You Know You’re Teaching in Taiwan When…

1. You’ve started carrying extra packs of chopsticks in your pocket.

2. During swimming hour, boys all wear speedos and EVERYONE wears a swim cap and goggles.

3. Kids are so honest that they come and tell you they did something wrong.
Example: Kids aren’t allowed to speak Chinese here, and when they do, they have to give you one of their “dollars” (they get fake money to use here at camp). They’ll come and hand me a dollar, and I’m like, “Thanks, what’s this for?” And they say, “Say Chinese in room.” So cute.

4. The kids are so polite. They say “Thank you, Teacher” for pretty much everything. As I’m passing out worksheetes, or workbooks, or anything, it’s “Thank you, Teacher. Thank you, Teacher. Thank you, Teacher…” 25 times. From every student.

Now, great stories from the week:

1. This isn’t really a story… but this picture is of my sweetest student, Tim. He is SO adorable. He brought me and my TA several different kinds of candy the other day. He had the biggest smile on his face when he handed it to us. He was here at the last camp, so he kind of knows the ropes, so that’s nice to have that in my class… He and another girl named Smile are sort of leaders for the other kids…

2. I have a kid that mixes up “thank you” and “your welcome”. It is REALLY funny to me. It’s hard to not laugh every time. The students get beads for good behavior or things like that. I was handing out beads to half of the room because we had played a game to learn vocabulary where I split the class into 2 teams. I handed this kid a bead, and I hear “You’re welcome, Teacher.” I laughed because I thought he was trying to be funny. But as the week went on, he said it more and more, and I realized that he just gets them mixed up. So, I corrected him several times, “No, you say ‘thank you’, I say ‘you’re welcome.” He goes, “Oh, sorry Teacher”. A couple of times this week he caught himself. “You’re wel… wait I mean, thank you.” Hahaha. Soooooo cute. And hilarious. I have to bite my lip every time because you can’t just laugh in a kid’s face. Oh man.

3. One of the situational classes we have is an airport. The kids have to first go to the travel agency to buy either a First Class, Business, or Economy ticket. Then they have to go through customs and security. Once they’re on ‘the plane’, they have to find their seats. First Class gets massages, unlimited drinks and cookies, and anything else they need. Business gets help finding their seat, water to drink, and one cookie. Economy just gets water.

After all the kids are on the airplane, we fly through over a few different countries where they get to see some dances/customs from other countries. There is also someone who pretends to have a baby on board, and after that, there’s a hi-jacking situational. Now, the hi-jacking thing was a little strange for all us americans. We were all sort of like, ‘um, can we do that?’ But this is Taiwan, and yes, it’s ok to be politically incorrect. So, anyway… I was talking to my american TA at breakfast about it. And I stated my problems with it:
     * It’s not a problem with the situation itself, but it is made such a fun/funny thing, I feel like a lot of the kids don’t exactly understand what a hi-jacking is, other than this funny thing that we do at camp.
     * I told my TA, that some kid is going to grow up to be 19, and say something about a hi-jacking in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up in a locked room for a while.
    Obviously, I wasn’t entirely serious, I was mostly joking. Like usual. But we talked about it for a moment…

A little later, during breakfast, some of my kids find this fake turkey that is made out of fake camp money. They point to it and are motioning and using the few words they know to communicate that they would love to steal it but obviously wouldn’t because this is Taiwan and everyone is super honest. In the midst of all this, one kid looks at me and Steve and goes, “Teacher, hi-jack”. Steve and I look at each other and start laughing. What did I say earlier? Hahaha. It was funny.

4. At the airport today, my job was customs. It was really fun. I enjoyed asking kids if they had a cat in their backpack. Or if they were going to New York to sell drugs. Or if they were trying to smuggle fruits or vegetables into the USA. Another teacher, Asten, was the other customs officer. We had a lot of fun with it…. The kids got a kick out of it if we asked if they were going to sell drugs in New York. They also thought it was funny if I needed to check their backpack and made them open it. Anyway… One of the questions we would ask every kid was, “Why are you going to New York?” (The flight was from Taipei to New York). Here are some of the answers we got…
     To see an american movie
     To find parents who got lost there
And the best answer…
     To see an american toilet.
No joke! Hahahahaha. Asten and I both started dying. It was hysterical. She proceeded to ask him why… He had this whole explanation. And he wasn’t joking. He legitimately wanted to see an american toilet. Hahaha. Oh man. So funny.

5. Today, we took a class picture. During it, one of my students shouted, ‘fuck’. Of course, not knowing what it meant. It’s because all the music that they play is american pop/hip hop… stuff that would NEVER be appropriate in public settings in the states. It’s all REALLY sexual and explicit… I made it clear to my students that it was not ok to say that word, and told the people in charge that they need to do a double take on the music they’re playing… It’s a lot harder to catch things like that in music if it’s music in your 2nd language… Even if you’re pretty fluent. I get that for sure. But how horrible for a kid to come home from camp and the 6 words they learned were “Nametag. Chopsticks. Make 2 lines. Quiet. Shit. and Fuck.” Not exactly ok.

6. One student asked me to remind her what my English name is… As opposed to my Chinese name. Hahahaha. So funny.

On a more negative note, I’ve been hungry all week. I’m starving 2 hours after a full meal. We did commondeer some bread from the kitchen last night, and jelly from the breakfast room, and I have peanut butter. We had a very beautiful midnight snack.