I can't believe it's November already. I have been Taiwan for nearly 3 months and it's starting to feel like home. Some days I forget that I am in a foreign country, but it's rainy days like today that remind me. It has been raining for the past two days almost nonstop. But it's actually a pleasant feeling: I've been lounging around watching movies and eating good food. And doing some teaching, too.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my persona as a teacher. I've come to the conclusion that teaching is mostly acting. I make grammar and phonics sound more exciting than they are, even if I really do find them exciting :) To the right is a picture of me as a crazy rockstar on Halloween with one of my youngest students.
I think I am getting plenty of good teaching experiences here. Sometimes, I have classes with younger kids following ones with older kids and vice versa. My teaching certification is for middle and high school but I think that the experience is younger kids is useful, too. The language barrier can be a problem with the youngins' but using body language is a great way around that.
The next few months will be different and rather hectic. I am starting a Chinese language course at a nearby university. It's actually a pretty rigorous course, and I choose to take it because I want to leave Taiwan with a little Chinese under my belt. I can't justify coming to a foreign country and relying on everyone to know English or have others translate for me. If we run into a foreigner in the U.S. we may not even consider that they don't know English very well. Here, though, everyone anticipates foreigners to know little to no Chinese. Fortunately, when I go to stores, etc. there is always at least one person there that speaks English. Anyway, I'm going to put a lot of work into learning the language here and trying to communicate with the natives as much as I can. It's so easy to forget that I'm still a guest in this country, and I want to be as respectful as possible. This mentality is so different than in my classes. We are supposed to use only English, but sometimes the students slip and say something in Chinese. I made up a rap to promote English speaking in the classroom, "No, Chinese. No, no, Chinese!" Sometimes the students will get lazy and just give me the answer instead of reading the whole sentence in the book. So I made up a chant, "READ THE WHOLE SENTENCE! READ THE WHOLE SENTENCE!" The little kids like it and they think I'm goofy. And they'd be right...
So, I'm told that it will get cooler here eventually. But I have yet to feel it. It's still miserably hot and humid some days, but I bought two winter jackets just in case. December seems so close and it's still in the 70s and 80s everyday. I'm not complaining. I've always preferred to be hot rather than cool. Despite the rain and wet streets, I'm really enjoying my time here, and I don't think I reflect on this enough. For one, the people here are really great. For instance, when a person in America wants something we usually just say, "can I please have some of your cake?" The person will respond with either a yes or no answer, maybe sometimes making up an excuse as to why they cannot share. In Taiwan, if a person wants something, they try to get the other person to offer it. They may say how delicious the cake looks and smells, ask you where you got it, and ask if it's tasty. Until finally you get sort of frustrated and say, "do you want to try some?" All you can do is laugh because to them this is the polite way of asking, whereas Americans are more forthcoming...
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