About people and why I love them

Now that almost everyone has left, I think it would be a good time to reflect upon the Fulbrihgters I spent a year with. Though we spanned personalities and interests, they are all amazing and talented human beings.

Priya- Priya has the energy of 20 of me and she uses all of it productively. I was amazed this year at the confidence with which Priya made connections with local people in Taiwan and made herself a part of the community. When I could get her to slow down enough to chat or when I sped up to meet her by going running with her she always had interesting things to say and I left considering her point of view.

Mary- Mary has nearly as much energy as Priya. I would describe her as bubbly, but not in an airy way. She was always happy to be doing the things she was doing and does her best to make you happy about them too. It's a shame that a 30 minute scooter ride deters me from solidifying friendships.

Julianna- I like Julianna because she surprises me. She came from the most "American" background of all of us- daughter of a preacher and part of a family of 7 in the Midwest and education major at Northeastern. Yet, she said the darnest things and often shed and interesting light on situations. She too got a million things done.

Melanie- Melanie and I probably will never be close, we are headed in different directions, yet I always found her even and fair in her opinions and enjoyed her look at life, though it was remarkably different from mine. She is thoughtful and honest, most of all about herself, which I think is a rare trait.

Josh- As the only male, 10 years older than us, Josh was in an unusual position, but then again he is an unusual guy. Josh became friends with my apartment, but you were never sure what that meant, would he ask for fruit and leave, or bring everyone flowers. He was snotty and made lots of sarcastic jokes, but he took the ones thrown back at him in stride. He was bound to say something different from everyone else and remembers a time before the internet.

Katherine- our paths will cross again, I'm sure of it. Katherine was incredibly sweet, but drove after those things she wanted. She is one of those people you could never be mad at. I didn't spend enough time with her, I wish we could have walked though the hills of Datong together. Katherine always got me talking about the art world and somehow scaring and reassuring both myself and her. Katherine, stop worrying, it will all work out.

Fiona- Fiona is the most selfless person I know. She choose to go to nanao this year because she felt that they needed her. She didn't consider her personal desires and needs at all. She has a strong sense of social responsiblitiy and reminded the rest of us of it. Fiona worked on school projects all the time. I was constantly telling her to work when she go paid, but she drove on. She has been a good couch fixture. I hope you don't have TB Fiona.

Katie- Katie wasn't the easiest person to live with, but she wasn't having the easiest time in Taiwan. I appreciate the way she approached her problems, with a reflective mind that was willing to place blame on herself if she should find is and was not easily angered by the world's unfairness. I was amazed at the way Katie decided that if one part of life wasn't going well, she should pursue and build another part and thus developed more close friendships than I could have imagined. I have grown used to the soft San Francisco exterior coating the hard New Yorker wearing the hot pants. When we had our last dinner together, just Katie, Colin and I couldn't help but think how glad I will be to find Katie my friend back in the states.

Annalily- In many ways Annalily and I are very similar. When she says something out of the blue and everyone gave her that look of huh? I thought we must have had our brains built by the same unit. Annalily is very soft and loving. She is very sensitive to the world and engages it with delicacy. As I grew closer to Annalily I saw how she often wanted things her way, but one could almost never bare to not give them to here. She stays by her beliefs fervently.

Catherine- I am so glad that Catherine and I have come back around to each other. She is probably the person I enjoy talking to the most. She is willing to laugh out loud at the crudest or meanest jokes, but stands by her friends. Catherine was never willing to do what she didn't want to do and would tell you point blank why she didn't like something, even if it was the food you were eating. Catherine and I were able to sit hours listening to each other. Catherine accepts the things she has to deal with with a laugh and drives forward, but playfully. She has the mind of a linguist and I think together we would make the perfect academic.

Taiwanese BBQ

So summer has come and what I wanted was a BBQ. I asked around as to whether I could have one in a park, but nothing came of it for more than a month. Then Roxanna, my co-teacher was relating with a giggle that I wanted to have a BBQ in the park across the street. Telling the story she decided we should all have a BBQ at our co-worker's mother's house. All my favorite people were there.

Sonia's mom's house is also a bag factory. I never considered where bags were made in Taiwan, but apparently it's places like this. I made hamburgers, which I think was a bit strange as hamburgers are generally a breakfast food here, and they only went over so so, but ummmm, it made me so happy. They could have been bigger though.

