Oi, long time no see. Last time we met I had finished my training and just moved to Hsinchu and observed some classes.
Now, I am officially Teacher Eric. I walked into my classes and all of them except the teenagers just started laughing. It actually surprised me a little, because I figured of all people to find foreigners funny, kids who see and interact with them weekly would be more resistant to the novelty. Figured wrong. My first week one girl requested to touch my hair. She said it was like Barbie hair.
I walked into my first class and they were going berserk. Kids tend to do that when they are forced to attend night classes after already being cooped up in their soul-sucking elementary schools for the past 8 hours. I also found out that my CT (co-teacher or Chinese Teacher, take your pick) Vera was the head CT for my branch. Although not technically my boss since the NSTs (Native Speaking Teachers) have a separate chain of command, she says “jump” and I ask “how high?” She is definitely my superior.
Class itself was rough the first day. I forgot to introduce some vocab and students were correspondingly lost on the story. I did a terrible job explaining grammar points, and the students were again appropriately confused. It was definitely a fake-it-til-you-make-it experience. Show no fear and the students won’t devour you whole, or something like that but nonetheless my brow was accumulating sweat beads as I made an idiot of myself for 110 minutes. When it was all finally over I immediately apologized to Vera for the mistakes I knew I made and the ones I didn’t know about too. I hope she is warming to me.
My second class that day was with the oldest students I have, around 14.There are about a dozen of them and every single one has quite strong English. The curriculum for them tackles fairly advanced concepts like pollution, transportation, evolution, and for this level at least, natural-world themes. Most of my other classes are with young kids, some as young as 5. The young ones are awesome. They are jazzed to be in class, like to move around, yell loudly when repeating words, and find Teacher Eric’s impersonation of lions, tigers, and bears to be just the awesomest thing ever. For the super young ones, there is even story time when I sit on a chair and the kids gather around me. The most challenging are the middle ones, who are taking the English seriously (if you’re five you certainly don’t) but still aren’t that good at it.
Getting to work was an adventure in itself for a while. I bummed rides from my boss the head NST for a while, but my HNST Japie had to go all the way across town, and occasionally he had early classes so I took taxis a bunch of times. It got to be a huge pain, but getting a scooter proved harder than I had thought. My apartment complex is relatively far from downtown by Hsinchu standards, definitely not something you walk. The few scooter stores I found near me all wanted proper documentation or gave prices too high. I am not licensed for Taiwan as an international license is not enough, so they refused to hand me the deed. Apparently many places sell under the table to foreigners but all I’ve got near me are legit.
I was worried my boss would get annoyed for another reason too; I called in sick on my second day of work. I agonized over it, tossed it over in my mind. But after I had spent half an hour feeling crappy in my local convenience store, I realized that were it not my second day and I’d been at the company I would call in sick in a heartbeat. I soon phoned my HNST Japie and he didn’t seem too surprised or miffed.
So what did I have? I think it was Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Why, you ask? Well put these together: first our fire alarm goes off at 1:00am. Then the next morning we discover the fridge is broken and not cooling, though still plugged in. Throughout the night I am nauseous, have a pounding headache, and feeling kind of like it feels when you’re massively hungover yet still slightly drunk from the night before, only I’d been straight sober for a week. I looked up the CO poisoning symptoms and they matched. I looked up refrigerators and though many models are not a risk, some in America before the 1970s are, and I’m not confident standards are better here. The final kicker is that they only are a problem when the cooling unit is broken.
One thing I’m not sure of is if it was entirely responsible for the ensuing 3 days of bowel movement. Extremely regular bowel movements. That could have been something I ate, I’m not sure and I’m definitely not a doctor. Either way it sucked and it carried over into much of that weekend of the 4th. Another problem was that our freezer died and it took all our food with it including the two dozen chicken breasts I had just bought. They started to rot and since I still had my cold I mentioned at the end of last post, I couldn’t really smell it. My poor roommate, however, could. I cleaned it out and bleached it but it’s still an absolute stinkbomb to open the freezer. I’ll probably have another go at washing it soon.
Speaking of food, some things truly exist only in America. While watching my daily dose of ESPN.com clips, I saw an ad for a Papa John’s Double Bacon Six Cheese XL pizza. If you think that exists anywhere outside the USA and the Great White North then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. There is Costco pizza here and it’s the closest thing you get to back home, but nothing that makes your jaw drop and your cholesterol rise.
Not that I haven’t cooked however; since the repair of the fridge I bought some steaks and have already cooked two of them, with fried potatoes. I like cooking, though I only have a stove. I don’t know if it’s ironic or just plain makes sense, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t learn anything about making Chinese food here since it’s all so readily available and good, while I am my own best source for Western food and should see that ability rise. My first steak was marinated in too much soy sauce, but it seemed to leave to all be concentrated towards one end so it wasn’t too bad.
