Home?

Zoe and I finished our first school year at a new school called TAS (which stands for Taipei American school). I started TAS because our family has decided to continue living in Taipei and it would not be a good idea for me to go to a local junior high school. The local junior high schools are one hundred times harder than it already is in local elementary school, with things such as more competitiveness and harsher teachers. Also, another year of Chinese might be too much, and we would have a hard time transitioning back to English.

Ever since I moved to Taiwan, I thought that our lives were a lot more unusual and crazy than average people, and that there is hardly anyone that has similar lives to us. I always felt like the outsider wherever we were in Taiwan; at my local school I was known as “the American that moved to Taiwan not so long ago.” Most of the time I could not relate to my classmates, they did not understand me, nor did I understand them because they have lived nowhere else except for Taipei. When I went to America for summer vacation it was the same because many people have lived in Palo Alto their whole lives and I felt like they didn’t understand me. At my US summer camps I would have to explain my background. I would tell people that I currently live in Taiwan and that I went to a local school when I first moved back from the US. After a couple years there, I transferred to an American school so I am fluent in Chinese and English. It would be this weird and complicated story and I could sometimes see the question marks popping out of their heads.

TAS has been a very interesting experience so far. TAS’s original mission was to create an American public school in Taipei, but it is really different from an average American school in the US. It wasn’t until I started getting to know more and more people at TAS that I realized that everyone in the school are cross-culture kids, just like me! Everyone has their own individual story that may even be more complicated and more interesting than mine. In a way, TAS is its very own culture. No matter where you are from, as long as you go to TAS you are exposed to at least two or more cultures: Taiwanese/Chinese from the environment outside of school, and American from TAS. However, most kids are exposed to more than two cultures, for instance, there are a lot of international kids who move from country to country every few years because of their parents’ work. For example, one of my friends that is also new this year to TAS just moved from Singapore, and before that lived in Dubai, Panama and Belgium. All of these kids are very interestingly culturally influenced. Another friend of mine has lived in Belgium most of her life and went to a local school there, but then moved to England for her dad’s work and learned English at a public school – she didn’t know any English at all before she went to England. She stayed there for a year and then she went to Singapore and adapted to an American accent; after a year, she came to Taiwan. Now, she is totally fluent in English and speaks in an American accent with not a hint of Dutch accent when she speaks to me, but she still speaks to her parents in Dutch. After a year, she will go back to Belgium. My local school experience is very similar to her experience and we can relate.

First day of school at TAS

I have another friend who has lived in Taiwan her whole life and is in the most advanced Chinese class with me. Her Chinese is better than mine. Not surprising at all, right? Except she is Caucasian. At first when I saw her I thought for sure she was American because I wasn’t familiar with TAS yet, but then I had dinner with her and her parents and they spoke to her in an Australian accent, but she replied in an American accent. On top of all that, she spoke in Chinese to the waiter without any foreign accent! Mind blown! What? She started to explain to me her complicated and unusual story: Her parents are both originally from Australia and came to Taiwan to teach History at TAS, she was born in Taiwan and her parents decided to send her and her sister to a local preschool and local elementary school all the way until fourth grade. She went to TAS in fifth grade and she has an American accent because of TAS, but her parents speak to her in an Australian accent and don’t know any Chinese. I bet she went through a lot of the same misunderstandings and frustrating times as I did, being an outsider in local school and also being kind of like an outsider with your parents at times. The thing is, a lot of people think that she is a foreigner, but she really isn’t, she just looks like one, but isn’t one inside. She told me that she thinks that everything that everyone does is totally normal in Taiwan and never gets culture shock, but she still is different than everyone else in Taiwan because of how she looks. We would be shopping around, and she would break out her perfect Chinese to the cashier lady who would have an expression full of fascination and confusion for a split second. She probably wishes that everyone would just be more chill and treat her normally but still I absolutely love it when she speaks Chinese although I am not sure why. It is kind of how my local classmates were absolutely obsessed with the idea of me being an American, which was nice but a little too much. I feel like I can relate to her in that sort of way but also can’t because I am not in the same position as her, I probably don’t fully understand how she feels. She is fascinating to me and I admire her crazy experience.

Home. Just thinking about what it means is confusing not just to me, but to a lot of other kids at TAS.

There are also a lot of teachers and some students with Australian, British, or New Zealand accents. In the US most people might think that those type of special accents are so posh or fascinating. Well, actually the words and meaning are practically all the same, they just sound a little different, that’s all. I can picture if there was someone with a British accent in a school in American everyone might be crowding that person asking questions like: “Do you drink afternoon tea with your pinkie up?” “How is the Queen like?” “Do the girls ever wear those poofy dresses with wires and tightening strings at the back?” But at TAS everyone just treats people that have those type of accents like everyone else and don’t think that it is super surprising.

In health class, we did this CCK (cross-culture kids) survey that we would not have been able to do in America. With questions such as: Is the question “Where are you from” hard to answer? Can you process miles and inches, but also kilometers and centimeters? Have you lived in one or more countries? Have you heard that the sport where you kick a ball around can be called soccer or football? Most kids answered yes to these questions.

Most of the kids at TAS are also very understanding when others have to move away and when others move in. Most of my friends are going to be moving somewhere else within a couple of years and the other ones that are not moving seem to understand more. Of course, they are still sad, but they are not like, “Oh my gosh! I will miss you so much! Why do you have to move?” I got that a lot when I was moving from Palo Alto to Taiwan. It was quite frustrating because it was not under my control whether we moved or not. I really appreciated how everyone was trying to tell me how much they care about me and that they liked hanging out with me. But it’s like saying, “You can’t move or else I will be devastated!” And it was just a lot of pressure. I feel like it is a lot more settled at TAS with attitude more like, “Hey I am going to be really sad without you because you are such a great friend, but I hope that you will have an amazing experience ahead of you.”

