ENLIHS SPELING AND TRANSALTOINS

When we first arrived in Taiwan, we were surprised by the amount of English we saw on signs, t-shirts, etc... We are so thankful the Taiwanese have taken the extra step to label so many things in both Chinese and English. This alone has made our lives here 100 times easier. One thing that always makes us chuckle regarding this, however, is the spelling we see. There are many things that contribute to their sometimes confusing letter choices and arrangements.

First, sometimes the Taiwanese are trying to spell out Chinese sounds/words. For example, we’ve seen the name of the city we live in depicted eight different ways in English: Douliu, Douliou, Dou-Lui, Dou-Liou, Touliu, Touliou, Tou-Liu and Tou-Liou. Because English sounds and Chinese sounds don’t correlate exactly, it’s often hard for the Taiwanese to choose just one English spelling in situations like this.

This issue was very confusing for us at first, especially when the same organization spelled things different ways. For example, the Taiwan Railway Administration spells Douliu one way on their website, another way on their automatic ticket booths and a different way on their signs. At this point, however, we’ve thankfully gotten a little savvier.

Secondly, it seems a lot of people throw English on their signs or menus without getting it checked by a creditable source. Now, we have absolutely no problem with this...we are obviously not in a position to be upset or annoyed about it...it just really surprised us initially. Apparently we had the assumption that if businesses, schools and organizations were going to spend a significant sum of money on products, they would make sure everything (Chinese and English) was correct on them. Well, that assumption of ours has been challenged. :)

When it comes to translations...often times they’re humorous. Sometimes their titles are vaguer than ours and sometimes they’re much more direct and literal. Oftentimes the word choice is interesting. And, in many cases, the translations are simply confusing.

With the intentions of helping you understand and hopefully passing on some lighthearted humor, we’ve posted some pictures below. (Hopefully you can read the words in them...we made the pictures a little bigger than usual.) Allow us to emphasize one more time how much we appreciate all the English we see here, regardless if it’s correct or not. :)

Just a taste...

ABOUT CAMPUS

So, last night Phil brought a document home for me to look at. It was something some of his students had given him to correct. The document is intended to be a script for a PowerPoint presentation about Dongren Junior High School. They’re going to be giving this presentation to some English-speaking people visiting next week from New Zealand.

Today as I was thinking about it to myself and smiling, I decided I couldn’t resist posting it to our blog. My intention behind doing this is not to make fun of his students in any way...their English ability is so advanced compared to our Chinese. And, we always admire the students here who are willing to take risks and make mistakes. I simply think this is a great example of some of the confusion that’s involved with our life and work here. Enjoy! :)

(Needless to say, Phil decided he needed to schedule some time to work with these students on the presentation before next week!)

Here it is...unedited...

Dong-Ren

Junior High School

About Campus

Facing the sun door

Exactly face the sun

The first, teacher kidness building

The teacher of part and offices all again this, so take teacher kidness building.

I am the second to spread Xi Yuan.

Spreading the Xi Yuan is the place that the student learns.

The third international building.

Our English village at the third, so take for the international building.

Ecosystem pool style style lake

There are a lot of plants inside our styles style lake, can appreciate.

This road is very beautiful and be like similar in the garden.

Yunlin Dung-Ren International English Village

Our foreign teacher

The son of our foreign teacher he’s name is phill, he is all very good to everyone, also taught many of our things and make our English better progress.

Our restaurant

This is the restaurant of the village of our English, is also the one of them of our teaching location, we all learn restaurant rite here.

Our store

Here am the store in the village of our English, we learn here how to make use of English to buy the language of thing and response clerk.

End

Thank’s everyone, our introduce this to end.

CHANGHUA

Phil and I spent this past weekend in Changhua County, which is just north of Yunlin County. We hung out there with another foreign couple, Andi and Peter. Changhua City is home of the largest Buddha statue in Taiwan, so we went to see that. The temple that hosted the statue was located in a beautiful little park reserve that overlooked the city.

On Sunday, Andi and I participated in a 10.9K race in a small town in Changhua County, on the coast. The race was put on to raise money to help “Save the Sousa”. Sousa is a type of dolphin in Southeast Asia. Peter and Phil were troopers...they came with to cheer us on even though we all had to be up at 4:00 am to catch our shuttle bus! Thanks guys! The last part of the race was probably the best part...for multiple reasons :)...we ran on the top of a large concrete wall, right along the ocean. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it was nice!

VISITORS!

Phil and I were lucky enough to recently have some visitors! My family and some family friends, the Abrahamsons, arrived on March 28^th. My family was able to stay until April 9^th. The Abrahmsons flew out earlier that week. Our schools were very understanding of our situation and allowed us to take almost two weeks off of work so we could travel around the island with them.

It was really great to see them all and fun to get the opportunity to show them around! It was funny to listen to all their comments regarding Taiwan’s culture. They were many of the same comments we made when we first arrived...many of the same things we found interesting or strange...but their comments were often about things that seem “normal” to us now. So, it was great to be reminded of all those things again. :)

Throughout the time that they were here, Phil and I traveled to places we had been before and also went to new places and did a lot of new things (even in the places we had been to prior). The eight of us pretty much utilized every form of public transportation you can imagine. We were very busy. Our itinerary looked like this:

Day One - Wulai (northern Taiwan)

Day Two - Taipei City (northern Taiwan)

Day Three - Sun Moon Lake (central Taiwan)

Day Four - Douliu and Huwei (west-central Taiwan)

Day Five - Little Liuchiu Island (southwestern Taiwan)

Days Six and Seven - Kenting (southern Taiwan)

Days Eight, Nine and Ten - Taroko Gorge (east-central Taiwan)

Day Eleven - Northeast Scenic Area (in..you guessed it...northeastern Taiwan :)

Day Twelve - Jiufen and Beitou Hot Springs (northern Taiwan)

Day Thirteen - Taipei City (northern Taiwan)

Although our time with them was really just one highlight after another, here’s a few things we thought were particularly memorable:

-- Singing KTV (karaoke) at our hotel in Wulai.

