Vacation or work...hard to say

I am now on vacation. I have time to contemplate what I have been doing, what I have not had the chance to do, what I hope to do in the future and of course to travel a bit an contemplate that as well.
Although I get only this one break all year, I am thankful for just how long it is. Because of the Fulbright conference I got to add three days to my time off work making for a 31/2-week break. You may think the conference would be work but it hardly was.
After holding off a torrid of people wanting to get together with me right before I left Yilan for a while (doesn’t this always happen?) I left with the other Fulbrighters on the Tourist train down to Kending. It was a long ride, we left at 8 and arrived around two, but when we stepped off the train we knew the trip had purpose. The weather had transformed from wet, rainy and cool to balmy subtropical sunny. Though we were followed from the station by a small leathery old woman selling cold tea and god, we managed to hop on the tour bus, thus beginning a love-hate relationship with the maid Taiwanese mode of travel, tour buses.
The first page worthy stop was the aquarium. I would say that this aquarium beats the Shed in Chicago, but is not quite as good as the Monterey Bay aquarium (they had no sea otters). As silly as it sounds, they had successfully themed the exhibits with a sunken ship theme. This would not have mattered if there had not been so many underwater tunnels to walk through and from which to see sharks and huge fish swimming above. From the Aquarium we went to our resort hotel, checked in and got comfortable. Each of us had a whole huge room to ourselves priced at around $230 a night. Yes those are your tax dollars at work. Thank you America.
After a large mediocre dinner we started the conference. We had the choice of making it two days long or having one long haul and a party. It seemed only Catherine objected to this second option, as she hates parties of all sorts, but she kept quiet out of fear of the group. And thus began the long haul. We had a moderator from AIT (American Embassy of sorts) who was to keep our reports at 5 minutes each and to start he did a pretty good job. Oddly the meeting put me through a huge range of emotions. It started with the visiting lecturers and I got excited about their classes and even go the syllabus for one of them (I’m such a dork), when it moved on to the Researchers I was excited about what they were doing and I began again to consider again a PHD and professordom. Then the junior scholars (beginning dissertation/ masters work) began to speak and I got down on myself. They were really doing some cool things, interviewing cross-straits journalists, working for election polls… I felt that they were all things I would never be prepared or confident enough to do and I became a little sad. Then we teaching assistants began to talk. Some were simply cheery while others started bring up problems in the methods of teaching English and with the program in general and with our effectiveness. I recognized many of the issues brought up to be true, but they were things I hadn’t worried about. Sure we often don’t have clear goals or complete plans for a lesson, but we get through it alright and maybe the kids can’t do the tests very well and are still unable to build thoughts in English outside of the rigid and sometimes useless phrases from the books, but I didn’t worry to much about these things. I gave my short talk on trying to effectively show kids that they can use language to communicate using art as a tool, but while everyone else was presenting their issues I began to wonder if I was effective at all, am I really teaching them anything, will they really know any English? The night ended on Sarah who presented her presentation as her implemented solutions to all the things we couldn’t do. I left the meeting at midnight tired and worried and then I made Catherine stay up with me and talk it out.
The next day was more tour bus. Despite my late night I woke with the sun coming though my huge window and went for a swim. We ate breakfast and hopped on the tour bus that took us to the park’s activity center where we saw a long video showing the sights of the park we were supposedly visiting. As we left the auditorium Josh said, “Wow, that Kending place looks really cool, we should go.” We didn’t however. Instead we saw an exhibition about the natural sights around us before getting back on the bus. From there the tour went something like this: Get on bus, get off bus, walk 500m to vista, stand around viewing vista and chatting 10 minutes, get on bus, go to ocean, spend 10 minutes looking in tide pools not at high tide, get on tour bus… The highlight was lunch at a The Youth Activity center. The place is like a youth hostel built in a traditional style of architecture. We had time after lunch to wander around the peninsula where the center was, which was quite beautiful. In the late afternoon one of the last stops was a fish market. Many people were pretty tired of the bussing around by then, but the sun was going down and there was a beautiful light on everything. There was a fisherman sitting in the sun untangling nets. It was really the first time I was so captivated by an image that I felt no fear asking if I could take a picture. I didn’t actually understand his response, but there was a native speaker standing next to me. Apparently he wanted a copy. I eagerly offered to take his address and send him one and after more talk I didn’t understand, it came out that he was from Fujian and he didn’t really want a copy, he was just fooling around. I took quite a few pictures of which I hope at least one will turn out. Back at the hotel I played squash with Katherine, who is just as bad as I am at the game and we had a riot. We then went to the beach and took a dip in the evening water. I was a bit unnerved by the fact that I couldn’t see anything and was seriously worried when a felt something gooey and Katherine (who lived in Tel Aviv and has had this happen before) said I think I got stung by a jellyfish, we got out of the water and went to the same dinner we had the night before.
After the dinner and in lieu of the meeting we had a conference room with some drinks and snacks. There really weren’t enough of us to make much of a party, but Brooke (a Reedie from the 80s who left Reed for the very Reedie reason that there was no Chinese department) got hold of a guitar and I at least spent several hours singing along to Dylan and the sorts. Around ten I headed out to a bar/dance club where some people already were. The scene was a little strange, but there were enough of us to make it fun. A few got a little rowdy, which was funny, and strange from people who had been talking about detailed academic endeavors the night before (This shouldn’t of surprised me, after all I had friends at Reed who presented at academic conferences, just to come back the same day for Renn Fayre). I eventually got bored and went home to bed.The final day we had the morning to ourselves. I had planned to hike up a nearby peak, but was told that was impossible. The concierge offered no other hiking suggestions and I was at a loss. I decided to try to relax, something that for me seems unnatural on vacation. I went to the beach until I got to hot and then returned to my room to read on my fancy balcony. We then checked out of the hotel and it was time for Catherine and I to begin our lone journey Northward.

