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.

Denial

I don't want to talk about it. Scratch that, I don't want to think about it. Actually, I don't want it to have happened, and by somehow leaving it out of my mental processes, I can pretend that's so: today was not my last day of teaching at Hanmin. Today was not my farewell to all the absolutely wonderful 5th graders I've had the privilege of meeting there. And it was also not my last day working with Maggie.

Except it was.

They're unfathomable, these "lasts." They represent the ripping out of my life of things that have become wholly connected to who I am, and who I have been for the past 10--almost 11!--months. Teacher Bekah, Bekah 老師--it was a title that fit awkwardly at first, like a new shoe. Now, though, it's been worn into a second skin, and I'm reluctant to take it off, especially since doing so means saying goodbye to the nearly 1,000 students, teachers, and administrators I've been able to work with here.

I can't think too much about it. I can't. Especially since each day brings a new goodbye, a fresh "last" to add to the ever-growing list. Last day of 6th grade at Hanmin, last day of 6th grade at Qingshan, Hanmin graduation, last day of 5th grade at Hanmin, Teacher Appreciation Banquet...It's a blessing and a curse, having my endings stretched over a week and a half. I'm reminded of the lobsters who, being put in water before it's boiled, don't even realize the water is heating up until it's over.

OK, so that's a bit morbid, but the idea holds: I feel like I'm being eased into The End so gradually that I don't--can't--mourn properly for each new step. Sure, I keep writing emo-kid-worthy blog posts about it--(sorry about that)--but it's hard to let myself realize, really, that it's ending. In class, I look around and tell myself, this is the last time you'll be here, but I can't get a real sense of it. I read the mounds of cards piling up on my desk--all very sweet, all reminding me just how much I love my kids--and I think oh, well, you might still get to see them on Tuesday and Wednesday... And yes, I might: I'll be physically present at Hanmin tomorrow and the day after for various events. But even then, there are no guarantees! And after that--nothing.

I'd better end there--no sense taking that course any further down its inevitably Eeyore-ish way. I suppose there'll be plenty of time to deal with the gloom later on--and I doubt my as yet un-summoned tears will stay away once I'm actually on the plane headed home. After all, I'll have nearly 1,000 reasons to be sad.

In the mean time, here's a more pragmatic, pictoral look at my day: a day, as I've said, of goodbyes, but also of candy and cards and smiling faces.

Soooo many caaaaaards!

Not pictured: the Teacher Appreciation Banquet tonight. It was great--scrumptious food, saw several of my students (their parents were on the PTA and/or were teachers) and fun talking with Maggie and Alison--but my camera was dead. So...that happened.

300 Days

Today marks my 300th blog post. 300. Besides immediately calling to mind a certain big-budget film (THIS IS SPARTA!), 300 posts makes me realize just how close to a full year it is--just 65 days shy. And I won't even be here a full year; won't quite make that 65-day mark. Wow, the end is close.

It's fitting, then, that today Alison and I taught our 6th grade kids their graduation unit: words like "miss," and "graduation," and phrases like "Keep in touch!" and "This year was great!" and "Have a good summer!"

The classes themselves were less melancholy than that perhaps sounds--we're having them make posters for themselves and then having everyone sign each others' using the phrases we're teaching--but I can't think too hard about it, or I'll realize that we're on our last unit with the 6th graders. They graduate in three weeks, one of which will contain their final exam, rather than a class period. I only have them two more times. But I can't think about that.

To make matters even more melancholy, today was the last day that Ingrid and I were both at school: she's done with her program at the end of this week, and won't be there tomorrow because she's attending a concert. I will at least see her again Thursday--Teacher Penguin invited us to a BBQ--and I'm still hoping she'll change her mind and come to Australia with me, but all in all today was a day of choosing not to think about the many goodbyes to come.

...At least my students' posters were cheery.

...so yeah, those pictures' adorableness keeps me happy. As does the nail polish I put on today, which I just realized is SCENTED. So, my fingernails now smell like coconut deliciousness.

