I love being a Měiguó Rén (American)!

Living in Asia, I am painfully aware of how white I am at almost all times. When I'm teaching, I look across my classroom and see Asian faces staring back at me. When we drive on our scooters, there are always people staring from street corners and cars passing by. At the mall, the bank, the local grocery store, EVERYONE can see that we are different and we stick out.

Before coming here, I never really realized how much a person can stick out simply because of the color of their skin. It's probably a really good lesson in life to learn and would be great to see how some people might react to the same situation. But all sage wisdom aside, it totally rocks sometimes!

Today I went into a random little key shop to get my gate clicker fixed (yes we have a gate, we have to keep the children penned in somehow!). With my horrible Chenglish and a lot of pointing, I communicated what I wanted and it took the little man working there about 45 seconds to fix it. Then he smiled, handed it back to me, and waved goodbye. When I tried to pay him, he kept saying "no no no, Měiguó Rén, Xièxiè ....." and so on and so forth in other Chinese I couldn't understand. Basically, he was saying "No no no, you are an American! Thank you! blah blah blah"- something I'm hoping was complimentary at the end.

I love being an American living in Asia sometimes! You get your clicker fixed for free :)

I'm Ready for Family I Think....

Last night I had a dream. Nothing inspirational, but it did include both of my parents, my best friend from home, and several cousins at odd intervals playing supporting roles. The dream itself was very confusing because throughout the whole thing I think I hit several different continents while traveling on a bus and then ended in me watching a high school basketball game waiting out a blizzard outside. Now I'm no Freud, but I can interpret a little bit of it: I miss my family and friends. The bus, blizzard and basketball are all still confusing to me, but I understand why I was ferociously hugging my mother when she walked into the gym.

I still like what I'm doing in Taiwan and am happy living and working here, but I am starting to miss the people from home. I don't dwell too much upon it during the day, because realistically there is nothing to be done about it except skype with them more perhaps, but it is apparently manifesting in my thoughts at night.

My outlook on the family and friends situation would be much more bleak if it weren't for two things:

1. Nice spring weather is upon us in Taiwan. Yesterday we scootered around town and I was wearing my sunglasses, a t-shirt, and had my jeans rolled up. It was great and I forgot how much 75 and sunny can really make you happy.

2. Debbie and Virgil land in Taipei in 31 days. To say I'm excited is a terrible understatement.

I can imagine my weird family dreams will continue but at least I will be able to hug my mom in real life in a little over a month. With all of the things going on at school during that month, I think it will be here before I even have a chance to really think about it. Or at least while I'm awake.

Still Expanding!

Today during 7th hour, a student by the name of Chris walked into my class and said "Ms. Pint, I'm in your 7th hour class now too!" That's right, yesterday I added five new boys to my class and now there is a sixth; my class size has doubled in the last forty-eight hours.

Now this newest edition is not necessarily a bad one, but it will make me watch what I saw more: Chris is the only American student in the school. He is obviously fluent in English (which practically none of my students were before the addition of Chris) but what is more concerning is that he gets all of my semi-inappropriate comments and jokes in class that are completely lost on ESL students.

I guess this will be good practice for me for when I return to American schools: larger class sizes and not being able to really say "that's what she said" while teaching. Sad day.

Algebra 2 Boom

My 7th hour Algebra 2 class has generally been either a royal pain in my butt or a joy to end my day with. I had 6 students (two girls and four boys) and we all got along fairly well; they would come in like a wild pack of dogs and sometimes they would settle down and we would all have a great time learning math. Other times, the wild pack of dogs would remain rowdy and uncontrollable, but I like to remember the good times.

Today, my little/crazy class of 6 students was increased to 11 students: one new boy and four boys from the other section. Now for those of you math majors out there, that is an 83.3% increase in my class size in one day. Also, I was adding five boys which is just way more testosterone in the room.

Needless to say, I was a little...ok, a LOT nervous to see how it would change the class dynamics. I was envisioning the noise level reaching decibels that could damage the hearing and countless blunt and sharp objects flying across the room. But to my shock and awe, the class ran very smoothly today. Obviously this is only the first day and the new additions to my seventh hour have plenty of time to turn into their own wild pack of dogs, but I think this is a very good sign.

