Right of Passage

I think now that I've been here for over a year, I can start to vent some pet peeves and idiosyncrasies about Taiwan. Every place has them, and most probably aren't exclusively practiced in one place, so that makes it fair to point them out.

When navigating your way through Taipei's train/subway system, the "right of way" is granted exclusively to those pedestrians boarding the train/subway car. And in crowded Taipei, there are a lot of people trying to board trains. As soon as the car doors open, they simultaneously drop their shoulders and try squeeze through.

Here's the issue: You're heading into the city and Taipei Main Station is your stop. You and everybody else in the train are bunched together in a cluster at the door, they slide open and you're met by a frenzied group of juggernauts that have no regard for you, each other, or anything but the inside of that train. They can't put it together that the train passengers need to "alight" before they can get on. But they try to make it happen anyway.

So the typical situation is you standing in the doorway with nowhere to go. You are a stone in rapids, a rioter against a fire hose, Simba against stampeding wildebeests. Frozen in place, catching shoulder after shoulder to the chest until somebody realizes that if people get off, there will be more room on the train.

What may be even more obnoxious is that it also happens on a smaller scale. In my building, when I take the elevator down to the 1^st floor, where it's quite obvious that I'm getting off, I'm never surprised to be in a 1-on-1 battle with somebody who insists on getting in the elevator before I get out.



To be fair, I don't think everyone in Taiwan does this.

Dreams Do Come True

Two days after my year anniversary in Taiwan, I finally found Dr. Pepper.

On no particular Monday, when casually asked if I wanted a drink from the store, I responded in a typically sarcastic way by saying, "Yeah, I'll take a Dr. Pepper," both parties knowing full well that Dr. Pepper doesn't exist in Taiwan.

This time, the right person over-heard and piped up that there was a store in Taipei that consistently supplied DP.

The only bad news was that it was around 1:00 in the afternoon, and I still had another 6 hours of teaching to go, but the thought of a nice cold DP helped me power through my 10 hour Monday.

As soon as I finished teaching, I headed down to XXXXXXXXXXXX* and sure enough found a stock of about 20 warm Dr. Pepper cans (imported from Japan). Resisting the pent up urge to chug one on the spot, I kept calm and only bought 6 to take home and refrigerate. No point in waiting all that time to drink a warm DP... yuck.

My first sip was as euphoric as I thought it would be, and now that I know XXXXXXXXXX* has DP on the regular, I can't think of anything that specific that Taiwan doesn't have.



Dr. Pepper, you really do make the world taste better.


*The location of this supplier remains undisclosed, mostly because I'm a selfish.

Parallel Universe

The weather is changing. It's getting warmer. That's great, except that means the kids are getting sick. Every kid needs a mask.

At lunch time, the masks are next to the bowls as the students are hurried to finish their rice and vegetables, interrupted only by getting up to take a tissue to dam the constant flow of snot.

One by one, they finish and bring their bowls to my co-teacher for soup, then take a piece of fruit.

"If you're sick, you don't eat the fruit," she orders. Caught off-guard by that statement, I glanced over at the tray of fruit. It was orange slices...

I proceeded to ask about why, when the kids are sick, they are to be deprived of oranges, or any fruit for that matter. I got a brief lesson in how cold fruit when you are sick is bad "chi," which apparently trumps any scientific proof about the nutrition of an orange.

So the healthy kids eat oranges, and the sick kids finish their soup and the masks go back on.

I scratched my head over this for the whole day, and pretty much forgot about until the next morning. The breakfast tray came into the class and it was full of cake. Each student got a slice of cake that had some sort of pudding filling.

Once I was reassured that the kids needed to drink some water after they finished their cake, I confirmed with my co-teacher that they weren't going to be eating any fruit that day.

Amazing...

A Useless Lesson

Super Kids 6, Unit 2: Lost in Hawaii
Peter is at the airport and can't find his sister. A man helping asks, "What is she wearing?" and "What does she look like?"


The goal of this lesson is to get the students to be able to ask and answer both of those questions, while also using objective and subjective pronouns (He is taller than her. She is shorter than him.)

The vocabulary: long blond hair, short brown hair, straight black hair, curly red hair.
(She has long blond hair and blue eyes.)

Easy enough, right? I had some great ideas for activities, like bring in some magazines and let the students go through and describe the people in the ads.

See the problem yet?

I stood there in 7-Eleven staring at the magazine rack after flipping through about 8 magazines, picturing how my activity was going to pan out... He has straight black hair and black eyes. She has straight black hair and black eyes. She has straight black hair and black eyes...

I'm just sayin...