I could just see it through the opening between the parking garage pillars of the HSR: streaks of orange and magenta transforming the Kaohsiung sky into a bowl of rainbow sherbet. Though I knew that time was of the essence, and that we needed to get downstairs and get my bags taken care of, I couldn't help but pause: this would be my last Kaohsiung sunset.
As I write this, it's still July 11th, and it's still sunset--but I am now waiting for my final flight in SeaTac airport after an 11-hour flight, and it's almost 9pm, not just before 7. Time zones and day-length differences strike again.
I teared up twice on my journey: once, just a few minutes after I saw the sunset in Kaohsiung, as I said goodbye to the world's best host family; and once, about an hour ago, as I caught my first glimpse of American soil. And that pretty much sums it up: tears on both ends, for both reasons. Happy and sad. Good and bad. C'est la vie.
As I am, now, officially in America for good, I am no longer 百合, and so this blog has come to an end. Going forward, I will still blog, but less frequently, and on subjects which have yet to be determined. Nonetheless, though it's empty now, here's a link to my new blog, for whenever I begin posting about my more-mundane life Stateside.
I'll cherish forever my time in Taiwan; I truly cannot imagine where I would be had I not gone; I don't want to think about a version of my life in which I hadn't met all the amazing people and had all the amazing experiences that I have met and had over the past year. But all good things must end; even the most perfect day has a sunset, followed by darkness.
Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Substitutions
I opened my mouth, and shut it again. Recalibrated. Opened it again. "Careful!"
It happened first with the ubiquitous "mmn"; then "thank you," I think, and spread quickly to "really?" and "yeah!": in my mind, they existed first and foremost in Chinese. Someone gives me something? 謝謝 (Xie xie)! Someone says something unbelievable? 真的嗎 (Zhen de ma)? I need to confirm that something is correct? "mmn" or 對阿 (dui aa) will do the job just fine.
小心 (xiao xin) as my go-to word is new for me, though, and it has the advantage (?) over the others of concerning situations in which you really don't have time to translate before speaking. If you're telling someone to be careful, you usually need to do so immediately--and, really, that's the reason why 小心 made its way into my vocabulary in the first place: being an elementary school teacher gives you ample times when you need to caution people quickly, and be sure that they understand you.
We talked in our Fulbright sessions earlier this year about the tenets of language learning; one of the goals towards which we strive as English teachers is for English words to come naturally. This is referred to in the language teaching community as automaticity. And yes, automaticity is great, and yes, I'm more than a little excited that, for some words at least, Chinese has supplanted English in my mind.
But when, as happened in Australia, I found myself about to caution someone in Chinese, I started wondering about the dangers of these substitutions. No wonder second (or third, or whatever) languages are lost so easily if you don't use them! Seems to me like a natural defense mechanism: if you hold a rarely-used language at the forefront of your mind, you run the risk of not being able to communicate with those around you at a moment's notice--and that is, after all, the main purpose for which language was developed.
I'd just like to take this moment to apologize in advance to all my friends in America, for the moments when Chinese will almost certainly slip from my mouth instead of English. Just give me a few months and, I'm sure, I'll recalibrate.
It happened first with the ubiquitous "mmn"; then "thank you," I think, and spread quickly to "really?" and "yeah!": in my mind, they existed first and foremost in Chinese. Someone gives me something? 謝謝 (Xie xie)! Someone says something unbelievable? 真的嗎 (Zhen de ma)? I need to confirm that something is correct? "mmn" or 對阿 (dui aa) will do the job just fine.
小心 (xiao xin) as my go-to word is new for me, though, and it has the advantage (?) over the others of concerning situations in which you really don't have time to translate before speaking. If you're telling someone to be careful, you usually need to do so immediately--and, really, that's the reason why 小心 made its way into my vocabulary in the first place: being an elementary school teacher gives you ample times when you need to caution people quickly, and be sure that they understand you.
We talked in our Fulbright sessions earlier this year about the tenets of language learning; one of the goals towards which we strive as English teachers is for English words to come naturally. This is referred to in the language teaching community as automaticity. And yes, automaticity is great, and yes, I'm more than a little excited that, for some words at least, Chinese has supplanted English in my mind.
But when, as happened in Australia, I found myself about to caution someone in Chinese, I started wondering about the dangers of these substitutions. No wonder second (or third, or whatever) languages are lost so easily if you don't use them! Seems to me like a natural defense mechanism: if you hold a rarely-used language at the forefront of your mind, you run the risk of not being able to communicate with those around you at a moment's notice--and that is, after all, the main purpose for which language was developed.
I'd just like to take this moment to apologize in advance to all my friends in America, for the moments when Chinese will almost certainly slip from my mouth instead of English. Just give me a few months and, I'm sure, I'll recalibrate.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Back "home" and Internet-less
So here's the thing: my apartment no longer has Internet. As I write this, I'm sitting in Brunch across the street, one eye on my battery meter as it drops closer and closer to the point where it will automatically shut down.
The pros of this situation:
As for today, it consisted almost entirely in travel. I was up and out of my hostel by 6am; one local train, one express train, one flight, two buses, an MRT ride and a walk later, at 5:30pm, I arrived back home in Kaohsiung. Along the way, much ado was made about various forms of cash--I was carrying three (AUD, NTD, Japanese yen)--and trying to keep the coolest coins from each. I ended up making a small purchase specifically so I could get more Japanese change--some of their coins, the value of which I haven't been able to determine, have holes in them!
Another, erm, interesting moment came with the appointment of a sign at the entrance of my Osaka-Taipei flight telling me to "enjoy your "safe" and "comfortable" flight"--hardly encouraging.
AND--and if I had more time/wasn't feeling quite so lazy I would have led with this and made it a post of its own--I realized that hearing spoken Chinese and seeing Chinese signs is a comforting, homelike thing for me now. Being in Japan, even for a very short time, made me remember how awkward it is to not know a single word of the language being spoken around you (especially disorienting was the fact that Japan uses some Chinese characters, though mostly of the simplified variety, in its writing), and it let me see how far I've come in this year in Taiwan. The trilingual announcements at the airport (Japanese/Chinese/English) were great for showing me that I can now safely say I'd probably be alright if they had cut out the English--and that was a wonderful realization.
Well, it's about time I pack up and head back to my Internet-free home--and then get to work packing for my return to my other home.
The pros of this situation:
- Harder to distract myself while packing;
- Much more likely to spend fewer than 8 hours a day on the computer;
- New time requirements for my blog will mean less late-night typing
- I have no Internet in my apartment. That pretty much sums it up, but if you want more, here:
- I have to buy a coffee/tea whenever I want to check my email;
- I have infinitely fewer opportunities to get in contact with people (internationally and nationally; my phone's almost out of funds, too);
- When I start forcing myself back onto a US time schedule (which I'm thinking of doing starting maybe Monday or Tuesday), I'll be up all night with nothing to do;
- Updates and photos will take longer getting posted.
As for today, it consisted almost entirely in travel. I was up and out of my hostel by 6am; one local train, one express train, one flight, two buses, an MRT ride and a walk later, at 5:30pm, I arrived back home in Kaohsiung. Along the way, much ado was made about various forms of cash--I was carrying three (AUD, NTD, Japanese yen)--and trying to keep the coolest coins from each. I ended up making a small purchase specifically so I could get more Japanese change--some of their coins, the value of which I haven't been able to determine, have holes in them!
Another, erm, interesting moment came with the appointment of a sign at the entrance of my Osaka-Taipei flight telling me to "enjoy your "safe" and "comfortable" flight"--hardly encouraging.
AND--and if I had more time/wasn't feeling quite so lazy I would have led with this and made it a post of its own--I realized that hearing spoken Chinese and seeing Chinese signs is a comforting, homelike thing for me now. Being in Japan, even for a very short time, made me remember how awkward it is to not know a single word of the language being spoken around you (especially disorienting was the fact that Japan uses some Chinese characters, though mostly of the simplified variety, in its writing), and it let me see how far I've come in this year in Taiwan. The trilingual announcements at the airport (Japanese/Chinese/English) were great for showing me that I can now safely say I'd probably be alright if they had cut out the English--and that was a wonderful realization.
Well, it's about time I pack up and head back to my Internet-free home--and then get to work packing for my return to my other home.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Top 10 Things I'll Miss About Taiwan
10. My students, my co-teachers, my colleagues, my friends...
This one is obviously actually #1, but it's far too serious to put as my ending note. So, this is actually the thing I will miss the absolute most about Taiwan...but I don't have the heart to put it there. I love my students; I love my co-teachers; I love my colleagues; I love my friends here, and I don't want to think about the fact that I'm leaving then soon. *ahem* Movingon.
9. Standing out in every crowd
It gets annoying at times, but it's still kind of cool to be The Foreigner, worthy of stares and smiles and awe. And I'm not gonna lie, it's nice getting "你很漂亮啊" all the time from strangers. I won't quite know how to deal with blending in again...
8. The ability to pop up to Taipei or Taitung on a whim, or to fly to Thailand in just 6 hours or so
I've mentioned this before, but I have absolutely LOVED the ability to travel that this year has given me, coupled with an absolutely fantastic array of locations at my feet.
7. Living amongst the nicest people on the planet
I genuinely believe this to be true. I have NEVER met more kindhearted people than the Taiwanese locals, especially Kaohsiung locals, are. It's partly Southern hospitality (the same the world over), but mostly just an ingrained wonderful friendliness all over the island of Taiwan. They are simply wonderful.
6. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon off work
This was just a lovely quirk of my schedule all year: no class after noon three days a week. Never gonna get THAT again!
5. Playing the foreigner card
Not being able to communicate definitely has its upside. This is it: the foreigner card. "I don't understand!" Annnnnd you can now do anything you want.
4. Drinking ALL THE TEA
I didn't even drink tea before I came to Taiwan. But I will miss all the fabulous varieties of tea I've grown to love this year, and will no doubt try to replicate them on my own: grapefruit green tea, Oolong milk tea, Earl Grey milk tea (at least this one I can still get at home), yogurt green tea, mango green tea, the list goes on...and I will always remember being the sole one still ordering it iced when the temperature dropped to a "frigid" 60F or so.
3. Beautiful sunshiney days on my scooter
When the sun is out, my scooter is perfect. Wind in my hair, zipping along, getting tanned (avoiding the slowpokes...); in essence, perfection.
2. Fresh fruit, everywhere, all the time
Taiwan's fruit is the best thing ever. EVER. And it's cheap. I will forever miss being able to go down to the fruit stand on a whim and buy pineapples, mangoes, and watermelon and for less than 3USD.
1. Driving like a maniac with no repercussions
'Nuff said. Here's hoping I readjust before I get buried in tickets at home...
This one is obviously actually #1, but it's far too serious to put as my ending note. So, this is actually the thing I will miss the absolute most about Taiwan...but I don't have the heart to put it there. I love my students; I love my co-teachers; I love my colleagues; I love my friends here, and I don't want to think about the fact that I'm leaving then soon. *ahem* Movingon.
9. Standing out in every crowd
It gets annoying at times, but it's still kind of cool to be The Foreigner, worthy of stares and smiles and awe. And I'm not gonna lie, it's nice getting "你很漂亮啊" all the time from strangers. I won't quite know how to deal with blending in again...
8. The ability to pop up to Taipei or Taitung on a whim, or to fly to Thailand in just 6 hours or so
I've mentioned this before, but I have absolutely LOVED the ability to travel that this year has given me, coupled with an absolutely fantastic array of locations at my feet.
7. Living amongst the nicest people on the planet
I genuinely believe this to be true. I have NEVER met more kindhearted people than the Taiwanese locals, especially Kaohsiung locals, are. It's partly Southern hospitality (the same the world over), but mostly just an ingrained wonderful friendliness all over the island of Taiwan. They are simply wonderful.
6. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon off work
This was just a lovely quirk of my schedule all year: no class after noon three days a week. Never gonna get THAT again!
5. Playing the foreigner card
Not being able to communicate definitely has its upside. This is it: the foreigner card. "I don't understand!" Annnnnd you can now do anything you want.
4. Drinking ALL THE TEA
I didn't even drink tea before I came to Taiwan. But I will miss all the fabulous varieties of tea I've grown to love this year, and will no doubt try to replicate them on my own: grapefruit green tea, Oolong milk tea, Earl Grey milk tea (at least this one I can still get at home), yogurt green tea, mango green tea, the list goes on...and I will always remember being the sole one still ordering it iced when the temperature dropped to a "frigid" 60F or so.