I am really lucky to be able to experience being around such special people from around the world that I can relate to with different perspectives. I think that all the kids at TAS are more open-minded and wiser. I think that everyone that leaves TAS will live a happier and more successful life and at the same time influence the people around them to make this world a better place.

What is your definition of “home?”

A ripple effect

In February, I went to Cambodia for three days with my family and friends. On the last day when we were about to leave, I asked my parents if I could go visit a local school with our friends. They said I could go but they were going to stay in the room packing and resting. So, then I woke up early, ate breakfast, then got on the car with our friends to go visit the school.

Someone that worked at our hotel named Rady used to be a teacher at the school we were going to visit, so it made it easier for him to take us to go visit a school. We were driving in one of the poorest parts in that area, the roads were very rugged, all the houses were teeny-tiny and they were on big fields with no electricity wires connected, but almost everyone smiled and waved to us. When we got to the school, several kids helped us push the gate open, all the kids were so excited and curious about the car, the way we looked, and the language we spoke. Their classrooms were made out of straw and bamboo, the floors were red dirt, there was no electricity or running water, most kids were barefoot, but every single kid still seemed very happy and enjoyable. We played some games and took some pictures with them, showed them how to take a selfie, then got back on the car.

Pushing the gate open.

In the bamboo classroom.

Playing a hand game together, with my friend Charlotte.

The whole school, me and the Palmers.

On the way back, Rady explained how in that village there aren’t that many children that get an education because they have to work in the fields. They have never seen anything like a phone or a car, they have never had any foreigners visit. They don’t have any organizations supporting them either, but Rady goes back and teaches every once in a while and donates some books. Then I thought about how they are very short on supplies but I could tell that they were very happy and grateful that they have the opportunity to get an education. Unlike at our school, we have so many resources but not many people realize it, some people even dislike going to school. If the kids in Cambodia really want to learn, I think that is a great thing. How can I help them improve their environment so that they can get an even better education?

If I help these kids get a better education, it could totally change their future, they would get a better job, know more about the world and they could help their whole community get wealthier. When I got back to Taiwan I had the idea to do a school supplies donation drive, then donate the supplies to the school. I planned for this activity to go on for two weeks, but then it went on for four months! This project totally did not go out how I thought it would…

First of all, nobody in my school has a clue what a donation drive is. All the kids know how to do is Study, Homework, Tests. I found two of my friends and explained to them about the school in Cambodia and what a donation drive is. After they got the idea, we went to the principal’s office to ask her if we could do the drive. No one in my school has ever gone to the principal’s office themselves to have a meeting, so my friends were so nervous, afraid she wouldn’t be nice to us. At first the principal was very surprised, then she became confused but curious and excited because nobody has ever done something like a drive or a bake sale at our school. Finally she said yes, and she wanted us to do a presentation in front of the whole school! I was excited and so glad we were actually going to do this, but the other girls were super nervous because they haven’t done many public speaking projects. By the way, they didn’t talk the whole time we were in the principal’s office! 

When we came out they kept on accusing me by saying stuff like, “How come you didn’t ask her if we could do the drive by the gate?” “How come you didn’t ask her when we were going to do the presentation?” Then I said, “How come you didn’t ask?” They said it was because when they saw the principal they got super nervous and became speechless. That’s another reason why no one has ever done a project like this at our school in Taiwan, kids don’t really know how to discuss about things, especially with teachers. There is a very big bubble between teachers and students. Nobody really asks the teacher questions, if they really need to they will go in groups because it’s less “scary”. Nobody dares to negotiate with teachers either, so whenever I wanted to ask for my teachers' opinions about the donation drive and ask them why they think that way, some of the teachers and my friends thought it a bit odd how forward I was.

After I got the teachers' approval to do the donation drive, we did our presentation at morning assembly in front of the whole school, and we put posters and boxes around the school. Sometimes I would get frustrated with my friends because they were so clueless, I had to start from the very beginning with everything. They would ask me “Why do we have to put posters up?” Then I would say, “To get people’s attention.” “Why do we have to get people’s attention?” “So then people will want to donate stuff.” The question they would keep asking me over and over again was, “Are you sure this is going to work?”

Our posters.

The first donation box that we made.

Within a week, the boxes were full of school supplies! Everyone at school thought the donation drive was so cool because no one has ever done anything like this. At first it was just me and two of my friends doing it, then it became my whole class doing it together, my teacher used this opportunity to teach us life skills. Like how to persuade people to participate, how to work in groups efficiently to finish something, he helped us improve our public speaking skills by arranging times to meet with classrooms all over the school to tell everyone more details about our drive. He even taught some of my classmates how to make a documentary for this activity. We named this project, “Sending love to Cambodia”. Pretty soon we had about eight boxes of school supplies, one box was around sixteen pounds, which was about one-hundred and thirty pounds of supplies.

This class was very supportive, their teacher told everyone at least to donate one thing, and then gave us a whole box of supplies.

Before I started doing this project I didn’t think a lot about what we were going to do after collecting the supplies. Collecting all the supplies wasn’t hard and it went by fast, the hard part was everything after that. Organizing everything was such a pain! We had to sort every different type of supply, we had to put all the pencils in a pile, all the notebooks, pens, sharpeners…etc. After we sorted everything we had to count how many of that type of supply we had, so we know which ones had too little, which ones had too many.  For example, we had one-thousand something pencils, and twenty-five sharpeners! What happens if their pencils get dull? After we knew all the numbers, we started encouraging everyone to donate pencil sharpeners and no more pencils. 

