November, where have you gone?

It seems November has come and gone without making an appearance on my blog. So here's what has happened since last I left you:

• I went to the Harvard Band 90th Reunion and got to see some old friends; Jonathan even flew in from Poland for the weekend, in part because...
• I turned 24;
  
• The Phillies were once again in the World Series, but thanks to uncapped salaries in the MLB, did not reach the same conclusion as last year;
• I got Windows 7 as a birthday gift from my brother John, and so far it is as awesome as all the commercials make it sound;
• Milo has started sleeping a million hours a day, so I no longer have a puppy's urgent bladder waking me up in the early morning;
• I bowled over 100 twice in one evening;
• Thanksgiving happened and I ate my weight in turkey and pumpkin pie;
• I attended my 5-year high school reunion, which was not as awkward or uncomfortable as anticipated;
• I finally ordered a monitor (TV) for my computer from TigerDirect's Pink Friday sale, so I can stop borrowing my Dad's.

I have a handful of half-written blog entries in my head about various unrecorded Taiwan experiences, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to write them out. Wrapping up those few last entries will really conclude my year in Taiwan, and as I still tell acquaintances that "I just got back from being abroad," it seems weird to let go of the experience entirely. There has been a real lack of continuity in my life since graduation. I spent a year in another country with another language and a new routine and a whole set of new people, then I abruptly returned to suburban Pennsylvania with a year of holidays and birthdays gone by, finding my friends with jobs and apartments instead of classes and dorm rooms.

Enough of that. I just wanted to say, I haven't forgotten about this blog or about the things I plan to write in it. I thought all I needed was to find the time to create (of which I have plenty), but as it turns out I still haven't found all the right words.

Sushi in the US? Very yes. Blogging? We'll see.

It's way more expensive, it's not as fresh, it has weird English names, and did I mention it's way more expensive? But my first experience at a sushi restaurant in the US was a positive one. For those not keeping score at home, I'd never dared to eat sushi until it was forced upon me in Taiwan, and I quickly fell in love.

Considering I've been home for over three weeks, there are still many foods on my to-eat list, and I have a great deal of unpacking left to do. Of course, the fact that I never unpacked from senior year of college doesn't make anything easier.

I should probably justify my latest prolonged absence. I wasn't only sleeping. First my laptop decided to stop turning on (again). Then the wireless internet decided to stop working, so even my mini laptop was useless.

The truth is also that I have no idea where to start. I have a lot of un-blogged stories and pictures that I'd love to share with you.

So let's start at the very beginning. Well, the beginning of this year, anyway. I never did write about what I did to ring in 2009.

At the very end of the first semester, the student teachers at Fu Xing got enough free time and outgoingness to introduce themselves. I had had no idea that there were a handful of other 22/23-year olds wandering the halls of Fu Xing, also without teaching experience. I got the chance to hang out with some of them a few times before the semester ended (they left Fu Xing after first semester). They ended up inviting me out for New Years' Eve.

First, we had dinner at Ikea. I had the Swedish meatballs.

Then we went to the Dream Mall (the "Times Square" of Kaohsiung?) for festivities and fireworks. We had to pose with the World Games mascot:

Then we met up with fellow Fulbrighters Billy and Dan.

I even ran into one of my fifth graders, Willy! No, it was not really cold enough to warrant wearing a hat (maybe 55 F), but I really wanted to feel wintery.

And then there were fireworks.

After the fireworks, we headed home in what I thought was impossible: a scooter traffic jam. But I was really glad to get to know Kenji, Ray, and Etty. Even though Kenji and Ray went back to Taipei at the end of January, Etty continued on as Fu Xing's new Taiwanese teacher for the second semester, and her classroom was right next door.

A very belated happy 2009!

Hamburger Breakfast: A Dragon Boat Adventure

The past few weeks, many Kaohsiung Fulbrighters and I participated in the 端午節 festivities by forming our own 龍舟. We were competing in the foreigner division against the likes of full-of-giant-Germans 中山大學, the very European Wenzao University, and the International World Games team, to name a few.