3. Beautiful sunshiney days on my scooter
When the sun is out, my scooter is perfect. Wind in my hair, zipping along, getting tanned (avoiding the slowpokes...); in essence, perfection.
2. Fresh fruit, everywhere, all the time
Taiwan's fruit is the best thing ever. EVER. And it's cheap. I will forever miss being able to go down to the fruit stand on a whim and buy pineapples, mangoes, and watermelon and for less than 3USD.
1. Driving like a maniac with no repercussions
'Nuff said. Here's hoping I readjust before I get buried in tickets at home...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Choosing What to Keep
I leave Taiwan very, very soon. This fact dictates my entire existence right now; every moment of my day which is not spent preparing directly for this event is spent in the knowledge that it probably should be. There's no longer any question of denial: it is what it is, and it's time I face facts. I'm going home. Soon.
I mentioned a few days ago that my packing process involves an awful lot of throwing stuff out. If you know me, you know that that is absolutely, 100% not in my nature. I'm not saying I'm a pack rat or anything, but actually I totally am a pack rat. Just look--no, just kidding, please don't look--in my childhood bedroom closet. There (and in the attic, since my room has been repurposed a few times since I moved out) you will find an archival record of my life, told through physical artifacts. My favorite toy from when I was 8, a cool art project from when I was 12, my high school English papers--they're all there, if you just look.
But here's the thing--I almost never do. Because, at the end of the day, there's rarely a reason to look back and see exactly what it is that I wrote about Catch-22 in that one paper, or exactly what my handwriting looked like when I was 5. It may be nice to have a few indicators of the different stages in life, sure, but ultimately the stuff that crowds the upper shelves of my closet is just that: stuff that crowds my closet. And, in some instances, my suitcase.
Having an imposed weight limit (set not just by the airlines, but by my budgetary rejection of excess baggage fees) has been hugely helpful in helping me see my pack rat tendencies for what they are: an unnecessary reliance on things to describe my experiences. I'm not saying I'm going to go through and trash what I have, but going forward, it's immensely freeing to be able to look at a pile of Chinese writing I've done, or my favorite bag since freshman year of college (the zipper of which recently broke, and which is otherwise well-loved throughout), or first-ever Fulbright name tag with "百合" printed on it, and realize that they belong in the trash, and that putting them there does nothing to dampen my memories.
My trash can is overflowing with such realizations.
And it doesn't bother me, not in the slightest, because of all the things that will come home with me--all the intangibles, which fortunately don't weigh in at the airport, since if they did I don't think my life savings would begin to put a dent in those fees. Choosing what to keep is easy when you realize you don't even have a choice on the important stuff.
Stuff like meeting Karina and her friend Satomi for shave ice (which I didn't end up getting to eat), and realizing that I now know Kaohsiung well enough to navigate on autopilot. And like being taken out to dinner by Alison, Maggie, Fiona and Patty, who took me to a Thai restaurant because it's my favorite, and who dared to brave spiciness beyond their comfort level to do so. And like getting waffles with Rachel and Chialing, despite being still full from dinner, just so we could have another little bit to sit around a picture-laminated table and take silly photos of Chialing's nephew's dog.
This is what I'm taking home; this is what matters:
As for the rest--no need to add to my rat's nest.
I mentioned a few days ago that my packing process involves an awful lot of throwing stuff out. If you know me, you know that that is absolutely, 100% not in my nature. I'm not saying I'm a pack rat or anything, but actually I totally am a pack rat. Just look--no, just kidding, please don't look--in my childhood bedroom closet. There (and in the attic, since my room has been repurposed a few times since I moved out) you will find an archival record of my life, told through physical artifacts. My favorite toy from when I was 8, a cool art project from when I was 12, my high school English papers--they're all there, if you just look.
But here's the thing--I almost never do. Because, at the end of the day, there's rarely a reason to look back and see exactly what it is that I wrote about Catch-22 in that one paper, or exactly what my handwriting looked like when I was 5. It may be nice to have a few indicators of the different stages in life, sure, but ultimately the stuff that crowds the upper shelves of my closet is just that: stuff that crowds my closet. And, in some instances, my suitcase.
Having an imposed weight limit (set not just by the airlines, but by my budgetary rejection of excess baggage fees) has been hugely helpful in helping me see my pack rat tendencies for what they are: an unnecessary reliance on things to describe my experiences. I'm not saying I'm going to go through and trash what I have, but going forward, it's immensely freeing to be able to look at a pile of Chinese writing I've done, or my favorite bag since freshman year of college (the zipper of which recently broke, and which is otherwise well-loved throughout), or first-ever Fulbright name tag with "百合" printed on it, and realize that they belong in the trash, and that putting them there does nothing to dampen my memories.
My trash can is overflowing with such realizations.
And it doesn't bother me, not in the slightest, because of all the things that will come home with me--all the intangibles, which fortunately don't weigh in at the airport, since if they did I don't think my life savings would begin to put a dent in those fees. Choosing what to keep is easy when you realize you don't even have a choice on the important stuff.
Stuff like meeting Karina and her friend Satomi for shave ice (which I didn't end up getting to eat), and realizing that I now know Kaohsiung well enough to navigate on autopilot. And like being taken out to dinner by Alison, Maggie, Fiona and Patty, who took me to a Thai restaurant because it's my favorite, and who dared to brave spiciness beyond their comfort level to do so. And like getting waffles with Rachel and Chialing, despite being still full from dinner, just so we could have another little bit to sit around a picture-laminated table and take silly photos of Chialing's nephew's dog.
This is what I'm taking home; this is what matters:
As for the rest--no need to add to my rat's nest.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Boxes and Bags
I've been putting it off, but don't think it hasn't been on my mind. Every time I look around my room, my brain goes into analysis mode, mentally categorizing every item my eyes alight on for one simple thing: is it coming home? If so, where and how?
Packing. It's the end of the year now, really and truly, and very soon all the things I've arranged so carefully around my room and apartment, the things that make a room my room, will be jammed back into their casings, ready to fly home with me. If, that is, they make the short list.
When I flew here, I paid atrocious amounts of baggage fees. Then, I flew home in August with an all-but-empty suitcase and brought back more stuff. Then, there were gifts. And souvenirs. And more gifts. And I do not want to pay more to leave here than I did to come.
Some stuff, of course, can't make the journey: the gifts I brought to give, the coffee I brought to drink, the shampoos and conditioners and whatnot I brought to use. Whenever I think of another thing I've used up here, I get excited. So, too, do I get excited when I realize I can part with something else--those books I brought and read but am not too attached to, those shoes that got ruined from too much use, those clothes which have dwindled thanks to a harsh washing machine and, again, overuse, or which will prove otherwise useless in my home climate.
And, I was at least able to send a few things back with visitors when they came, so that's something. But still, my packing plans call for throwing out as much as I possibly can to avoid a third bag and overweight charges.
Today, I began filling my theoretical third bag with stuff--stuff which will come home, but which I definitely will not need between now and July 11. And so, my mental preparations have become physical. No turning back now--from here on out, it's all boxes and bags.
Packing. It's the end of the year now, really and truly, and very soon all the things I've arranged so carefully around my room and apartment, the things that make a room my room, will be jammed back into their casings, ready to fly home with me. If, that is, they make the short list.
When I flew here, I paid atrocious amounts of baggage fees. Then, I flew home in August with an all-but-empty suitcase and brought back more stuff. Then, there were gifts. And souvenirs. And more gifts. And I do not want to pay more to leave here than I did to come.
Some stuff, of course, can't make the journey: the gifts I brought to give, the coffee I brought to drink, the shampoos and conditioners and whatnot I brought to use. Whenever I think of another thing I've used up here, I get excited. So, too, do I get excited when I realize I can part with something else--those books I brought and read but am not too attached to, those shoes that got ruined from too much use, those clothes which have dwindled thanks to a harsh washing machine and, again, overuse, or which will prove otherwise useless in my home climate.
And, I was at least able to send a few things back with visitors when they came, so that's something. But still, my packing plans call for throwing out as much as I possibly can to avoid a third bag and overweight charges.
Today, I began filling my theoretical third bag with stuff--stuff which will come home, but which I definitely will not need between now and July 11. And so, my mental preparations have become physical. No turning back now--from here on out, it's all boxes and bags.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Goodbyes, Tea, Rain, and a Challenge!
Well, from here on out it's pretty much all goodbyes. Just reading over my last week of postings is depressing, and from here on out it's a downward slope. So, to counterbalance what could otherwise be a tidal wave of sadness, I've decided to split today's post (and possibly future posts, pending time and motivation) into two sections: the deep, dark and sad, and the light, bubbly and happy. And yes, they will be in that order, because who wants to end on a frown?
Today was my last day with my 6th graders at Hanmin. Ever. And it wasn't even supposed to be! See, the 6th graders graduate a week before everyone else finishes school, so they took their finals last week, and have graduation this Friday. Which, I thought, would work fine: I'd have one final class period with all of them; get a chance to say goodbye, take pictures, and hand out the little end-of-the-year gifts I had for them. And, today, that's precisely what I did. But tomorrow, when I'm supposed to have my other three sixth grade classes for the last time, they have graduation practice. I've always thought graduation practice was useless, but I've never before resented it quite so much as I do now.
So today was my last day. The kids were pretty checked out about it, as a result of the fact that this week seems to be the officially sanctioed bring-your-DS-or-iPad-to-class and watch-movies-all-day week, and because they knew I'd be at their graduation, but they did appreciate the lollipops and cards I made for each of them--and then mobbed me with their yearbooks to sign. And, of course, we took pictures.
In between classes, Alison, Maggie and I went down to the general assembly room we've been using all year for Morning English, and which had, yesterday, been emptied of most of its rows of tables, which had been replaced with white plastic deck furniture labeled and set around the room for teachers to sit at for the 6th Annual Teacher Appreciation Tea Ceremony.
When I first heard we were having a Teacher Appreciation Tea, I pictured an English-style tea such as those that have made their way to America for special occasions and such among those who want to feel posh. Why this was my first logical conclusion then is a complete mystery to my now. We are in Taiwan, after all!
When it was our shift (yes, everyone was given a shift), we entered the room with about 20 other teachers, and sat in front of a group of probably 70 or so students, plus the ones massing around the doors, whose purpose I didn't yet know. For tea, each teacher in had an assigned seat and, after a short speech and with the onset of a musical cue, the masses of our students from around the doors flooded forward, one for each teacher, bearing a cup and saucer for each individual teacher. When they got to us, on another cue, they went down on one knee and waited while we drank our tea. So sweet, and so unexpected! And, as a Westerner, very, very foreign to have a student kneeling and waiting on me.
After the tea--which Alison sadly missed, since her student was late--they put on a slide show of all the kids from this year, together with a sad, anthem-y song which they invited everyone to sing along to. Very poignant--and then the lady who was announcing began commenting on each slide. My favorite moment was when she called out "BEKAH!"...and then the slide didn't have me on it. The next one did, though, and she was ready with her announcement once again!
I got a (really terrible) video of part of the slide show; maybe it will give more of a sense of setting:
It felt very pomp-and-circumstance-ish, though the sensation was somewhat lost when they released us late to our next class, where, after we escaped the clutches of the textbook salesmen, we just handed out cards and watched movies again.
The last class of the day was when the really interesting stuff began, though. In the middle of handing out cards, an announcement came over the intercom--and the whole room broke out in cheers. I turned to Alison. "School cancelled?" "Yes."
It's been raining torrentially all over Taiwan for days--my commute the last few days has been perpetually horrid, and it's flooding elsewhere--and as of this afternoon, the Kaohsiung government finally decided they had had enough, and shut down schools, so everyone could go home...right as the worst of the rain started again, of course.
Then, while walking back (early) from that last class, one of my sixth graders from last semester stepped out of her classroom to get my signature on her yearbook. The next thing I knew, I had every single kid from two classrooms surrounding me and wanting my signature all at once. This when I felt certain that every second I stayed at school would mean a worse drive home--they had closed the schools for a reason, after all, surely!
But, of course, I signed them. How could I not? And then I drove home, during which drive I discovered that the closure was not limited to Hanmin, as I had thougth before, but was, rather, a city-wide proclamation, which meant that the roads were absolutely packed with parents who had been called to come pick up their kids hours early. In the parking garage at home, I ran into one of my neighbors on her way out, and when I cautioned her about the rain, she just smiled and said she had to go pick up her kids. Everyone did, after all!
