The Matching Game

Following "The Best Weekend Ever," was the start of our 3 week orientation. The first week was designated specifically for the ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) to get settled and accustom to Yilan. On the first day, they introduced us to the MANY acronyms that would be used as our "cool" special Yilan ETA lingo. Here goes our acronyms: FSE (Foundation of Scholarly exchange), ETA, AP (Advisory Panel), LET (Local English Teacher), and TC (Teacher Center). It took us all a little while to get the hang of the lingo and some of us adopted the use of the 3-letter acronyms, while disregarding the 2 letter ones. Every now and again I'll through out the term "AP" when describing the directors and I'll just receive blank stares from my fellow ETAs. The first thing that comes to mind is Advanced Placement and Assistant Principal (which often does not fit into the context of the convo).

On our third day, we visited three schools and went to Wai-Ao beach (black sand beach, GORGEOUS!). This was the beginning of our courting with the schools. At our first school, Yilan Yuan Junior High, we were greeted by the principal and taken into a meeting room where we were wined with water and entertained by a fancy power point. At the second school, Da Fu elementary, we were brought into the gym to be serenaded by Chinese zither players, and wined and dined with water and fruit. At our final school, Geng Fang Elementary, we received a wonderful tour showing the beautiful campus by the beach front and we were refreshed by cool sweet lemon iced tea. By the end of the day, we came to the conclusion that all the schools really wanted to have an English native speaker as a resource to their students.

The matching game really began on Monday 8/11, the day we were introduced to all the LETs. When we all arrived, all the LETs sat on one side of the room and all the ETAs sat on the other side. We soon noticed that there were twice as many LETs than ETAs. That's when we found out that we would indirectly choose who would be a main school teacher and who would be a co-school teacher. It was an honor for the teachers and their schools to receive an ETA, and therefore they felt pressured to get us to choose their schools. Some LETs came off REALLY strong, while others were more relaxed. I think we all were more comfortable with the LETs that didn't constantly say "come to my school, come to my school."

Over the next few weeks, we worked with various LETs on micro-teaching projects while being trained by Dr. Trites. When it came time to choose our LETs, we were all stressed out! Out of the 24 LETs, we all had to choose 6 to rank for our preferences. Many of us liked the same LETs and became really difficult to choose who we wanted to work with. Every ETAs' criteria differed. Some only chose Yilan teachers because they wanted to live in Yilan, while others were looking for someone who would allow them more freedom to enhance their teaching skills. Personally, I was looking for a teacher that could show me how to create a fun learning environment and someone that I knew I could easily get along with for the next 10 months. Most of my teachers were in Yilan (I kind of wanted to stay in Yilan), but one of my top choices was in Luodong.

On Monday August 25th, we all went through our introductions and then participated in a speed dating game. We had two hours to see all the teachers, and the AP split the LETs into two groups. For the first hour we saw all the LETs in the first group for 5 minutes each, and repeated in the second hour with the second group. The speed dating was exhausting but really helped some people in their decision making process. As for myself, I basically stayed with all my same choices. After the speed dating, the ETAs and the LETs had 30 minutes to choose their top 6 preferences.

THE RESULTS ARE IN!!!!!!

The next day, we all walked in anxious to see who we were matched up with and where we will be moving (Yilan or Luodong). On a middle table, there were fold sheets of paper with each of our names. All the ETAs ran over to open their papers to reveal who was going to be their co-teachers. Once I opened mine, I scanned the letter to see Crystal's name for my main school (Siao Wei) and Jenny as my co-school (Cing Gou). Crystal was the only teacher I put down from Luodong cause I knew if I worked with her, I wouldn't mind having to move to a different city and that I would have an amazing year!

The Best Weekend Ever

After settling in to our apartments, we all hung out Saturday night after the Foundation bought us pizza for dinner. On our way to take the left over pizza from the boys’ apartment to our apartment, we stumbled upon a musical performance in the courtyard of our apartment complex. Earlier in the day when we were moving in, we all noticed a small music school right next to a “cram school” (basically an intensive tutoring school used as supplement to public education). As we walked passed that night, the owner of the music school motioned us to come and sit down. We all sat down out of curiosity and kindness. At first we assumed students were performing, but as soon as they began to play we quickly realized that they were advanced musicians. After the first song, I believe, the owner/director introduced the players. Many were laoshi (teacher), one was ta baba (his father), and another was ta erzi (son). They all played traditional Chinese instruments, including the Er Hu and the Pi Pa (I believe that is how it is spelled).





