TEACHAAHH!!

Hello--Teacher Carolyn here (or, as students just say, “Teachahh, Teachahh!!”). I’ve taught four classes so far, so I guess that makes me a teacher. I find it really strange/disturbing to hear myself say phrases like, “Please open your books and turn to page 97” and “I’ll give you two more minutes to look over your notes before the quiz,” but I guess it’s also exciting. It’s hard to gauge how I feel about teaching at this point--four classes isn’t enough--but I think I like it…and I definitely like younger kids more.

My first class was great—they were about 9 years old and very cooperative and enthusiastic. It’s too bad I’m only subbing them and not inheriting their class. On Friday, I took over an A level class that I had observed before their former teacher left the school. It was the class’s last day--Friday night, 13-14 years old. I had some fun with them--I went around and asked them about themselves (what they’re into, what they like to do in Taichung, etc). When we went around the room going over the answers to the Final, I encouraged them to recite the answers with excitement and passion, perhaps incorporating arm movements or dances into their performance. One kid thought I was funny--the others either weren’t listening or just looked at me like I was nuts. Needless to say, no one interpreted and performed the answers to the Final in the way that I instructed, and we got through it the good ol’ fashioned boring way. It was a little tough getting them to do stuff, as I think they were hoping I would let them hang out and play cards all class, but they were mostly cooperative. I just found out that I’ll be inheriting that class as they move on to the next level. I was pretty relaxed this time, but that’s because it was the last day and I didn’t think I’d be keeping them. But I’m going to tell them on Day 1: I’ll give them two classes to stop constantly talking to one another in Chinese . If they don't stop after that, it’s seating chart time (at which point I’ll hold up my proposed seating chart, just so they know I’m not bluffing). Their old teacher and Chinese teacher may put up with their inattentiveness, but I won’t. So we’ll see how “Teacher Carolyn: The Hard Ass” goes next week...

I can already sense my mean teacher side coming out after only eight hours of teaching. I just can’t believe how hard it can be to get teenagers to cooperate. In my third class, I literally had to drag a girl up out of her chair to go talk to another student after she wouldn’t participate in the Interview activity the first three times I told her to. That was another A-level class--Saturday morning at 9:00 with 13-ish-year-olds. Again, I feel their pain. I’d be tired and annoyed too, but there’s one or two students who just refuse to cooperate and in my head I prepare to say things like, “I’m not going to ask you again!” and that’s when I realize I’m OLD. My feeling of oldness has greatly increased since graduating college, but being a teacher REALLY amplifies it (please refer to the diagram below). I want to scream at these 13 and 14 year olds that I was their age, like, two seconds ago, but I guess that’s not really true and they wouldn’t understand what I was saying anyway.


Anyway, the A level on Friday night and the A level on Saturday morning were pretty similar except that while the Friday night students talk too much in Chinese to one another, the Saturday morning students don’t do much of anything. I’m going to have to research games and activities that motivate young adults. The younger kids are easily motivated by games and “junk cards,” but none of that really works past age 11. My fourth class, one that I will keep until their term is over (early Dec), was pretty good. They were around 10 years old, on average, and while some of the boys talk too much (anyone wanna tell me girls talk more than boys?? HA!), they are good kids. One kid is a total teacher's pet. He spent the entire ten minute break making me a seating chart so I could more easily learn students' names and also added up the team scores from the previous activity. On the quiz they took, one of the questions was, "If I win a lot of money...." and students finish the sentence. Every kid put "I will buy a PSP, I will buy an airplane, I will buy a house" etc., except for this teacher's pet kid, who wrote, "If I win a lot of money, I will give it to my Dad." Isn’t that adorable? I wrote what a good son he is in the margin.

I think once I have my own classes (most of my classes so far have been subbing) and get a better idea of what’s going on and what games work well, I’ll like it a lot. I definitely prefer the younger kids, and I think I'm being assigned to a class with 7-8-year-olds, so I'm definitely looking forward to that. I like the process of going through the material in class, and I like the monotony of grading after thinking too hard to develop a lesson plan. The Children's Dept at our school is a little disorganized, compared to the Adults Dept, so I think it will take me a little while to understand what I’m supposed to be doing for each class and how I’m supposed to be grading, but the actual work itself I enjoy so far, and I hope to develop a good rapport with my students. We just found out today that we can’t use “sticky balls” anymore. Sticky balls are these rubber, colorful balls with suction cups on them that you can throw at the white board. They’re a staple in pretty much everyone’s lesson plans, but apparently some kid got hurt so now we can’t use them. I don’t know the story, but I would assume that during a break a teacher left the sticky balls in the room and a student threw one at another student. You’d have to throw them pretty hard and they’d have to hit you in a sensitive area for them to really hurt, but I guess it was a big enough deal that sticky balls are no more. Now we’ll have to find a way to play games without them. Sad times.

Mike and I have bought some things for our apartment, so we’re getting settled in nicely. Since we don’t have a stove, we bought this weird contraption that is a pot and a mini grill all in one. You plug it in, turn it on, and move a dial this way or that, and boom—you can boil stew while you grill a hot dog (as the picture implies). I’m not sure what the Chinese characters on the dial say, so hopefully we don’t burn the place down, but so far, so good! I can hear Alton Brown’s voice in my head, cursing this cheap, sorry excuse for a stove, but what can we do? On the plus side, since we’re living poor, transient lifestyles, there’s not a single “uni-tasker” in our kitchen. We have a spoon/spatula thing that serves as both (can you guess) a giant spoon AND spatula AND anything else we may need to pick up/stir/flip with. Alton would be proud (if you don’t know about Alton, he rocks: http://www.altonbrown.com/). Wow, I can’t believe I’m writing about our spatula on my blog. It’s exciting times over here, let me tell you. We’re even saving up for a bathroom mat!