In light of buqiban culture, I cannot fully imagine the havoc wreaked on everyone's lives today. I didn't think much of it until I went walking to find lunch, and discovered that the vast majority of restaurants around were abnormally closed. Even after they picked up their kids, people are really just hunkering down for this one--Chialing closed up shop early, since, as she told Rachel, there was no one in the streets. And who can blame them?
And now, the lighter note!
Today, as I found myself sucked once again into the Youtube Wormhole, I began wondering what conclusions someone would draw about me if the only information they had available to them, for some strange reason, was my Youtube history and subscriptions. And no, they aren't allowed to look at the videos I've actually uploaded myself, that would be a MUCH more complete and, therefore, less fun view. So here's what they would learn about me, and what they would subsequently assume to be my entire personality:
And now I'm curious. Based solely on your Youtube history and subscriptions, what would someone assume YOU to be like? Leave a comment if you're brave enough to reply!
Today was my last day with my 6th graders at Hanmin. Ever. And it wasn't even supposed to be! See, the 6th graders graduate a week before everyone else finishes school, so they took their finals last week, and have graduation this Friday. Which, I thought, would work fine: I'd have one final class period with all of them; get a chance to say goodbye, take pictures, and hand out the little end-of-the-year gifts I had for them. And, today, that's precisely what I did. But tomorrow, when I'm supposed to have my other three sixth grade classes for the last time, they have graduation practice. I've always thought graduation practice was useless, but I've never before resented it quite so much as I do now.
So today was my last day. The kids were pretty checked out about it, as a result of the fact that this week seems to be the officially sanctioed bring-your-DS-or-iPad-to-class and watch-movies-all-day week, and because they knew I'd be at their graduation, but they did appreciate the lollipops and cards I made for each of them--and then mobbed me with their yearbooks to sign. And, of course, we took pictures.
 |
| The girls of 6-07 took a picture with me... |
 |
| ...while the boys of 6-07 did this. |
 |
| Lollipops that had lost their wrappers...pretty, though! |
 |
| Class 6-08 was more cooperative :) |
 |
| So was Class 6-02. |
When I first heard we were having a Teacher Appreciation Tea, I pictured an English-style tea such as those that have made their way to America for special occasions and such among those who want to feel posh. Why this was my first logical conclusion then is a complete mystery to my now. We are in Taiwan, after all!
When it was our shift (yes, everyone was given a shift), we entered the room with about 20 other teachers, and sat in front of a group of probably 70 or so students, plus the ones massing around the doors, whose purpose I didn't yet know. For tea, each teacher in had an assigned seat and, after a short speech and with the onset of a musical cue, the masses of our students from around the doors flooded forward, one for each teacher, bearing a cup and saucer for each individual teacher. When they got to us, on another cue, they went down on one knee and waited while we drank our tea. So sweet, and so unexpected! And, as a Westerner, very, very foreign to have a student kneeling and waiting on me.
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| Maggie getting her tea |
After the tea--which Alison sadly missed, since her student was late--they put on a slide show of all the kids from this year, together with a sad, anthem-y song which they invited everyone to sing along to. Very poignant--and then the lady who was announcing began commenting on each slide. My favorite moment was when she called out "BEKAH!"...and then the slide didn't have me on it. The next one did, though, and she was ready with her announcement once again!
I got a (really terrible) video of part of the slide show; maybe it will give more of a sense of setting:
It felt very pomp-and-circumstance-ish, though the sensation was somewhat lost when they released us late to our next class, where, after we escaped the clutches of the textbook salesmen, we just handed out cards and watched movies again.
The last class of the day was when the really interesting stuff began, though. In the middle of handing out cards, an announcement came over the intercom--and the whole room broke out in cheers. I turned to Alison. "School cancelled?" "Yes."
It's been raining torrentially all over Taiwan for days--my commute the last few days has been perpetually horrid, and it's flooding elsewhere--and as of this afternoon, the Kaohsiung government finally decided they had had enough, and shut down schools, so everyone could go home...right as the worst of the rain started again, of course.
Then, while walking back (early) from that last class, one of my sixth graders from last semester stepped out of her classroom to get my signature on her yearbook. The next thing I knew, I had every single kid from two classrooms surrounding me and wanting my signature all at once. This when I felt certain that every second I stayed at school would mean a worse drive home--they had closed the schools for a reason, after all, surely!
But, of course, I signed them. How could I not? And then I drove home, during which drive I discovered that the closure was not limited to Hanmin, as I had thougth before, but was, rather, a city-wide proclamation, which meant that the roads were absolutely packed with parents who had been called to come pick up their kids hours early. In the parking garage at home, I ran into one of my neighbors on her way out, and when I cautioned her about the rain, she just smiled and said she had to go pick up her kids. Everyone did, after all!
In light of buqiban culture, I cannot fully imagine the havoc wreaked on everyone's lives today. I didn't think much of it until I went walking to find lunch, and discovered that the vast majority of restaurants around were abnormally closed. Even after they picked up their kids, people are really just hunkering down for this one--Chialing closed up shop early, since, as she told Rachel, there was no one in the streets. And who can blame them?
And now, the lighter note!
Today, as I found myself sucked once again into the Youtube Wormhole, I began wondering what conclusions someone would draw about me if the only information they had available to them, for some strange reason, was my Youtube history and subscriptions. And no, they aren't allowed to look at the videos I've actually uploaded myself, that would be a MUCH more complete and, therefore, less fun view. So here's what they would learn about me, and what they would subsequently assume to be my entire personality:
- I like comedy sketches
- I like British things
- Specifically, I like British accents
- I like Doctor Who (which is both British and contains British accents)
- I like the actors of Doctor Who (who are also British and use British accents)
- I like watching male vloggers
- Specifically, I like watching male vloggers WITH British accents
- Most specifically of all, I like watching male vloggers with British accents TALK about Doctor Who (charlieissocoollike and nerimon)
And now I'm curious. Based solely on your Youtube history and subscriptions, what would someone assume YOU to be like? Leave a comment if you're brave enough to reply!
Monday, June 11, 2012
Slow Wheels Turning
Several things happened today, all pointing, slowly but surely, to the conclusion that my time here is almost done.
1.) I booked my SCUBA class for my trip Down Under. And, with that, I'm locked in: my vacation is coming, and soon! Great Barrier Reef, here I come. And afterwards...home. 29 days.
2.) I began making goodbye cards for my students. I've been putting this off, partly because I didn't want to sit for hours writing "Have a GREAT summer" on 535 slips of colored paper (120 in now and my hand is already killing me...); partly because the incessant rain these past few days have made me less than thrilled to venture out to buy said papers; and, mostly, because I don't want it to be time for that yet. Rachel was nice enough to buy some lollipops for me at Costco a while back--also for goodbye gifts--and I put them on my desk chair and rolled it under the desk so I wouldn't have to look at them. I don't think I'm quite ready for this...10 days.
3.) Tiffiany began packing. Yes, I know, this is not me, per se, but it's begun: ETAs are taking their stuff off their walls, sorting it, folding it, wrapping it, and putting it in bags and boxes to go home. The process has started, and there's no going back now. Soon I'll need to join. 10 days.
I miss home. I miss my friends and family. I miss my dog. I miss lasagna. But now that the wheels sending me home are in motion, I don't know if I'm ready for them to turn...
1.) I booked my SCUBA class for my trip Down Under. And, with that, I'm locked in: my vacation is coming, and soon! Great Barrier Reef, here I come. And afterwards...home. 29 days.
2.) I began making goodbye cards for my students. I've been putting this off, partly because I didn't want to sit for hours writing "Have a GREAT summer" on 535 slips of colored paper (120 in now and my hand is already killing me...); partly because the incessant rain these past few days have made me less than thrilled to venture out to buy said papers; and, mostly, because I don't want it to be time for that yet. Rachel was nice enough to buy some lollipops for me at Costco a while back--also for goodbye gifts--and I put them on my desk chair and rolled it under the desk so I wouldn't have to look at them. I don't think I'm quite ready for this...10 days.
3.) Tiffiany began packing. Yes, I know, this is not me, per se, but it's begun: ETAs are taking their stuff off their walls, sorting it, folding it, wrapping it, and putting it in bags and boxes to go home. The process has started, and there's no going back now. Soon I'll need to join. 10 days.
I miss home. I miss my friends and family. I miss my dog. I miss lasagna. But now that the wheels sending me home are in motion, I don't know if I'm ready for them to turn...
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Happy Sad Anniversary
One year ago today, I walked home from my last undergraduate final exam and opened my inbox to find the most important email of my life: the email announcing I had gotten the Fulbright. I was blown away.
Or, technically, what the letter said was that I should call Jonathan Akeley at my earliest convenience to discuss the status of my Fulbright grant; and, technically, what I was was frozen stiff, then spurred to frenetic energy as I dug through my drawers looking for older correspondence, and then frozen stiff again. But you get the picture.
I don't know if I've mentioned it on here before, but I was actually an alternate to come to Taiwan. That means that in April, when everyone else here was getting their life-changing letters, jumping up and down with joy and calling their friends and family to share the good news--and believe me, they all remember the precise moment they got their letters, we've compared notes--I got, instead, the deflating news that I had gone from "recommended candidate" to "alternate." That was all the information I was given--that I was an alternate, and that, if someone backed out or they got more funding, I might get to go. There was no mention of the likelihood of that happening; nor did they tell me whether I had a dozen people before me on the alternate list, or if I was the first.
As it happened, the latter. But the not-knowing that plagued my April-June was one of the biggest testings I've faced so far, and the pay-off was easily the best. One year later, I cannot fathom what my life would have been like if today had passed like any other, consigning me forever to the phantasmal status of alternate.
I suppose it's fitting, then, that today featured our unofficial LET-ETA Farewell Potluck. One year ago today, I learned that I would have the opportunity to come to Taiwan and meet and work with hundreds of wonderful people; today, I began to learn what it is to say goodbye to them.
The existence of the potluck, and the number of people who came, actually says a lot about our group. See, we had had an official farewell dinner planned for all the ETAs, LETs, and host families. Then it got cancelled, thanks to budget cuts. At our last Wednesday workshop, they gave us the microphones--and all anyone could talk about was how much we wanted a real goodbye, funded or not. So potluck it was!
And I'm so glad it was. For a strictly voluntary event on a weekend night, a huge number of people showed up--and, Taiwan being Taiwan, way more than enough food. I spent the night shifting around the room and chatting, and in addition to chilling with the other ETAs (which we've done surprisingly little of this year) and with Maggie, Alison and Patty (ALWAYS a pleasure), I got to catch up with several of the LETs, like Kiwi and Karen, with whom I'd loved to hang out back during orientation, but hadn't been able to see much of since then. And, of course, I ate myself sick.
I can't help but think how perfect the timing was that our potluck should be today, exactly one year after I found out I was coming here. What a perfect way to celebrate, and to remind myself of the possible outcome of a period of intense uncertainty--which, incidentally, is also what I'm dealing with right now in regards to the coming year.
Today ushers in a new year for me, one with many goodbyes to be made, but also many hellos which I don't know about yet. And, as sad as the goodbyes are, and will be, the best possible way to look at them is in light of the fact that they can be made--that I met all these wonderful people in the first place. Thank you all for a fantastic year, and thank you, Fulbright, for changing my life with a single email sent one year ago today.
Or, technically, what the letter said was that I should call Jonathan Akeley at my earliest convenience to discuss the status of my Fulbright grant; and, technically, what I was was frozen stiff, then spurred to frenetic energy as I dug through my drawers looking for older correspondence, and then frozen stiff again. But you get the picture.
I don't know if I've mentioned it on here before, but I was actually an alternate to come to Taiwan. That means that in April, when everyone else here was getting their life-changing letters, jumping up and down with joy and calling their friends and family to share the good news--and believe me, they all remember the precise moment they got their letters, we've compared notes--I got, instead, the deflating news that I had gone from "recommended candidate" to "alternate." That was all the information I was given--that I was an alternate, and that, if someone backed out or they got more funding, I might get to go. There was no mention of the likelihood of that happening; nor did they tell me whether I had a dozen people before me on the alternate list, or if I was the first.
As it happened, the latter. But the not-knowing that plagued my April-June was one of the biggest testings I've faced so far, and the pay-off was easily the best. One year later, I cannot fathom what my life would have been like if today had passed like any other, consigning me forever to the phantasmal status of alternate.