There are at least eight hundred pencils in this box.

This box is all sorted!

It was frustrating when we were so clear that this was a school supplies drive, not a junk drive, so please don’t donate anything else except for school supplies. When we were sorting through everything we had to throw away a lot of pencils that were too short, pens that had no ink, correction tape that had nothing in it, and stuff like that. There was another pile of stuff that were things that were in good shape but were not school supplies. For example, utensils, a CD bag, a plug-in lamp and a mouse pad. (As I mentioned before they don’t have electricity, or personal electronics.) 

Our whole class sorting all the supplies and packaging them into boxes.

Sealing the boxes with tape.

It was very satisfying looking at all the school supplies sorted in the boxes after all our hard work, but we couldn’t send them out yet because we didn’t have enough money. My classmate’s mom works at a shipping business, so it made it easier for us to communicate and we got a discount. Even though we got a discount, the cost was still around four-hundred US dollars. It would be much easier to raise the money in America because we could just do a bake sale and be over with it. But of course, it would be even harder to get an approval for a bake sale than doing a donation drive, they would think it’s weird that I’m trying to get money at school, and the recesses are only ten minutes.

All our boxes of supplies sealed!

My sister and I went to go sell cookies on the streets a few times, but it was hard because some locals had doubt about what us kids were doing trying to get money on the streets, even though we already explained that we were fundraising for a good cause. Foreign tourists understood more about fundraising though, so they were very supportive. We still had quite a lot of money to fill in so we decided raise the money at our once-a-year school carnival. 

Selling cookies with Phoebe and my friend.

Every year we have a carnival at school, it is a very cultural thing to do in Taiwan. It is so exciting when all the parents and relatives come to watch amazing performances, eat and drink from the delicious food stands, and play fun games. School plays a very important role in Taiwan society, it’s a place where kids are safe, so that’s why it happens at school. Every class has to pick an entertainment stand, and every grade has to pick an educational stand where people can come tour the stand to learn something new. This year’s topic for the educational stand was countries from around the world, all the teachers from the sixth grade got together to discuss and decided on Cambodia. Not only can we teach everyone about Cambodia and their lifestyle, we can also teach everyone about their education environment, and we can raise some money for our shipping cost at the same time! Now it wasn’t just my class doing “Sending love to Cambodia”, it was the whole grade!

Every class did a poster board about Cambodia’s history, culture, tourism, location, and ours was about sending love to Cambodia. Our main goal was to let other people to feel something for these kids in Cambodia, to let them understand more about the world. We can’t just keep on telling them to give us money, we had to let them have some feelings, and perhaps they will give us some money. Even though we didn’t raise that much money in the end, I was still glad we did this to introduce something different to everyone, I hope they remembered what we told them and can use this knowledge usefully.

Our Sending love to Cambodia stand.

After the carnival was over, every class had raised lots of money and was discussing what do with it, most classes donate some and keep some. We went to a lot of classes to tell everyone if they are trying to find an organization they can consider donating money to us for our shipping cost. Many classes thought it was more meaningful to support people they knew, and it was easier. Because there were five classes that chipped in a little, we had enough money to ship the remaining supplies!

A few weeks later, Rady sent us pictures of the kids with the school supplies. I felt a wave of love and warmth as I spotted a picture of a little girl smiling as if she got a million dollars with three pencils in her hands. It wasn’t until then it hit me. Was I really the one who started all this? I couldn’t believe that the person that made her this happy was actually me. The reason why they are holding pencils right now is because of me. It’s mind blowing.

"Hurry Hurry! Don't be the last one in line!

Teachers handing out pens.

The whole school with the supplies, ready to hand out!

In class after getting the supplies.

Soon things were seriously going insane. I went from “the American-kid-that-nobody-knows” to “the kid that did that did something nice for kids in Cambodia.” Almost everyone in the school knew me or at least recognized me. Once we went to a department store on one of the weekends, and someone from my school that I never talked to knew my name and said, “Hi Chloe!”. I was surprised but then thought about why and said hi back.

Then I got picked as “the role model student” representing Xinyi elementary school, usually it’s someone with good grades or is smart, but this time it was much different. I went to get my award from the mayor and got reported to be on the news and newspaper. One day at school my friend was reading the newspaper that got delivered that morning, and all of a sudden, she said, “Chloe, it’s you!!!”. Everyone rushed over to see, and it really was an article about the school supplies drive with a picture of me and the Cambodia kids. After that our documentary that my classmates were working on for a long time was finally ready, and our principal loved it so much that she put it on the TV in front of our school playing twenty-four-seven!

Getting my award from the mayor

Getting interviewed.

On TV.

Here's a link to the video with me on the news:

https://youtu.be/eDalk2cbn8A

Here's a link to our documentary:

https://youtu.be/WUrszaa1c5g

The newspaper for kids that gets delivered to our school every morning.

I never intended for all of these crazy things to happen, it is cool that they happened but the thing that makes me happiest is seeing that the kids in Cambodia were happy and hearing people say that they learned or got something from this project. I opened another window for my classmates in Taiwan showing them that the world is a big place, everyone has different lives, we are small compared to the world, but we can still make a difference. On my yearbook, a lot of my classmates said stuff like, “Thank you so much for hosting this special sending love to Cambodia activity. This was the first meaningful and nice thing that I did in the past twelve years, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I learned so many things that I would have never learned before if you didn’t do this, you have such a great heart.” These words are one-hundred times better than being on the news or getting any award.

