Everyday Taiwan (a summary of my new daily life)

     It's already been about five months since I've arrived in Taiwan.  In some ways it feels like I've been here five months, but usually, time seems to fly by.  I won't go into detail about how I've arrived here in Jialeshuei, a very southern, rural area of Taiwan, right next to a surf break.  As another traveler I met put it, "It's where they bury the dogs." I'll just explain my current living situation.

Jialashuei, steps from where I live

      I live in a hostel/guesthouse where the third floor overlooks the ocean and where every morning I climb up the stairs to check the surf condition.  My neighbors are elderly Taiwanese folks who speak to me in Taiwanese even though they know I don't speak Chinese let alone Taiwanese.  Two doors down there is another family that has a small business in their living room where they sell convenience items like ice, ice cream, beverages and beer.  Their daughter is a bit mentally ill and loves to wake up every morning around 7am and yell at the top of her lungs, "YA-LALA-LALA... HEYYY YOO" while walking around the neighborhood.  This took a few weeks of getting used to but now I just think of her as the neighborhood's broken alarm clock.  She's very nice and though her vocabulary is very limited to about three words, she says "hi" to me every time she sees me.  By every time I mean if I walk by her house (which is at least 4 or 5 times daily) , I'll hear a sudden "Hi!" from the window.  If I realize after a few steps of walking past her house I forgot something and turn around, I'll hear another "Hi!" Though most of the time I can't see her through the window, I always wave, smile and say hello. 

The neighborhood where we live, these are the hostels in the front

      I forgot to mention how small our neighborhood is.  Our neighborhood is our village, they are one and the same.  This village has about fifteen homes altogether and about five of them are guesthouses or hostels.  Since I don't speak Taiwanese or Chinese (Taiwanese is the main spoken language in the rural areas of Taiwan, Mandarin is the main language in the larger cities) it is impossible for me to communicate with any of my neighbors.  Sometimes this really makes me sad because all of the neighbors are such nice people and I'm sure they would invite me over for their Sunday all day drinking binges or for a meal.  How I would love to sit at a table with my elderly neighbors, taking shots of kaoliang and hearing stories of their childhoods seventy or eighty years ago. Though I think kaoliang is the worst alcoholic beverage in the world because it tastes like cleaning product that you would only use on the harshest of stains...it would be worth the sacrifice.

    Each morning I awake between 7 and 9 am and check the surf.  Usually the surf is decent even though it gets extremely windy here.  I'll suit up, grab my board and walk down to the beach for a nice morning surf session.  The Taiwanese are extremely nice people but for some reason with only a few exceptions,  they are the most serious surfers I've ever met.  Only after a few months of surfing everyday out at the same break have some people started to warm up to me by giving me a nod in the water or on a good day, a smile or a wave.  I never really thought that Cali guys were every gentlemen in the water, but they seem to be compared to here.  At least in Cali it wouldn't be unusual for a guy to occasionally pass along a good wave to me if they were a better surfer, but in Taiwan? forget about it!
I'll talk more about the surfing in Taiwan in another post.

    After surfing, I eat breakfast, usually oatmeal or a breakfast sandwich if I remember to buy ingredients from town the day before.  The owner of the hostel/guesthouse allows me to sleep here in exchange for very cheap rent and some help.  I have to make up the rooms and keep the place clean.  Fortunately guests are rare because busy season isn't until the summer.  If there is cleaning to be done, I'll tidy up, if not then I'll get ready for work and ride to town.

    Town is about a twenty minute scooter ride from here and it's where I work, buy necessary items like bread or floss and do any grocery shopping.  I work about 15-18 hours a week which is considered full time in Taiwan.  When the weather's warm and the wind is low, I love my commute to town on my scooter.  It's so beautiful that sometimes I forget to breathe.  Since I live in the countryside the road is narrow and windy and most of the road is through farmlands and rivers.  Beautiful flocks of shocking white egrets are seen all the time eating from the richest green rice fields.  On a blue and sunny day I feel like the countryside is singing to me.

One of many views

    I am currently an English teacher at a cram school.  Cram schools are education based businesses that children as young as four go to after school.  I want to say after they come home from school but that would be a lie.  Most of these kids don't go home after school, they hop on a bus and go straight to their after-school school.  The rumor is true, Asians really are over-achievers.  Kids as young as six are at school or some sort of education affiliated program from 7am- 8pm.  People don't even go to work that much, yet they expect these little kids with an appetite for running around and making mud pies to sit still at a desk all day and night.  A lot of these kids go to these crams schools to do their homework, get more homework, and get ahead. (Which I find funny because if most of these kids are doing this to "get ahead" then getting ahead is the norm, which means everyone's ahead, then who are they really getting ahead of?)  These cram schools exist for extra work in English, math and Chinese, etc.  To make them more well-rounded these little kids also go to art class and take lessons for a musical instrument or five.  I've heard that high school students literally are at school from 7am til well past ten pm.  Then they are expected to do their homework and then "sleep" which is really only a nap, and then do it all over again the next day.  It's crazy! It really makes me appreciate my under-achieving US education filled with little memories of the school part and lots of memories of coming home after school and then disappearing with the neighborhood kids until sundown.

The over achieving future generation of Taiwan.  My students gathered together for a Christmas program.

    Fortunately though for me, the Taiwanese want to torture their children with English.  It's why I'm getting paid pretty well to basically talk to these kids, solely based on the fact that I am a native English speaker. Though I lack any teaching credentials and definitely didn't study or work as hard as these kids that I'm paid to teach.  In fact, most of these kids are probably smarter than me.  Another reason why I love being an American...

    So after work, I pick up dinner to go and bring it home and do it all again the next day.  The picking up dinner part is a whole other subject all together.  Which, my friends know how hard it is for me to find food in Taiwan.  It's worth writing about in another post. 



Thanks for reading!







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