The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival

When we woke up this morning our clothing smelled like charcoal briquettes. Little surprise, for the past four days have been Taiwanese revelry at it's best - the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

Americans have Thanksgiving Day, Germans have Oktoberfest, and the Chinese have the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. It is a celebration of the successful autumn harvest dating to 10th century BC. The moon symbolizes completeness, and people travel far and wide to join their extended families on the full moon of the eight lunar month. The nation goes mad for moon cakes, small, dense pastries filled with nuts, sweet pastes, and egg yolks. To this day, the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, along with Chinese New Year.

It is also the prime occasion for what seems to be the most cherished of all Taiwanese customs - the barbecue. Every third door stoop in the nation has a group of people gathered about tiny hibachi grills cooking skewered chicken, pork, sausages, hot dogs, fish balls, corn-on-the-cob, shrimp, and whatever else fits on a 8-inch long toothpick. That's why our clothes, and everything else in this nation, smells like charcoal.

There is no way to overstate the Taiwanese love of barbecueing. My informal poll today found that 24 out of of 25 of my students had barbecued within the past 72 hours. Self-appointed culture critics complain that barbecues threaten to over-shadow Moon Festival traditions. Government officials request restraint for environmental reasons - last year carbon monoxide levels in Northern Taiwan spiked by 45% on the evening of the Moon Festival.

Needless to say, it is impossible to cook food on an open fire without consuming beer. During the holiday, Devin and I were repeated greeted by large groups of middle-aged men who huddled around a 12-inch by 18-inch grill while throwing back Taiwan Beer (probably the foulest brew in creation). They called out a few words in English, laughed at each other for speaking English, gestured for us to join them. The universe of strange encounters reached its highpoint at 1 pm on the Moon Festival, when a guy in his 20s leapt off his scooter as we exited a 7-11.

Crazy Man: Hello! Are you Americans? My English name is Anthony Chang! What are your names?

Adam: My name is Adam.

Devin: I'm Dev...

Anthony Chang: [pointing frantically at Devin] Is your girlfriend? Very beautiful!

Adam: Yes I kn...

Anthony Chang: Do you support Taiwan?

Adam: You mean for the United Nations? Yes, I...

Anthony Chang: China not bad! Taiwan very good!

Adam: China not bad?

Anthony Chang: China not bad! Taiwan very good! Goodbye! Anthony Chang! Support Taiwan!

And then he was gone. And now the Moon Festival is gone, too. My advice to anyone who wants a whole new kind of party: come to Taiwan during the Mid-Autumn Mood Festival. Bring something for the barbecue.

The National Palace Museum

Today, Devin and I visited the world's greatest exhibition of Chinese art and culture. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has 650,000 individual items; to view them all would take the average person three years. The Museum is widely considered to be one of the world's finest, standing alongside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Louvre.

We loved it. The scope of art and artifacts, dating back to 6,000 BC, is stunning. Classic examples of Chinese culture and history are expertly displayed. Our favorites were an intricate river boat carved out of a one-inch-long olive pit with a 300-character poem inscribed on the bottom, and seven concentric balls carved out of a single piece of ivory (see the short video below for a better explanation). We plan to return to the museum in early October when our friend Toby visits from New York.



Like most things in this strange nation, the backstory of the National Palace Museum is just as interesting as its surface. Chinese emperors gradually assembled the collection in Beijing's Forbidden City starting in the10th century AD. After the imperial system collasped, China's Nationalist government held the first public art exhibition in 1925. But World War II forced the government to pack the collection into almost 20,000 crates and squirrel it away in the Chinese hinterlands. After the war, conflict exploded between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and Chairman Mao's Communists. In 1949 the Nationalists retreated from mainland China to the tiny island of Taiwan. They brought nearly all of the art with them, leaving only 700 crates to the Communists.

Needless to say, China remains incensed over Taiwan's possession of 8,000 years of Chinese history. However, many people contend that Taiwan served humanity by preserving the collection from 1966 to 1976 when China's Red Guards would have destroyed the art for embodying Chairman Mao's forbidden "Four Olds": Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.

In 2007, I believe that Taiwan is still in a better moral and developmental position to protect this priceless treasure. I trust Taiwan's transparent democracy and modern infrastructure more than the nation that brings us poisoned toothpaste, tainted food, lead-coated toys, the world's worst industrial safety record, unbridled environmental degradation, and a never-ending sea of human rights abuses against Christians, Tibetans, Falun Dafa practitioners, journalists, and internet users. If China swallows up Taiwan, the loss of this art would be a crime against all people.