All the reasons for living abroad

My original plans for the extra days of travel Catherine and I were tacking on to the trip were relatively ridiculous. I had us going to 4 places in four days that were not exactly close to each other. The day before leaving to Kending I amended our plans, narrowing things down to Tainan and Alishan. First stop Tainan. This is an amazing city. We arrived in the evening and checked into a crappy little hotel noted in lonely planet. We were then out on the town. We thought we would see some of the sights by night since we didn’t have much time, but unfortunately many were closed, we did see some nice spots and without any other tourist per say. After several hours of wandering we thought it high time to find the night market and eat. Before we went we stopped at a cute little coffee shop, of which there are tons in Tainan, especially around the university. I had hot chocolate with dollops of fresh whip cream sinking into the cup. We also stumbled upon a very cool art house with installations in each room. The girl manning the house was one of the artists who did a very cool piece which involved images of election posters plastered over mirror onto which was projected a video of a white wall with the occasional cockroach. The cockroaches climbed over politicians’ faces while at the same time the mirrors caused their images to be reflected around the room. We had a lovely conversation and I gave her my e-mail. I don’t really know what for, but if I could move to Tainan and hang out with artists I’d jump at the chance. It was one of those cities that as soon as you arrive you think I could live here.
The search for the night market was a little insane. We went tot he street that LP said had a good night market only to be directed by locals away from that street back towards where we had been earlier in the evening. We both walked silently along the highway with cars speeding by on either side. When we finally heard the rinao of the market we were elated. We gorged ourselves. Hakka or Aboriginal (I’m not sure) rice cooked in bamboo. Lots of meat on a stick, veggies on a stick, dough balls, gooey rice egg thing, shao xiancao and watermelon juice. I must say Ilan is good at the traditional sweets and I wasn’t in love with Tainan’s shao xiancao, but that was about it. Maybe it was our hunger but we were happy with almost everything that went in our mouths. We did not find any of the coffin bread that Tainan is famous for, but we did pass by a real coffin production store on our way too food and I think that counts just as well.
The next day we headed over to the Anping area of town where a lot of artifacts of the Dutch remain, or at least remain in part. It was an interesting area. To start the main fort’s Dutch name is fort Zeelandia and I simply don’t think anyone should miss a sight with a name like that. We arrived too early and wandered down some old streets, running into a traditional hostel that if I can recall was used by sailors from a specific group when they came to Tainan. The fort itself had been mostly torn down and rebuilt by the Japanese leaving only two very old walls. It made me wonder though why I am infatuated with things like old walls for the fact that they are old. I suppose it’s the sense that if the walls had eyes all the things they could have seen. From the fort, we followed Tainan’s very accessible tourist instructions to a few places not in the Lonely Planet. The most interesting to me was the one called the tree house. It was an old salt warehouse built by the British after they received trading rights from the Opium war. Now, the whole building has been taken over by a few fig trees that have wrapped roots and limbs around every part of the house. The history of the house went from ownership by the Tait company, a British salt merchant to use by the Taiwan Salt company to abandonment. It was interesting to me how much of the signage related to the Opium wars. It seemed to me that there was a subtle underlying message about relation to the West. Although the British forced intrusion into Tainan (treaty port) had created the building the earth and nature of Taiwan had taken it back, showing Taiwan to be an independent place that has come into its own. Maybe it’s a little far reaching, but I saw and enjoyed the parallels. Before the afternoon arrived we headed over to the Confucius temple. Catherine wrote down the slogans to translate and we both left our academic wishes, mine being that I should find out what my academic wish is. Somewhere on this journey we discovered that each tourist site has a stamp and we reveled in stamping parts of Catherine’s lonely planet book that she didn’t care about.
