The first part of today involved teaching American traditions to the kiddos; the second part involved whole-heartedly embracing Taiwanese traditions and injecting them with a bit of playful Americanness.
Our lesson today (and yesterday) was pretty simple and fun: an introduction to sports around the world. The book included bowling, badminton and dodgeball, but neglected to add soccer or American football. I quickly remedied that, and re-discovered that, no matter where they're from, boys love the idea of a sport that involves hitting each other and making the other person fall over.
Seriously. I played about a minute from this clip of the last Super Bowl, and at the end of many classes, both yesterday and today, I had boys trying to figure out where they could find more of this "football" craziness. To which all I can add is a Scott-themed "aMERica!"
After school, our apartment got together with Katy (an American teacher at Sanmin), Fonda, and Chialing to celebrate Rachel's birthday today in the most Taiwanese fashion ever: KTV.
And this was, hands down, the most fun I've ever had at KTV. The English songs available at this particular place were not particularly plentiful, and consisted primarily in popular songs from the 90s or earlier, but that led to fantastic, no-holds-barred singing contests of the Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Avril Lavigne etc, plus songs like "Barbie Girl," amongst others.
Because, really, when you're doing KTV, you've already kissed your dignity goodbye; it's more fun if you take it all the way and go for flat-out ridiculous! Once Chialing and Fonda arrived, we incorporated some Taiwanese songs too, of course, leading to several rousing rounds of our old favorite 我的寶貝,
as well as several songs by 五月天(Mayday) and others that I recognized but can't yet sing. (To do list: learn to sing more Taiwanese songs for KTV purposes.)
It was a lovely way to spend the evening, and a lovely way to wish a happy birthday to the wonderful Rachel! By the time we ended, the whole group was belting out "My Heart Will Go On," confirming American stereotypes and thoroughly celebrating our past four hours in the best way possible.
So, in light of such a bi-cultural day, there's really only one way to end this post: to say Happy Birthday, Rachel, and 生日快樂,池蕊!
First of all, I'd just like to point out that this is my hundredth consecutive post on this blog. And, while the perfectionist in me would like to pour hours and hours of time into it so that it does not suck, I'm fairly certain that a) none of you really care; b) I've killed any chances of it being epic by simply mentioning that this is my 100th post; and c) I do actually care about getting some sleep tonight.
And not without reason: tomorrow, I will sing the American national anthem at a MLB game. Not alone, of course, and not in America, but STILL: tomorrow myself, 5 other Fulbrighters, and a group of high school students from the Kaohsiung American school will sing the American national anthem a the Taiwanese MLB All-Star Game.
So, yeah, we'll be on international TV.
Today, though, was just practice, which essentially entailed the group of us standing in the hot sun in the baseball stadium, waiting our turn to run-through the song a couple times. That, and taking jumping pictures.
Umm, I think we have a problem here...
Love the facial expressions...and we're getting closer!
Win!
Annnd epic win!
But I'll have plenty to write about on that account tomorrow and Sunday, after we've actually done more than a run-through followed by a long speech by the mayor, who came for the performance.
So, to rewind a bit: this morning, my 5th and 6th graders had a field trip! And I, naturally, went with them. It was a short affair; we walked the five or so blocks to our destination, and the whole trip took about an hour and a half. But it was fun! We went to Qing-Shan's original building, which has since been converted into a government factory which manufactures clothes for Taiwanese soldiers.
We meandered around the old complex, the kids getting important tidbits of information from the Director of Academic Affairs, in Chinese, while I savored the scenery and absorbed the occasional paraphrase by Patty. The complex was actually quite picturesque.
When we went inside for the actual tour, I found myself wondering who would wear the clothes, and about the home lives of the workers--I had been told that a good number of my students' parents work here, and I wondered which ones they were? No way to tell--when they saw me trailing along at the tail end of the procession, their reactions were universally gasps and occasionally a proffered English phrase like "Hello!"
Our procession.
So that was our field trip.
Fast forwarding a bit, past the MLB practice, song came into my life a second time today, at Zhong Shan Da Shue's (中山大學) 13th annual "Singing Contest in Chinese & Taiwanese for the Foreign Students." In other words, glorified karaoke.
Here's how that went down: some people sucked. Like really, really sucked. The first guy to lead off was one of those, which I appreciated as a boost to everyone's confidence. Then there were a few people who were okay, and a few who were absolutely fantastic and need a record label to notice them now.
That would be this guy. He also needs to stop wearing v-neck shirts now, but I won't quibble.
One group even dressed up in costume and did a comedic bit, which was pretty great.
And then there was us.
At the last second, Tiffiany had to leave because she had a bus to Kenting to catch for her birthday weekend (because sometimes life is just rough, you know?), and so our teacher recruited some of her other students, a group of French guys, to help us sing our song.
Yeah...that did not go so smoothly.
The thing is, they knew the chorus of the song, but that was about it. Not that we were too much better--we had our lyrics sheets in hand--but we had at least practiced it; knew what we were doing and had agreed weeks in advance to standing in front of a crowd and singing this particular song. (I blogged about it clear back in the beginning of October.)
So here's what ended up happening: the four of us who had prepared stood on one side of the stage, intermittently singing and laughing at ourselves, with a single microphone pointed, not at any of our mouths, but at a generalized point in the middle. I'm fairly certain no one could hear us.
