Friday September 9, 2011

I have a cell phone number! Sam's dropping my phone off today because they didn't have the color I wanted last night. Even a cheap one was kind of expensive because I didn't want to sign a 2 year contract. Sam's like, "well here's the thing, it's going to be more expensive to just do a  prepaid phone than if you did a 2 year contract.." I'm like, "well here's the thing Sam, I've only been here for 3 weeks and I'm not deciding to stay a whole extra year to save money on my cell phone.." Now that I’ve gone this long without a phone, I don’t really see a need for one except for the school needing a number from me and the possibility of my horrible sense of direction getting me lost in the stray dog town again and me needing a rescue.

I skyped with the Nanny family last night. It was good to see the boys and I talked with Eric about some of his abroad experiences. He had some good advice about trying new things and accepting invites because I may be missing out on something I actually like and if people ask me to do things and I turn them down, they’ll stop asking. He asked if I was homesick, I somehow can’t answer that question without getting all choked up even though most days I feel fine and don’t think about it too much. That’s a pretty straight forward answer right there, “hey are you homesick..” “Um yea..yea kinda” (my eyes well up with tears and my throat closes up..so pathetic) He taught me how to set up a dropbox  for my pictures which I think I should set up with my dad too because my dad doesn’t go on facebook to look at pictures.

Lunch was interesting at the school, it was an “American” lunch so there was chicken nuggets and spaghetti. I wouldn’t necessarily call it gross because it was kind of nice not having rice for one day, but an Asian style Bolognese sauce over pasta, was probably comparable to Spaghetti-o’s. They had bananas again. I was excited. I took two. Chiao brought me a moon cake. She told me if you get a lot of Moon Cakes during Moon Festival, it means you’re popular, so sometimes people feel bad if they don’t get any.  I think I received a few because I’m the new American girl who everyone feels bad for and invites me to their homes for tea and dinner every week  and they think I have no friends (which is not entirely true..I’m working my way up to about 3 friends.) It’s kind of nice, but I’m pretty sure this popularity will fizzle out in about a week. The one she gave me had green beans in it but they were sweeter. I finally told her that in America, we don’t put beans in our desserts. She’s like “really?! What type of desserts do you eat?” I’m like, “well if we fill pastries I guess they’re filled with fruit or chocolate or something like that..” I feel like shipping her an apple pie one day or something. We decided to go to the Taiwan Symphony on the 24^th with her boyfriend and his friend. After lunch, I drank coffee with Coffee Joe and we talked about how pomelos are the same as grapefruits. He always sounds so interested in what I’m talking about, even the topic of what fruits we do and do not have in America is like.. awesome. So I just googled images of grapefruits and that gave us something to talk about for 10 minutes. He’s like, ”so you eat them with a spoon and don’t peel them??” Student’s came around with mooncakes, these ones were black. I was like, “Wow they’re black! what kind are these??” And then they gave me that too cool teenager look and were like “We put them in dirt..” and I was like “Wow good English!”(smartasses in every country I guess)

I changed up my lesson plan throughout the day which seems to be more of a common thing for me now. I literally start with one idea for the first class of the week and it always kind of sucks and doesn’t work and by the 18^th class I can barely remember what my original idea was and the new one is 100 times better. Crazy how that happens (I feel bad for the first class of the week.) The lesson ended up being the whole “How is your day going?” lesson where everyone has to speak and they have different answers they can give me. But I got the lesson down to a tee to where they have about 10 minutes at the end of class and I have them get into groups of 4 and write down as many questions they want to ask me and I told them they can ask Teacher Diana anything..this made for some interesting questions. I ended up adding a rule where once one group asked a question the other groups had to cross it off of their list and they couldn’t ask that anymore, so it ended up being a motivator to get the groups to volunteer first.  Some of the more advanced students asked some pretty tough questions! Others asked some funny ones . A lot of them want to know if I have a facebook..If they ever add me I’d have to do some major facebook editing, or just create a completely new one which is what Kristen suggested. 

Sam never came to the school with my cell phone which I was kind of banking on having for the night because I started to give my number out and I was expecting Wenli to call me before we headed to the BBQ. I had like, giant sweat pits in my new cute gray dress from J Crew which I wanted to wear to the BBQ, but noooo I have to sweat like an animal everyday.  I wore a different dress and attempted to re-straighten my hair which I’m still attempting to do out here for some stupid reason, at least now I know to bring a  hair tie and bobby pin everywhere I go because your hair will end up a disaster after 15 minutes in a room/outside. Sam said he’d drop the phone off to where me and Wenli were because he was running late (shocker.) Wenli picked me up on time and we headed over to this Elementary school’s BBQ. I was nervous because like I previously mentioned, Wenli said that I wouldn’t know anyone and she was leaving after an hour to go to her family’s BBQ. We followed this lady and her son (who is my student) to the bbq and I guess her and her husband are heads of the PTA. At the BBQ, Sam showed up with my phone in a bag and I had to carry it around with me. We walked into the BBQ and this school was decked out! They basically had a quad and the whole thing was set up with tables/chairs, a karaoke stage, balloon animal stand, tables and tables of food, and giant tubs of drinks. First thing I noticed when I walked in was cups full of beer on every table..I was like “wait a minute..thats not green tea..the foam is too thick to be tea…that’s..that’s..BEER!!! Hallelujah! They drink! But I probably won’t be drinking because I’m with my supervisor, the principal, and my student’s parents, right? WRONG. First thing the principal asks me is if I want a beer and doesn’t even listen to my answer and grabs me one. I gave this phony answer where I pretended to be hesitant and kind of said “nono are you sure?”, but then turned it into “ohh ok twist my arm, if you WANT me to have one, I will..” They had Heinekens too. 