Goals for tomorrow:

1. Don't cry at the thought of goodbyes
2. Don't spend all day sniffing your fingernails

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!

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!

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.

Past Tense

Today marks my last day of Chinese New Year break, a day which I mark with an odd mixture of joy and remorse. It's been a very strange experience, flitting about with nothing to occupy my days but what I choose, a ragtag diet of books and movies and TV shows (and, yes, a trip to Thailand) supplanting my steady routine of classes and work. I haven't had this sort of a complete and total break since Christmas breaks in high school, and even then I was living at home, which meant my free time was snapped up to get the house ready for the deluge of people which always marks the holiday season for us. This break was different: it was a break.

And now it's over. I spent several hours today sitting in my favorite coffee shop nearby and hammering out a Powerpoint presentation for my lesson plan at Qingshan this week, featuring my trip to Thailand and a new lesson on the past tense: read, watched, played, went, rode, and saw. Patty thought the kids would like to see what I did over break, and I tried to make the slideshow a nice blend of my trip and the grammar, teaching the concepts and then heading each slide of my pictures with a sentence: "I went to the beach." "I went snorkeling." "I saw lots of fish." "I rode an elephant."

I like how the presentation turned out, and it felt good to sit down with a decided purpose in mind and work until it was finished. I've missed teaching, missed having a task set before me that I needed to finish. Especially since it took place in a coffee shop, it reminded me of being in college, which is (for me) a pleasant memory.

But now, these weeks of relaxation and exploration are a memory, too. They are all now set in the past tense, and I can't imagine I'll encounter a similar break again. Going forward, I'm no longer a student, and after this year I'll no longer be a teacher, either, leaving me in a standard job working standard hours, which notably exclude weeks-long breaks for holidays, Western or Taiwanese.

So am I excited to go back to school tomorrow, excited to meet my new students at Hanmin, see my co-teachers and students at Qingshan again and step back into my routines? Yes, absolutely yes. But even so, I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness as this break, and breaks in general, slips irrevocably into the past tense.

School's Out

Today was my last day of the semester, meaning I am now officially on break! This may seem odd to all of you who just finished Christmas break and are heading into your second quarter/semester/term but, as I've mentioned before, Christmas isn't the big deal here. Chinese New Year is.

So, in the weeks before and after the actual lunar new year, which this year falls on January 23rd, all the schools get time off. Quite a bit of time, actually: their last day is this coming Wednesday (I'll be at the Fulbright midyear conference), and school doesn't begin again until February 7th, giving the students--and us teachers--a solid three weeks in which to rolick and play and rest.

And I plan to take full advantage of it. First off, CNY break is pretty much the only time we Fulbrighters are okay-ed to leave the country, so Karina and I will be hitting Thailand for about a week, visiting my lovely friends Marissa and Melanie in Chiang Mai and checking out the beaches for a bit. Then there's been some speculation that we'll do a bit more exploring in Taiwan with Tom and Amanda, though nothing's set yet. And, of course, there's the inevitable conference, which will give us a glimpse of Xitou (溪頭).

Aside from that, I think I'll take the "break" thing as literally as possible without going dormant. Explore the parts of the city that I haven't seen at a leisurely pace. Eat at new restaurants. Hang out with my co-teachers, colleagues, host family, fellow ETAs and friends. Play Mahjiang. Visit wherever I'm invited. Rediscover the gym. Sleep. Basically, get in all the things I know I won't have time to do once school starts again, and hopefully form some better habits for myself to keep following once it does.

I'm so ready for this break. It's really quite amazing how exhausting it can be to live in another culture and to teach 5th and 6th graders. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it. But this break is good news--and for some reason, all I can think of is this song, inaccurate though it may be:

6 Days of Pirate-hood

After spending 6 of the past 7 days dressed as a pirate, and spending 5 of those 6 teaching Halloween to 5th and 6th graders, I feel like I've learned a lot. For instance...

