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Published: August 21st 2007
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Exchangees!
Just a few of us. I am at the bottom right and my girlfriend is near the top left. Look for the tallish blonde one. Wow, how time flies.
For the last 7 months I have been serving Rotary in "...it's goal to promote the advancement of international understanding, goodwill and peace at the person-to-person level".
Yeah right.
Basically I've been having the time of my life as an Australian exchange student in Taiwan, working hard and playing harder. I've been to so many amazing places, met so many brilliant people and experienced more in 7 months than most will experience in their whole life. I've had culinary experiences you've only heard about on the Discovery Channel’s 'Top 10 Weirdest Foods', I’ve explored jungles you thought Indiana Jones had only ever hacked his way through and I’ve encountered hardships usually reserved for POWs and Alaskan oilrig workers.
I guess this is what makes it so hard to choose a starting point.
Well, I may as well begin with why I chose to come on exchange here in the first place. Truth is, I didn’t. Before Rotary selects you as an appropriate candidate, you face a long and arduous process of interviews, examinations and back-checks. You are given a list of possible host countries and you number them 1 - whatever, 1 being the country you would most like to have host you whatever being the country you would least like to visit (or just stay the hell away from). Japan was my number one, and my number two was Brazil. I don’t think Taiwan even registered in the top 10. There were two spots available in Japan, and two girls who could already speak, read and write the language were chosen to fill those spots. Figuring I wanted to visit an oriental Asian country, my selection officers picked Taiwan. I said OK, because, above all else, I wanted to go to any country where I would be thrust out of my comfort zone and made to fend for myself in a culture as far removed as possible; and damn did I get just that.
Now before I continue I want to provide you with some information that will help you to more fully understand the situation I was in when I arrived in Taiwan. Firstly and most importantly, my Chinese skills were non-existent. I knew not one word in the world’s most difficult language and even after two or so days I began to see why communication is the very fundamental basis of any society, civillisation and relationship. Secondly, any previous forays into Asia had been limited to Bali. Now Taiwan is to Bali as a quiet, considerate and reserved person is to an American: they have nothing in common. Essentially, I had no idea what to expect, the only thing I knew about Taiwan beforehand was that my laptop was made there! Thirdly, Australian exchange students arrive at the start of their school year and return home at the end of their school year. Our school year happens to begin in January and finish in December. This meant that all the other exchange students I met soon after I arrived, who had been there from the start of their school year, had already spent the past 6 months assimilating into the culture and developing the language.
Needless to say I faced a situation most other exchanges did not.
From then on the first 5 months moved at blinding speed. I saw the sights, went to school, ate the food, submersed myself into the culture, attempted to learn a level of Chinese that would suffice, partied my liver into submission and met some of the most wonderful people I have ever had the privilege to meet. I think that has been the greatest thing about this exchange, networking with other exchange students from all over the globe. I’ve acquainted myself with Americans, communicated with Canadians, forayed with the French, bonded with Belgians, encountered Ecuadorians and romanced with Russians. My best friend became an all-American Upstate New Yorker and my girlfriend became a beautiful blonde Slav from the Central European land of Poland. One of the neatest things about it all is that now, in the many years of travel I see ahead of me, I have a place to stay in almost every country.
The last two months I have spent here things have slowed down quite significantly. All my friends, the exchange students of whom there were around 40 of, have all returned home. Only myself and one other Brazilian girl (who is in the same situation as yours truly) remain. Over this break I found myself in another city working as an English teacher for the local YMCA. I teach children from 8 - 13 from Monday to Friday, 8am - 5pm and it’s the hardest damn job I’ve ever done (and I’ve worked as a brick layer). At times I’ve been depressed, bored and my personal favourite; despondent. This is a result of he sudden absence of the best friends I have ever known, finding myself in a new city with a new family just as I was finally beginning to settle in, and the sheer stupidity of my job.
I am at the YMCA camp to teach English; yet all my class seems to do is play cards and fight. This is not my fault as I am completely prepared to teach and take control of the class. However, we are required to conduct the lesson in English and my students understand very little of what I say. My assistant, who is supposed to ‘assist’ me in translation and control, does very little to help. I often find myself wondering why she is there at all. The children themselves are ridiculous; all they do is fight, bicker and argue. Today I had one 9-year-old male student tell another female classmate the same age, that he wants her to “…die very quickly so he could eat her meat”. He then pointed to the region of her breasts and crotch. In the end all I seem to be doing in class is yelling for five or ten minutes every hour then just sitting back watching hopelessly as chaos unfolds. Bloody hell!
However, all is not lost. In one week I will be done of this place and will make my merry way back to civillisation (Taipei) where I will once again settle back into routine exchange student life. I am very excited to meet the next load of exchanges that have landed just this weekend past. Seems like a very colourful and interesting bunch. Swedes, Finns and Dutch aplenty (nationalities I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting an exchange student from)!
God knows what the future holds but be sure of this: I will actually start to make a regular effort to blog my various shenanigans. So fear not loyal Ben-watchers, you will know everything that I do, see and experience (within PG-rated reason)!
Ben Webster.
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