This morning, like most Wednesday mornings, Fancina and I prepared a simple English phrase to teach at the staff meeting.  Phrases in the past have included “Hello, my name is….. It’s nice to meet you;” “Where are you from;” “What grade do you teach;” etc.  Short exchanges that hopefully encourage the staff to talk to me, or to any native English speaker for that matter.  These mini-lessons have been pretty uneventful…up until today.  Today’s phrase was:

“What do you like to do on the weekend?”

“I like to go shopping and relax.” (just the sample answer we used)

So Fancina and I are in front of the entire teaching and administration staff of my school, demonstrating this exchange and everyone seemed to understand (more or less).  

Then I turn to our vice principal and ask him, “What do you like to do on the weekend?”  He in-turn responds (and quite deliberately I might add), “I like to do my wife.”  

As you might have guessed this was quite unexpected.  My face turns bright red as I burst out laughing to the point where I’m almost crying.  I had to cover my face with a small whiteboard as I hurried back to my seat to sit down.  The whole room was laughing too, maybe at my reaction, maybe because they got the joke that the Vice Principal (natural jokester that he is) was TRYING to do, maybe because they didn’t know what else to do, but I’m pretty sure no one was laughing for the same reason I was.  

In my VP’s defense, he was trying to make a clever joke, which, when he explained his reasoning, made much more sense and was funny in a much less crude way.  So his wife- who also works at the school and was at this very staff meeting- her Chinese name is something like ‘shi-ping’, which sounds a lot like ‘shopping’. (At another gathering we had, the VP made a joke telling me that his wife loves shopping because that’s her name.) So had the joke come out as originally intended, I believe it would have been more like ‘I like to GO my wife‘ which is pretty darn clever if you ask me.  But damn those little auxiliary verbs and how they can derail a sentence in a second.  A ‘do’ for a ‘go’ changed a simple joke into a rather crude, but still grammatically and semantically correct, especially in the context of the question, and of course highly amusing, statement.  

It’s moments like these that make me truly appreciate all foreign-language-learners.  I can only hope I have given people such enjoyment with my contemptible Chinese skills.

Can you see the teeth? I mean can you SEE the TEETH?!

“GIVE ME SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT…” One of the things we focused on during our ‘prep’ weeks before Halloween was teaching the kids the ever-popular Halloween chant: Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear! Fancina was the one (not me) who suggested/insisted we teach them the whole chant.  We told them that when we go trick-or-treating in class, they will have to say that in order to get candy.  Now that I think about it, we might have given a slightly skewed account of an American Halloween, thinking that all kids threaten to pull down people’s underwear whenever they go trick-or-treating.  So sorry in advance if you ever have one of my students knocking on your door and pulling down your skivvies.  

Masked Maiden and the Vampire

Before I dive into this post, I’d like to point out that I haven’t gotten this dressed up for Halloween since I was a Newsie in 8th grade.  Every day this week I was something different, partially because my vampire teeth only came with enough putty for one use, but that allowed for some creativity on my part.  So keep an eye out for the different forms of Dani.

That said, the second class of Halloween week consisted of 3 things:

1. Halloween parade around the school.  This really meant us disturbing several other classes because who can pay attention to their teacher when witches, ghosts, and a strange (and deathly-looking) white girl are roaming the halls?  Lets just say there was a lot of screaming involved in these processions. 

2.  Then students came back to the room for trick-or-treating.  They could come up to me, Fancina, or one of the teaching interns who were helping us, say the ‘trick-or-treat’ chant and get candy.  Now I understand that some kids couldn’t remember the whole chant, so I would often prompt them or have them repeat after me.  There was of course the one kid who would simply yell “blah blah blah! blah blah blah! blah blah blah blah blah blah blah” (but substitute ’blah’ for the Chinese equivalent) after me.  I gave him candy anyway.

3.  The last part of the day was the ‘best costume’ contest.  Fancina and I would pick 3 or 4 of our favorites, and then the students would vote among them.  Now some costumes were kind of lame, but I have to admit that others were incredibly creative.

Uncle Harry (??) with a golf club. and a knight.

Pumpkin, Harr(iette) Potter, and a cute little devil

My volleyball class was probably the most excited about the day. They got really into scaring the little kids in their classrooms as we paraded around the school.

My scary volleyball class!

Boxman might be one of my favorites. Also, the mask with the blood that circulates throughout it was a popular choice among all my students. I saw about 10 of them during the week.