On the other side of the stage stood the French guys, leading the crowd in clapping (clapping??? For Wode Bao Bei???) and chiming in whenever the chorus rolled around. And did I mention they had their own mike?
Fortunately, as I mentioned, we were still laughing. A few audience members laughed, too, which was more a relief than anything else. Because what else could we expect from that scenario? As Lydia said while we were leaving, in that sort of situation you have to be either completely amazing, or completely sucky and able to laugh at yourselves. I'd say we probably fell into the latter category.
Nonetheless, We'll be back out on the baseball field tomorrow, singing our hearts out for an international audience: proof that talent matters infinitely less than tenacity and happening to be one of the only Americans in Kaohsiung. And, as this 100th post attests, I have no talent but the talent of staying constant, whether to blogging, to being American, or to singing--poorly.
Just a few little things from today--a few little moments which, by themselves, don't look like much, but which, taken together, make for a nice day.
1.) Class 6-1 at Cing-Shan, my first class of the day every Thursday and the one which is notorious school-wide for bad behavior, was a little better today (or at least they seemed a little better to me). In fact, the whole day today at Cing-Shan went really well, I thought; the kids were engaged, I was enjoying myself, and the teaching really seemed to flow and tie it all together, which is something of a first for me.
I think I may have hit upon a better way of teaching vocabulary, actually. Our lesson this week involves household chores-- "do the dishes," "get the mail," take out the trash," "feed the fish," "walk the dog," and "clean the room." In our lesson planning, Patty asked that, while teaching these new words, I first explain the verb and then add on the prepositional phrase. But really, how do you explain a verb? I explained it by telling the kids all the other things they could "do," "get," "take out," "feed," "walk," and "clean"--and not just telling them, but asking them to fill in the blanks. "What else can you do?" "What else can you clean?" When they answered, I'd act out whatever they said, which led to some fun moments--walking a lion and an elephant, for instance, and a boy saying he would feed his girlfriend (which I suppose is better than not feeding her)--and which actually had the kids all focused on me and enjoying themselves.
This was new for a lot of these kids. The kids at Cing-Shan sit at tables facing each other in cramped quarters, and possibly because of this, almost every class has issues of paying more attention to each other than to the teaching. Today was an epiphany: I made them all focus on me from the beginning (I wouldn't begin until I had everyone's eyes on me, I told them, and my heart warmed when one boy reached across the table to nudge someone who wasn't looking--self-managing classroom glimmering in the far distance!), and then I managed to hold their attention by directing their talking into productive replies.
Lesson learned: make them talk, but talk to me!
2.) I learned I can pick up finger-picking guitar fairly easily. I can play the bass guitar, of course, but I'd never really tried to pick up an acoustic before; I don't know chords, and I have not the slightest idea what note the upper two strings on a six-string are tuned to.
But tonight in Chinese class, Andrew announced he didn't want to play guitar for our performance (we're still trying to persuade him otherwise), and Analicia volunteered that I play the bass. I picked up the teacher's guitar and in a few minutes I was able to recreate, by ear-training/bass knowledge/piano theory training, "Wode Bao Bei." And it sounded decent! Granted, it's a simple song, but it was a thrill for me nonetheless. I still hope Andrew can be rallied to the cause, but if he can't, I guess I'll be well-practiced soon enough.
Lesson learned: I should buy an acoustic and teach myself!
3.) After Chinese class, I forced myself to go the gym. I had a headache, it was almost 9pm, and everything in me wanted to just stay at home, but I hadn't been to the gym since Monday, and I actually kind of missed it. And I was rewarded! My headache all but left me, and I got all the wonderful warm-and-fuzzy endorphins that makes gym-going addicting.
Lesson learned: couch potatoes can be retrained!
So that was my day--some nice surprises, making strides in teaching, music transferability, gym motivation; nothing major, but altogether great.
This song is currently playing on repeat in my head, and that is not at all a bad thing--it's quite peaceful and lovely! We're learning it for Chinese class; next month there's a foreigners-singing-Chinese competition which we may or may not be entering, depending on how confident we're feeling and whether or not we can all be convinced to sing/play the guitar (Andrew) in front of an audience.
"Wode bao bei" means "My baby," if you were wondering.
Singing in Chinese is interesting; or, at least, singing this song in Chinese is interesting. Chinese is a tonal language, of course, but when you sing you have to hit the notes you're playing, which may or may not match up with the tones you're supposed to be saying to make the words make sense. I've been told that, typically, as a result of this tones don't matter when singing.
In this song, however, she follows the music about 60% of the time and the actual tones about 40% of the time, making the singing-slash-talking alternative acoustic style work, and making those English speakers attempting to sing with her work, too. Her fun little vocal plays are half stylistic and half tonal, meaning the tones marked on the pinyin version of her lyrics (no tones on my linked version, sorry) which I have are right about half the time. So that's fun.
Actually, though, it is: her music reminds me of Ingrid Michaelson, whom I love, and it's quite fun to be able to sing in another language, however poorly. And who knows, come next month maybe we'll even win something from it.
If nothing else, we will have won ourselves a nice little KTV song!
