Jhong-sing Elementary School

Today was the first day of school! Harmony picked me up outside and drove me the 20 minutes to school (and conveniently told me she lives right behind my apartment building, wouldn't mind driving me if it was raining in the morning, and actually wouldn't mind driving me all year). When we arrived, Anne was already in the meeting room where the first graders and their parents were gathering. After an awkward assembly, which I couldn't understand at all since the Principal spoke only in Chinese (Anne did poke me when I was supposed to stand up for everyone to clap for me), we headed down to the first grade classroom. The plan was for me to stick with Anne today.

Most of the students had English names already, due to their parents or to cram school (extra school to help with their English) but there were a few I was allowed to name. I do believe I named one Ben, one Nicholas, one Patrick and one Emily. There also was a Leo, an Amanda and a Vincent. Not too bad.

Amusing Antidote 1:
While going around attempting to figure out these TINY first graders' names (which was hard, since some of them didn't understand what I was asking and the rest were just plain shy), I came across one girl who would actually talk to me. When asked what her name was, she said "Lupy." Lupy? Yes, Lupy. I went along with it and wrote L-U-P-Y on her name tag. After she left, Anne asked me if her name was actually Lupy, and I said I just thought maybe her parents liked that name. Anne said something along the lines of "Are you sure it wasn't Luby?" I said it was possible. "Luby? Like the red stone." The girl's name was definitely Ruby, which makes far more sense, but due to my inability to understand anything that isn't COMPLETELY clear English, I totally missed it. This poor girl is going to come into school tomorrow and be confused as to why her name looks different. Although, this is assuming she's recognized it at all...

Stone picture walk-way.

Waterfall and green area in the middle of the school.

The school itself is really beautiful. It's very well kept and the buildings are pretty new. The vibe is really great, all the teachers seem very friendly and you can definitely tell they like working there. The day was super long (8-4), and after the 1st graders left at 10, I basically just watched CNN and labeled books. Tomorrow I'll sit in on 4 English classes with a substitute in the 5th and 6th grade. My schedule is as follows:

Monday:
9:35-10:15: 1st grade
10:30-11:10: 1st grade
11:20-12:00: 2nd grade

Tuesday:
1:30-2:10: 6th grade

Wednesday:
No teaching (we work all day at the Teacher's Center)

Thursday:
9:35-10:15: 1st grade
10:30-11:10: 1st grade
11:20-12:00: 2nd grade
1:30-2:10: 5th grade
2:20-3:00: 5th grade
3:15-3:55: 6th grade

Friday:
8:50-9:30: 5th grade
9:35-10:15: 5th grade
10:30-11:10: 6th grade
11:20-12:00: 6th grade

Thursday is definitely my hardest day. But we found out tonight that we only have to be in school for when we actually teach (unless we're doing lesson planning with our teachers), so that will make Tuesdays nice (when I actually have a way to get myself to school).

My totally pimped out English classroom. DVD player, TV, projector, stereo, toaster oven - what classroom is complete without a toaster oven?

Amusing Antidote 2:

At one point, this music comes over the loudspeaker. I hear this screaming and running and look out the window to see all these boys running towards the basketball court with buckets and brooms. Turns out the Principal found out someone from the government was coming to inspect the school and he wanted it to be clean. However, having the students clean is not abnormal. Everyone morning from 7:50-8:00 they are expected to clean, then various times throughout the day the music comes on to signify cleaning time, and then again at the end of the day from 3-3:15. It's a little bizarre to see 3rd graders mopping and sweeping, but it does cut down on school costs, since they don't really have any janitors, just some guy who "fixes the desks."

Cleaning time!

And now, some more visualization! My co-teacher, Anne!

What an incredible incredible past 9 days. Just a warning: this is going to be a lengthy post. I apologize for the lack of update. First of all, thank you so much to all of you who wished me a happy birthday. It was a great day, even if it was a little strange being so far away from home. I certainly celebrated in style, and everyone was so amazing when it came to planning! On the actual day, my house mates surprised me with presents and flowers. The party was followed by a trip to the hospital for our health checks which are required for our scooter license (more about the scootering in a later post, I promise. This one is going to be long as it is). The check consisted of taking our height and weight, making sure we weren't colorblind/blind in general, and testing our hearing. Easiest health check ever. We were a little surprised that's all there was to it.

