Education | Trekking Around -- Teaching in Taiwan

Entries Tagged as 'Education'

Taiwanese Halloween Party

October 31, 2008

Although Taiwan does not observe Halloween as a holiday, we had quite the grand celebration at school. Each child dressed in costume as well as each foreign teacher and each Chinese Teacher. We had a regular class morning and after nap time we dressed the children up to go outside for Trick-or-Treating. Each school had its own parade of students up and down the city streets. Parents were instructed to send bags of candy to school, the school manager then brought the candy to various local businesses, and the businesses were gracious enough to give the candy back to the students when they came by to Trick-or-Treat. After the big Halloween Parade we returned to school to play Halloween games, eat candy, and have a Halloween fashion show. Karen’s game was musical pumpkin chairs and Bryan’s game was the ol’ classic stick your hand in the jar feel the “brains”, “eyeballs”, and “Mummy guts”.

Bryan dressed a swashbuckeling pirate more to impress Karen then anything else. But his costume was quite authentic with scarves, jewelry, a hat, and sword. Unfortunately, Bryan’s camera battery ran out so we do not have his picture. Hopefully someone at school captured a good shot of him. At Karen’s school, all the teachers decided to dress as superheros but at the last minute many teachers changed their attire. So Karen ended up being some kind of SuperWoman with what else- SPARKLES as her weapon of choice. We all had a very entertaining, exciting day! Enjoy the pictures of our students!

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Sipping afternoon tea

Maokong Part 4

Karen sipping afternoon tea

Afternoon tea

So as we said in Part 3, we found a peaceful tea cafe overlooking the lush mountain. We of course speak no Chinese and the proprietor spoke no English. Generally this is not a huge problem, we have learned how to communicate without words but sometimes they are necessary…

The lovely woman brought us a pot of hot water, some mild tea leaves, our tea set, and she was kind enough to give us a small demonstration. First you are to cleanse the pot and the cup with boiling water. Next, you are to put the tea leaves into a small teapot with the boiling water and let it steam. the stronger you would like your tea, the longer you let the leaves sit in the pot. The picture of the three leaves on Karen’s hand represents the different lengths of time the leaves steamed. As the leaves sat longer, the more open the leaf became.

We were sitting quite relaxed when a friendly pet pig decided to keep us company. Apparently, the pig is the

Tea leaves

pet of the shop owner. The pig allowed us to pet him but not for long, he was too busy looking for food to bother with us, what a hog!

When we finally decide to leave, I made a big point in telling Bryan to tip the woman that gave us such a nice tea presentation and demonstration. One point of local culture is that workers here are NOT tipped for their services and if you try to do so they will flat out refuse the extra money. The total bill came to $450NT or $12. Not cheap but not outrageously expensive either. Well, to our shock and horror we did not have enough money. This was our first lesson in the fact that almost everything in Taiwan is paid for IN CASH and very few places accept credit cards. Well now here is the tricky

Teatime with Piggy

part, how do we communicate the fact we have no money and what will happen to us? We were able to scrap together $300NT but that still left us short $150NT. Needless to say the poor woman never received her tip.

After that fiasco, we were ready to leave the mountain so we went to get in line for the gondola ride and finally realized the line was not moving. We waited in line, and waited, and waited. now if that wasn’t bad enough we had to stand in the blazing sun, 98 degrees. Finally, a worker came out to make an announcement, in Chinese. No one around us looked alarmed or distraught so we figured everything was fine. Well we kept waiting longer and longer, more hot sun and more unrecognizable announcements. After close to two hours we were given some warm water and bussed down the hill. All in all it was a fun day and very amusing at the end, lessons learned.

Check out all our pictures from that day here

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Maokong Gondola Part 2

Zhinan Temple

At the second Maokong Gondola Station one will fond the famous Taoist Zhinan Temple and 10 shrines of various religions; Confucian, Taoist, and Buddist. The Zhinan Temple is quite elaborate laced in gold and majestic colors. We got off the gondola ride and are immediately faced a sign that states, Boulevard to Heaven. This sign suddenly rings true as we round the corner to view this magnificent temple but also the breathtaking scenery from the temple steps.

It was so peaceful and calm when we arrived with very few tourists around and soft chanting music in the background. We thought that maybe the lack of tourists was due to the fact that it was 9am and the gondola ride just opened. Come to find out later… very

View from temple

few tourists go to the temple at all or at least in groups due to deity that is housed in the Zhinan Temple. Lu Tunpin, one of the Eight Immortals of Chinese legends, is the deity that resided in this temple. Legend states that he is jealous of lovers and all couples that visit the temple together will soon find their relationship terminated. Well it has been 5 weeks since so we are holding out hope that we are good since our saving grace is that we were unaware of the legend until after our visit. Despite Lu Tunpin’s distaste for love his is in fact a well honored deity said to bring salvation tot he faithful.

All myths and legends aside we both felt inner peace when we were visiting the temple. We were amazed by

walkway to temple

the beauty of the intricacies in the architecture and the artwork. Each painting tells a story in the tale of Lu Tunpin, as you can see in the arches of the walkway. We were even blessed by a little old lady at one shrine sight who gave us each a red string necklace with a gold Buddhist medallion.

Zhinan Temple in Taipei, Taiwan, is a well hidden treasure nestled in the mountains of Maokong Station.

for more information view

http://taipei.tv/attractions/temple/zhinan/index.htm

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Arriving in Taiwan

Welcome To Taiwan

We arrived today in the morning, but we did not have much time to really observe. We were hustled to our hostel for a little food and some rest. The jet lag was not terrible but it just put you in an exhausted fog. Our host/employer showed up at 2 pm and took us on the bus to the hospital for some routine checkups, an ex-ray for pneumonia, and some blood tests. It was an easy ordeal.

From there we got our first look at our schools. Bryan’s school was first. We got to meet some of the children and Bryan was introduced as Teacher Bryan. They all said hello and introduced themselves. They are all quite cute.

Bryan will be teaching in the Green class, mostly 6 year olds. They are a fun bunch and as of today Bryan only has 6 students signed up, 4 girls and 2 boys. The library is small but very nice, there is a work room, a computer room, and a teachers’ lounge. It is a small school, but there is plenty to do.

Karen's School, Jump Start Gu Tang

We then went to Karen’s school. Her school is older, with much more activity. The school is smaller in size but bigger in the amount of students. Karen has been assigned the school where all the other experts are. We think that this is more or less their flagship school. Karen has 16 students in her class, the maximum number. The school manager as they are called was very good, very energetic, and very enthusiastic about her school.

Both school managers were women, as were the Chinese teachers. We each got one Chinese teacher assigned to our rooms to be with us. The school managers were very eager to have us and Bryan has been invited to observe the school at any time, we will be going back tomorrow to check things out.