Anyway, when I first heard about dragon boating back in the fall, and found out there was a drummer who kept the beat, I knew what I wanted to do. So as early as possible I "called" the role of 鼓手... after all, I have rhythm, and the boat wasn't really missing out by not having my rowing arms.

I can't speak for the rowers, but I had a fantastic time as drummer. The rowers were supposed to follow my beat, so I had to give them a steady and doable pace while also aiming to be competitive with the other boats. It was basically my job to bang a drum and scream. What could be more fun? Maybe the guy who got to sit on the front of the boat and grab the flag at the end, but then again, he almost fell into the not-so-sanitary Love River.

Our boat consisted of 20 rowers (half Fulbright, half Taiwanese friends), the drummer (me), a steerer/tiller (Chris, our Bureau of Education liaison), and a flag-grabber (Henry, a military worker at Ling Jhou English Village). We had a total of four practices that were about 45 minutes each before we raced, and as the practices were in the afternoon, we never got to practice with a full boat. So, we may have lost in the end, but I'm incredibly proud of our team. The first time we tried the full length of the course (500km), it took us over seven minutes. On our final race, we clocked in at 4:18. Not a technical victory, but a moral one. Plus, those Germans were huge.

Our team name was supposed to be something intimidating. We chose "Hamburger Breakfast." Why? Because Taiwanese people think that Americans eat hamburgers for every meal. So I frequently led the team in a motivational chant: What do we eat? HAMBURGERS When do we eat them? FOR BREAKFAST!

As I was actively drumming and screaming throughout practices and the competition, I couldn't take any pictures. But here are some pictures from Fulbrighter Shiela and Jo (from San Min English Village).

Warming up before practice:

An afternoon practice with a less-than-full boat:

Getting geared up for our first race, in uniform:

Rowing into place for our first race:

Maya got some great photos of our races here. Also check out her video:

Anyway, Hamburger Breakfast was certainly a positive experience. Drumming for the dragon boat was one of the most fun things I've done since coming to Taiwan, and I hope I get the opportunity to do it again someday.

I should include that our fantastic team t-shirts, courtesy of the design styles of Fulbrighter Gered, include our team name, all of our names, some great designs, and my suggested slogan of "Your Ass is Dragon." Ten points if you can name that literary reference :-)

Mother's Day Celebration...

...also known as the best "school day" ever.

When I found out I had to work on Saturday, I was less than excited about it. Those of you who know me know I like to sleep for 75% of my weekend hours. But the tradeoff was no school Monday, and Saturday wouldn't even be a full day of work. So, I woke up at 7am and was at school by 8:15, wondering what this special "Mother's Day" workday would entail.

First, there was a 90-minute assembly. A few classes from each grade performed a 台語 or 客家語 song and dance. As I don't understand either language, for me, this was mostly an exercise in smiling and nodding and taking pictures of the shiny costumes.

A sample:

A third grade class wears traditional Hakka clothing:

A sixth grade class ends the show with "We're going to Hawaii" in Taiwanese. Needless to say, the boys in grass skirts and coconut bras were a big hit:

The crowd looks on at a fourth grade performance:

After that, it was out to the carnival held in the school courtyard:

Each class had its own booth, where they sold food, drinks, or wares, or held a carnival game. Here I failed miserably at the very-difficult ring toss hosted by one of my classes:
Not pictured? Me successfully knocking the cans over at two different throw-a-thing-at-the-cans booths.

My fourth grade sports class chose to sell worms (that would later go into cocoons, that would later grow into moths). I tried to buy something/somehow participate at every booth, but this is one where I had to decline:

Some fifth grade students try to sell their products to Susan and me.

