Random Scenes of Taiwanese Life

Things have been pretty normal here for the past few weeks, which explains my reluctance to post about it. Carolyn and I are taking turns being sick and I recently caught the flu and got bronchitis. I’ve recovered from the flu but I’m still coughing a lot, but my lungs no longer gurgle when I breathe so that’s a plus. I went to the chest doctor and he gave me antibiotics to take. It doesn’t help that this past week has been one of the smokiest, most polluted weeks I have seen in Taichung. I’m hoping my cough doesn’t turn into a lingering cough like Carolyn’s has.

I have a new private one on one student, which I am excited about. She contacted me online through a service that helps Taiwanese find English tutors. We met last Tuesday (when I was extremely sick but I needed the money), and the lesson worked out well. She’s very friendly and easy to get along with. At first I was afraid she would be looking for something more than tutoring lessons (people often set up tutoring lessons here when they are looking for a foreign boyfriend) but it turns out she is legitimately interested in learning English because she uses it at work. Hopefully the lessons last because it’s a nice source of extra income, and I receive cash right away instead of having to wait a month for a paycheck like at my school.

So a Canadian friend of ours who works at our school put in her one month’s notice last week and the school dropped her to 6 hours a week. At this point it’s cheaper for her to go home now instead of finishing the one month. It’s sad that the system our school creates provides an incentive to teachers to be dishonest. She has decided (and rightly so) that she should just stop showing up to work and she got plane tickets for this coming Monday. While it will put a little undue stress on whichever foreign teacher has to substitute her class, it’s better than her having to pay a lot of money to stay for the remaining month while only making $200. I hope she feels no remorse for putting the school in a difficult situation, because they do it to us all the time and I would certainly feel no remorse (perhaps I would even get some pleasure out of making the children’s director scramble to solve the problem). So this is what I have to look forward to during last month of being here in Taiwan.

On the plus side (I don’t know if I already mentioned this), I have received two new children’s classes. Teaching children is so incredibly different from teaching adults. Teaching adult classes are generally much easier because you don’t have to strive to keep them entertained (for the most part, I have a group of college-aged students who still require entertainment). The one children’s class I teach Thursday nights for two hours. These children are young (age 7-8) and for the most part they are very cooperative and happy children. I haven’t had to do any disciplining yet. The only problem I have is that they don’t understand the concept of taking quizzes and tests, so I have a very energetic boy who screams out answers he recognizes. And all the students keep asking me if their answers are correct during the test. I had to have the Chinese teacher explain to them how to take quizzes and tests, but they still were very confused. It’s okay, quizzing and testing 7-8 year olds is pretty ridiculous I think and it really just exists to make the parents feel good about the school.
The other children’s class I received is on Friday nights after my old children’s class. It lasts one hour from 9pm to 10pm. These kids are great and are definitely my favorite class. They are between the ages of 10 and 13. They are a lot of fun, they like to play practical jokes so they put an eraser on top of the door, and my Chinese co-teacher walked in and it fell on her and we all laughed about it. We have to cover a lot of boring material in this hour (mostly bookwork) but they still remain positive and friendly. I’m going to introduce more fun games into the class because it could be a lot of fun for everybody.

Outside of school we haven’t been doing much because doing things costs money. We did celebrate my birthday by getting a ton of delicious Indian food at a local Indian restaurant. Carolyn also got me a cake and new headphones because mine broke. It was quite a nice birthday! The cake is a coffee flavored cake with frosting squirrels and chocolate logs on top. It’s very delicious, we had got a similar one for our friend Michael’s birthday a few months ago. This coming weekend we are going to a tourist forest recreation area in Nantou county with our local Taiwanese friends (they are driving us ☺ ). That should be fun and I will post some pictures on Sunday. We also want to take the High Speed Rail to Kaohsiung sometime soon and go to Kenting as well. Kenting is the tropical beach area in the southern part of the island. I could really use a tropical retreat! Have a great week everybody.