In addition to the hamburgers there was about 100 pounds of meat, including rice stuffed sausages- Yummy. Roxanna and Grace's children were adorable.
I especially love this shot of Andrew.
It was a great way to end out the year with all of them, though I suppose it's not really the end as I'm having dinner with them on Wednesday. Tomorrow Katie and Annalily leave. The home is broken down and I'm just going to sit tight for a few days waiting for the above mentioned dinner and let the place sink in.

Last Day of School

Today was my very last day teaching and time to say goodbye. This week has been weird because I've felt that I should be saying goodbye all week and in fact I've already said goodbye to so many people and who knows when I will have the chance to see them again or if I will have the chance to see them again, or if I have the chance I will feel to shy and awkward and distant.

I made cookies for my co-workers, took my closest teacher friends out to tea and had my kids write letters to themselve that I will mail to them in a year. Today I just organized the classroom for the first two hours and gathered all my things. At the 10:15 break a binch of kids came and gave me presents and cards and then the teachers pulled out the keyboard and everyone sang the song that everyone knows in Chinese but the name escapes me, something with wo and ai. I cried again and all the kids lined up for hugs.

In the afternoon, we had a farewell tea for all the Fulbrighters and co-teachers. That was strangely anti-climatic, but if we had not met people would have left without me having the chance to say goodbye at all. I guess that would be okay too though, it's not as if goodbyes really do anything for me. Now I'm sitting waiting to go to dinner with a Fulbright friend Katherine, that I probably won't see again for and undetermined amount of time. I feel sort of sad, and just a little strange. I'm looking forward to moving in with Coling, but it's not the same looking forward that everyone elese is doing talking about eating sundried tomatos and doing those other things you can do in the states but not here (I really can barely remember.) It'll still be a long time before Colin and I are back to the home country, but I'm okay with that, even if it's strange at the moment.
On another note, I went to turtle island yesterday. It is the symbol of Yilan and it looks a lot like a turtle and I've seen it every clear morning from my bedroom. That was nice closure I guess, setting foot on the distant island I've seen all year. We saw some dolphins, I got burnt, the island was lush and militaryesque. Afterwards Katie Catherine and I went surfing. I would have backed out because of the feeling of surf culture when we arrived, but Katie drove forward. Once we got in the water I had a great time, overcame my SoCal insecurities about surfing and had fun. Katie, whose last surfing experience was tramatic, ended up backing out at the last minute, but she helped me do it- Thank You, Katie! I still can't say I really like having a headache from seawater up my nose, but at least I know that.

Anyway so much for closure, now it's packing time. That is, somewhere between Karaoke with the housemates on Saturday, tea drinking tonight, and BBQ with teachers on Sunday.

About home

The past two weeks we have had 2 American born Taiwanese in our 5th grade classes. Their mother graduated from our school and since they are here on summer vacation she thought they could get a taste of Taiwanese school and I guess maybe make some friends. They obviously speak fluent English, so my class should be a bit of a joke, but the boy even took the final exam today and helped me grade. He also wrote the extra credit, four sentences using sound, taste, smell and feel.
Here's what he wrote:
sound
In America, the trash trucks don't make sounds to tell you that it has come.
taste
Taiwan's food always tastes better than American food.
smell
America smells better than Taiwan though.
feel
Taiwan feels more like home.

In my last week teaching here, this toughed me deeply. Maybe it's because all the other sentences were "the CD sounds bad," but I think there is a lot of sentiment here. He is making keen observations and that he comes to the conclusion that Taiwan feels more like home is dramatic. I have a hard time imagining what it must be like to have such a connection to a country other than to one you grew up in. Obviously he is also Taiwanese and therein lies the difference. However it is that difference that strikes me, one I know I'll never be privy to, but that I have seen not only in this student, but in fellow Fulbrighters who have family here. I can't imagine having a connection of that sort to Russia or Germany or anywhere my family came from quite some time ago. But if I were to raise children abroad, how would they feel about America? Would they have the duality I've seen? And is a duality like that what you really want to have, can it only be had comfortably in America, where you can be both outside the cultural status quo (an immigrant's child perhaps) and still be culturally American.

Are we doing this right?