I suppose it's fitting, then, that today featured our unofficial LET-ETA Farewell Potluck. One year ago today, I learned that I would have the opportunity to come to Taiwan and meet and work with hundreds of wonderful people; today, I began to learn what it is to say goodbye to them.
The existence of the potluck, and the number of people who came, actually says a lot about our group. See, we had had an official farewell dinner planned for all the ETAs, LETs, and host families. Then it got cancelled, thanks to budget cuts. At our last Wednesday workshop, they gave us the microphones--and all anyone could talk about was how much we wanted a real goodbye, funded or not. So potluck it was!
And I'm so glad it was. For a strictly voluntary event on a weekend night, a huge number of people showed up--and, Taiwan being Taiwan, way more than enough food. I spent the night shifting around the room and chatting, and in addition to chilling with the other ETAs (which we've done surprisingly little of this year) and with Maggie, Alison and Patty (ALWAYS a pleasure), I got to catch up with several of the LETs, like Kiwi and Karen, with whom I'd loved to hang out back during orientation, but hadn't been able to see much of since then. And, of course, I ate myself sick.
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| Foooooooood |
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| Pictured: Patty succeeding in getting Analicia to try the duck blood rice. Brittany is still being persuaded. I held strong. |
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| Lovely people!...many of whom I didn't know were in the picture until I uploaded it. In a crowded room, pictures grow as soon as you start posing! |
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| I love these people so much! |
Today ushers in a new year for me, one with many goodbyes to be made, but also many hellos which I don't know about yet. And, as sad as the goodbyes are, and will be, the best possible way to look at them is in light of the fact that they can be made--that I met all these wonderful people in the first place. Thank you all for a fantastic year, and thank you, Fulbright, for changing my life with a single email sent one year ago today.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Lasts
Today after school, I got my scooter oil changed, filled up my gas tank, grabbed Subway for lunch, and stopped by my bank to transfer rent money into Rachel's account. Why am I telling you all this? Well because, as I stood in line at the ATM at the bank, I realized: I was paying June's rent. June's rent. As in, the last regular rent I'll pay in Taiwan.
And so, the march of the lasts continues. Retrospectively, I can say, too, that I've had my last oil change, and had my last payday. From here on out, in fact, I'll have to be vigilant if I don't want to miss them: lasts will keep on flying at me, whether I notice them or not, as the countdown to America begins. (41 days, by the way.)
And lasts are usually sad. Though those today weren't--last time I have to shell out for new oil or my living space? Hooray!--you can pretty well expect this blog to get more nostalgic as we move forward, though always complemented with stifled excitement for things like my car, American food, and the ability to communicate. (And, you know, my family and friends and stuff, but that goes without saying. :) )
But before we get to that, I thought I'd share a nice little video from one of my favorite YouTube-ers that I found today, a video with which I quite identify. For all the introverts reading this, enjoy the similarities and validation. For all the extroverts, watch and learn!
And so, the march of the lasts continues. Retrospectively, I can say, too, that I've had my last oil change, and had my last payday. From here on out, in fact, I'll have to be vigilant if I don't want to miss them: lasts will keep on flying at me, whether I notice them or not, as the countdown to America begins. (41 days, by the way.)
And lasts are usually sad. Though those today weren't--last time I have to shell out for new oil or my living space? Hooray!--you can pretty well expect this blog to get more nostalgic as we move forward, though always complemented with stifled excitement for things like my car, American food, and the ability to communicate. (And, you know, my family and friends and stuff, but that goes without saying. :) )
But before we get to that, I thought I'd share a nice little video from one of my favorite YouTube-ers that I found today, a video with which I quite identify. For all the introverts reading this, enjoy the similarities and validation. For all the extroverts, watch and learn!
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Scooter Pet Peeves
...because it's been a while, and I only have another month (ish) in which to experience (and complain about) Taiwanese traffic. So, what have I been noticing lately? Well...
1. Scooters might just be the reason for the terrible traffic light systems in Taiwan. This was actually a big breakthrough discovery for me. In America, as you may know, traffic lights are triggered in one of two ways: they run on a regular schedule, or they keep the dominant road on green unless a car pulls up to the light on the less-dominant road and triggers a switch. Well, so far as I can tell, this second system does not exist in Taiwan.
Rather, it is on a rigidly regular schedule which aligns all roads facing one direction--which is a bit eerie, at first, since it means that you'll be driving along, and suddenly see the traffic lights for every block within your sight-line turn yellow at once. It also is insanely obnoxious, since it absolutely guarantees that you will stop every X number of blocks, with X being determined by the schedule, how fast you're going, and how many slow-moving vehicles pull out in front of you along the way (but we'll get to that in a minute). The lights are so reliable that, at this point, I can pretty well tell you exactly where I'll have to stop every time I drive to school--and I know exactly how fast I have to go to get to where. (Woo, made it to Yisin this morning! Or: gaaah, Ersheng, I'm going to be late. Stupid tour bus!)
Now, granted, I've been out of the Stateside driving routine for almost a year now, so please correct me if I'm remembering it incorrectly. But aren't the scheduled lights there rigged so that, if you hit a green, you usually hit all greens; if you hit a red, you usually hit only one, followed by a string of greens? I don't think it' even something you usually notice, I just have a distinct memory of many, MANY trips where I hit all yellows, like four lights in a row's worth of just-long-enough lights--until eventually I hit one that I couldn't help but stop for unless I wanted a ticket and/or an accident.
Besides that, greens are more prevalent on major roads because the minor roads are almost all run on pressure sensors, which means that those roads only get the green if they're actually needed. And, after 10 months here in Taiwan, where the number of vacant alleyways with green lights as I sit at a red, coupled with a general lack of traffic law enforcement, has led me to routinely determining if I am at a "necessary" (stop and wait) or "non-necessary" (look and go!) red light, green-lighting major roads at the expense of smaller ones seems like a great idea.
A few days ago, though, while reading this Cracked.com article, I realized why they can't have them here: scooters can't trigger pressure-based lights! And since the vast majority of Taiwan's (or, at least, Kaohsiung's) motorists sit perched not in cars or trucks but on scooters or motorcycles, a lights system that caters to larger vehicles while stranding smaller ones just wouldn't make sense.
Still, it seems like they should be able to just develop a more sensitive sensor...or at least make the schedule according to actual traffic patterns, rather than an arbitrary grid!
2. Dear Car-drivers of Kaohsiung: We'll get out of your lanes as soon as you stop using ours as a parking lot. Sincerely, Scooter-drivers of Kaohsiung.
Most major Kaohsiung roads have one of two set-ups: either several car lanes, a barrier, and a scooter lane, or several car lanes, a line, and a scooter lane/road shoulder. It should be noted that, on the outside corner of every scooter lane and/or road shoulder, there are usually parking spaces. If there is no space for parking spaces, there is a solid red line along the curb.
But see, here's the problem: no one cares. Remember earlier when I mentioned traffic laws rarely get enforced here? Well, that applies to parking laws, too, to some extent. (I do see roving parking ticket-givers, but it doesn't seem to do much to deter illegal parking.) On any given road, with or without space to park, let alone actual parking spaces, there will be two rows of parked or parking cars. Double-parking is not just common, it's absolutely the norm.
But wait, you say, you just said there's no room for them to park! Ah, yes, but you forget, there's a whole scooter lane/ shoulder of the road to be used! Because, CLEARLY, that's what that extra space is there for, right? It's not like it's legally set aside for scooters or anything! No, this must be extra parking space. Obviously.
As a scooter-driver, this is absolutely infuriating. I'll be driving along, minding my own business, when I see that the double row of parked cars up ahead has completely filled up my lane. Obviously, I safely swerve left, into the car lane--doing my best to avoid the bottleneck of other scooters all also trying to avoid a collision--and get honked at. I'm sorry, but what? We're in your way, you say? We're in your lane, you say? AND WHY DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT BE???
So sorry, car-drivers of Kaohsiung. I will not stay out of your lane--and, until you clean out mine, please refrain from asking me to. But, sadly, that's not even the only way cars abuse the scooter lane, which brings me to...
3. It's a scooter lane, not the pick-up/drop-off lane.
This one only really applies to the really big roads, i.e. those with a barrier and real separate scooter lane. Most of the roads I take to get to work fall into this category. And, on this one, I'm willing to shift the primary blame from the car-drivers to the civil engineers who designed the roads. They designed them terribly.
I already mentioned that most roads have parking spots along the far outside edge. What I didn't mention, though, is that those spots are almost always filled, being filled, or being vacated, thus creating a near-constant, yet unpredictable and largely blinker-free flow of very slow moving vehicles into and out of the scooter lane. There are no parking spaces or places to stop along the main car lanes. So, to get its passengers anywhere near the businesses/homes they're trying to get to, car driver must pull out of their lane and merge with the scooters, then find a parking space and pull into it. Not surprisingly, this is a very slow process--slow merge into the oncoming scooters, slow crawl lest you miss a spot; absolute dead stop when you realize there are no spots to be taken.
All this in the midst of normal-speed scooters just trying to make it to wherever they're going on time. It's insanity. Once, on the way to the gym, I found myself in a cluster of scooters who had to come to a complete, lane-wide stop because a tour bus had parked itself smack-dab in the middle of the lane and was disembarking its passengers. Eventually, a few people discovered we could still squeeze around the corner of the bus next to the barrier (barely!), while most just took the Taiwan-ordinary (yet also insane) option of taking to the sidewalk.
Civil engineers, here's a thought: car parking spaces along the side of the car lanes; scooter lanes exclusively for scooters. You'd have less double-parking AND, I'd wager, fewer accidents (no more unexpected merges; no more sudden car doors!). So, please? All you'd have to do is move the barrier and re-cast the sidewalk...
4. If you're going to cut me off, please have the decency to keep going afterwards.
This one's short, but I cannot stress enough how annoying it is. At this point, I know how fast I drive comparative to others; I can usually tell, at a glance, whom I should be ahead of and behind at a given stoplight if I want to avoid the annoying-for-everybody dance of passing and being passed. But others, apparently, either don't know or don't care about this.
This pet peeve manifests itself in two ways. In the first, as I'm stopped at a light, someone pulls around me and stops directly in front, cutting me off from moving until they do--which invariably takes ages and is ridiculously slow. My best guess for a reason behind this is that they don't want to breathe in exhaust fumes, which is fair enough, though a bit selfish, since they're directly funneling their fumes at me as a result. In the second, while driving, someone zooms around me and immediately slows down--usually so that they can coast at a good 10km/hr for a good block or so before the actual upcoming stoplight, which they will not actually make it to because they're aiming for the patch of shade 50ft back. I've been told that stopping back from the light in order to be in shade is illegal--it's dangerous, at any rate: you're intentionally stopping in the middle of the road!--but it's absurdly prevalent here, thanks to the desire to avoid getting tan.
And look, I get it: you don't want to breathe in exhaust, or you don't want to shoot your breaks, and you want to stop back from the light, or you don't want to get tan. Okay. That's fine. But please, PLEASE don't pass people if you're planning on doing it! Again, it's unsafe, selfish, and just flat out rude.
So those are my pet peeves of the day. And if you're ever in Taiwan...please remember: scooter-ers are people too!
1. Scooters might just be the reason for the terrible traffic light systems in Taiwan. This was actually a big breakthrough discovery for me. In America, as you may know, traffic lights are triggered in one of two ways: they run on a regular schedule, or they keep the dominant road on green unless a car pulls up to the light on the less-dominant road and triggers a switch. Well, so far as I can tell, this second system does not exist in Taiwan.
Rather, it is on a rigidly regular schedule which aligns all roads facing one direction--which is a bit eerie, at first, since it means that you'll be driving along, and suddenly see the traffic lights for every block within your sight-line turn yellow at once. It also is insanely obnoxious, since it absolutely guarantees that you will stop every X number of blocks, with X being determined by the schedule, how fast you're going, and how many slow-moving vehicles pull out in front of you along the way (but we'll get to that in a minute). The lights are so reliable that, at this point, I can pretty well tell you exactly where I'll have to stop every time I drive to school--and I know exactly how fast I have to go to get to where. (Woo, made it to Yisin this morning! Or: gaaah, Ersheng, I'm going to be late. Stupid tour bus!)