Not only were the new boys quiet (for the most part), respectful, and willing to do the work I asked, but my old students all stepped up into leadership roles in the class. It was really great to see how some of them voluntarily helped the new boys understand both the math and what crazy Ms. Pint was telling them. Keep your fingers crossed that this trend continues!

Asian Weekend

Even though I've lived in this country for over 5 months now, I still feel like I'm visiting at times. This past weekend however, we sort of acted like the locals (sort of) and looking back on it, it was nice to just live in Asia and not feel like I'm visiting.

My weekend actually started on Thursday night when my friend Kate and I drove downtown to go to the big lantern festival in the central park of Taichung. I saw a total of three other white people that entire night and it was great. I had yet another version of the Taiwanese green onion pancake- this one in a swirly form sort of like a savory cinnamon roll- and some other delicious street food. I also saw a random local pop group which, if you read my last post, was right up my alley.

Friday night we went to Family Mart as always and then went to a local restaurant and had some great Taiwanese food- we couldn't order at this place normally because the menu is all in Chinese but we brought some of the Taiwanese teachers from our school with us to do the ordering and general communicating. The fun didn't stop there obviously and we headed to some our favorite bars to hang out with the film crew and actors for the Life of Pi movie they're shooting in Taiwan right now (That's right, google it. I talked to the lead Indian dude who is incredibly good looking but really stuck up). Too late of a night but worth it, lots of food, fun and friends which is perfect for a Friday night with no Saturday classes to teach.

After sleeping in on Saturday, we all got up and headed to our favorite mall to shop. I stopped at my little grocery store on the way home to grab some milk and my new favorite fruit that I have no idea what it's called in English but is like a tiny little apple with a nice crisp taste (see picture below). Saturday night was low key, just watching tv at home, because I need to lesson plan and grade today. But as I sit here and procrastinate from doing just that, I realized that it was just about the perfect weekend in my opinion. It's official, I live in Asia...

My new favorite fruit from the Whale Tale Grocery Store.

Cool graffiti on a wall outside the mall I was shopping at on Saturday.

I Love K-Pop

This should come as no surprise to those of you who are closest to me or have had to suffer through a car ride with me where I'm in control of the music: I love horrible pop music. I can't deny it or even try to hide it, I fully embrace it. And being in Asia is possibly the best place for me because all of the music is basically bad pop but in a different language!

I've recently gotten really into K-Pop (Korean Pop) because one of my students gave me a flash drive full of K-Pop songs from her iTunes for me. During every single prep, and during some classes that have work time too, I have been jamming to boy bands and girl bands from the South Korean pop scene and it is awesome! I can't tell what the actual words mean but I can always guess what they're talking about. And funny enough, my one Korean student always tells me I'm pretty close on what the lyrics mean (pop songs all revolve around three or four themes so it's not too tough).

My favorite band? "f(x)" which is literally they're name. I like them not because of their music but because their name is a math symbol (the function of x) even though my students tell me that means something about a flower in their weird txt message language kids have these days. I tell myself it's still about math when I listen to their songs and it makes me smile. Gotta love K-Pop!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pUfHnWRsRA

(CnBlue- the K-Pop band I saw in concert in Taipei this fall)

My Asian Valentine('s Day)

Yesterday was my first Valentine's Day in Taiwan and possibly the most bizarre Valentine's Day of my life. Of course I was surrounded by my students all day long. And I did enjoy when one of my 9th grade students walked up to me before class and said "Ms. Pint-a! You're beautiful-a! Happy Valentine's Day-a!" while handing me a Lindt Truffle. (my students tend to add an "a" sound at the end of words because in Chinese, a lot of words end in that sound and it's sort of a fallback for them and super adorable for us teachers to hear)

The best part of my odd Valentine's Day was at the end of the day however. One student (whom I don't even teach) in 11th grade, Wayne, was telling me all day that he had gotten me a balloon and candy and I thought he was just making it up. At 7:30 I got a knock on the door to my apartment-and yes, it's still weird that students can just come to where I live by walking down the hall! Of course when I open the door, it's Wayne with a heart shaped balloon and chocolate for his favorite non-teacher.

Wayne then informed me that he was going to get me a rose, but decided to get me a balloon instead so we could "do the helium thing" in his words. So I proceeded to bite the balloon, suck up some helium, and speak like a chipmunk for 5-10 minutes with an 11th grade student in the dorm hallway. Weirdest Valentine's Day ever but also, possibly the best! Now if I only had my loved one's here with me it would be amazing.

