On Sunday, I made it a point to catch up on my sleep since I've been staying up til about 1:30am on average throughout the week. My new comforter is like sleeping in a cloud. It's nice. I'll have to eventually figure out how I can ship things home. I bought random souvenirs for people since day 1 and they're all sitting in the corner of my room. I don't even know where a post office is so I'll do some research. A girl that Gretchen put me in contact with, Caroline, facebook messaged me to hangout for the weekend and Sunday was the only day I had available really. She's lived in Taiwan her whole life and pretty much lived in Taichung for most of her life as well. So she called me after she had a bike race and we planned to meet up at the Train Station. For some odd reason, the weather went from gradually cooling down at night time, to brutally hot. Hotter than when I first got here even! It had to be in the upper 90's with the humidity. I wasn't prepared for the heat and before I met up with Caroline, I set out to go get some food and found a long mirror for my room, and I wore leggings and a tank top and was dying. Dripping sweat from head to toe. I don't think I'm allowed to wear less that that though. I occasionally see younger girls wearing skimpy clothes and they're usually stick figures so it works on them, but for the most part, everyone is pretty conservative. I'm getting more and more comfortable asking strangers for help. I went to take the bus to the train station and even though I've done it 10 times now, I wanted to make sure I got on the right one. You never know, those buses will take you all over and there's about 30 different ones. I asked a girl and she said that pretty much every bus will take you to the station but to get on when she gets on. People just let you follow them. That's like the 8th time someone has let me do that. I guess they don't worry about getting robbed or stalked or killed, maybe it'd be different if I was an old foreigner man though.
I met Caroline and she picked me up with her scooter. She's another person who suggested that I get a scooter because it's so much more convenient. I told her about my knocking a scooter lady over story, and she said people usually know to watch out for car doors. After she highly recommended getting a scooter, I asked her if she's ever been in an accident, hoping for the answer "oh god no, they're super safe." Instead the answer I got was "oh yea, about 3." If I think about it, if I had to count the fender benders I've had, I'm sure I'd be at about 3..and that's NOT including knocking my side view mirror off 3 times (because no other people were involved in that)..She took me to the North side of Taichung which seemed like a more lively, updated area. Again, I wish I was living in that type of area. She said that a lot of foreigners are in the North part of Taichung and most of the popular bars people hang out at are there. She had me remember some of the streets names. Zhongming and something else. It's so hard because Zhong would be prounced Jong and there's streets that start with Jung and those are pronounced Chung and then there's Chong and Xiong and who knows how you say those. We ate at a little cafe and both just got a tea and a pastry thing. It was good, she filled me in on the cliquey groups of foreigners that are in the city, and I'm thinking..I can't even picture what she's saying .. are they hiding in some secret underground clubhouse?? Do I have to get hazed in order to earn a spot in the foreigner society? Anyway, her boyfriend, who is Canadian, works at a bar called Fu-Bar. It just opened back up. I mentioned the whole bars/clubs shutting down issue and she made it sound like it really wasn't a big deal, you just need to know where to go. It was good to have her driving me around that part of the city and showing me important streets. Even though I can't remember how to technically say the streets, if you showed me their names (in pinyan not symbols) I'd recognize them which is an improvement to where I was at about a month ago. I thought walking down my street was a big outing and now I'm hopping on buses and riding my bike all over.
When she dropped me off by my apartment, I decided that even though it was brutally hot, I need to walk through this park that's right by me. So I went for a walk through Taichung Park and it's so pretty! Very serine. I also stopped by this grocery store in Chung Yo mall called Jason's. It's awesome, it has all imported goods from other countries, but it runs on the expensive side. I bought some fruit, snacks, and drinks just to see how they were first. I also bought a beer glass because I only have one plastic cup in my apartment and a coffee mug. When I got back to the apartment, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate one of my oranges. Those were some good grocery choices. I could not find orange juice to save my life though, so I settled for some stuff that was shipped from the UK, it claimed it was 100% juice, real oranges, all that, so I thought it'd be good even though it came in a giant juice box like-cardboard container..(those are never promising.) It tasted like shit. I might have to buy a juicer because the oranges I bought were great..orange juice..not so much.
