Welp

Things fall apart, or so they say. I won't be heading out to Bali after all, and Marina won't be coming out to visit. Oh well. So it goes, right?

I haven't decided for sure whether this means I'll be returning prematurely. I'm leaning towards a short trip or two within Taiwan before flying home at the end of August to spend a couple weeks in the States visiting friends and family and generally catching up. Frankly, that sounds wonderful.

School has been going well. It's dawned on me that in a bare few weeks I will have taught Kindergarten for a year. That is, I will have been responsible for the education of 8 kids for an entire year. Unimaginable, 14 months ago. Easy, now. I could even do it again, if I had to. Hah!

Perspective shift

When things are looking bad from one point of view, take steps to move to another.

My plans for the time following my trip to Bali with Marina are in disarray. That is, I have no set plans yet. I have no job prospects, my applications seem to fall on deaf ears. I have a vague idea of where I want to live, and a pretty clear idea of what I'd like to do, but until I find someone willing to hire me, I am out of luck.

Short term, things are looking brighter than ever. My workload at school is minimal at the moment, due to relaxed expectations in the time leading up to Grad Show. It's stressful in a way, but it's also easier. Skimming stuff is both accepted and expected, and spending a few extra minutes at playtime is okay. Even better: I've been told that starting in August I'll be down to three kids, and that I'm expected to blaze through the remaining curriculum quickly in order to spend more time with them at the park, going to movies, or just generally chillin'.

Sounds like fun.

Continuing on

Two more adventures in socialized healthcare, dealing with Will's disappearance, the stress of co-directing a 45-minute musical featuring 36 3-7 year-olds, job applications, and food consultancy. Two weeks in the life abroad.

I developed a mystery rash on my leg on Saturday, and so set out for the clinic. Finding it closed, I took the MRT to the University hospital. Finding only the emergency room open I sat my butt down at the low end of triage (and felt guilty even for that). After a long chat with my neighbor, a young/old Indonesian girl here as a housekeeper (with her own fascinating story), wound up seeing a nervous young doctor who decided I'd had a bad reaction to a bugbite. 700 NT and a tube of steroids later, and I was on my way.

Today I wandered over to the other clinic after work and sat for an hour. The doctor took one look at my foot (big old blister, likely infected, totally within his domain as a general practitioner) and referred me to a dermatologist. Another half-hour wait for a five minute consulation and a prescription for a week of antibiotics. At least I got what I needed, and the wait wasn't really that bad. 200 NT, which works out to about 7 bucks, US.

Not having Will at school has had its ups and downs. Disciplining him was pretty much impossible, and he had a lot of trouble paying attention during play practice (more on this soon). He got the other kids riled up, and slowed down the class at times. He always had a smile on. He would come up to me and say, "I like you Teacher Ben!" Occasionally he'd call me Teacher Emma (my co-teacher) by mistake, and then laugh in embarrassment, hilariously. The kid was adorable, and you couldn't keep him down if you tried. I miss him in the way that I've realized means that I really valued him, which is a new kind of pain for me. It's no fun, but I'm glad to have recognized it and made its acquaintance.

Helping Celine run the grad show has been a magnificent pain in the ass. We have too few kids, too many requirements, too few costumes, too little time, and too little patience. It's the end of the year, everyone is cranky, and we're losing time from the curriculum that the kids need to have finished before they go on to grade 1. And all there is to be done is to continue on and find a way to make it tolerable for the kids.

Job applications suck. Sending out resumes and not even receiving confirmation receipts is frustrating and discouraging, and all I can do is continue on looking until I find what I need. It will all work out in the end. It's just making it to the end that's tough.

In other news, I have been advising the newly opened burrito stall in the night market on how to properly season and garnish their burritos. It has been a fun experience, and I have gotten to know the owner well enough to have been given his phone number and life story. New bullet on resume: Burrito flavor consultant, Taipei, Taiwan, 2008.

Bummer

I lost my first kid this week: Will, who used to be named Pewitt. He was a hellion in the beginning, but got much better until the end of the first semester. At the beginning of the second semester he was having a rough time, not paying attention, dozing off. In the last few weeks before he got yanked from my class he was doing tons better, finishing his work early, engaging the material.

Personality-wise, Will was probably my favorite. He never took things personally, which made him hard to discipline, but also meant that he pretty much always had a smile on his face. How can you argue with that?

He disappeared from class a week and a half ago, and we got confirmation today that his mom doesn't want him to attend our school anymore, and that's final. She's crazy, in a bad way, but there's not much we can do about it.

I miss him, and wish that I had had the chance to say goodbye. At least I'll get to say a proper farewell to the rest. Still, I feel like I got the most accomplished with Will. He really turned over a new leaf in class, after being maybe the worst behaved kid in the school for the last three years.

Oh well. What is there to be done?

Your latest news from around the globe

After a couple of months of long periods of inactivity with occasional bursts of effort, I have completed my latest model. Martin is much, much better at this than I am, but I'm still proud of what I've put together.
Now to start on the next one!

In other news, I've been thinking a lot about cultural exhaustion, lately. Maybe it's delayed-action culture shock, or maybe I'm just tired, but lately I've really been missing a lot of the comforting things I took for granted about living in the states. Being able to read the signs comes readily to mind. Understanding conversations as I walk through a city. Getting cultural references. It seems like the effort of staying mentally active in a place that encourages me to be lazy is starting to get to me.

I'm tired. I'm almost (almost!) ready to go home.

Thunder

I was walking home from work a few minutes ago, and caught a BRIGHT flash in the sky. So bright and so near overhead that I jumped into the air. Before I landed, the thunder hit, loud enough to startle the hell out of me. So loud that I could physically feel it in my bones. So loud that every car alarm for a block around me went off at once.

Wow.

Woosh

Woosh is the sound of how quickly the weeks are being torn off the calendar. We practice daily at school for the grad show, and that cuts into a big part of my teaching time, meaning that each day zooms past at work.

Katherine has gone home, and I've been going out to dinner with Martin more often. It's good times, but it has meant that I've been swimming a little less regularly. Gonna have to really clamp down on that. I've also been spending more time hanging out with Ali and Kaitlin, though Kaitlin will shortly be getting busier, as she has taken a new job. All three of us are very, very ready to be done with the current school year. 12 straight months of school is fucking hard.

I've kept up writing more regularly, though an increase in output seems to have coincided with a decline in quality. Obligation versus desire, and all that good stuff. I've been taking pictures every now and then (though too lazy to edit and post to flickr). No exciting trips to speak of, besides a ho-hum trip to Fulong, a good day of surfing at Daxi, and an afternoon of dragon boat races out in Xindian. This weekend there is a pool party on Saturday, and I'm considering heading to the coast on Sunday for some more surfing. I'd like to get out of the city. We'll see if it happens.

The weather has been interesting lately. Hot and humid and cloudy, with daily thunderstorms in the afternoon. Pretty cool, though I'd rather be relaxing at home on the couch listening to the rain and thunder than teaching a crowd of unruly children. I guess that's just how it is. This morning I awoke to find ants in my laptop. A less-than-desirable side effect of all the rain.

Keep on truckin', I guess. Muddle through 'til August, when I'm done and it's travel time.

Oh, one more thing: I have an initial phone interview tomorrow morning for a job as a study coordinator at the Menlo Park VA hospital. Wish me luck!