Now, granted, I've been out of the Stateside driving routine for almost a year now, so please correct me if I'm remembering it incorrectly. But aren't the scheduled lights there rigged so that, if you hit a green, you usually hit all greens; if you hit a red, you usually hit only one, followed by a string of greens? I don't think it' even something you usually notice, I just have a distinct memory of many, MANY trips where I hit all yellows, like four lights in a row's worth of just-long-enough lights--until eventually I hit one that I couldn't help but stop for unless I wanted a ticket and/or an accident.
Besides that, greens are more prevalent on major roads because the minor roads are almost all run on pressure sensors, which means that those roads only get the green if they're actually needed. And, after 10 months here in Taiwan, where the number of vacant alleyways with green lights as I sit at a red, coupled with a general lack of traffic law enforcement, has led me to routinely determining if I am at a "necessary" (stop and wait) or "non-necessary" (look and go!) red light, green-lighting major roads at the expense of smaller ones seems like a great idea.
A few days ago, though, while reading this Cracked.com article, I realized why they can't have them here: scooters can't trigger pressure-based lights! And since the vast majority of Taiwan's (or, at least, Kaohsiung's) motorists sit perched not in cars or trucks but on scooters or motorcycles, a lights system that caters to larger vehicles while stranding smaller ones just wouldn't make sense.
Still, it seems like they should be able to just develop a more sensitive sensor...or at least make the schedule according to actual traffic patterns, rather than an arbitrary grid!
2. Dear Car-drivers of Kaohsiung: We'll get out of your lanes as soon as you stop using ours as a parking lot. Sincerely, Scooter-drivers of Kaohsiung.
Most major Kaohsiung roads have one of two set-ups: either several car lanes, a barrier, and a scooter lane, or several car lanes, a line, and a scooter lane/road shoulder. It should be noted that, on the outside corner of every scooter lane and/or road shoulder, there are usually parking spaces. If there is no space for parking spaces, there is a solid red line along the curb.
But see, here's the problem: no one cares. Remember earlier when I mentioned traffic laws rarely get enforced here? Well, that applies to parking laws, too, to some extent. (I do see roving parking ticket-givers, but it doesn't seem to do much to deter illegal parking.) On any given road, with or without space to park, let alone actual parking spaces, there will be two rows of parked or parking cars. Double-parking is not just common, it's absolutely the norm.
But wait, you say, you just said there's no room for them to park! Ah, yes, but you forget, there's a whole scooter lane/ shoulder of the road to be used! Because, CLEARLY, that's what that extra space is there for, right? It's not like it's legally set aside for scooters or anything! No, this must be extra parking space. Obviously.
As a scooter-driver, this is absolutely infuriating. I'll be driving along, minding my own business, when I see that the double row of parked cars up ahead has completely filled up my lane. Obviously, I safely swerve left, into the car lane--doing my best to avoid the bottleneck of other scooters all also trying to avoid a collision--and get honked at. I'm sorry, but what? We're in your way, you say? We're in your lane, you say? AND WHY DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT BE???
So sorry, car-drivers of Kaohsiung. I will not stay out of your lane--and, until you clean out mine, please refrain from asking me to. But, sadly, that's not even the only way cars abuse the scooter lane, which brings me to...
3. It's a scooter lane, not the pick-up/drop-off lane.
This one only really applies to the really big roads, i.e. those with a barrier and real separate scooter lane. Most of the roads I take to get to work fall into this category. And, on this one, I'm willing to shift the primary blame from the car-drivers to the civil engineers who designed the roads. They designed them terribly.
I already mentioned that most roads have parking spots along the far outside edge. What I didn't mention, though, is that those spots are almost always filled, being filled, or being vacated, thus creating a near-constant, yet unpredictable and largely blinker-free flow of very slow moving vehicles into and out of the scooter lane. There are no parking spaces or places to stop along the main car lanes. So, to get its passengers anywhere near the businesses/homes they're trying to get to, car driver must pull out of their lane and merge with the scooters, then find a parking space and pull into it. Not surprisingly, this is a very slow process--slow merge into the oncoming scooters, slow crawl lest you miss a spot; absolute dead stop when you realize there are no spots to be taken.
All this in the midst of normal-speed scooters just trying to make it to wherever they're going on time. It's insanity. Once, on the way to the gym, I found myself in a cluster of scooters who had to come to a complete, lane-wide stop because a tour bus had parked itself smack-dab in the middle of the lane and was disembarking its passengers. Eventually, a few people discovered we could still squeeze around the corner of the bus next to the barrier (barely!), while most just took the Taiwan-ordinary (yet also insane) option of taking to the sidewalk.
Civil engineers, here's a thought: car parking spaces along the side of the car lanes; scooter lanes exclusively for scooters. You'd have less double-parking AND, I'd wager, fewer accidents (no more unexpected merges; no more sudden car doors!). So, please? All you'd have to do is move the barrier and re-cast the sidewalk...
4. If you're going to cut me off, please have the decency to keep going afterwards.
This one's short, but I cannot stress enough how annoying it is. At this point, I know how fast I drive comparative to others; I can usually tell, at a glance, whom I should be ahead of and behind at a given stoplight if I want to avoid the annoying-for-everybody dance of passing and being passed. But others, apparently, either don't know or don't care about this.
This pet peeve manifests itself in two ways. In the first, as I'm stopped at a light, someone pulls around me and stops directly in front, cutting me off from moving until they do--which invariably takes ages and is ridiculously slow. My best guess for a reason behind this is that they don't want to breathe in exhaust fumes, which is fair enough, though a bit selfish, since they're directly funneling their fumes at me as a result. In the second, while driving, someone zooms around me and immediately slows down--usually so that they can coast at a good 10km/hr for a good block or so before the actual upcoming stoplight, which they will not actually make it to because they're aiming for the patch of shade 50ft back. I've been told that stopping back from the light in order to be in shade is illegal--it's dangerous, at any rate: you're intentionally stopping in the middle of the road!--but it's absurdly prevalent here, thanks to the desire to avoid getting tan.
And look, I get it: you don't want to breathe in exhaust, or you don't want to shoot your breaks, and you want to stop back from the light, or you don't want to get tan. Okay. That's fine. But please, PLEASE don't pass people if you're planning on doing it! Again, it's unsafe, selfish, and just flat out rude.
So those are my pet peeves of the day. And if you're ever in Taiwan...please remember: scooter-ers are people too!
Monday, May 14, 2012
Sweat, etc.
It's back, and in full force. Today, the high was 30C (~87*F), plus a balmy 80% humidity and sunlight the brightness of which could definitely burn through any sunblock you dared to set up against it. The heat. It's here.
And it's not come alone: it's brought its faithful companion, sweat. What joy is ours.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. We don't get a lot of days above the 80s (F) there, and no one really talks about humidity because there's never enough of it to matter. As a result, sweat was a pretty foreign concept to me before I came here. Sure, people sweat, but usually just a little, and usually just when they've been working out or something.
Not so here. It took less than a month here for me to buy a little washrag to take with me everywhere; a little more than a month to realize wearing makeup was a futile waste of money. Then the heat waned; Kaohsiung's pleasant Fall and Winter approached, and I even had to don a coat a few times. But no more. Now the heat's returned, and, with it, the sweat.
Why am I writing about sweat? It's simple, really: it's the closest thing I have to a uniting force of my day today. It was certainly ever-present, anyway.
This morning, I arrived at school with my hair in low pigtails--a response to its newly cropped length which doesn't allow for any other sort of hairstyle that would simultaneously fit under my helmet and keep my hair off my neck. I didn't want to sweat. But what had I unfortunately forgotten as I styled my hair? Oh yeah: the interview.
Today, my LETs applied for the Fulbright program for next year. Seeing as how the interview fell in the middle of a school day, and involved all of the people that I usually share classes with, Hanmin asked if I would accompany them to the interview. Which I did--IN PIGTAILS. So much for professionalism.
The interview went fine--I mostly just sat there as moral support, though I did manage to throw in a quick plug for my schools right before we left--and then we went out to lunch at a local duck noodle shop. There, I had a bit of a problem with my chopsticks--they were slipping out of my fingers. No, not because I don't know how to use chopsticks--believe me, it's second nature at this point--it was because of sweat. And that's when I realized: it's back!
Thankfully, my heat annoyance was soon relieved by a SCRUMPTIOUS visit to a shave ice place with Hanmin's principal, academic director, and Maggie (a visit which meant we were 20 minutes late to our next class, but hey! We had the principal's and the academic director's explicit permission!)
The heat continued to plague my day in various forms which, thankfully, had less to do with sweat. My shoes began to fall apart and blister my feet, which sucked, and I got really thirsty, which also sucked.
It also impacted my favorite moment of the day: the moment a gaggle of 6th grade girls stretched my birthday into a second week, crowding my desk and handing me notes written on paper shaped like Facebook "like"s, a box of cute chocolate (like what Analicia got me!), some almond cookies, and a big ol' chocolate bar. It was so nice of them, and they were so wonderful, yet what was I worried about? The heat. And the chocolate.
All I can say is "Thank goodness for refrigerators!"...And AC. It's the one surefire way to get out of the heat, and so to avoid melting--whether chocolate or self.
And it's not come alone: it's brought its faithful companion, sweat. What joy is ours.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. We don't get a lot of days above the 80s (F) there, and no one really talks about humidity because there's never enough of it to matter. As a result, sweat was a pretty foreign concept to me before I came here. Sure, people sweat, but usually just a little, and usually just when they've been working out or something.
Not so here. It took less than a month here for me to buy a little washrag to take with me everywhere; a little more than a month to realize wearing makeup was a futile waste of money. Then the heat waned; Kaohsiung's pleasant Fall and Winter approached, and I even had to don a coat a few times. But no more. Now the heat's returned, and, with it, the sweat.
Why am I writing about sweat? It's simple, really: it's the closest thing I have to a uniting force of my day today. It was certainly ever-present, anyway.
This morning, I arrived at school with my hair in low pigtails--a response to its newly cropped length which doesn't allow for any other sort of hairstyle that would simultaneously fit under my helmet and keep my hair off my neck. I didn't want to sweat. But what had I unfortunately forgotten as I styled my hair? Oh yeah: the interview.
Today, my LETs applied for the Fulbright program for next year. Seeing as how the interview fell in the middle of a school day, and involved all of the people that I usually share classes with, Hanmin asked if I would accompany them to the interview. Which I did--IN PIGTAILS. So much for professionalism.
The interview went fine--I mostly just sat there as moral support, though I did manage to throw in a quick plug for my schools right before we left--and then we went out to lunch at a local duck noodle shop. There, I had a bit of a problem with my chopsticks--they were slipping out of my fingers. No, not because I don't know how to use chopsticks--believe me, it's second nature at this point--it was because of sweat. And that's when I realized: it's back!
Thankfully, my heat annoyance was soon relieved by a SCRUMPTIOUS visit to a shave ice place with Hanmin's principal, academic director, and Maggie (a visit which meant we were 20 minutes late to our next class, but hey! We had the principal's and the academic director's explicit permission!)
The heat continued to plague my day in various forms which, thankfully, had less to do with sweat. My shoes began to fall apart and blister my feet, which sucked, and I got really thirsty, which also sucked.
It also impacted my favorite moment of the day: the moment a gaggle of 6th grade girls stretched my birthday into a second week, crowding my desk and handing me notes written on paper shaped like Facebook "like"s, a box of cute chocolate (like what Analicia got me!), some almond cookies, and a big ol' chocolate bar. It was so nice of them, and they were so wonderful, yet what was I worried about? The heat. And the chocolate.
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| Thanks for the likes, Mandy, Anna, Lillian, Natasha, and Cindy! |
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| Favorite parts: "Fo" Bekah Teacher and the squares bottom left--each with a different design and different type of chocolate inside! |
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Birthday
What a lovely day. Really, truly lovely, populated by wonderful people, foods, and times. Nothing exciting, but that's okay with me; oddly, my experience here has done nothing so much as reinforce me in the belief that being alone sometimes is not only okay, but great. So today was a fantastic mixture of being alone and being in company: perfection.
The morning existed in the best possible way for Saturday mornings to exist: sleep.
Then I got to chat with my mom and dad (though my dad fell asleep while I did...hardly an inspiring reason to come home, Dad! ;) ) via Skype, and open the fabulous presents they got me which had been staring at me since they arrived with Alex and Melanie more than a month ago.
