The Land Where It's Already Tomorrow, Chapter 07: Chapter 07: Miscellaneous Musings

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This chapter will be my feelings and impressions, jotted down from time to time throughout my first week of school.

We can start off with Sunday night, with the ‘pre-start’ jitters of anyone going in to a new job. Tomorrow morning, the rubber hits the road.

There will be a semester to plan, one that complements what the Chinese teachers have already been doing. This will be with the kids still sight unseen, and me knowing nothing about them other than the low level of their English ability. The aboriginal kids speak Mandarin as a second language, and the Chinese kids all speak Taiwanese dialect. Yikes!

One of my new colleagues tells me that the boys in particular will be excited to see me, since they have never had a male English teacher or a native-speaking English teacher before.

Unless I exert my utmost endeavour, I will feel as if I am letting everyone down. For me, there is no greater motivation than people depending on me.

The Chinese teachers of English are very hard-working and dedicated here, and I feel a professional obligation to them as well. They speak better textbook English than most native speakers, and (regrettably) better than some of the “teachers” I have met in Taipei. My new colleagues speak the beautiful English of educated foreigners, but they lack the cultural context.

I responded, without a great deal of forethought, with a North American cultural idiom, when I wanted to express enthusiasm to a new colleague. I won’t give her name, for obvious reasons. “Giddiup!” Hell, everyone knows what I mean. Everyone from the States or Canada, that is. “Get it up?” she says, with the puzzled look of one who was clearly looking for familiar textbook English. She was blissfully unaware of the innuendo. It would have been unfair and unkind and immature to laugh. I explained the reference to getting a horse to move, and translated to the Chinese I learned in the academy last week. “Keyi ah!” How I wish I could speak fluent Mandarin! At the very least, I would like to be able to speak it as well as my new colleagues speak English. It’s a bit too late in life for me to entertain any notion that I will ever be able to do so. With the gracious Chinese manners that we in the west could do well to emulate (it’s more important to be kind than to be right), everyone compliments me on my Chinese. Yeah right. See Spot run.

Esmerelda and I went to Hualien City this (Sunday) morning. It only took 45 minutes, and I obeyed the speed limit. I want Lao-puo to run into town when she gets here, with me on the back, so I can give her pointers along the way. For example, there is the odd spot here and there where caution is folly, and he who hesitates is lost. The motorbike lane ends at bridges, and you have to play in the traffic. Unless you want to get a truck mirror in the back of the head, you must accelerate briskly and dominate your lane. Secondly, I find that in the city the best course of action on crowded streets is to simply ride as if on a bicycle, at little better than a walking speed. I like the fact that over here honking a horn at someone means “Here I am”. In Canada, honking a horn seems to mean “It’s my opinion that you can’t drive worth a shit.”

We came home along the coastal route, and I stopped at a hilltop viewpoint to give Esmerelda a bit of a breather. There were stairs going down to the beach—it would have been quite a hike, especially back up, and the bilingual caution signs were interesting and amusing. Besides “stay on the path”, there was also
· Beware of bees and poisonous snakes (what’s the Garden of Eden without a snake, huh?)
· No electrocuting, poisoning, or use of explosives to catch fish. (that one defeated me. God help anyone who gets caught with a handgun around here, let alone explosives)

It’s now Monday evening. I survived my first day of school, and it was easy. My day was just a one-hour meeting this morning to discuss the semester with the other English teachers, then a few hours back in my pad looking at the books and doing a general unit plan for the semester.

I’m a lot less apprehensive now about actually starting to teach. It seems there will be 22-45 minute periods per week, and three of those are adult classes (teaching the other teachers) and one is co-teaching drama with an English teacher named Winona. We decided to do “The Sword in the Stone” because it will be easy to involve all the kids in the class—even if I just teach them English catcalls for them to jeer at the hulking oafs who can’t pull the sword out. That way, the shy ones can talk as part of a group. Let’s see anyone find “put your back into it!” or “wet spaghetti!” in any ESL textbook!

Compared to how long and hard I used to have to work in Taipei to crank the same income, this is a part time job.

