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Published: September 22nd 2007
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Last of the States
My last photo before I left the U.S. I figured the ridiculously large flag at LAX was fitting. The amazing thing about Hess is that the moment you threaten to quit, they do everything in their power to accommodate you. I think I’ll be keeping kindy. To be honest, I’m really just paid to be a white person in the classroom, and two-and-a-half hours go so quickly that my mistakes seem minimal anyway. Besides, I’m only doing this for three years.
The reason for that decision is simple: people seem to go insane if they stay in Taiwan for longer than three years - that, or they marry a Taiwanese woman. Which might be the equivalent of going insane, come to think of it. Anyway, three years should be enough for me to get some travel in and do the main things for the law school application process.
Or I could move on to South Korea after I finish in Taiwan. Depends on how much more traveling I want to do.
It is so hard to believe that I left the States a month ago. I feel like it’s barely been a few days, even though I’ve done so much. In the nine days of training, I explored quite a lot of Taipei. I went
Taipei 101
Self-explanatory, really. to Taipei 101 on my first day, then explored a bunch of the expat hangouts, wandered around a few daymarkets and on nightmarket. I also spent nine days in a mixture of euphoria and excruciating boredom. We were forced to endure teaching demo after teaching demo, and the whole time I wanted to scream “You learn by DOING, not by WATCHING!” However, I also met a lot of people, learned a lot about my corporation, and learned a lot about Taiwan and the culture shock that people usually go through.
At the end of it - I’m quite proud of myself and still a little astounded - I was awarded the “Happy Hippette” award. Yes, that sounds amazingly stupid, but it makes me grin every time I think about it. The mascot and logo of Hess is this big yellow cartoon hippo, and apparently, at the end of every training session, along with four or five other random awards, they always give out the “Happy Hippo” award to the most cheerful person in the training group. So in my training group of fifty-five, they couldn’t decide between Marco and I. In the end, they gave Marco the “Happy Hippo”
Damper Baby
The bizarre thing that keeps Taipei 101 standing through earthquakes. Apparently, it's quite a tourist attraction all by itself. award and I got the “Happy Hippette” award. All I could think of was “If only the people from Paraclete could see me now - most cheerful!” I think it’s hilarious - and I think that was the attitude that got me the award in the first place.
Since then, I’ve definitely gone through (been going through) culture shock. The thing is, those first two weeks in Taipei were like a dream. I was immediately thrown in with a bunch of other English-speakers, and all of were being desperately friendly because we all knew that it was going to be difficult to make friends out at our branches. So now we’re all out at our branches, and although I text and see Naomi regularly and I’ve Facebooked Lispeth, I haven’t really heard from any of the others since coming to Fongyuan - not that I expected to, honestly. But it’s easy to get bogged down and depressed when there’s no one to talk to outside of work. I need to learn Chinese quick, just so I can talk to people! I’m too vocal a person not to.
At any rate, I’m determined to enjoy my time here. For
I (Heart) Swing!
Who wouldn't want their picture with this? instance, Naomi and I have made tentative plans to go sit on a Vietnamese beach during Chinese New Year, and I’m going to spend a couple of weeks each in the Philippines and India when I get my first month off. The thing is, I have to take advantage of my location to visit as much of Asia as possible. I’ve got a feeling that once I start law school and practicing, it’s going to be a whole lot harder to just take a couple of weeks off to enjoy traveling.
I bought a book called Law School Confidential at Caves Books in Taichung, and it looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me (although I’m oddly looking forward to it - I definitely don’t want to teach for the rest of my life). And I want to go to law school whether I end up practicing law or not. I mean, I’m still up in the air about applying for the Foreign Service too… Enough about my ambitions - I honestly don’t know where I’ll be in ten years, and as long as I’m doing something worthwhile, I don’t care. Of course, that means I
Sun-Yat Sen Memorial
They have a changing of the guards, too, but I missed it by about ten minutes. probably shouldn’t still be teaching ESL in ten years. I’ve got to admit, I feel a little guilty contributing to globalization after all the idealistic discussions I got into in college.
(After rummaging through Caves, I met Naomi at the Botanical Gardens outside the National Science Museum and we ended up eating some really good Chinese food - I love taro root! - and then wandering down to the Fengjia nightmarket. I bought some interesting earrings and a charm for my cell phone - I felt very Taiwanese!)
Culture Shock Moment
Naomi and I were heading down the stairs to leave after dinner, and there was this little old lady, stooped and tiny, climbing laboriously up the stairs. She had these two shopping bags filled with vegetables, and she would set them up two steps ahead of her, slowly put one foot on the next stair, and then the other foot, before picking up her bags to continue the process. She was about halfway up the stairs when Naomi and I noticed her. Nobody else in the restaurant was moving to help her, and we had no idea what the correct protocol was because there was no
Another View
I guess Taipei 101 is supposed to look like a bamboo shoot. It's really awesome looking at night, when it's all lit up different colors. one to follow! In the States, I would have helped her immediately without even thinking about it, but Naomi and I weren’t sure what to do in this case because no one else was helping. We finally decided to take her bags up to the top of the stairs for her, but I’m still not sure if that was the right thing to do…the old lady seemed rather shocked.
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Rebecca
non-member comment
Happy Hippettes are stinky?
So has your shower been fixed yet? The photos are neat, It's awesome to see what trouble you've been up to :P