Notice the knife through my head...

and the blood dripping down my face...at one point I was sweating so much that the blood (which was like cherry cough syrup) ran into my eye, blinding me for half a class.

I have been looking forward to this week for a while…possibly since before I even got to Kaohsiung.  The whole week was wholly dedicated to Halloween.  Actually we were so excited about this week, that the past two weeks were dedicated to preparing for this week!  ’Preparation’ included reading a story about a witch, learning Halloween vocab, and brainstorming how you could dress up for Halloween.  

But this week was the main event.  Since it was so big, I think I’m going to have to reserve two posts to cover the whole thing.  So here’s the break down of the first class: 

1. JellyBean counting contest: Whoever guesses the correct number (or closest number) of JellyBeans in one of the three containers gets to take the entire container home! (Sugar bribes never fail…although this doesn’t specifically encourage English, its still fun!)

2.  Halloween Mad Libs: students were broken into teams and then told to come up with 10 of the following kinds of words:

1. Type of weather (eg. cloudy)
2. Name of a town/city
3. Costume 1
4. Costume 2
5. Person
6. Question
7. Adjective
8. Place
9. Favorite food 1
10. Favorite food 2

Here are two of the more memorable results (words are bolded in the basic Mad Lib structure):

A: On a snow Halloween in the town of London, I was going to go trick-or-treating. I decided to dress up as a ghost but everyone thought I would scare people, so I decide to dress up as a spider instead. My spider costume was done to perfection and I looked great. The first door I knocked on turned out to be the home of Jolin Tsai. Jolin Tsai opened the door and said, “Is Tony (boy in the class) a girl?“. I tried to utter the words, “trick-or-treat” but I was very ugly. Jolin Tsai said, “Come in”. I said, “No way!” and ran as fast as I could for the W.C. I didn’t get any blood or poo-poo for Halloween that year.

B: On a windy Halloween in the town of Taipei, I was going to go trick-or-treating. I decided to dress up as a wizard but everyone thought I would scare people, so I decide to dress up as a ghost instead. My ghost costume was done to perfection and I looked great. The first door I knocked on turned out to be the home of Obama. Obama opened the door and said, “How many girlfriends do you have?“. I tried to utter the words, “trick-or-treat” but I was very excite.  Obama said, “Come in”. I said, “No way!” and ran as fast as I could for the beach (originally spelled ‘bitch’…causing about 3 minutes of confusion).  I didn’t get any shark or steak for Halloween that year.

 3. Mummy-wrapping:  What can be more fun than small Taiwanese children wrapped in toilet paper?  If you witnessed these classes, you would agree that not much could top it…in English class anyway.

Some teams were meticulous in their wrapping.

Others not so much...and if you look closely, you can actually identify some of these sadly-wrapped mummies.

A few days after starting school, I was asked to help the art class with an English illustrated storybook contest. (A note about ‘classes’ in Taiwan: some classes are split by interest/ability, e.g. the volleyball class, the art class, and the music class. Once you are in a class, you stick w/ them like butter on bread.  They have the same homeroom teacher together, which in some classes happens to be their coach, art teacher, music director, etc.), same science class, English class, etc.  They are like tiny armies that travel around the school together.)

The storybook had to be an English version of a Taiwanese myth or legend.  They were graded on artistic representation, the legend chosen, and correct English usage.  The storybook won first place and, not to be biased, but it was awesome.  Enjoy!

“Hello! I’m Yushan”

““Hi! I’m Banpingshan.  I’m the highest, most beautiful mountain in Taiwan.”

“Surrounded by mountains and rivers, I’m the supreme master, to whom no one can compare…Even the infinite sea has to surrender to me.“

Whenever Banpingshan met Yushan, he would boast of his strength while Yushan just listened carefully.

Yushan told Banpingshan, “Surrounded by mountains and rivers, Mother Nature has blessed you with the best environment.  You should cherish Her beauty and protect yourself from harm.”

Banpingshan replied, “That’s right.  I have all the best things that have never before been granted.  Let’s compete to see who is the tallest mountain in Taiwan.”

Yushan agreed to the challenge without hesitation.

“Ha ha! I’m certainly taller than you! By stacking three dried tofu cakes on top of my head, I’ll be able to reach the sky!” Banpinshan exclaimed.

The Sun overheard their conversation, and was angry with Banpingshan’s arrogance.

The Sun ordered that the thunder god punish Banpingshan.

Banpingshan couldn’t stop talking about his good qualities.

Suddenly, clouds filled the sky and thunder boomed and lightning flashed.