I was easily persuadable, but I made them use at least a little English to sell it to me, and promise to work hard in English class, before I handed over the money. As a result, I ended up with two popsicles, a Slurpee, a cell phone charm, two bottles of bubbles, a soda (with a marble stuck in the bottle?), french fries, some lollipops, and countless other small pieces of candy. I don't think I'd had that much sugar since I was in elementary school.

All in all, the chance to interact with my students as just young, fun people, instead of having to stand in front of them trying to tell them what to do in a language they don't understand, gave me a whole new dimension to them. And it wasn't bad for a day of work, either; in typical Taiwan fashion, working Saturday meant getting the day off today.

Happy Lunar New Year!

I am of course in a land of few-to-no Asian people, but I must remember it's lunar "Chinese" new year.

I may not be in Taiwan to partake of the holiday, but here are some photos from when I went New Year shopping with my host family. And I thought Christmas shopping at the King of Prussia Mall was crowded...



Shopping for Chinese New Year, as I learned, is not shopping for presents or even really decorations, but it's shopping for little snacks and other food items. I brought some with me to Krakow, and I'll certainly have some in celebration tonight. Too bad I won't see any fireworks...

'Tis the Season...

... for holidays! Finally, winter break in Taiwan has come. And I'm leaving for Kaohsiung International Airport within the hour. Kaohsiung to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Munich, Munich to Krakow. See you on yet another side of the world!

Also, since it's finally the holiday season here, check your mailboxes. For those who didn't get their addresses to me on time, though, here's your virtual Taiwan holiday card!


Yes, that's my (female) roommates and me in matching reindeer outfits, and Milo in a sweater.

Happy lunar new year, and 寒假快樂!

Happy Birthday, Fu Xing!

Alternate title: That time I got sunburned on January 1st.

Here in Taiwan, every school has a "birthday" celebration. Contrary to my instincts, this "birthday" does not fall on the same day every year, but instead the administrators pick a seemingly random day in the first semester on which there is normally no school. For my Fulbright ETA colleagues, that was random Saturdays throughout November and December. For me, that was Thursday, January 1st.

The school birthday, also called "sports day," involves the whole student body contributing something in terms of performance or, more commonly, athletic events. From relay races to tug-of-war to potato sack races to cheerleading, there was something there for everyone.

These things are best described in pictures.

To kick it off, the kindergartners did about 15 minutes of repetitive choreography with pom-poms and then parachutes to very, very irritating music. But they are kindergartners, thus, it was adorable:



Then, the boy/girl scouts honored the principal and other administrators with a performance. It started like this:

Why were most kids wearing T-shirts with "FUN" painted on, while some boys stood with black garbage bags? Well, it went from this, to bizarre dance-fighting, and finally turned into an homage to the World Games, playing the ever-present World Games theme song in the background. Watch the video to find out what was under those trash bags:


Then, there were lots and lots of sports competitions. 1st graders with hula hoops, 2nd graders kicking soccer balls around chairs... all the way up to 6th graders trying to throw a Frisbee through a hula hoop. Harder than it looks.

After these "fun" events, the rest of the day was running. Every kid in every class ran a race, and then the fastest in each class formed a relay team, then each grade had a class vs. class relay. Not surprisingly, the baseball/badminton class won in every grade.

Look at these third graders run for their place in the relay:
And the utter domination of the sports class (inner lane), expertly completing the hand-off while everyone else waits:

And like everything else that's good in life, I got a free t-shirt. You'll note in the above pictures that teachers are all wearing light-blue t-shirts. What you can't see is that they have our mascot, a baseball-playing penguin, in the upper corner. Unfortunately you can't see it in this picture either, but Tyler's smile is just too adorable to pass up:

The moral of the story: if you have to work on January 1st, this is probably the best it gets.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from the Dream Mall in Kaohsiung, Taiwan!

More lengthy update to come.

Christmas in Kaohsiung

Now that I've gone over my classroom activities, I can tell you about the "traditional" Christmas I managed to pull together in this land without any apparent Christmas tradition.

