Famigerate

The Return

2010-09-03T23:26:00.000-07:00

The plane took it's time coming down over LA, almost as though it was giving me a chance to start figuring out how I was going to deal with being back in 美國. I watched the lights form grids and the grids get bigger, and then I saw something odd. There were strange little boxy shapes dotted here and there. At first I thought they were parked cars, but then I saw the highways and the cars whizzing by on them, and the shapes I was seeing were too big to be even semi trucks. I stared at them and tried to figure out what they could be.

I spent the last day in Taipei getting the best of everything that it has been for the last two years. My friend's parents were nice enough to help me deal with my tax information, and then took me to lunch afterward at a little vegetarian buffet. I think they miss having younger children around, because Joyce (her English name) was extra solicitous and took the time to put food on my plate for me if she thought I wasn't taking enough of one thing or the other. They dropped me off at my apartment after lunch, and I got my security deposit back and reassured the landlords that I was indeed planning on leaving, see, that was all my stuff in the bags packed and sitting by the door. They told me I could leave the keys on the desk when I went, since my flight was so late.

So I took the bus over to Jinshan school for the last time. I wanted to drop off some information for one of the classes I had, and once I got there I discovered that my old 1B class was in session (now 2A, of course). I stuck around for the extra five minutes it took them to finish, and I am so very glad that I did. It was a sweet send-off. Amelie saw me and her face lit up and she stuck her head back in the classroom and said, "Miss ROWAN!" Arthur and Sherry and Lianne all piled out and waved, and Lianne leaped on me and hung from my legs like she does, except heavier now than she was last I saw her. We took pictures in the classroom, and Amelie gave me a picture she'd made in school that day. I was touched.

When I left Jinshan, I went through the CKS memorial garden to take the MRT back to my apartment. I fed the fish there, and appreciated the breeze, and watched the dragonflies, and wondered just what kind of reverse culture-shock I'd have coming home. Doors, I thought, that open out consistantly. English everywhere. The lack of the veneer of politeness over everything.

Then I rode the MRT back, stopped in at 1868 to say goodbye to Tiffany, and caught a taxi to the airport. That part took forever. The traffic was appalling. It should have been a 45 minute trip. It took two hours. But I made it in time, and dealt with getting the paperwork for my exit permission, and got my baggage checked. There were three security guys standing chatting at the conveyor belt in TPE, speaking in Chinese about something or other. When I came up to put everything back in my bags, one of them was saying, in Chinese, "I'd rather be a girl than a boy, anyway."為什麼？" I asked. The gentelman in question turned bright red, and stared at me, and covered his face in embarrassment and seemed altogether astonished that I could understand. "你聽得懂中文嗎？" I could. And after that all three of them chatted with me and another one came over and also chatted with me while I was packing everything back up.

At this point I'd been awake for 35 of the last 38 hours, so I was dragging a bit. And then came the 14 hour flight. I got my carry-on stowed and slung myself into my seat. The plane took off, and they served dinner right away, and I ate and passed out. I slept for about 7 hours, and then I watched the inflight movie about the princess of Hawaii, and then chatted with my neighbor, who was a housewife who split her time between LA and Taipei. Then there was another meal, I slept for another two hours, and then we were circling LAX.

I don't know how to express my feelings at being, for all intents and purposes, back. How do you say goodbye to a place that will leave bits of itself in you forever? How do you greet a place that's been yours forever? The smell of the air is different. I can't say how, but it is. It's less humid, certainly, and less close. A man who was clearly American offered to let me go in front of him in a line, and I couldn't remember how to say "Thank you." The man who checked my passport after I re-checked my luggage said, "Welcome back," and I teared up. I miss Chinese already, even though there is more around me than most other places in this country barring the occasional Chinatown. What will my reverse culture shock be like? What forms will it take? I don't know.

The boxy shapes, those were houses.

An Open Letter to Ms. Salticoidea

2010-08-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Ms. Salticoidea,

Recently you and several members of your family came to view my apartment. Perhaps you saw the moving signs and decided to have a look. I want to thank you for your interest. It is truly gratifying to know that the small room I've inhabited for the last year will not be lonely once I've gone.

I wish to correct, however, a minor misunderstanding. I have not yet vacated my home, and am, in fact, still living in it for the next four days. Your enthusiasm is admirable, and I sympathize with your desire to get all the trials of moving over and done with in a timely fashion. I regretfully insist, nevertheless, that you wait to move in with all of your many children until after I have left.

It is true that this apartment, humble though it is, would make a wonderful place to raise a family such as yours. There is a wide variety of cuisine that is likely to appeal to your peculiar tastes quite locally available. The range of edibles for a family like yours is truly impressive, and most of it is so fresh that it is still moving. Your impulse to take advantage of the veritable smorgasboard of ants, mites, and moths abundant in the area is understandable. I assure you, in four days, you can avail yourself of them all.

Nonetheless, in the meantime, I humbly beg you to cultivate patience and refrain from allowing your charming children to run wild in my bathroom.

In highest gratitude for your understanding and forbearance, I am, Madam, sincerely yours.

An Impromptu Lesson In Human Anatomy

2010-07-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

In Which There Is Too Much Information

Caught up in the heady whirlwind of the inestimable luxury of summer vacation, when I have three whole days of working in the morning only (I suddenly forget, do college students attend school during the summer? No? What did we do all that time? Oh, that's right, summer jobs), I ventured out this afternoon, after a nap made less restful by the heat, toward the post office, intent on procuring boxes. If my readers are still with me after that appallingly long sentence, let them be aware that it is still 98.6 degrees outside, in the shade, and that I am beginning to feel grateful when the temperature inside falls to 90.

So. Out I went. I passed the orange juice shop, which mostly sells a variant of Tang, and happened to glance down the alley next to it as I walked. It took me a moment to process what I saw.

An older gentleman, perhaps in his late 60s or early 70s, was standing there in this alley perhaps a ten minute walk from Taipei 101, with his shirt lifted up around his armpits and no pants whatsoever. Let me be clear about this. His pants were not hiding somewhere, waiting to spring out at him, he had not laid them aside momentarily in order to facilitate the washcloth bath he was engaged in at the time, they were simply absent. To avoid any other confusion, there were no undergarments present either. He stood there, washing himself down, considerately presenting his back to the street rather than his front, mooning the world. Now, I fully understand the attraction of a cool bath on a hot day, and I was just bemoaning the lack of a lake or an easily accessible pool a few hours ago. Getting naked in an alley in a city with the population density of Taipei (9,588.5/km), though, in the middle of the day... that's over my limit.

Maybe the water from the tanks gets cooler at ground level.

Not A Drop

2010-07-04T02:54:00.001-07:00

In Which Culture Shock Comes Late, And Out of Left Field

Let me run through the water system for most buildings here in Taipei for you. For fun, let's do it backwards. You turn on the tap, water comes out. Where does it come from? Some pipes in the walls. So far, so good. Familiar. And where do the pipes get it? They get it from water tanks located on the roof of the building. Usually the water tank in question is metal, at least on the outside, and housed inside a cage of rusty wire mesh that's bolted to the roof. The tanks themselves are not rusty. They are shiny. And metal. Did I mention metal? Now, I don't know off-hand what kind of metal these tanks are made of, but let us consider standing in a suit of armor. Let us consider doing this on a day like today, when the ambient air temperature is 98.6ºF. On the outside of our bodies. Let us consider standing in a suit of armor in 98.6º weather out on the rooftop in the blazing sun.

Is it really any wonder the water that comes out of my tap is hot enough to sterilize canning jars?

I was reflecting on this today as I stepped out of my apartment to buy some food. I had just run the shower over my legs to try to keep them a little cooler when I went outside, but they dried almost immediately, and, of course, the water was warm. I contemplated the warmth of the water while I walked past the public koi pond the local temple keeps, and while I crossed the street, and while I bought my crushed ice and watermelon (with seeds) drink, and I thought of a Gary Larson cartoon I had seen once. Three or four people in tattered clothes struggle across the parched desert to reach an unexplainable drinking fountain in the middle of the sand. The one in the lead pushes the button and says, "Now just hold your horses, everyone. Let's let it run for a minute and see if it gets any colder." I thought of this cartoon, and it hit me, suddenly, there in the middle of the street, about to step into the sushi shop to get my cucumber rolls and bean curd - My God, I thought, none of these people have ever seen The Far Side.

Narcissus Speaks

2010-05-09T05:29:00.000-07:00

In Which The Author Does Some Considered Navel-Gazing

I am not, oh readers, a god. I do not have magical energy, I have not attained enlightenment, and I can neither read minds nor fly under my own power. I mention these because they seem to be distressingly common misconceptions. People seem to believe that the things I notice are somehow beyond the capability of a normal mortal to notice, and that the consideration I grant my fellows - by "consideration" I presume they mean "concession to their right to be human" - could only conceivably be achieved by someone who is not (note the illogic here) actually human. Allow me to set the matter straight.

Several doctors have conclusively proven that I am, in fact, human, with human functions both physical and emotional. The odd tendency people have to doubt this is one I frankly find disturbing. I have no doubt that the way I operate in relation to other people is perhaps unusual, but it does not by any means exceed the capacity of ... well, of anyone. In this way, I am not special. I do not glitter with some indefinable enchantment.

Here's why I'm so sure. I am not, in fact, a naturally kind and forgiving person. I'm bitter, I have a propensity for impatience and grudges, I pull toward anger and selfishness like I have a faulty steering wheel. And yet, I do not spend my life being angry. I share nicely with others. I wait for small eternities without reaching to "hide or fade or fix" other people's problems, and I do not snap with the frustration of doing so. I don't ever give up on a person's potential to change. I can move past actions that bother me. I remember striking before thinking, and holding grudges beyond reason, and wishing to be the center of attention at all times and believing I deserved it. I remember not actually being aware that other people mattered. And I also remember the decisions that I made to change that. They're decisions I have to make every day, every minute, and sometimes I forget to make them the right way and I screw up, but they're conscious and deliberate and difficult and often painful.

And that's why I don't much care for accusations of transcendence or flippant praise and awe. I worked for this. A god? That's not giving me enough credit.

Like Riding A Bicycle (But Not How You Think)

2010-04-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

In Which I Delve Into The Realms Of The Heart

I haven't written anything on here having much to do with emotions. There are a number of reasons for that. Some of you (if, that is, there are any of you left reading this) think of emotions as the telltale signs of weakness and it has seemed more important to avoid the jeering than to put down an accurate account of the way I'm being affected by the world around me, for example. I initially intended my famigerations to be famigerations and deal only with my perceptions of my new environs, as objectively as I could put them down. And there is a little part of me that has wondered whether my emotions are valid, and whether they're even acceptable as inclusions in a blog I share with whoever wants to read it.

On reflection, though, the above pretensions are - well, pretensions. I've said before that I think of emotions as a valid set of data, so why keep them from my writing? Particularly as I now find myself wanting very much to articulate some of the emotions that have taken hold of me in the last five months. I just don't know if I have the vocabulary to do so.

Better wordsmiths than I have spent lifetimes trying to describe the feeling of being in love, and the truth of the matter seems to be that it is, in fact, everything that all of them have said.

When you're learning to ride a bike, everyone keeps telling you, "Keep your balance! Push the pedals! Have confidence! And you're thinking, "Screw you!" You're thinking "This isn't working. How come I'm not getting it? What's wrong with me? I'm so stupid! Every kid on my block already knows how to ride a bike." And then one day you get on your bike and it just happens. And suddenly all the advice makes sense. You even feel a little stupid for having felt so stupid.

Well. Yes. He got off the plane and it all just fell into place. The last two weeks have slid by like amber beads on a string, clicking into each other and turning the light golden. We were a little worried because we're fairly lucid people and we know our probabilities, and nothing seemed to be going wrong. We were both sick, it's true, with one ailment after another for the majority of his visit, but it didn't matter.

