It's school time!

Today marks week two of living in Fengyuan and teaching! My mornings start at 6:15AM and I'm out the door by 6:40AM. I then bike 10 minutes to the bus station; I never rode on the streets in Lexington, because I thought it was too dangerous. Never did I imagine I would be biking alongside cars, buses, pedestrians, and scooters without so much as a bike lane in Taiwan. The first day of school, I biked in front of a bus that was just about to turn. The only images that flashed in my head were those of scooter drivers being run over by buses, as I imagined a similar skull crushing fate for myself (thank you DMV class for instilling permanent fear). Although I initially would sweat buckets biking down the road out of sheer terror, I now feel every so slightly more comfortable on the road. Then I catch the 7:05AM bus and take a 30 minutes and arrive at San Ho.

On one of the first few days of school, I accidentally got off at a unfamiliar stop only a few blocks away from school. I decided to sit down on a bench right outside a huge warehouse and whip out my google maps on my phone to figure out how to walk to school. After a few minutes, I thought I finally mastered the art of map-reading. I thus set off unwittingly in the opposite direction of the school for about 15 minutes. Finally realizing my mistake, I headed back in the direction I came from.

As I start walking towards the warehouse where I initially sat down, I began to see men one by one popping their heads out of the door to look at me and retreating back inside. As I drew closer, a group of about 15 men circled up outside the warehouse and all stared at me. Confused, I stared back and realized one man was waving me over. I hesitantly walked over and the man kept asking me "Did you lose your wallet?" Of course, it takes a few blank stares before I realized what he was asking, and then insisted "No, it's in my backpack." But the man continues to ask whether I lost it, and finally, to prove to him I indeed did have my wallet, I dug in my backpack and realized that no, my wallet wasn't there. The man chuckled and proceeded to head into a room, coming out with my wallet in hand. I thanked them profusely and found all my credit card, receipts, and money untouched. This is just one instance of the immense kindness of the Taiwanese people --to notice a unattended wallet, stare and flag down the complete stranger that owns it, then convince said stranger she lost her wallet before returning it to her.

Luckily, most mornings are not as eventful. At San Ho, I teach a total of 15 classes a week of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd graders, beginning at 8:35AM and ending around noon every day. From 12-4PM, I eat lunch, take part in the school wide nap time (a truly magical time!), and lesson plan. Admittedly, I was incredibly nervous my first day of teaching, but am slowly getting the hang of it. Part of it is trial and error. In order to get students' attention, I tried a clapping method, where I clap a certain rhythm and students will imitate the clap and ideally fall silent. Instead, the kids seemed confused about why their teacher was clapping and then proceeded to clap unendingly. My co-teacher and I ended up settling on another tactic. Part of it is also my three great co-teachers that I work with. I am given a lot of freedom to plan lessons and choose my own topics, but still get good input and suggestions from them. I'm learning a lot from them now and hope to share some new ideas with them as well.

I only see each class once a week for 40 minutes, so I'm looking forward to getting to know them and sharing more stories!

Till next time,
Chia