Eye patches are cool. And they also suck. Not too long before I "became" a pirate, my online browsing took me to this article (warning: some language), where #5 of their list of 6 Absurd Pirate Myths informed me that pirates did not, in fact, wear eye patches to cover missing eyes, but rather wore them to keep one eye adjusted to the dark when attacking ships, at which point they would need to be able to move quickly--and non-blindly--from the bright light of the deck into the pitch darkness of the cabins, all while swinging a sword and trying not to get killed.

Turns out, this works for haunted houses, too. With kids cycling through a darkened room, letting in streams of light at each end, it helps to work the door with an eye patch on--lower it when the door's open, lift it when it's closed. It actually helped: a lot. Visible difference when I was using the eye-patched eye. So yeah, pirates had a nifty idea for looting ships! And, you know, scaring 5th graders.

The sucky part? More accurate: parts. First off, there's the obvious discomfort--it's just weird to have something covering one of your eyes for an extended period of time; I found myself scrunching up one side of my face trying to keep that eye close for some bizarre subconscious reason. I made mine out of felt, which is pretty good on a skin irritability scale, especially when coupled with the fact that it was held on not with an elastic round-head strap, but a normal headband beneath my hat. But still uncomfortable; a large number of my pictures from teaching this week feature my eye patch folded up on itself and pushed under the brim of my hat to keep it out of the way, and by the end of the day, I was always ready to tear that thing off my head.

See the thin strap of black on my forehead? Yeah...and this was my FIRST  DAY!

And that's not to mention the inevitable loss of depth perception and peripheral vision. Many missed steps, missed food portions and misshapen letters later (in an unfortunate coincidence, the week I was a pirate brought with it the most board-writing I've had in a lesson plan in quite some time), I've never valued my ability to see what's around me--and know where it is around me--more.

Not pictured: six other hand-written  flashcard words

If you think your students have gotten used to having a foreign teacher around, donning an eye patch, hat, and sword will turn that assumption right around! It was kind of funny how much attention I suddenly got once I donned my costume. I hadn't realized how used to me students had gotten until I changed the stakes a bit--if a foreign teacher is normal, how about a pirate foreign teacher! Along the same lines, I was surprised at how many kids were actually a little nervous because of my costume--it wasn't anything particularly scary; to my mind, it was actually pretty tame. But an eye patch, watch out! And, on a related note...

Wooden swords work well as attention-getting objects. For some reason, this did not occur to me until I was halfway through the week, but it's fantastic! Teaching vocabulary words on a blackboard has never been more fun than when you can smack it with a wooden sword and ask "What is this?" And kids pay more attention when you're swinging a sword around anyway--highly unusual, and so highly worth paying attention to.

Yarr, matey!

And, of course, if they're still not paying attention, a quick rap on the desk (I said desk, not hand, just to be clear) works infinitely better than a ruler to get a student to sit up and listen! I'm only half joking in all of this, of course. :)

I never want to hear "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" again. Yes, I know, this is not directly related to being a pirate, but in the context of Halloween, it fits perfectly. Over the past week, I have read a simplified version of that story precisely eleven times, line by line, as I waited for my co-teachers to translate into Chinese. The original story is okay, but when you take a kids' version from the Internet and simplify it further for kids who don't speak English, the story becomes unbearable and odd.

Each translation pause opened up a gulf of self-doubting questions about the story: should I have left that detail in? Should I have cut this one out? Why in the world did Washington Irving have a fake ghost in the middle of the story? Should I have read that sentence on its own, or should I have read those two together? And how impactful can a ghost story really be when kids hear each line twice, just in two different languages? Which leads me to...

If you hear the same thing in two different languages enough times, you start to understand bits and pieces of both. This is the one upside of reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" so many times. Among other things, I now have the word "誰" ("who," as in "Wh-who are you," or "你, 你 是 誰?") and the word "南瓜" ("pumpkin"--not hard to think of where that fits in the story), as well as "馬" (horse) and "頭" ("head," as in "he was headless," or "他沒有投"). So yeah, at least Teacher Bekah was learning from the story! Hopefully the kiddos were as well, but it's less likely since they only heard it once.