I started to procrastinate on my work and clean my room and eat my snack and I go to take my beer glass out of its newspaper packaging, contemplating if I want to drink one of my new beers, and it slips, drops straight on to my right foot, shatters into a billion pieces, and then I proceed to step on the glass with my left foot. Ouch. Of course my foot was like gushing blood from the two small cuts, they felt kind of deep but I don't know much, I've never really cut myself (probably because my dad would freak out if we handled a knife the wrong way growing up...I think he's scarred from his child labor days in Hammond where he'd cut his fingers at the butchershop with knives, I don't know something like that.) SOO, I don't have a broom or dustpan to sweep up the glass but I do have a cute pink cotton swiffer, really glad I decided to be practical when I shopped for my apartment. I put flip flops on and sat on my bed to try and stop the bleeding. I didn't even try to be independent in this situation, I called Sam right away. I was like "sooo I dropped this new glass I bought and I stepped in the shattered glass and I'm bleeding and I don't have a dustpan or neosporin or big bandaids.." He was very concerned about the bleeding etc, he said he'd be over in 15 minutes (Sam time, so..30-40 minutes..thank god I wasn't trapped in a fire.) If I WAS in a fire, I would just spend that 30 minutes trying to put together the "escape sling" that's in my room that you have to hook up to the window and casually swing down to the ground. No thanks. He brought over a broom, dust pan, saline solution, iodine, neosporin, and bandaids. Then of course he has to start asking questions as if I'm 5 years old, very slowly and wide eyed he'll ask "well do you wear shoes in your apartment? you need to always wear shoes" (no Sam, we don't wear shoes when we are about to go to bed, that's weird.) and he's like, "you bought a REAL glass, NEVER buy real glasses in Taiwan, only by plastic ones, real glass can break (yes, I noticed the shards of glass all over my floor, I was so curious as to what would happen if I chucked my new glass to the ground..) Sorry, enough sarcasm, I hate being treated like I'm a little kid, maybe I'll just deal with the bloody mess myself next time. So he cleaned up the glass and had me go into the bathroom to use the saline/iodine/neosporin, and I cleaned off the area with saline first then I used the iodine and holy hell, I started swearing like crazy (I'd like to stay censored but that shit STINGSSS) At the doctor they put iodine on you before a shot, they don't rub it in to a wound, so I didn't expect that pain and Sam is a pretty religious guy, I felt bad for screaming what I screamed. He's sweeping out in my room and I'm like "son of a bitch...god dammit....ffffffuuuuuuck ahhhhhh" He thought it was humorous, I thought it was a little rude he didn't forewarn me of the excruciating pain. Foot's fine, this Chinese neosporin is probably 10 times better than at home. They have like, magical medicine out here. You better believe I drank on of my beers after that night...and I used my plastic cup.
