The Return

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

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

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

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

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)

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?

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.