Balderdash

Hello everybody,
I've been looking for work recently and while I haven't had much luck there have been some promising signs. I've had two interviews/ teaching demos, and while neither of them ended up hiring me, I feel like I did fairly well during them. The reason I didn't get the jobs is that they are both part-time evening positions, which is what I already have (well my job is actually supposed to be full-time but of course it never turns out to be) so they would conflict with my schedule. And I can't quit my current job to work a part-time job because it's technically illegal to be working part-time and so a part-time position would not be able to supply me an Alien Resident Card like my current school does. I've also found some other schools hiring but so far they've all conflicted with my schedule as well. It turns out every school in Taichung wants English teachers to work at night and on Saturday mornings.

I'm hoping to find a part-time morning and afternoon position for maybe 2 hours a day. That would put me up to work about 25 hours a week, which considering the pay rate of $21U.S. an hour and the low cost of living here, I'd be doing pretty well. Carolyn has had more success than I have, she has been substituting in the mornings and she is being considered for a part-time morning job at a local elementary school. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because we could really use some extra work to survive here.

Speaking of extra work, my school gave me a new class to replace my other class that just ended, so I am back to 10 hours per week. In addition, I am being given a children's class (very young, maybe 7-8 years old) to teach on Thursday evenings, putting me at 12 hours per week. Up until now I've been typecast as an adult teacher (from what I've read online women tend to get the jobs teaching children while men are given the jobs teaching teenagers and adults). To be fair, the only reason I was given this class is because every single other white English teacher at my school already has a Thursday evening class. Therefore, I have become a final resort, haha! Not only that, but the full reason I am getting this class is because a fellow teacher friend of ours who works at our school just quit for a real job at an elementary school. So the school was in a pickle and they decided that while they strictly want me to teach only adults they had to grudgingly give me a children's class.

In other news, our school just hired two more white English teachers, completely over-saturating itself and therefore lowering all the current teacher's teaching hours dramatically. They expect teachers to quit so they hire new teachers even when they are unneeded, and thus drive the current teachers to quit! In a way, it's comical to step back and look at the idiocy of this situation and school. In another way, it's depressing that I have to put up with this sort of mismanagement for 7 more months.

Which brings me to another point, I am still applying to jobs back in Chicago, and if I find something decent and it looks promising I would highly consider taking it if I don't find work here soon. So please continue to keep an eye out for any jobs you know of that I am qualified to do.

Lately for recreation we've had to find cheap or free ways to entertain ourselves. Watching movies and television shows online is one thing we have started to do a lot of. We've also been hanging out with our fellow teachers more often as well. Two weekends ago we spent over 8 hours at our friend's house playing Balderdash. Well we weren't actually playing Balderdash because we didn't have the game itself. Instead, we took turns looking up people, dates, acronyms, words, and movie titles online and we would all write down a lie to convince people our answer was correct. It was great fun and I have learned many new english words such as gimcrack, costive, organza, and canaille. And do you know what the acronym V.O.M.I.T. stands for? Carolyn had the best lie, Victorian Old-school Murderers In Training. In actuality the answer was Victims Of Medical Imaging Technology.

So I've been in Taiwan for over 5 months and by this time I believe the honeymoon stage of living abroad is over, as well as the frustration stage. I am starting to feel more homesick though (I mostly miss family/friends/food/Marge). I've grown to accept living here (although a great many things still frustrate me). But things aren't as interesting to me as they initially were. I suppose if I had more work and I was making more money to use for travel I'd be finding more interesting things. Hopefully I do get some work so I can afford the tourist destinations that I want to visit before I leave in 7 months. Perhaps if I work really really hard over the summer I can even make enough money to visit India for two weeks like I wanted to. It's probably a pipe-dream for now but we will see.

I hope you are all doing well, please leave comments because I like to read what you have to say about what I have to say. Plus it lets me know who is still reading this.
-Michael