That's all there was?

After the hospital, it was back to the Center for some more training, but the afternoon was spent visiting two other schools, going swimming in a cold spring, and visiting the Traditional Arts Center. There was a dinner planned with all the Local English Teachers and with Dr. Wu, the guy who basically makes this all happen. Dinners with Dr. Wu are always extensive (think multiple, multiple courses) and amazing. This was no exception. THEN... Kelly (a staff member who takes care of us like no other) brought out a cake and other ETAs carried out flowers and presents (flowers from the family- Thanks again, guys!) and gifts from various LETs. It was a fabulous day.

Posing with people dressed up as characters from a Asian drama/puppet show.

Since we didn't really get to celebrate just on our own, on Friday, the rest of the ETAs surprised me by taking me to a vegetarian restaurant (they said we were going to McDonalds... I was none the wiser), and then throwing an AWESOME dance party. What a way to celebrate 22.

Taipei 101. Really tall.

On Saturday (after not much sleep Friday night) we headed into Taipei. The plan was to go to this tap festival performance that night then head to Keelung to see this big parade for Ghost Month. The tap was amazing- I have never seen anyone move that fast. Finding a German bar in the basement of a department store afterwards was pretty wild too...

German Taiwanese Bar-maid?

Security fence in Taipei- yes, that's broken glass on the top of the wall.

Sunday we headed to the parade, and met up with the other 3 Fulbrighters who had forgone the tap for hiking. To get from the train station to where the actual parade was, Anita (another staff member) had some of her friends take us there ON MOTORCYCLES. No lie. We visited a temple all decorated for the occasion (again, see below). Since we had to be at training bright and early Monday morning, many of us decided to skip the actual parade and take an earlier train home.

Monday was the judgment day. After 3 weeks of getting to know the LETs, we had one more chance to basically sell ourselves (give a 5 minute power point presentation on why we we would be good to work with), they "sold" their schools, and we did a "speed dating" session- basically we talked to each teacher for 5 minutes, asked them questions, and let them ask us questions. After, we had 20 minutes to list our top 6 LETs, why we would work well with them, and why we would be good at their school. The LETs did the same for the ETAs. The whole process was very intense and stressful, but I realized that these teachers had been getting to know me for the past 3 weeks- they probably had a pretty good idea about me.

Tuesday morning we arrived to sealed envelopes with our placements. I was put at Jhong-Sing Elementary school, with LETs Anne and Roxanna. I'm so so so excited. It's a small school, but still in the city, a staff of about 25, two classes (except for 2nd grade) per grade, about 15-20 students per class. I went and visited on Tuesday and fell in love with it. The classroom is incredible and the school is beautiful. The only issue was that I had to move from Luodong to Yilan, which I did today (still in the process of unpacking...), but if that's the worst that can happen, it's not bad at all.

Anyway, the first day of school is tomorrow and I'm getting picked up at 7:30 since I don't have a scooter (I swear, more on that later!), so I should attempt to get sleep so I can go back to being "Teacher Katie" again!
*

REAL LIVE KIDS!
After spending more time on a lesson plan than I EVER would under normal circumstances, the day finally came. Today we worked with a one-day summer camp. These kids had won an English speech contest last year, and their prize? A day with REAL LIVE ETAs! Since we were going to a crab museum (what?) in the afternoon, the main focus of the morning was on sea creatures. I was working with 5 other ETAs on the 3rd/4th grade group.

The students were great. Only 10 kids showed up, but since these were all kids who had one an academic contest, they were also the ones who were the "best" at English and who actually wanted to be in a school setting. The kids far surpassed our expectations for how much English they knew. That became apparent when, during brainstorming about sea animals, someone said plankton. Nevertheless, we tried to make things as fun as possible, and I think they actually enjoyed it.