At the end of the day my goal was to give the kids in Cambodia better learning resources and I hope they will get a better education and have a better future. This has been such an amazing and special experience, I would never have been able to achieve this goal without my classmates, my teachers, my family, the Palmers (the friends that took me to the Cambodia school) and the people in Cambodia that helped give the school supplies to all the students. Thank you all so much for supporting my ideas and helping me through hardships, you don’t know how appreciative I am. I am like the pebble that dropped into the water, and there are more ripples every time we change something together, every time more people come in. I hope through this “sending love to Cambodia” activity, more and more people will want to make the world a better place, there could be lots of pebbles and ripples in the water, and we could all put more and more love into every corner of this world together.

Independent Thinking

Independent thinking is a very important skill in life, we have to have creativity to be different from others and to bring our own ideas out to the world to make it a better place. If we want to succeed in life, we can’t see the world just in black and white, we have to think outside the box. Then, we can discuss our ideas with someone else, and that person can tell us their ideas, and this is where teamwork comes in. No one starts a company all by themselves, we have to discuss with others that have different ideas from us or else it would be extremely difficult.

Often times in Taiwan, it can seem like kids don’t really know how to do anything else except take tests and write worksheets. Kids also don’t really know how to prioritize their time because there are very few long-term projects. For example: Do math workbook p.44-p.45. We have to do every single homework assignment on our “communication book” and when we finish it, we have to check it off, then our parent has to sign our communication book to prove that we finished that homework assignment. Most of the assignments are due the very next day. If we don’t finish them, we will get in deep trouble by the teacher.

This is my communication book. First thing in the morning, we write the date, then copy the homework assignments (the pink words). When we go home we do our homework and check them off, then we have to write our diary and copy the "phrase of the day" (the blue words). There is also a really weird English phrase of the day above. Then my mom signs at the left bottom corner, and if she has any questions she can write them to the teacher. That's why it's called a communication book. When I go back to school the next day the teacher will look at my diary, and give me a stamp to prove he looked at it.

The parents seem to only care about grades and tests, so a lot of my classmates go to a cram school, where the teachers teach material that will later on be taught in school. They give even more worksheets and tests than the students already have. The cram school’s number one job is to get them a good test score. If they don’t get a good test score, parents will complain to the teachers. Therefore, the teachers have to emphasize test taking skills, rather than teaching new stuff. The parents mostly care about the homework that has to do with tests, they don’t really care about assignments like group presentations. A lot of my friends will get some sort of punishment, and some might even get beaten if their scores don’t meet their parents’ expectations. There is a girl in my class that said if she didn’t get a ninety-five percent or above, she’d have to spend the whole weekend studying at home and would not be able to go out. My other friend got a ninety-nine and was crying because she made a careless mistake and didn’t “improve”, so she was so scared she was going to get yelled at by her mom.

Another thing that is really different from my school in the US is my teacher ranks us from first place to last place after a series of tests. It’s so annoying because everyone is so competitive. The top four are always the same, but first place changes between them every once in a while, and they always try to fight for it. Out of the four people, there is one first place and the other three are always so jealous. Sometimes they even bond together to knock first place down, and then there will be a new first place, and they will do it again.

A lot of people want to be friends with kids who have good grades, I don’t know why. It’s also really annoying because I have to be extra careful when I take an English test. Of course, the English tests are super easy for me, but if I make a careless mistake and get a ninety-nine, and if someone gets a one hundred, everyone will think that that person’s English is better than mine. Again, they have a very black and white mindset, “if you get a high score you are good at that thing, if you get a low score you are bad at that thing.” But that’s not necessarily true.

This is one of my worksheets, this is what we get everyday.

Once, my social studies teacher asked, “How come you are not going to international school if you are going to go to college in the US?”

 “Because we want to learn Chinese and get a cultural experience,” I answered, which is how I answer every time someone asks me this question.

“But it’s not going to be useful for you because the tests for college are not going to be in Chinese.”

And then I didn’t know how to answer…

Another time we had a big science project and it could be on anything, I was really excited about it, so I found three of my friends and we started to discuss what our project was going to be about. Those three girls were all “A+ students” so I figured they would have a lot of cool ideas. But actually, they didn’t really discuss or have any ideas, anything I said they just said they didn’t care. Whenever we were supposed to go home and do our own part, often times they would say, “Sorry, I had to go to math class and then I had to do homework, so I had no time.” 

Then I thought “Isn’t this a homework assignment too?” They thought that the science project was last priority because it’s not in the tests, also they don’t really know how to complete it because it’s not that clear how to finish it. You can’t really “check it off”. Their parents think that too, so they were no help when we had to buy supplies, thanks to my dad who helped us buy all our suppliesJ. But our science project was still really hard to complete.

A lot of the education here is just about memorizing stuff, not about understanding it. For example, the science textbook just says what happens and not why it happens, and the problems that we have to write never ask why, so you can just memorize everything, but from my learning experience in the States we never memorized science. It’s the same with the other subjects, in a social studies test we had to write why global warming was happening, and I wrote a very complicated but logical answer, but the teacher gave me a zero just because what I wrote wasn’t in the textbook! Basically, you don’t have to pay much attention in class and just memorize what’s in the textbook to get a good score! But that’s not the point! The point is to understand because that’s not how the world works! I bet the teachers here think I am crazy because I have so many questions and I am consistently asking, “Why?Why?Why?”

