My Big Break: A weekend to remember

At home, it is Memorial Day weekend. At home, people will get tomorrow off. At home, my high school friends are having their annual week(end) in Strathmere, New Jersey, and this is the first time in six years that I'm not there. It would be an easy time to feel homesick. But I haven't really had the time to think about it.

In Taiwan, we get next weekend as a long weekend (four days, in fact-- though does it really count, if you have to make one day up the following Saturday?). This weekend, the Fulbrighters and I were busy working from 9am-7pm on our Fulbright Kaohsiung project. The concept of our project changed (thanks to external forces) from an educational website to an educational DVD a few weeks ago. Since then, we've been scrambling to think of content, write scripts, and hire a film crew. So both days this weekend, we were at the Tai-Ping English Village filming our video (a great bonus of English Village is having your own private restaurant/airport/subway car for filming things).

It was pretty professionally done. The cameramen were concerned enough about noise that they wouldn't allow us to turn on fans or air conditioning in the small, windowless rooms where filming took place, and in late May in Kaohsiung (90+ degrees mid-day with high humidity), you can imagine how fun this was. But we pushed through it, we recorded all twelve scenes + vocabulary/grammar segments + self-introductions. Now it is in the hands of the film crew, until they give us back a version we can subtitle and approve.

So, it's not how I've normally spent my Memorial Day weekend, but it is certainly a weekend I'll remember. And if I ever forget, I can just watch the DVD. Someday, you might be lucky enough to see yours truly dancing the Hokey Pokey or playing the role of ambiguously-aged teacher Miss Cooper (the easiest to pronounce of my family names, and a tribute to the other [former] teacher in my family).

I only took a few photos, and they were all during the elaborate birthday party scene where I played 'girl who gave birthday boy a T-shirt and is also holding a camera.' I think it will give you an idea of what my weekend was like, though.

The camera crew:

Setting up our scene in the English Village restaurant:

Voila, a real-looking birthday party:

My head is still spinning from the craziness that has been the last few weeks, but I have a feeling things will stay rolling until I leave. Now, I should get to bed... our first dragon boat race is tomorrow!

Kaohsiung earns more tourist dollars because of American Fulbrighters...

Last week, my friend Lauren (also Harvard '08) decided to take her own spring break and visit me in Taiwan. This was very fun and exciting for me, as I don't get a spring break. So during her visit, I gave her a sampler of things essential to Kaohsiung City and my life there. Things like...

...eating 雪花冰 at Ice Art:


...taking a boat ride on the 愛河:

...getting all-you-can-eat 火鍋:

...going shopping at 新崛江, one of Kaohsiung's many 夜市s:

...hanging out with Chia-ling (and making peace signs in every picture):

...teaching some classes at 復興國小:

...and even stopping by the 太平國小 English Village:

Lauren and I also ventured to Lotus Lake, a place I hadn't been since August (when it was more like Lotus all-dry-and-smelly-because-it-was-dug-up-for-the-WorldGames), and spent the weekend in the mountains of central Taiwan. Blog posts on these adventures and more coming soon!

English Village consumes yet another day of my life

Alternative title: My first step toward becoming a Taiwanese soap opera star.

The Backstory
I don't know if you all remember, but there's this thing called English Village that is a big part of my job here in Kaohsiung. Two days a week, every week, I go to an elementary school other than my own Fu Xing (last semester it was Fu Dong, this semester it is Tai-Ping) and work the English Village. What does this mean? For over two hours I act as a "waitress" and repeat the same dialogue/activity eight times with a different group of fifth graders from Kaohsiung. Every ten minutes it's a new group that I've never seen before and will never see again. The amount of times I've said "menu" and "restaurant" since September is probably in the quadruple-digit-range, and I'm not at all exaggerating. I won't say it's not mindless, and sometimes my least favorite part of working here, but I acknowledge that it's a good experience for all of the fifth graders in Kaohsiung to get a chance to practice English and learn that speaking to foreigners isn't that scary.

Anyway, many schools throughout Kaohsiung also have their own English Village (though it's not yet part of the field trip circuit like Fu Dong and Tai-Ping). Fu Xing is lucky enough to have its own English Village convenience store and post office. Working at Fu Xing's English Village is far less painful, as I know many of the students and I don't have to do the same restaurant/menu/"I want blahblahblah" routine.

How this relates to my eventual fame and fortune
So someone, somewhere (read: probably the Kaohsiung Bureau of Education) decided to document the success of Kaohsiung's English Village program by making a film at each English Village, large and small. No one really knew what to do, though, so it has turned into a "let's show off our school and its best English students" video. Whatever. All I know is, I spent four hours this morning with a handful of our best fifth and sixth grade English students and a guy with a camera in all of our faces. Not something I expected to be doing this year, but as I've learned this year, when working in Taiwan, one must expect the unexpected.