He left yesterday, and the gaping loneliness I expected has been almost completely obliterated by the joy of just knowing he exists. I am ridiculously happy.

Winter?

2010-01-25T00:45:00.000-08:00

In Which The Loyal Readership Is Treated To Another Update

My first semester at Columbia has come to an end, and winter classes have started. The adjective here is little more than a pretty, meaningless description of the time the classes span - last week it got up to the 80s.

I won't see my level 4 and level 1 kids for a month. They'll start 4B and 1B after Chinese new year. They did well this semester - I'm proud of them, and I'm proud of how I did as their teacher. I have a couple of them in my winter class, and it was nice to see them when I walked into the room this morning. It made transitioning to a new class much easier and much friendlier.

I've started taking a tango class here in Taipei, which is an interesting exercise in mixed cultures. It's a great class. The instructors seem to have an incredibly good grasp on both teaching and the dance itself. My boyfriend being in another country as he is, I go by myself. It's mostly ok. People are pretty polite, and for the most part there isn't much ickiness. This is qualified because there has been some recently, with one man who seems to have a different goal than I do. I'm hoping this will not last.

I've slowly been putting up some of the backlog of photos I've got... Bear with me, guys, it's taking a while. The most recent are still from November.

My Students Are Awesome

2010-01-06T05:57:00.000-08:00

In Which My Faith In Them Is More Than Rewarded

One of my 4A students just sent me an About Us page in English... All about CERN. For the curious among you, they're responsible for the Large Hadron Collider that I've been so excited about for a while.

I think this means I'm succeeding as a teacher.

The Future Cometh

2010-01-05T08:14:00.000-08:00

In Which The Next Few Months Are Outlined

Happy 2010, everyone! I've been dreadful about this blog of late, but rest assured that my life is going swimmingly. This is actually a more auspicious statement than you might think, given my history with swimming. Life is good in the Land of Me.

A brief overview:

January brings the end of my first semester with Columbia, and I am still much happier there than I was at Kojen. We're having a celebration near the end of the month, and then starting winter classes. The winter classes go for a couple of weeks before they end to make way for Chinese New Year.

Over Chinese New Year I am going to head for Australia to visit the esteemed Teacher Thomas with whom I became friends last year. You may remember him from a sunburned trip to Kenting. We're going to visit Darwin. I have no real idea what this trip will be like. Wish me luck.

When I return, it will be to a new semester and social studies instead of science with my then-4B class. I don't yet know what our readers will be - I hope they're good.

At the end of March, the very excellent Jacob Ela will be arriving for a much-anticipated visit. Anyone who has advice about what to see, please do not hesitate to speak up.

This is what the next several months hold for me. I hope they are delightful for all of you, too.

Merry Christmas, etc. (It's Been A While)

2009-12-25T03:58:00.000-08:00

In which I am not apparently as much a grinch as the rumors would lead me to believe.

This is not going to be terribly long, nor terribly informative, but I thought I'd tell everyone who is still looking at this that I'm having a pretty awesome holiday season, and I got more than everything I wanted, and I hope all of you are having a lovely time as well.

My students are adorable and of course the most intelligent creatures to walk the planet, and life is pretty dang good right now.

Best wishes to everyone.

A Good Day

2009-09-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

In Which Sometimes Things Just Go Well

Today was one of those days in which even the frustrating things added up to a harmonious whole. I had two classes today, a 1A and a 4A, at different schools. My 1A has five students, who are as rambunctious as the six- and seven-year-olds they are. They finally began to settle into the class routine today, and we didn't even lose much time of actual curriculum to acheive it. Even better, I think it's sustainable.

In my 4A class, we wrote silly questions as preparation for writing a paragraph, or set of paragraphs. My students will be writing about things like "Why do polar bears like chocolate?" "How big is the sky?" "How much water is there in the ocean?" and "Why does Joe laugh all the time?" During the break time, they drew a butterfly on my hand with facepaint sticks.

After the 4A class, I went to Subway to grab a very quick sandwich before the open house at the first school. The sandwich I got had very little on it, but it was sustenance. Nevertheless, I don't think I'll go back there at night. It occasioned a pleasant conversation with another teacher, however, who thought of me and wanted to know if I wanted anything when he went to get dinner. I declined, but the overture of friendship was nice.

The open house was even better. The parents of three of my students came in, listened to the general speeches and introductions, and then came to my classroom to talk to me. They cared about the education of their children. They asked pertinent questions and raised well-considered issues. They brought up the ways in which their children were feeling frustrated, and about what they felt confident. They were eager to participate themselves in their children's education, and when they left, one of them shook my hand and said, "We are lucky to meet you."

And after all of that, I met with the manager for Columbia Schools to talk about a proposed change in the presentation of the curriculum for my Saturday class. It's a group of teenagers, bored, on Saturday morning, with vastly different skill levels. Different kids are coming and going all the time, so it's challenging to keep the whole class on the same page, and would be even if they were willing to lift their eyes above the level of their knees. I want to make the class into a game like I have mentioned here previously. I described to our manager what I wanted to do, and when she understood, she said, "Yes. Please do this. And if it works at all, please let me know, because we want to watch it happen and see if we can use it for the other Saturday classes." I couldn't have been more thrilled.

I walked to the MRT station through the courtyard of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall and felt pretty good about life.

On The Bright Side

2009-09-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

In Which My Internet Is Still Not Working (Sorry)

My friends, I have found the Promised Land. It is a five-minute walk from my front door and goes by the name of 1868. It is, perhaps, the best coffee shop I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing since the Black Cat, and that, dear readers, is saying something.

You don’t know how amazing a decent sandwich on multigrain bread with real cheddar cheese is until you’ve subsisted on oil soaked vegetables and variations on noodles with cabbage for a year. It was marvelous. They make their own bread and their own coffee, and the tea that Tiffany served me was excellently prepared. She used a timer.

Tiffany is the Taiwanese woman behind the counter. I get the impression that she’s also the manager. She’s cheerful and talkative and has a heterochromic cat named Xiao Naiyou, because his fur is not quite white. She has pictures of him on her laptop, and happily displayed them. She had her laptop out because she was playing a game on Facebook in which she was the … manager of a restaurant called 1868. Somewhere, Benoît Mandelbrot is chortling in delight.

And speaking of the French, I’ve met my only neighbor. His name is Alex, he’s French, he works in logistics, and he’s learning very basic Chinese from me. He’s also leaving in two weeks, which means that I will have the entire floor to myself for the foreseeable future. At least until this internet thing gets fixed. It’s been nice to know someone here. Leaving Kojen was absolutely without question the best thing I possibly could have done, but it was nice having friends at work. In time, I’m sure, I’ll get to know my co-workers at Columbia.

In the mean time, I’ve reconnected with Sarah and am still hanging out with a few of my old co-workers. Yuki and I took a trip down to Hualien this past weekend to see Taroko Gorge. It was pretty, and big, but not quite as impressive as I’d been led to believe. Nevertheless, we had a good time walking around and relaxing. We stayed the night in a charming little bed and breakfast that had a few live birds in a stack of old-fashioned cages and a miniature Chihuahua named Muffin.

With that, friends, I'll leave you for the time being.

Delta Stands For Change

2009-09-01T08:06:00.003-07:00

In Which Many Changes Are Enumerated And Explained

I have been here for one year, peerless readers, and two weeks. In the last three days I have changed schools, moved, and lost my roommate to the lure of identifiable food lacking MSG. I am now living in a little fourth floor efficiency with huge windows that I shall have to Do Something About when winter comes. They do not quite close all the way. Given a choice, however, between that and endless repetitions of Madonna from a bar downstairs, I’ll take the draftiness. I haven’t finished finding a place for everything yet, but with luck and perseverance I shall win out in the end.

I am no longer in the employ of Kojen English Language Schools. The reason for this, it pains me to relate, can be laid entirely at the feet of [...imagine longwinded fulmination here - leave a comment for details...] I shall miss my friends among them.

I shall also miss Katy, who flew back to the United States on the last day of August. It will be odd to live alone again. I expect it will involve a good deal of going to bed earlier, and more wandering around. Perhaps I shall even improve my Chinese! I will also have more time to devote to studying calculus and drawing. Poor exchanges for a near constant companion, but I believe it is time to catch up on my self-improvement.

My classes now number four. I have two on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, one on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and one on Saturdays. The latter two are known as “boost” classes, presumably for students who are moving more slowly than the curriculum otherwise allows, or more quickly. The Tuesday/Thursday one is two hours long and ends at 7:00pm. The Saturday class is three hours long and ends at noon. The students are struggling with concepts like “finding the main idea of a paragraph.”

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I have a two-hour class ending at 3:30, and another ending at 6:30. The first is a lower-level class just learning basic nouns and verbs. The second is a higher level class in which I am permitted (nay, encouraged) to read from a Roald Dahl book, and teach them science. For illustrative purposes, here is a somewhat exaggerated unfinished cartoon depicting my reaction to that last.

None of my classes ends later than 7:00pm, which means that I can stroll leisurely towards a bus or from the MRT, passing fruit stands redolent with pungent guava and sweet mango, stopping at one of the multitudinous 7-11s to buy an Australian ice-cream bar, having dinner at a little Taiwatalian restaurant or getting take-out from a tiny Thai cart. It’s cooler here at night, and walking alone in it reminds me of things – Madison before I knew it as a college student, Chicago after seeing a play, New York City while visiting a friend. Perhaps it is something about being solitary that refracts the night into sounds and smells and sights that match memories of places I’m not, and some of places I’ve never been.

Choices

2009-06-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

In Which Death Is Mentioned, Society Is Further Maligned, And More Seeds Of Future Posts Are Sown

We went to the beach. I put those pictures up some time ago. It was a good time - a group of mutually benevolent people hanging out with a relative minimum of high-school behavior. Afterward we came back and I opened my box.

It was a little boring, to be honest. The most consistent predictions were that I'd no longer be vegetarian (false), that I'd have a cat (also false), and that I'd be married with a kid or two (1/3 true - the marriage isn't probably what they meant, and while I've got some 40 to 50 kids, it's not quite in the same way). I'm hoping the next one will be better, or at least more interesting.

We also went to Ali Shan when Katy's friend Aidan was here. I didn't really feel like there was enough time to do anything there, but the train ride was cool.

I went back to Yingge with Thomas, who's going back to Australia in a few weeks to start law school. He made a saki set. I made a few more containers of various sorts. We ate at a delightful restaurant of a hole-in-the-wall variety, and then came back for a TED talks gathering chez Katy and Rowan. In some ways it's very nice to have a bunch of intelligent friends with whom to discuss ideas. On the other hand, I do get the impression that we often intellectualize happiness into non-existence.

Our jobs here are the same as ever: the same challenges, the same rewards. My H-class put on a play that none of us wanted to do for parents who resented having to take the time to watch it, so that our director could stress out and try to make us stress out, all for the sake of face.

Which brings me, indirectly, to the next point. Last week, someone we met here near the beginning of our stay committed suicide.

Now, I'm pretty isolated here, and I have a feeling that this is making my viewpoints less and less connected with the society I left in the United States, so take what follows with a shaker-full of Pacific salt. Death isn't an easy thing to process at the simplest of times, and it gets more complicated when it's a choice someone's making. We humans sometimes get offended by much less permanent choices, like who someone marries or how someone cuts his hair. We get positively irate over choices like where to eat or what color to paint the house. When someone chooses to die... we don't know what to do. We feel guilty, usually, and sad, and probably angry. We think, "If only I'd done X," or "Why didn't he/she value me/my friendship enough to live?" or "Now I will never see him/her again." We think that our existence ought to have had more bearing on their decision. A decision as final as death, though, is sometimes a response to exactly that kind of pressure from friends or family or co-workers or society. Family members tell someone to live his life this way, friends advise something else, co-workers say "just do this," society tells him to put on a happy face and be strong, and no one takes the time to let him do or even say what he'd prefer. It is too frequently entirely unimportant. From the time people enter school until they retire - most of their lives - they are battered by a constant onslaught of opposing pressures to do a very narrow set of things and practice a vary narrow set of behaviors. You're an American girl who doesn't shave her legs? SHAME. You're a Taiwanese boy who wants to be an artist? FIE. When there's no real outlet for personal happiness or even opinion, the only way people can assert their right to control their own lives, it often seems to them, is to end them.