-- Having my family and the Abrahamsons experience Taiwanese food and smells. :)

-- Strangers wanting to take random pictures with us (especially the younger boys, Grant and Brett).

-- Getting foot massages at a night market that were extremely painful, tickly and pleasant all at the same time.

-- Having my family and the Abrahamsons visit our schools. As you may have guessed, Brett and Grant were pretty much rock stars with Phil’s junior high girls. :) Phil still has students ask him when “his family” will be back to visit. And, apparently, quite a few of his students created all English Facebook pages so they could be "friends" with the boys. Now they’ll all be up to date on all the gossip happening in the Dassel-Cokato area! :)

-- The minor bus accident on the way to Phil's school.

-- Being serenaded by a Taiwanese restaurant owner while eating lunch in Douliu.

-- Renting scooters from the old woman on Little Liuchiu Island.

-- Watching people light these lanterns (in the video below) and release them into the air.

-- Snorkeling on Little Liuchiu and in Kenting.

-- Staying at Achi’s place in Kenting. Achi is a surfer and renaissance man. He never failed to surprise us by all the things he had done/is doing in his life. He spoke great English and because of this (and his personality) he acted like our concierge while we were in Kenting...helping us set up all our activities. :)

-- Surfing lessons. Most of us just did a lot of exhausting paddling vs. actually “riding the waves”, but it was a great experience!

-- Going to the hot springs near Kenting.

-- Abrahamsons having to leave Taroko Gorge earlier than they had planned because all the trains back to Taipei City (where they needed to get to catch a taxi to the airport) were booked due to the Tomb Sweeping holiday that took place on Monday, April 5^th...bummer.

-- My mom and dad having a relatively large falling rock go right over their heads at Taroko Gorge. This was a bit rattling for us all. To top it off, about 15 minutes after the rock incident, we went on a crazy taxi ride. Needless to say we were thankful when we got back to our hotel safe and sound that night.

-- Seeing wild monkeys at Taroko. I was the only one who saw them, but I swear I’m not lying! There’s a video of them below. You can’t see them in the video, though, you can only hear them.

-- Going to a cute little tea destination (Jiufen).

-- Staying at a hot springs hotel in Beitou (where the men and women facilities were separate because you’re required to go nude...that was an experience :).

-- Going to Taipei City’s flower market.

-- Going to a driving range in Taipei City.

-- Finishing our time with my family by eating an American style meal at TGIFridays! :)

MY RING!

Last Thursday I (Phil) decided to play baseball with some students after school. I borrowed a boy’s glove and played a rousing round of catch. So much so that when I took my glove off my wedding ring came off with it. I didn’t notice my ring was missing until I was on the bus home, too late to go look for it. I suppose I could’ve asked the bus driver to pull over because I needed to go and look for my wedding ring, but I figured that would have been pretty hard to communicate.

So, on Friday I had a class during first hour and towards the end of class I told my co-teacher to tell the students that I lost my wedding ring outside somewhere around the track. My students were very concerned right away. They all let out a collective, “Oh my God!!” After they all settled down and adjusted to the fact that I lost my ring I asked them if they could help me look for it if they had time. As the bell rang, all of my students rushed out of the classroom and onto the track. A couple of students gathered around me and started asking questions like; “You need your ring to stay with your wife?” and “Your wife will be so ANGRY?!” I responded yes to both of them because I didn’t feel like explaining that I could just by a new ring if I wanted to and either way I could stay married to “Anna”.

When I was done talking with those students I looked around and realized that more students were recruited to help me find my ring and save my marriage. There were 50-60 students combing through grass and dirt desperately trying to help me keep my wife. It was amazing to see all of these students so worried and eager to help even though my ring held very little meaning to them personally.

As the break time was coming to a close, a student (that I played catch with the previous day) found my ring on a set of stairs. I offered to buy him a bubble tea, thanked him for finding my ring, and assured all of my students that my wife would not leave me now.

LIBRARY OPENING CEREMONY

Last Thursday (March 18^th), my (Annalicia’s) school had an opening ceremony for our brand new library. They have been working on this library ever since I’ve been here and it turned out absolutely beautiful!

At the opening ceremony, they had all the students line the halls and pass the books from where they were being stored to the new library. It was really cool! I went to watch and take some pictures and ended up being interviewed by three different news camera crews. Only in Taiwan! :)

A few interesting things to note: First, at the ceremony a group of students played, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” on recorders. It got me in the Christmas mood! :) Also, no one is allowed to go in the library with shoes on.

CHINESE YO-YO

I (Annalicia) got the chance to learn how to play with a Chinese yo-yo a few weeks ago! The physical education teacher at my school put on a little “in-service” for us! He can do some really cool tricks with it. He got first place at a Yunlin County Chinese yo-yo competition!

One of the tricks he taught us was throwing the yo-yo in the air and catching it. Well, the first time I tried it, I threw mine way too high and I could see it was going to hit another teacher so without thinking I started yelling, “Heads up! Heads up! Heads up!” No one moved...they had no idea what I was saying...my yo-yo hit the teacher! (She was okay.) :)