a slow process of catching up

There’s a lot to get myself straight with before I can just get into a rhythm here. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed in my first six months here. Not culturally, though I am dealing a lot more with the culture this time than last time (in a Taiwanese-run school dealing with very small children who are really too young for school and their parents is drastically different than an American-run school dealing with just school-aged kids), but just overrun. I’m working a lot, which is great for the pocketbook but terrible for my desire to do things other than work.

There are outlets – kung fu, friends, food, drama, Rock Band. Some of those things are consuming the artist, though. I’ve barely taken out my big camera in the past two months, instead using a little hand-held that is always with me (though this has proved helpful in other aspects). I’m not doing anything with my photos – after 12 hours out of the house, I just find myself wanting to read, maybe watch a TV show, rather than sort and apply and upload. I hope that Chinese New Year will help me overcome some of this by allowing me to catch up so that it doesn’t seem like such a daunting task.

my improving needs improvement

Hi there. You may remember me as the guy who used to write here. It’s been busy. Work is hectic – even though I work 34 hours a week, I’m out of the house for 50-some due to kung fu, travel times, and a long lunch break that I just spend chillin’ at the tea stand. It’s great for my reading time but terrible for blogging. In my defense, the food blog has been mildly updated (well, to the beginning of Taiwan, so really, just six months ago) and is primed for all of the treats we are enjoying here, and my photoblog is still up-to-date (or at least within a week of up-to-date) every day. I’ve got a break right now for Chinese New Year (the year of the Ox starts tomorrow), so I’m going to try and get a few things down while I’ve got the time, but it probably will continue to be the opposite of a plethora here. I’ll try, though! Until then, happy New Year!

5.6

We had an earthquake the other morning (funny, the only place I could find it reported was a world financial news page). Not super-powerful, but enough to send us swaying back and forth for over a minute. We went and squatted next to the desk, trying to take advantage of the so-called “triangle of life” toted by Doug Copp as the way to survive an earthquake. It sounded right, but I hadn’t looked it up – it’s not the best idea. While it does exist, it’s unpredictable and potentially just as dangerous as it is life-saving. Yikes. Good thing it was a gentle 5.6 – no injuries, no damage. Still doesn’t beat the 6.2 I experience my first week in Taiwan, nigh on five years ago.

chinglishmas

I dislike Christmas shows. It’s taken to an insane level here, as that’s about the only way to show off a school’s teacher’s English-teaching ability (like speaking English well isn’t, but like many parents the world over trying to understand their children spewing forth in a foreign tongue, one word sounds as good as any other), so schools push for the biggest, flashiest, danciest show that can be produced, then expect more. In some ways, Chris and I are lucky, as we have the youngest classes and expectations are a little lower for us than the two slightly older classes (though it’s a small comfort).
Let me tell you something that you don’t think about until you’re in the deep end: Christmas carols were not written for small children who don’t have English as a first language. I’ve heard them from the age of -1 or so, so they come pretty naturally, but look at some of the words used. Bells on bobtail ring? Newborn king? For goodness sake? Round yon virgin? Would you learn these words at the same time you’re learning cat, octopus, red, ten, and pencil if you were learning Spanish? Carols were written for English-speaking Christian adults to sing at Christmas, not for four-year-old Taiwanese kids. This may seem obvious to you, but it isn’t to my manager.

Anyway, the past couple of weeks has intensified to the point at which we are no longer teaching anything, just practicing Christmas shows, routines, songs, and dances for five hours a day – yes, everything has to have costumes, choreography, and props. On Tuesday, I was told my show was not flashy enough and had to change almost everything in it (the show itself is next Friday). Every day since, something has changed, so the kids are getting really confused. Good thing they don’t hold grudges.

Yesterday, all of the English teachers were handed scripts and told that they would be paired with children to introduce songs and acts. They had been written by one of the Chinese teachers who teachers more advanced classes. Here are the two scripts I was handed. The first introduces Jingle Bells:

Kid: I’m so exciting. I hear jingle bell ringing more loudly!

