Oh, the garbage man can...

Well, we have left Taipei and are now living in the much cleaner, calmer Taichung (“Tie-jong” with a long “o” sound). But I believe my blog left off at last Monday, so on Tuesday we did one more day of sightseeing around Taipei and observations at the school. We first went to the Presidential Building and then wandered around. There are a couple exhibits inside the Presidential Building, but there were a ton of security people watching us and we couldn’t figure out where to enter without getting shot, so we decided just to take pictures and leave.

Later that day we had more observations to do at another branch of our school in Taipei (I believe there are about fifteen branches of our school in Taipei, two in Taichung, and a few more around the island). After the first ten minutes at this branch, I desperately wanted to leave. The kids class I observed was terrible and the teacher equally so. He kept yelling at the kids, saying, “What the hell is wrong with you??” and getting really annoyed when they would get the answers wrong. I tried to give him a break, because they were out of control and a bad class, but you can’t yell at kids like that.

During our ten-minute break, he and his friend talked with me and they didn’t have anything good to say about Taichung. They were very grateful to be in Taipei and to be at that particular branch. They basically had the attitude of “everyone else sucks and we rock,” which I don’t understand, because they very much do not rock. I don’t want to be a jerk and blame it on the fact that he’s from New York City--I find it ridiculous to blame a person’s hometown for their personalities--but when I said I was from Chicago, he got that special twinkle in his eye that some people (especially those from NYC) get when they realize how much better they are than you. That’s when I knew it wasn’t going to work out between us.

Anyway, I survived the children’s class and we met with the director of the adult department, who was the first person to actually sit us down and explain how they do things at this school (as opposed to just doing observations and guessing how things work). He explained the different levels of adult classes and how the school approaches teaching. He then sent us to observe an adult’s class, taught by a really cool guy from South Africa & Australia. He talks real slow with an Australian accent and is really laid-back—totally how you would picture an Australian dude. He was an excellent teacher, I was sad that we wouldn’t be able to work together.

I believe for dinner we ate at Mos Burger, a popular Japanese hamburger joint. I ordered a burger with the spicy sauce, which turned out to be a curry-ish sauce. It was weird, but I kind of liked it. When we were sitting there, I noticed that “Away in the Manger” was playing over the loudspeaker. That cracked me up, it’s so funny how inappropriate that song is in the middle of September at a Japanese burger joint in Taiwan to someone with my background, but how no one from Taiwan even notices.

The next day we went to the bus station to head to Taichung! We said goodbye to the rep who had been helping us out in Taipei and got on the bus. It was very green—green seats, green curtains, green walls—but nice, and it was only about $4 US for the two-and-a-half hour trip. I really really enjoyed the bus ride. I was a little nervous about it at first—expecting the driver to drive like a crazy person—and I didn’t know if we would be driving on any treacherous roads. It was also initiating flashbacks of the bus ride back to Hong Kong from Yangshuo, which was only supposed to take 12 hours, and ended up taking over 24 (I believe it was hour 17 when I finally lost it). But the bus ride was great—the bus driver didn’t drive crazy and the roads were just freeways. It was nice to relax, listen to some music (for the first time in a week), enjoy the landscape, and think about how I want to approach my new job and what I want to accomplish here in Taiwan.

We got off the bus in Taichung (not without a little confusion, but luckily the bus driver knew where we were supposed to get off), hailed a cab, and went to meet our actual bosses at our actual school. The first people we met were the Manager and Adult Department Director of the school, who were very friendly and welcoming. We parked our 80000000000 pounds of luggage in the front office and went on a tour. The school looks just like the ones in Taipei, but a bit newer. There are two branches in Taichung, and the one we first went to is referred to as the “New School.” The other one (can you guess??) is called the “Old School.” Most classes are at the New School and a few adult classes are at the Old School. The Adult Director is from Wales and is a squirly-lookin 40 or 50-somethin guy who mumbles to himself and rambles a bit. He’s pretty awesome. He goes to great lengths to accommodate new teachers and make the transition smoother. He took us on a tour of the surrounding area, showing us Sogo (a huge department store), some parks, a laundry place, and some restaurants he likes. He also made me feel less guilty for not knowing Chinese, because he’s lived here for ten years and still doesn’t speak it. He even bought us some tea from one of the many tea stands in Taichung.
We also briefly met the Director of the Children’s Department, who has been helpful in our apartment search.

We then headed to our hotel, which our school pays for for seven nights and is in the same building as the Old School. At this point, I don’t know if we will find an apartment by then (Wednesday), but one of our friends has offered us a place to stay until we find something. The hotel is really really nice compared to our place in Taipei. I’m starting to think that every hotel is a love hotel, though, because even though the room is normal (no provocative pictures on the walls), the vending machines are full of…products to…accommodate…whatever goes down in a love hotel (whether you’re alone or not, hint hint). Also, most of the channels on the TV are porn. I don’t know if people don’t care if their kids see porn or what, but I’m surprised how much porn is on televisions in hotels. We went sight-seeing for a little while on Thursday, looking around the cute and peaceful Taichung Park, but we have mostly been training/observing/trying to find apartments and cell phones.