Phyllis. Our example for our "create your own sea animal" lesson.

They're so good and quiet.

Back to being Teacher Kate

After lunch we went to a crab museum. Many of the kids said they had been there before - clearly a popular destination for school trips. I was re-assigned to two of the older students (going into 6th grade), and spent most of the time attempting to talk to them, while at the same time making sure they stayed with the group. I did, however, learn that crabs can grow up to 4 meters. The level of English varied dramatically among the kids. Some students were EXTREMELY talkative and very confident in their ability, and others were basically silent all day. I was told that just because they won the speech contest, that didn't mean that their English was all that great. They had to memorize a 2-3 minute speech, but so much emphasis is placed on memorization here, that it is extremely easy to just memorize without having any idea of what you're saying. One even admitted that his father wrote the speech for him. While my first taste of teaching English was not necessarily indicative of what I will be facing, I think, overall, it went pretty well. It was certainly nice to be in the classroom again. And learning about crabs wasn't too bad, either.

Shrimp: Up close and personal.


Scary crabs.

Me with my charges, Nicole and Vivian.

The best part of the museum? Playing on the playground, clearly.

Literally rocking out.

Save the 5 minutes that we went outside to experience the "Super Typhoon" today, my house mates and I have now been in our apartment for over 24 hours straight. Although catching up on the missed seasons of various TV shows starts out as fun, when you're still doing it 10 hours later, it loses some appeal. Luckily, from what I can tell from the weather websites, the eye of the storm has passed over Taiwan, what's left now is just the tail end. And what a tail end it is. It sounds like you're in a wind tunnel, and whenever a big gust comes, the windows sound like they're about to crack. We've put tape in huge Xs over the glass, hoping that if the windows DO break, they'd break into large pieces instead of shattering. However, if this were to occur, we realized that we don't have anything to cover the, then exposed, window with. Details...

I took last night to make flashcards in a feeble attempt to learn some Chinese before I get swamped with teaching (class starts on August 30, so not much time there, I suppose). It's a very frustrating feeling being surrounded by writing and not being able to read any of it. Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that there are 4 tones that any given word can be in. One tone means one thing, the same word in a different tone can mean something completely different. For example: "tang" in a first tone means "soup," but "tang" in second tone means "sugar." The problem is, a lot of the time, people talk very quickly, and while I can hear the tone difference in some things, I feel like a lot of the time, I'm gonna have to stick with putting the words in the context. A side of soup makes a lot more sense than a side of sugar when ordering noodles...

Anyway, one thing I'm struggling with in terms of language is the whole idea of the characters. Our Chinese teacher suggested that we learn b, p, m, f (pronounced boh, poh, moh, foh), which is basically the alphabet. However, each sound is associated with a character- makes sense: when we learn to read English, we realize that the sound of A is connected with the letter A. The character aspect is called "MPS," while the written out sounds (in this case: b, p, m, f) is called Pinyin. The MPS characters you learn make up the more complex characters that mean actual words. We have been told that our students learn MPS, and it would be more benifical if we learned MPS too, rather than Pinyin. This adds an extra step. Now, we have to look at a character, recognize what that character is in Chinese, then translate it to English. For example: you see the character, you recognize that it's the character for bai, and then you remember that bai means "white" (it's also the first part of my Chinese name: bai ba ru). However, if you don't know that the character is bai, your stuck, and not only can you not read it, you sure as heck can't say it. NOT to mention, when you combine the characters with other characters, they make up new words- for example, bai (white) when combined with two other characters make up the word "passion fruit." Never would have guessed that.

This definitely makes language learning frustrating. The last time I learned a new language was Spanish, and at least then I was using the same alphabet. At the same time, when you finally figure out what a word is, it is SO satisfying- like identifying a code. I worked on translating part of a menu last night, and while I still don't know what a lot of words mean, I can definitely find the character for vegetable, meat, and water. I know people spend years and years learning this language, but I'm bound and determined to at least know enough to get by here.

SUPER typhoon!

Staying indoors!