Teacher: That means Santa is walking much closer!

Kid: We should joing the happy team to welcome Santa.

Teacher: Great idea!

And the other, introducing a play of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

Kid: Teacher! (Run) An awful news! I have just heard that we’ll going to have no Christmas! It’s just like thunder from the blue sky. Teacher, tell me quickly, please! Is the rumor true?

Teacher: I have no idea about what you said. Could you explain it more clearly?

Kid: It’s Grinch who is trying to stop Santa’s traveling. How could we dissuade Grinch from doing so? Or, should we kidnap him before our Christmas’ party begin?

Teacher: No wonder I just saw Our Santa who was in a blue mood. Maybe we could hide behind the curtains and see what Grinch’s plan is.

Kid: Then, come up a solution to this problem!

Teacher: How smart you are! Oh! He’s coming toward us. Let’s hide away! Follow me!

Kid: Find a place where we can eardrop clearly!

Teacher: OK!

Christine gets to open the show with the boss’s daughter:

Teacher: Good evening, everyone! Welcome to our Christmas’ show. What do you expect to watch tonight? Maybe, I can ask our little princess first. Wonderful [yes, that's the boss's daughter's name], do you know what program you’ll watch tonight?

Kid: I want something that is exciting, enthralling, fun, and unforgettable. For example, I hope there will be interesting English dramas, lovely dancing, and good songs! Most important of all, I expect to see Santa Claus, and to receive something great from him. Teacher, do I do well this year?

Teacher: Yes, you’re pretty good, smart and obedient.

Kid: Does that mean Santa Claus will surely visit me and other good kids tonight?

Teacher: Oh! Oh! I can’t tell you now.

Kid: Is this a secret between you and Santa?

Teacher: I can’t spill the beans. And Santa is watching you somewhere right now. And Santa say we should welcome the first program now.

Kid: (Jump up) OK! Sorry for keeping you waiting!

Teacher/Kid: Let’s welcome the first interesting show!

And finally, their introduction of the show-closer, Nuttin’ for Christmas:

Teacher: Why do you pull a long face?

Kid: I think I won’t get gifs [sic]this year.

Teacher: What did you do?

Kid: It’s a long story. I hope Santa will forgive me.

Teacher: Don’t worry! I think he will. Some kids like you want to give you some advices [sic]. Do you want to hear them?

Kid: Yes. Let’s welcome them to come here!

Is it a little cruel to make fun of this? Not when I’m handed it and told that that is what I’m to say and to teach a four-year-old to say. I wouldn’t presume to do it in a language that I don’t speak well. Christine says she would still feel uncomfortable doing it in Spanish, and she’s almost fluent. The one thing that gets me is that my co-teacher wrote it and one of the mistakes she made was one that she berates students in my class for making.

However, there’s not much I can do about all this except make light of it. As with so much here, it’s your attitude that counts and while mine hasn’t always been the best in this Christmas endeavour, this little bit of comic relief has helped me immensely.

If you haven’t already seen our wonderful collection of Taiwanese Christmas cards, something else that has given me joy this Christmas season, check out the gallery full of them on flickr!

they came, they left, they ate teppanyaki

Well, my parents have come and gone. It’s been really quiet here as of late because we’d been preparing for them, I’d been preparing my classes for substitutes, and then there wasn’t much time for computer while they were here. It’s going to continue being light until after Christmas, though we’ll see if I can find some time to pop in now and then.

Anyway, Mom and Dad loved it here. They tried just about everything we threw at them, from lovely, wonderful things like hairwashes and strawberry milk,  to things that aren’t exactly commonplace for them, like squid on a stick and scooter rides. They took it all in and loved it. I’m quite impressed and astounded how much they loved it, really. You never know how people are going to react to this place.