So we should feel guilty, I suppose. We should, but not in the narcissistic manner to which we're accustomed. We shouldn't feel guilty because we as individuals were so important to a person that by one action or lack thereof we could have made them realize that life was worth living. That is simply not the case. We should feel guilty collectively. A person's decision to die should make us consider whether we've allowed others the room to be themselves, or if we've decided that we are so omniscient that we know exactly how they should proceed with the rest of their lives, and that we're so important that we have the right to deny them the right to ever choose anything again.

To end on a brighter note, I found a little children's book recently in Chinese that is the first chapter of a book I read growing up and have always sort of loved: The Finn Family Moomintroll. It is the inspiration, in fact, for my sub-headings. I was very glad to get it. It's relatively easy to read, but I'm learning new words with it, too.

Next up, I hope, the long promised entry about education.

Well Worth $59.95 + Tax

2009-05-27T02:32:00.001-07:00

In Which Rowan Journeys South And Anticipates An Anniversary

About a month ago, my friend Thomas suggested that we go south to Kenting to find a desert he'd heard about. "We'll hang out on the beach, look at the moon, drink a coconut, wander around in the desert, it'll be great."

So I went to Kenting with Thomas and Matthew (a friend of his) last weekend, and it more or less blew me away. I used to play Monkey Island when I was in fifth grade (hello, Aaron, if you ever read this), and the southern tip of Taiwan is just like that, unpixelated. After taking the high speed rail that wasn't ("Dude," said Matthew, "You took the slow train!"), we got there at nine or so on Saturday night, and rented a scooter to get to our campsite. We thought we'd be renting tents, but the guy running the camp told us that we could stay in a cabin for a very reasonable price, so we did that instead. The beach was across the road and through a little gap in the trees, and it was both beautiful and deserted. It was apparently used in the movie Cape No. 7, which I have not seen, but will now have to look into. We hung out on the beach for a little while that first night, and I wandered alone down to the shore. It was many things I've sorely missed: a large body of water, quiet, and dark. Really dark. The third night, the milky way was actually visible. That first night was cloudy, and there were strange, tiny glowing things washing up with the waves. They landed on the beach and shone blue there for about five minutes before fading out. We waded around for a little while before turning in. Thomas found a rather large cockroach in the shower with his foot, which was the evening's entertainment for Matthew and I. We all more or less passed out right away, and I woke up at 5:30 the next morning to sunlight, birdsong, and a kick in the side.

I took a shower and walked barefoot down to the beach, where I got to watch the light come up over the hills behind me to hit the waves. Matthew and then Thomas came down when they woke up, and we went to grab breakfast at a little outdoor café that had very brightly colored koi in a little pond. After everyone was actually awake, we started on our journey towards the desert that Thomas had heard about. I rode on the back of Matthew's scooter and we occasionally stopped for pictures, when we couldn't deal with how pretty everything was anymore. We drank coconuts, as advertised, and eventually came to a place where we could see what we were heading toward. It looked like a sand dune to me, but that was alright, too.

It was a dune, more or less. There were even dune buggies irritatingly scooting around on it, with screaming girls and smug looking guys. It was pretty cool looking anyway, even if I did get a bit sunburned. I'd bought sunscreen just before we left, but hadn't put any on yet, and by the time I did the damage was already done. Thomas slathered some on his face and neck around the same time I did, and we went walking around the dune and surrounding area. I collected shells on the beach and scraped my knee climbing a wall, but we had some shade and food at another small cafe and headed back to our scooters. It was at about that time that we started to realize just how sunburnt we had gotten, so we headed back to the cabinsite. The very charming and friendly host took one look at Thomas and told him that we could use his own personal garden of aloe plants to apply to our scorched skin, so I snagged a piece and daubed it on myself before taking a nap. The gentlemen decided to wash Matthew's scooter and take a walk, insisting that they didn't want a nap. When they came back, I'd woken up. They both fell asleep, so I went back to the beach and walked along it for a while before deciding to go wake them up for dinner. We ate at a great little Thai place that had some wonderful coconut drink and some decent food, then went back again. We had a few beers and stared at the stars and the waves for a while before going back to bed.

Matthew had to leave on Monday, so we spent the morning walking around a forest area (where the evil sun couldn't reach us). First, though, we went and got Thomas a very fine hat. I bargained the lady down because of a smudge on the brim, and we wandered through the forest happily. We encountered some interesting snacks in the visitor's center, and Thomas was enamoured enough to buy three of them for the toys included.

Matthew took off after we left the forest, and Thomas and I drove down the coast (we only got lost once) to see the sun set at the southernmost point in Taiwan. Then we drove back. We talked on the beach for a few hours, and then I positively had to go to bed or pass out head first in the sand. Not having any aspirations of being a large flightless bird with a frightening kick, I chose the former. We went to sleep after a hilarious interaction with our host in which we tried to pay him what we owed him, he reduced the amount by 1000 NT, we tried to pay him what we owed him, he refused, etc. It was bargaining, but backwards. We headed out first thing the next morning, at just the right time. I was still sad to leave, but it was just before I'd have started to get sick of something, like the way my hair wasn't ever really getting clean.

Tomorrow I will be opening my 10 Year Box. I'm a little apprehensive about this. I anticipate feelings of inadequacy, hilarity, wistfulness, and pride will abound. I intend to post results soon.

跟我自己 or With Me Alone

2009-05-06T02:18:00.000-07:00

In Which There Are Changes And Journeys

I purchased new glasses a few weeks ago. You can see the new glasses over there on the right. They're photo-greys, which is convenient, and also represent the first time I've substantially changed the style of my eyewear in about ten years.

Anyway, while I was at the ocudoc's (I really want to make a joke about Doc Oc, here), I naturally got my prescription checked and readjusted. They did this with the most fascinating tool I've seen in a while. Glasses. But not just any glasses. Spectacularly Victorian spectacles. Naturally, I had to try them on, and I convinced Sarah to do so as well. The results were, perhaps, predictable.

Katy's father and step-mother are here, and we went on a few tours in the early part of the week. I think they plan to do more, but I'm occupied with work and can't join them. The first few were lovely, though, and I was glad to be able to go. We first went to a little temple in a name-of-which-I've-forgotten place. It was charming, in a gaudy sort of way, although I have still not gotten used to seeing the swastikas everywhere. Then we made a trip to Yeliu, which was lovely. Very weird, but lovely. There were rock formations of sandstone that looked like morel mushrooms, and little round holes in the rock shore that made for very nice rock pools. We didn't stay nearly long enough, but it was drizzling and we had a tourist shop to get to, so we left. I got a lot of pictures out of it, though, and Katy and I think we'd like to go back some time. The famous bit of rock there is called The Queen's Head, and Danny, our guide, told us that it will be gone within twenty years. Poor girl's head will snap right off when her neck gets too thin. He also told a story about a noble (but poor, naturally) fisherman who saw some kids swimming in the ocean thereabouts and a storm came up and the kids started drowning, so the fisherman jumped in to save them. He managed to save one before drowning himself, so the government at the time, wishing to present itself well, paid for the fisherman's five children to attend school. This is a very Chinese story.

We went on another tour that same day to a little rest-stop-ish place where we looked at the waves and admired the strange stone jacks that were apparently keeping typhoons at bay, but it was a bit of a let-down after the bizarre formations of Yeliu. Then we went to Jiufen (9 shares), an old gold mining town that's since turned into an artists' village.

The next day we took a trip to Yilan and saw some really fascinating cultural stuff, the best of which was a trio of musicians (later with a singer) playing music which I will try to upload here.

This one contains the trio of musicians: one was playing a hammer dulcimer, one a mandolin of some kind, and one that looked like an autoharp, but a very large one that was tuned by moving around little pyramids under the strings.

Let me know if you'd like to see the other one - I know these get pretty hard for people to load if they've a lot of video or images.

Anyway, the Williams family took off on Monday morning, and we are back to normal before the next visitor shows up.

The Game

2009-04-11T20:54:00.001-07:00

In Which Public Education Is Roundly Abused, And Rowan Is Decidedly Delinquent In Her Updates

Some time ago, when your negligent (my deepest apologies, again) guide was but a tot, my father and I played a game. We, being imaginative souls, called it "The Game." (A recently ironic name, since The Wife and I have taken to calling Society "The Game.") The Game of old was based on a large square of maroon canvas, various pieces of felt and wood, and an abiding and dedicated sense of curiosity.

The canvas was a map - those of you with predilections for scoffing may begin now at this clear reference and precursor to tabletop gaming - and the smaller squares of felt were decorated with trees and mountains, caves, lakes and streams, farms and fields, anything my small, voracious brain could conjure as an appropriate backdrop for adventure. We sewed them ourselves.

Using this constantly changing terrain as a geographical guide, my father told me stories in which I was expected to participate (I doubt very much whether he or the proverbial wild horses could have stopped me) by answering questions and choosing directions and courses of action. I might have been unable to cross a bridge until I brushed up on my French because a troll was guarding it and wanted an answer to "Est-ce que ceci n'est pas une pipe?" I would have to go learn what the troll was saying (and possibly look into surrealist artists) and figure out the right answer before I could cross and continue. Maybe there was an item priced in lira when all I had were pesos, and I'd have to find the correct change. Perhaps a dragon or ghost appeared in a dream, demanding that I tell them the name of the secret malefactress in the book I was reading at the time. It was a game that stitched together the sometimes disappointing mundanity of the waking world and the wildly colorful and challenging scenarios of my imagination, and my father's. It was a multiplayer game without the computer, a mix of Carmen Sandiego and the brothers Grimm, in which I was both character and storyteller, in equal parts.

I loved it.

"But Rowan," say my Patient and Forgiving readers, "what on Earth has this to do with Taiwan?" Well, my Gentle Public, today I went to the orphanage again, something I have now done four times, and began a very basic variant of that Game. I presented Ken (either he's changed his name or everyone's been getting it wrong all this time) with a little green notebook in which I had written the following:

One day, you find a book. On the cover, there is a picture of a crying woman. When you pick up the book, you see a ghost. The ghost says: "Do you have any threes?"

I had him read it aloud, and then we played Go Fish, in which we practiced the constructions "Do you have _____? Yes, I have two _____s. No, I don't have any ______s." I played up the character of the challenging specter, and Ken took great pleasure in trouncing me, gleefully using the correct English phrases the whole time.

I am brought thence to the subject of Public Education, which can be roughly defined as the practice of carefully and thoroughly eradicating our children's desire to learn. Children seem to naturally thrive on curiosity and its satisfaction, and regularly reach out for more information and more answers and more questions. The kids in my lower level classes have to be restrained from gathering around the whiteboard in their enthusiasm to write the words correctly (and how counter-productive is that idea? making sure that children never believe they have a place in educating themselves), and jump at the chance to answer questions and play games and draw and learn. The upper level classes, after a period of slightly caustic wariness, also settle into an honest desire to wield knowledge with skill and inquiry. All it takes to encourage them is a concrete and consistent set of rules (not too many, not too unreasonable), and a genuine desire to share what you know and learn alongside them when you've no idea.

Why is this so hard to come by?