Another example is that we don’t have actual art classes here. My interpretation of art is creating something that expresses your own thoughts and feelings, every piece of art is different. But in art class here, we are sewing a pillow right now, and the supplies come in a DIY kit, everyone gets the same kit, so everyone’s art is the same. But I wanted to change mine up a bit, and use some supplies from home, which made it hard for my teacher to grade.

This is the pillow kit

These are the instructions we have to follow.

In the past ten years Taiwan’s education system has been really trying to encourage independent thinking, they are improving, just very slowly. Last semester I got the “additional courses award” (like creativity, teamwork, and stuff like that).

There are good things about this type of education too though, sometimes in life you have to learn to sit still and do what your told even if you really really don’t want to. I feel like some of the kids in my school in America had a very hard time doing that…

I am really glad that I get to experience these two totally different types of education because there is no exact right or wrong, it’s just that the world is a big place, and everyone on earth has different thoughts and opinions. Sometimes we think something is wrong or bad, while others think it’s good. Generally speaking, when we are exposed to new types of learning we feel uncertain and maybe even scared or angry, but everything has its flaws, and too much of anything is bad.

Christmas in Taipei

I took Chloe and Zoe out to dinner recently, just me and the older girls. It was a chance to check in with them about some deeper impressions of how school is going, what they think at the halfway point of their second year in local Taipei school. Given the holiday season, the conversation quickly turned to the differences in celebrating Christmas between Taiwan and California. 

We’re not doing a big nostalgic Americana Christmas celebration - there are no lights up and no tree in the living room (we’re relying on the spectacular tree in the lobby of our building to carry the day :). We were never massive-effort decoration people even back in the States, and this just feels more natural and less forced here. For context, the girls don’t get even one day off from school on the 25th. In comparison, they do get New Year’s Day off, and Mid-Autumn Festival etc. So, naturally I asked them how they felt about it. Chloe and Zoe replied with remarkable equanimity, saying all the right things about how they didn’t feel like Christmas needed to be all about massive displays and mounds of gifts. Part of me wanted to push a little more, to probe if they really felt this way, so I said, “Yes, it would be great if we didn’t always assume that every birthday and every Christmas will involve presents, so that we don’t take it for granted and we really appreciate it when we do receive a gift.” The girls don’t know that in fact we did get them some small presents for Christmas, but I was happy to hear them respond that “of course”, that is the way things should be and we shouldn’t just take it all for granted.

In front of the tree in the lobby.

While I chewed on that, and the BBQ, Chloe then jumped unprompted into a story about her classmate in Xinyi Elementary School. Birthdays were on her mind as Chloe is a December baby, and her classmate has a birthdate only a couple of days before Chloe’s. For small talk, Chloe asked her what she got for her birthday. Without missing a beat, her friend said that her mom took her out to dinner at a restaurant, with table cloth. No mention of a present, and no sense of embarrassment - it was clear to Chloe that this dinner out was a big deal and rare treat. Her friend was so happy to recount this dinner, and it left a deep impression on Chloe of how lucky we are: “Yeah can you imagine, we eat out practically every weekend!” I nearly cried on the spot, partly over the poignancy of the table cloth detail, and mostly out of a sense of pride for how deeply the girls are feeling the life lessons they’re getting here.

What a great way to celebrate the true spirit of Christmas, as they say. I held it together, took a sip of my beer, and we continued chatting over our impromptu Taipei Christmas BBQ meal. It was about 70 degrees yesterday, but it felt like the holidays to us.

Hope you’re all having a great one with family and friends.

Joe

How and why did I get this position?

When I first moved to Taiwan last year, I had no idea what we were doing on the first day of school when the teacher told me to vote, so I just randomly voted. It wasn’t until after a month or two later that I found out that every person that got elected was some sort of “position” or “job” in class. I’m just going to list out the important ones:

#1 The highest position is the class President, and what she or he has to do is make sure all the other positions are doing a good job, and the person that has to tell everybody to bow and greet the teacher before class. Being the class President requires a lot of responsibility.

#2 Then, usually there is a Vice President, that mainly just follows what the President tells him or her what to do.

#3 Next there is the teacher’s Assistant that just helps the teacher organize homework books and helps print things out.

#4 Then there is a “Health and Sanitary Manager,” that makes sure everyone is doing a good job cleaning when it’s time to clean the school (if you read my last post about cleaning the school you would know what I’m talking about). If someone didn’t do a good job, he or she would write the name down on a clipboard, and then would give the clipboard to the teacher and he would then punish the person. The “Health and Sanitary Manager” also has to make sure everyone brushes their teeth after lunch, if someone doesn’t, they will write it on the clipboard too.

 #5 Lastly, there is a “Discipline Controller.” I never ever wanted this position, I always felt so bad for the person that had to do it. This job’s purpose is to replace the teacher whenever the teacher is gone, everyone in Taiwan is super scared of their teacher even if they have a decently nice teacher, so whenever the teacher is gone they feel like they can relax and be naughty. The “Discipline Controller” has to make sure that doesn’t happen. He or she has to make sure that the class isn’t too loud and no one is leaving their desk, and if someone does, they will write it down and give it to the teacher. Therefore, other people often think that the “Discipline Controller” is very annoying. But it is not their fault, they must do their job.

When we were electing the new class positions for this semester, the boy next to me asked, “Can you get really strict or tense sometimes?” I said, “Not often, I’m pretty relaxed." He gave me a weird smile and said, “Perfect.” Then he raised his hand and said, “Excuse me teacher I’d like to nominate Chloe for our Discipline Controller.” “No! My personality doesn’t fit at all for that job!” Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder the teacher said, “Who agrees?”

Half of the class raised their hand! Obviously, they picked me because they think that I will let them be very free and as naughty as they want, but I can’t let that happen!

