Sunday, September 28, 2008

Things That Aren't Classes

We had a movie night on Wednesday at our apartment. Joel and Gill and Dave came over and we watched The Sting, which I had never seen. It was fun to have people over - made me feel like we actually live somewhere. We had another movie night last night at the home of Georgia and Cat, two of Katy's co-workers. We watched The Princess Bride, because no one doesn't like that movie.

On Friday, I did some laundry (which I hung in my closets with the doors open - laundry dries in about 24 hours here, unless it's fabric like denim, in which case it takes more like 30 hours), got some groceries (tomatoes, scary individual cheese slices, and sprouts !sprouts!), made myself a sandwich, and decided I'd walk to meet Katy at her MRT station near Shilin.  The first thing I passed when I walked north of the Minquan/Linsen intersection where I usually turn for the MRT was a pretty building that looked like a temple.  For all I know it could have been a tchotchke shop.  There was a restaurant that had three bird cages outside, and one of them had birds the restaurant manager called "qise" birds, or seven color birds.  They were very pretty and not at all frightened.  The other cages had canaries and finches, but I'd passed them by the time I thought to take a picture.

I walked up to the Art Park, which has clearly seen better days.  Nevertheless, it was nice to be walking in a park.  It smelled like a park, which was nice.  It smelled like 4:00 in a park on a late summer day, and since it was 4:00 in a park on a late summer day, it was a very appropriate smell.  I forget how things are connected until something is familiar and it strikes me as odd.

There was something going on in the military complex next to the park - some kind of rehearsal or drill or something.  I took a few clandestine pictures (I wasn't the only one), listened to the music for a while, and watched them twirl their rifles like batons.  They were very good at it.

I passed the Art Museum itself, which was pretty cool, and the Taipei Story House.  I hung out in another park for a while, watching the airplanes fly overhead and watching some little boy throw his sister's shoes in the sand.  She didn't seem to mind.  After a while I headed north again to cross the river towards Shilin.  I took a bunch of pictures of the clouds (they were very pretty) and set my camera on a wall to take a picture of some leaves.  When I turned around, there was a gentleman in a shocking state of deshabille, casually doing his business there on the side of the road.  I made a hasty exit.  This was clearly not the place for young ladies of delicate temperament.

Every time I pass beneath a bridge here, I want very much for it to be an aqueduct.  It never is, but I can pretend.  This isn't Taiwan, it's ancient Greece.  Complete with huge letters graffitied on a hill in the Roman alphabet.  Just like Hollywood, but different...

As soon as I got to the Jiantan MRT station, where I was to meet Katy, it started to rain.  I had very thoughtfully neglected to bring my umbrella, so I sat under the overhang of the rails and waited for it to let up a little.  As soon as the rain got somewhat more like mist, I made a dash for the nearest café, where I sat down and ordered myself some tea (rose tea!) and toast.  There was some confusion about the toast.  The waitress asked me if I wanted one of two options on the menu, but I knew what neither of them were.  She went back to the woman who turned out to be her mother, and after a whispered conference, the waitress came back and said, quite clearly, "Butter. Or. Penus Creme."  I did my best to hold it together.  "Peanut butter?" I asked.  She shook her head.  "Penus Creme."  Her mother came over and repeated the same phrase four or five times, to make sure I'd heard correctly.  I had.  Then she gestured to indicate little nodules.  "Peanut butter," I said firmly, and made them repeat it.  "You know how you have this word for bird?" I said.  "And how sometimes it doesn't mean bird, but something different entirely?  That is what you are saying.  Peanut butter is the right way."  They laughed and nodded.  I hope that people will correct me when I'm saying terrifically laughable things in Chinese.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Classes

I have three classes of my own now, with a fourth coming relatively soon, and a fifth approaching some time after that.  On Mondays I have an M2 class.  There are 10 kids registered for the class, and the youngest two are are about five years old.  The oldest is probably around seven.  There's a pretty wide range of what they've learned so far and how they learn best, and it's a bit of a challenge to accommodate them all.  We play a lot of games.  The rule for M classes and K classes particularly is to play more games than not.  Any time the kids are sitting in their seats is time they might not be learning.  The games get them up and running around and engaged (usually) in the topic at had.  One of the hardest things about my M2 class is that one of the students is very bright and gets bored easily, and one of them is alternately very quick and very slow and hates being touched or encouraged.   Making room for these two to learn what I have to teach is sometimes frustrating, but I've only had 4 classes with them, so it is, as the saying goes, early days.  If anyone has any advice, I'd be delighted to hear it.