What did we do? Eat, mostly. When they visited in Argentina, we showed them around. There are things to see here as well, and we did take them to markets, temples, 85-storey buildings (well, just one), hairwashes, a spa, our school, Costco, stationery stores (you can’t visit without going into one), and other little things, but we wanted them to try the full spread of delicious things you can eat here. They loved teppanyaki, the Buddhist vegetarian buffet (who would’ve guessed?), the lunch box buffets in general, and the fruits and fruit juices. There wasn’t much that they didn’t like.

Definitely a success. Now it’s back to school. Hopefully the highlights in pictures will be up soon. Next week? We’ll see.

dealing with the parents

I came in on Monday to teach one of my more advanced classes and encountered one of the Chinese teachers. She had just had a run-in with a parent. I’m very lucky she dealt with it, as I don’t know if I would’ve kept my cool as well as her. The issue was the word little and its comparative and superlative. If you’re a bit rusty on your grammar terms, that’s the adding of -er and -est to adjectives to compare them in twos or larger groups. I had taught that the progression was little, littler, the littlest. Seemed fair and straightforward to me, but adjectives can be deceiving.

Apparently, in the English classes in Chinese school, the translation of little is the few/a little sense (I have a little milk) and the progression is taught as little, less, the least. When I marked the latter wrong on a quiz, the student’s mother called the school in a rage. She told the Chinese teacher that she had gone to university in England and read newspapers and there was no such word as littler and she had looked online and in dictionaries and could not find it and she knew English and no one used littler anywhere. When the Chinese teacher tried to correct her, the woman called the teacher a liar and told her to prove it. After finishing the call, she went to a dictionary and found her proof right there (it actually listed both cases). When she talked to the mother again, the mother, rather than admitting any error or apologizing, launched into another tirade about how the Chinese teacher would do anything to win and she was just covering up for the foreign teacher’s (me) incompetence because he didn’t know what he was teaching and if the children went to English class in Chinese school (run by non-native English speakers) and said littler then it would be wrong and how could they say that the English school taught them that and it wouldn’t matter because the answer would be wrong. And that was the end of talking with her. (I write in long, unending sentences for her part because that’s how that part of the story was related to me. From the sounds of it, it comes the closest to simulating how she argued.)

Meanwhile, on the other side, I explained to the class that there were two uses of little and what the difference was between them. I did a little looking and asking on my own and discovered that the case probably is that one word that translates as a little/few is what is taken for little, therefore progressing through to less and the least, while the other word that translates as diminutive in size is translated as small. This is fair, as native English speakers would probably use small and smaller most of the time – My house is smaller vs. My house is littler.

I guess it’s the pain that all teachers feel that gets under my skin, the fight that some parents put up because they believe they know more than a trained teacher. Sometimes this may be the case, but spending a couple of years in a country does not give you rein over the language spoken there, at least over a native speaker. I would never presume to correct someone’s Chinese here or someone’s Spanish in Argentina and insist that I’m right simply because I lived there. However, they’re the client, so sometimes you just have to smile and coat every word with sugar, even the littlest ones.

halloween insanity

Halloween is always a crazy time in the English-speaking community in Taiwan. There are two main forces controlling foreigners: the push of the English schools to recreate this quintessential Western holiday (as it is termed) through costumes, pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and haunted houses. Sometimes not a lot of thought is put into preparation of these, causing stress for those involved: teachers putting in tonnes of hours to complete a haunted house that is very much too scary for a class of six-year-olds, for example. It happens more than you think. Foreigners also use Halloween as a way of reconnecting with what they know, going to ridiculous lengths to create amazing costumes. I’ve seen a guy who created a plane to wear, space walk suits, Jack Skellington and his gal (done very, very well), Johnny Bravo, and a tonne of other wonderful getups here. I’m looking forward to this year – a group of us is posing as Street Fighter II characters.

