Tim and cliff say TaiWhat!: 9/6/09

This week we were back in hsinchu, and we were working like dogs to find jobs. The school term started on the 1 September, so unfortunately most full-time positions were already filled in late August. We went door to door to tons of schools in hsinchu and jhubei (across the river from hsinchu) and have had a little bit of luck.

Teaching job interviews here normally involve a 30 min demonstation of your teaching skills. Tim went for a demo at kid castle (see pic) on Monday and worked there on Tue, and Wed. The job is nice but its not many hours – 10am to 11:40am, mon to thurs, so he would need to find another afternoon job. He is going for some interviews on Monday.

I got offered a full time afternoon job at a Giraffe Language school in hsinchu, which is a nice school. I am the only foreign teacher and there are 4 chinese-english teachers, and I taught there yesterday.

An interesting chair at the train station.

Taiwan is very good at recycling, with recycling. Check out the recycling area at Robyns building below. Although its a bit ironic, because Taiwan often overdoes the packaging. The below "Five cereals bumper harvest biscuits" (catchy name) contains three different layers of packaging before you get to the biskies. mmmm... biskie my biskie!

Its the little things...

A few good inventions that I have noticed in Taiwan are:

- Light switches with a little light on them (so that you know where the switch is in the dark).

- Magnetic bath plugs, with a place to stick it in the middle (So that its not always falling all over the place, and makes it more symmetrical).

But its not all good, there are some silly things that are not in use here. Like "Stop streets" There are no stop streets. Its either a Robot, or an ambigious 4 way intersection, where you slow down a bit, but the more main road has right of way? I'm sure it speeds up traffic flow, but increases accidents as well.

Tim used his shifty eyes to check how Ryno was doing on the "Impossible quiz".

We have been trying out a few new fruit lately. The above fruit is aptly called a Dragon Fruit (it looks like the pink flames of an ancient beast, and it was pretty delicious. It tastes like a kiwi, but a softer and more watery taste.

Fill 'er up cliff! Getting drinking water is like a mini petrol staion here.

The drinking water is not that great here, but apparently you can drink it if you want from the north of the island upwards. In order to evolve my body to get used to the water, I started drinking half tap water mixed with half purchased water. But I started getting this strange dry cough (only at nights) so I halted the evolution process.

This fruit may be called a pamelo? It was citrus fruit, that tastes like a bland, less zingy grape fruit.

We built this Gotham city on rock and roll! (Don't worry, I said Gotham)

We bought a Scooter!

Actually we bought two!

But we got a good deal on both of them. We haven't got them quite yet. We will be getting one later today, and the other one tomorrow. Part of the reason, we got a great deal on them is because they are slightly illegal. They are not stolen or anything, but rather just lacking a bit of paperwork. The previous owners were foreigners who just left, and didn't bother going to the traffic office to change the details into the new owners name, and so now there is either no paperwork or expired paperwork... but don't worry, this happens all the time and many bikes either have expired paperwork or are licensed in their friends names. The biggest problem arises if it is parked illegally and towed away, then you cannot claim it back because you have no paperwork!

Unfortunately it's not this pimped up one in the picture. Tim just saw this sweet baby parked on the road while he was walking.

Check next weeks blog when we reveal photos and awesome names for our beasts of transportation! Cheerio

Greetings from Taiwan! The last few days have been quite eventful ones. During the start of the week Cliff and I have been doing some substitute teaching at a school our friend Anna-lou works at, the Washington American School. (There are no Americans near the place) We both really like it there and is no real chore working there, as everyone is so friendly and helpful.

We received a job offer from a school in Taichung, for two full time teaching positions which is really ideal for us. The school is a cram school, so its hours are a little different starting around midday and finishing around 9pm. We headed down there late on Wednesday, had an interview at 8pm, and started work the next afternoon! As we have no formal teaching qualifications, the head of the school was a little hesitant to hire us, her hesitation being matched by our hesitation to sign a 12 month contract.