ITunes is my Asian Lifeline

For the past week or so, my iTunes account has been acting funny. There was a conflict with the fact that my billing address was in the US but I'm making purchases and downloading from a Taiwanese IP address. Needless to say, a sad little error message would pop up every time I tried to buy or rent something.

Now for those of you still living in the great American heartland, this may seem like no big problem; how often do you need to buy something on iTunes anyway? If I were living in America also, I would agree. When I lived at home in the U. S. of A., I bought something on iTunes once a month maybe. But now that I'm living in Taiwan, I buy something on iTunes on a weekly basis. This may seem excessive, but unfortunately because of who knows why, you can never access sites like Hulu or watch tv shows on ABC.com or MTV.com while in Taiwan. I can't tell if it's because China still puts some restrictions on our internet access, or if the school does so (we have some sites blocked because our students use the same wireless network), or if it's an international copyright thing. Either way, I can never see tv shows online for free like I could in the US.

After four months of not having English speaking television, a girl just wants to see an episode of Glee or two! So this morning I woke up to a pleasant surprise- my iTunes account would let me download things again! For the next few hours, I will be catching up on Jersey Shore episodes I've fallen behind on. Oh how I love bad reality tv!

Thailand (my thoughts)

I promise that I would post a much more extensive review of my time in Thailand and although it's taken me a week or so, here it is!

Unfortunately, our time in Thailand was super short and the three of us who went are already discussing what we would see if we go back ever. We had only 6 full days to experience a huge culture and country so of course it was not enough. We figured that since we only had 6 days to travel, we only would hit two cities: Bangkok and Pattaya.

Bangkok is a huge Asian city and sort of feels like all of the other Asian megacities I have seen lately (odd statement to make, but I have seen a few in the past couple of months). I thought it would be much dirtier and grimier because of it's reputation; Bangkok is said to be the City of Sin for Southeast Asia. I didn't get that vibe at all when we were there. We spent most of our time in Thailand in Bangkok, almost four full days, and I liked almost all of it. We saw the Grand Palace and Wat of the Emerald Buddha like every other tourist:

We also got to see Wat Pho which has a HUGE reclining Buddha inside:

And what was nice, is that since we had so much time in Bangkok, we got to see some less traveled sites like the weekend market and Park Lampini which had GIANT native lizards just hanging out there!

After Bangkok, we took a break from the city to lay on a beach for a few days which was amazing. Thailand has a reputation of having great beaches and it did NOT disappoint! We would have liked to make it down to Phuket (where "The Island" with Leonardo Dicaprio was filmed, supposed to be beautiful) but with only having a week and $200 a ticket to fly down there, we decided a two hour bus ride to Pattaya was more realistic.

Pattaya was beautiful anyway and the ocean is warm off of any coast in Thailand so we definitely enjoyed our time there.

And the nice thing about Pattaya was that they had an elephant rehabilitation center there so we even got to ride an elephant one day!

All in all, we definitely like Thailand. I personally loved the feel of Thailand- it is quite possibly the best Asian country to vacation in because the feeling is so relaxed but there is still a strong and interesting culture to experience. After only a week, I would definitely say I would go back and for much longer next time!

More than One Night in Bangkok

After a very short week, we're back in Taiwan. Thailand was an amazing country and I could have traveled around there for a year but after only 7 days, I'm glad I got to go at all! This specific trip made me realize a few things though:

1) I am a beach person. Before this trip I was unsure that I even liked water and/or sand. I was fairly confident that I wouldn't be able to lay in one place for more than 20 minutes. I was generally pretty terrified by the ocean because of movies like "Jaws" and the "Perfect Storm." And then we laid on the beach in Pattaya for six hours straight our first day there and it was awesome! I now know that I love the beach. I love the sounds, the smells, the general lack of anything to do or worry about. I love beaches! (What a great discovery to make!)

2) All large Asian cities are the same. Although I loved Bangkok and it was super fun to spend a few days in, there was nothing terribly unique about it compared to other large cities in Asia. For example, we had really great Lebanese food one night, not exactly something you need to fly to Bangkok to get.

3) I never want to travel anywhere at all close to the equator during the summer months. Thailand was hot enough in February.

It's late for me now and I hear my own bed calling my name as I type this, but I will post pictures soon!