And so begins the real work: getting to know our LET (Local English Teachers)- figuring out who we want to be working with for the next 10 months, getting to know teaching styles, lesson planning, personalities. Personality is definitely the major thing- I'd be happy in any of the counties, which is nice. I'd much rather be working with someone because I think his or her personality is compatible with mine than based on where the school is located.

I've never done lesson planning like this. It seems fairly abstract, just creating a plan for a class without knowing the background of how much the students know, what kind of a school it is, how old the students are. It's much less structured in that regard than I'm used to. We don't have to list the standards and the objectives. The focus more is on presentation and whether it conveys the information you want it to. Lesson planning is not new to me, but having to repeat things so many times, and using as few words as possible (and as much body language as possible) to convey directions is hard. I'm used to giving directions to students who understand (at least most of) the words. Practice makes perfect, though. Today I felt my lesson plan was much more solid than it was yesterday. Today I taught prepositions.

After sharing our lessons in the morning, the ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) went and visited two schools in Nan-Ao, a county that is about an hour and a half on the bus from Ilan, but only 15 minutes by train, and only a half an hour by train from Luodong.
















Basically the entire trip consisted of winding roads up and down steep, lush mountains. Every now and then you could see the coast. The view was absolutely incredible.

The two schools that are out in Nan-Ao have a primarily Aboriginal student population. They are VERY small schools, with a staff of 10-15, and 100-130 students. They both go from K-6, and the ETA that is placed out there would teach in one school 2 days, and the other school 3 days. One of the schools has 3 requirements for the students to graduate: they must partake in the Aboriginal dance group, they must learn judo, and they must participate in the brass band which is being formed this year.

The town's population is 3,000. It'd be like living in a Vassar-sized town. But because the community is so small, apparently you are known very well and everyone watches out for you- you're invited to families' houses and to celebrations. The music and dance programs in the school really appeal to me, but I'm not sure if I could be that isolated from the rest of the group in Ilan and Luodong. More importantly, there is even less English in the Aboriginal village than there is in Ilan and Luodong- I suppose that would give me motivation to learn Chinese faster, but I'm sure it would also be hard. However, thinking about it, I'm not sure when you'd get another opportunity like it. At every school, they gave us food, and then we went to this ice place, which is shaved ice flavored with different things. I had lemon (they have no yellow lemons here, only green!) and passion fruit. It took me a minute, but I realized that it tasted just like water ice. I feel like I'll be frequenting the ice place regularly. These pictures are the views surrounding the schools.

When we got back to Luodong, all 12 of us, plus the staff went to dinner at a hot pot place near our house. Hot pot is great because you can chose what you want to eat- most of them are buffet style, with a set price for an all-you-can-eat. You pick your food, it's raw, and you cook it in a personal pot filled with broth or water. It's definitely a skill, and the first time I did it, things ended up very water logged and slightly mushy. This time was better. After hot pot, we had a scavenger hunt in the Luodong night market, which personally, I prefer to the Ilan night market.

















(Getting our scavenger hunt teams)

The other night marked the beginning of Ghost month (this is the 2nd day of July, according to the lunar new year). Supposedly, the beginning of Ghost month is marked by the opening of the gates of hell, and all "hungry ghosts" come out to haunt people. However, the ghosts are not talked about because it attracts some of the angrier spirits. To show respect to the ghosts and to keep them happy, people pray, burn incense, and burn money in offering daily, though only three days are mandatory for the money burning: the beginning, middle and end of the month. Not all ghosts are bad, but the ones that are good are called different names.

There were HUGE tables set up in the night market FILLED with food and incense for the spirits. There was a huge skinned pig at one end, and people were burning money everywhere. There were also performances and fireworks. I'm going back to the night market later this week, so expect photos...

Day 2 of being home sick with the flu. I suppose it's better to be sick on the weekend than on the weekday when I'd miss training. Luckily, with Taiwan's many flavors of juice (think blueberry and lychee), subsiding on liquids alone isn't too bad.

On Friday we all went to see "Borne Ultimatum" - it was in English with Chinese subtitles. The theater was tiny- only about 9 rows, so it gave it a really intimate feel. Before that, a group of us went to dinner in the night market.