他們的南瓜! / Their pumpkins!

And now, at last, I can retire my trusty pirate costume of hat, belt, sword, and eye patch. Perhaps in another year I will have achieved enough distance between my over-exposure to don it again, maybe even unite it with my trusty pirate costume which I stupidly left at home in the States, but for now, I'll just sit back and relax...no rum required.

Back to Normal

Dan and Danny left this morning sometime after I did, and I was instantly plunged back into my occasionally unrelenting (oxymoron, I know) schedule. And today was one of the unrelenting ones.

I've often meant to detail my schedule on here to give you a glimpse into my actual day-to-day life, and I suppose I have done that in snippets so far, but now let me just give you the timetable I follow every other Wednesday.

6:45am -- Wake up and get ready for the day, assuming I remembered to shower the night before (otherwise, the alarm is set for 6:20am)
7:20am -- Leave for Han-Min, on the expectation that it will take a good 10 or 15 minutes longer than a normal day, as I will have to fight through the morning rush all trying to get to Siaogang by 8am
7:50am -- Arrive at Han-Min, with any luck
8:00am -- Begin Morning English! I switch off teaching this with Alison and Maggie, and we teach 5 classes of a single grade every week; by the end of the semester, we will have seen every class once and we'll start over again. Today Maggie and I taught a new dialogue for our first "middle grade" group of 4th graders; first times always have a few bumps, but overall, it went pretty well.
8:30am -- Begin the awkward hour break before my next class, usually rendered un-awkward by a coffee/tea trip with Maggie and/or Alison. Today it went by really quickly, thanks to a few great conversations with both of them and the fact that we used the time to plan for our Halloween lesson plans. Going to be great, by the way!
9:30am -- First *real* class of the day; all adorable 5th graders with Maggie on Wednesdays.
12:00pm -- Lunch. My last class of the three I teach on Wednesdays bring me my lunch in the teachers' office, where I thank them in English and they, without fail, giggle a response and run away. Love it. :) Another highlight of lunch is always sitting and talking with Maggie, Alison, and Fiona, the other English teacher at Hanmin; our desks are close together and we just sit and chat and teach each other new vocabulary. It's fantastic.
12:30pm ish -- Lesson plan time! Alison and Maggie and I plan for next week
1:00/1:30pm -- Go home to pick stuff up if I have time (I did today); if not, straight to Sanmin for our massive LET-ETA-Fonda-Alex-Education Bureau people-Dr. Sun meeting!
2:00pm -- Here begins our meeting.
4:00pm (if we're lucky) -- Here ends our meeting. Nothing much of importance happens in between.
4:25pm -- We (ETAs) finish our post-meeting meeting with Fonda and Alex, and either quickly run home for stuff if there wasn't time before (this option would make us late) or run out for food at the local market and/or 7-11. Oh, the nutritious dinners we eat on Wednesdays...
5:10pm -- Chinese class begins. "Surprisingly," we make horrible students on these days...
7:10pm ish -- Chinese class ends.
7:40pm ish -- Rachel and I reach the gym (if we coordinated and have managed to conquer our exhaustion--which didn't happen today)
8:40pm ish -- Rachel and I head home, where I drop exhausted onto whatever flat surface I see first.

I know that, in writing this, I'm inviting comparisons from people who routinely work 14 hour days etc, and I have no answer for that. I'm just sharing my day.

It's All Relative

Sorry, the Patterson in me couldn't let the opportunity escape for a bad pun. In other news, I met my host family today! They are absolutely wonderful, and I already feel blessed to have them in my life.

"But wait," you say. "Bekah, you live in an apartment. Why do you need a host family? Are you moving?"

