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.

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.