28,000 Word Post

I haven't written in awhile cuz I got the flu, but since my experience at the Taiwanese hospital was pretty good (and waaay better than that time I had to go to a Montreal hospital), I'm already feeling better. A lot has happened since: I had a Chanukkah where we put birthday candles in a pomelo, a Christmas where I went to a Taiwanese church, and a New Years where I watched fireworks from my window. But right now I'm just gonna chill with all that and show you some pics of my students.
These are from when we had class outside a few weeks ago. The assignment: find an object for each letter of the alphabet (e.g., apple, bee, cloud). This was with some of my best students, who also happen to be really cool kids.
This is a short post, I guess I'm gettin ready to go on vay-kay soon. But if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then this here is like a 28,000 word post. But as the great rapper once said: "Really, what's really 1,000 words really worth?/ I can describe the whole earth in one really absurd verse."

Me and Yvonne
Me and Wendy







Sara and Ann

Sara is one of the smartest students in the whole school. I think she stumped me here.
Leo. Always smiling.












The whole class
Duck...
Duck...

Baaaaallin!

One of the highlights of my weeks here is Wednesdays, when we have a students vs. teachers basketball game. You might think a bunch of grown men against middle-schoolers would be a blow-out. But man them kids are fast. And the teachers don't take it easy on em. They're blocking their shots, throwing elbows and everything. And the kids just get up and go hard right back. But it's all fun.

I must confess, however, that I came to Taiwan with ambitions of being the best basketball player in the entire country, if not the whole continent (Yao Ming aside). Those expectations have proven to be, shall we say, unrealistic. I am, like, the fourth best player on my team of middle-school teachers. Who knew Taiwan had ballers like that?

One great moment came last week in the 4th quarter. The Teachers had the ball, and since we couldn't see the shot clock I was counting down the seconds, "10...9...8..." when suddenly the ball came loose and I picked it up right behind the 3-point line. For some reason I kept counting, and as I was yelling, "1!!!" I shot a 3 that swished at the buzzer. I got some props for that one.

The funny thing is that me and the other teachers all have nicknames after NBA players. We got this huge teacher we call Shaq, this chubby teacher we call Charles Barkely, this real skinny teacher we call Reggie Miller, etc. I'm Kevin Garnett. It's cool that so many miles away from America, we all have basketball in common.

Here are some pictures from Reggie Miller's birthday party. They love karaoke here, and you know I will never pass up an opportunity to grab the mic.

"And I am telling you..."

I really like my job. Recently, my work has been to watch "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" with my students (see below), playing duck-duck-goose outside on a beautiful day amidst breathtaking mountain scenery, and showing my kids 50 Cent albums. Last week, we made decorations for this week's Christmas-Channukah holiday lesson (I'm playin Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" and telling the story of Chanukkah).

I for real enjoy working here. Everywhere I go my students yell, "Teacher Brett! Teacher Brett! You are so handsome!" (I attribute the latter partly to my actually being handsome, partly to the fact that I am the only non-Taiwanese person most of them have ever met, and partly to the fact that "you are so handsome" is one of the few complete phrases they know in English).

My students are all middle schoolers (7th, 8th, and 9th grade) and are generally pretty cool plus good students, except for that one girl who was looking up "Christmas-themed condoms" in class last week when she was supposed to be finding holiday season gifts (ok, maybe she was on task).

Here is the "Fresh Prince" clip I showed em, which coincidentally illustrates my teaching style (I essentially did this exact routine the other day in class to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On"). The "Fresh Prince" thing was funny bcuz I was trying to explain the concept of the show to them: "So you see, first he is a poor man, but now he is a rich man..." and my students were like, "if he is the prince then who is the king?" and I'm like, "i don't know, Uncle Phil?"



Here are some pictures of the Rogn Yuan campus, one of the two schools I teach at.

Talkin' Taiwan

Jockin' Jay-Z. This post is about language in Taiwan, and not just Chinese. Most people here also speak the native language, Taiwanese. They've got some great idioms. For instance:

"Just because you can't afford pork doesn't mean you don't know how a pig walks." This means that there is no excuse for a lack of common sense. Today, interestingly, industrialization and development have led people to make the opposite claim about Taiwanese youth: "they can afford pork, but they don't know how a pig walks." Kids these days.

