This is my first blog. I've been collecting my experiences in emails, Skype chats, and journals until now.
February 2009
I'm currently teaching English as a Foreign Language in Taiwan right now. I'm at the Shane English School franchise school in Jhongli City. It's a lot of fun so far. I'm teaching all levels kindergarten through adults. The Taiwanese are very friendly and I was fortunate enough to be here during the Chinese New Year. I spent the week in Taipei with the family of a Taiwanese friend from my hometown. I even went to dinner on the eve of the new year with the family of the owner of my school and got to set off some fireworks. I'll be in Taiwan until at least the middle of next January.
I've found a few places where I can rent a practice room with a piano for a period of time, but nowhere with an organ yet. There are a lot of xylophone schools, though. The owner of the franchise school I'm teaching at also has a percussion school with drums and xylophones.
April 2009
I'm finally settled into my apartment. I'm no longer camping in my room! I have a mattress pad and shelves and an induction heater. I've also started to get back into regular contact with some people outside Taiwan, mostly through Skype. I've spoken to my friend from my CELTA course a few times which is very nice. She has a tendency to come online at inconvenient times (such as in the middle of my interview with Shane School, my observation feedback sessions, and my first video calls to my grandparents and brother), but she remembers our early teaching experience and understands things like PPP and TPR which I can't talk about very easily with my family and other friends. She was still looking for work a while after Footprints helped me find Shane English and my posting in Jhongli. I tried to convince her to call Footprints and/or come join me in Taiwan, but I think she has other plans. It makes me a little sad because I would have loved to have another friend here and I would also have liked to send someone else to Footprints after what still seems to me to be a near miracle in terms of the short time between interviewing with Footprints and arriving in Taiwan.
For the first few months after I arrived I was really in withdrawal from baking my own bread. Bread in Taiwan is extremely strange by my standards. It's almost all sweet-- even cheese and ham bread is sweet! I don't really care for the sweet ham, but most of the things I've had from the many many bakeries here have been wonderful. Sadly, the closest I can usually find to 'normal' bread is some form of baguette and the success of the imitation French bread varies considerably. I don't constantly think about doing something insane like buying an electric oven or signing up for cooking classes to get access to one now, but I have to wonder if that's because it's like not eating for so long that your stomach gives up on sending hunger signals?
The food in Taiwan is wonderful. It's better if you can eat all of it, though. One of my foreign coworkers is vegetarian. He's had a bit of a tough time. I'm much better off. I just can't tolerate a lot of pork before I feel nauseous. My limit before Taiwan was maybe one and a half breakfast sausages. My tolerance has increased somewhat due to what I've referred to as 'ambient pork levels' but my usual dinner order is still 'not pork'. All dumplings have pork. It's gotten to be almost a running joke when we order dinner to eat at work. I like dumplings and I never want to imply that I don't, but I can't eat a whole dinner box full of them before they go cold without feeling ill. Apart from the pork issue, I've only encountered one dish that I wouldn't eat again. It was some vegetable dish that tasted like gasoline and cucumber hand lotion but looked like small pieces of celery. I can't describe it any better than that and I've never seen it again so I haven't been able to identify it. I had it in a buffet place on my day off so there was no one I could ask about it. But that's only one dish. I'd even eat stinky tofu again if it was offered. I'll admit that I wouldn't buy it myself. It would be too long to stand in front of the vendor!
July 2009
My father came to visit me for about a week a couple weeks ago. I took a few days off work (only four because I also had two days off in the the period during which he was visiting) and had a great time showing him around Jhongli and exploring places I'd never had the opportunity to see before.
Of course, we visited my school, which was a very gratifying experience for everyone. I talk about my father a lot and the rest of the staff had helped me make my vacation plans and given us a lot of valuable advice. I wouldn't or couldn't have done most of the things I've managed here without them. I was a little worried about the whole issue of 'face' before I came, but it's been fairly smooth sailing. I have to say that I've really appreciated my own sense of tact and diplomacy, though. I'm sure I've avoided more potential problems than I'm really aware of. Any trouble I might have had about taking my vacation at one of the school's busiest times was probably solved by investing everyone in the success of my father's visit to Taiwan. And it was a success.
We and a couple of friends went to Taipei 101 for dinner and the view from the top. I'd been up before, during CNY. I was telling everyone about my great experience with my school owner's family during CNY, and our friends interrupted me and told me that such a thing was unheard of. The Taiwanese, they insisted, don't invite people to dinner with their families on the eve of the new year. Well, whatever the case may be, clearly it's not unheard of now.
We took a domestic flight to Hualien from Taipei for a day-tour of the gorge. I didn't have my passport and it didn't matter. I had my ARC. Even knowing that it was okay and that my ARC has everything I would need my passport for as part of it, the experience was nearly stunning. I really felt the difference between my status and that of the other people in the tour group. I was a tourist, but not just a visitor to Taiwan. Our guide though the airport in Taipei gave me the train tickets to deliver to our guide in Hualien. I guess my ARC made me seem more dependable, even as one of the youngest people in the group and one who can't speak the language.
August 2009
In Jhongli, Typhoon Morakot didn't even really compare to an Iowan ice-storm. I suppose I really lucked out in my posting. I'm really glad my school isn't in the southern part of the island and isn't in a tiny vulnerable mountain valley.
Taoyuan County (where I live in Jhongli City) was the least damaged county in Taiwan. We had only about 313,000 NT worth of damages. That's less than 10,000 in US dollars. School was closed for Friday and Saturday, but only as a precaution. This is the usual result, I'm told. Only the foreign teachers were even worried by the typhoon.
When my father was here we visited a lot of places I'd never had time to see before, including Hualien (the place that saw the strongest wind) and Kaohsiung (the place with the second most damage) which has made watching the news really weird for both of us. We were just there and the disaster photos and video seem completely unreal.
I can't quite believe it's August again already. I've been living in a foreign country for eight months, I'm a year older, and the last group of my college friends will graduate this year. Next year I may well experience a typhoon or two in Japan, since I want to transfer there when my contract in Taiwan is finished. My desire to go to Japan has everything to do with a desire to go to Japan and nothing to do with wanting to leave Taiwan.
The Community 
