Touring Taidong + Second Week Sentiments

This past weekend, we got the chance to hang up our ugly orange volunteer uniforms (those of you who follow my Facebook photos have seen them... we joke that we look like prison convicts) and stow away our lesson plans for a bit. A few teachers drove us around Taidong county so that we could see some of the highlights. A few of the stops we made were:

- Rice farms. Agriculture is big here in rural Taiwan, and the big farms even give tours of the machinery used to sort, shell, rinse, and package rice.

- Buddhist cave shrines. Much of the meaning of this was lost on our group, as none of us subscribe to the religion... but it was still inspiring in a different way. (Those who have taken any sort of literary theory class will understand when I refer to Longinus' term the 'sublime' here)

- A beef noodle soup restaurant. I still think my mom's is better :]

Now we are halfway through the second week of teaching. We've certainly fallen into a routine: Powerpoint presentations, games, activities, worksheets, review... but the students still keep us on our toes. On some days, they are truly little monsters and there is nothing more we would like to do than to drop kick them from here to Narnia, but there is always something that makes up for even the worst ones. For example, today there were two little girls, 8-year-old Fiona and 12-year-old Amy, who came up to me and offered to braid my hair. They told me that my hair smelled nice, and that I was cool because I am not afraid to yell at the bad boys of the class. Both of them fought over who could hold my hand during the activity, and then at the end of the class they gave me hugs and said that they would be sad when I left. In that moment, I wished I could stay here with them forever.

The end of week 1

Teaching is exhausting.

A long week is about to be remedied with a long soak in the local hot springs.

1st Day of Teaching

Today, we taught our very first class- it was only a half-day (3 periods after lunch) and we were all already exhausted. The day began with a silly little skit performed by our group members, in which we acted as poorly dressed towel-cape superheroes that were assigned to defeat bad guys using English. (the video will hopefully never make its way around my social media outlets)

After the skit, we did a few introductions and were able to enjoy an amazing welcome performance by a few of the local students. The Bunong tribe are supposedly famous for their singing abilities, and after the performance, I do not doubt that one bit- this girl had a beautiful voice and was able to sing in both Chinese and English. Shortly after the performance was a simple pre-test, in which we asked things ranging from "What is your name?" to more complicated comprehension questions. Some of the students were really quick to respond, while others clearly had very little exposure to English. From their scores, they were divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.

Pre-tests being administered by Chris, Tammy, Yatyng, Lauren, and me.

Yatyng and I are teaching the beginner class, and it is REALLY difficult. We have all the punks (of course), the thirteen-year-old boys who care about nothing except sports and sleeping in class. Our students were either very responsive, or straight up fell asleep in front of us, and it was tricky to keep them amused due to the general ADD level of middle schoolers. We played a few games, the ones that involved candy and prizes were naturally those that rallied the best response. Three periods felt like an eternity, because we had to be on our feet constantly, keeping them amused and making sure they were paying attention and participating.

Each moment I spend here makes me appreciate teachers that much more. Furthermore, our living accomodations here are certainly less than standard. Our place, while air conditioned, is also quite drafty due to random gaps in the walls. At night, we sleep on thin tatami mats on a hard wood floor, which isn't quite conducive to my usual rolling around. We have no shower, only two spigots for hot and cold, so we fill shallow basins with water and pour, fill, and repeat. On top of that, there is a considerable menagerie of critters that live in the mountains, and every day and night we come across cockroaches, snakes, geckos, lizards, toads, spiders, and even the occasional goat. The bugs are the least desirable by far, and a few cockroaches have perished under the vengeful stomp of our teammate Richard, who is the only one brave enough to kill anything larger than a thumbnail. We all agree that living here is going to humble us a lot by the time our weeks are up...

The silver lining, however, is that on the weekends, the staff takes us out on adventures around the local area. The city of Haiduan is a small farming community that is populated by a majority of Aboriginal Taiwanese, specifically the Bunong tribe. The city is surrounded by mountains on one side, and endless rice fields on the other. We've had the chance to go for a bike ride around the area, and to eat at a few local spots.

From Mr. James (in purple) going right: Tammy, Lauren, another teacher, Yatyng, Chris, me, Nival, and Richard.

7/5/2012

The training week has certainly taught me how difficult it Is to be a teacher, no matter the curriculum or student level. In the course of three days, we had to plan out two weeks’ worth of 6-period days. Our lesson plans had to incorporate new vocabulary and sentence patterns, reading, conversation, writing, review, and activities, and had to simultaneously be applicable to three levels of ESL ability. This was incredibly overwhelming to us at first; we definitely spent a lot of time staring blankly at the computer screen and exchanging confused looks. However, as the week progressed, we learned the tricks of the trade through lecturers and presentations, and a real teaching plan began to emerge :]

We stayed up late on Wednesday to finalize our lesson plans, and when we were done we were mentally drained but eager to do SOMETHING other than basic elementary vocabulary and spelling. After some discussion of things we could potentially do, we finally decided on a whim to check out the clubs around Taipei. We ended up at Myst, just a few blocks away from the Taipei 101. It’s a beautiful interior, and we felt much better after loosening up and dancing away the accumulated stress from coming up with so much content for the classes. Aside from being extremely ill-prepared for a club setting (we had waltzed into the club with plain jeans and tees, and had only eaten a light dinner about 7 hours before heading out), it was a great night out for some team bonding, followed by 4am Taiwanese breakfast food at one of the most famous chain stores in Taipei.

Officially on the program schedule, however… was the fact that as a reward for finishing all of our work, we were able to walk over to the Shilin night market to scope out its extensive array of Taiwanese street food, and to purchase gifts and prizes for our students. My teaching group stuck together and after getting some authentic boba, stinky tofu, and the famous giant fried chicken, we were set to meander for a while, shop for shoes, laugh uncontrollably at ridiculous accessories, try more street snacks, and just joke around, simultaneously poking fun at and getting to know each other better.

7/2/2012:

Today, I am thankful for the following things:

1. Magical mosquito afterbite oil.

- I was sitting out in the lobby trying to get meager internet connection so I could write my mom an email, and in the short fifteen minutes or so that I was there, I managed to get bitten SEVEN TIMES. Four of the bites are close together, so they swelled into one huge, painful mass... fortunately, the convenience store sells a magical ointment only known by the name "green oil," which works wonders.

2. Online rent pay.

- Because even though I'm a thousand miles away, I still have a small space in an apartment somewhere in the faraway land of Irvine.

3. Enthusiastic group members :)

- We had to start working on our teaching plan today... quite a task for a group of six inexperienced, post-college student teachers. Something that college has taught me to despise is the dreaded group project-- these usually mean uncooperative and unresponsive group members, a freeloader that does nothing, and the few unfortunates that end up pulling the weight of everyone else. This group was entirely different, and I'm looking forward to teaching with them already- they're all mellow and down-to-earth, and are full of great ideas.