I have started to get used to being the “Discipline Controller”, the hardest part of the job is finding a balance between not being the goody two shoes, but at the same time, managing the class. Sometimes, when everyone is super noisy, I feel bad telling everyone to shut up. So, everyone takes advantage of me, and it’s hard to make sure everyone is behaving.

In some ways, it's good that I got this job because I can use this chance to learn how to be more strict and firm, and to get up the courage to tell everyone to be quiet. At least I know how hard it is to be a teacher!

My class on our graduation trip. 

TRUE or FALSE?

The girls tell me that there are tests for everything here. I always knew there would be lots of tests (at least once a week) for the basics like Chinese, Math, and Social Studies. But I was surprised to here that there are tests in all the other fuzzier subjects too. In music class, the teacher tests you for singing. She grades you on how loud you are, not on how well you hit your notes (which is good as I suppose, as some may be tone deaf). There are tests in PE, too. Chloe said that there was a paper test on basketball rules: “TRUE or FALSE: if your’e on a three-pointer line and shoot the ball in, it counts as a three-pointer” (I must confess I did not know the answer to this question; Chloe said it’s FALSE). Zoe said there was a test in health class, and one of the questions was “TRUE or FALSE: you are not supposed to roll up your maxi-pad before throwing it away.” I think the answer is TRUE; Zoe said the teacher had demonstrated how to throw away a maxi-pad, with red ink paste on it and all. She also confirmed that boys and girls get different tests; and mentioned that one of the boy’s questions was on how a boy should take care of - in her words - “what’s down there.” There are tests on what to do in an earthquake, where you should go and what you should do. But what gets to me the most are the tests in art. Zoe said that the teacher gave them sewing kits, with holes that had been pre-punched into the fabric. The goal was to sew up the doll. Zoe had some extra time so she used the leftover fabric to make a hat. The teacher gave her a disapproving look, as if that would hurt her grade. Your goal is to just make the doll as you were told, and not be creative. For someone like Zoe, who love art, it’s disappointing to her that there’s really no room for creativity. It’s all about following the rules, coloring in the lines. Zoe said when she decided to shade something, her classmates were like, “Whoa, that looks so cool.” The expectation here is to just draw cartoon like two-dimensional characters (the irony here does not escape me).

As you’ve read before, we’ve told the girls not to care about their grades, especially not in art. 

But I can’t help and wonder - if you are not encouraged to be creative, how can you be innovative? If you’re told to color a certain way, how do you mix colors? If you’re told to build a doll from a kit, how do you build one from scratch? 

The good thing is that the girls still remember what it was like to take art back in the Bay Area. They had fond memories of their art teacher. As Chloe said, “Susan was just there to give you advice, not to tell you what to make.” They also had fond memories of their old US hippie school, with its no homework, no tests, no grades policy. The school was required to administer one standardized test a year so they could see how the students performed relative to other kids in California. But that was it. And they still managed to learn.

Chloe was excited last night because she remembered that she had gotten “picked” to go to coding class. The teacher had only two spots and had asked if she was interested in going during nap time. She couldn’t wait. In the limited amount of coding she’d done in the US, she loved the freedom to be able to think and solve a problem in any way she wanted. She loved making the cat in Scratch walk around a maze. There were set semantics and rules you had to follow, but ultimately, the test was on herself: how could she create something from scratch?

Because of this culture of valuing tests, I wonder if kids here are inherently motivated to do better, or if they just gun for the best score so their parents will not be upset. I’ve heard of kids getting beat when they don’t get 100%. When I was back here for local school in 5th grade, I remember a kid getting beat for getting a score below 50%. The whole class winced as the teacher used his bamboo stick and beat him on the butt. I was glad to not have attended the local junior high school here, as I heard stories about kids getting beat for the number of points they missed. If you got a 40%, then you’d be beat 40 times to get up to 80%, since that was the bare minimum level of “good.” If you got a 50%, you’d only be beat 30 times. The teacher would start with a fresh bamboo stick on Monday. He’d have to toss it out on Friday as it would be falling apart by the end of the week.

For some reason, the kids here have a hard time being motivated to learn in English class. Chloe and Zoe both observed how the English teachers are constantly trying to get them to learn more; they motivate with presents, candies and snacks. It’s gotten to a point where the girls are even tired by it, commenting that the kids seem to just want the prize and not care about really learning the language. My hypothesis is that the parents also don’t care about English as much as Chinese or Math (why would they?) so they de-emphasize whether or not they need to test well in it, thus creating a culture where kids have a hard time with it. I’m also seeing this with Phoebe in the music class I take her to every Saturday. She’s highly motivated to accumulate enough stamps on her card so that she can exchange it for a prize. Last week she got to go through the treasure chest to pick something; I was reminded of going to the doctor’s office in the US, where you get a prize for surviving the flu shot. Except here, she’s picking a prize for doing her music homework. She’s only five, so I don’t blame her for finding great amusement in accumulating stamps on a card.

To show you how much the Chinese culture values tests and rewards, you even get a free ice cream sandwich if you score well on a test. We went to a very popular ice cream sandwich stand the other day, after coming back from summer break. There was a flyer that said the following: “Have you eaten this since the start of school? If you get 100%, you get 100NT off. Ice cream sandwich will only cost you 20NT. Get 98% and get 98NT off. Get 80% get 80NT off.” It’s a pretty nice promotion given that a sandwich would only cost you $0.67 USD if you got 100% on a test. Note that if you get less than 80%, you don’t get any discount. There’s no “A for Effort!” here. But the promotion was offered right at the start of school, which felt a bit hollow since kids weren’t really testing yet. 