Reflecting

2009-03-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

In Which I Do Hope The Readers Will Bear With Me

I went to Ghana, stayed 5 1/2 months, and learned how people are the same, and what brings us together. Here I am in Taiwan, just passing the 7 month mark in a probably 24 month stay, and I'm learning about all the ways we do our damnedest to keep ourselves estranged.

When I was growing up, I was told I could do anything I wanted to, be anyone I liked. This is a very American concept. It is also a very American lie. While it is true that, technically speaking, I can do anything I want, no one mentions the consequences. No one says to a four-year-old, of course, honey, anything you want, unless it's being a garbage collector, because then people won't respect you. We have constructed for ourselves a giant isolated bubble in which negative consequences are universally to be avoided. Anything with any negative side effects at all - any decision that rates a black look from the neighbors, any accidental step that makes us "look bad," in short, any mistake - is ruthlessly weeded out of the society we have so carefully constructed around ourselves. It's very easily done, too. We do it by the extremely simple expedient of offering our children carefully tailored choices. By the time most of us get old enough to realize that we can make our own choices, we're so accustomed to having them all but made for us that we don't know what to do. We just go on with the plan, get a job that pays the bills and is otherwise totally mundane and uninteresting, get married, have the requisite 2.3 children and wonder vaguely why we feel so damn unprepared for all of it. Most of us have some kind of crisis after college (Oh God, not Real Life!), and another at 45 (What have I done with my life?), and if we're lucky we manage to keep it down to two and slip into resigned acceptance of the way our lives have turned out.

Being nudged into this kind of society with a well meaning You can do whatever you want is somewhat akin to being taken by your very particular Uncle Steve to the biggest bookstore in the world and told to choose just one in the space of an hour. You know that there is a right one, or at least a right several, and that you will be judged on your choice.

What am I learning here? Partly that it is too late for me, in many ways. This world is no longer my world, and I have wasted my time in it browsing shelves in the areas of the bookstore that Uncle Steve doesn't care for. I can no longer labor under the pretense that it is my story in which I'm living. My story left me competent in nothing but learning. "Well," said a friend, "What a useful skill," and I agree wholeheartedly, but it is not, unfortunately, a terribly marketable one. Sadly, marketability sets the boundaries of this no-longer-mine world that I live in, so I am left, in effect, not a useful member of a society that doesn't value real education.

I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about this, and it troubles me. It is, as I've said, too late for me. I will never be the kind of person that society - as it is - welcomes with open arms and a friendly word. At best, this society will leave me alone with no more than a half-admiring, half-bewildered sidelong glance. But it is not, perhaps, too late for the kids who are now who I was. This world now belongs to people who are right now running on small, unsteady, bare feet under swing-sets, reaching for stuffed animals, being carried by grandparents. People even now being told that they can do whatever they want to do. I cannot make the world into one that accepts me, or them, but perhaps I can offer them a space and a chance at self-awareness and true choice.

This is all leading up to a later discussion of the problem of education and potential solutions, but this part had to come first.

Our Hearts We Cannot Steel

2009-02-15T00:37:00.000-08:00

In Which An Orphanage Is Visited

My new student's English name is Kevin. I don't know his Chinese name, but that's pretty standard. He's an athletic kid, a little stocky, energetic, desperate to be special. He knows more English than he lets on, but he's embarrassed by how little that really is. It's less shameful to pretend that he knows nothing, and start from scratch.

The orphanage is in the southern part of Taipei, right up against a mountain (possibly a little taller than Yuan Shan). The city around it feels a little different than the rest of Taipei, a little cleaner, a little fresher, a little less oily with consumerism. The stores are similar, but they seem less looming. Perhaps it's just that they don't have overhangs.

There are birds in a cage outside the door - parakeets and finches, hopping around and making enough racket for a small family of howler monkeys. Sandy, the woman who met me at the MRT station today, took me in and introduced me to Christina, one of the secretaries, before leading me up to the 3rd floor classroom where I'd be teaching. Classroom is deeply misleading. It's a room with three empty bunk-bed-desk combinations in it. It's spacious and bright and airy. It has wood floors. Kevin came in and we sat on the floor and played with alphabet tiles and conversation. I taught him basic pronouns and am/is/are, and how to say "I am a boy," and "I live in Xindian." I gave him flashcards and vocabulary to memorize. Next time I'll bring chocolate for prizes and a CD with which he can practice his listening skills.

The Joy Orphanage itself was first put together in 1951, in the wake of Japan's retreat from Taiwan. The granddaughter of General Governor Liu Mingchuan (builder of railroads, among other things), drew on her familial connections and lands to provide a place for the children left without families after the war. At its opening, there were some 400 kids living there. Now they have two facilities, and 70 kids total - 25 or so in the emergency facilities for temporary and immediate placement, and 45 or so in the permanent facilities while they wait for adoption. A family from the United States is interested in adopting Kevin, but there are still many legalities to go through, so "nothing is certain," said Sandy.

I am not at all sad that I went, and I hope it's something with which I can continue to be involved, whether the tutoring keeps going or not.

Numbers

2009-02-10T05:57:00.000-08:00

In Which It Is A Typical Tuesday Night

There were seven people in the teacher's room tonight after classes were over at 9:00. Rita the librarian, Steven, Wendy, Stacey, Jasmine, Jesse, and me. We trickled out as we finished our post-class clean-up, made plans for the week, and said our goodnights. By the time I left, in conversation with Steven, Rita was the only one left. The light in the room was yellow. I thought of leaving a Subway at 11:00 pm in Ashland with three friends.

I got to the bus stop just in time to catch the 226. Nine people were scattered through the bus, and the light was the same yellow light--the kind of light that accompanies quiet, and separates people, even if they came in together. Someone's cellphone rang, a MIDI of the first four bars of "It's a Small World," but it was cut off. It wasn't answered, but I could nevertheless hear with perfect clarity how the conversation would have gone, even in another language, and even though I'd have understood the first two words and then perhaps one word in four after that. I could hear how each word would have fallen perfectly into prefabricated holes in the silence, made to fit them, sliding into place with nearly audible clicks and resting there level with the quiet and nearly indistinguishable from it.

I left the bus at the stop across from the coffee shop near our apartment. There were two employees left, cleaning up under the same yellow light, facing in different directions, moving with equal slowness. Above the street, the fat moon.

In the park, fourteen older women learned a new line dance, moved their feet in almost perfect synchrony. Tomorrow they will probably add music. A boy gave a girl a stuffed animal on one of the benches. Someone was smoking.

Two doormen and four bouncers were on the ground floor of our apartment building. One of them was also smoking, and pushed button three for three of the girls in the elevator. The two men got out on the fourth floor. I got out on floor five.

It is 10:30, and I am happy to be where I am.

The New Year (Part The Second)

2009-02-02T04:40:00.000-08:00

In Which Eastern Holidays Are Experienced, And More Visitors Come To Town

People ask me, with relative frequency, "How's Taiwan?" I never know what to say to this. When people ask "How was your day?" or "How is the food?" acceptable answers include "Fine," "Good," "Delicious," "Started out great, but it's raining a lot now," or possibly "Lovely, but I wish it weren't so pink." I don't know how to encapsulate Taiwan in a single phrase or sentence, and I know better than to believe that anyone asking so flippantly wants a full blown dissertation of an explanation. I suppose I could direct any and all inquiries here, but that seems a bit arrogant and presumptuous.

Taiwan - Taipei, really - is a city in which I'm living, like any other city I've inhabited. It is a place, to me, not a tourist destination, and certainly not something I can break apart and offer to people who want it in convenient chunks. I can only approximate my experience of this city in carefully thought-out and nevertheless longwinded and untidy parcels. I cannot make them stand alone, because they are part of something much larger that even I don't have a handle on.

Katy's parents came for the week of Chinese New Year, which is the major holiday here. It's a bit like Christmas and Thanksgiving all rolled into one, and while the actual celebration is an Eve and a Day, the vacation time lasts all week. The Roads (Hi, guys) arrived on the Friday before the holiday, late in the evening, so Katy went to collect them while I conducted my last A10 class. (I will miss them, but they're being combined with another class for A11 and transferred to another teacher. The class next door to the A10 never got along with their teacher, so I have rescued them from one another.)

I got home on Friday in time to welcome the Roads family back from the airport (sans Paul, who is still in Spain), but I had to get up for my Saturday morning class, so I went to bed. I think they crashed shortly thereafter. I didn't see a lot of them over the week, since Katy took them south to see the rest of Taiwan - or some of it, anyway - and to have some family time, but it helped solidify the difficulty we (or I, anyway) face when asked to be an interface between representatives from the home we came from and the home we share now. I didn't feel nearly adequately prepared to show the city off, because to me it is just where I live. I remember my grandmother saying similar things about Chicago (Hi, Grandma), and about being eternally startled when she saw tourists there. Since I'm not here for tourism, I can't see the city in that light.

Apart from feeling woefully unprepared, the week went well. It was good to see Katy's family, and very nice to have a week off. Although, I confess that I missed my students. I spent Chinese New Year's Eve at the home of one of my co-teachers. Her family was very nice, and there was a lot of food. After dinner, she and I and another of our co-teachers went to a night market, bought fire crackers, and lit them off in an empty lot until someone told us to stop. I discovered I don't much like fire crackers, although I'll admit to being a total girl and enjoying the sparklers. (What? They were pretty!)

While Katy and her parents were in the South, I slept a lot, and went to Sebastian's house one evening for a very enjoyable bit of conversation and friendly banter with his friend Michael and himself. Sebastian was one of the people in China via the program I used, and it's nice to see him on occasion. I also went to the National Palace Museum again with Yu-Cheng. I think I could spend a long time there for several days (or perhaps weeks, or months) in a row without knowing everything it could teach me. When the Family Roads returned to Taipei, I joined them at Taipei 101. We went up to the very top and wandered about, looking at the ridiculous golden sculptures of ants and butterflies, and peering out the windows at the city below, which drifted in and out of fog as the light faded. We had dinner in a restaurant with a similar view, a floor or two below (although we had to go all the way down to the bottom again and take a different elevator to get back up to the restaurant). The food was quite good, and we returned home well-fed and sleepy.

They spent the rest of their time in Taipei seeing the sights, and I spent my last day of freedom trying to get in as much rest as possible before the next morning. The winter classes are ending tomorrow, and it will be nice to have the ability to wake up at 7:30 without an alarm, instead of at 8 with one. I don't pretend to understand the way my subconscious rules my sleep schedule.

I am now back into the swing of teaching, and it's going pretty well. There have been no spectacular successes (or failures, fortunately), but I am beginning to feel more confident at the front of the classroom. The A7 class that I just took over seems quite nice, although hopelessly adolescent. Adolescence is something I can commiserate with, however, having fallen prey to the disease myself not so long ago, and they seem willing to cooperate. This week I taught them about "What a day!" and "Such an idiot!" and "So much money that he could buy the Earth." They are to write an adventure story for me by next week. I look forward to reading the submissions. One of the ideas submitted was "turned tiny and climbed into the principal's underpants." I'll keep you posted.

Katy and I are reading the Lord of the Rings. We've gotten about 1/4 of the way through the first book. It is a delight to see her reactions to things I have always considered established parts of my personal history. It's a little like reading it for the first time again myself. This is why I love reading to people, why I love teaching.

And speaking of teaching, I'll be starting to volunteer at an orphanage on Sundays for the next couple of months. I know, I know, just when I've managed to get Sundays off, I take up a volunteer position. But this is by my own choice, not because I've been half-tricked into it. It is for one hour every week, tutoring an 11 year old boy who has been adopted by an English speaking family so that he'll be able to communicate at least a little when he reaches his destination. Reading this over, I realize I sound nauseatingly ... well, nice, but it is something I genuinely find myself looking forward to. I am not doing it because it would be the right thing to do, but because it appeals to me. I like the kids I work with, and I am downright delighted to have this opportunity. Don't hold it against me.