Monday- On my semester plan that I handed in Monday morning, I had a lesson planned for the week that talked about different feelings. We went over 7 different feelings and students learned the phrase "it makes me feel..." and "I like/I don't like this song" and then we listened to 10 songs that I put on a CD. I learned this lesson from my cooperating teacher at the middle school during student teaching, and I love it because I can choose my songs. I did about 9 songs that I really like (not anything super popular, just good choices for different feelings) and then #10 was by a famous Korean boyband, Shinee, that the girls are crazy about. The first day went well, most classes understood the assignment, especially when I had the co-teacher translate each feeling. At the end of the lesson, students were so excited to hear this popular Asian boy band song and they got the point that everyone has different feelings for different things. I think it was hard for them to not have concrete answers for each song. They would ask the co-teacher.."So..is the answer Sad? Bored? Relaxed?" And I stressed these two things, "The person next to you will not have the same feelings, do not look at their paper and say 'oh you felt excited, me too.' and copy their answer. Also, do not right Happy Happy Happy Happy down the page." All of the co-teachers were on board but then the one older one who I always assume doesn't like me, made the lesson into exactly the opposite of what it should've been. After each song she would prompt the students and they would all write the same feeling! I think she finally realized this was not right when one kid spoke up and said "I wrote angry?" She's like "teacher Diana, he has a different answer than him, he wrote angry and he wrote sad." I was like, "Yea! Good! That's the point, everyone's different." At the end of the day, Anita (I finally know her name) who is the head of the English department and is also one of my co-teachers, mentioned that I need to review the vocabulary words in the magazine because the students will be tested. I know I already mentioned this, but it totally stressed me out because I JUST sent them my ideas for the semester without any help, and now I have to change it. I was so excited that the students really enjoyed the lesson for the week and it was different than what they are used to, and if I have to do boring vocabulary reviews every week, then what makes my English Conversation class any different than their grammar class? When have you ever heard a kid say the word, "sighed." That's a weird word to teach, a sigh isn't a vocabulary word to define. I mean, I already did it, I taught that last week, but whether they got it or not, who knows. She asked if I'd like to ask my questions at the meeting they're all having next Tuesday, and my first thought is, Why am I not included in the meeting in the first place? If it's going to be in Chinese, then maybe alter the meeting so I can understand, then you can all practice the English that you tell me you want to practice and improve, and then the kids will eventually have better English because YOU'RE learning English.. Makes sense in my head...After Anita mentioned that, I got kind of choked up. I'm exhausted, I'm confused, I'm annoyed. I want to cry. I almost just want to go with my gut and do what the kids like.
Monday night was my very first Chinese Class!!! Yayyyyy!! Twice a week, Mondays and Fridays 7-9pm, I'll have Chinese class with Shija. Other Dewey people are in it as well but they've been enrolled for a few weeks now so I'm in a different class. The first class had 6 people including us. A girl from Minneapolis, (out here for footwear engineering??) A girl from Thailand and a guy from Turkey, who work at the same company, and then a Costa Rican man who lived in Indianapolis for 15 years. Talk about small world in a small class. Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and New York, Turkey, Thailand all in the same room learning Chinese for completely different reasons. All we learned was the alphabet and vowels and those alone were sooooo hard. I need to get some help from Connor. He had Chinese and he was just in 1st grade, if he can do it, then I should be able to..(but he's also read ever Harry Potter book before the age of 7 so..maybe not.) My jaw was seriously sore after that class. I said some of the vowels to Kari on skype, and this sounds mean, but her and I agree that you almost sound like a deaf person when you try and say some of their vowels. They use different sounds and noises to make the vowels and your jaw, tongue, and throat are moving every which way.
Tuesday at lunch, we had these really good chicken legs, like rotisserie style, and we had corn. Lunch is never that good so naturally I took two chicken legs (I really wanted to take about 5.) This guy who sits at our table is kind of an asshole. He thinks he's like..hot shit because he's a dean and he's younger. I don't even have to speak Chinese to realize that he seems totally into himself. There's times he will tease Wenli about "how old she is" and I told them that I learned how to say "hot girl" in Chinese class, la mei (spicy woman), and he told Wenli that she's too old to be "hot" and all this mean stuff. He'll mumble it all monotone-like in Chinese, and then she'll pretend to get sad and repeat what he says to me, and I'm like..wow you're an asshole. I could probably get away with saying that to his face and he wouldn't know, but she doesn't take it to heart so I brush it off. Anyyyyway, you know how I mentioned how disgusting the manners can be, especially at lunch time? Burping spitting all sorts of things. WELL I was eating my chicken legs like a normal American would. Kind of like eating corn on the cob, you just hold it with each hand, two fingers on each side so you don't get your hands messy, right? HE had the nerve to say something in Chinese to Wenli about me when he's sitting right next to me (and I don't even hold back anymore, when I know they're talking about me, I flat out say, "What?") So she says "He say you eat like animal." And he looks at me and nods and says, "Animal." all serious like. I could not help my reaction but (hopefully didn't offend anyone) I sarcastically responded "I eat like an animal, you eat with your hands every day and spit out bones??" and like laughed at the idea. Jerk. The other nice people at my table were talking about the dinner we are all going to on Thursday night for Teacher's Day. The PTA hosts it so we don't have to pay or anything. I'm picturing another gross "dinner box" with shrimp heads and red bean paste, but they told me its at a really nice Japanese place. I'm excited! Wenli and I are the only girls at our lunch table and she goes "Diana wants beer at the dinner, and I want grape wine!" And Mr. Who (who is sooo nice) was like "Oh you like beer?" I was kind of embarrassed, I'm like, "well ya I like beer, but it's ok I don't need to drink at the dinner..(then casually throw in..) will other people be drinking?" And Mark said, "don't worryyy" (thats his favorite phrase to me, he says it so funny, like don (in donor) woorey) and said that Wenli will drink grape wine and others will probably drink. He's going to pick me up from my apartment and drive me.
