Scootin'

I finally decided to buy a scooter, as I now have enough money and some confidence that I will not wreck my scooter in the first week of driving it. I'm still kind of ambivalent about it, since one of the joys of leaving the US was not having to take care of things with motors.

Buying a scooter definitely falls under the category of Things That Are Harder Than You'd Think. I thought that if I learned to say "I want to buy a used scooter for $10,000" in Chinese, and I'd say it at one of these used-scooter shops where there are three men just sitting on stools, staring into space and smoking, that would be enough, but it's not. A couple of shops have told me they don't speak English (grr! I am not speaking English!); a couple have told me that they don't sell used scooters, and a couple have asked if I have a Taiwanese friend I can call. I guess the most frustrating part is that it's not like I'm interrupting them from fixing a scooter, or even watching TV. They are sitting on stools. That is all they're doing. You would think they had time to spend ten minutes trying to communicate with me. So I will need to get someone to help me. Which isn't a big deal, just finding time. And also Taiwanese people always have some specific opinions about how much I should spend, or what size scooter I should get, which don't always match my opinions. But I should get one soon.

On the entertaining side of things, I've started to study for my scooter license. There is a written test, which is a combination of multiple-choice and true-and-false questions. The manual you study from is just a collection of 300 possible questions. It is mercifully in English, but the English is sometimes creatively translated. Many of the things are common sense but others exemplify the difference between the Western way of doing things and the Taiwanese way. For example:

A true/ false question: "To practice bad driving morals will bring dishonor to the motorcycle operator and his family." (That's true, by the way.)

Here's a multiple choice question: "You're driving when oil causes you to fall. You: a) count it as bad luck and drive on; b) report to the nearest police station; c) put some branches on the road to warn other drivers." Yes, in the US putting branches on the road would never be the correct answer, but here- it's all part of good driving morals!

The few things I have to work on are the impenetrable system of arm-gestures the traffic-directing policemen use (I could figure them out it they just had a list of them with what they mean, but it's all presented in the true/ false section, so you're like "oh, so that doesn't mean traffic from the right can proceed with caution...") and the differences between motorcycles, huge motorcycles, and huge heavy motorcycles ( most of which are what we would call scooters, not motorcycles). I think I'll be OK! We'll see!

Making a difference?

One of the cool things about teaching after many months is that I can really see a change in the kids I teach- some in general (they can say more stuff now) but most of the students respond well if you make an effort with them, whether it's changing their seat so they're sitting next to someone who can help them or giving them some extra personal attention. Which is easier said than done since I'm teaching about 200 kids. But sometimes I can.

I have this one class that I just love- they've been learning English for about 3 1/2 years, and the class is set up so that for the first hour you're just kind of shooting the breeze- they learn new words and read passages and talk about them. And they just love to talk, and always come up with funny things to say. And when we play a game or have to do hard stuff in the second hour, they are always so cooperative and try hard. I have another class at about the same level who are the opposite- they never talk, they never have fun, they just sit there and sulk.

Every class has a few kids who are really smart and work hard, and some who are either smart or hard-working, and then a bunch of other kids of varying ability. At the end of each level we give prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for best grades, and then you can give awards for 4th and 5th place, or give awards for best effort or most improvement or whatever. Now that I know the kids better I like to do that because otherwise the same kids always get prizes, and it's kind of demotivating.

In this fun class there's a girl named Lisa who isn't too smart and just really seemed to have given up at the beginning of the level. She wouldn't do half her homework and a lot of times she would just sit there and not do the exercises and be like "I don't know how." It was really frustrating and I was kind of mean to her, but I tried to explain stuff to her and once I stayed after class to help her a little. Her grades improved a little but I felt like she really made an effort in the second half of the level- she paid attention in class and always tried and just seemed to have fun. So the CT and I decided to give her an award for Most Improved. You could tell all the kids (including Lisa) were just shocked that she would get an award. After class she was like, "Thank you, teacher," and she had tears in her eyes! I was so happy!

Because of vacation and stuff I didn't teach them for the first few lessons in their new level- the first one I did was a quiz. So I reviewed and told them that the vocabulary section was worth a lot, and if they didn't know a word they should write something down and take a guess and I'd give them some credit. So Lisa leaves all but one vocab word blank and just completely bombs the rest of the test- she got a 24 (out of 100) and I was being as generous as I could with the grading. And on the make-up quiz she got like a 50. Grrr!!!

Random Acts of Kindness

The other day I was hurrying to get to the bus station in Fong Yuan and trying to get into a tight space on the scooter, and I wound up scraping my leg and opening up this almost-healed scab on my knee and it just bled and bled. So I went to 7-11 to buy some band-aids and new pantyhose (since my current ones were all bloody)- I wound up buying these knee-highs that sisters always wear with skirts, just sheer panty-hose-colored knee highs, but when it Taiwan do as the Taiwanese, eh?). I went in the bathroom at the bus station to take off my pantyhose and figured I would go outside to put on the band-aid, since the bathroom is all cramped and filthy.
When I came out, this teenager quickly handed something to me, and sometimes people give out promotional packs of Kleenex for free so I thought it was that, but here it was a pack of kleenex and 2 band-aids! She went away before I could even say thank-you.

Just a quick note- no pictures or vacation stories. It's a busy couple of weeks with Kindy & everything else. The kindy is going fairly well. I'm getting to know the kids better and whatnot. It's just hard to be fun for so many hours a day....

I've been using the scooter of the girl I'm subbing Kindy for. I'm OK at it. I can see why people always wreck them when they first start driving- I keep having to remind myself to go slowly. It's a big one (125 cc) and the hardest thing is parking it- the scooters don't have reverse so you have to kind of lift it around. She is much smaller than me and has no problem so maybe you will get used to it. I will probably buy a smaller one though. I will buy one soon- and, uh, get my license soon. :[

It's pretty much been raining for the past week. It's miserable to drive in, of course, and makes everyone grumpy. It also makes everything damp & moldy. Ugh. All the Chinese people are like, yes, it's the rainy season, I think it will rain all month. But no one mentioned the rainy season was coming, you know? Also the weather forecast always call for like a 20% chance of showers and then it rains all day. So weird.

It's been a long time since I've posted, I know! Garrett & Mandie (my brother and his wife) just left yesterday so I was basically on vacation for the last ten days. I have a lot of catching up to do on this! Lots of photos and stories to post.

The next couple days will be pretty busy- I have to spend many hours on my curriculum-writing thing today, and tomorrow I'm subbing Kindy and having a meeting and tutoring... but then we have a national holiday (Tomb Sweeping Day) so 3 days off from Hess. I have some plans but I will make some time to write too!