I’ll be teaching every last kid in the school. There are six divisions in each of grade 7, 8, and 9, so that means each kid will only get 45 minutes a week with me (except for grade 8 division 2—I get them for drama as well).

It’s far from ideal, and nobody’s going to be fluently bilingual by the time I go home. The school can’t expect miracles, but I’ll do my best.

I think I might frame my timetable one day. It’s in Chinese, right to left, but I figured it out.

Maybe I should e-mail my schedule to George Heyman (president of the BC Government Employees Union of which I was a member for over 25 years) for his consideration when workload comes up at the next round of union negotiations.

If I don’t take my nap, I’ll be the only person awake in the whole place.

I knew that Chinese hospitality is legendary, but the treatment here is beyond belief. We all had a free lunch today, since the school cafeteria isn’t open yet. The box lunch was rice and a chicken leg, half a tea egg, a slice of beef, pickled vegetable of some sort, salty green beans, and the pickled cabbage of which I am particularly fond. I don’t know what the drink was—some kind of yogurt fruit thing. No doubt the cafeteria dishings-up will rapidly lose their appeal, but when they do Lao-puo and I will just jump on Esmerelda and whip into Hualien City for a treat. We can even get comfort food if homesickness rears its ugly head. There are western hotels in Hualien City—even a time-share place, because of nearby Taroko Gorge. We will also go to Taipei frequently.

I know that we will both appreciate a turkey dinner, come Thanksgiving and Christmastime. We aren’t Chinese, and never will be, for all that our new environment fascinates and delights us.

I’m grateful for the food that at home we would consider to be overly salted. My body seems to crave salt, because it’s so hot here that my electrolytes run amok without me even realizing. Once in a while I feel strange, sort of giddy and light-headed. The cure is a can of Chinese root beer, because it’s got more salt than an Ontario highway and enough sugar to keep a dentist busy.

I learned the hard way to wear long sleeves and long pants on Esmerelda—there was incredible sunburn on my lower legs and forearms. It has turned to a dark tan already, and the rest of me is my usual fish-belly white. Even on the hottest day, it’s lovely and cool on the bike.

Here comes the garbage truck. The little ditty it plays is very pleasant, and I will always associate the sound with this place.

I’m required to stay on the school property for the entire 8 hours of the school day, but that’s not a hardship because I enjoy the company of my new colleagues.

The same mystery has presented itself again. “How can I feel so at home, let alone be a teacher, in a place where I can’t read?” Never mind the Mandarin that presents itself therefrom.

How Can. Hao Can. Good Looking.

Some of the other false cognates are fun too.

Pyscho. Sai Ko. Shit Pants.

Nene (State Bird Of Hawaii). Nei Nei. Big Tits.

It might be prudent to choose other examples for my students.

It is now Wednesday morning, and all the kids are here. I met the principal and had tea in his office. This morning was the opening assembly. Principal Lin introduced me to the school, and I made a little speech that Stephen (academic director) interpreted for the students. It was a bit intimidating— being on the stage and talking into a microphone to over 500 students (all of whom will be in my classes), as they were staring at me with frank curiousity. They wear uniforms—white tops and blue shorts for the boys and blue skirts for the girls. There was an awards ceremony for the top achievers from last semester, and each kid got a certificate and a hongbao with 100 NT Dollars in it. As each got his or her certificate and red envelope, the student would give a military-style three-fingered salute to the principal who bowed in return.

Stephen explained that the three fingers in the salute are to symbolize courage, knowledge, and kindness. I guess it would talk a lot of courage to single out one particular virtue to stress to anyone in authority. Having had years of experience as a mischievous schoolboy, the thought occurred to me immediately.

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Photos

Amber
Amber is trained in home economics, and whips up beautiful stuff in her dormitory room.

Jody
Jody is substituting this year, and I for one will be very sorry to see her go.

Carol
Carol will be away on maternity leave for part of the year.

Suzanne...
...is standing next to Amber on the right. The two men are Principal Lin (on my far right)and the Director of the Hualien County Board of Education.