The night market is crazy. The vendors set up tables every night in the middle of the street for about two blocks and sell everything from watches to bags to animals.



























































Everything is really cheap, both in price and in quality, but if you need to find a beach towel or a t-shirt, this is the place to go. Come Christmas time, the night market is going to be a blessing.

There was a typhoon last night. This is what a typhoon looks like from our living room window:

Luckily, it was only rain and a little wind. Nothing serious. There's another one coming tomorrow morning too. Supposedly "all the locals tape their windows" to prevent glass shattering, but looking around our building, we're the only ones who've done it...

Yesterday we took out the trash for the first time. Which was good, since we had a TON of trash and it needed to be taken out. However, unlike in the states, the trash truck and recycling trucks everyday. Seems simple, no? On Mondays and Fridays, they collect trash, food waste (to feed the livestock), glass, paper, and used clothing. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays they collect the usual trash and food, and then all the other recyclables. We got a 5 page list of things that can and can't be recycled. It's intense.

The trash truck comes at 6:30 and at 9. So at 6:15, while we were getting our trash ready, we hear this loud classical music playing from speakers around our apartment building. Apparently it's to warn us that the trash truck is coming. We, along with the rest of our building, take the trash downstairs and wait outside for the trash and recycling trucks to come. When they finally arrive, playing yet MORE classical music, the bags are handed over to the trash men, who have the hardest job of opening up the bags and dumping all the contents into different containers.


















People taking out the trash in a different part of town.

















Everybody does it.






















Clearly a social event.

Address...

On another note: If you want to send me things, here is the address:

Kathryn Pabarue
c/o Foundation for Scholarly Exchange
I-Lan County Teacher Center
No. 36, sec 1, Minchiuan Rd.
I-Lan City, I-Lan County 260
Taiwan

Nice.

Hot Computer Lab

So, I made it. It's day 5 here in Taiwan. Sadly, no pictures will be included in this post, as my computer has yet to be hooked up to the internet- I'm writing this from the Teacher's Center in Yilan where we will have training for the next 3 weeks. But when I do have access to the internet in my apartment... oh ho! Will there ever be pictures.

We got to Yilan on Friday morning, after spending the night in Taipei. Taipei was a whirl-wind; jet-lagged meals, exhausted visit to the Botanical Gardens. It'll be really neat to go and see it when I'm actually awake. The trip from Taipei took about an hour and we passed through the longest car tunnel in Taiwan, which is actually the 5th largest car tunnel in the world (Taiwan likes to have those "world record" things- largest building, longest car tunnel. I think it's because it feels threatened). The ride was fantastic, incredible mountains and cool bridges.

I'm actually living in Luodong with two other girls in the program for the first month (and possibly for the rest of the year, depending on which school I am placed in). At first glance, our situation was somewhat frustrating. There are 7 Fulbrigters in Yilan, the Teacher's Center is there, the other apartments were newer, cleaner (ours was left a MESS), and all of the rooms had air conditioning (mine is the only room in our apartment that has it). Katie, Laura, and I all felt somewhat isolated. However, we moved furniture and cleaned some, found out that the area around our building is actually cool (pictures to come, I swear), and are generally feeling more up-beat about it. It's still a 40 minute trip to Yilan (25 minute walk to the train station, 15 minute train ride), which will kind of stink in the upcoming weeks when we have to get to the Teacher's Center without the help of the school bus to pick us up, like it has been. But if all I'm complaining about is travelling to Yilan, I think I'm doing pretty well.

As far as actually being here goes, I'm still in shock sometimes. We went to the night market last night, which is just stalls and stalls of stuff, to put it quite frankly, and an entire section devoted to snacks and drinks. It's noisy and crowded and overwhelming, but incredible. I'm still not used to walking up tea stand and have EVERYTHING be in Chinese, but hopefully I'll learn some characters of foods that I like that I can recognize on other menus. All in all, it's going well. Now to get the internet up in the apartment so I can type less and show more...