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| Living in Taipei, Taiwan | ||||||||||
| I moved to Taipei on August 24, 2001, four days after my 22nd birthday to work for my school. I had previously lived abroad in France where I spoke the language because I had studied it for years. To prepare for my journey to Taiwan, I began learning Mandarin in college my senior year. I was less than an apt pupil in studying Mandarin because I was also trying to wrap up my two majors and to finish my requirements to graduate so I didn't focus on my studies very much. When I came to Taiwan, I came with a year's worth of mediocre studying in Mandarin, all Beijing dialect with simplified characters so I had to throw part of what little I had out the window since people couldn't understand me very well and I had trouble reading signs for which I knew the characters because in Taiwan, they use traditional characters. I remember being lost in what turned out to be a block away from my school for over three hours because I was trying to pronounce my school's street name: Hsin Yi Rd. as "hi-sin-yee road" when it it really pronounced "shin-ee-loo" in Mandarin. I am much better about speaking and reading thanks mainly to two sources: The MRT, road, and bus stop signs and my nursery students, both from last year and this year. Unconventional means, yes, but much more permanent information than trying to study a dictionary or textbook. I still have taxi drivers not understanding me when I say the name of my street until I write it for them or tell them how to get there. For good or bad, I have been here for almost a year and a half and will have lived here for three years before I move onto my next endeavor. While I am here, I am soaking up Mandarin although not at a rate that I'd like, but I am still getting something out of my experience: teaching experience abroad, a new language, living in a non-Western culture (more or less), life experience, and, on top of all of that, money. |
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| This is outside of the traditional home of my school's principal with some of my co-workers. Notice the dragon on the roof. | ||||||||||
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