Then I got free Starbucks and (as odd as it may sound for a voluntary activity on a Saturday which was also my birthday) got some stuff done. I finished editing the current chapter of the thesis I'm working on for a local grad student, made good headway writing a piece I'm working on for one of my university's publications, got some reading in courtesy of the wonderful Flannery O'Connor, and was inspired for a potential music video parody about foreigners abroad. (Stay tuned on the writing and music video projects; they will hopefully come to fruition soon.)
By then, it was time for dinner, a great and fabulously Western affair at Foster Hewitt's, a Canadian place in Zuoying where I joined my host sister Emily, Karina, and Analicia for a delicious 5-cheese hamburger and potato wedges (POTATOES!!!!), washed down with fresh strawberry-lime soda and followed by a brownie sundae which was, thanks to Analicia's efforts, garnished with a lit sprinkler. Thankfully, the owner respected my wish that they NOT sing to me. (After all, when you've had several choruses of adorable students serenade you all week, sometimes trilingually, there's just no going back to half-hearted restaurant employees.) Analicia and Emily had great gifts of chocolate and a teddy bear and sweet-smelling soap for me, just to round out the amazingness. :)
At home again, I got in some more reading and TV-watching, which was absolutely wonderful. And so ends my week of birthday--though not quite, really, since it's only 11:30am on my birthday at home right now, meaning birthday wishes will keep pouring in on Facebook for a good many more hours. This is undoubtedly the longest, and may be one of the best, birthdays I've ever had.
The morning existed in the best possible way for Saturday mornings to exist: sleep.
Then I got to chat with my mom and dad (though my dad fell asleep while I did...hardly an inspiring reason to come home, Dad! ;) ) via Skype, and open the fabulous presents they got me which had been staring at me since they arrived with Alex and Melanie more than a month ago.
Then I got free Starbucks and (as odd as it may sound for a voluntary activity on a Saturday which was also my birthday) got some stuff done. I finished editing the current chapter of the thesis I'm working on for a local grad student, made good headway writing a piece I'm working on for one of my university's publications, got some reading in courtesy of the wonderful Flannery O'Connor, and was inspired for a potential music video parody about foreigners abroad. (Stay tuned on the writing and music video projects; they will hopefully come to fruition soon.)
By then, it was time for dinner, a great and fabulously Western affair at Foster Hewitt's, a Canadian place in Zuoying where I joined my host sister Emily, Karina, and Analicia for a delicious 5-cheese hamburger and potato wedges (POTATOES!!!!), washed down with fresh strawberry-lime soda and followed by a brownie sundae which was, thanks to Analicia's efforts, garnished with a lit sprinkler. Thankfully, the owner respected my wish that they NOT sing to me. (After all, when you've had several choruses of adorable students serenade you all week, sometimes trilingually, there's just no going back to half-hearted restaurant employees.) Analicia and Emily had great gifts of chocolate and a teddy bear and sweet-smelling soap for me, just to round out the amazingness. :)
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| New shirt from home! Thanks Mom and Dad! |
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| Soooooo gooooooooooood! |
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Peanut butter and stinky tofu
This was originally going to be a long, complex, drawn-out post on culinary and cultural sensibilities. Then my dear dear friend from home, Flavia, got on Skype and an absolutely wonderful, and necessary, conversation ensued. It is now midnight. Hence, this post just got preemptively abbreviated.
Peanut butter. Quick, name the single most common allergy for kids in the United States. Peanut butter, right? OK, so that may actually be the second most common, after milk, but still! I worked as a nanny for four years and as a childcare provider in various other forms for pretty much as long as I can remember (I started helping at church when I was just 10 myself), and one of the biggest taboos in every childcare setting in America is never bring anything having to do with peanuts anywhere with kids, ever (unless they're your own and you just want a PPJ in the privacy of your own home, but even then you should be careful).
Which is why today, I had a minor freakout when I realized that the jam I was bringing for our blind taste test (this week's vocabulary: jam, pepper, salt, butter, sugar, ketchup) had been contaminated by peanut butter. (Because, really, why dirty two knives?)
I brought it to school anyway, though, after carefully getting the jam from the bottom of the jar without disturbing the potentially contaminated bits on top (never an easy feat), and asked Maggie that we ask the kids to make sure no one was allergic before doing anything with the jam. Her reaction: huh?
Apparently, peanut allergies aren't really a thing here. In fact, we asked all of our five 5th grade classes today, and had not a single peanut allergy in the bunch. We had a few milk allergies (proving the point in the link above, I suppose), and so duly avoided the butter for them, but no one was allergic to peanuts! It was truly dumfounding.
Stinky tofu. This is a much more minor point; something that honestly could have fit in a Facebook status. It would have said "that moment when you're driving down the street and smell something that reminds you of delicious cheddar cheese. And then realize it's stinky tofu." I'm holding out some hope that there actually is a place on Zhongshan selling cheesy goodness, but it's unlikely. More probably, my sense of smell is officially shot to pieces by Taiwanese sensibilities.
Peanut butter. Quick, name the single most common allergy for kids in the United States. Peanut butter, right? OK, so that may actually be the second most common, after milk, but still! I worked as a nanny for four years and as a childcare provider in various other forms for pretty much as long as I can remember (I started helping at church when I was just 10 myself), and one of the biggest taboos in every childcare setting in America is never bring anything having to do with peanuts anywhere with kids, ever (unless they're your own and you just want a PPJ in the privacy of your own home, but even then you should be careful).
Which is why today, I had a minor freakout when I realized that the jam I was bringing for our blind taste test (this week's vocabulary: jam, pepper, salt, butter, sugar, ketchup) had been contaminated by peanut butter. (Because, really, why dirty two knives?)
I brought it to school anyway, though, after carefully getting the jam from the bottom of the jar without disturbing the potentially contaminated bits on top (never an easy feat), and asked Maggie that we ask the kids to make sure no one was allergic before doing anything with the jam. Her reaction: huh?
Apparently, peanut allergies aren't really a thing here. In fact, we asked all of our five 5th grade classes today, and had not a single peanut allergy in the bunch. We had a few milk allergies (proving the point in the link above, I suppose), and so duly avoided the butter for them, but no one was allergic to peanuts! It was truly dumfounding.
Stinky tofu. This is a much more minor point; something that honestly could have fit in a Facebook status. It would have said "that moment when you're driving down the street and smell something that reminds you of delicious cheddar cheese. And then realize it's stinky tofu." I'm holding out some hope that there actually is a place on Zhongshan selling cheesy goodness, but it's unlikely. More probably, my sense of smell is officially shot to pieces by Taiwanese sensibilities.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Coping Mechanisms
While I was talking to my mom the other day (with some of my few precious Skype-to-cell minutes I got as part of a hostel deal a while back), she brought up the concept that, as my time here begins to wind down, my brain has begun making subtle adjustments to help me emotionally prepare for the removal. I agree; that's definitely happening. But it's not just happening on a subconscious level; I have never in my life kept such careful track of time, or monitored my own thoughts and emotions on a subject so continuously.
If you look back over my blog, it's all there: the excitement in coming to a new country, the shock and joy of actually being here, the settling in to day-to-day life, and then, it begins: a nervous, self-conscious tic which ever prompts me to ask--am I ready? Would I be happy or sad if I went home tomorrow? What about next week? Next month? My answers were tempered, always, by the reality of how much time I had.
Are we five months in? Then yes, I miss home, but only aspects of it. Are we halfway? Then I begin missing people here in Taiwan preemptively, not yet ready to think about life Stateside. Are we just a few months away? Then I must go out of my way to mention that I will miss Taiwan--in the midst of a weeks-long ode to my homeland. If I'm honest, all of my posts are like this last one: I write what is true, but also what must be true in order to make life livable for however much time I have left here.
And now that it actually is next month--or, almost; a month and a half till school is out and two before I actually go home--I'm beginning to feel like I will be ready to be done soon. I've already mentioned the things I miss about home, and, honestly, lately I've noticed myself getting annoyed again at cultural things I've long-ago accepted as normal. My road rage is at an all-time high, for instance, even as I'm at my most adept at handling traffic situations. My psyche is preparing me, preparing me to be happy to be back in America; ready to displace my happy memories with things I won't miss, things like the traffic and the lack of Western food and the prohibitive humidity.
I know there will be reverse culture shock to deal with, no matter how much I prepare myself, consciously and subconsciously, for the change. Today Grace and I went to Smokey Joe's (perhaps the only Tex-Mex place in Kaohsiung) for a belated Cinco de Mayo lunch, and I found myself gasping at the 300-600NT (~$10-$20US) entrees, and positively fuming when they added a 10% gratuity to our bill without notice. Come July, some things about America will be hard to accept no matter what I do.
But that won't stop me from trying; continuing to pull out whatever tactics I can to smooth the transition. It will be hard to leave Taiwan; hard to return to America. But at least my brain knows this now, and is working hard on its coping mechanisms.
If you look back over my blog, it's all there: the excitement in coming to a new country, the shock and joy of actually being here, the settling in to day-to-day life, and then, it begins: a nervous, self-conscious tic which ever prompts me to ask--am I ready? Would I be happy or sad if I went home tomorrow? What about next week? Next month? My answers were tempered, always, by the reality of how much time I had.
Are we five months in? Then yes, I miss home, but only aspects of it. Are we halfway? Then I begin missing people here in Taiwan preemptively, not yet ready to think about life Stateside. Are we just a few months away? Then I must go out of my way to mention that I will miss Taiwan--in the midst of a weeks-long ode to my homeland. If I'm honest, all of my posts are like this last one: I write what is true, but also what must be true in order to make life livable for however much time I have left here.
And now that it actually is next month--or, almost; a month and a half till school is out and two before I actually go home--I'm beginning to feel like I will be ready to be done soon. I've already mentioned the things I miss about home, and, honestly, lately I've noticed myself getting annoyed again at cultural things I've long-ago accepted as normal. My road rage is at an all-time high, for instance, even as I'm at my most adept at handling traffic situations. My psyche is preparing me, preparing me to be happy to be back in America; ready to displace my happy memories with things I won't miss, things like the traffic and the lack of Western food and the prohibitive humidity.
I know there will be reverse culture shock to deal with, no matter how much I prepare myself, consciously and subconsciously, for the change. Today Grace and I went to Smokey Joe's (perhaps the only Tex-Mex place in Kaohsiung) for a belated Cinco de Mayo lunch, and I found myself gasping at the 300-600NT (~$10-$20US) entrees, and positively fuming when they added a 10% gratuity to our bill without notice. Come July, some things about America will be hard to accept no matter what I do.
But that won't stop me from trying; continuing to pull out whatever tactics I can to smooth the transition. It will be hard to leave Taiwan; hard to return to America. But at least my brain knows this now, and is working hard on its coping mechanisms.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Inside-Outside-In
Culture shock. I haven't written about it in a very, very long time--since January, unless you count my recent musings on perspective shift, which I don't. The reason why I've stopped is pretty obvious: I have ceased to be shocked by the culture.
Sure, I still notice little quirks like misspelled shirts and "Indian"-Spanish-Chinese singers at Taiwanese holiday celebrations. But I'm pretty sure I'd notice those no matter where I was. The huge in-your-face cultural differences are now pretty much invisible to me, something I had somewhat forgotten and have recently been reminded of, since Ingrid came to join our little Hanmin teaching family and I got to see her reactions to them.
In fact, I now believe I've been in Taiwanese culture enough to somewhat internalize it. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, apart from all the not-exactly-ironic peace sign posing I've been doing for months...
Today I realized (thanks to a Facebook post by one of my ETA colleagues in Yilan, Lauren) that I have also been incorporating the culture into my daily life on a more subtle level. Here's the link that prompted this realization.
Yes, it's a meme of Asians taking pictures of their food. It's pretty accurate; whenever I actually pay attention at restaurants (Rachel's especially good at noticing this), I see people everywhere with their cameras out and pointed alternately at themselves and at their food. Rachel told me she and Brittany saw one person in Taipei taking a picture of herself with...her fork. Pictures of food, and food-related objects and poses, are all over here.
And let's see...what have I been writing about lately? Constantly; almost obsessively, in fact? ALWAYS with pictures? Here I was thinking it was about my American culture, but as it turns out, it may just be a result of my sneaking internalization of the local culture. To say "hello" in Taiwanese, after all, you literally say "have you eaten"! Food is absolutely central to Taiwanese culture. So, really, why does this realization surprise me?
Maybe because it's such a perfect cohesion of American and Taiwanese cultures; I never saw it coming. I may do a whole series on how much I miss sandwiches, but the fact is I've taken food, something I never paid all that much attention to in the States, and elevated it to one of my most common subjects.