On Wednesdays I have a K1 class.  It's a larger class, with 15 kids registered.  The youngest is probably around seven, and the oldest is more like eleven or twelve.  She seems a little embarrassed all the time to be in a K1 class.  This is the easiest class I have.  Everyone is happy to be there, more or less, and everyone thinks I'm hilarious.  We got a new student last week, and she was shy enough that Elegance (the Sanchong school manager) was worried about whether she'd do alright in the class.  But after the first hour she was laughing at me with the rest of them, and during the break she joined the rest of the kids trying to sneak up on me while I wrote on the white board.  Both my K1 and my M2 seem to really enjoy varying decibels.  When we drill words or letters, I say it in a normal tone of voice and have them repeat it ("A /a/ apple!").  If they're not paying attention, I drop to a whisper, say it again, and have them repeat it in a whisper.  Once they've all whispered back correctly, the reward is shouting the pattern at the tops of their tiny lungs - which gets pretty loud.  I may need to invest in earplugs one of these days.  They love it.  And it keeps their attention on me and on the topic at hand.

My A3 class, on Saturdays, is easily the most difficult for me.  There are so far only five kids in the class, although there are seven registered.  They all sit several seats away from each other, and they're all pretty quiet.  The youngest is eleven, and the oldest two are about fourteen.  There are two girls and three boys, and it's difficult coming up with activities to keep them interested.  One of the boys is clearly at a level higher than that from which the class starts, but the student at the lowest level can barely understand me when I ask a question.  The class goes for three hours, and I have no co-teacher (she's on vacation in Canada for the next couple of weeks).  I'm going to have to come up with some way of engaging them.  Again, any ideas are welcome.

My two upcoming classes are an A4 that starts very soon, either this week or the next, and an M1 class that is waiting for another couple of students to register.  

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Travels and Travails

I left the house yesterday morning at around 11.  On my way to the Minquan MRT station, I crossed Zhongshan N. Road, which was under construction.  It hadn't been under construction the day before, but today there were machines and men and the general milling about that comes with road repair.  Except.

The milling was significantly less aimless than that to which I'm accustomed.  There were more than three guys there, and none of them were standing around doing nothing.  Not only that, but when I came home at 6:00 pm, and pay careful attention to this part, the road was finished.  Not just kind of finished, but still blocked off.  Finished.  And repainted.  And dry.  Ahem, Chicago.  Ahem, Madison.  Ahem, everywhere I've ever lived before.  A friend once told me that a city that didn't have construction going on somewhere was a city that was dying.  Taipei's got the not-dying process thoroughly expedited.

People have been asking about that last post.  I apologize for being obscure.  The ARC card is like a green card or a work visa.  It allows us to get paid here without being deported, which is convenient.  It was easily achieved, with only a morning spent in the DMV-like National Immigration Agency.  I may have to go back to add my other school to my card, but the card itself is in my possession and shiny and new.  Now I can do things like open a bank account and get a cell phone.

...which I have done.  Katy and I went with Chris, Debby, Jill and Dave (a couple from Canada) today to purchase cell phones and SIM cards.  And now we have them.  Mine even has an English to Chinese dictionary on it, but no indication of pronunciation.  It also has modified Tetris (I fear for my productivity), and a coin-flipping program for all your most important decisions.  After we bought the cell phones, we all went and ate pasta at a pseudo-Italian place, which was Orientalized in the same way that it's Americanized in the States.  We sat and talked for a while, then started making our way to Taipei 101 for the bookstore and its Dictionary.  Katy and I both purchased one, and I presently remembered what pasta does to my metabolism.  The Wife and I dragged ourselves, zombie-like, from Taipei 101 back home, where we both passed out for 6 and 3 hours, respectively.  I guess we're not quite adjusted to our schedules yet.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

ARC achieved!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Signs and Portents

At first I thought it was an ice-cream truck.  The song was Für Elise, and I could hear it coming down the street, even from inside our temporary apartment.  Robyn and I were the only ones home: Katy and Elaine had both gone to work and weren't expected back for another hour or so.  We'd had instructions to take the garbage down if we could catch the garbage truck, but I didn't hear any beeping at all, so I figured it hadn't come.  Later, of course, I put two and two together, and after much scribbling and carrying of remainders came up with the shocking sum of four.  The garbage trucks here play Für Elise, over and over again, like the ice-cream trucks in the States.  When you hear it, you have to grab your garbage and run down with it to the street, where the truck is collecting the neighborhood trash.  If you have more than one bag to throw away, you have to pay a fee.  