The Adult Director gave us a little orientation on Friday, the purpose of which was to help us understand where are students are coming from language-wise and how they go about learning English. For example, you don’t conjugate verbs in Chinese. There’s no past tense, no future tense, etc. You just say the subject and the verb and the context gives the sense of time. In English, there’s tons of tenses. Present perfect, past continuous, blah blah blah. When to put an “s” at the end of verbs is also problematic: ie: “We get sandwiches on Wednesdays” or “She gets sandwiches on Wednesdays.” It was nice to get that kind of overview, and I think analyzing English in this way is interesting. The English we know, as native speakers, is ingrained into our brains and we don’t learn grammar in the way that ESL students do. When do you use “look” instead of “watch”? As in, “He watched TV while I looked at the painting.” I don’t know the answer to that—you just do! These are questions students will ask that native speakers don’t really know how to explain. This lesson reminded me of being introduced to verb conjugation in my first French class and complaining to my Dad about how confusing it was. It took me a week or two to wrap my head around the simple idea of conjugating verbs. The reason for that is native English speakers don’t have to consciously conjugate verbs. We just know which verbs are appropriate from being immersed in it. But when you approach a new language you have to think about these things and memorize the patterns. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s really interesting.

The Children’s Director also took me around the area that day, pointing out good restaurants and explaining how to order food in Chinese. Then, Mike and I had to do a demo for her. My class involved teaching countries, and I don’t think it went too bad. The most important thing is to act confident at all times and I wasn’t that nervous about it. Obviously, if we still teach like that in three months, there’s a problem, but for a first try I don’t think either of us were that bad. She said she was surprised neither of us had taught before, but pointed out some things to keep in mind. One is how we write letters. I write my capital “U” with a little tail, so it’s basically a giant little “u.” Mike writes a smaller version of a capital “N” for his lower-case “n,” which is also incorrect. She said if parents see that in the kids’ correspondence books, they will call and complain. So now I have to be careful and keep that in mind. Another thing to worry about is the order in which you explain directions and pass out handouts. If you do something in the wrong order, the students will be distracted or confused, so you have to think about the timing—something I wouldn’t have thought teachers had to worry about.

The school provides lesson plans for every single lesson and the Adult Director wrote his own for each lesson, so you have two options for each class, plus tons and tons of worksheets, exercises, and game ideas. So there is a lot of preparation involved, and you have to know what works for your particular class and what doesn’t, but we don’t have to come up with the plans from scratch, which is good for people who don’t know what they’re doing. For dinner we went to a dumpling place that the Children’s Director had showed me, and Mike ordered noodles while I ordered shrimp dumplings. My dumplings rocked, but Mike hated his noodles. I tried them, and while the sauce was a little weird, I thought it was mildly good, so I ate some of those too. We’ve had a little bit of trouble with food—most food stalls have no English signage at all and half the restaurants are Japanese. So usually we eat mediocre Japanese food. But now that I have an idea of what restaurants are around (there are a lot more around the New School than at our hotel by the Old School) and how to order food, I think it will get easier. We just have to be patient.

We had a class to observe and orientation on Saturday morning, but after that, we went to see an apartment building that one of the other teachers at our school is staying in. The Children’s Director had called the landlord, who doesn’t speak much English, to let them know we would stop by this weekend. She drew us a map and after a little wandering and confusion, we found it. The apartment has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen, so it sounded like too much space for us, but we thought maybe it’s not as big as it sounds. But it’s a lot of space, the bedrooms are pretty large and there’s an open living room area too. It’s way too much space for just us. We could get other roommates, but we’re not sure if we want to live with strangers. It’s also a little dirtier than we had wanted (at least the kitchen is), so for now we aren’t really considering it unless there is nothing else.

Unfortunately landlords are harder to reach on the weekend and there is a typhoon coming today (Sunday), so we have to wait until Monday to see another apartment building. We have two more landlords in mind to call (they both speak Chinglish, so communicating might go OK), and hopefully we can see apartments on Monday and Tuesday. If none of those work out, one of the teachers here has offered us a room in her apartment until we find something. That is very very nice of her and much appreciated, because then we don’t have to settle for something just to avoid paying for a hotel/hostel.

So after checking out the 3-bedroom apartment on Saturday, we went looking for super-cheap cell phones. We found them, but when we tried to buy a Sim card, they told us we needed to provide a copy of our ARC’s (work permits) and passports. Confused, we left the market for the hotel to research this strange request online. We also called our friend from the school, who is from Vancouver and has been here four and a half months. She said that we do need copies of our ARC’s and passports, and she also invited us out to a bar with some of her friends. So later that night we met her in front of Sogo to go to FM, a bar that foreigners tend to frequent.