Skipping

2009-01-20T18:24:00.000-08:00

In Which I Rediscover An Old Form Of Exercise

I've been looking for some form of exercise since I arrived. The exercise I can enjoy must fulfill the following: It must not be tedious (running is out, sorry guys). It must be cheap (ballet's out, so are tennis, ice skating, and anything else that requires special and expensive equipment). It must be available to me at any time (my class schedule doesn't really allow for taking other classes at regular times).

One of the other foreign teachers at School 8 is a former boxer, and out of the blue one day he said, "Rowan, how do you feel about skipping?" I thought he was talking about the practice of avoiding school or work, but he clarified - "You know, skipping rope." I think the last time I jumped rope was in third grade when we pledged to jump rope for a syphilis cure (I'm sure it was something like that). I hated it at the time, because I was being forced to do it. But suddenly it sounded like a fantastic idea.

So I went out and bought a jump rope for the equivalent of US $2. I took it with me to the park across the street last night after class and skipped for a while. And you know what? I think it's workable. It requires enough concentration that I don't get bored, the rope was cheap, and I can pack it up in a little bundle and take it with me.

Maybe next I'll try Hoop Rolling.

Xǐ Bù Xǐhuan?

2009-01-12T04:34:00.000-08:00

In Which I Get More Personal Than Usual

I have no shortage of friends and family that find it difficult or unacceptable to talk about their feelings. I don't mean to imply that my social sphere is populated entirely with expressionless stoics. However, while I know many people who will discuss their deepest desires and shames at the drop of a hat, I also know quite a few who run almost entirely on logic. I was not raised to run exclusively on logic. I understand it, and it helps me, but if I were asked (as I have been in the past) to ignore my feelings, or to not feel them at all, I wouldn't know how to respond. The ways I feel about things - my likes and dislikes, my awe and fear and excitement and anger, my love and faith and hope - are as much a part of my interface with the world as is my skin. I could no more peel it away than I could flay myself. Sometimes, because of this, it's hard for me to interact with those who do not admit feeling into their spheres of life, or at least their spheres of discourse. I say something like, "I am sad about such-and-such," and they say, "Just change it," and the conversation is over.

I recently had a discussion here about making plans. A friend and I were trying to decide what to do over Chinese New Year. My friend asked me to suggest some places, so I considered for a few days and concluded that I'd like to see the Palace Museum again, and also take a little walk somewhere in the mountains. Then, having given my input, I asked my friend, "What would you like to do over Chinese New Year?" Communication suddenly broke down.

According to my friend, this is a cultural difference. While I agree wholeheartedly, I don't think that the cultural split in this case lies on international political boundaries. Some people both here and in the States appear to be as open to feeling hope and sadness and anger and glee as most people are to seeing shapes and colors. And some, in both countries, seem to be deliberately closing their eyes, saying that the information is too much, too confusing, too extreme. Too inconvenient, too dangerous. There is, perhaps, a traditional predisposition towards that kind of thinking here. There are so many rules, and sometimes it's easier to follow them than to think about them. Taiwan's Yoda says "Do or do not, there is no like."

Call me a hippy (and some of you will, derisively), but I'd much rather be affected by love and wonder and loss than live in a world that had none. I am a collector and collator of data, and how I feel about the world is information as valuable to me as logical thought. I see no reason they cannot co-exist and improve upon each other.

Perhaps all of this sounds a bit defensive. I am grateful to my friend for talking about this subject, one which I've never found anyone "stoic" able to talk about before. It made me think, and I'm glad to have a better understanding of why someone might choose only logic, why someone might choose only black and white. More, I'm glad to have that understanding and still know that I choose to like things.

(Note: The title of this post asks "Do you like it or not?")

The Visitor

2009-01-09T23:45:00.001-08:00

In which Hobbes Sees Our Lives Up Close (Poor Thing)

Hobbes flew in on the evening of Saturday the third. Katy and I took a bus (a very posh bus) to the airport. We were both excited, and reminisced about our own arrival. Katy made a welcome sign in Chinese. We held it up through various stages of excitement, anticipation, hope, and then weariness at entirely the wrong terminal for a while, before figuring out that there was a much bigger terminal accessible by sky train (creepily deserted, but effective). We collected a somewhat worried Hobbes and found our bus back.

We came back to our apartment and more or less slept immediately that first night. The next morning I had a one-on-one class at School 8, so we met up afterwards and had dinner at a very nice little noodle place next to Da'an park. After eating, we went to to see the flowers again. Katy and Hobbes hadn't seen the show yet, so we wandered around for a bit and tried the candied tomatoes (Hobbes was a fan). I saw some sections of the display I hadn't come across yet, but went home pretty quickly afterward due to exhaustion. Katy and Hobbes split off and went to find dinner and the meditation group.

The week was, for me, a blur. I left on Monday morning to do some editing, met Hobbes and Katy at the vegetarian buffet that I frequent, took Hobbes with me to the School 8 area, and deposited her at a Starbucks with instructions to meet me there after I was done with my classes. I unfortunately (and unusually) had two that day - a regular class and a make-up. I picked up Hobbes at 9:10ish and we made our way back to the Linsen area. On Tuesday Hobbes and Katy went up to do some walking in the northern area of Taipei, while I prepped for my Tuesday class and graded their homework. They had an oral quiz, and all did pretty well, apart from the two girls who have been entirely uninterested in the whole class.

Wednesday morning Hobbes and I went to walk around the area with the art park and the art museum. The art park was closed, but we finally made it into the Story House. Weird stuff. It was, when we went, housing a display of television and newspaper advertisements for nine or ten Taiwanese brandnames. Soap, soy sauce, snake oil, stationary, toothpaste (see hei ren for a somewhat amusing history), and the necessary overpriced gift shop. No photos were allowed in the building. After my Sanchong class, Hobbes hung out at home until both Katy and I returned from our classes (another unusual thing - I had another make-up class on Wednesday). On Thursday Hobbes took herself around and saw the touristy bits of Taipei - Taipei 101, etc - while Katy and I had class and editing. I got done at 7 on Thursday, after a somewhat disturbing class in which one student was upset and wouldn't tell me why, and met Hobbes at the Taipei Main Station where we got some dinner and hit up the cultural gift shop for "hey, I've been to Taiwan" gifts for the folks back home, I presume. I tried to find a trinket with the Taipei Railroad symbol on it, but the only one available was a hiddeous little alien figure with the symbol for a head. Anyone wishing to take up metalsmithing is welcome to send me a Taipei Railroad symbol necklace. Perhaps I'll find an arc-welder.

Friday morning we headed to the Peace Park area. It was a pretty park, and we had lunch before-hand at another vegetarian buffet that was quite tasty. The Peace Park (2-28 Park) commemorates an incident on February 28, 1947. We wandered around until both of our cameras lost batteries, and then I had to go into work. I dropped Hobbes off at the Starbucks again, and she uploaded her photos while I taught a couple of classes. I finished my classes at ten, by which time Katy and Hobbes had eaten dinner at a little restaurant somewhere in the Da'an area. We all met up back at our apartment and Hobbes and I stayed up while Katy took a nap. We left the apartment to find transportation to the airport at 4 AM. The busses weren't running yet, but we were approached by an extra-enthusiastic taxi driver who insisted that he could take us there.

The taxi driver was very nice, in spite of our initial suspicions. He charged a bit less than the others (we considered the possibility that it might be a scam), and he was non-intrusive for the duration of the forty-minute ride. He played a CD quietly and let us be giddy from exhaustion in the back seat. At the end of the ride, we noticed that the music had a lot of harmonics in common with ABBA, and no sooner had that occured to us then a Chinese version of Gimme Gimme Gimme came on. I asked him to write down the name of the guy singing, and he pulled one better and gave us the CD. It turns out to be a CD he burned, and written on the disc are the words "hǎo tīng de gē."

We arrived at the airport at about 5:00. It was deserted. There was no one at the check-in desk, and after some peering blearily around, we discovered that it would not open until 6:15. So we sat down in the waiting area and variously went to sleep (Katy), noticed our surroundings (Hobbes), or fought an all-consuming battle against startlingly heavy eyelids (me). The staff got there promptly at 6:15, and Hobbes checked in and we hugged our goodbyes, then Katy and I made our way back to the terminal from which the busses left. On our way to the sky-train, we ran into a young mother with a kid on her hip, one on the way, and a touchingly devoted husband who was having trouble with their metric ton of luggage. We helped them get their baggage together and listened to her spout "Ai-o!"s and gratitude. We made the bus and I spent most of the trip back staring vacantly at the seat in front of me. When we got home, I made myself a cup of tea and promptly fell asleep before being able to drink it.

The New Year (Part The First)

2009-01-01T07:59:00.000-08:00

In Which Western Holidays Are Documented

First, of course, you all must indulge me in a small bit of reminiscence - as far back as mid-December! The Christmas decorations in Taiwan started going up before that, of course, but I'm only willing to delve so far into nostalgia -- even in the spirit of seasonal goodwill.

I went with Sarah to a Chrysanthemum show a while back, and am finally putting up a few of the pictures. It was surreal and dim, but lovely in the way that gardens are at night. We wandered around for a while before coming back to join Katy for a game night we ended up not attending. That was the last extra-curricular thing I took pictures of for a little while, apart from the views to and from work every day.

The daily commute featured such things as Strange Wall Decor, Stores With Dubious Wares, my students' Writing Books, Buildings, the Santa Clause Bus Drivers (none too pleased), and Sunset.

Sarah and I went out to dinner at a thoroughly charming little restaurant that reminded me in a not unpleasant way of the Black Cat Café in Ashland. On our way there we were dizzied by one church's display of Faith and Electricity in honor of the season. We ate and talked, and determined to return someday (we haven't yet, but we've been unavoidably distracted by other things - like holidays). On our way back, Sarah declared her desire to introduce me to a friend of hers (I believe I mentioned him in an earlier post), Xie Yu-Cheng. I met with him for a lovely dinner shortly thereafter and we have been having charming and extremely helpful (for me, at least) exchanges since.

My A10 class had a unit on ghosts, so I told them the story of Taily-Po. Ann, the oldest girl (14) started out skittish, and when I got to the point where the story goes "Boo!" everyone jumped. But Ann screamed. It wasn't a little shriek of startlement, either, it was an outright scream. One of the teachers next door stuck his head round, and I reassured him. The rest of the class thought it was hilarious. To my delight, about five minutes later the quietest girl in class pulled the balcony curtain aside a little, peered out, and said in Ann's general direction, "Oh! What's that?" For the first time, that class was unified and interested. They spent the break drawing their rendition of the monster.

On the twenty-third, there was a new addition to Taiwan from their mainland cousin, commemorated by very cute bread-things in the local bakeries.

We had a quiet and homey Christmas/Chanukah dinner. Katy and I made dinner and invited Sarah and Jenny to join us. We had mashed potatoes and squash and latkes (I made them in a wok) before opening presents under the bamboo-cum-Christmas-tree and lighting the menorah (while wearing a Santa hat). Oh, we are so terribly multicultural it hurts.

I had dinner with Yu-Cheng on New Year's Eve, then went to Sarah's house to see the fireworks. Her family's apartment building has a roof from which there's a pretty clear view of Taipei 101, and at midnight there were a lot of fireworks off of the building. I'm not entirely certain of how to take photos of fireworks at night - anyone with input is welcome to advise.

New Year's Day, I went to Da'an Park with Sarah and her family. There were a lot of flowers. We met up with Jenny and Katy and went back to Sarah's house to bake cookies. They were delicious. Cranberries and chocolate chips and coconut and walnuts and lip-smacking goodness. I do like making cookies.

