It’s OVER!

One of the largest milestones, and most stressful teaching moments, has been accomplished. On Saturday Adam and I participated in A1’s annual Christmas Show, a traditionally long and hectic day. We’ve been working with our classes for over a month to get ready and things went surprisingly smoothly.

THE CLASSES

Uranus

My youngest class (which also has a very large range in abilities) performed three songs with hand motions and introduced themselves by sharing their name and age. This is a rather large accomplishment since a few of them usually speak no more than 15 different words of English per day, mostly made up of the phrases “may I go to the bathroom” and “may I borrow….” They sang one song about snowflakes set to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “I’m a Little Snowman” set to the tune of “I’m a little Teapot,” and “Up on the Housetop” without any of the verses and Raffi for back-up. In order to make it a more photo-worthy event for the parents, I also constructed corrugated-plastic snowmen for each of them to hang around their necks and topped them off with Santa hats to create a row of adorable Taiwanese snowmen.

Moon

For the Moon class, made up of mostly 8 and 9 year olds I wrote a play. Looking back, it was a decidedly overambitious undertaking for both me and the children, but somehow we pulled it off. The play was entitled “The Christmas Pirates.” One new pirate wants to go home and celebrate Christmas with her family, but the captain decides that kidnapping Santa is a better idea. The pirates try to kidnap Santa, but they’re thwarted by the elves and Santa’s Christmas magic. For children that don’t speak English as a first language and have no acting experience, I was proud of the performance they delivered, even though it was far from perfect.

Planet and Orion

The oldest classes are required to do a speech contest, but luckily each class was judged separately from the others. My Monday Wednesday Friday class (the less advanced class) wrote and recited their own Christmas myths, ranging from why we have Christmas trees to why Santa is fat. The Tuesday Thursday class talked about a fictional trip they took to a planet of their own invention and celebrating a holiday there. Each student got a prize for participating and the top three in each class earned larger rewards.

If all of that sounds time consuming and hectic, remember that I only taught 4 of the 15 classes in the school. Each teacher had to put together roughly 15 minutes of material for each class (slightly shorter for the young-uns and slightly longer for the older kids).

Adam’s Classes

Two of Adam’s classes performed songs and he too wrote an almost-original play. One of the cutest moments all day was his little kids wearing giant teeth around their necks singing “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth” and then talking about how gross it is when their mommies and daddies kiss before singing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” while wearing giant lips. Adam’s middle group sang some of the toughest songs all day, starting with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, then singing Puff the Magic Dragon and ending with Do You Believe in Magic. His oldest group performed Adam’s Japanese adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves entitled “Snow Smart and the Seven Samurai.” Instead of being beautiful, the main character is Smart, and she teaches the Seven Samurai to speak English instead of cleaning the house. If you think that sounds like a progressive adaptation, then add in the consideration that Snow Smart was also a played by a ten year old boy!

THE ATMOSPHERE

Considering the number of things that could have gone really wrong on Saturday, the day went fairly smoothly. Adam and I even managed to get into and out of Santa costumes twice for photo-ops with the kids (not by choice). One of the most disconcerting things about the day was that children would come up to you and thrust a gift into your hands before running away giggling. Luckily, we’d been forewarned by the other teachers and traveled armed with pens or markers so that we could immediately write the kid’s name on the present. Also, no matter what your student was supposed to be doing, the parents wanted to document it on film (or memory card). The hardest moments were when I was single-handedly tying 14 small children into snowman costumes, climbing around parents with cameras, being approached by parents who wanted to discuss their child’s performance in class, explaining to students in my other class that they didn’t need to put their costumes on yet since they wouldn’t be performing for another hour, graciously and quickly accepting presents from parents and children, and smiling calmly and keeping the kids from going crazy. Those were moments that every one of the teachers experienced (except without the snowmen) and are the reason that the Christmas show had been discussed with such foreboding tones for the months precluding the big day.

THE END

When it was over, the sense of accomplishment among the teachers and students was great. But, now it's done, and Christmas is over as far as the school is concerned. We'll have put in a full day at work by the time you wake up to open presents, so if you think of it, have an extra bite of mashed potatoes or pecan pie for me!

Tea, Mountains, and Mist

Long before computer chips and wireless network routers, oolong tea was Taiwan’s top export. Tea and tea culture remain central to the fabric of modern Taiwan. On Sunday Devin and I visited Pinglin, a town of 7,000 people in the heart of tea country. Eighty-five minutes of snaking mountain roads on a Taipei city bus brought us to a place dominated by thick vegetation, steep mountains, and mist.

Appropriately, a tea house was our our first stop. Our waitress and an English-speaking customer taught us the proper method to brew tea. It was easy. All you need is loose tea, a clay tea pot, a separate pot of boiling water, a tiny stove, a shallow bowl to collect excess water, a fine wire filter, a glass pitcher, a dish for waste water and used tea, a watch with a seconds hand, and a tea cup. We were a long way from 50 teabags for $2.49 at Target. I’ll let you guess what tastes better.

Another difference: Taiwanese “agriculture” does not imply 160-acre squares of flat land. Tea fields are about the size of a large American back yard, with neat rows lying almost vertically on top of each other. After relaxing for an hour in the tea house we climbed through a fallow field to reach a hilltop with spectacular views. Two thirty-five foot-tall statues of Guanyin (the bodhisattva of compassion) watch over Pinglin from either side of the river valley. Mountains upon mountains line the horizon. We stood, catching our breath, in amazement.