Every Christmas since I can remember, I have been in Berwyn with my family. We go to church on Christmas Eve at 11pm, where we sing Silent Night in candlelight. Christmas day, we wake up in the morning (or afternoon, in recent years) and open presents and stockings together under the tree. "We" of course is my mom, dad, brothers, usually grandmother, and more recently, Cressy, our high-school-days' foreign exchange student from China. Then we have an extended family Christmas dinner, either at my family's house, my grandmother's house, or my cousins' house nearby. We call family further away, and then occasionally my brothers will run off to a movie and maybe invite me along, too. Or we'll all fall into turkey-and-sugar coma and fall asleep.

I was more than a little bummed about being away from home for Christmas. Right after Thanksgiving, my roommates and I decorated our apartment with a small (fake-- duh) tree, lights, and even some stockings. We found all the Christmas movies we could get our hands on, but that's all we could do.

As Christmas came closer, though, it started to seem a little more real. I was angry about having to be here, I tried to pretend it wasn't Christmas, I got sad about it, and finally, I got over it. I managed to find an English-speaking (in fact, foreigner-run) candlelight service on Christmas Eve, with Silent Night and readings from Luke and everything. We ordered a turkey from a hotel nearby, and some Fulbrighters even made some homemade mashed potatoes. So those Fulbrighters around brought a dish, came to our apartment, had a Christmas dinner, and watched Christmas movies. After our guests left, my roommates and I exchanged presents under the tree. It wasn't home, but it was something.

My roommate Dan, carving the turkey:

Decorating gingerbread cookies, care of Nicki:

Christmas revelry. You can see our decorations in the background:

After the gift exchange. Vicky is "that kid" who has to wear every gift she receives...

After watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" over a dozen times last week, I finally had to learn my lesson...

Christmas Day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.

Christmas comes to Fu Xing

I could either write one really long update about the holiday season in Taiwan, or I can break it up into hopefully digestible bites. So, here's the holiday update on how Christmas came and went at Fu Xing Primary School. We spent about two weeks of class doing holiday-related activities... I could write about it, or I could show pictures. I think I know what all my blog-readers prefer.

First, I taught them about the holiday season in the US (I even tried to talk about Chanukah before Susan told me it was too hard to understand...). Then they drew/colored pictures to decorate the classroom and listened to Christmas music. No pictures of that.

Second, they wrote letters to Santa. Some choice entries:

(As you can see, some didn't quite grasp the concept of a form letter.)

Third, my fifth graders put on a Christmas recital in their music class. It involved "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Santa Claus is coming to Town," in English!

Here they are, performing "Jingle Bells," or 叮叮當, on the recorder. Did you know that recorders come in soprano, alto, tenor, and bass varieties?

A performance of "We Wish you a Merry Christmas:"

Also, we watched the old cartoon version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in all my classes... 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders alike found it hilarious, captivating, and comprehensible-- even without subtitles. I'm sad that I no longer have the ability to laugh at cartoons just for being funny-looking. Anyway, the movie got across the message that I thought many of them needed to hear: Christmas is not defined by presents or decorations or fancy food.

A picture of the kids enjoying the Grinch (I'd never seen them pay this much attention all semester):

My grinch lesson board:

For those classes who had time, I wanted to tell my favorite Christmas story, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." The language is a little steep, though, even for native English speakers of the same age, so, with the help of my fantastic co-teacher Susan, I translated it into a Chinese poem with (approximately...) the same meter and rhyme scheme. Then the students drew/wrote their reactions:

Some sample "reflections" on the poem:
Stanley, from class 4-5:

I like this poem, but is very long. X'mas's night is quiet so is good. reindeer it's fling very high. He is very fat. He has elf and toys, he want give many children. He can go any ( ), Many children has a stocking. children want a gift any years. They are happy in this day. The world is love X'mas. so I like x'mas, too.

