Stay in Milk and Drink yo School

I am now officially comfortable in my new home. I wasn't sure if that was ever going to happen but I really think it has. There are still a lot of things that must be done before life can really start kicking ass here but over all I am pretty pleased with how everything is going. So far all I can in Chinese say is "thank you, bye bye, I want dumplings, and excuse me." It isn't exactly a large vocabulary and I haven't even eaten a dumpling yet so I am still struggling. So here is what is going on.

Yes, we did finally get an apartment and it is pretty great. I am so happy to be out of that craptastic hostel that I was starting to call home. I almost thought about getting myself arrested because living in a prison seemed more attractive than where I was. For those of you who look stuff up a lot, our new place is located right near the Minquan W. Rd MRT (Metro). It is pretty centrally located and I have already found some pretty cool places around us that I will probably pop into on a daily basis. The best part is that there is a little local market around the corner that actually sells 1000 ml beer cans. It is so hilariously large when you have one in your hand and the only way it could be more funny would be seeing it in the hands of some small Asian guy.

We moved into a three room apartment (Myself, Dunkle, and the new guy Dan from MOtown.) So far there is some real positive roommate energy flowing around so we all hope that it continues like that. I think the place will be nice once we all have some money to spruce things up and get some trinkets to fill it up and give it life.

The first night at the place was a bit hard for me because I didn't really get the idea of "furnished." I just figured that "furnished" meant everything is there like furniture, plates, clothes, and food. Not quite. The first night I had to sleep on an old dirty mattress with a pullover for a pillow. That was bad but still not as bad as the hostel. Of course now I have some sheets but I still screwed that up. You see, it is really really hard to do things here when you don't know Chinese. I wondered around a Wallmartesque store the other day for about an hour not knowing what to do. I mean seriously, if I ever meet someone who packages bedsheets I am going to kick the shit out of them. Why would I want to separately buy just the stretchy part and a pillow case? Why do they sell just that? Do they think that that is the most important part of the bed sheet stuff? Why can't you just buy a big thing with a pillow, stretchy thing, little sheet, big sheet, and pillows? Why do you have to buy it all separate? I found out that you can't even really find all the same stuff so you have to mix and match. It is even worse when you are cheap like me. After my hour in the store I had bought a pink stretchy thing and pillow case kit, a blue blanket, and a giant neon green pillow with cows all over it. It looks like a blind six year old decorated my damn room. I didn't mean to get pink sheets but when a sheet is small and folded the color comes off as a nice red and when it is bed sized it is pink with yellow flowers all over it. I can't wait for the day that I bring a girl back (just to read a book together of course) and she sees my classy decorating style. Oh well I ain't no metro homo.

Sorry I was actually going to try a real blazin' bloggin' today and then I wrote that garbage up above. How about I talk about my school.

I actually really like my school. My boss is totally hot too. (oops I'm getting off track again) Seriously though she is super hot but also very nice and intelligent. Her English is almost perfect but it is funny when she types things out with little mistakes. Yesterday I was supposed to teach my kids the words "purple yarnt and bron tape." But hey it isn't like I speak any Chinese. The school is in a really nice part of town and is surrounded by tall and fancy high rise apartment buildings. Our school teaches the cream of the crop as far as the families are concerned. Everyday I see Mercedes, BMWs, and other nice cars dropping their little kids off. The inside is all new and high tech as well. It looks like how you would design a kindergarten if you had as much money as you wanted to do it. The whole place is made for tiny little kids. Tiny toilets, tiny chairs, tiny everything. Speaking of the toilets, one weird part about those is that they are surrounded by windows. I guess it is so we can make sure that they don't mess around but everytime you walk upstairs you are bombarded by little children waving from their toilet seats while pooping out a little turtle head. It is really strange but I guess no one else minds. I asked about it and they said "don't worry, you'll get used to it." So I am supposed to get used to watching little kids pee? Whatever.

Speaking of the kids they are all soooooooo smart. This isn't like it was in France. While I would say the French kids were better disciplined, they were in no way as sharp with English as these kids are. Most of the kids I teach (7-10) can pretty much understand English enough to communicate and read. It is really amazing how good they are. Sometimes I forget that they even speak a completely different language until I hear one of them say something in Chinese. Having them speak English makes teaching them English so much easier. Whoda thunkit?

Right now I am teaching only two classes which is also an improvement from last year's eight classes. I have a class with about 12 kids and one with 5. Last year my smallest was 22 and my largest was 28........damn! While the 5 kids class is great the 12 is outrageous. I have never seen these types of human beings ever. About 5 kids in that class are certifiably bat shit crazy. One kid will actually break out in the middle of class and just start screaming and shaking his body all over. One is so ADD that he seems to be able to not pay attention to not paying attention. And one girl cares so little about class that she wouldn't be fazed by the discipline of an army general. I have to teach this class for two hours a day and we don't do simple stuff. We start off with the weeks grammar and vocab. We play games, do flashcards and pretty simple class stuff. After that 30 minutes we move on to the workbook where the kids do writing activities and practice their reading comprehension. Then we have a pee break and I have to go monitor a bunch of little boys who pull their pants all the way down to pee. Then we go back and do phonetics, creative writing, reading, and story writing depending on the day. For the last half hour we do art, science, literature, or math. This happens all in English and is prepared and executed all by myself. Crazy I know. Totally different from my days in France where my lesson plans were often "created" in my head as I walked to school each day. So the structure is nice but trying to keep a bunch of cracked out nutcases in their seats for 2 hours is no easy feat. I think I am doing pretty well though and having a Chinese teacher in the class really helps a lot.

There is also another funny aspect of life as a teacher here in Taipei. It was very important for me to know before I got here that what I am actually doing here is completely illegal and punishable by deportation from the country. In most cases you are even banned from ever entering Taiwan again. This is totally serious too. Westerners or foreigners are in no way allowed to teach kindergarten in school here. The way they get around it is by registering us as elementary teachers and literally hiding us in the nooks and crannies of the tax system. My school is so paranoid about it that I am only permitted to enter the school from the back door. Twice already I have had to run and hide with the rest of the white folk because the government alarm went off in the building. If their security people detect a government vehicle or a gov type person we have to run and hide. For real. So every day I am dangerously risking my livelihood just to educate these beautiful children. (Can't wait to use that on the American girls when I get home.) I just hope I don't get caught because having to tell people that I was deported for illegally teaching kids every day could really get misinterpreted. But I doubt that will ever happen.

So that is life as of now and I enjoy it a lot. Tonight Dunkle is going to introduce me to a woman he has casually dated here and there. She is going to bring some of her friends out so I get to meet them too. The hilarious catch is that he only recently found out that this woman is about 32 to 35 years old. Hahahahahahahahaha. But that is how the Asians are, you seriously cannot tell their age. So I hope you are all well and enjoy the stories. Now that I am settled and found the shop that sells 1000 ml oilcans and am going to meet a bunch of middle aged Taiwanese chicks I think life here is going to get very interesting here. Bye