Wednesday was Teacher's Day. It was interesting, I got like, 25 cards from students! So cute. And when I would walk into a class (granted I only have 2 on Wednesdays) they decorated the chalkboard for me. You can tell the kids picked the smartest kid in their class to give me a card. It's like..near perfect English. But Wednesday kind of sucked, I had a little breakdown to my mom that night. English club went horrrriblleee. It's two periods in a row, and the students were supposed to bring materials to put together their travel brochures with their group (that we spent two hours researching the week prior, mind you) and the second period they were going to present them. Only ONE group brought materials. The others didn't even bring the rubric for the assignment, barely even brought a pen, AND they didn't remember who was in their group!?? I'm like, omg I wish they spoke English. Somehow I think they still understood my teacher guilt trip about responsibility and how I'm disappointed, and how it changes the plans for next week...But it totally sucked because it changed the entire plan for that day. AND, when I walk around the school, I see these beautiful art projects and crafts from every kid, they're all so talented, so I was really excited for this project. I'm thinking they're going to pull out all the stops for this brochure. Drawings, fancy handwriting, construction paper cut shapes everywhere, pop up's on the pages..(they created books about the 4 seasons that looked like they could be sold in the Barnes and Noble Children's Section) but no, they didn't even bring paper for my assignment :( First period was just ended up being a blow off period for them and some of them worked with scraps of paper, markers, and scissors that I provided and others just sat in silence..so weird. The second period I just had them all write English notes to a teacher for teacher's day. I said, "it doesn't have to be for me, make it for your homeroom teacher or someone else, it's ok if they can't speak English." But 90% of them made it for me haha. So English club= shitty that day. On a positive note, Beryl thinks she can get a hold of some pumpkins to carve for the week of Halloween, maybe like 5, one per 5 kids. That would be cool. Taiwanese jack o lanterns.
Later on that day, I went to the gym at the school and got some grapefruit green tea from the juice stand (the guy who owns it loves me. He tries to talk to me everyday about all sorts of things in English. Asks me what I think of the school systems here in Taiwan and how the culture is compared to America's and politics and yadda yadda yadda, sometimes I just want to get my kiwi juice and go, but I appreciate all of the English he's using so I stick around.) When I got back to my apartment, I immediately wanted to work on my powerpoint for the assembly the next morning and I told my co teacher, Sabrina, that I'd send it to her right after school because she was going to be my assistant this week. Well being that the day was already crappy, it only went down from there, it didn't save onto my flash drive. If the weather was about 10 degrees cooler, I might've considered riding my bike all the way back to school, but no way. I have to re-do it :( I then got a phonecall from Shijah, we talked for like, 2 hours about anything and everything! Just ranting and raving about the cultural differences, our apartment troubles, my teaching troubles, what we're doing for the weekend, the 3 day weekend coming up, and even NYE! It seems premature to talk about but I love NYE and I'm all for planning it soon! It won't be any trip to the dells, but I'm sure it will be a good time (I can't believe I just compared Wisconsin Dells to Taiwan..I should kick myself) So during our conversation, we start to talk about my apartment, and after hearing and seeing what Lien's place is like and now hearing what Shijahs place is like..I'm starting to get the feeling I've been jipped. I said from day one, even BEFORE day one, I have money to live comfortably out here. I will spend more than the given stipend, so I can have a place that I actually want to LIVE in for an entire year. Her and Lien are only paying about 1,000 to 2,000 more than me, and have their utilities included AND have a TV, a balcony!! a big living space, and their fridge is