Dr. Strangeland or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Taiwan

9.03.2001

So I have been in Taiwan for four days now and man is it interesting here. I have seen a little bit of the city that I live in. It is nice here. It is crowded and the streets are busy, but compared to Taipei Jong-Li is a small country town.

In the past few days I have been shown some safe and good places to eat. The area around the adult school I hope to start teaching at is cool. It's just a bunch of shops everywhere. You can buy pretty much everything you need in this area. For snack food I go to Carrefour (sp?). It is basically a Zellers or Walmart with a produce section.

On Saturday we went to Taipei. That place is really cool. It is a huge city packed full of people. But so many of the buildings look so nice.

On Friday I got my first job. Adrian introduced me to his boss and in 30 seconds I had a job teaching elementary school. Today was my first class (I now have two) and man was it a gong show. I had no idea where to start and how to do it, but somehow I got through it ok. There are a couple of kids in the class who get everything right off of the bat. But then I have a couple who still cannot say Hello my name is _______. And of the kids who can say it, I think about one third of them have no clue what they are saying. They just repeat after me and smile. But I'm getting paid so who cares, right? No I do care I want them to learn, but man is it going to be tough. I have another class at 4:40 today, so that one should go a little smoother, since I sort of know what I am getting into. I am starting to wish that in all my time at Indigo I had looked at one of those ESL books. The parents of one of my students introduced themselve sto me just before class and when I told them that I had only been here for 4 days they looked really scared.

Speaking of classes I want you all to know that I got a B+ in both of my religious studies classes. Which means my GPA is high enough to get into education.

Gotta run to work. Talk more later.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home


 
Read my Guestbook!
Sign my Guestbook!
Sign my book NOW