Promo on getting a sandwich for just 20NT, if you get 100% on your test.

They are starting to gear up for midterms. I don’t even need to look on the calendar and I can feel it. A couple of weeks before the tests, the teachers start to cram in as much homework as possible. They have small quizzes. The kids start to get anxious. I can only repeat myself and tell Chloe and Zoe not to worry about grades and tests. TRUE or FALSE? Tests suck! 

They all got sandwiches, even without test scores. Yay. 

Phoebe the Sunday Street Vendor

Phoebe woke up this morning wanting to go sell stuff. She was working on some scarves yesterday, and had woke up early in the morning to work on a glove. It was 94 degrees outside, so I was tempted to say no. But she had this relentless enthusiasm around selling her goods, so I agreed. We gathered up all the stuff that she's made over the last few months, and brought them to the subway station near us. She set up her spot and started to sell.

Setting up her stand.

All set up in a couple of minutes.

Pompom scarves were 50-60NT (that's $1.70 - $2.00USD), jewelry was anywhere from 10-50NT ($0.30 - $1.70USD), coasters 10NT, bags 30NT - 50NT. The glove was 50NT.

She didn't do a lot of marketing around it, although on her way out the door Zoe wrote "Come buy Stuff" in Chinese on a sheet of paper. So Phoebe sat there and hollered "Do you want to buy something?" in Chinese. Not a lot of people stopped at first, but then, someone stopped and asked, "did you MAKE all this?" And then she stared saying "Do you want to buy something? I made it." Then people started stopping to take a look. And it's true, she did make all of this stuff! The first 10 minutes went by a bit slow, but then miraculously she actually started selling stuff. Her first customer was a family with two girls. The younger daughter even tried on the backpack:

Trying on the backpack.

Then we had a couple of young guys who bought a bracelet and a pompom scarf. One woman bought a couple of scarves, forcing Phoebe to have to do some addition (one was 60NT and the other was 50NT). The coolest sell was when she saw a Caucasian man walking buy and, instead of hollering in Chinese, she spoke in English. The guy stopped and was a bit incredulous that she made all those scarves. He asked her how long it took her to make the pink pompom scarf, and Phoebe said "about an hour." And he bought it from her!

Such a cool guy!

More customers...

Different variety of customers

She's adding with her fingers to give her customer the total cost for two scarves.

Even though it was scorching hot, I was surprised she actually sold out of her pompom scarves. That and the jewelry were the most popular. At the end, she sold the backpack. I was hoping she wouldn't, as I really liked the backpack and wanted to use it myself. 

One thing I did not expect was the number of customers who wanted to take a photo with her after buying. A couple of them even gave me their business cards, and invited us to lunch. 

I also did not expect that a group of folks would joke about buying her. This group of grandparents came by and Phoebe asked them if they wanted to buy something, and they said "No, but we want to eat something. Do you know where we can go?" She shrugged and one guy said, "I want to buy little sister" (referring to Phoebe), "can I buy you?" Phoebe nodded, but then realized she had made a mistake when the other friend joked, "Really?! I'm going to take you home with me." Good thing I was there. They weren't serious, of course. I asked her why she thought they might want to buy her, and she chuckled, "They want to grill me since they're hungry." (Yes, this is the type of humor that Phoebe has, insane).

We sold out most of the goods in less than an hour. I was about to pass out from the heat so I convinced her to leave. She made 470NT, which isn't bad for a five year old.

First day of school

It's now our second year here in Taipei, I can't believe how fast the first year flew by. This year, we headed straight to their classrooms, I didn't even remember to get a photo of them at the front gate of the school! So here they are on the balcony. The main difference this year is that they have their student IDs around their necks, since they are able to take the subway by themselves to and from school now.

Chloe is in 6th and has the same teacher this year (1/2 , 3/4, and 5/6 classes have the same teacher for two years). Zoe is in 5th has a new teacher, who seems genuinely nice and and understanding. 

Climbing up three flights of stairs

Zoe's classroom. She's there in the back, pretending not to see me. 

Chloe's in sixth grade! Which means she is in the graduating class of her elementary school

Joe took Phoebe to school while I took the older two, and Phoebe was pretty excited to be back.

Phoebe's first day. She's very local now. She will also be graduating from her school this year.

The first day of school also happened to fall on a Wednesday, which is a half day, so we went out to ramen for lunch. 

Finals

Chloe and Zoe finished taking finals last week. They were proud of the fact that the teacher didn’t have to read the questions to them. When they first moved here, they couldn’t read any of the questions on the test. For example, the math test was mostly word problems, so while they may have been able to solve the problems in English, they couldn’t even start since they couldn’t read the questions. The tests here are just sheets of densely packed Chinese characters. This time around, for both the core Math and Chinese subjects, both girls read everything themselves.

Over dinner after the first day of finals, Chloe says, “Mr. Chen graded all the Mandarin tests during lunch, and in the afternoon, he went down the list of students and asked if they wanted to hear what they got on the test in front of everyone. When he got to me, he joked ‘Are you sure Chloe? You sure you want to know your score? You’re not going to cry, are you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m positive I want to know my score.’ And then he said, ’NINETY-ONE!”…And the whole class cheered! The boy next to me was like, ‘Wow, you’re awesome, you even did better than me!’”

Tears well up in my eyes. The image of a whole class of 28 kids rooting for my daughter, fresh off the plane from the US, who couldn’t read any of the test questions the first semester, but who is finishing the year strong. It wasn’t the grade that struck me; it was the sense of empathy her class embodied. Their sense of collective pride for their classmate made me want to go and hug every one of them. A classroom full of eleven year olds pulling for each other, encouraging each other to do better. A class of kids who are brought up in an environment that values competition, but yet who are willing to encourage Chloe to work harder. If this doesn’t embody ‘class unity,’ I don’t know what does.