Further New Year updates when Chinese New Year comes around. In the mean time, our friend Hobbes is coming to visit (hi, Hobbes!) for a week or so very soon. Our first visitor!

新年快樂!

2008-12-31T19:37:00.000-08:00

Happy 2009, everyone!

Things That Are Going Well

2008-12-20T01:51:00.000-08:00

In which several Good Things are Enumerated

Number One: We have been graced with the gloriousness of a new-fangled and hi-falutin' water heater. It 'most glows with freshness and practicality and, most of all, not-being-broken. We now are the fortunate recipients of such amenities as water pressure and warm showers. All praise be to those that deserve it.

Number Two: My delightful conversation partner, Sarah, introduced me to a gentleman friend of hers (more of a proletarian most times, he hastens to assure me) with whom I enjoyed an absorbing dinner last Sunday. He is Taiwanese, but spent last year at the University of Chicago studying public policy. We seem to have a great deal to talk about, and I am quite pleased to have another Taiwanese friend. He has promised to help me with my Chinese. I think he will be a firm teacher with strict goals, which is beyond useful for me right now. Exactly what I need.

Number Three: My classes are going splendidly. There are occasionally hiccoughs, but primarily things are running quite smoothly. I did a story-writing exercise with my A3 class today, and I think I may have actually managed to explain the importance of continuity in tense and topic. Whether they follow through with it is another matter entirely, but it was nice to have their attention all focussed on the thing to which I was pointing. They left the room laughing, five minutes after the bell rang. Another teacher sat in on the earlier part of my class today and mentioned before-hand that he'd been told I was one of the best. I am sure that's at least a little hyperbole on the Academic Director's part, but it was lovely to hear.

In Short: Things are going well.

Drunk and Incompetent

2008-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

I should never have gone in the first place. I don't like bars, I don't like drunks, and I don't particularly like being up very late in the company of the latter at a table in the former. But it was a farewell party for a friend/co-worker, and I'd said I would attend, so I did. We'd been through a rough week: the water heater in our apartment has been broken for about two weeks, and this week the landlady sent someone in to fix it. After many, many miscommunications about the time and the keys and the apartment number (they replaced the water heater in a different apartment, but not ours), a workman showed up, punched a hole in the wall, turned the lights on and off, and left. Today another three came, punched a couple more holes in the wall, and now we can get hot water, but only if the sink in the bathroom is on at the same time as the shower. Katy and I got home from our respective schools and had a lovely talk about hardcore music and the debatable merits of being angry, so perhaps I was not in the right frame of mind to be patient by the time we left.

The friend -- let's call him Bob -- was obviously drunk by the time I arrived. He was banging on the table with enough force to knock glasses over, and somehow still being served and not being thrown out. I sat on the other side of the table, ordered some mulled wine (first experience - not bad), and tried to be entertaining and entertained instead of appalled and angry. I don't think I succeeded very well. Bob kept apologizing to me, but as the evening wore on, he got less and less coherent about it, until he was just saying "I'm sorry," at regular intervals, without anything in between. Finally, after lots of shouting and banging, he came around the table and sat next to me, leaning in. "Rowan, I'm sorry," he said. "For what?" I asked. "Just, I'm sorry." I looked across the table. This appeared to be the wrong thing to do. He grabbed my face with his hand and turned my head back toward him.

Now, maybe it's the teaching, maybe it's the brief amount of time I spent learning the basics of street fighting (cheat, cheat early, often, and ruthlessly), or maybe it's the ridiculous ways people tend to see me, but I don't have any trouble communicating when I'm really, truly angry. "Bob," I said. I did not yell. The guy across the table heard me and immediately started paying attention, but I'm pretty sure no one else did. "Bob, if you touch me again I will disembowel you." He dropped his hand and cocked his head to the side. "Really?" he said, like he was questioning the answer to a confusing math problem. "Yes," I said. "Really." The guy across the table said, "Bob-" and Bob said, "No. I want her to kill me." I decided it was time for me to leave, so I slid under the table and shook hands with everyone and toddled off to the MRT.

Now. Can anyone tell me what is so attractive about drinking to excess?

More Snapshots

2008-12-08T19:55:00.000-08:00

Once again, my loyal readers, it has been far too long. It's not quite a month since I last put finger to keyboard in an effort to catalogue my activities here for the enjoyment of those elsewhere. I'm sure you've all gotten quite bored in the mean time.

It's solidly autumn here now, although the locals keep telling us it's winter. The weather has been pretty consistently under the 75ºF, 23ºC range. It fluctuates pretty wildly - in the morning it's been around 12ºC (that's 53ish in ºF), gets up to 21ºC in the afternoon, and then back down to 11 or 12ºC at night. The rain mostly seems to come in the evening these days, usually while I'm teaching.

I was elated at the US election results. Everyone was talking about it in the days leading up to the election, but since then there's been nary a word. Katy and I sometimes talk about the things going on in the States, but most of the other people here seem pretty unaffected. Of course, I'm the only FT in my school from the US, which might have something to do with it. All the other FTs are from Canada, England, South Africa, or Australia.

This has been the month of getting sick. Katy's been fighting a cold for the last forever or so, and I picked it up last week. I'm almost entirely recovered now, but for the residual cough. I got a jacket and a scarf for the cooler parts of the day, and felt like a wimp doing so, but I'd rather be warm and feel foolish than be sick. Our apartment isn't heated, but so far that hasn't been a problem. I'm hoping it will remain a non-issue.

My students are wonderful. They're teaching me a lot about teaching, and about learning. Each of my classes responds to a different style, and it's exciting and challenging. It's incredibly rewarding every time I learn what works well for a class. Last week one of my classes refused to leave the classroom when the bell rang because they wanted to keep playing the vocabulary game we were in the middle of playing. Made my week.

I will try for more frequent updates. I have more to say if I'm not trying to cover a month all at once.

Snapshots Between Classes

2008-11-12T03:24:00.000-08:00

My eternal apologies for being so silent for so long, my most estimable and patient friends and kin. In the last two weeks, my teaching hours have gone from 12 to 21, bringing my total hours on paper to 27 per week. This estimate, of course, does not take into account the preparation time, nor does it make clear that I've been working seven days out of every week. My time for doing other things, in short, is in short supply. This log suffers.

I find myself with a bit of time now, though, and will do my best to rectify the abominable void that has replaced news of me in the past weeks.

I went up to Danshui with a fairly new acquaintance, Basharat (from England) to see the sunset and wander. The sunset was lovely, although Bash missed it. The sun appeared to be crashing into the horizon very slowly.

I got a new M1 class, and oh my stars and garters they are cute. Challenging, but cute. They're the first class to be really affectionate - they all give me hugs. They're all quite rambunctious, too.

Halloween was also cute. Uneventful, but cute. Rita, the Sanchong librarian, decorated the Sanchong school rather too well, I think.

Jenny (Katy's conversation partner), Sarah (mine), Katy and I all went to Yinghe a while ago and managed to find a place that would let us throw some of our own pottery. It turned out pretty well. We got to choose the glaze. I will always miss kick-wheels and the experimentation of making my own glazes in Ms. Parson's class. But they turned out alright.

We went to dinner with Chris and Debbie and Chris's class for his birthday. There was a very cute little girl there who had perfected the art of eating soup.

If this entry is disjointed and flighty, forgive me. There is much to tell and not enough time to devote to telling it. I am sacrificing quality for quantity.

The weather has cooled significantly. Today was lovely - in the 70s and mostly sunny, breezy, dry. It's been raining a lot.

Yuan Shan

2008-10-20T19:59:00.001-07:00

I have been tragically unable to find a mask for Halloween. This weighs on my thoughts unexpectedly, since I haven't cared at all about Halloween for quite some time. Madison's festivities were not the sort I prefer, and I forgot that it can be about having fun in a good, old-fashioned, sans-tear-gas kind of way. I know there are masks, but they don't seem to be in my area. Ideally, I would find some basic masquerade eye-mask and add ears and whiskers and wear black, but perhaps this dearth is a blessing in disguise. It's still routinely 80º here, and a black sweater and black pants would probably turn me into a cat passing out from heat stroke. I'll content myself with giving my A3 class Halloween related fake tattoos (if they want them).

My editing job is going well. Last week I spent three hours rewriting a version of Rapunzel that my employer had on file. The Taiwanese get confused by Western fairy tales. "I don't understand," said my boss. "How could she live for so many years if she was tied to a tree?" and "But how can he see again if his eyes have been poked out?" These are fair points. In the finished version, she was merely banished to the desert, and his eyes were not so much poked out as occluded by the thorns. When she cried on him, the thorns were washed away.

On Sunday, Katy and I went to Yuan Shan (Round Mountain - everyone says it with a bit of a smirk, so I assume "mountain" is sort of a euphemism for "hill with big ideas") and walked around. About 1/5 of the way up the stairs, we stopped to take pictures and were overtaken by a gentleman who said in clear, heavily accented English, "It is so beautiful," and nodded to us. I asked him if he came every day, and he said, "Yes, for more than 15 years." He climbed on, and we continued taking pictures, but when we got to the next little clearing, he was sitting on a bench waiting for us. He beckoned us over, and offered to lead us around the mountain. This turned out to be a very good thing. The paths on the mountain were warrenous. He took us to the very top and showed us the tiny marker that indicated the peak, then wandered with us for a while. He told us his name was Huà Yèfǔ, or George. He worked for the China Times until he retired twenty years ago. He said we could call him Huà Sir, which is a charming combination of English and Chinese. Eventually, he took us to a place where he said we could get food ("It's free!") and something to drink. I assumed he meant some kind of cafe or temple tourist something, but he led us down into yet another little clearing and shouted to the still out of sight occupants, "Chuān yīfu! Chuān yīfu!" ("Put on clothes! Put on clothes!") I choked a little trying not to laugh. When we got to the clearing, there were four or five shirtless elderly gentlemen and their wives all gathered laughing and talking and cooking and eating. They have a little semi-permanent tent set up where they go every Sunday to have a potluck and drink coffee and whiskey and tea. After lunch (we were, of course, invited, stuffed, and encouraged to "make ourselves at home"), the men all went off to play cards around a rickety old card table, and the women sat down and discussed a number of things I didn't catch, although some of it was about the two waiguoren in their midst.

The mountain (or hill with delusions of grandeur) itself was lovely. There were enormous butterflies in iridescent black and brown and blue, and flowers, and greenery. Every turn had a surprising little plaza with a couple playing tennis or a group singing karaoke. Some of the plazas were deserted, and I liked those best of all (Katy will say to this: "You would"). There were funny little fuzzy snails and dragonflies and birds. I didn't notice when the traffic sounds faded because the birds were so loud.

Katy and I had to leave, but George gave us his phone number so that when we are next in the area we can call him up and have him take us around a museum thing. He kept calling it the President's house, but it sounded like it was no longer inhabited.

We went home, showered, and went to a farewell party for some of her co-workers, after which I headed south to enjoy some tea in what I was told was a traditional tea house. It was quite peaceful, apart from the rowdy crowd with whom I sat.

We have had more adventures since, but for the sake of getting this post up, I will relate them in the next.

Symbolism

2008-10-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

This is the top of a package of instant noodles that I bought for myself back when we didn't have a cook pot. That symbol you're offended by? That means it's vegetarian. I look for that symbol when I wander through the night markets, hoping to find a meal that doesn't include beef or pork. It's an odd symbol to want to find, among the Hanzi characters of Taiwan and the Katakana characters that are sometimes scattered among the Japanese restaurants. It's strange to look around and say to myself, "No, that means mutton, and that means fish...Ah, there, that means I can eat it! Only if you flip it around and turn it a bit, it also means Very Bad Things." The phrase "cognitive dissonance" comes to mind. So I looked it up. Turns out it has a pretty long and colorful history, but its existence here is mainly Buddhist.