We left Tainan a little late and went to Chaiyi. We had missed the train up the mountain, but I figured there would be a bus. There was, but it went all the way up to the top and we had a homestay halfway up the mountain at Fengqihu. Our only choice was to pay out twice as much money and take a cab. The cab felt like a death ride. I am sorry dad for ever criticizing how you drive up mountains because it has never been like this guy. He barreled around turns and occasionally honked before speeding around blind corners. I soon felt as though I was going to vomit and Catherine began to fear for her life. I resisted my stomachs churning primarily out of fear, what do you say once you have vomited in someone’s cab. We made it and had a lovely evening at a Bed and Breakfast of a family who had been on the mountain since he Qianlong era. We also began to discover how popular the Falun gong is on the mountain. Catherine asked about doctors and the woman said they only had Catholic missionaries you could go to, but that they don’t get sick because they don’t do bad things and they practice Falun dafa. Catherine, who is always sick found this at least amusing and came to the conclusion that has she been born on Alishan she would be dead.
The next day it was up to Alishan park. We didn’t have a reservation and proof arrived that Catherine and I make great travel partners. I got us to the mountain and had a list of hotels and she had no problem calling a bunch of them until we found one with open rooms. We spent the afternoon sitting at a shop that sells tea, asking questions and drinking various types. In the end, we bought some of the famous Alishan tea as one must in these situations. Though the night was young, we went to bed early so we could go see the sunrise.
Everyone told us that the sun would rise at 7, which, since I get up everyday at 6:30 and it’s light, seemed a little late. We also wanted to hike and you can never be sure how accurate people’s judge of distance is. So we got up at 4, left at 4:30 and hiked for a 1-½ hours. As we started the trail a black dog ran up to greet us, wagging his tail. He climbed the whole mountain with us stopping where the path forked to make sure we would go the right way. When we arrived it was dark and rainy and the thick fog seemed to indicate that we would see nothing. We waited and soon the light began to peak through the clouds. The fog dispersed and the famous sea of clouds came into view. Still there was no one else. The morning light progressed, shifting the colors of the sky and hills. At one point fog rolled back in, obscuring everything, but it rolled away as I glanced down at my camera. The sight was truly sublime and although I am pretty sure trying to record the sublime with a camera is futile, I tried anyway. We stood and stared at the changing landscape for nearly an hour before anyone else arrived. Before the sun peaked over the mountain, but after I thought most of the cool stuff had past a few other tourists showed up. Still I was surprised. I had been told that the mountain would be packed and that I should not prepare for a peaceful morning. It was not until the sun had come up allowing us to bask a few minutes in its light and we walked down from the upper viewing platform that I understood. There were scores of people who had arrived on the train and on tour buses, but none of them had bothered to walk to the upper level where they could get the best view. Check, I guess.
The rest of the morning we spent hiking around. We saw the few old cypress trees that the Japanese had not cut down, a phallic monument built by the Japanese to appease the trees spirits. That awed me. To be aware and thinking about the trees spirits, but then to think that a big stone penis will make it all okay. We also saw a Buddhist temple built by the Japanese. I liked the simplicity of it that the Chinese temples lack and of course, the wood floors. I even thought I would like to be a Buddhist nun if I could do so there. Then again, I would have to lie to my master, saying something like, “I don’t think I can give up my earthly love for the city” to get an assignment like that. Outside of the Daoist temple was a whole exhibit of Falun gong stuff. The only thing I can tell about the religion is that their slogan is “Falun dafa is good” and that they are upset that the PRC is torturing their practitioners. I should look into this more.
We left the mountain at 1:18 and took the 3 ½ hour train ride down. I tried not to sleep so I could see the beautiful views along the tracks. After that it was another 3 hours back to Taipei. I’m pooped and ready to go to China.

