So, as of last Sunday, I was officially off work for a few days. I was pretty much on the verge of a breakdown – with everything built up over the past few weeks. Not only did I need to be off work, but I needed a break. A rest. To be alone. To get away…

By 5pm, the last kids had gone home. Basically that weekend was a 2-day camp for several cram schools. I still don’t completely understand the concept of a cram school, but from everything I understand, it’s basically extra school every day after real school. So, it was several cram schools that had brought their students as a school to attend this ‘english camp’.

The thing that was strange, was that the teachers from the school were there the entire weekend. Observing. Or something. It was interesting. Because with all the disorganization and utter chaos, I wondered what the Taiwanese teachers were thinking of it iall. Several people had told me that it’s very Taiwanese for things to run inefficiently and for the schedule to change every hour. One of my Taiwanese friends in Texas put it this way, “Taiwanese work very hard, but not always smart.” And that is EXACTLY how everything has felt since I’ve been here. Everyone is SUCH a hard worker. Really. But we could all save our energy and do things better if we did them more efficiently. But no. I could go on and on. But, basically, one of the american teachers here, asked one of the Taiwanese cram school teachers what she thought of the camp, and she expressed some of the same frustrations that we were having. This particular teacher said that nothing had flow, and that everything was disorganized, and doing things differently could actually help the students learn something. She also said that the teachers felt sorry for all of us. All this made me feel a little better… just knowing that all my frustration wasn’t just myself having a bad attitude. I mean, I did have a bad attitude, but at least it wasn’t without reason. Not that that makes it ok. But you get my point. She also noted that she never, until this past weekend, realized that Westerners could actually work hard. Ha. Really interesting.

So, after the camp, the director had the kitchen of the hotel provide us all a good snack of noodles and fruit. (Oh, and side note… each night, before the students go to bed, they get a snack, around 10pm. And guess what the snack is… Noodles! Haha. So funny to me. I can’t imagine my or any of my friends’ mothers feeding me noodles at 10pm before bed as a kid. Haha.) But anyway… 2 things I love. Carbs and fruit. Seriously.

After the snacks. We headed away from the middle of nowhere in Hsin Chu county… I and 2 other teachers were supposed to stay at a hostel provided by the company. But there was another teacher for the weekend, who is from South Africa, but is currently living near Taipei and working on her PhD. She and her Taiwanese girlfriend kindly invited us to stay at their apartment in the mountains near Taipei with an amazing overlook of the city.

It was BEAUTIFUL. I’ll put up a picture in my next post. But it was a great way to start my week off.