No, I'm not. But, as it turns out, living situation has very little to do with the idea of a host family. Fulbright connects every ETA here in Taiwan with a host family to serve as, well, a family, someone to spend holidays and go see the country with, much as a grown child might do with their biological family. They give us another person to turn to if we're stumped with what's going on around us. And, of course, the added benefit is that of cultural exchange: they teach me Taiwanese culture, and I teach them American culture. Saying that since I live on my own I don't need a host family is roughly equivalent to advocating dumping your biological family once you're self-sufficient: even if you don't live with them, you still need a family!

We went to Banana Pier for the official family-meeting-reception, and got there just as the sun went down. It was gorgeous.

Yes. Unedited.

(...and oh yeah, this happened...)

And, once inside, we got to meet our families and have a delicious meal! My family consists of Margaret, an English teacher in Kaohsiung who has had an ETA before and who reminds me somewhat in her looks and mannerisms of my Aunt Marlene; her husband James, who smiles constantly and is keen to teach me Chinese and show me around his hometown of Meinong (so excited--gorgeous place!); and Emily, their daughter, who is a sophomore in college studying English, and with whom I have quite a lot in common. They're fantastic!

Seriously though , US family, doesn't she look like a Lindstrand?

 Other highlights of the night included everyone being forced to give impromptu 2-minute introductions of themselves, which were occasionally adorable..

Karina's family's son introducing them in Taiwanese--SO cute

...but more often slightly awkward. And then there was 'fun time,' which involved the ETAs writing their answers to a series of questions and seeing if the new host families could guess. In the first round of six questions, we got zero right, giving us the ignominious position of last place. We rallied in the second round, pulling out with four matches (one of which was obtained by kind of cheating...), but were still consigned to the bottom of the stack. We didn't care, though--it was just funny. Also, we're pretty sure that Andrew, who got 100%, cheated more than a little to get there.

By the end of the evening, my cheek muscles were aching from too much smiling, and I was 100% optimistic about the coming year, as James and Margaret want to show me around and Emily told me she's excited to have a traveling buddy around her age. I could not have picked a better host family! There's nothing better than when things just click.

And that's been happening in other areas of my life lately, too.

My colleagues at Han-Min and I had a great week; one of the great things about Han-Min is that, because it's a big school, the subject teachers all share an office. This means that, at every break, I am surrounded by my LETs and a third English teacher, Fiona, with whom to chat and hang out. And they're fantastic--as of today, we're planning to go see an Alphonse Mucha art exhibit sometime in the next few weeks. I'm not going to lie, I hadn't heard of Alphonse Mucha before today, but I'm excited to go see his works if only for the fantastic company!

Another moment of adorable clicking today: one of my students, Peggy, saw me studying Chinese and took it upon herself to come in on all of her recesses to help me, pointing to different words and having me repeat them after her, correcting my characters as I wrote them on flashcards, and then, in the last recess, bringing in flashcards of her own that she'd made for me during her last class. So. Cute. A little annoying when I was trying to work quickly, but the thought did not go unappreciated.

Incidentally, Peggy also made me this card for Teachers' Day:

Human connection is just so wonderful when it falls into place, and you don't realize how little of it you have at first when you move to another country where you don't speak the language. But today, in three separate instances, it fell into place, and reminded me of the joys it can offer. It's not a full-blown web of support, but it's a great group of colleagues, students, and now a family, and in a city where I used to know no one--it's all relative.

Teachers' Day!

Today was Teachers' Day, which is, as you may have guessed, a day honoring teachers. Apparently there's one in the US, too, but I had never heard of it before 10 seconds ago, when I searched it on Wikipedia. Not possible here!

Here in Taiwan, Teachers' Day is a really big deal--according to Maggie, Kaohsiung used to give teachers $5,000NT each on this day, and according to Alison, they still give New Taipei teachers $1,000NT. (We didn't get money, though, for the record.) Here, Teachers' Day celebrates the attributed birthday of Confucius, he of the hundreds of wise sayings and seemingly the wellspring of all Chinese wisdom. Basically, he's a superstar--and a superstar at teaching. Which means that we, as modern-day teachers, are by extension superstars as well!

