Aug31
As many of you know, I have returned to Nashville for graduate school. And I’ve found myself back to the scary times of the first days of class. The critical first three minutes of class when the professor sets the tone for the entire year. The boring recitation of the syllabus which we, despite the rigorous application process we all went through, are clearly unable to read for ourselves. The thirty-minutes spent on awkward self-introductions which leads to no one remembering anyone’s name until the first group project. And somehow, in the matter of just a single class period, the one (and sometimes more than one) slightly wacko or vehemently opinionated character always arises; in the matter of an instant, you know that class will be just a tiny bit more interesting because of this one person.
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Welcome to English Village—the pride of Yilan County. Every Tuesday, six of us gather in the morning to give some fifth grade students of Yilan County an unforgettable English experience. The entire building is designed to be a simulated English environment, complete with an airplane donated by EVA Air, a fake dance studio, bank, restaurant, etc.
After a group introduction, the students, in groups, run through the stations to practice interacting with us, saying things like “I want to exchange $200 NT dollars to US dollars” at the bank or “Do your eyes hurt?” at the health center. We also play fun games with them to get them to practice using English more. At the end of their crazy adventure, they write postcards in English.
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Apr29
I remember my first introduction to bubble tea was when I visited my brother for the first time in Houston. I was amazed at the list of different fruity flavors I could choose to mix with black or green tea and large black chewy tapioca balls (called boba or bubbles). When I returned to Maryland and Nashville where the bubble tea scene is severely lacking, I was disappointed in the lack of selection and the outrageous prices.
Little did I know that there is so much beyond even the best bubble tea shop in Houston. Oh, so much more. Here in Taiwan, you almost literally can’t go an entire street block without walking past a tea shop. In more crowded areas, usually even more than just one tea shop.
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As July starts to creep up on me, I’m realizing more and more all of the things that I will miss about Taiwan. One of the biggest things that I’ll miss is teaching my sixth graders. They are amazing: hilarious, smart, sweet, mature, kua zhang, cute, crazy, and everything in between.
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Mar26
Today after lunch, my principal met with about 25 top-performing students that had been selected to compete in the English Easy Go competition. I walked in on him yelling at them to participate and encouraging them to sign up and that only if their parents said that they couldn’t go would he let them free. Actually, I was a bit surprised to see the students so scared. One of my students, Jacky, who is a really sweet student and would never lie, was trying to tell the principal that he would not be able to come because he had another engagement. The principal did not find this an acceptable answer and began questioning him to the point where it looked like he would cry. With me standing there, the principal turned to me and said in Chinese, “The reason they do not want to participate is because they hate you.” I wasn’t entirely sure if I translated what he said correctly, so I sort of ignored it and figured he was just joking around.
About two hours later, I left my classroom to get some fresh air and saw no less than 10 sixth-grade students approaching my classroom. Usually when they come to the classroom they are looking for Amy or Lisa since they can speak with them in Chinese about whatever problems/requests they have. But, in fact, they were looking for me. The next thing I knew, all of them were surrounding me and talking in Chinese to each other about how to say this since they don’t know how to translate. Eventually, one girl speaks up and says, “We didn’t hate you. The principal…” and then it cuts off because she gets stuck in the translation. Eventually, she continued saying that he was lying and being mean, but that really they like me a lot. They looked so worried that I really thought that they hated me! It was possibly one of the cutest moments I have ever had here in Taiwan. My students are so sweet.
