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.

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.  

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.