I’ve become a little obsessed with the tea stands around here. You can find several on each street and, since green tea is the only thing I can say in Mandarin (besides milk tea, which I’ve been trying to avoid at the moment), I usually get that. It’s just iced green tea with some sugar and it’s delicious, refreshing, and inexpensive. I believe they have juices and teas mixed together, like passionfruit tea and grapefruit tea. I’ve tried samples of the grapefruit tea and, as someone who HATES grapefruit, I found it quite awesome. They really need these in the States.

I also tried a new kind of restaurant—a buffet. I know the idea itself isn’t new, but this is a Taiwanese buffet. They’re common here and I guess it’s a normal way of getting a meal. The ones I’ve seen aren’t enclosed restaurants; they’re open, like a garage. You just pop in, grab a box or plate, and fill it up with whatever you want. There’s fish, pork, chicken, tons of veggies, soup. I filled up my box with all kinds of junk AND I got a bag (yes, a bag) of white rice for $70 NT (a little over $2 US). And, it was pretty tasty (see picture...and yes, that's a fried egg. Eggs are everywhere. I think I've had 10 eggs in the past four days). I was feeling very good about myself—very accomplished—after buying this meal. I still don’t feel like I’ve “figured out” how to eat here, so doing something new (successfully) like this was rewarding. I had just found a store with lots of cheap stuff for our apartment, and had planned to eat elsewhere, but I saw a guy go to this buffet, so I thought, what the heck, I’ll follow this dude and do whatever he does. So I did, ate a new kind of dinner, felt like I was living a more Taiwanese life, and hummed the Mary Tyler Moore song all the way home. Later, Mike and I tried what we call an “Ice Monster,” although I’m not sure what they’re actually called. They’re kind of like snowcones, but really intense, rich ones, full of actual fruit. The stand we stopped at didn’t have pictures or English signs, and I didn’t see any fruit to point at, so even though I’m indifferent to mangoes, I ordered that (luckily I had my dictionary handy—guess what “mango” is in Mandarin? “Mang-guo”). They pour mango syrup on the ice and throw in some fresh mangoes, and man, it’s good! There’s some sort of cream in it or something too, because it tasted like a creamsicle, but mango-y. I’m looking forward to trying it again with some different fruit.


Over the weekend, Mike and I did more exploring. We wandered around Taichung, found the Botanical Gardens. The inside costs money, so we just stayed on the outside, browsing the pleasant parks surrounding the building (please see the unattractive, creepy picture of me in front of the building. And yes, that's a giant bug statue). We also attempted to go hiking. The bus dropped us off in the general area of the hiking trails/hot springs, but we had to walk up a road to get to the actual trails. We walked uphill for almost an hour, but we still hadn't found them and by the time we did it would probably be dark. So we headed back down and hope to go back next time with a better idea of how to get to the actual trails. But I guess it counts as hiking if you hike up a road, dodging scooters and trucks coming around bends. It's amazing to me how much Taiwan looks like Vietnam. Hong Kong is closer to 'Nam, but it doesn't really look like it. I guess Taiwan and Vietnam's latitudes are the same or close to the same, so that probably explains it, but the similarity is startling nonetheless. It's not what I expected.

We also went to the movies to see what that was like. We watched "Burn After Reading," which I was surprised to see as an option. You get assigned seats, but there were like 6 other people in the theater, so we didn't really follow that rule. They also specify in their video of theater rules that no videotaping is allowed, which I thought was pretty funny. As for the movie, I liked what it was going for but I don't think it succeeded. It wasn't as funny as it could have been, although Brad Pitt was pretty good. I've always thought that no one gives him enough credit for his actual acting capabilities. I'm not sure that that movie works if you're reading the subtitles, though, because the plot is kind of irrelevant. The humor of the movie is in the language and tone of the dialogue, which I would assume is lost when you're reading a translation. I was the only one who ever laughed during the film, so I guess it all was lost in translation.

People are really really really into their pets here, particularly dogs (I saw one with its ears and tail dyed hot pink today), and there are pet stores everywhere. Usually I look away from the pet stores because they are depressing, but there’s one down the street from us with a batch of kittens in the front window and they are RIDICULOUSLY cute. I’ll have to get some pictures of them before people snatch them up. They’re gray with black and white stripes and blue eyes. Their ears are all crumpled up too and they just roll around playing with each other or sleeping all day. SUPER cute. I want one…

I’m also obsessed with this fruit-jello-drink-snack-thing from 7-11. It’s called “Fruit Therapy” and is described as, “Refresh and Beauty Support” on the container. I usually get the grape flavor, but peach is also available. It’s gelatin but it’s not as hard as jello, not as loose as liquid. It’s kind of in-between. You get a spoon but since it’s not set, you eventually have to slurp it up. There’s little grapey flavored white cubes dancing around in it with two or three actual grapes floating around too. They’re full of grapey goodness. Although a little disturbing, they are quite delicious and very refreshing, and I’m afraid 7-11 is going to receive a good percentage of my paychecks as a result.

Weird Things (continued)

9. This rooster, hanging out by the canal.