Then on Sunday, we decided to roam around our new city to see what we could discover. We met up around 10 am and worked our way down the street. First we ran into a shop that made dan bing, a breakfast delight that resembles an egg “burrito.” Following breakfast, we continued down the same street and discovered the Music House. From the street it looked like a traditional Japanese style home. When we walked upon it, the sign read “Music House” in English. As we worked our way inside the quaint house, a sweet woman greeted us warmly and motioned us to come in to the house. With the help of the translation of one of our fellow ETAs, Mandy, the lady explained to us that the house was an old government education building and that the interior wood was authentic. Along with explaining the history of the house, she also explained all of the many instruments within the house. After our tour, she invited us to come back to listen to a performance around 2:30 pm.
Following along our same trail, we continued walking down the same street and followed along as it curved to the left. Soon we discovered a distillery and noticed many people coming in and out of the gate. We all decided to walk in, and to our left we read a sign that said “If you haven’t drunk our wine, you can’t say you’ve been to Yilan.”

That is when we all came to the conclusion that having some of their wine would be really important in our tour of Yilan! We walk around the distillery and tasted the different foods and wine. After having our tasted of the distillery, we continued on our journey. We walked through a small market, played a little in Du Du Dong Park, and looked around the tourist info center across the park. By the time we finished, it was time to return to the Music House for the performance. Going back to the Music House was great! The house gave us a place to relax, listen to beautiful music, and cool down. The man who played the traditional instruments was amazing and he even offered us tickets for his concert in Taipei.





Our day was going fantastic. Following the music house we rested for a little while and then went to this delicious veggie restaurant that the previous ETAs called “Mama’s Kitchen.” As soon as we entered, they quickly greeted us, sat us down, and handed us a picture menu that the previous ETAs created for us. The whole time we were there and every time since, an old lady (who we think is mama) attentively but casually takes care of us as if we were all her family. Upon leaving “mama’s,” we all went for dessert at this place that serves this treat that seems like a cross between ice cream and shaved ice. Whatever it is, the treat is amazing and it looks like shavings. The flavors included milk, peanut, green tea, coffee, blueberry, mango, and sesame seed. Dinner and dessert definite was the cherry on top of a fantastic weekend!

Arrival to Taiwan

On August 1, 2008, I arrived in Taiwan on EVA Airlines flight 0001. The flight was extremely long, 13 hours to be exact. Despite the length of the flight, the aircraft itself was quite bearable for economy seats. I remember flying on Delta and United internationally, and they were nothing compared to EVA Airlines. On EVA, each passenger had their own interactive touch screen that gave them the option to watch a movie, pick a television show, or play a game. The leg space was great for an economy seat, and the accommodations for the business and first class elite were amazing.

The people I flew in to Taiwan with were Mary, Jamie, Ann, Brett, Adam, and Julia. Once we made it to Taiwan we ran into a few more girls: Virginia, Evie, Alana, and Jill. Soon Mandy, Nell, Elizabeth and Faith met up with us as well. We all took the shuttle to our hotel. They provided rooms for each of us, but they were not all ready when we arrived so we had to split up between a few rooms for everyone to freshen up. After freshening up, they distributed $20,000NTD to each of us and we headed to the Foundation for lunch boxes. After lunch they gave us more explanations of the living arrangements and expectations. We walked to a local electronic store to take pictures for our ARC (alien resident card). Then we all went to Story Land, an interactive historical children’s museum. After the museum we all went to dinner at a Chinese Muslim restaurant. We were all soooo exhausted, we had landed in Taiwan at 5 am and we didn’t get a chance to really rest until we made it back home from dinner around 8:30 pm, and to top it off we had to have our luggage downstairs by 8:20 am to go to Yilan in the morning.

I woke up the next day well rested and extremely excited to see where I was going to live for the next 11 months. Taipei seemed really nice and similar to Beijing in its size and culture, but I had no real idea what Yilan was going to be like. It took almost an hour or so to travel to Yilan because of all the traffic going through the 3 long tunnels that connect Yilan to Taipei. As soon as we exited the 3rd tunnel, we were able to catch our first glimpse of the county. To the left I could see the Pacific Ocean and a glimpse of Turtle Island that was not too far off the shores. There were palm trees everywhere and the weather and location of the city reminded me of Florida. They split the 16 people in our group up into two groups, one was to live in Loudong and the other was to live in Yilan City. I was amongst the latter group, and thus was going to live in downtown Yilan for the month of August. In September, we will move to our permanent locations depending on our placements with the LETs (Local English Teachers).