5th Graders

Happy One Month Anniversary to Jen&I in Taiwan!

The students in both my 2nd grade and 5th grade classes like to race to see who finishes their workbook page first by shouting out “Finished!” when they are. It bugs the crap out of me, and I’m always telling them to stop it or ignore them. Today, the 5th graders kept doing it, and finally I exclaimed, “Why does everyone keep telling me that they’re finished?” Edison piped up from the front row, “Because they’re from Finland.”

Finished. Finnish. Finland. Surprised that Edison could even make jokes in English, I couldn’t keep a straight face for awhile.

And then during break, John who is normally the quietest and shyest kid in the class, pulled out his Chinese homework and says to Melody (who drives me nuts because she’s such a tomboy and is always talking in class) loudly in Chinese, “Teacher, help me do my math homework.” I’m sitting in the corner, pretending to grade homework and ignoring him, but quite interested in where this conversation was headed. Granted, it’s all in Chinese.

John: Teacher, come and help me do my math. Teacher, help me do my math!
Melody: Come on, Teacher doesn’t understand Chinese.
John: Yah, whatever. Hmpf, if we have to learn English, then why can’t she learn some Chinese?

At this point, I stepped in, amused and in English, “So John, you really think I can’t understand what you’re saying?”

John was completely taken aback. It was like a switch in personalities. In English, he’s all quiet and hesitant but in Chinese, he’s loud and haughty and can make comebacks quick as lightning. It was back to the English John, “Oh Tea.. Teacher, you know Chinese? Teacher, you learn Chinese?”

“Yes John, I can understand Chinese.”

In Chinese, muttered to Melody, “Wow, English and Chinese, Teacher’s amazing.”

On another note, the school gave me more hours. I get a few more tutoring hours, and also two more junior high classes to teach. One’s at Friday night from 7-9pm, and the other one is Saturday morning from 9-12pm. So now I’m up to 22 hours a week, which is plenty for me, but there goes my weekend.

2008
09/08
CATEGORY
teaching
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Night Owls

We went out for the first time in the month since we’ve been here. Saturday night, Charles invited Jen&I and some other people from work to have dinner at this house. He made spaghetti, and we just sat around and talked. I got all the dirt about people at work, and it was great merriment all around.

Then, since Jen&I have never been out, we got to experience a hole-in-the-wall pub with no name, which was filled with Americans and Canadians. I’ve met my first Canadians here in Taiwan, although Canada is so much closer to Nashville than Taipei. The cab ride there was ridiculous and quite informative because there’s a girl at work who’s learning Chinese, and I tried to serve as their translator as she was trying to find out his life story. Apparently, he’s 36, not married, but is looking for a decent traditional and conservative Taiwanese girl. He said that all Taiwanese girls do now is go out and party every night and are only attracted to foreign guys. When ThuVan asked if he liked to go out and party every night, he said that he would rather stay home with his wife and play with his kids. Adorable. Although, his personal saying (loosely translated) is “There are no good women in Taiwan. All the good ones are married.”

However, I beg to differ.

2008
09/07
CATEGORY
friends
night life
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Taiwanian, Like Bahamian

I got asked directions twice today! You know that means I’m almost like a native. The first time was at the bus stop, and some lady asked me where the Living Mall was which literally is like a block away. I told her to just go straight, and she was like, then what? Um, just go straight and you can’t miss it. There’s a huge ball attached to it.

The second time was on the bus home, and the man sitting in front of me asked if the bus was going towards Neihu. My school is in Neihu, and I was going home, so no. Then he kept asking me if the bus goes to the subway or the train station, and I had no idea. I felt bad, but of all the people on that bus to ask, including the bus driver, he chose to ask me. The foreigner who has only been here a month.

I made friends! There’s a fellow teacher at my school, Charles, who is having some of our other fellow teachers at our school and us over for dinner tomorrow night.

2008
09/05
CATEGORY
friends
tourist
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Mmm.. Ikea

And we are furnished!

On the way to work yesterday morning, I passed by a store like two blocks away that sells second-hand TVs. After work, Jen and I walked down there and bought a 20inch old-school TV for $2000NT ($63USD) and taxi-ed it home. And the driver helped carry it to the elevator for us.

Then we had dinner at this buffet place a couple of blocks away. It’s a road-side buffet with a spread of about 30 different dishes and you get to pick whatever you want and then pay according to how much you get. Mine was $80NT ($2.51USD) for a plateful and rice. I think it’s the closest thing to a home-cooked meal for us.

The internet called me fat, right? So Jen and I walked to AsiaWorld, a mall, where the Ikea is. Ok, it was like a 30-minute walk and easily remedied by taking a bus. Anyways, we got a coffee table, pillows, toolkit, and some other things to make this place a little bit more homey.

We finally figured out the trash schedule. The garbage truck comes up to the alley at 6:03-6:08pm everyday except on Wednesdays and Sundays. There are recycling trucks that follow the garbage trucks, but you can only recycle certain things on certain days i.e. paper on mondays, plastics on tuesdays, etc. There are government-sanctioned trash bags that you have to buy at convenience stores where you can put anything in them and not have to sort it. Recycling stuff can go in any kind of bags and are a lot cheaper, therefore it kind of encourages you to recycle.

But there’s a problem.

Jen & I will never get home in time to meet the garbage truck. You have to take the trash to them because they don’t collect it. So as of right now, it looks like we have to be home at 6pm every Saturday night to be able to throw our trash away. Yuck.

Update: Jen ordered a bed base for her mattress from a furniture store across the street, so I took the opportunity to ask the salesman if he knew of the trash schedule around here. He told me there was another stop after 9pm which is perfect. So last night, we got to meet the garbage truck! It’s good to know that we won’t have piles of garbage laying around our apartment.

2008
09/05
CATEGORY
daily life
food
shopping
1 comment

Yeah Yeah

The Internet just called me lazy. There’s this search on the Taipei bus site where you can input your starting point and your ending point, and it will tell you what buses to take to get there. I was trying to figure out how to get to Ikea from the bus stop closest to our place, and it told me that the distance is rather close so please try to get some exercise and walk there. Thanks a lot, Internet.

On another note, my 5th graders are driving me crazy. They talk a lot and take out their little exacto knives (which apparently they use to sharpen their pencils, and those things are allowed in schools??) and play with them. I think we’re going to do some assigned seating come Friday, and put the two worst students in separate corners.

However, I love my 2nd graders. They’re all angels and so smart, and we also finish early so we always get to play games. We’ve played a lot of Hangman, so I’m going to try and figure out some new games we can play to spice it up a bit.

2008
09/04
CATEGORY
teaching
2 comments