Heidi, from class 5-3:

I like this poem, this poem is old, it is 200 years old, I like their's Santa. hope Santa can give me a computer, but Santa is not here, this poem is long, the picture is beautiful, the Santa is fat, and teh Santa is nice, hope can listen again. Merry Christmas.

If anyone is interested in my (illustrated!) Powerpoint of "Twas the Night before Christmas" with Chinese and English, let me know.

And finally, since I did have to work all day on Christmas, I figured the only way to get through it was to bring it. So, of course, I brought it. And "it" was a reindeer sweater and antlers.

So, a belated Merry Christmas to all of you, from Fu Xing Primary School!

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, I may be in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, and I may have had to work on both days that most Americans get off work, but at least I got to eat some turkey. And talk about it, a lot, in my 感恩節 lesson plan.

I was actually lucky enough to have two Thanksgivings. The first was last Saturday night; we met an American woman at a bar a few weeks back, and she was kind enough to invite us to her own American Thanksgiving at her apartment. So we enjoyed a Costco turkey, homemade pumpkin pie, and lots of other traditional American Thanksgiving food (including mashed sweet potatoes, provided by Apartment C) in the company of several English cram school teachers from the US and Canada.

The second Thanksgiving took place on Thanksgiving night and was held by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in Kaohsiung, which is basically the American consulate/embassy (but due to Taiwan's ambiguous political status, it cannot officially be called that). So, the chief of AIT hosted this event for Fulbrighters, our Taiwanese co-teachers, and some other Americans living and working in Kaohsiung. It was more than we could have ever hoped for on Thanksgiving in a foreign country. There was turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, cookies, cranberry sauce... and it was all fantastic. And thankfully for me (and all of you), my fantastic co-teacher Amy brought her camera and sent me all the pictures she took. And Taiwanese people love to photograph food. So, some photos from my first Thanksgiving away from home, care of Amy.

Homemade dinner, probably in the largest domestic oven in southern Taiwan... which would be average size in the U.S.


Pumpkin pie... straight from Costco!

A lot of the Fulbrighters and our co-teachers, with Mason (deputy chief of AIT):

Amy, Susan, and me, with the host (chief of AIT-Kaohsiung, or whatever you call it):

Note my insistence on wearing a sweater, even though it certainly wasn't cold enough to do so. The good news is, it was as low as 65 the other day! I hope these "cold fronts" come with more frequency from now on. (It's back to 78 today.)

As your holiday season approaches...

Hanshin department store has started putting up Christmas decorations, so I thought it would be fun to write up a list of some days I'll be working this year that you won't be.

I will be working on...

• November 27th, 8am-4pm
• November 28th, 8am-12pm
  
• December 24th, 8am-12pm
  
• December 25th, 8am-4pm
  
• December 31st, 8am-12pm
• January 1st, 8am-4pm
  

And so on and so forth. I figure this is about the time people start complaining about only getting off work a few days for Christmas, or having to work the day after Thanksgiving... or bragging about all their vacation days... Anyway, I'm probably not the person to go to for any of this.

Then again, I will be off from January 21st to February 11th. Krakow, here I come!

Happiest Halloween

Time to take a quick break from the ongoing Jon summaries to bring you a time-sensitive post about bringing America to Taiwan this fall.

Today was Halloween in the English classroom at Fu Xing. Because I don't teach there on Fridays, we had Halloween a day early. Now, Halloween isn't celebrated in Taiwan, so the only way people know about it is through English classes and the occasional display at a western chain (like Carrefour or Costco).

Earlier in the week, I gave a lesson on "this week in America" to my students... I talked a little bit about the World Series, Halloween, and the presidential election. A few students actually followed the Series and took after their teacher as diehard Phillies fans. And a lot of kids knew that Bush was the president of the US, and that Obama might be the next one (though Obama's opponent was, they said, "Hillary," "Bush," "Ma Yingjiu," or "that guy with the white hair"). I also talked about Halloween and told them that if they came to the classroom and said "Trick or Treat" on Thursday, they would get candy. Bonus candy for wearing a costume!

