A 6-day week. You heard me right. If I was a kid, I would be so mad to lose my Saturday to school. In the end we gain a day of vacation because next week is a four-day weekeend, but in the short term I am not too fond of the decision. So, Saturday is yet another Friday schedule. Friday isn’t a super busy day for me which is nice. What sets Friday apart from the other days is that I teach am all school class on whatever topic I want to. Unbeknownst to me, that meant that our extra day is yet another class I have to lesson plan for. I’m thanking my lucky stars its October which means I can start incorporating my Halloween ideas and lessons so I am not lacking in that planning aspect yet.For being a six-day week it has been quite eventful almost to the same level of the 12 days of Christmas with something happening every day.
Monday
a typhoon came parallel to the coast of Taiwan. We weren’t directly hit which meant the government didn’t think everyone should take a Typhoon day and cancel school, only the coastline schools. If the government wasn’t cancelling school I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad. Yes, there was rain, but it rains most days here. It was the wind I forgot about. Waking up at 4am from the loud rain I made sure to cover my backpack with a waterproof cover, wear my water resistant pants, and put my laptop inside a large Ziploc because you can never be too sure. My drive was going well. No one was on the streets so instead of driving in the scooter lane, the equivalent to a bike line on the right side of the streets, I drove in the middle of the road. Once I hit the 電光bridge I was getting blown everywhere. The “bridge” is over the Beinan River, which is never full unless it’s during a typhoon, more importantly the bridge is a large maybe .5 mile expanse with nothing blocking any wind. I was getting blown towards the right while I tried to stay on course. Constantly drifting to the right, a concrete wall of the bridge. Multiple times I considered just getting off the scooter and walking alongside it, but a scooter doesn’t move like a bike and its harder to keep straight without falling to one side and losing my balance. I soldiered through and finally got to school where it rained the entire day. If you ask me we definitely deserved a Typhoon Day for that.
Tuesday
was the start of test review. In Taiwan or at least Taitung, the children have a week that has all their tests, like a finals week, but they are only elementary school kids. I don’t know how useful it is seeing as the kids don’t like finishing their homework on time so I can’t imagine them going home to study for these tests. Even if they did English is probably not the highest priority, its math most of the time. Unlike the other ETAs, I haven’t had to write any of the tests or quizzes, but on each practice tests we have, I read all of the listening comprehension from multiple choice sentences to phonics. The end of each review quiz also has a speaking portion that the children get really nervous about. It is upsetting to see the children that are comfortable in class with all the words and reading struggle a lot on the reviews. I can’t imagine how the tests will go.
Wednesday
marked a Fulbright Workshop day. I took the train into the city to sit through a lecture on ways to differentiate learning in the classroom. Some of the techniques I actually might include in class for worksheets, but most of them required a higher level of English to make it “fun” or more students than a class of 2. I like seeing all the other ETAs at workshops, but because we are so far away in 關山from台東that when we do come it’s like going to a family reunion where you aren’t included that much except for this obligatory event each year. It almost makes me want to go into the city more to hang out, but the country and road trips are so much more fun than spending a day in the one Starbucks in the county and still having to drive another hour by scooter home. On the bright side, these workshops bring me to the city where there are so many more options for dinner. Of course dinner means that if I took the train to the city that I have to wait an hour for the next one because there is an hour that no trains leave while most people are eating dinner.
Thursday
Thursdays and Tuesdays are fun. The kids at KanDing are more confident in their English so they will actually talk to me if not in English, in Chinese. A couple cute second graders and a sixth grader have taken to teaching me small Chinese words like stairs, ground, and pipe. The vocab is limited to what they can point to, but it is helpful I’ll admit. The second grade teacher is also one of my favorites. Despite never speaking to me in English she has given me mooncakes with a card she had Irene (my LET) translate into English for the Moon Festival, she brings fruit to school, and aboriginal dishes. She made a Bunan burrito in a way. It was wrapped in a banana leaf and seaweed with rice and pork in the middle. It was just what I needed to hold me till lunch. Not only does she still make an effort regardless of her ability to speak English – I do try to speak to her in Chinese, but not always sure I say what I think I am saying – but she has started a new prize system in her class. If the kids tell a teacher that they love them or that they are beautiful she will give them a pack of snack seaweed, a real treat. I have never felt more loved than all the kids running up to me to say that even if the compliment is enforced with bribery. The day closed with the biggest earthquake I was awake for. I was outside sitting on the steps and I swear I saw the whole ground shaking until I heard the alarms go off.
Friday
was another day filled with the monotony of test review. Reading phonics this much has caused me to start overthinking how I pronounce things. As I was preparing for giving one of these quizzes by listening to phonics, I heard a scream. A high-pitched shriek of fear. I was jolted from the youtube video I was listening to to the reality of the teacher’s office. I tore my headphones out of my ears and kept asking “what?” In the fast paced moment I completely forgot I was in another country. None of the teachers’ really speak English so my questions of “what” to find out what was happening were futile. It took a little for me to find out that the teacher across from me opened a draw to find a cockroach – a understandable reason to scream. I just can’t believe that I have been here two months and I can sometimes still forget that I am here.
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