“BANG!” Banpingshan split in half and collapsed into the Taiwan Strait.

Poor Banpingshan, as Yushan had predicted, was forever doomed to be excavated and continuously damaged.

Meanwhile, the humble Yushan was surrounded by mountains and rivers and lived happily ever after.

Pride comes before fall but humility comes before honor.

Recently I found myself in a very…interesting and enlightening conversation with a few local Taiwanese girls.  It all started when we were trying to decide if our waiter was a boy or a girl– a situation we have found ourselves in more than a few times.  This confusion is due to boys tendency to have long (styled) hair, earrings, tight pants and bright color shirts coupled with the girls tendency to wear loose collared shirts, baggy pants, and a shaggy/mullet-like haircut.  Add those two together and you’re bound to have come gender-identity issues.  (I also want to point out that this is not meant to be a generalization for the Taiwanese population as a whole, but merely pointing out a noticeable fad.)

So this initiates the “girls looking like boys” topic.  Since there are a lot of single-gender high schools and junior high schools, girls don’t feel as pressured to look like the latest supermodel…which consequently leads to the following:

“Actually, its really popular to be lesbian at an all girls high school.  Its cool and trendy.  A lot of girls decide to be lesbian during high school, but then it’s not cool in college so they go back to being straight.”

There you go…homosexuality: the latest fad (??)

I haven’t inquired about all-boy schools yet…

Kaohsiung (white) vs. Taipei (yellow)

Last night I finally got to do something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I got here: experience a live Taiwanese baseball game!  One of the local teachers offered to buy a couple of us tickets for the Kaohsiung vs. Taipei game, which is a pretty big deal, especially because we’re in play-off season right now.  It was a night game, (and personally I think all afternoon games in southern Taiwan should be outlawed due to intense heat) so the weather was ideal.

 When we arrived at the stadium, where we met the aforementioned teacher (Coach Pow), we assumed we would be rooting for Kaohsiung’s team, La New Bears. (side note: all teams in Taiwan are sponsored by a company, therefore La New is a large shoe store in Kaohsiung.  If the team won, then there would be a huge sale on shoes after the game!)  As it turned out, he bought tickets in the Taipei section, so we found our ‘WE [HEART] LA NEW BEARS’ sign a little out of place.  Naturally we changed loyalties and rooted for the Taipei Brother Elephants.  

Coach Pow brought along a large bag full of noisemakers, so we were blowing horns and shaking rattles with the best of them.  And we obviously had to buy a crap-load of Brother Elephant paraphernalia in order to fit in.  

The game was more or less like a good old fashion American Game with the exception of:

1. No 7th inning stretch

2. No ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’

3. Taiwan teams are equipt with small bands, dancing cheerleaders, and designated crowd-rilers.  

4. At one point a large number of bananas were being passed around the stadium (?).  Take one, pass it on.

5. No nachos, beer, peanuts, soft serve cones, etc.  Instead insert lunchboxes, shrimp crackers, bubble tea, and carmel/kettle corn.

The best part of the night was that we ended up rooting for the WINNING team, which always makes a night at the baseball park more fun.

Cheering like crazy for the Elephants who just won a pretty close came. Elephants 4; Bears 3.

I will apologize in advance that there are no pictures to go with this post, but I was not expecting such an entertaining morning.  Here’s a quick summary:

5:20am: get picked up by Jane and Teacher for some early morning qi gong at the largest lake in Kaohsiung

5:23am: Change of plans….qi gong on the beach as the sun rises

5:45am: Arrive at the beach.  (Apparently if you get there before 6am, you don’t have to pay an entrance fee.  Otherwise you have to pay the rest of the day).  The beach is SWARMING with full-body swimsuits and a couple of full-fledged face masks (think bank robbers, not scuba divers), I believe to ward off the sun that really hasn’t even risen yet.

5:46am: Headstands and a FULL 25 minutes of splits (OUCH!) commence.  Along with this comes large groups of people gawking at Teacher’s awesome moves.

7:00am: Leave the beach and head up the nearby mountain to a spot overlooking the ocean and eat fresh fruit.

7:30am: Head back down the mountain, but stop long enough to feed peanuts to the local monkeys. LOTS of local monkeys

8:00am: Get breakfast at a breakfast stand in the city.  This consists of fish soup, rice, cucumber-like vegetables, boiled cabbage and tofu for Teacher and Jane, and an over-easy egg in a bag for me (again with the bags…)

8:45am: Go to the peak of yet another mountain where we look at the view, take a walk around a traditional building, comment on the amount of Japanese tourists, and take a nap.

