Culture Shock!

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Made it to Taiwan. Have spent nine days in training - met Naomi (England), B.B. (U.S.), Lispeth & Seth (U.S.), Jez (England), Marco (South Africa), Heidi (fellow UCSC graduate), and a multitude of others. Have been working since Monday - am overwhelmed by work, but figure if Hess really does end up being a problem, I only have to stay with them for a year. The thing is, I love HLS -Hess Language School, which is the buxiban portion of their enterprise - just find myself hating kindy. I mean, they really have to tell me something if they want me to actually teach these kids. Honestly think I might quit the kindy portion of my job at the end of this week if things don’t improve - I’m allowed to quit a contract within one month of starting work, and the kindy contract is separate from the HLS contract.

Know that I’m also going through culture shock and that I’m not allowed to let that affect my decisions regarding work. I need to talk to more people - make more friends, and it seems a bit difficult at work, but it’s even harder on the streets, because so few people speak any English here. I mean, my birthday was last Wednesday, and the only one who was able to acknowledge it was my boss! Talk about depressing! The thing was, my parents couldn’t call me, and I didn’t have the internet to get birthday greetings from anyone else.

However, I did spend the better part of this afternoon exploring parts of Taichung with Naomi (a Brit I met in training). She lives in little Europe, which is smack dab in the center of town and near a lot of good restaurants and between all of the major museums. We found the English section at Nobel Bookstore (namely, a single shelf), and we each bought copies of Taichung Unlocked, which I can tell is going to become my bible while I’m living in Taichung County. The thing is, it’s only NT$22 (about US$0.66) to take the train from Fongyuan to Taichung, and I’m within walking distance of the train station in Fongyuan. To be honest, everything is within walking distance in Fongyuan. Naomi and I also ended up wandering around the Museum of Fine Arts, which is a seriously bizarre place.

Culture Shock Moments

1.) When the Department of Education raided our kindy on my second day of work and we had to go up to the third floor and sit silently in fear of discovery - although my only real fear was that we’d have to go back down and I’d have to attempt to figure out what I was doing again.

2.) Lightning struck the intersection next to my building and the drivers weren’t even fazed - they kept right on driving! I mean honestly, I thought lightning was supposed to strike the tallest thing around (which would be my apartment building, come to think of it), and no one was seemed to notice this scientific anomaly except me!

3.) The absolute disaster that was my apartment when I moved in. I knew that the cultural norm here was to clean the apartment when you move in, but there shouldn’t have been that much crap left behind, and I still can’t get some of the cigarette burns off of my walls.

4.) Bones left in every type of food - chicken, beef, fish… How do they keep little kids from choking? How do I keep myself from choking?

5.) This sounds stupid, but the never ending rain. It’s not even real rain, just an obnoxious drizzle mostly, but without a scooter, it’s unbearable!

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