"[He is] a frog at the bottom of the well." This refers to someone who is narrow-minded, with limited vision. The parable has it that a frog, who has never left his well, is talking to a turtle. The frog says, "life here is fantastic. I have my own little puddle of water and a few delicious flies to keep me satisfied." The turtle responds, "That sounds nice, but have you ever seen the ocean? It is tens of thousands of feet deep, with many creatures of all kinds. " Meaning that the simplest don't even know what they're missing.

"Old ginger is spicier than fresh ginger." This is factually true, and you can say it anytime age wins out.

I also really like some of the Chinese I'm learning:

If someone says "thank you," you can respond with, "bu huei," which means literally, "[you] can't." In other words, "what I have done for you is so minor and insignificant it is not even possible for you to thank me for it." Quite modest, I think.

One thing that struck me, and which was kind of jarring at first, is that the word for "that" in Chinese is "nigga." This wouldn't be especially noteworthy, except for the fact that the Taiwanese use the word "that" the way Americans use the word "like." As in every other word. They say it even when speaking English, so if I ask for directions somewhere and they're trying to think of the right English words, they'll go, "umm...nigga, take a right...nigga, by the gas station, nigga." Relatedly, "jigga" means "this."

Also, in Chinese saying "ma" at the end of a sentence indicates that you are asking a question. So it's perfectly grammatical to say, "whatsup, ma?"

And on the basketball court, they call an outdoor court "a crowded cattle pen" and they say, "bread!" when someone shoots an airball (I have no idea why).

Here are some pics of me giving a presentation at the Fulbright orientation in Taipei back in September.

What is a poinsettia?

Yesterday, my Taiwanese co-teachers were setting up Christmas decorations around the school, and they said to me, "sorry, but we don't have a poinsettia to put up." And I was like, "who is that?" And they were like, "you know, the Christmas flower." And I'm like, "I have never heard of said flower." So then they showed me a picture of it online and I go, "Nope, sorry. I don't think I've ever seen that before. It's prolly a Taiwanese thing." One of my Taiwanese co-teachers, his jaw literally dropped, and with this dead serious look on his face, he goes: "I am shocked," like I just told him they don't eat McDonalds in America or somethin.

But when I asked the other Americans on the program they all were like, "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A POINSETTIA IS?!" Not surprisingly, the only other person who didn't know what a poinsettia is was this Jewish girl.

So help me out here: should I know what a poinsettia is? Do yall know what it is? In my mind, if I don't see it by the fountain at the mall, if it wasn't in any scene from "Home Alone," if it's not 50-feet tall and at Rockefeller center, and if no girls gonna kiss me when I stand under it, then I ain't know nothin about it.

Here's a picture if ur like me:

Strange Ways

Last Sunday I was just goin to get some lunch when I heard these two girls talking behind me. One said to the other (in Chinese), "are you hungry?" and I actually understood what she was saying so I turned around and said (in Chinese), "yea! I'm hungry!" Then we started talking (all in Chinese) and they invited me to go to lunch with them. But when we got to this vegetarian place one of the girls asked me if I had a girlfriend and I was like, "no," and so she was like, "ok, then you go on a date with my friend now," and then she just left me with the other girl! It turned out to be all good; one interesting moment came when the girl didn't know the word "Jewish," so i explained it this way: i held up three fingers, and pointed to one and said "Muslim," pointed to one and said, "Christian," and pointed to one and said, "Jewish," and then she got it. We exchanged digits (but didn't arrange visits).

That reminds me of when I was eating at another vegetarian buffet and I started talking to this elderly Taiwanese man and he ended up inviting me to his house right then and there. I was a little apprehensive, since in the U.S. I would never go to the home of some old dude I just met (I'm not tryna go out on some "Silence of the Lambs" tip). But I went anyway. It was totally worth it when we went to his house and he had me sing karaoke for him, and I (ironically) chose the 1950's song "Diana," which goes, "I'm so young and you're so old/this my darling I've been told" and then he had me teach him the lyrics in English.

Lastly, two cool things:

1. I got acupuncture. They stuck what looked like these incense candles in my back and then hooked them up to these Frankenstein-style electric nodes. It didn't hurt, but felt weird. It was actually covered by my Taiwanese health insurance under, "traditional Chinese medicine."

2. I went to a Taiwanese ashram for disciples/devotees of Supreme Master Ching Hai. They're really into vegetarianism, so we basically just ate and meditated all day. Nice way to spend a Sunday.

Various pics from Taiwan University for the Performing Arts, this festival in Jiaosi, plus this hike I went on. I could say more about all of those, but I done took up enough time.