I do know Chinese…

Recently, I have had a student named Grace coming to my E6 classes. She is from the Junior High school, but she is Korean and her English isn’t as good as other students. So to catch up she has been coming to my class this semester. In my class there is a strict English only rule. I have one student whose English ability is very low and speaks to me in Chinese quite regularly. Usually, I just stare at her with a blank expression as if I don’t understand. This usually gets her to try and say whatever she is trying to explain in English. I forgot to go over the rules with Grace and she doesn’t know of the English only policy.

Last week, Grace was explaining to me that she had to leave early and would see me tomorrow. She said this all in Chinese. At the time, I was testing Rudy’s reading pronunciation. Rudy being one of my lowest students and also the one who tries to speak Chinese to me everyday was surprised when I answered back in Chinese. So surprised she exclaimed, “You know Chinese!” like it was a major revelation. I will have to continue using my blank expressions and hopefully Rudy will forget that “I know Chinese.”

Seeing the Reunion

Recently Taiwan was given two pandas by China. Obviously this causes mass hysteria in Taiwan. Come on, it’s a panda! So I took a trip to the Taipei zoo. It was my first time seeing pandas which was pretty exciting. Since so many people in Taiwan also wanted to see the pandas, We were given a specific time in which we could see them. Once we were in the huge exhibition hall built specifically for them we just had time to file through to see them. One person that I was with received a call on her cell phone as we were walking past and wasn’t even able to see them. I felt sorry for her since I didn’t even get a good picture with my camera for her to see them. Once the craziness subsides I think I would want to see them again, maybe. The pandas’ names are Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, in Chinese when you say these together it means reunion. So I call these panda’s propaganda, but still they are pretty cool.   All in all, my trip to Taipei was an amazing trip. I had a lot of fun and seeing pandas in real life, I couldn’t ask for more.

                             

I Must Be Famous

My Chinese reading ability is finally getting good enough that I am realizing one of my goals I set for myself when I first came to Taiwan: reading comic books in Chinese, but that’s not the interesting part of the story. I was doing some shopping at the mall in Chaiyi and made my way to a bookstore. I decided that I wanted to test my Chinese reading ability so I picked up a popular comic called Deathnote.

I made my way to the checkout counter. I was waiting patiently for the clerk to ring up my purchase when she asked me if I could read Chinese. I said I could read a little and then said in English that it was more to get me to practice Chinese. I thought that would be the extent of our conversation since I usually don’t speak to people when I’m checking out. She then tells me that my backpack is open. After a year of skateboarding my bag is pretty beat up and some of the zippers are broken causing one of the pockets to hang open. I told her i knew of this and it was no problem. I didn’t feel like or have the vocabulary to explain anymore.

Then she asked if I study or work. I told her that I work at Concordia. You know, the polite conversation kinda stuff. She then asked me if my name was Mike. I was really confused at this point and my face surely showed it. She asked again and I responded “No, it’s Matthew.” I figured that to her most foreigners look the same and she was just confused about who I was. Then she said something that really confused me because I had never seen her before. She said, but you ride a bike and skateboard. Though utterly confused, I responded yeah, that’s me. By this time she was done ringing me up and giving me my change. So we parted ways leaving me utterly perplexed and thinking I must be famous.

Do Not Enter. No Problem

Sore muscles. That’s all I can think about the day after hiking Duli Shan. This was the first time I went hiking since coming back to Taiwan in August. I love Taiwan for the mountain hiking, something you can’t really get in Iowa. We’ve had a couple of typhoons and big rain storms. After these types of weather events you can expect the trail to be a little rough. I had forgotten this fact though. So when Michael, Andrew, Noel, and myself started out on the trail the sight that we saw surprised me. Looking out for safety the park put up a strip of ribbon to tell hikers that the trail was inaccessible. This did not deter anyone though and a makeshift trail was made to bypass the inaccessible part. We were able to enjoy the rest of the trail.

Jangmi

Typhoon Jangmi, the fourth typhoon to hit Taiwan this year, recently passed. I just wanted to let everyone know I am ok. Since Chiayi is protected by the mountains, I normally do not have to worry about the effects of typhoons. The wind was very strong according to some reports up to 140 mph. I stayed inside most of the night waiting out the storm watching movies and reading.  I guess the power went out for an hour during the night, but I didn’t notice anything of that sort. This morning I took pictures around campus. There wasn’t much destruction: a few branches down and one gazebo was destroyed. All in all the most powerful typhoon of the year wasn’t so bad. We did have a day off school though. That was a plus. 

Students Playing Matchmaker?

For my E6 class, this unit we are learning about amazing people. One of the persons we are learning about is Sarah Chang, a world famous classical violinist. She is pretty amazing indeed!

Anyways, during one of my classes I had students think up questions that they would like to ask Sarah Chang. They had the usual where was she born, what does she do when she's not doing a concert. All these questions were easy to answer or at least find information on the internet to answer them. One question however was quite difficult to find. I searched and searched but could not find the answer.

The question was, "Is Sarah Chang married?" Like I said I searched hard for the answer but could not find it. So I went to her official website. I found a way to contact her and sent Sarah Chang a message explaining that I was a teacher and the reason for my question.

Later in the day I received an email from her which said:

Hello!
You're very sweet, thank you for your email.
No, I'm not married! Too young, too busy, too immature, take your pick.....
Thanks again.
Sarah

 

With the running joke of me having a Korean wife, I thought this was just another layer to add to that joke.

Asian Snowball Fighting

I recently went to Korea as part of the CELA trip before the beginning of the school year. While you may think that the most memorable thing for me would have been the shopping. If you thought that you thought wrong. I loathe shopping. We happened to do a lot of it during this trip. I was however to not participate in shopping and was able to be a NSB (Nonsmoking buddy) to the fellow guys on that were part of our travel group.

Being an NSB was not the most memorable event either. This honor would have to fall to snowball fighting with a bunch of Korean kids in Tae Kwon Do. Going on a trip to Korea, I would not have thought that this would even happen. However, we went sledding at a place I saw on the Travel Channel a couple years ago. It was an indoor place that made fake snow. It was fun to watch the skiers and snowboarders. And even more fun to get into a snowball fight.

It started out that the kids were throwing snowballs at each other. A stray one wandered our way and soon Heidi and I were part of a massive snowball fight. We also taught the kids and some of the assistant teachers from CELA the proper way to make a snowball. They didn't know how to pack it so it wouldn't break up when thrown. I think that this is a very valuable skill to know even in Asia.