Eating s'mores Ariel

Eating s'mores Ariel
Originally uploaded by ari mail.

There are new photos on my flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/arielsshotstoshare There aren't many, but go look. This is me eating S'mores made thanks to Colin's Mom's care package. There are also Chirstmas photos on Colin's blog (no point putting them up twice and lots of officialish photos of me talking here: fulbright.saec.edu.tw/

Wooing five year olds

Mainland China is reaching a critical point with its attempts at population control. Apparently if the policy is not changed soon there will be a crisis due to the fact that the number of aging people far outweighs the number of working people. Of course this is due to a government that wants just a little too much control over it's population and although one could argue that more foresight could have prevented the problem, governments rarely do well with foresight, especially ones that need to be large and powerful enough to read and censor everyone's e-mail.

Interestingly, Taiwan is having a similar population problem, but there was no particular governmental directive that lead to it, there is just a low birth rate. Although many would say that ultimately less people is a good thing, it causes some immediate problems. Although this smaller generation is now very young we can already see some of the effects. This leads to my story.

Every Wednesday we have some sort of teacher's workshop. When it deals with curriculum I sometimes don't have to go, but it is often fun and often involves food. 4 times a semester I am supposed to teach a teachers' class. I was supposed to do that yesterday, but we had something else to get done, we had to paint cups. I thought we might get to keep our cups and I began planning an interesting abstract and minimalist design. Then I found out why Roxanna described the activity as something "We had to do." Apparently we were making the cups for kindergarteners in the area to woo them towards our school. Our school, along with many other smaller schools is having enrollment issues. You can see it in the class numbers. The 6th grade has 25 students per class while the 1st grade has merely 18. If there are less then 15 students per class the classes are combined and the youngest teacher at the school has to go look for new work. Hence, cups. I wanted to ask if the cups would actually work, but it didn't seem like a good subject to broach.

The problem is two fold. One is the decreasing population. I was told that it used to be very profitable to open an after-school school or a kindergarten, but now that the number of potential students has dropped only the largest and most well known stay afloat. Which leads to the second issue, the philosophy that bigger is always better. I find this funny in terms of schools because in the states it is almost exactly the opposite. You want your kid in a smaller school so that he/she won't get lost in the crowd, will get personal attention and likely have smaller class sizes. Here people look to the larger schools and see more resources and nothing else. Knowing people who work at these larger schools they definitely don't seem much better, but then there is the Jr. High. The junior high our school feeds into is not that great, and junior high is where it one lays the foundations for the rest of one's life, apparently. Bad Jr. High means students will do bad in High school, which means they will go to a college that is not so great and they will never have a good job. Harsh thing to put on a 12 year old, or for that matter a five year old.

So back to the cups. Despite the somewhat sad reason for making them I enjoyed myself. I made my first cup with sailboats and my second with Teddy Bears. Then I thought I should actually be appealing to the parents not the child and I made a nice landscape. Maybe I will see them before they are gifted away.

Taking care of myself

I did two amazing things this weekend that I can't believe I haven't become addicted to before this moment. The first was on Friday after the Fulbright biweekly meeting. Ruby thought that I could really use a hairwash, which is to say a shoulder and head massage with shampoo. I sat in a warm beauty parlor not far from my house and had someone rub my head and shoulders for the low price of 99NT. That translates to about $3US. I left with silky, though very flat hair, and relaxed head and shoulders.
The other self-indulgence was even better. I took a 20 minute train to Jiaoxi Sunday evening, walked ten minutes to a spa. The whole city is filled with hot springs and in the cold winter air you can see steam rising up from the oddest places. They even have a little public, covered hot springs pool out infront of the train station and workers will dip their feet in a smoke a cigarette when they get off work.
The spa was set against the mountains and was basically a set of corregated metal leantos with man made pools underneath. One could choose to get a private family pool though on Sunday night you had to wait in lin for that, or you could choose the naked or bathingsuit pools where women and men were divided. Catherine and I inadvertantly choose the naked pool, though in truth it's how I prefer hotsprings. We moved from hot to scalding to way too scalding and relaxed for some time in the presence of maybe only 7 other people. By the time I got out I had that wonderful jelly body feel and a quickened heartbeat. The whole thing cost only 50 NT plus an neccessary 10NT shower cap so a total of less than $2US dollars. Afterwards we found a cute Japanese restaurant which was significantly more expensive than the spa and I had some amazing salmon sushi.
It occured to me last night that these things can really make my life infinately more comfortable and relaxed for almost no money at all. I wonder why I have not yet incorporated them into my weekly routine.

