OUR MISCELLANEOUS MONTH OF MAY

We haven’t been doing much traveling this month, we’ve mostly just been hanging out in Douliu. So, our May has been filled with a bunch of small, yet memorable, miscellaneous events and activities, starting with a...

Mother’s Day Celebration

On Saturday, May 1^st, my (Annalicia’s) school hosted what was kind of like an open house/carnival thing. The intention behind it was to try to promote the school and get more students interested in coming to Yunlin Elementary.

My students put on a program in honor of Mother’s Day at this event. All the songs were in English, but most of them had nothing to do with moms. :) There’s a video below of part of the Kindergarteners’ song and dance. These Kindergarteners are so good at organized dance, it’s unbelievable! This song was about McDonald’s and Pizza Hut (notice their costumes)...I cringed a little at the promotion of these American entities, but the kids were so cute, Phil and I couldn’t help but thoroughly enjoy the performance! :)

“Ice” Hockey

We found out a few weeks ago that, in the words of a Taiwanese friend of ours, “Taiwan has ice hockey!” Ice hockey? Hmmmm...we were surprised. We went to check it out...it was roller hockey...that made more sense. :)

Hard Rock

Taiwan continues to surprise us. One night we were walking and came across a hard core, heavy metal band performing in the park. This challenged our perceptions of the Taiwanese. We were used to most people here loving things that are “so cute”, like the Hello Kitty stuffed animals (even as adults) and singing love songs on KTV...not screaming into microphones. It was a good reminder for us of the diversity that exists within cultures and the potential danger involved with generalizing. There’s a short clip of the performance below. Believe it or not, the “singer” was a cute, petite woman. :)

Night Market

Douliu’s Saturday night market used to be right by our apartment. Awhile ago, though, it got moved to a different location. Since then, we hadn’t been. So, we decided to hit it up a couple times this month. This night market is the biggest one in Yunlin County and draws a huge amount of people in every week.

Mike

One of our Taiwanese friends owns an English cram school in Douliu. Awhile ago she found a guy from Ohio to come work as a foreign English teacher at her school. His name is Mike and he just arrived in the beginning of May. He lives in an apartment right down the road from us. His schedule is opposite of ours (he works at night), but it’s been fun to hang out with him on the weekends. It’s been weird, but good to have another “foreigner” around in Douliu.

Mobile Library Opening Ceremony

Yunlin County granted my school a large sum of money to be the host of a mobile library. Basically what our mobile library consists of is two trucks filled with books and other things. There’s a team here at Yunlin Elementary who brings these trucks around to other schools in the county (mostly in the countryside), who do not have libraries of their own. Kind of a cool idea! Of course, none of this would be official without a proper ceremony to mark its beginning! :) I think I’ve been to more opening ceremonies during my time here than most Americans will ever go to throughout their entire lives!

Sidewalk Chalking

One day I was talking to one of my co-teachers and somehow we got on the subject of sidewalk chalk. I came to find out that, after discussing if for a few minutes, he had no idea what I was talking about! (That happens a lot here! :) Apparently sidewalk chalking is something most Taiwanese people have never done or even heard of.

After I explained it to him and showed him some pictures online, he asked if I could plan a lesson around sidewalk chalking so the kids could experience it. What a good idea! So, that’s what I did. There are some pictures of my students chalking below. They are so cute! Usually right at the beginning of the lesson, they all just sit there because they don’t really believe they can draw on the ground. :)

A Field Trip to Phil’s School

Last week I took a day off of work at my school to go with Phil to his school. I had been to his school twice before, but both of those trips were way back in August. And, on those past trips I didn’t get to meet any of his students or ride the bus with him. I decided I wanted to see what a day was like for him, with his commute and everything, and his students kept telling him they wanted to meet me.

We had a great day! I definitely appreciate, even more, the hour long (one way) bike, bus, walking commute he does everyday. And, his students were really fun to interact with. Their English is so much more advanced than most of my students’ English (obviously)...so, I could actually have conversations with some of them! In one of his classes, students decided they wanted Phil and I to sign our names on their folders and then they drew hearts around our signatures. :)

It was fun to spend time with his co-worker too! We had a lot of tea that day! :) We spent about 45 minutes having tea with his principal. He played three different Chinese instruments for us and ended up giving us a Chinese flute/recorder as a gift! Fun! (There’s a picture of Phil’s principal below.)

ROAD CONSTRUCTION

Road construction in Taiwan is definitely much different than it is in the States. Oftentimes there is no indication that you are approaching a construction zone...suddenly there it is...a lane is closed....no one’s directing traffic. Phil and I call these the “Just Figure It Out” construction areas. And, amazingly enough, people usually do! Here are two examples:

Our absolute favorite aspect of road construction here are the little guys they dress up, holding flags. We’re not really sure what this is about. Is it a way to get people’s attention? Are the construction companies unable to hire an actual person for this position? Whatever the case may be, we find them pretty humorous!

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! :)