My manager announced the Halloween schedule on Friday, telling me that I had to carve 17 pumpkins in one afternoon and the teachers had one hour to build a four-room haunted house (see what I mean about stress?). After some clarification, we got most of the issues ironed out. At least we get paid – many schools have teachers “volunteer” their time for Halloween. Ha ha ha. I’ll see you on the other side of this holiday.

starts with t

A friend recently continued a meme by passing it on to me. It sounds quite simple off the start – name ten things you love that begin with the letter presented to you. She got N and had to ponder for a while. Understandable – N is one of those lurking letters that feature in a lot of words but tends to shun the spotlight when it comes to initial consonants. She came up with an excellent list that featured notebooks, novels (lucky! She even got to solicit book suggestions with that), and naps. Now it’s my turn. Before I get started, if anyone reading and wriring would like to continue the meme (sowing what I reap), just comment and I can give you letters like a kindergarten teacher!!

I got T. Troublesome? Maybe. Opposite to Andrea’s problem, my head immediately flooded with T words, though they weren’t words necessarily related to what I like. Tarantula? Tables? Taffeta? T as an initial letter does not hold back, it pours forth with credible words. The hard part is deciding what I really like. Finally, however, the chaff was separated from the wheat, and I came up with the following (in sort of a particular order):

vote vote vote

The Independence Day long weekend just passed and I spent it on Orchid Island, a tiny spot of land a couple of hours east of the mainland. A fair amount of that time was spent underwater: diving was the order of the day. It was great to get back into the water. I saw some neat stuff – a turtle, lobsters, crabs, all kinds of fish, great anenomes, lionfish, stonefish, sea snakes, a wreck, fantastic corals – but I’ve had more exciting dives. That said, this was one of the best series of dives I’ve ever done, as I felt comfortable with lots of experienced people around me. There was nothing super-incredible or rare seen this time, but just hearing the fish nibble on the coral (it’s all around you when you dive, all you can hear. It’s like white noise) was a constant source of wonder for me. I hope to get pictures to share soon. If not, I’m looking at doing it myself in the future. Here’s hoping!

Now, that said, I received my vote for the Canadian election yesterday. Yes, yesterday. The vote I sent away for over a month ago. (I think.) I wish I had received it even last week, it still would have been possible to send it off, but getting a letter from Taiwan to Ottawa in 30 hours just isn’t feasible. That said, I hope those of you reading this get out and do your civic duty. I miss voting. I’ve been unable, for various reasons, to vote in an election since I left Canada nearly five years ago. This will make two fairly important elections that I’ve missed and that upsets me. As my mom always said, if you don’t vote, you can’t bitch. Get out there and earn your right!

oh no! no oreo!

You’ve probably heard about the melanine problem in the milk products coming out of China in the last little while. Haven’t? Companies/individuals/(government officials? who knows) in China have been adding melanine to substandard milk to help it pass nutrition tests. Melanine is usually used to make plastic bags and fertilizer and causes kidney problems. Nothing about this story is good. People are getting sick (thousands upon thousands in China, many of them kids) and some are dying. It’s a little scary.

Products containing milk have been disappearing off of shelves in China, but Taiwan has been thrown into a tizzy, as no one knows what exactly contains contaminated powder or how much it has. The government didn’t help by announcing that 2.5 parts per million (ppm) was an acceptable level, then changing its mind the next day and saying that that was not an acceptable level. Pizza Hut in Taiwan stopped supplying contaminated cheese, and this week, M&Ms and Oreos were pulled off of shelves all over the country because the chocolate they are made from was suspected to contain poisoned milk powder. What will my kids do for snacks? (Oh wait, they’ve got noodles and seaweed and rice cakes and many, many other candies. They’re set.)

In typical Taiwanese fashion, calls of resign for various ministers and the president echo through the media. This always bothered me here – why call for the resignation of the person who knows the most? I understand sometimes that heads have to roll (it happens back home), but they call for it for the slightest thing here. Bridge collapses from Taiwan? It was the transportation minister’s fault! Resign! (Really.) Sometimes, consequences are beyond control. Keep a knowledgeable head in the game rather than tossing them to the sidelines, people!

In conclusion, I miss M&Ms.