One way or Another

I have a cold or something of that sort that I've had for almost a week now. It got worse yesterday so that I had to go home early. Since it seems like most Taiwanese people go to the doctor at the slightest hint of anything I thought maybe that was a good idea. Earlier in the week I went to the pharmacy to get some generic cold medicine. That was surprisingly difficult as nothing looked like western brands even though western brands pervade everything else here. I ended up with some scary looking yellow and black pills that I think were essentially tylanol and did very little for me. When Roxanna asked if I wanted to go to a Chinese or Western doctor she describe the Western one as the one that gives you pills because that seems to be the doctor's primary job here. You go, state your symptoms and they give you a pill for each one. I think if you went in with a runny nose they would still give you medicine. My housemates experience with this had lead to side effect such shaking and extreeeeeme drowsiness.

Still, at first I wanted to go to a Western doctor. This however, was primarily because I was paranoid that maybe I had cold like symptoms for something like tonsolitis and I might need them taken out, or who knows, maybe bird flu. The next day, when we actually went and I felt a little better my paranoia had subsided and I decided that it might just be better to have the "lighter" (Roxanna's description) Chinese medicine. So I went to a Chinese doctor. He asked my symptoms and checked my pulse and then gave me a bottle full of medicine to be mixed with water four times a day.

I don't know what's in it, but I wouldn't know what the western doctor was giving to me either so I figure one unknown is like another, no?

Academic honesty for 6th graders?

I miss Reed. I miss everything: academic talk, staying in the library until late, planning on staying in the library til late and going to the Hedgehouse instead, all the people. I miss these things all the time, but today I really miss the honor policy and in particular how it is related to academics. I like the idea that teachers can trust students and students can trust their teachers and we can all go about our bussiness of learning. Now, could we make that work in a Taiwanese elementary school. Maybe, but I don't think I'm quite the person to try it.
What brings me to this. Well, we give a lot of tests. More than I think we should or need to, but I'm not really in charge of those types of decisions so I just grade and imput into the computer and not irregularities. I have found cheating and I have a message to elementary students out there. If you plan on cheating on a test, be damn sure the person you are cheating off of is going to get 100 percent otherwise it's pretty easy to tell. I mean, what is the statistical probability that two students, who sit next to each other will both spell bathroom 'bethrum" and forget the 't' in bought. When I was left to my own devices on this matter I asked the two girls in question why their tests looked exactly the same. They said they didn't know, so I docked their points. Another time I brought the issue to my co-teacher. She took the girls out and asked if they had cheated, they said no and she let them go. The question is, is this showing trust in your students or teaching them that if they cheat than they had best cover it up with a lie and get comfortable with that as well. These two incedents, however did not make me particurally long for an academic honesty policy, I just didn't know exactly what to do. Here's what did it.
We gave the 6th grade a vocabulary test today. Many of them often do very poorly on this. I guess it's not that bad, better than a bell curve, but I was unaware as an elementary school student that there were grades lower than a B except on "Saved by the Bell." Anyway, the who class did really well this time, a big plus for my emotional wellbeing (enhanced by having my tutoring canceled) and one boy whose average score is 50 got 100. When I passed back the tests the boys around the new star were jovial, but I couldn't tell if it was in an amazed way or a "damn, you got away with it way." I can't help but be suspicious or at least to wonder what happened with this kid. I don't want to be suspicious and here is where I would like my academic honesty policy, so that I don't have to be suspicious. I never thought how awsome that must be for Reed profs. I suppose I could also conform to the culture I am in, figure cheating is not that big a deal and be happy that the kid did so well.