My Taiwan Adventure

Today I acted as one of the panel of judges for an English Speech Competition at our school. I had to rate grade 7 students on their Content, Language Usage, and Delivery. It was kind of a fun afternoon but now that it is over I find myself drained of energy. While I get paid a monthly salary this work doesn't count as teaching hours. Don't ask me why that matters but for some reason it frustrates me that sitting for 3.5 hours evaluating student's efforts "doesn't count."

I was really impressed with the student's prepared speeches. I think some of them did better than native speakers when they presented. The most interesting part of the contest was the "impromptu speech." The students are given a four panel cartoon and then given 20 minutes to prepare a story to tell the judges. By the time 21 students had finished I was valuing the creativity of 4 or 5 brave students more and more. The imaginative students certainly stood out from the rest!

I was asked to give a small speech of my own at the end of the contest and started out by telling the students that I imagined I felt like they did, "happy to be there but a little excited and a little scared." I gave them encouragement to continue studying their English. I was happy to be able to tell them that honestly they impressed me with their hard work, research and creativity. In addition, I wanted to maybe inspire them to continue reading and practicing their English for future endeavors. Such brilliance should never be taken for granted or wasted.

I was impressed by what I learned about the students as one of their topics included "what I do in my spare time" and "who I most want to be like." These kids are reading Einstein and studying plays and music. My knowledge of fine arts is almost meagre in comparison to some of them. I've vowed to take advantage of living so close to the Cheng Kai Shek Memorial. There are multitudes of cultural experiences available there. In May I'm going to try to get to see Swan Lake. (At only $40 cdn. it's quite a deal to see the ballet.) If I can still get cheap seats there's a percussion recital this weekend that I'd like to see also. The symphony plays there often also and some of my co-workers have invited me to join them on semi-regular forrays. So really, I'm getting all set up to be busy here in Taiwan.

I was surprised at how many opportunities I had to socialize this weekend. Granted that I didn't take advantage of all of them but it was nice to feel that I'm begining to make a life for myself here. The funny thing is that I still like to spend time on my own to just mellow and create things. I'm beginning to wonder what I'm going to do for my physical health though.

Being a teacher is moderately more active than sitting behind a desk as I'm standing and walking all day, but still I'm not getting the level of activity that will allow me to be svelte and lithe like the ideal-self I have in my imagination. I guess stopping on the ice cream crusades would be a good start. However, it is both my Father's birthday and one of my good friend, Ryan's, birthday today, so ice-cream it is! Maybe I'll walk home to make up for it. I haven't tried that from here yet and reportedly it should take about an hour according to my room-mate. I have a big salad in mind for supper too so this is an opportunity to explore some of the town on the way home. Although Taipei has 6 million people in it, I'm sure that geographically it covers less area than Calgary.

That's all for now. I'll let you know how the walk pans out. Thanks for reading and keep those emails and letters coming. (Haven't recieved a SECOND letter yet and I keep my fingers crossed!)

Love and Hugs
Teacher Destiny in Taipei Taiwan.

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