This nice guy who was a teacher at the other school talked to me the whole time and him and the principal were asking me about beer and other various topics. Wenli and I went to get food from the tables and it looked like it was catered, but I think it was all made and brought by parents and staff! There was fresh fruit (the pineapple here is the best) trays and trays of fried rice, noodles, popcorn chicken, and soups. I thought that was the meal we came for but she said “Don’t fill up too much, there is still BBQ.” Up at the Karaoke stage, they were drawing names for raffles and the principal insisted that I put my name into the drawing and then he got me a few more beers. Then, my principal goes up to the stage to sing karaoke!! They kept asking me to go up there but thank god I had a legitimate excuse,  “I can’t read the Chinese on the monitor..” Everyone started to fire up their stone grills and brought cases and cases of meat/sausages and began grilling for their own table. I was at a table with those PTA parents we followed, the principal, Wenli, and that nice teacher who spoke decent English. I noticed the kids were up at the grills flipping meat and Wenli said that it’s tradition for the children to grill the food for the parents..god can you imagine the lawsuits that would follow if we did that at our schools or homes in America?? “Oh here hunny, grab that spatula and flip my steak in that high flame, would ya?” There were 8 year olds grilling, I’m not joking. Parents sat back and drank..it was actually kind of nice, I bet my parents would’ve loved that when we were growing up. 

I also asked Wenli what their culture’s rules are for table manners (because I’ve noticed there are NONE) and she basically said, they really don’t have any, the only one is to let older people get their food before you. Overall, what we consider “good manners,” they don’t use anyyyyy of those at a table. They eat with their hands, they talk with their mouths full, they spit out pits and bones from their food into a tiny napkin next to their bowl. I also noticed that people don’t use any manners in public either. I’ve never seen so much snot/mucus/coughing/lugees and even the occasional snot rocket, from someone who wasn’t a part of my family or a close friend. They literally hauk lugees everywhere, I don’t even know how to spell that term and never thought I’d have a reason to spell it. It’s gross. Aside from coughing up mucus all day long, I see a lot of older men spit this red stuff and their mouths are all red, and it’s like chewing tobacco but it’s a nut. I think it gives the same buzz that tobacco would. OK I googled. It’s the Areca Nut or they call it the Betel Nut. “Areca nuts are chewed with betel leaf for their effects as a mild stimulant,^[1] causing a mild hot sensation in the body and slightly heightened alertness, although the effects vary from person to person. The effect of chewing betel and the nut is relatively mild and could be compared to drinking a cup of coffee.” Whatever, long story short: People just love to spit here. 

Back to the BBQ. Apparently, they started drawing names for the raffle, and everyone at my table started freaking out and was like “Diana Diana you won!!” and I’m like..shut up really!! So I walk up there, everyone at this wedding reception sized BBQ claps and they don’t even know me, and I got a gift wrapped box. They had me open it at the table and it was this cute Minnie and Mickey Mouse tea set! I actually needed a tea set in my apartment. THEN, not even 10 minutes later, and another beer deep, they call my name again and everyone’s freaking out, I won a NEW BIKE??!! A brand new white and blue mountain bike. I literally wanted to say What the f—(and probably could because no one would understand anyway) but I was speechless. I told the principal I couldn’t accept it because they had just given me a bike 4 days ago!! He said “No, you keep new bike, that was an old bike, you need a new one.” It was so nice.  Wenli left before I got the bike and the principal ended up driving me home. He asked me if I had enough money for the weekend because I still haven’t gotten paid on account that I STILL don’t have my ARC card. Sam said they’re legally supposed to pay me..but actually, I think legally, I need the documentation to show I live in the country before I get paid, so I’m not really arguing it. My supervisors and principal insisted that I take money from their pockets and I told them no and that I can take out money from the States. The principal was like “this isn’t a pride thing, take the money..” I’m like haha I know. That night, Sam wrote me on facebook to say Lien was going to sleepover so we could leave early for Taipei. Because of the holiday weekend, the only bus tickets left to purchase were for 5:30am!! Talk about super early.