Recycling is separate - all plastic bottles can be recycled, as well as all glass.  All paper gets recycled, including waxy paper from food containers, as long as you rinse it off first (this means milk cartons and most to-go boxes...keep up, US!).  Matte plastic bags can be recycled, but not shiny transparent ones.  Plastic containers of all kinds get recycled, as long as they're rinsed first.  As far as I know, you don't get charged for having a bunch of stuff to recycle.  

Katy and I are fortunate enough to have a service that takes care of garbage and recycling for us, so we take ours out to a red bin in one of the stairwells whenever we like instead of running down the hall whenever we hear the tinkling strains of Beethoven (apparently he's popular here?) drifting through the window.

Sometimes, here, I could swear I smell plantain roasting on charcoal stoves - a smell I associate exclusively with Ghana.  It's always very briefly coming out of a lane or on a short-lived breeze, and then I'll pass a bakery and smell buttery baked rolls, or milk tea from a shop, or stinky tofu from a night market.  The hairstylists' places smell like a US mall.  The bookstores smell like bookstores, and the 7-11s smell like 7-11s.  (The snozzberries smell like snozzberries!)  I wonder which of these I'll associate with Taiwan.  I thought I had it the other day - an almost sweet smell, a little spicy, like cinnamon perhaps (or maybe cassia).  

After work today I wandered around a little bit, discovering many interesting signs and fashion, and then walked home over the bridge from Sanchong and took some pictures of the area around the city on the Danshui River.  Katy's school is to the north, and my School 8 is to the south and east.  Sanchong is over the river to the west.  Every time I cross the river I'm surprised by the mountains again.  I love having mountains around.  They give me a horizon to look for.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Baby's First Typhoon (also other things)

Our first typhoon hit Friday, Typhoon Sinlaku.  By "hit," I mean grazed.  Taipei is in a bit of a valley between mountains, and most of the wind and weather gets absorbed by them.  It's mostly just rained a lot.  All day, in fact.  Since Friday night, in fact.  So far it has rained for a solid 36 hours and counting.

But back to the beginning of your time without me (I know, it's been agonizing, hasn't it?):  That club that I mentioned last Saturday was full of a bunch of wàiguórén who all seemed pretty desperate to find mixed drinks, make outs, or both.  Neither The Wife nor I were particularly interested in seeking out either, so we avoided the bar area and went straight up to the dance floor.  Chris and Debby were at the club, nearly passing out from the jet lag.  We talked to them for a bit, then danced for a while until the press of people and music got to be a little too soaked in desperation, after which we came home.

On Wednesday Betty died, after having refused to eat anything at all since she arrived.  In taking her out to the garbage, I very smoothly forgot that our outer door locks automatically, and locked myself out.  Katy wasn't due back for another 4 hours, so I went down to the guard of the building and played the Stupid Foreigner card.  He kindly called a locksmith, who showed up in after about 10 minutes.  Perhaps it would be more accurate, actually, to say lockpick.  He was a charming old fellow as dextrous as a monkey, and got our door open distressingly quickly.  I want to learn.

On my way home from the Sanchong school the other day, I stopped in a bookstore/office supply shop to get a pencil case (ubiquitous items here), and I saw a copy of Blankets in Chinese.  Kudos to Craig Thompson for that.  Or his agent/publisher, I suppose.  It was a little jarring to see an American graphic novel authored and illustrated by a Midwesterner sitting on the shelf in the local office-supply/book store.  I guess it's not an industry entirely overrun with manga.

On Thursday, Katy and I brought our paperwork to the National Immigration Agency/Ministry of the Interior, the inside of which bore a striking resemblance to the DMV, and waited for a few hours to begin processing our ARCs (Alien Resident Certificates).  There was a very cute little girl in front of us who kept staring and making faces.  I tried to get her to take a picture with my camera, but she steadfastly refused.