As the crazy American English teacher, it was my duty to be that teacher, going all out in a ridiculous costume and getting really excited about everything. By the time I got to Carrefour though, there were only three adult-sized costumes left. I chose this one. Note the sad-looking Asian man on the front.

The students exceeded my wildest expectations in terms of enthusiasm, as more than half of the fourth graders had some sort of costume (though many of the fifth graders were, of course, "too cool"). And students were coming from all corners of the school between classes to get candy and check out each other's costumes. Here's me and one of my fourth grade classes:

And finally, the highlight of the day of course came during second period. My fourth grade sports class (baseball and badminton players) finished their Halloween activities early, so we turned on the TV and watched the end of the World Series, live, on ESPN. I wish I had gotten video of their cheering "homerun" in Chinese, or jumping all over each other when the Phillies won, but of course, I was cheering with them. So here they are, mezmerized by the TV during the ninth inning.

And that's how I brought Halloween and the Phillies to Taiwan. If anyone remembers to ask me who won the presidential election next week, I'll know I've reached them. Now that's what I call being a cultural ambassador.

10-10 in Taipei

Before I started playing catch-up, Taiwan's birthday 10/10 or 雙十 (think 4th of July in the US) was coming up. As a Fulbright recipient, I was invited to Taipei for a big parade and banquet on 10/10. Luckily, Jon was able to come with me to the parade that morning under the auspices of dating a Fulbright. Sweet! The banquet was a little more closed-list, though, so he had fun wandering the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial while I half-heartedly, wholly-sunburnedly mingled at a very VIP event.

The parade was certainly the highlight of the day for me. Basically, it was four hours of speeches and performances in direct sunlight (guess who forgot to wear sunscreen)... the president of Taiwan was there, as well as several other politicians and Taiwanese celebrities. Being with Fulbright meant coming as a VIP, and we sat in the front of the parade area, next to the tent where the president/etc. sat, facing the masses of Taiwanese people who had waited in line for hours that morning to get in. I even got interviewed by someone in the Taiwanese media, and apparently some colleagues saw me on TV. The interview was pretty bland... I just played the happy American and said I love hot weather, the line wasn't too long, and the security was reasonable.

The event invitation had stipulated no cameras, so I didn't bring mine; when we got there and saw several people subtly and not-so-subtly taking pictures, I decided it would be okay to use my camera phone. Especially after I took a few pictures and the Taiwanese secret service dude sitting behind me didn't stop me.

So hold onto your internet connections, folks. I have probably 50+ pictures and videos from this event, but I'll try to crop this down into a tasteful, bloggable, slowconnectionable amount.

It began with what you'd expect... soldiers, military music, important people yelling patriotically:

Yes, it was sunny and hot and I didn't wear sunscreen. The only reason my face didn't get burned? Free (patriotic) hats!

The parade also had plenty of floats, representing various organizations or regions of Taiwan.

And plenty of choreographed performances, like these girls from Kaohsiung promoting the World Games in Kaohsiung, 2009. These girls made a performance at a recent Kaohsiung event, to be blogged later on...

And plenty of other performances, many with young children and/or traditional cultural displays and/or, for lack of a better way to say it, strong presence of the Asian "Hello Kitty" aesthetic.

Finally, because I believe the 10/10 banquet was more adequately covered in many fellow Kaohsiung ETA blogs, I'll leave you with just a few photos of this outrageous and fancy experience.

Taiwanese President Ma Yingjiu/Yingjeou (spellable many different ways)-- he's the guy between the backs of the Taiwanese Secret Service heads, mixing tea Hakka-style (though not the unidentifiable-but-probably-famous westerner in the middle).


On my way out... The "guest house" where the banquet took place, only open a few times a year for special occasions such as this. Note the red carpet on the left.

Someday when I'm home in the US and we're passing a slow afternoon, ask to see the rest of the pictures from 10/10. You probably won't regret it.