I think this is what Chloe and Zoe are referring to when they say they love their school. It’s these moments that move them to want to work harder, learn more, and discover what it means to live in a new country.

A sample math test. The majority are word problems, or have words in them where even one word makes a big difference in the question (ex: units like kilograms, acres, tons all have one word in common, but not knowing the other word destroys your will to live).

Celebrating the end of finals with a trip to the amusement park.

You make a mess you clean it up!

First of all, there are no janitors at our school, The cleaning is just on us. Every day, from 2:50pm to 3:10pm is what’s called “cleaning time” for the whole school, everyone has a cleaning job, and we work in groups, when it’s cleaning time we do it. For example, I work with these two other really nice girls, and our first cleaning job was sweeping leaves on the first floor. After we did that for a month or two, then we were assigned to cleaning the bathroom - that was brutal! Then after a while, we were the people to dump the trash - that was also pretty disgusting.

Sweeping leaves was okay, because you are just sweeping nature, we also used these super cool brooms made out of real twigs, and you don’t have to smell poop or trash. Cleaning the bathroom was just plain gross, when we first got the job I realized that the scrub for the toilet that people poop and pee in, and the scrub that is used for the sink that we wash our hands in, looks exactly the same!!! And you know what that means? It means that it’s extremely possible that when we are washing our hands we are touching poop and pee! When I found out I freaked out, and told my teacher that we had to label each one, so we will know which scrub is for what. After telling him that we are washing our hands with poop and pee, he agreed, so I stuck the labels on. Also, most of the toilets in Taiwan are squat toilets, for those of you that don’t know what a squat toilet is, it’s just a whole in the ground instead of a whole in a chair. It’s harder to aim when you go in a squat toilet, therefore there are often splats of pee around the hole, and then we have to mop that pee. Squat toilets also tend to stink more than normal toilets so when we are mopping we hold our breaths.

The upper left picture is a squat toilet, The picture on the very bottom is a poster that reminds everyone to aim well when they go pee. Direct translation is "Hi kids, please squat properly, don't let pee pee and poo poo get outside of the toilet, it will make the bathroom stinky!" 

Then, I dumped and sorted the trash. This is how it works, we take the bag of trash to the big trash cans area, then we use tongs to separate normal paper, glass, milk and drink cartons, food trash, hard plastics, and thin plastics. I thought this job was actually okay because our job was just to dump the trash, it’s just that sometimes we help the other kids out to sort it too. The only thing that sort of sucked was that it really stunk! Many ants too.

Even though I think that “cleaning time” is sort of disgusting (sorry, I think I gave a bit too much information), I am still really glad to have this experience of discipline, basically if you make a mess you have to clean it up! There isn’t going to be some janitor who is going to clean up after you when they didn’t even make the mess! Now that I think about it, I was pretty spoiled in the USA, we had a janitor that would clean the school, and people would take it for granted! Even though there is a janitor in the USA it doesn’t necessarily make everything cleaner because people just think “Oh there is someone cleaning after me, guess it’s just fine that I got pee on the toilet!” Versus here, people think “Oh cleaning the bathroom is a real pain, I must make sure I don’t make a mess!” Because everyone cleans the school together, so they know how it’s like! And I’m glad that now I know how it’s like too! 

These are the stalls with the squat toilets.

Hike with Docent Joe

One of the great things about where we live is our vicinity to Elephant Mountain. It takes us about five minutes by foot to get to the base. When we first moved here, we noticed that there were always a ton of people walking towards the mountain on the weekends. And when we checked TripAdvisor, we saw that it's the NUMBER ONE rated thing to do here in Taipei! The whole path has steps on it, which is good and bad: some days it feels like a painful session of Stairmaster, and on others it's pretty brainless, you just keep counting. There are multiple paths that could get quite confusing, but it starts out with just two: the one on the right is more steep, but has more photo opportunities with Taipei 101, and the one on the left is less sleep, but makes you feel like you're in the middle of the jungle. The girls are often too busy to go make the trek during the week, and the weekends can get pretty busy with all the tourists, but we did find a recent weekend to go. Go early and there aren't too many crowds.

Joe has always loved nature, and many of the plants and animals he sees on the trail make him nostalgic for his childhood days growing up in Taiwan. He can give a pretty good science lesson the whole way up. We stopped to check out parasitic plants, banyan trees, spiders, and lichen...

Live science lessons. Look at Zoe's face in the bottom right...I think it was something slimy.

Taking a break at the top.

Note the swirly plants: one on the left looks like an alien, and one on the top right like an asparagus!

Banyan and lots of leaves.

At the top there's also a place where you can do some dips and pull-ups. that's what Phoebe is trying to do.

Obligatory selfie! 

Chloe's first Wushu Competition

We were super proud of Chloe this past weekend, as she competed in her first Wushu tournament. With all the homework she's had with learning a new language, she's still found some time to practice. Many of the elementary schools in this area have an after-school program that teaches Wushu, but her school is one of the few that doesn't. As a result, she was the only one from her school to compete. Some schools had 10 or so children there who would cheer each other on. But Chloe just had her family! To be honest, I was so nervous I couldn't even cheer. I was worried she'd jump and twist her ankle or something.

Here we are getting a snack after the tournament. Chloe is so sweet though, the first thing she wanted to do afterwards was to go buy a birthday present for her friend.