She and her friend from Australia met us and another Canadian woman and we took our first scooter rides. Mike and I were not thrilled to be on the backs of scooters sans helmets, but it was only a minute or two away and the Australian girl assured me that she’s a safe driver. One part of me was thinking, “Weee! Scooter!” and the other part was thinking, “OMG we’re going to die! Why is she driving so fast!?” even though she wasn’t driving fast at all.

But we survived and had a couple drinks and met some other foreigners. Everyone says the foreigner community is very tight in Taichung, more than anywhere else in Taiwan and more than most other countries. Everyone knows each other by three degrees or so, and there are events and get-togethers almost every day of the week. That is nice to know, because even though Mike and I have had each other, we’ve been a little lonely and are eager to make some friends. I would love to and plan to make friends with Taiwanese people too (and we did make friends with a couple last night), but at this point I don’t know Mandarin, so if I can only communicate with other English-speakers, chances are they’re also going to be foreigners.

Everyone we met was really nice and much more interesting than me. It’s fun meeting so many nomads, who just go from one country to another finding work and doing whatever. It was also a nice break to be in a Western bar/restaurant. Everything made sense! I knew how to order food, what everything was, how and where to pay, what to expect from the bathroom, etc. It seems like every restaurant we go to is different in terms of paying and we never know how to pay or how to ask. But, it will get easier once we learn some Mandarin and get a feel for different restaurants.

Today (Sunday), we are stuck in our hotel room. We were going to go with our Canadian teacher friend and her friends to a temple and jade market, but a super typhoon (category 4 I believe) is on the way, so the trip is cancelled. The foreigners we met said to be sure we have food and water because we might not be able to go outside for a day or two. Right now it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and it’s been raining on and off and is quite windy. However, as a result, the weather yesterday was AWESOME. It was sunny and much cooler. Last night there was a nice breeze and even today, although it’s rainy and windy, the temperature is great. I wish it was always that temperature here! In the next couple hours, the storm is supposed to really hit, so we’ll see what being in a typhoon is like. Our hotel is nine floors up, so flooding shouldn’t be an issue. As long as no debris comes flying through the window, we should be OK. I’m actually a little excited about it—I’m completely unfamiliar with typhoons, but the other teachers said this is the third or fourth one of the season and they don’t seem that worried. They said it’s funny seeing videos of people going full speed on their scooters but going backwards because the wind is so strong. So I’ll let you know how the typhoon goes!

As far as teaching goes, we start teaching this week. We’ve met all the teachers and they all seem very nice. For most classes, there is a Chinese teacher and a foreign teacher and the students split their time between the two. Mike and I are both subbing for a teacher from Texas who is taking some days off because her dad is visiting. The two classes I have are 8-9 year olds and 13-14 year olds. Mike has the real little kids, like age 7, which I’m super jealous about, because I love the seven-year-olds—they’re crazy and so much fun. I’m also going to be taking over a class of 9-10 year olds (K11 level) and 14 year olds (A level). The A level class I have observed before, and I’m a little nervous about it because (a) they’re 14 so they couldn’t care less and (b) it’s a Friday night class so they couldn’t care less even more (but who can blame them)! Friday night + being 14 + learning English = no fun! They talk in Chinese a lot throughout class, but they don’t seem like jerks, so we’ll see how it goes. Plus, I think their class is almost over.

Mike is starting off with adult classes this week and then just subbing children’s classes. The Adult Director is still working on my adult class schedule, but I know that I’ll be “practice teaching” for a half hour next Saturday, and the Director will be there while I teach and will give me tips afterwards. I really like him so I’m not too nervous about him thinking I’m a terrible teacher. I’m sure most people here are terrible at the beginning, but I’m enthusiastic and fairly confident in front of the classroom (so far). He said he is a very reserved, academic person and was very nervous about teaching at first, but now he’s been doing it for ten years. And everyone tells me that enthusiasm and confidence are the keys. So (to take a cue from Mr. McCain), I’ll take off my “Oh-my-God-I-have-to-teach-I-barely-enjoy-talking-how-will-I-teach??” hat and put on my “I’m-super-talkative-and-excited-to-teach-English” hat and call myself a teacher. And I really am looking forward to it. I really really really really want to like it and come back to the States determined to be a teacher. At the very least, I just want to come out of it alive!

Weird Stuff from Taiwan (continued)
6. The garbage man: We were walking around Taipei when we heard music--Fur Elise to be exact--I said, "Ohhh, the ice cream man!" but when we turned around, we saw it was the garbage man. The garbage man drives his truck around playing music and people come out of their stores with bags of garbage to toss in his truck. I've heard the garbage man several times now, and each time my first thought is that it's the ice cream man. How ironic that it is pretty much the opposite.