Both of my schools had their Autumn Festival feasts this week.  This consisted of grilling various meats and vegetables (mostly bell peppers and mushrooms) and tofu on a portable grill, eating them with pig knuckles (for those inclined...I wasn't) and moon cakes, and drinking tea.  It was very informal, and a little bit like an indoor office picnic with a barbecue.  The one at Sanchong was on Tuesday, and School 8's was Friday.  While we were eating at School 8, Kojen announced that, due to the Typhoon, classes would be cancelled from 7:00 for the rest of the weekend.  There was much celebration.  One of the FTs promptly went and bought a bunch of beer.  I ducked out and got tea with Annie, one of the new CTs, who kindly showed me around the area and talked about religion and faith with me until I decided I should head home.

My route home from School 8 requires two transfers on the MRT, and at the first one I found myself walking behind a couple of wàiguó gentlemen who were chattering away in English.  I couldn't believe my luck.  One of them was Sebastian, who was in China with Chris and I back in 2005.  He took me along for cheese sandwiches with his friends (they were a pleasant bunch) and we caught up a bit.  He has promised to show us the way to telephonic communication later this week.  We may yet join the legions of the socially available.

We have spent the rainy weekend indoors, enjoying the Typhoon Days (like snow days, only with big, playful, tropical storms!) by watching all three of the Bourne movies, catching up on our respective writings and laundries, and being generally useless to society (which is also useless to us until the rain lets up a bit).  I went out this morning (and by morning I mean afternoon, even by our time) and Found A Grocery Store.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have discovered the shining beacon of sustenance, from whence all nourishment will hereafter issue.  It was really close.  Seriously, it was about two doors away.  I was thoroughly embarrassed after asking after it's whereabouts when the very helpful gentleman led me a whole 30 feet away.  I didn't even really need an umbrella.

But hey, now we have food.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Happy Big Bang Day!

Although why they're calling it that I certainly don't know.  They've only just started the first beam going 'round.  There won't be a collision for another month or so.


I think it's pretty cool, myself.  

Reasons you shouldn't panic:

Slashdot  The comments are more revealing than the blurb.
Livescience  A while ago, but pertinent.
Discover  They even did the research again.  So stop worrying.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Fish and Other Friends

So we went to purchase Betty last Saturday (many apologies to my adoring public for not updating for a Whole Week), and got sent on a veritable treasure hunt for fish stores (apparently normal pet stores do not sell fish).  I'd been asking around a bit, and everyone told me something different.  I went to the first place I'd been told to go, and there were no fish there.  In fact, there was no store there.  The guy outside the address said that they'd recently moved, and waved his hand in a direction I might have called North if I'd been feeling charitable.  When he found out I wanted to buy a fish, however, he changed his mind entirely, told me the store I was looking for didn't even sell them, and said something about some other area of Taipei.  I gave up on that particular conversation and came home.

We next asked at a pet store.  They were very helpful and hence very helpfully told us that the nearest place to get fish was somewhere on the part of the MRT that was too far south to be on our map of Taipei.  We thanked them (effusively), they told us they were sorry not to have been more help (bù hǎo yìsi), and we went to another pet store.  They also were anxious to be of service, and informed us that we could most easily and conveniently purchase fish at a location that could not be reached by the MRT at all, but must be driven to in a car.  They were also bù hǎo yìsi, and we moved on.  I could tell you the entire story of how we eventually had to climb a mountain and consult a Zen Buddhist Master living in solitude upon a crag overlooking the sea, and how he told us that a fish could not be bought, only attained, and how we spent the next seven years studying a single fish scale in pursuit of enlightenment, and how at last with kind words to and from our Master we descended from the mount having learned the fishy secrets of Ichthus, and how the gods descended from the heavens to reward us for our patience, with Sūn Wùkōng at their head, and how the Monkey King bestowed upon us the Four Heavenly Fish to represent the four changing seasons and to remind us of our own mortality (sì, the word for 4, is reminiscent of sǐ, the word for death).... but that would be a lie.  We eventually asked someone who gave us the address for another pet store that didn't have fish, but did conclusively have the business card of a place that did, and wasn't at the ends of the earth.  