Speaking of history, Friday was Double Ten day here, so there were Taiwanese flags everywhere. Katy and I went to the National Museum and looked at a lot of different kinds of art. I bought a book of old Chinese paintings, hoping to learn more about drawing trees that don't look utterly foolish. It started raining on the way there, and we caught a rainbow out the window of the bus. While we were there, we met Jim, a docent at the museum who was (are you reading carefully?) a friend of the gentleman who is friends with my uncle who lives in Virginia. My uncle got me in touch with Mr. Paxton, who suggested I ask for Jim if I was ever at the museum. Jim, when we met him, asked if he could give our email addresses to a relative of his who was coming to Taiwan and wanted to know more about teaching here. So now we also are in contact with Ray. I'm going to need a chart soon.

In other news, I've posted pictures of my M2 class (aren't they cute?) performing for the camera. I also took a picture of Rita, the librarian at the Sanchong school, and had pictures taken with Elegance, the manager of the Sanchong school.

On Sunday we went with Jenny (Katy's language partner, remember?) to the beach. I always forget how much I miss large bodies of water until I'm standing on the shore of one. There was a group of people drumming under a tent, and a woman flinging herself around in some kind of wild dance. We walked up and down the beach and teased the waves (we lost - you almost always do) and found strange life-forms in odd colors.

I came back and went to meet Marc, a teacher from School 8, who helped me buy an external hard-drive and pointed me towards a lot of movies (probably more than I can really watch in 3 months). The hard-drive will come in handy in a month or so, when the new MacBooks finally reach Taiwan. I am patient, I swear.

Spoor

2008-10-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed it, I've updated Spoor.

Animals and Children

2008-10-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

Animals and Children

There are certain computer and video games in which you have to travel through an area using the information found in a journal left behind by some eccentric loner with occasionally very poor handwriting. I got a little notebook to take notes in about my classes - not the official class notebooks in which I write my finished lesson plans, so I don't have to worry about making mistakes. It was intended to be a book full of rough outlines of my lesson plans. It's turning into that Eccentric Guide in a Spidery Hand. It contains obscure phrases that correspond to certain computers which must be turned on in a certain order. It stores the phone numbers of important people who can help you on your way. It has mysterious admonitions in different colored ink, and occasional notes about the local language. There are maps that only make sense if you're standing on a certain street. And it's all in a little plastic-jacketed notebook graced by two stylized monochrome bears and a yellow bird. The text on the front says: "a cute little milk&charcoal bear." The bird says hello.

I started my A10 class since our last update. It went very smoothly. They're very advanced English speakers. We talked about concepts like have to vs. got to vs. should and must. I also have a job editing textbooks that starts tomorrow. I don't yet know how that will go, but it's extra income doing nitpicky work that I can enjoy without giving it my soul. More on that as I know more.

Katy got a little sick about a week and a half ago, but I'm managing to so far stay healthy. Expect news of my ill health next week, now that I've made that claim. Schools are breeding grounds for illness, and I have two schools, plus whatever bugs Katy brings back from hers. Fortunately, fresh orange juice is readily available (and I'm thinking of getting a juicer and making it myself, we'll see) on the way to the MRT station at Minquan, so we're getting plenty of vitamin C. Also, we have lots of garlic to put in our food.

Our food, which we're cooking ourselves, now. We bought a wok, a sauce pan, and a rice cooker, and those are really all we need. The Wellcome supermarket (I did not spell that wrong, there are two Ls in the name) has a pretty decent selection of vegetables to put in our stirfried concoctions. Right now we've got carrots, pea pods, some kind of sprout that doesn't shrivel and die (or vanish) upon contact with heat, a very hearty cabbage that needs to be cooked for a long time, and some stringy mushrooms. I'm hoping to find some spinach sometime soon, although I'm not sure what to do with it here. It's not really a stirfry vegetable. The supermarket also sells a lot of tofu, broccoli, tomatoes, and various other vegetables that I may have seen once in a dream. We do most of our cooking at night, throwing rice into the Supa Fine rice cooker and vegetables into the wok and mixing them all up later. Katy wanted me to point out that she also cooks. I have proof, for those of you who doubt. She made a very good dinner with carrots and other vegetables, and nothing was burned.

She and I and her conversation partner, Jenny, went to the Taipei zoo on Sunday last. She told us it was the largest zoo in Asia. They had no cephalopods. I was deeply disappointed. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful place. We took the MRT there, and used our MRT cards to pay for admission. These Easy Cards (a rough English translation of the Chinese casual way of referring to them) are possibly the most convenient things in the world. We saw the Formosan animals first, which Jenny was kind enough to tolerate, but she was the most excited about the penguins. I thought the lion and cub were entertaining, but the zoo's very colorful version of Chicago's Cows sort of took the cake. It was a long trip, and we were tired when we got home, but it was fun. Jenny seems very charming and friendly.

Today is "Double Ten Day" ("Shuāng Shí Jié" in Chinese) which is Taiwan's national celebration of the ultimate collapse of the Qing Dynasty. Everyone gets the day off. Fireworks, military parades (probably what I saw them practicing for when I walked through the Art Park), etcetera. Katy and I are going to the National Palace Museum. We've heard good things.

2008-09-28T07:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-20T03:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

ARC achieved!

2008-09-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

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.

What the blazes is she talking about?

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.

2008-09-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

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 Yán, Hújiāofěn, 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.

2008-08-31T01:17:00.000-07:00

Home Life

Now that we're in a proper apartment, I can perhaps go into a bit more detail about what might eventually be my routine. (I don't want to commit myself or anything...)

We found a filter for Leonard Yusef (our fish - the Chinese word for fish is yu), and he is swimming around rather more now than he was a day ago. Granted, the filter is probably for a much smaller tank, but we only have one fish for now, and he's a bottom feeder, so between the little filter and Leonard Yusef, I think we'll be OK. We would like to get him a friend and call her Betty, in honor of Paul Williams (The Wife's brother). I think even with Betty in the mix Leonard should be able to keep up.

We've also gotten a clothes rack which Katy skillfully put up, a clock for our kitchen which extolls the virtues of citrus and affection, some laundry soap which looks like Tide but isn't (it calls itself "Sopp"), and a lot of hangers for drying and hanging our clothes. Seriously, like 90.

I've more or less begun to figure out how to get to the two different schools at which I will be teaching. We live quite close to the Minquan W. Road station on the Red Line of the MRT, so Katy takes the Red Line up to Shilin where she teaches. I take a bus from the Minquan W. Road station to Sanchung, which is across the river and where I will probably be most days. It's a new school, and the AD described it as the "experimental branch" of Kojen. The other 20% or so of the time I will be at School #8, which is on the Brown Line near the Da'an station. Next Friday I'll be substituting for another teacher's A-8 class at School #8. It's a three hour class, and will be my second experience teaching for Kojen. My first is on Wednesday, at Sanchung, and is the very first day of a Y1 class. The lesson includes letters A-D in both upper and lower case, and four example words each. I fully expect to be gravely wounded by cuteness.

If I walk north from our apartment, I reach Minquan W. Road, which intersects with our Linsen N. Road. There is a set of walkways over Minquan and Linsen so that pedestrians don't have to wait for the light if they're so inclined, although it seems that people rarely use them. I walked up to them the other day and took pictures of the surroundings to the north, east, south, and west. What you see in the north is a mountain (probably Zhishan), and a temple (probably the National Peace Museum). Walking east leads to a street that appears to be a funeral street - a lot of coffin shops and urn shops. I saw a lot of people burning paper for Ghost Month on that street a couple of days ago. Our apartment is to the south a few blocks. To the west is the MRT station which is the center of our working universe. On the southeastern corner of Minquan and Linsen is a pet store that does not carry aquarium filters, but does have bunnies (Hilary, that's for you) and puppies in its windows.

There are little things (there are always little things) that are different that strike me suddenly, like the fact that almost all the doors open inward. In the United States, most of our doors open outward, presumably because it's theoretically easier to open a door outward from inside should the building be burning or something.

Which reminds me: the day we closed the deal on the apartment I went to the bank to change some money and a wonderfully kind gentleman next to me spoke up in halting English. "In thirty minutes you cannot go outside. There will be a ... I don't know how to say it ... we will pretend there are airplanes..." And I said "An air raid drill?" He nodded, and repeated "At two thirty. You cannot go outside. You must stay indoors." The bank teller corroborated his advice, so Katy and I spent the air raid drill inside the realty while sirens went off and the streets were empty of everyone but a few bored looking police officers. It lasted for a half an hour. No one seemed particularly fazed.

2008-08-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

Settling In

We sort of wandered around on Sunday towards the area where we think we might want to live. We found a charming little park with rock doves or pigeons much more skittish than those in Chicago, and more evident than those in Madison. We approached a woman getting out of her taxi to visit a friend in one of the apartment buildings and asked what we should do if we wanted to live there. I can't imagine how this would be going if I didn't know some Mandarin. She was very friendly, but didn't speak any English. She actually led us around to look at bulletin boards for rental signs, leaving the apartment door open. Unfortunately, she didn't find any. Still, we got an idea of the kind of place we'd like to be.

On Monday I had my first day of training with Kojen. I was desperately nervous until I remembered that they didn't want me to speak Chinese, and that I was in fact there to simply be a native English speaker with some idea of how to pass the language on. That first day went quite well. I observed two classes: Y6 and A2. The letter refers to the overall level, and the number to the microlevel - much like the streets here. Y is the most basic level, and the microlevels are 1-6. M is the next, and goes from 1-12. M goes at half the speed of the next level, K, so that M12 is the same as K6. K also goes up to 12, and then the students go on to A level. My AD (Academic Director) said that usually kids get to about level 10 before passing the age acceptable for the next letter level, so the 12 classes are sometimes pretty small. There are four kinds of teaching positions: FT (foreign teacher), CT (Chinese teacher), TA (teaching assistant), and TT (telephone teacher). Each class is twice a week (M/R, T/F, W/S), with once per week as the FT's class and once as the CT's. The TA and the CT are often the same person, which helps with continuity. The TT (again, often the same as the CT and TA) calls the students once a week for 5 minutes to give them a pop oral quiz.

The first class I watched was a Y level class - Y6, which is the highest of the most basic, youngest class. They were dangerously cute, the five of them. The teacher said, "Who's being good?" and they all ran shrieking and giggling to their seats, where they sat up impossibly straight and shoved their tiny left hands (fists closed) into the air, waiting to be called upon. They were covering initial clusters CL, GL, and BL when I was observing, and they played games for the privilege of answering the teacher's questions. When they answered correctly they had to participate in a game of skill (ball throwing or some kind of race) before getting a tiny little prize called a "jian ka," which means "reward card." The jian kas come in different denominations, and when the students have collected enough of them they can trade them in for little notebooks or pens or erasers, etc. "Teaching by stealth," the teacher called it.

Class 2 was an advanced class, quieter, although they still played games. The teacher made lots of eye contact used vocal variation to good effect. When a student or two got out of line, he looked at them all and jovially said "I can stay after class." Everyone immediately shut up. The room was pretty evenly divided between girls and boys, and by divided I mean that all the girls were sitting against one wall and the boys against the other. In spite of their quietness, they seemed to have a pretty good rapport with the teacher. He introduced us (Robin was watching the same class) as "very smart," and one of the girls looked determinedly at her desk and muttered quite audibly, "Smarter than you!" He laughed and agreed, and the class went on smoothly.

The third class I watched was a K class at a different branch of Kojen. They seemed restless at the beginning, but settled down eventually. The teacher used flash cards and a game he'd made up. There were more kids in this class, and the integration between girls and boys was more complete. Once the kids got used to the game, they got into it and started wanting to play a little more.