conveniently located in their room, not in a classroom they live above that they have to walk through when a class is going on.. WTF. I don't think it's my "area" either, after knowing my area and seeing other areas, I am NOT in the downtown city part.. I think I could get a nicer place for a reasonable price. And my landlord switches up what I owe, what I'm supposed to have, what utilities cost, and it's not fair. Sam keeps saying, well the buildings new, he's new, the place is new, but I don't care anymore, I'M NEW. I don't use that as an excuse. I still get stuff done. It's not fair that I'd have to buy my own tv and pay for cable when all the other Dewey people have that..I also told Shijah that even though it's only been a month, I already feel annoyed with the location and the type of living. I have to eat from a food stand or a night market every night..there's no little cafe's or sit down places to relax, I always have to take my food back to my fluorescent lit tiny apartment. So Shijah and I decided that I need to look for a new place. If I tell Sam, he'll just "work something out with the landlord" and next thing you know I agree to live here because the landlord agrees to pay one more utility and buy me an old used tv. No, it's more than that. It's not just the tv. It's a lot of things. I still have a long long time left in Taiwan, and I'm not going to be my typical pushover self who usually just sits back and takes what life deals her. I have some control over this..I think... Anyway, I finished my powerpoint at 1:30 am and got to bed.
Thursday
My presentation went awesome!! It started as a super broad topic, "Music in America" but I briefly covered some main music trends/famous people throughout the years, taught about words like "idol, popular, trend, celebrity," and threw in some current music references and the kids loved it. They film my presentations so I'd love to know where those videos end up..when I figure that out I'll see if I can attach them to the blog. I seriously need to stop depending on my procrastination skills, somehow at 7:15am I created a burned cd and linked the powerpoint to the cd so I could incorporate music in the presentation. and was out the door by 7:35, got to school at 7:46, and set up. Wenli came up to me after the presentation and praised me for my good work which felt great. I haven't really gotten any feedback like that since I started. To hear it from her made it even better. She said that my topic was so interesting and the students loved it and it looked like I spent so much time on it, (not going to lie, I've seen the former teacher's presentations online, and they're kind of boring.."top 10 pets in the UK" (how does that last 20 minutes?)
The lesson went well again, I can't decide if it's easy to do the same lesson 18 times, or hard because it's so repetitive and you forget what you went over with each class. Using music really helps get all types of learners involved. There's a tiny little 7th grader who is so cute, and I noticed she wasn't writing anything down on her paper so I tried explaining the assignment to her again while the music was playing, and the boy behind her who has great English was like "teacher Diana, she's special, she's special." and I was like, ok..and all I did was draw little pictures under each feeling word, and she instantly understood. Her paper was filled out better than some of the other students. With every song, she'd look at the pictures I drew on the bottom and then saw what word they were with and wrote a perfect sentence: "It makes me feel excited. I like this song" That's how I learn, I need pictures and concrete examples of things. In some of my 8th grade classes, the lesson even appealed to the little jack ass boys that are too cool for school. They pretended they didn't get it and would joke and act like they weren't going to do the assignment and next thing I know, once they hear one song they think is cool, they start paying attention. It's nuts. I wish all lessons could be this smooth. This teaching job makes me feel like I'm bipolar, you either have days where you're on this super high and everything is clicking and working and so positive, and then you have days where your like, shit, nothing will work, this job sucks, these kids don't get it, I hate this..