The school was really in a pinch as one of the teachers (also a South African) was going away for 10 days and they desperately required western skin to cover in his place. We were it, and were thrown into the deep end teaching classes neither of us felt comfortable with. Cliff taught a high school class (as the actual high school) of 40 girls, all around 16 years old. The class started to get a bit bored so Cliff played some 20 questions with them. Letting one of the girls’ think of a person, the rest of the class began asking the questions, it went something like this:

Is it female? No
Is he handsome? Yes
Is he white? Yes
Is he Cliff? Yes

My first class was the highest level of class the school offers, known as high intermediate, the level of which was far higher than I felt comfortable teaching! One question in this class was to differentiate between words: was founded, founded, was founding and found. I also had a conversation class in which for 1.5 hours it is your task to provide stimulation conversation, on a topic taken from the newspaper. I actually found the conversation classes easier, than the more formal classes. But trying to get the kids to participate is really challenging, and trying to figure out what level they are at is really difficult. I am developing a new respect for teachers...

The contract the school was demanding we sign, asked us to compromise on a few things that are quite important to us - working Saturdays and minimal leave being two of the major ones. So although the job seemed perfect at first, we both realised that neither of us were happy at the school and decided that it was not going to be the host of OUR Taiwan experience. A hard decision as it would immediately solve a bunch of question marks we are curious about!

So we worked on Friday as we both had quite a load of classes, and told the school head we were not going to take the job. You couldn’t say she was happy about it, but she didn’t get hysterical either and treated us well enough for the day. We did feel a LITTLE less lost and confused, but that place is like a little beehive of craziness! Come 4pm it starts going nuts, with all the students coming in and out with their little masks covering their faces. Those masks also can make teaching frustrating as you cannot see if the student is laughing, smiling, confused, understanding and often makes it hard to hear quieter kids.

Amongst all the scrambling to get this job (because we really wanted it) we had to get some more id photographs taken, so we went to the first photo place we saw and got COMPLETEY ripped off! We paid 800 NT$ (about R260) to have the photos taken, and we suspect it might be because we pointed to a certain id photo on the desk. The photographers beautiful assistant spent about 10 mins on each photo cleaning up our faces on Photoshop! It felt strange watching someone “remove” all our facial flaws in front of our eyes.

We have been staying a super cheap hotel in Taichung, right by the train station, which is called the Fuh Chen Internet Hotel. We stayed at this same hotel last week, and were desperate to use the internet, so we wandered around town aimlessly for about 2 hours unable to find an internet cafe, getting VERY frustrated. So we headed back to the annoyingly named hotel to see if they could help us, and the receptionist told us, “Up road, on right, big beauty”. Needless to say we found no internet using her description. Eventually we found a swanky place with big couch leather seats, which demands you buy a drink every time you use the internet.

Well anyway, yesterday while I went into work early, Cliff decided to interrogate the receptionist further as to how a hotel can have the name Internet in it, and yet provide no internet! We are laughing about it now, but I didn’t want to believe Cliff at first. There is FREE internet on the 5th and 6th floors of the hotel if you have your own computer and they assumed we didn’t have one. Right there, in the hotel it was there for us the whole time!

We have been learning to ride a scooter, on the busy streets of Hsinchu, thanks to Robyns unfailing generosity and helpfulness! She has really helped so much we feel we owe her BIG time. Cliff and I both get a kick out of zipping around the busy roads so I foresee many a rock/paper/scissors match to decide who sits in front!The picture in the blog on a scooter is Anna-lou and I on the NIGHTRIDER! At the same time we are learning how to use the busses, as the place a bus drops people off is not necessarily the same place that it picks people up.

Travelling with us at the moment is Lucy and Leonards' first baby, he is a headstrong little guy by the name of Lionel. He has a headful of hair on him already.

We went to some of Robyns friends who stay in Jubei - a short way out of Hsinchu - to have some ice coffee and fun on the Wii. With us is Hannah, an American teaching at a Grade School in Hsinchu, and Johan another South African who has been teaching in Taiwan for a while.

Until next time!