I tried to minimize my actual on-camera time by giving the big parts to students, but I still did my part. Most of the day I just spent taking pictures and shaking my head in amusement and disbelief at the strange things that have happened since moving to Taiwan. Oh, culture!


The pictures you will all skip to instead of reading the above text
The pivotal Convenience Store scene:

The principal gets involved:

The recorder ensemble is featured, of course (sorry for the bad angle):

Fu Xing Decor?
And some weird World Games art created out of recyclable material. I'm unsure whether these were made for the video or whether kids putting up these art projects the day before the filming was unrelated.

A robot with all of the World Games sports on it:

The World Games mascots atop some empty bottles:

This one was actually pretty, made of cardboard and old CDs:

And this one wouldn't be nearly as creepy if it weren't wearing a sweater:

And that was how I spent my Friday. What did YOU do?

Typhoon Holiday, Brother Birthday

Gchatting with Alex, one of our Fulbright leaders in Taipei:

Tsung-hsun: hi, katie

home?school?

me: Hi Alex

yes, we are all at home today

Tsung-hsun: good

enjoy your typhoon holiday

Movies I watched while stuck inside during the typhoon:

• Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• Waitress
• Lust, Caution
• 10 Things I Hate About You
• Miracle Dogs Too (on Taiwanese TV)
  
• She's the Man
  

Food I consumed while most restaurants were closed because of the typhoon:

• Leftover Pizza Hut pizza (cold, of course)
• Peanut butter granola bar
• Kiwi (1)
  
• Oreos (several)
  
• Coca-cola
• Chicken Teriyaki burger and fries from Mos Burger

Amount my sleep schedule was thrown off because of the typhoon:

• A lot

Things that will make October different after this week:

• Typhoons will stop coming through ... knock on wood
• Jonathan will be visiting Oct 4th-22nd
  
• English Village will be on hiatus 10/7 to 11/2, which means more free time on Tuesdays and Fridays
• It will be at least a little cooler here in Kaohsiung ... knock on wood again

Time to go to bed again. If you know my brother Steve, remember to wish him a happy 25th birthday!


(Steve, at my graduation, after a night of no sleep, probably glaring at my mother for taking a picture of him)

Orienting for you and me

I realized I haven't actually addressed a lot of the basic details of what I'm doing and what my life is like here yet. So how about we try that? I'll try to make things sound way more interesting and entertaining than they actually are, to make for better reading.

For the month of August, I'm in orientation. Orientation is basically serving to get us acquainted with the city, the education system in Taiwan/Kaohsiung, our fellow Fulbright ETAs, teaching English at the elementary school level, what our positions will entail, and the local English teachers with whom we'll be placed. So far we've covered all but the last one (arguably two) of these items. We're probably meeting with some of the local English teachers (heretofore referred to as LETs) starting next week, and once we meet them, we'll have a much better idea of what they expect from us.

So for the time being, I am in orientation from about 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday. My weekends are totally open (save for the plans made by my very motivated peers), as are my nights. Once August ends, I have absolutely no idea what my schedule will be. We've heard that we'll be working anywhere from 20-35 hours a week at our various schools. I'll be working with a specific LET (to be selected through speed-dating-esque interviews next week) 3-4 days a week, working at an English Village on Wednesday afternoons, and hopefully sleeping at least 8 hours a night.

What's the English Village, you say? So glad you asked! There are various "English Villages" throughout Kaohsiung (in different elementary schools); they are basically micro-stores/malls/airports/banks/what-have-you. Every 5th grader in Kaohsiung goes to an English Village at least once a year to practice "every day English." At first I thought this kind of thing was a huge waste of money (whatever happened to writing 'POST OFFICE' on the board and going from there?), but after seeing the English Village at Ling Zhou Elementary School, I decided that having such elaborate "pretend" locations would be incredibly exciting and motivating for kids. I know that I'm looking forward to spending Wednesday afternoons playing the role of an emo barista, disgruntled postal worker, or inept bank clerk.

Because no blog post is complete without pictures, and because the English Village is really that impressive, I present you with these images from the Ling Zhou Elementary School English Village airport.

Fake flight schedule. Elaborate, eh?



Oh no! Billy lost his bags at baggage claim. Again!

In the fake airplane. I told you this was elaborate. (Shiela, Dan, Shana, me... pic courtesy of Shiela)

There's more to be seen and more to be told, but you'll have to wait until next time!