First days in Taiwan - Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday  
I woke up super early because in Taiwan the mattresses are HARD!! Like sleeping on a sleeping bag! We went to breakfast which was pretty much egg sandwiches, but with other ingredients. I didn’t care though cause I was starving. We didn’t have dinner the night before.

We began orientation by meeting everyone and by having a formal welcoming ceremony with officials from the Minister of Education and the American Institute. We then had some training on ESL teaching in Taiwan. After lunch, we went to the “Old Street” and learned about Indigo dyeing. Basically indigo dyeing is tie-dyeing with indigo ( a dark blue) dye! It was so much fun though!! I love my bandana/cloth/ hankerchief! After that, we walked around Old Street.

When we got back, we changed and went to the welcome party. They had Taiwanese snacks for us and COKE!!! I was just a little excited! We learned how to do a traditional Aboriginal dance. Taiwan has several Aborigian tribes. Then we played People Bingo where you had to complete a Bingo card by finding the person who matched the random fact on your card. It was fun and I won the second round!!

Then…. we sang KARAOKE!!! Karaoke is HUGE in Taiwan. It was funny though because most of the songs were super old and I didn’t know most of them! After the party, Joy, Allen and I went to Joy’s room and talked and listened to music. Then I went to bed and slept a glorious 7 hours!

Wednesday

This morning, we had our very first Chinese lesson! I learned very quickly that my southern drawl and Chinese do not go well together. However, the native Chinese speakers said it was “cute” how I sounded. All I know is that I have such a hard time making the words come out the right way. It is so hard!!

After the Chinese lesson, Wallace (The Aboriginal who taught us the dance) gave us a presentation about Taiwan: places we should go, the festivals… etc. It was such an awesome presentation! I want to go so many places. 

We then went to lunch, which by the way is AWESOME!! I am enjoying the food. I don’t know what I am eating half the time, but I just don’t ask. Also the only utensils we have are chopsticks. I got good at them really quickly!  

After lunch, we had a looong session with a professor who taught us about making activities and lesson plans for teaching! She was so good!!! We played all kinds of games. One of her motivating tools was if we got an answer correct, we got a “banana” drawn on the board! You would never know that a bunch of adults could be so competitive about a drawing on the board! At one point, I got the opportunity to erase 3 bananas from a group. Allen made a comment about how I cheated, so I erased 3 bananas from his group! Later he got to erase 5 bananas from a group so of course he chose mine. However, he asked me what group I was and I told him 4, even though I was group 6. Then someone said, “No! Hannah is group 5!” Finally he figured out which group I was in and erased my bananas. The teacher looked at me and said, “This means he really likes you.” It was so funny!!

After dinner, James, Joy and I had to create a lesson plan about Christmas. We worked hard. But of course when you work hard, you have to play hard! After we finished, Andrew, Allen, Calvin, Yetta, Joy, Ben, Jessica and I went out to walk around the city. Jessica and I finally got to get some money from the ATM. But in the process, we got separated from the rest of the group. Luckily, we had Andrew with us and we got back just fine!

When we got back we gathered in the Leisure room and a bunch of us watched Taken (great movie to watch when you are overseas). Ben and his group came back with Pizza!! Of course we all had to have a slice!