Moon Class

My 4:40-6:10 class is a lively bunch, mixed in age and ability. I've got a high-achieving seven year old and a low achieving 10 year old and everything in the middle. One of the boys has the craziest inability to sit still I've even seen; on my second day observing the class I witnessed him put his entire head into his backpack and zip the zippers to his neck, not removing it until he was asked to. He's also known for doing handstands in class, bringing strange objects to class and making obnoxious noises with them, and presuming he knows everything about the English language. There's also the adorable but insecure girl who wants you to help her through absolutely every worksheet and question (even if she knows the answer), the girl who thinks she's brilliant even though she never gets more than half of the questions on her homework right, the boy who just won't stop talking, and the silent but brilliant genius girl who recently earned her 20th sticker (meaning she's gotten As on 20 tests!).

Some of the kids have the classic disease where they think that if they finish first then they must be the best, even if they've got all of the answers wrong. Luckily, though, they're still at an age when they think teachers know everything. No matter how crazy the classroom gets they're afraid of getting sent into the hall or getting an F for their behavior grades. Also, there's never a shortage of hands in the air when I need an answer for a question and the majority of them earnestly try to get As on tests (especially since that earns them a sticker).

The subject matter for the class is mostly typical of a second to third grade English class. We work on reading comprehension, phonics, and grammar every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we focus on spelling and a poem. Ideally I'd like for them to be reading a book and then utilizing the skills from their reading comprehension textbook on a story and drawing our spelling and phonics words from there, but the class and school aren't set up for that (in regards to time and parental focus on textbook achievement). The poem we're currently working on is actually the lyrics to "On Top of Spaghetti," one of my favorite songs from when I was little. Since it's fairly long I broke it into sections and we just finished the first two last week. We had ANOTHER typhoon yesterday, when we were supposed to start the third and fourth sections, but I'm quite alright with spending a day at home instead of teaching the kids to memorize a poem.

Even though this class can have some rough days, we've definitely come to a point where we know what to expect of each other and that's lead to some great progress lately. They may not always behave the best or do all their homework, but at least they're still easily bribed by stickers and candy!

The Worst Day in the History of Education

Believe it or not, A1 Language school entrusts me with a fleet of small children. Fifty-two children in four classes, to be exact. I've come to the conclusion that teaching is like eating a poop-sandwich. Some days I have more bread, some days I have less bread. But every day I eat poop.

Let me tell you about the worst day in the history of education. It happened to me on Friday.

I was beginning to introduce a spelling test to my last class of the day, Neptune. The class is roughly a fourth grade English class, but children range in age from seven to thirteen. There was some commotion over 9-year old Eli's missing spelling packet. Everybody searched for it. Eli even looked out on the playground. After three minutes of nonsense, 12-year old Kevin plopped the spelling packet on Eli's desk. He had stolen it, then huddled with 10-year old Willy and 13-year old Sam. I called the three felons to the front of the room, verbally reamed them, then announced that they each had received an "F" for the week's behavior grade.

Perhaps I overreacted, but I run a tight ship.

Kevin and Sam beamed hate at me. Willy, the youngest and softest of the three, sat down at his desk, buried his face in a book, and burst into uncontrollable tears. He was beyond help. I have a strict policy when it comes to crying students: I ignore them. We began our grammar lesson on "a," "an," and "the." The class was silent except for Willy's weeping. It didn't stop. I asked him if he wanted to step into the hall, drink some water, visit the bathroom, and come back to class when he was ready. No response. He just choked on his tears.

And then he vomited. He vomited on the floor, on his chair, and all down the front of his baby-blue jersey-knit Chinese School uniform.

Pandemonium erupted. I blotted some of the liquid vomit with Kleenex, and convinced hysterical Willy to go to the bathroom and clean himself. Alice and Grandma Rose, the school's custodians/cooks/playground monitors, came into class and wiped away the remaining puke.

I sat at the head of class and stared out at the room. Willy's vomit-strewn desk was against the wall, half the students were in the wrong seats, the other half were shouting at me for being a bad teacher. There were seven minutes left in the day. It was too early to let everyone go, but too little time to regain control of my class.

I heard Willy sniffling in the hall. I told him to stay outside while I gathered his backpack, books, and pencils. No need to take away his last gram of dignity. I brought out his things, and told him to not worry about the "F." I wished him a good weekend and said that the next week would be better for everybody.

I stepped back into utter chaos. While I was in the hall 12-year old Luke had wrapped his hands around 7-year old Jensen's head and drove it into a table. Jensen's cried as a goose-egg grew out of his forehead. Alice walked back into the second fiasco. She shouted at Luke in Chinese, then began to treat Jensen's skull with ointment that smelled like Vick's vapor rub. Alice and I made eye-contact just long enough to confirm that I was the most pathetic teacher she had ever seen.

I told everyone to go home. No homework this weekend.

The room emptied except for Sam and Kevin, the original two spelling-packet thieves. They begged for mercy, but I had none of it. I felt like a home plate umpire who knows he made a bad call. I said some junk they didn't understand about morality and honesty. Kevin left, as sullen as ever.

Then Sam started crying.