The fourth class was also at the second school, which is where I'll be doing most of my teaching. It was another K class, and was even quieter than the third. Even when the teacher played games with them they were quiet. They livened up once, when one of them wrote "The doctor told him to eat the flu" on the whiteboard. I flinched in a possibly dramatic kind of way, stuck my tongue out, screwed my face up, and shook my head violently back and forth from the back of the room. They laughed at me. I consider it a complete success.

Back at our temporary apartment, we lost water completely for a day, and the pressure's been very low ever since. It's really hard to take a shower with water that has all the flowing power of a mud puddle.

Yesterday's training session didn't really give me any new information, but it was good to go over the old stuff. Yesterday morning, however, I walked into a realty, said "Nǐ huì shuō yīngyǔ ma?" The lady said "Bú huì," and I sighed and said "Wǒ gēn wǒde hǎo péngyou zhǎo yīge fángzi..." After a lot of discussion and drawing of pictures, she took us to look at one which we immediately liked. Furnished, half-way between our two schools, and in the same area I referred to at the beginning of this post. We told her we'd come back the next day and hoped very hard all the way home that we could make it work. Today we clinched the deal after much finagling of finances, and we now have a lovely two-bedroom apartment with a fish tank and room for plants. We're going to have to buy pillows, though.

When I signed onto the internet today, I found that one of my friends from Madison is planning on showing up in Taipei in a week to work for Kojen also. Taipei is apparently The Place To Be.

2008-08-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

Something Different, Something Familiar

The first rains came yesterday, hard and reminiscent of some pulp novel as penned by Raymond Chandler circa 1955. There was a little thunder, but mostly it was just water dumping out of the sky. I was stuck inside for most of it, without an umbrella or rain slicker (both in Katy's room), with the threat "Taiwan has acid rain - it will make your hair fall out" echoing through my thoughts. I made myself some terribly unsatisfying noodles and waited for The Wife to get home from her first day. My first day is tomorrow. When she returned, we and Robin took the MRT (and also our feet. ...Mostly our feet) to the Reach to Teach gathering at Citizen Cain, a bar somewhere to the southeast of our temporary apartment. I'm not sure how they felt, but for me it was almost more intimidating to walk into a bar full of waiguoren than it was to go to the Aboriginal Bar. Richard, once approached, was very nice and good about introducing us to a few people. We met two Andrews from Colorado, a Daniel from Missouri, a Dave and Jill from Nova Scotia, a Bash from Manchester, and Mitch - one of the Reach to Teach staff. All of them were very charming people, and I am glad to know there are familiar faces in the area.

Speaking of familiarity... Unlike China or Ghana or Scotland or Ireland, Taipei does not feel foreign to me. We bought handkerchiefs today, like in Ghana, and everything seems familiar, like traveling to another state rather than another country. Traverse City was more foreign than this.

2008-08-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Adventures Out and About

We have (clearly) found a coffee shop with wifi, purchased some funny little squares of what could, with some ingenuity, be toilet paper, procured a towel and Taiwan money, and we wandered around hot and cranky yesterday until we found food - first a sandwich (pre-monies, with a xìnyòngkǎ) and then some very tasty soup in a hole-in-the-wall just around the corner from our apartment. Post-soup we came home and passed out for four hours before heading out with our two apartment-mates to find a bar and some Taiwan Pijiu.

The bar was small, and I knew the minute we walked in that it was not frequented by wàiguórén. We were taken to the largest table and seated and fawned over. There was a gentleman who sat with us and made much of us, talking in English when he could. Another wore paint on his face to imitate the aboriginal culture of Taiwan - I'm not sure what, Haka, perhaps - and another wore a dress and a wig and false anatomy. They danced and sang, as did the other patrons, and even we got up and sang karaoke at one point. The patrons and staff sat with us by turns - it was a little hard to tell who was which - and food kept appearing on the table. Greens ("not typical Taiwan food," we were assured, but "like the food of your Native Americans." Kudos to those who warned about this.) and fish and an omelet thing. The English-speaking man repeatedly offered to hook us up with "muscle men," the cue for Painted Face to start flexing and pouting at us. We declined. At the end of the evening, while I was trying to settle our bill, the lady of the establishment proclaimed her love for me and presented each of us with a bouquet of 9 roses. We walked back to our apartment waving our tourist banners and trying to process. Katy found a pitcher in the cabinet in the kitchen, and we stuck 3 of the bouquets in it and set it out on the living room table.

Today we met with a lovely lady from Kojen, who will be meeting us again shortly to take us to the hospital so that we can have our exams for our work permits. We had lunch at a small buffet with a bunch of vegetarian food that I mostly did not recognize, but all of it was pretty tasty.

2008-08-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

Arrival, Etc.

The first leg of the trip was predictably raucous. There was a crowd of eight or nine drunk men sitting right in front of The Wife and I, but we sat next to a very sweet girl from Hong Kong who was on her way to a pool tournament. They've started charging $2 for water and juice now, so I didn't get my habitual tomato juice. Instead we watched parts of "Catch Me If You Can," which seemed to me a rather ironic movie to show on an airplane.

Having made the requisite trip through the world's most bizarre airport (Las Vegas - slot machines, bling, more bling, more machines), we had an uneventful flight to Las Angeles next to a very chatty Swedish woman who was subsequently very helpful in pointing us toward our gate at the end of the flight. Once at the gate, we made friends with a Taiwanese gentleman traveling with his young son. The son spoke some English, but was quite shy, and the gentleman was friendly and forthcoming and gave us his business card - he runs a women's clothing boutique in Taipei - and told us to call him sometime if we were in the area.

And then we started our long flight. At some point my brain lost all contact with things like rational time and day and merely started operating on "We're going to Taiwan!!!" The flight itself was the kind of convenient that Wilbur and Orville only ever dreamed of in their most secret hearts. I read Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and watched a couple of inflight movies. The food was not horrible. The stewards and stewardesses were friendly and helpful. The sun rose just as we landed in Taipei, over a landscape that reminded me somehow of Scotland. The airport was almost deserted. Customs was a gentleman who spoke nary a word, merely stamped us "approved" and waved us through. There was no line at the Nothing-to-Declare aisle. A man manifested out of nowhere with our names handwritten on a sign. He turned out to be a taxi driver employed by Kojen. Here's The Wife being excited in the taxi. Another gentleman met us at our temporary apartment, let us in, gave us our keys, and fled, leaving us with instructions to show up at the office tomorrow morning at 10, and very little idea of anything else.

We are housed (for now) with two other women, both of whom will be teaching in Kaohsiung. One is leaving tomorrow, and the other arrived last night. The Wife and I are well, and will shortly go shopping for such necessities as toilet paper, food, bugspray, and towels. It is delightful to be here at last.

2008-08-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

Three Days Out

I'm having a little bit of a hard time believing that I'll be leaving the country the day after the day after tomorrow. The Wife is going to come in and then we'll be taking separate vehicles to the airport, because we're ecologically conscious like that. Also because we wish to remain Living Breathing Parts of our Respective Families, who are also traveling in those aforementioned vehicles.

I've come into possession of a camera (courtesy of Aunts Kathy and Michelle, and my paternal grandparents - thanks, guys), so I'll be able to record parts of the upcoming trip in an amateurish kind of way. My heart goes out to the artistic among you - I've never claimed to be a photographer (at least I do not follow the family tradition of beheading my photographic subjects!).

The photos will probably be posted to Picasa, but I'll be making a note here to explain the photos I post most times.

2008-08-06T07:03:00.000-07:00

What I'm Packing

Checked

• 2 weeks clothing

• 1 "fancy" outfit

• PJs

• Flip-flops

• Tennis shoes

• Towel

• Toiletries

• Pillow

• Drawing pens and pencils, eraser

• 2 sketchpads

• Blank book

• 10 year box, which I will get to open in May of 2009 (I hope the customs people put everything back in it when they're done...)

• The Dispossessed

Carry On

• Laptop

• Tablet

• Scanner (My friend says this is a bad idea -- I'll let you know)

• Toothbrush, etc.

• Chinese/English dictionary - pocket size

• Blank book

• Comb

• Small bag

• Change of clothes

• Crossword and/or Sudoku book

2008-08-04T20:14:00.000-07:00

FAQ

• Where are you going and what are you doing?

I'm going to Taiwan to teach English.

• That's awesome! I have a friend/sister/cousin/former adversary who went to Thailand and loved it!

Taiwan. We'll be living in Taipei.

• Totally what I meant. Who's "we"? Are you going with a program?

"We" is The Wife (see Definitions - Post 1) and I. We're working through a program called Reach to Teach, which set us up at the Kojen School of English.

• Do they provide you with housing?

No.

• Where will you be living?

The Wife and I will be sharing an apartment in an as yet undisclosed location. Kojen will be housing us briefly while they help us find one.

• What ages will you be teaching?

Ages 8-15.

• So do you speak... What do they speak there?

Taiwanese and Mandarin, mainly. I speak some Mandarin, yes.

• You'll get to practice with the kids, that'll be awesome!

No. We're only allowed to speak English with the kids. Full immersion and all.

• Are you excited?

Ridiculously.

• Do you know anyone there?

Your friend/sister/cousin/former adversary.

• How long are you planning on staying?

Two years. The contract is for one year, but I'd like to renew it once.

• Tell me about English Schools in Taiwan.

As far as I know, kids in Taiwan go to regular school during the day. Parents can choose to send their children to English schools after their regular school, which means that a lot of kids end up going to school all day. We'll be teaching at one of these English schools.

• What's the time difference in Taiwan?

If it is 9:00 at night on Tuesday in Wisconsin or Illinois, it's 10:00 in the morning on Wednesday in Taipei.

2008-08-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

Definitions - To Be Updated As Necessary

Key:

c indicates that a word is Chinese.

e indicates that a word is in English. It's inclusion in Definitions means it's probably entirely or nearly obsolete.

r indicates that a word is made up by me.

Some words or phrases will not be preceded by an initial. They'll be pretty self-evident.

10 Year Box: A small time capsule containing artifacts from May 1999, which I will open in May 2009

Bù: (c) 不 No, negation.

Bù hǎoyìsi: (c) 不好意思 To feel bashful, uncomfortable, or embarrassed.

Facebrial: (r) Of or pertaining to Facebook. (pronounced "fah SEE bree ul")

Famigerate: (e) To carry news from abroad.

Fángzi: (c) 房子 House, room.

Gēn: (c) 跟 With, and, following.

Hǎo: (c) 好 Good, OK, well.

Hǎo tīng de gē: (c) 好聽的歌 Good songs. Literally, songs that are good to listen to.

Huì: (c) 会 To be able to.

Mìmì: (c) 秘密 Secret.

Malefactress: (e) Female evil-doer.

MRT: (c - kind of) Taipei's Metropolitan Rapid Transit.
Nǎiyóu: (c) 奶油 Butter.

Nǐ: (c) 你 You (familiar).

Péngyou: (c) 朋友 Friend.

Predilection: (e) A bias in favor of something.

Shuō: (c) 说 To speak.

Sǐ: (c) 死 Death.

Sì: (c) 四 Four.

The Wife: My Facebrial Spouse.

Wàiguórén: (c) 外国人 Foreigner.

Warrenous: (r) Having characteristics similar to those of a rabbit warren.

Wǒ: (c) 我 I, me.

Wǒde: (c) 我的 My, mine.

Xuéxiào: (c) 学校 School

Xìnyòngkǎ: (c) 信用卡 Credit card.

Xǐhuan: (c) 喜歡 To like, to be fond of.

Xie Yu-Cheng: (c) 謝宇程 Taiwanese friend. First appearance.
Xiǎo: (c) 小 Small.

Yīge: (c) 一个 One of, a; "one" with a generic measure word.

Yīngyǔ: (c) 英语 English language.

Zhǎo: (c) 找 To look for, to search for.

Zhōngwén: (c) 中文 Chinese language.