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.

The New Year (Part The Second)

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.

The New Year (Part The First)

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!