There was almost no bread that day.

It's not ALL fun and games (but most of it is)

If you were reading this blog unawares of what Adam and I actually do every day, it may seem like we just wander around Taiwan looking for adventures and natural disasters. While we are making the most of our free time, at least 40 hours in the week are spent teaching. The school is conveniently located a 5-7 minute walk from our apartment, depending on the traffic light. In one building there are 5 classrooms and a yard with rubberized tiling and extra desks and chairs. Across the street is the office for the teachers and the copier.

All of the kids except for a few in my beginner class attend Chinese school in the morning and then head to English school. The classes at A1 are scheduled with youngest and usually least advanced kids from 1:30-4:30, older and advanced-beginner to intermediate students from 4:40-6:10, and the intermediate to advanced students have class from 6:40-8:10. The classes are named after different planets and outer-space features, but I haven't really figured out how the naming process works. Here's a breakdown of my first class of the day, with more to come later this week.


URANUS (1:30-4:00)
This is what's known as a "baby" class. All of the kids started out at the school without knowing any English and range from 5-7 years old. Four of the kids in the picture were just added to the class last week when we switched from morning classes to afternoon classes (it used to be held from 9-12). All of the classes held at this time slot are generally younger kids who get out of school earlier and hence know less English. One of the four newbies doesn't speak or write any English at all, one falls asleep daily (even when we're singing!), one can speak really well but can't write her name, and the fourth looks permanently half asleep and likes to sniff other kids. The rest of the class is also full of unique personalities, but I'm used to them by now. One of the girls pouts through coloring since she doesn't like her markers, another kid yells at the top of her lungs whenever anyone uses Chinese, one little boy loves beetles (they're the trendy pet here), and another can't write a capital G to save his life. One of the girls is sought after by all the boys, and one of the boys has to go to the bathroom every half-hour. Not pictured is another new boy who still hasn't made a sound in class and didn't have a name on the first day, so I had to name him. All in all they're an adorable, lovable class.

Even though I don't have any training or experience teaching kids this young, other than buying supplies for the SED preschool, I think I'm getting the hang of it. We're currently working on handwriting (we're through capital W), short vowel sounds, fine motor skills (aka coloring inside the lines), and vegetable vocabulary (since we finished fruits). New kids excluded, we've mastered colors, the alphabet, days of the week, pieces of clothing, shapes, and numbers 1-50. We sing songs with hand motions at the beginning of every class, too. A recent hit was a variation of "I like to eat apples and bananas" by Raffi, filling in OUR favorite fruits. Since this is a tropical island, we added mangoes, papayas, kiwis, and other goodies.

My favorite part of class is coloring time. The kids all come up with very unique results even if they're all coloring the same picture, but the best is listening to them talk and sing while they work. The previous teacher taught them the phrase "May I please borrow..." and nearly all of the kids have mastered it. Even though at any other time of the class you might hear yelling, giggling, or crying, this is the only time when the classroom is full of the most polite 5-7 year olds I've ever met.

If this house is rockin'....

...it must be an earthquake! Last night, around 2am our time, an earthquake occurred just off of one of the small islands to the east of Taiwan. Even though it was all the way across the island we still experienced some shaking here in Hsinchu. At the time I yelled at Adam for swinging his foot, which he vehemently denied. When the shaking continued (almost rocking, really) and the dogs started barking, we realized we were experiencing our first Taiwan earthquake. We quite calmly rode it out and drifted back to sleep. For an official report on the quake, click here.

Taipei, Round One

We took a bus into Taipei this past Sunday, our first forage outside of sleepy Hsinchu. Although Taipei did not feel like the center of the universe (certainly no London, Madrid, or Washington D.C.), it was a welcome change. Vendors at outdoor markets hawk everything from ornate Buddha sculptures, to $1.10 DVDs of classic American movies, to homemade wines. I did not try the homemade wine.

Taipei has a diverse collection of museums, such as The Museum of Drinking Water, the Paper Making Museum, the Museum of World Religions, and the world-renowned National Palace Museum. On route to the Taipei Discovery Museum, I was accosted by terrible robots from the future. See the picture below.

We stopped by Taipei 101, currently the worlds tallest finished building. The 1670 foot-tall building looks like a stalk of bamboo lashed together. Although I’m not generally a skyscraper nut, I appreciate that Taipei 101 has a distinctive Asian feel. Devin concurs, but she argues that it looks “like a bunch of take-out boxes stacked on top of each other.”

We capped the day with a visit to the Sun Yat-sen memorial. Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the person most responsible for ending 5,000 years of Chinese dynastic rule to establish the Chinese Republic in 1911. Think of Sun as 100 George Washingtons standing on top of each other. His hall and outdoor garden in central Taipei are appropriately gorgeous.

We’ll head back to Taipei on September 25 to visit the National Palace Museum. Stay tuned!