Tomorrow we are getting our crazy Taiwanese wedding photos. I felt like I should do something to get ready, so we went and saw a baseball game. I saw my student who meows and he barked hello and Colin talked to some kids who asked first "Where are you from?" and then "What team are you routing for?" When we got back to the house I still couldn't think of anything to do to prepare for the photos so I started looking up gift registry stuff online. I thought that since we weren't inviting very many people we didn't need to do that, but multiple people have told me I'm wrong. I looked and got really overwhelmed, there are tons of things I didn't know I needed. Then Colin told me dinner was ready.

As we shared our dinner of salad out of a big tupperware container Annalily's mom sent cookies in we had this conversation:

Ariel: This owning stuff thing really makes life more complicated. I mean, candlesticks!
Colin: Shit, now we have to buy candles.
Ariel: Maybe we should only register for things we really need.
Colin: Yeah, like jobs.

Ah my baby cracks me up.

And for everyone who has commented on the potential of me buying a pink wedding dress because of the photo on flickr, I'm not buying a pink wedding dress. That was the first of many extremely puffy dresses that I tried on, that the photo studio owns, 5 of which I will be wearing in photos tomorrow, but still not owning.

Second to last week of school

Well, if I thought I would have a really solid conclusion to this whole Fulbright experience thing, I think my hopes have been dashed. Things are so busy at school that I'm running around like a happy chicken with my head cut off, but then again so is everyone else. Today, my lessons were interrupted because I was to go around the school and take pictures with one of the deans. We will both biye this year, "graduate" that is, from Zhongxing guoxiao and the school is making us a picture memory album. It's really quite sweet and I think it will be a lovely thing to have to ship home. There was also a BBQ with the 6th grade at lunch, which I left early to teach the 5th grade their English farewll speech to the 6th grade, and of course classes, tying up grades and writing the 5th grade exam. Whooo! I did just get back from a lovely shopping outing that resulted in no extra things to send home.

Miri visited at the begining of the week and I tried to play the wonderful hostess while she very adeptly played the wonderful guest. All of my housemates really enjoyed her presence and I loved catching up. We had Taiwanese hotpot and I took her out to my favorite spot, Xinliao waterfall to breath in some ions.

Now I'm trying to make myself extra beautiful for the wedding photos we will have this Sunday and finish up the 700 other things I have planned before I move up to Taipei.

Despit all this business I've had more time to play with my camera, so go check out more photos at flicker. I think clicking on the picture will take you there.

Voting

Voting is a big deal in Taiwan. They get a turnout of about 80% for even the minor votes for community members. What did Taiwan that we could emulate in the US, you say? Short of having a military dictatorship for several decades I don't think much. The Taiwanese haven't always been able to vote and they do so now with riotous vigor.

You may have heard a lot about recalling Chen Shuibian, but what is more present in my life are local elections. This past Saturday was elections for community representatives. Now we're not talking towns, this is smaller, neighborhoods we might say. Still, each area had at least 3 candidates, large herds of campagaigners wandered the streets giving out flyers, and small truck drove around broadcasting tinny, WWII era sounding broadcasts (as if noisy garbage wasn't enough).

Monday morning after the election I drove to school with the principal. She stopped at a house and she and another teacher got out to talk to the occupants. The remaining teacher asked me if I knew why we had stopped. She told me, but at first I understood that this was a person who had not voted. I thought "Jezz, this is worse than Reed." Turns out though that it was a actually a person who had run and lost. He had a simple house with a lovely garden, old tires hanging from windows, some with plants and some without, a tractor in view and flags still remaining from the campaign. I thought it represented a lot of community involvement and civic duty for our principal to pay this courtesy call.

Come see my photos

So you should all go take a look at my photos on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/arielsshotstoshare/
Here's a teaser to intice you

They're all taken on my new camera.

In other news:
Event hough I only have about 2 weeks left of this job, I have not entirely checked out, infact I'm starting to think I'm a pretty good teacher. I have gotten to doing things the easier way, which does not me the bad way. I've just learned what shortcuts allow more time for other things and still get the job done. Today my build a human house game went over really well, I was requested for an encore of hangman (if I'd known they liked it so much I would have started playing earlier) and when my co-teacher didn't come back to class to start the 5th grade, I very successfully did it on my own. Way to go me.

Now I will go home and relax because I suppose I deserve it.