When I got to lunch, Wenli told me she had some bad news for me. I got so scared because her tone was so sad, but then all she said was she wasn't going to the dinner tonight. I was like "OH, oh ok aw man, that sucks." I asked her why and she flat out told me that it was because of something that happened with the principal, I was like..woah..this is juicy, tell me more. She said that he asked her last minute to be the presenter and speaker during the dinner and she was offended that he'd ask her last minute and thought it wasn't fair that she's a teacher, and she'd be working during this dinner that's for teachers. She said "I want to sit and relax and drink grape wine with you and sometimes I say funny things when I drink grape wine.." Haha I loved that, understandable, I wouldn't want to stand up and not eat throughout a dinner that was for me. So the best part about this whole situation is, at lunch the principal walks up to us after she tells me this, and says something to her and she goes, "I know I'm so sorryyyy, but I can't miss my date! Diana, the principal doesn't believe I have a date tonight!" I was like, omg, she lied to him haha..So I said "of course she has a date! She's so beautiful!" She said I'd be fine because Coffee Joe, Mark, and Chiao would all be there.
After work, I got back to my apartment and a huge package is outside of my apartment door! Which is weird because I'm in my own little building, so someone had to literally walk it inside and up 2 flights of stairs. My mom packed me all of these goodies and necessities. It got here in like..4 days! I was nervous it was going to be another situation that happened with Nick. She sent him this big package of all of these winter clothes and things he needed when he was in Italy, and the package just traveled from country to country for over a month, only to end up back at our door all beat to shit with a thousand different countries' stickers on it. It went to like, every country that Nick wasn't in. I cried happy happy tears when I opened up that package..especially when I got to the milkduds, sour patch kids, and clothes.
Mark got me at 6pm to go to the dinner. It was at this Japanese place that was huge. A ton of the faculty was there and all of the PTA and school board. Everyone was pretty much assigned to a table (much like Moon Festival) I sat with Joe at a table and Mark went somewhere else and Chiao was one table over. I asked Joe who else would sit with us and he said he had no idea. The student teacher, Chiara (kiara) sat next to me. She's so small and nice haha. Every table had one bottle of gross orange juice, one bottle of even grosser barley tea, and then a bottle of grape wine..we can all take a guess at what I chose. I'll give myself some credit and say, I tried the other two gross drinks first which is why I knew they were gross. I was forced to drink the wine. The food was all seafood, some weirrrrrd seafood at points. I barely ate anything which was fine because once they told me it was a Japanese seafood place that wasn't sushi, I made sure to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before I left. I pictured raw fish carcasses, and you know what, that's exactly what was provided. Joe had to keep getting up to take pictures of the event, and Wenli was right, the speakers didn't sit down once to eat and relax. It was a weird dinner, the whole time they called up people to the stage and everyone would clap while they ate. People did that thing where they'd walk up to our table and cheers to us so we had to drink like 100 times. THEN, my crazy ass principal comes up to our table with a bunch of men and starts talking to them about me and gives me a full glass, of what appears to be water, and has me drink. It's straight booze. Vodka maybe. Maybe grappa. Or sambuka..I dunno I don't do well with shots, and this was literally a glass full of booze that he was drinking, not sipping, drinking. (I was having flashbacks of vomiting up my jaegar bomb at my going away party when I was dead sober.) Everyone watched me take a swig, even the tables around me. I made my usual grotesque shot taking face and was like..ok thanks, cheers, byeee. But that wasn't enough, he had me take one more. About 10 minutes later the principal was on stage giving more speeches and then once again, people start pointing and prodding me because he was introducing me. I was like..oh great, I just had some sick liquor, and about 2 glasses of red wine instead of my fish body meal..and I need to wave to people, I'll probably fall over. A wave wasn't good enough though , he had me go up on stage in front of 100 parents I didn't know and give some random speech. I don't even remember what I said (not because I was buzzed, but because I was so nervous and just like..blacked out when I mumbled something)..all I know is at the end I said She She, and everyone got happy and asked me to say more Chinese. I reeled off my 5 phrases and people freaked out. Shortly after, Mark drove me back. I told him about my apartment issues and he was willing to help me out right away which was nice. We'll see how tomorrow goes! It's almost the weekennnnnnddd!!!