Fulbright talks ad nauseum about our role as cultural ambassadors and as "a bridge between cultures." And, well, I suppose you can't get much more bridge-like than by complexly intertwining American and Taiwanese cultures; combining external and internal elements and placing them, subconsciously, in your day-to-day life. Is it outside? Is it in? The answer is like that of Schroedinger's cat: yes.
Sure, I still notice little quirks like misspelled shirts and "Indian"-Spanish-Chinese singers at Taiwanese holiday celebrations. But I'm pretty sure I'd notice those no matter where I was. The huge in-your-face cultural differences are now pretty much invisible to me, something I had somewhat forgotten and have recently been reminded of, since Ingrid came to join our little Hanmin teaching family and I got to see her reactions to them.
In fact, I now believe I've been in Taiwanese culture enough to somewhat internalize it. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, apart from all the not-exactly-ironic peace sign posing I've been doing for months...
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| January... |
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| March... |
Yes, it's a meme of Asians taking pictures of their food. It's pretty accurate; whenever I actually pay attention at restaurants (Rachel's especially good at noticing this), I see people everywhere with their cameras out and pointed alternately at themselves and at their food. Rachel told me she and Brittany saw one person in Taipei taking a picture of herself with...her fork. Pictures of food, and food-related objects and poses, are all over here.
And let's see...what have I been writing about lately? Constantly; almost obsessively, in fact? ALWAYS with pictures? Here I was thinking it was about my American culture, but as it turns out, it may just be a result of my sneaking internalization of the local culture. To say "hello" in Taiwanese, after all, you literally say "have you eaten"! Food is absolutely central to Taiwanese culture. So, really, why does this realization surprise me?
Maybe because it's such a perfect cohesion of American and Taiwanese cultures; I never saw it coming. I may do a whole series on how much I miss sandwiches, but the fact is I've taken food, something I never paid all that much attention to in the States, and elevated it to one of my most common subjects.
Fulbright talks ad nauseum about our role as cultural ambassadors and as "a bridge between cultures." And, well, I suppose you can't get much more bridge-like than by complexly intertwining American and Taiwanese cultures; combining external and internal elements and placing them, subconsciously, in your day-to-day life. Is it outside? Is it in? The answer is like that of Schroedinger's cat: yes.
Monday, April 30, 2012
KTV Revelations
...first of all, only when living in Taiwan would I have to double check my old blogs to makes sure I wouldn't have an overlapping name about karaoke. Second of all, karaoke!
Today Fiona, Ingrid, Alison, Alison's niece and I went to KTV--for a good 4 hours or so. It was fantastic! We had a nice mix of English and Chinese songs going on, accentuated by Ingrid and I popping to our feet whenever an English song came on--felt a bit like a Jack-in-the-box after a while, but in the best possible way that that sentence can exist.
In the course of the day we had plenty of wonderful revelations, as I learned the odd waves in which American music apparently crossed, or didn't cross, the ocean to Taiwan. We had a Taiwanese version of "We Will Rock You," for instance (why change Queen? WHY???), and a Taiwanese version of "Lady Marmalade" (of Moulin Rouge fame), as well as a song called "Rumour Has It" which was definitely not Adele.
And, as always, we had our share or lovely "music videos" which featured young models acting ridiculous while draped across various inanimate objects, including that old stand-by of irony, "Colors of the Wind" featuring a cookie-cutter blond chick on a big white sailboat. Kind of missed the point of the whole Pocahontas thing...and, incidentally, Ingrid and I had quite a bit of fun with the old Disney songs.
The most interesting part to me, though, was that apparently N*Sync, and even Justin Timberlake as a solo artist, completely skipped over Taiwan. I somewhat knew this from last week, when Maggie and Alison and I were talking about the Backstreet Boys (for some reason?) and I mentioned that, back in the day, I was more of an N*Sync fan. (True confessions, right here.) They had never heard of them.
Today, though, as Ingrid and I went a little crazy to "Bye Bye Bye" (because we could, that's why!), I realized that, even if they had missed N*Sync as a band, there was no way they could have missed Justin Timberlake. After all, beside his solo career, he's been in a hefty string of high-profile movies lately--The Social Network comes to mind--and I know from walking past innumerable billboards and posters (heck, I walked past one tonight!) that his two most recent, In Time and Friends with Benefits, have been widely publicized here in Taiwan. Surely mentioning his name would grant instant context to the cheesy 90s throwback songs we were belting.
Nope! Fiona and Alison were still stumped; when Ingrid whipped out her smartphone to get a picture on our side, Alison's niece recognized him and Fiona kind of remembered him from The Social Network, but that was it. Perhaps it's America-centric of me, or maybe it was just the age in which I was raised, but it is still absolutely unfathomable to me to not know Justin Timberlake's name!
In other news, some rather embarrassing footage of me singing and dancing to good ol' N*Sync, Mariah Carey and Avril Lavigne songs (amongst others) may or may not now be in existence...
But they, fortunately for everyone, are not on my camera chip. The following photos, on the other hand, ARE!
Anyway, thanks to my multi-hour belting, my throat is now a little worse for wear...but it was totally worth it! Yet another thing I would say only in Taiwan: karaoke is fun!
Today Fiona, Ingrid, Alison, Alison's niece and I went to KTV--for a good 4 hours or so. It was fantastic! We had a nice mix of English and Chinese songs going on, accentuated by Ingrid and I popping to our feet whenever an English song came on--felt a bit like a Jack-in-the-box after a while, but in the best possible way that that sentence can exist.
In the course of the day we had plenty of wonderful revelations, as I learned the odd waves in which American music apparently crossed, or didn't cross, the ocean to Taiwan. We had a Taiwanese version of "We Will Rock You," for instance (why change Queen? WHY???), and a Taiwanese version of "Lady Marmalade" (of Moulin Rouge fame), as well as a song called "Rumour Has It" which was definitely not Adele.
And, as always, we had our share or lovely "music videos" which featured young models acting ridiculous while draped across various inanimate objects, including that old stand-by of irony, "Colors of the Wind" featuring a cookie-cutter blond chick on a big white sailboat. Kind of missed the point of the whole Pocahontas thing...and, incidentally, Ingrid and I had quite a bit of fun with the old Disney songs.
The most interesting part to me, though, was that apparently N*Sync, and even Justin Timberlake as a solo artist, completely skipped over Taiwan. I somewhat knew this from last week, when Maggie and Alison and I were talking about the Backstreet Boys (for some reason?) and I mentioned that, back in the day, I was more of an N*Sync fan. (True confessions, right here.) They had never heard of them.
Today, though, as Ingrid and I went a little crazy to "Bye Bye Bye" (because we could, that's why!), I realized that, even if they had missed N*Sync as a band, there was no way they could have missed Justin Timberlake. After all, beside his solo career, he's been in a hefty string of high-profile movies lately--The Social Network comes to mind--and I know from walking past innumerable billboards and posters (heck, I walked past one tonight!) that his two most recent, In Time and Friends with Benefits, have been widely publicized here in Taiwan. Surely mentioning his name would grant instant context to the cheesy 90s throwback songs we were belting.
Nope! Fiona and Alison were still stumped; when Ingrid whipped out her smartphone to get a picture on our side, Alison's niece recognized him and Fiona kind of remembered him from The Social Network, but that was it. Perhaps it's America-centric of me, or maybe it was just the age in which I was raised, but it is still absolutely unfathomable to me to not know Justin Timberlake's name!
In other news, some rather embarrassing footage of me singing and dancing to good ol' N*Sync, Mariah Carey and Avril Lavigne songs (amongst others) may or may not now be in existence...
But they, fortunately for everyone, are not on my camera chip. The following photos, on the other hand, ARE!
 |
| We were having fun, I promise :) |
 |
| Yeahhhh KTV! |
Anyway, thanks to my multi-hour belting, my throat is now a little worse for wear...but it was totally worth it! Yet another thing I would say only in Taiwan: karaoke is fun!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Astonishment
"...well, you know, it's pretty much our only free weekend left before we leave..."
I'm sorry, what?
It was just an offhanded comment, just something said in a normal little chat in the dining room with Rachel. Our grant is only 10 weeks long, now; of those 10 weeks, five have Fulbright-occupied weekends, and of the rest, nearly all have at least one Fulbright event during the week. We're almost out of time. And just like that, it's all I can think about: my time here is almost gone. Like, really almost gone.
I know my posts on here lately have focused a lot on what I miss about home. A lot of sad-sacking about food, and family, and all the wonderful things in America that aren't available to me here. But just throwing up those posts has created a very skewed picture of my time right now, and now, as a steady rain cascades onto the bricks outside my window in an oh-so-typically-melancholic way, seems like the perfect time to swing things back into balance.
Because, really, two and a half months??? How is it POSSIBLE that we only have two and a half months before all this is over? How is it possible that in a little over two months I will be back in America, just an American among Americans, living a normal life like everyone else?
It seems like this has snuck up on me, which is of course ridiculous given that I've been writing about the passage of time pretty much since I got here, and of course have been answering the question "how long have you been here," with my answer changing monthly, on a regular basis. But with all of that, I focus on the time I've spent here: almost 9 months. I'd actually been planning a post on the topic (maybe it'll still happen), to come out on the last day of April. Nine months is a number I've gotten used to. Its partner, however, is still shocking.
What can you do in two months? That's no longer a rhetorical question. How much more can you see? What do you not want to leave the country without doing? How much money can you save? What jobs can you apply for? How much time can you realistically spend with your lovely Taiwanese friends without harming your health or teaching in the process?
And here's what I'm coming up against: not enough. Two months is not enough time to see it all; not enough time to put everything perfectly in order; not nearly enough time to spend with my friends. I've written before, many times, about how much has changed since coming here, and about how much I'll miss everyone when I go home; now it's hitting me that that time is soon, and that it will soon be time to actually, really, start saying my goodbyes.
And I'm not ready to think about that.
So maybe our jam-packed last couple of months will be the ultimate blessing: a chance to focus, not on the things we can't do, or the things we will ultimately have to do, but on the things we can do: see a few more local sights, participate in a few more local traditions, spend just a bit more time with the people we will miss. Maybe we'll be able to surprise ourselves into not mourning too deeply as we leave this beautiful island that we've called home. But I doubt it.
I'm sorry, what?
It was just an offhanded comment, just something said in a normal little chat in the dining room with Rachel. Our grant is only 10 weeks long, now; of those 10 weeks, five have Fulbright-occupied weekends, and of the rest, nearly all have at least one Fulbright event during the week. We're almost out of time. And just like that, it's all I can think about: my time here is almost gone. Like, really almost gone.
I know my posts on here lately have focused a lot on what I miss about home. A lot of sad-sacking about food, and family, and all the wonderful things in America that aren't available to me here. But just throwing up those posts has created a very skewed picture of my time right now, and now, as a steady rain cascades onto the bricks outside my window in an oh-so-typically-melancholic way, seems like the perfect time to swing things back into balance.
Because, really, two and a half months??? How is it POSSIBLE that we only have two and a half months before all this is over? How is it possible that in a little over two months I will be back in America, just an American among Americans, living a normal life like everyone else?
It seems like this has snuck up on me, which is of course ridiculous given that I've been writing about the passage of time pretty much since I got here, and of course have been answering the question "how long have you been here," with my answer changing monthly, on a regular basis. But with all of that, I focus on the time I've spent here: almost 9 months. I'd actually been planning a post on the topic (maybe it'll still happen), to come out on the last day of April. Nine months is a number I've gotten used to. Its partner, however, is still shocking.
What can you do in two months? That's no longer a rhetorical question. How much more can you see? What do you not want to leave the country without doing? How much money can you save? What jobs can you apply for? How much time can you realistically spend with your lovely Taiwanese friends without harming your health or teaching in the process?
And here's what I'm coming up against: not enough. Two months is not enough time to see it all; not enough time to put everything perfectly in order; not nearly enough time to spend with my friends. I've written before, many times, about how much has changed since coming here, and about how much I'll miss everyone when I go home; now it's hitting me that that time is soon, and that it will soon be time to actually, really, start saying my goodbyes.
And I'm not ready to think about that.
So maybe our jam-packed last couple of months will be the ultimate blessing: a chance to focus, not on the things we can't do, or the things we will ultimately have to do, but on the things we can do: see a few more local sights, participate in a few more local traditions, spend just a bit more time with the people we will miss. Maybe we'll be able to surprise ourselves into not mourning too deeply as we leave this beautiful island that we've called home. But I doubt it.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Cinderella
...but not really. "Cinderella" just happens to be the most imaginative way I could think of to describe how I spent my day today--essentially, with housework.
