New Adventures
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2009
1
28
72
Trip End
Aug 01, 2011
Yingge, TW.04, Taiwan
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Tuesday:
On Tuesday I went to take my test for my scooter license. Many foreigners here drive without a license, I did for the first 3 months, but I decided it was time to try my luck at the test. There a a health check, a written part and a driving portion to the test. There was a group of 6 of us that went with one of the Chinese teachers to help with translation. We first had the health check this involved measuring our height, having a vision test and also our physical abilities tested. We needed to squat down and touch the ground and then stand back up and be able to open and close our hands. This showed our ability to use the breaks on the scooter. After we all passed our health check we went to take the written test. I am pretty sure that I studied the least out of everyone in the group. We were given a manual of all the questions that they could ask us. There was a multiple choice, true/false and sign identification part. The test is very poorly translated. Some of the questions you can't even understand what they are asking. And others are just weird questions. You need to get 85% of the questions correct to pass. I ended up passing on my first try of the written test...90%! Five of the six of us passed the written and moved on to the driving part. For the driving test there was a little course you had to pass. You had to drive down a path and stay between 2 lines and take at least 7 seconds to finish. This means you had to drive really, really slow and not lose your balance. I started to go and I was about half way down the line and looked up to see it had only been 2 secs...I slowed way down and wobbled back and forth and ended up finishing the line in 10 secs! After you pass the line test there is a U shaped test. You have to stop at a stop light and pedestrian walkway. You then have to go around the corner moving very slow without putting your feet down and then pull up to a railroad crossing. I also passed the driving test and got my license!! If you went out of the lines on any part of the driving test a siren would go off and a man would come over the speakers saying "Sorry!" haha Three of us that took the driving test passed! I was pretty excited that it only took me one try to pass everything!
Wednesday:
On Wednesday I had my first meeting of my students' parents. We had an informal meet n' greet. It was a very interesting experience because of the the language barrier, I had only had some of my students for 2 days (my new class) and the culture differences. I had 8 parents come so I was talking for the whole hour. One of my first parents was a mom of one of my new students. She is one of the brightest students in the 3rd grade so her mom was concerned about her being challenged. We talked for a long time and then she left and I thought I was done with her but no. She lingered around me all night periodically coming back to ask more questions. She wanted to know what the differences were between their old teacher and me. Of course I couldn't answer because I had never seen the other teacher teach. She also found out that I am teaching two 3rd grade classes and wanted to know what the difference was between them (one is accelerated and the other is a very low mixed ability). She was a concerned parent but was an annoyance all night. She lingered around me all night listening to all my conversations with other parents (she spoke English). I talked with another parent who spoke English and I was complimenting his son's writing and I found out that the dad was correcting and helping with all his writing. I had to tell him to stop doing his sons homework! I had one other parent ask if they should punish their child because they weren't listening in class. Punishing here is sometimes abusive so I had to tell them not to punish but encourage their child to listen. It was a good night and it was nice meet some of the parents.
Thursday:
Thursday was my first night of Chinese lessons. There are 10 teachers from Cornel taking lessons at the university very close to school. I am very excited about it and am hoping that I can pick up a little Chinese while I am here. Our first day consisted of trying to learn all the sounds that they use in the language. Some of them are so hard to make. Besides learning the sounds we also worked on the 5 tones that they use in the language! So much to learn. Our teacher is great, though she wants to only have 2 classes where she uses English and then wants to switch to all Chinese! That might be a little overwhelming but I guess it will make me learn it! It is fun to be a student again too. It keeps things in perspective with what my students are going through learning a second language. I will keep you posted on how the classes go!
Friday:
On Friday the Chinese staff put on a Taiwanese BBQ at school. They had so much food there. All of the food was raw, you had to dish up what you wanted and then you went to one of the little grills and you cooked your own food. The food was really good. I stuck to the "normal" food, chicken and beans. I stayed for a while then I met to meet up with my roommates to have a goodbye dinner for my roommate. She headed back to the states on Saturday so we all had one last meal out together.
Saturday:
On Saturday I went on a day trip to Yingge. It is a small town just South of Taipei that is known for their ceramics. It was a cute little town. We started right into the shopping. There were so many little shops selling all sorts of ceramic items. Most popular were tea sets. Many of them were made in Taiwan. We had also read how there were some places where you could make your own ceramics. We all tried it! I was super excited because I have always wanted to try ceramics but never had the chance. They set us up at our wheels and we had someone teach us some different techniques. It was really nice because she spoke great English. I ended up making a cup. After you finish making it you can decorate it. We all had them write our Chinese names in them. They will be mailed to us in about 2 weeks! It was nice because it was only $10 to make it and have it shipped to us.
While we were there we also came to some performances going on. There were some aboriginal drummers and 2 different dance performances. We sat and watched them for a while. It is always fun to see the differences between their dancing/music and ours.
After we had made all our purchases we made our way back to Taichung. It was a nice day trip and I was able to get a little bit of Christmas shopping done along the way.
Sunday:
I now have the house to myself this week, Katie, Emily and Laura are all in Japan for the week and Dawndra moved home on Saturday. I spent the day cleaning and organizing our house. Cornel has owned the house for years so it is never fully moved out of so that stuff just accumulates here. I went through and got rid of a lot of the old stuff that was just laying around. It was nice to get some things organized.
Well that's all I got for now....Until later.....Love ya and Miss ya