But one more thing- They've set up the room next to mine, which is usually the security room as a dentist's office. Kids keep leaving class to have their cavities taken care of. Part of me thinks this a wonderful thing and that basic medical care should be done at all schools. The other part of me thinks that the set up can't be all that great since the whole thing seems to come and go. It lends a 3rd world, health clinic feeling to Taiwan that I can't say I see in other sectors. Hummm, maybe I should get my teeth checked. On second thought, maybe not.

I did it!

So I did it, I bought the Nikon D50. I am so very happy and I'm sure Colin, who has listened paciently to me debate the merits of different cameras and lenses, is happy to. I'm a very good consumer, perhaps too good. I have yet to regret a well researched purchase though. In fact the only thing I think I'll be sad about on this on is that it puts my little digital Pentax out of a job. I used to use it when I wanted fast and quick but that is taken care of by the D50. I get wrapped up in the talk about the various products and read and read and read and well it takes a while even after I'm 99% sure that I really know what I want. Then there is the question of where to buy.

In this case I weighed the cost difference to the painintheassness of getting a camera sent from the US only to discover that companies can't ship Nikons from the US or at least what I want. So then the question was Luodong from the guy I know or Taipei where things are cheaper. Given that once I know I want something and I'm ready I want it immediatly and given that I don't natively speak this language and wanted to feel comfortable with my purchase, I went with the local guy. I think it was good too. Although he couldn't tell the warranties apart (Taiwan vs. World) because they had no Chinese, he threw in a bag and a really cool weight reducing strap and cleaning kit. Plus he's going to the trouble to order me an English Manual which despite my year in Taiwan, I despratly need.

I suppose I'm only writing because the battery needs to charge and I can't play with it. Ah, I guess I'll go to bed and play tomorrow.

Yeah!

Happiness

How about a nice reflective post. I haven't done one of those in a while and as things are wrapping up here it seems appropriate.

I spent the weekend with Colin and my family. I was exceptionally happy on Sunday. We sat in the spa at the hotel in Jinshan, ate a leisurly breakfast, relaxed and watched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and then returned to Taipei and had a fabulous Thai lunch. After parting with my parents Coin and I tried unsuccessfully but interestingly to return a power cord I'd bought for my computer (we ended up in a strangly arty but smokey apartment with hymalayan cats) and then we went to buy get me a train ticket. I somehow lost the train ticket on the way to the train and instead of letting me break down in tears for losing something yet again, Colin suggested I get a later train and we go have coffee. So nothing big and fabulous, but I was incredibly happy.

Which makes me wonder, Have I not been happy all this time? I find myself thinking about the year and coming up with things I really like, my co-workers, the funny things my kids say, how many people say hi to me in the morning while I'm running, the beautiful scenary around my home, Taiwan's trains and mantou. Despite these things I seem to complain more than I appriciate. I can't stand the number of beeps in this country, I'm tired of miscommunication and people assuming I don't know basic things because I'm a foreigner, massive amounts of oil in my lunch, I could go on but I won't. When my housemates and I made up top ten lists they kept coming out negative. Maybe that's because it's funnier or more interesting or maybe it's because I am somehow in a hole that I fell into and didn't recognize I was in. I must have come off to my Dad as not liking my time here because he came to the conclusion that I was never planning on living in Asia again and he seemed to think I was really glad for things to be over. Not so, I don't think.

Maybe it's because my powers of retrospection fail to acknowledge anything but my most happy moments and I am thus stuck in a perpetual old Reed mindstate where everything was better before. Or maybe I simply don't want to accept that life is happy much less than all of the time.

But really, I think I am not part of a community in the way that makes me really happy. Then again, it took me almost 3 years to feel that way at Reed. Hum, maybe I should stay put, stop uprooting these roots of mine that don't seem to take very quickly.

I also think I am very adaptable. That can be thought of as a positive aspect and infact I fear I might sound like I'm bragging, but something I think is lost in being particurally adaptable. To adapt, you must accept things, sometimes simply at face value. I've learned to to say "Hum, well that's strange, carry on" or "I don't understand what that's all about. Oh well." It's a survival technique to only focus on the most important things or the most interesting, but I've lost a lot of wonderment and enchantment because of it. Probably because I saw too many crazy things at Reed.

So that where all of my thoughts have been. Maybe I'm anticipating having too much time this summer and I've gotten a head start on thinking too much.