And well, that's not entirely true, either, unless you count sitting on my bed and editing as "housework," and even by that definition I doubt you'd consider the prolonged breaks I took to talk to friends and read articles online as "work."
(Also, as I did my housework without the help of magical mice and of my own volition, sans the orders of an evil stepmother, and as it's past midnight now and I haven't had any magical transformations or lost any shoes, let alone found a Prince Charming, I really can't claim the title.)
So...I should have called this post "Cinderella and lies," apparently.
But on the plus side, I did complete all but one of the items on my to-do list today! The final item is choosing the hostels for my trip this summer: one where I'll spend the bulk of my time, in Cairns, Australia, and one in Osaka, Japan, which I'm flying through at night on my way home. (Special considerations for the Japanese hostel: how can I squeeze as much out of Japan as possible in a single night, while still making my flight the next morning?) So, if anyone knows of a good place to stay in Cairns or Osaka...hit me up!
Side Notes with "Th":
(because they are not enough to write a lot about, but I feel like sharing)
Thunder. It has woken me up two mornings in a row, now, and this morning did so so loudly that I practically shot out of bed, my subconscious evidently under the impression that I would be murdered if I stayed where I was. Thunder itself isn't too odd, I guess, but what is is that, by the time I've gotten up for real, both yesterday and today, it was not only no longer stormy, it was not even raining, and, apart from the water on the roads, I would never have guessed the thunder was anything other than a particularly vivid part of my dream. We'll see if the pattern holds tomorrow; hopefully not, for my subconscious paranoia's sake...
Things I will miss about Taiwan. The following is an exchange I had with the sweet, motherly woman who works downstairs at the local 7-11:
Me: (give her the money for the eggs and bread I'm buying)
And well, that's not entirely true, either, unless you count sitting on my bed and editing as "housework," and even by that definition I doubt you'd consider the prolonged breaks I took to talk to friends and read articles online as "work."
(Also, as I did my housework without the help of magical mice and of my own volition, sans the orders of an evil stepmother, and as it's past midnight now and I haven't had any magical transformations or lost any shoes, let alone found a Prince Charming, I really can't claim the title.)
So...I should have called this post "Cinderella and lies," apparently.
But on the plus side, I did complete all but one of the items on my to-do list today! The final item is choosing the hostels for my trip this summer: one where I'll spend the bulk of my time, in Cairns, Australia, and one in Osaka, Japan, which I'm flying through at night on my way home. (Special considerations for the Japanese hostel: how can I squeeze as much out of Japan as possible in a single night, while still making my flight the next morning?) So, if anyone knows of a good place to stay in Cairns or Osaka...hit me up!
Side Notes with "Th":
(because they are not enough to write a lot about, but I feel like sharing)
Thunder. It has woken me up two mornings in a row, now, and this morning did so so loudly that I practically shot out of bed, my subconscious evidently under the impression that I would be murdered if I stayed where I was. Thunder itself isn't too odd, I guess, but what is is that, by the time I've gotten up for real, both yesterday and today, it was not only no longer stormy, it was not even raining, and, apart from the water on the roads, I would never have guessed the thunder was anything other than a particularly vivid part of my dream. We'll see if the pattern holds tomorrow; hopefully not, for my subconscious paranoia's sake...
Things I will miss about Taiwan. The following is an exchange I had with the sweet, motherly woman who works downstairs at the local 7-11:
Me: (give her the money for the eggs and bread I'm buying)
Her: 謝謝.
*I smile. A pause.*
Her: “很漂亮”
“so beautiful” 是不是?
Me: 對!
Her: (to me) So beautiful!
Me: Aww, 謝謝!
It absolutely made my night! (Even though I answered incorrectly...oh well, the point was served. :) )
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Squirrel! and other stories
As usual when I put a lot of effort into a post (see below), I find myself the next day wondering how on earth I will follow it, short of welding myself to my computer for another couple of hours and pounding out another Tolstoy-length treatise on my life here.
And, also as usual when I reach this point, my answer is the same: I can't. I'm all treatise-d out for the moment. But what do have, and happen to have in spades today, is fun little stories of how wonderful life is here. So let's do that, instead!
Squirrel!
This morning found me all but sprinting down the 3rd floor hallway at Hanmin in my typical attempt to avoid being late. (For the record, so far, so good.) Now, my first class of the day on Mondays is actually my students' second or third. (Because, clearly, elementary schoolers were meant to be in school from 8am til 4pm, then hit the cram schools for hours afterward. But I digress.) And, since Hanmin, like most (maybe all?) schools in Taiwan, is built up rather than out, with wide covered breezeways serving as most kids' between-class play area, my path from the elevator to my office involved ducking and weaving between 2nd graders jumping rope, then taking a blind corner in the hope that this would be the one time that the 5th grade boys playing tag would think to look in front of them, rather than behind, as they took rounded the edge at a full gallop.
But while I was disappointed in that last hope--though thankfully he turned just in time to see me and avoid the collision--that little mishap was almost instantly forgotten in the discovery of something far more interesting and strange: a squirrel.
That's right, there, scurrying its way along the stone floor beside the banister, was a scawny black squirrel--that looked absolutely scared out of its mind. Of course, so would you if you had a horde of hyperactive giants closing in around you from all sides, trying to cut off your every escape route.
If squirrels think, I imagine this particular one's thought process went something like this:
"Oh, look, a giant white thing to climb. I like to climb. Let's climb the giant white thing and see if I can find food." (it climbs up the school building and stops at the third floor) "This looks nice. But it smells weird--lots of different sm--some food, some dirt, some anim- AHHHHHHH!!!!! They're coming! They're coming! THEY'RE COMING AFTER MEEEEE!!!!! Must get away, must get a--AH! WHERE DID THIS GIANT FOOT COME FROM?! I'll go--OH NO ANOTHER ONE! SAVE MEEEE!!!!"
All things considered, our little squirrel friend was making pretty good time down the hallway, flocked by a dozen or so kids doing their best to corral him so they could play. Fortunately (for the squirrel, anyway), I don't think they succeeded.
Although, later in the day, I did come across a stuffed squirrel, lying on its back in the middle of the hallway as if begging for mercy from a horde of giants....nah, must have been a coincidence.
Mr. 7 and Mr. 8
I think I've mentioned it before, but at Hanmin, we don't have an English classroom; rather, myself and Maggie or Alison (depending on the day's schedule) are the roving English duo, taking our cue from the bell just like our students and setting forth to whichever classroom is expecting us next. Or not expecting us next, as the case may be, if we've lost track of what period it is, but they're usually pretty quick at setting us straight with a big laugh and a chorus of "hellos."
Anyway. On the way to class today with Maggie, we were accompanied, as is usual here in Taiwan, by our classroom helpers--ie, those kids who'd decided to voluntarily come down and help us carry our stuff. (Gotta love Taiwan!) Also behind us as we walked were Ingrid and Fiona, another English co-teaching pair who commute to their classrooms, along with their helpers. A few other kids scurried about, too, rushing towards their appropriate home rooms.
I mention all this to say that I don't really know who's responsible for what happened next.
Out of the corner of my ear, I heard what I thought was "七月," (qi yue), which translates as 7th month, or July. July? I thought, Why is he talking about July?
Partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to check my Chinese listening comprehension skills, I asked Maggie about what I'd heard. Turns out that my Chinese listening comprehension skills suck (or, half suck, anyway--I had the 七 part right), and the student had actually said "qi ye"--I have no idea how it's actually written--which was a reference to a Chinese fable.
In the fable, apparently, there are two men, Mister Seven and Mister Eight, who lead people to Hell. Mister Seven is very tall, and Mister Eight is very short.
Hm. Have I mentioned that Maggie is probably about 4'11", and I'm a whopping (in Taiwan) 5'6"? No? Oh, well then I should probably just spell it out that they were talking about us. As the two who lead people down to Hell. Good to know they have such a good impression of English class...
Well, that's it for the night. It's no lengthy tome, but some days just don't need that sort of post. Some days just need a little shot of the small glories of life--a reminder that terrified squirrels and backhanded Chinese insults can, many times, make your day.
And, also as usual when I reach this point, my answer is the same: I can't. I'm all treatise-d out for the moment. But what do have, and happen to have in spades today, is fun little stories of how wonderful life is here. So let's do that, instead!
Squirrel!
This morning found me all but sprinting down the 3rd floor hallway at Hanmin in my typical attempt to avoid being late. (For the record, so far, so good.) Now, my first class of the day on Mondays is actually my students' second or third. (Because, clearly, elementary schoolers were meant to be in school from 8am til 4pm, then hit the cram schools for hours afterward. But I digress.) And, since Hanmin, like most (maybe all?) schools in Taiwan, is built up rather than out, with wide covered breezeways serving as most kids' between-class play area, my path from the elevator to my office involved ducking and weaving between 2nd graders jumping rope, then taking a blind corner in the hope that this would be the one time that the 5th grade boys playing tag would think to look in front of them, rather than behind, as they took rounded the edge at a full gallop.
But while I was disappointed in that last hope--though thankfully he turned just in time to see me and avoid the collision--that little mishap was almost instantly forgotten in the discovery of something far more interesting and strange: a squirrel.
That's right, there, scurrying its way along the stone floor beside the banister, was a scawny black squirrel--that looked absolutely scared out of its mind. Of course, so would you if you had a horde of hyperactive giants closing in around you from all sides, trying to cut off your every escape route.
If squirrels think, I imagine this particular one's thought process went something like this:
"Oh, look, a giant white thing to climb. I like to climb. Let's climb the giant white thing and see if I can find food." (it climbs up the school building and stops at the third floor) "This looks nice. But it smells weird--lots of different sm--some food, some dirt, some anim- AHHHHHHH!!!!! They're coming! They're coming! THEY'RE COMING AFTER MEEEEE!!!!! Must get away, must get a--AH! WHERE DID THIS GIANT FOOT COME FROM?! I'll go--OH NO ANOTHER ONE! SAVE MEEEE!!!!"
All things considered, our little squirrel friend was making pretty good time down the hallway, flocked by a dozen or so kids doing their best to corral him so they could play. Fortunately (for the squirrel, anyway), I don't think they succeeded.
Although, later in the day, I did come across a stuffed squirrel, lying on its back in the middle of the hallway as if begging for mercy from a horde of giants....nah, must have been a coincidence.
Mr. 7 and Mr. 8
I think I've mentioned it before, but at Hanmin, we don't have an English classroom; rather, myself and Maggie or Alison (depending on the day's schedule) are the roving English duo, taking our cue from the bell just like our students and setting forth to whichever classroom is expecting us next. Or not expecting us next, as the case may be, if we've lost track of what period it is, but they're usually pretty quick at setting us straight with a big laugh and a chorus of "hellos."
Anyway. On the way to class today with Maggie, we were accompanied, as is usual here in Taiwan, by our classroom helpers--ie, those kids who'd decided to voluntarily come down and help us carry our stuff. (Gotta love Taiwan!) Also behind us as we walked were Ingrid and Fiona, another English co-teaching pair who commute to their classrooms, along with their helpers. A few other kids scurried about, too, rushing towards their appropriate home rooms.
I mention all this to say that I don't really know who's responsible for what happened next.
Out of the corner of my ear, I heard what I thought was "七月," (qi yue), which translates as 7th month, or July. July? I thought, Why is he talking about July?
Partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to check my Chinese listening comprehension skills, I asked Maggie about what I'd heard. Turns out that my Chinese listening comprehension skills suck (or, half suck, anyway--I had the 七 part right), and the student had actually said "qi ye"--I have no idea how it's actually written--which was a reference to a Chinese fable.
In the fable, apparently, there are two men, Mister Seven and Mister Eight, who lead people to Hell. Mister Seven is very tall, and Mister Eight is very short.
Hm. Have I mentioned that Maggie is probably about 4'11", and I'm a whopping (in Taiwan) 5'6"? No? Oh, well then I should probably just spell it out that they were talking about us. As the two who lead people down to Hell. Good to know they have such a good impression of English class...
Well, that's it for the night. It's no lengthy tome, but some days just don't need that sort of post. Some days just need a little shot of the small glories of life--a reminder that terrified squirrels and backhanded Chinese insults can, many times, make your day.
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