On Monday we found the place (the gentleman at the pet store drew us a map with all but a red X on it), and it was indeed full of aquariums with fish in them.  There were skates there.  For sale.  As pets.  I was tempted.  But we were on a mission to find Betty, and find her we did.  We also found YánHújiāofěn, and Làjiàng.  We brought them home in plastic bags full of water and dumped them in and exulted over them.  We both had to go off to work, though, so we fed them and left them to get used to each other and Leonard.

My Monday consisted of a pretty thorough lesson plan dictated to me by my AD.  I was not sad about that.  It was good to have a guide.  There were games to be played, and he explained them to me, and there were letters to teach (A B C D, also the lower case versions of those same four) and rules to explain.  I observed two more classes (one a CT's class) and came home briefly before Katy and I headed out to spend the evening with a couple of other Reach to Teach folk - Andrew and Daniel (and also Andrew, a Reach to Teach staffer, but I haven't a link for him).  We had an enjoyable evening of debate about whose apartment was better (ours wins), and Katy and I came home to find that Là had vanished.

A word about our fish tank.  It's glass.  It's covered.  There really aren't many places for a fish to disappear to.  I speculated that perhaps Là had gotten into the internal filter, which wasn't working anyway, so I unplugged it and let it sit.  In our close inspection of the tank to find our missing fish, however, we discovered a baby fish.  Oh, wait, it was 3!  No, 12...18...30?  We're really not sure how it happened.  Fish lay eggs, right?  Not live babies?  But we didn't see any eggs in the tank, and it was less than 12 hours since we brought home the new four.  

By Wednesday, it was clear that the baby fish were Yán's progeny.  Most of them are white (although there are two rather puzzling blackish ones), and they're big enough to escape the pull of the filter by this point.  On Thursday Là reappeared, looking fine, and slightly less tweaky than he had been before he went on his little vacation or whatever it was.  I blame Dr. Who.

My first class was on Wednesday.  I misled you all by saying it was a Y1.  It was, in fact, a K1 class.  They were a little older, much quieter than I expected, and they all already knew everything I was trying to teach them.  I therefore had to play more of the games than I expected (oh woe, oh woe) to fill the time, but my co-teacher (who is also the librarian for that school) needed a bunch of time that first class to explain a lot of the rules to them in Chinese.  There were 11 kids in the class, but I imagine that will change a little bit over the next week or two.  So far I can't imagine disliking any of them.  They're very responsive and cooperative.  They're willing to like being there.  They want to like me.  

I made notebooks for keeping track of my classes.  I have one notebook for my K1 class (I get to keep them all year, by which time they'll be K3, probably!), one for my M2 class, which is starting on Monday and is at School 8, and one for the classes I teach as a substitute.  I subbed for an A8 yesterday.  It was long, but enjoyable.  They were all similarly cooperative - told me what to do when I forgot something, enjoyed the games thoroughly, tried to outsmart me into not giving them homework, but gave up when I was firm for 30 seconds.  They got a little alarmed at one point when they misunderstood something I said and thought I could understand Chinese, but I reassured them that I could not.  I asked why they were so concerned about it, and one boy said, "Teacher, we are speaking secrets."  I looked at them guilelessly and asked, "What is secret, mìmì?"  They exploded into gasps and chatter.  The boy said, reprovingly, "Teacher, you know Chinese?"  "No," I said, "I don't understand it at all."  He (and the rest of the class) persisted, and he said, "What is school?"  I laughed, and said "I don't know!  I don't know Chinese!"  "But you said mìmì," he said.  "What is mìmì?" I asked.  "Teacher, you said it just now," said another girl.  "When?" I wanted to know.  I redirected us back to the lesson at hand ("should have vs. shouldn't have"), but at the end of the three hours when the boy who'd asked what school was was almost out the door, I looked at him and said "xuéxiào."  He gasped like I'd thrown water at him and eyed me up and down.  "Teacher," he said, downright disapprovingly, "you know Chinese!"  I laughed and told him to go home.  

Yesterday we got a PPPoE internet connection in our apartment, which makes things rather more convenient.  Tonight I think we're going to some gathering of people - A club, perhaps.  I shall try to blend in with either the other attendees or the wall, depending upon with which it seems I have more in common.  I am not historically fluent in Clubbing, even if it only involves a blunt object.