Teachers' Day celebrations actually began earlier this week. On Monday, I arrived at Han-Min to find this sitting (not bitten yet, of course; that was me) on my desk:

It's a rice bun filled with red bean and (a single) strawberry! Quite good, actually.

I think it may have been from one of the other teachers or from the administration (all the teachers in the Subject Teachers' Office had one), but still.

And not to worry: you can't say students don't know how to appreciate their teachers here in Taiwan! Later that day, I witnessed this wonderful little moment:

No, your eyes do not deceive you: that's a student rubbing Alison's shoulders while another waits behind her--they were literally in line a second before I snapped this; a second before that, they were fighting over who got to give her the back rub. Would this happen in America? I think NOT. (Incidentally, the boy in this picture is named Louis; he's a total teachers pet and especially loves Alison. The girl, however, is just there to rub her shoulders.)

And that wasn't even on the day.

Today, after teaching Morning English, I found, first of all, that Alison had bought me coffee. (She is so sweet!) Second of all, I discovered that I, like all other teachers, was a temporary rock star.

(Of course, all it really takes to make me feel like a rockstar is this, but still...)

Anyway, today, in addition to the carefully-scripted "Laoshi hao" and/or "Good Morning Teacher Bekah" in the halls and in the classrooms (where either greeting is accompanied by a group bow), I heard "Happy Teachers' Day!" more times than I could count. And they were genuinely excited about it! This could be evidenced by the growing pile of stuff on my desk that students gave me--I think this was the bulk of it, sans a couple candies I ate.

Worth noting: the flower was from the school

Not pictured is one of my favorite cards, a handmade postcard showing the beach, an umbrella and a big cloud cut out against an inexplicably yellow sky. Actually, now that I'm looking at it again to describe it, you've just got to see it:

Sorry--webcam quality.

I love this card all the more because two girls came literally running up to Maggie and I today while we were on our way to class to deliver it--they were that excited to show us their appreciation. And, terrible teacher that I am (or, you know, just teacher-with-540-students-I-see-once-a-week that I am), I couldn't even tell you their names. I know that they were in class 5-01, so I know I taught them yesterday, and I know that they are super sweet, and made me the best card ever! Yet another reason I need to take individual pictures of my students holding their name cards or something--I can't stand not knowing simple stuff like this!

Aherm--back to topic. Another fun discovery today was that my name has apparently changed its spelling without my knowledge: the standard attempt was "Bkka," which I guess sounds about right if you sound it out, and especially makes sense given that there is no "eh" sound in the Chinese language, but it was a bit funny to see written out over and over.

And once on a crane!

Then there was the absolutely adorable card Alison and I got from a student named Madeline:

Outside...(It reads "Lead; Knowledge; Kind; Humorous; Inspirit; Likes Playing; friend?" Last three are my favorites. :)

And the inside: melts your heart!

But the most extravagant, wow-this-is-fantastic moment came in the second class of the day, when Maggie and I walked in to find...this:

 It was beautiful! All over, it read "Happy Teachers' Day" in two languages, plus "I love teacher" and "You are beautiful" in Chinese. I had forgotten my camera, but instantly ran to get it. This was not a board that could be erased before being captured forever!

The artists and their creation.

Had to get a close-up, too, to capture the vividness!

Feeling very honored as a teacher (and very awkward to be having my picture taken--Maggie's idea)

 We did, of course, have to erase it for the lesson, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They actually did it themselves, going at it with a gusto I thought amazing, given the time they seemed to have put into making it. But they were enthusiastic, and we then had a great class!

After class: even the home room teacher got in there! Can you spot the adults?

Feeling very blessed to be here in Taiwan, and to have the co-teachers and schools that I do. And not just because they give me stuff on Teachers' Day--they are genuinely some of the best people I've ever met, and I just love spending time with each of them!