Last weekend I was able to get out once and go to bar alley. There isn’t much to it, just 2 bars that are open nightly and a third that seems dead. At the end of the alley there’s another bar close by. It’s foreigner haunt #1, but they show sweet movies like 300 as well as EPL matches. The beers on special are only 100 bucks which isn’t bad for a bar but is still expensive compared to any sort of store.
During the week I was also able to explore a little bit more of Hsinchu. One of my CTs Lara wanted a Language Exchange so I met her and her friend Eunice and we went to a market and then they took me around downtown Hsinchu a little, including to a temple. It was nice to see something that wasn’t the road to work or a bar and I tried some meatballs that were surrounded by a gloopy starch. I also had a weird omelet sort of thing but the oysters it came with were a bit past their prime so it wasn’t that good.
I survived teaching my full load of 10 classes last week, and managed to enjoy the weekend now that I wasn’t sick, moving into an apartment, or getting worked to the bone in training. I am lucky enough to not have any Saturday classes for a little bit (all changing next weekend) so on Friday night I might another NST from my branch at a bar near the central canal in Hsinchu, close to bar alley but not on it. It was a lot more relaxed and without the creepy foreigner vibe. There I met two other guys who had worked at Hess previously. We talked about work, the benefits and drawbacks of a structured company, then got on our scooters and zoomed off away from the bar, up a hill, and to some random creek. We were planning on going to a temple but decided against breaking in.
Oh wait, the scooter.
I am borrowing one from an NST currently on vacation back in South Africa. It has more than 60,000km on it so each time I ride I wonder if I won’t be going back on it. Starting it up requires you to start it, wait for it to die once, then start it again. Still, it’s a godsend. I can go anywhere in a flash. No more bumming rides, I can schedule my own time however I want. It doesn’t have the greatest pickup in the world, and the horn doesn’t work, but it’s so convenient. After going up to the creek and having a nice late-night/early-morning debate about the future of tribalism and nationalism with regards to Africa, I returned home to sleep. The next day I would need my energy.
My roommate Marné wanted to go to Taichung a few days back, so we planned on it this Saturday. After her class we took off in the afternoon and I scootered our way to the train station. Having a backseat driver is not fun. The oohs and ahhs are enough, but then there’s the shifting of balance and clenching of fists as I pull off maneuvers common to Taiwan and frankly drive quite conservatively. We got to the train station, I parked in a ‘handicapped zone’ and we went to wait in line. We bought our tickets and 2 minutes later were on the train, standing-room only. An hour after that we arrived in Taichung, found dinner (dumplings!) and waited for another friend to arrive. The 3 of us then met a guy we all trained with and he took us to a holiday party a friend of his was having. It was nice to get into the holiday spirit. They had a fierce punch, eggnog, lots of Christmas decorations, and a KTV Christmas CD. There were no microphones so we had to make do with singing loudly, but I sang a couple anyway. I love Christmas music and I love KTV, so it was only natural. From there we went to a club called Spin. $600 for all-you-can-drink. Girls had it even better than guys at $350 each. There wasn’t exactly dancing inside, just people sort of swaying. Worse yet, there was no Liar’s Dice. It ended up okay though as I met a Taiwanese friend of someone from the holiday party. We found a stairwell where the decibel level was under 100 and talked about the future of Taiwan and how screwed it is. Like it or not, it is. Sorry.
After suffering through many a poorly made Long Island Iced Tea the police showed up, or at least idled around outside. At first I noticed I could hear myself think, then long lines for the bar formed. The club manager turned off the music and stopped serving alcohol. I don’t know what kind of place is too cheap to invest in soundproof walls , but I guess the answer would be ‘apparently the kind of place you go to Eric.’ Eventually the party was restarted but the club never really recovered that night. We went back to the training friend’s apartment and crashed on various flat surfaces searching for sleep. After fitful rest, the next day we went to McDonald’s then the train station and headed back. Standing room only of course, but when it’s only 1 hour who cares?
That’s that, my first truly fun weekend here. I’ll be in Taichung several more times, as that is where follow-up training is on the 21st, and then again January 16th for our yearly banquet. I doubt I’ll go to Taipei before I get my first paycheck, perhaps not even until the second. Turns out things cost money and they want me to work here. That’s okay with me though.
Until next time! I’ll try to get one done before New Year’s.
P.S. Clarence, Kenny, notice the time. 5 AM on a weeknight. That’s how much I care.