9:45am: Teacher lets me drive his car a ways down the mountain, but since my international drivers’ license is non-existent, I had to give up the wheel before getting back in town.

10:30am: Go visit one of Teacher’s friends who owns an awesome antique shop, and who also ended up giving me presents! (more stuff for a traditional tea party!)  This was supposed to be a 10 minute stop, but it turned into a lunch invitation.

11:30am: Lunch, which consisted of drinking and CONSTANTLY toasting white wine.  I swear anytime anyone wanted a sip of wine, it turned into a ‘thank-you’ toast (for what, who knows) and everyone had to drink.  I think we went through at least 2 bottles of wine for 6 people.  This might not sound impressive to some of you, but I want to remind you that I’m in Taiwan, and the average Taiwanese can’t really consume that much liquor.  Aka. there were a lot of red faces mid-way through lunch.

12:30pm: Beer chugging contests with some new Taiwanese acquaintances (NOT including Jane and Teacher).

1:30pm: Go to school for afternoon classes.

I have come to the conclusion that people in the south of Taiwan are nocturnal. And with good reason! Its so incredibly hot during the day, that the only ALMOST pleasant time to be outside is after the sun goes down.  I think that’s one reason why night markets are so popular.  This past Saturday night, we walked out to the cultural center (about 5 minutes from our apartment) and experienced a typical evening in Kaohsiung:

The entire cultural center is surrounded by art stalls every Sat. night; basically a weekly arts festival

Video proof:

the infamous circle dance

taichi? or hiphop?

Blind massages in the park. $3 for 10 minutes. worth it? you bet!

Red-carpet beauties

This past Friday (October 10th) Taiwan celebrated its Independence Day.  Its a national holiday (obviously) and therefore we didn’t have school and a lot of businesses were closed for most of the day.  All of the Fulbright grantees were invited up to Taipei for a formal dinner, at least that’s how it was presented.  ’Formal dinner’ does not begin to explain what we witnessed/experienced Friday night.  

So at 5pm we go to a specific metro station to meet one of the program liaisons.  From there we walk about 10 minutes to this very impressive looking government building.  Once the guards check our invitations, search our bags, and look us over, they let us enter ‘VIP land’.  Literally.  Imagine hollywood…or the White house.  We walk along the red carpet, which is teeming with foreign diplomats, business execs, famous Taiwanese people, Miss Taiwans, etc., until we get to the first of many large canopy-tents.  The first stand inside the tent was a create-your-own Häagen-Dazs icecream sundae, so we knew it was going to be a good night.  

Dan and I obviously had to get a picture with the American-born Miss Taiwans

About 2 minutes after we walked into the tent, we were pushed and pulled without explanation (which was ok as long as I focused on the delicious iced treat in my hand) and then THE PRESIDENT walks by.  

Introducing President Ma Ying-jeou! (full credit to Shiela for this photo)

Yes. We were invited to the President’s party! There were tons of tables with delicious food, open bars, live entertainment, and lots of business card swapping.  

View from the terrace of minglers and live entertainment

 10-10 party-scene video

Flower fruit. Always a must-have at these fancy functions.

What can we say...we love fruit here!

One of the many banquet tables. I believe we were roasting meat here.

There were many tables set up where people could get cool artsy things made...this is the clay-figurine table, our last stop of the night

and this is my personalized clay Monkey King...on a stick. Please appreciate the awesomeness of the front and the back!

Future goals:

Go to more of these VIP parties.

Become a VIP at one of these VIP parties.

Make friends with as many international diplomats as possible.

Become important.

Teaching English phonics (pronunciation) plays a big role in our English classroom.  This past week Fancina and I were teaching the hard ‘e’ sound, spelled ‘ee’ or ‘ea’; eg. see, tree, eat, tea.  After introducing the lesson we decided to play a game, which I fully credit to Shiela, called Phonics Jeopardy.  First the student chooses a category, either ‘ee’ or ‘ea’.  Then for $100 they must SAY a word that fits that category.  For $200 they must SAY and SPELL a word, and finally for $300 they SAY, SPELL, and use the word in a SENTENCE.  This is a good game because it addressed varying skill levels.  The best part of the game was that kids could create their own sentences.  Examples as follows:

1. I like eat cake.

2. I drink black tea.

3. A bee is in the tree.

4.  I see a turkey sitting on top of the taxi. (???)

5. He cheated on the test so the teacher made him stay after class as punishment.

6. I like tree.