Monday, December 21, 2009

A Day in the Life of Teacher Sophie



(Jerry)

Auntie cooked some ambiguous, chewy chicken parts for lunch and covered them with thick curry, making it impossible to spot and gnaw off the stuff I grew up considering edible, which means I’m at the McDonalds next to school filling my belly with french fries, and, escaping (to McDonalds?) the madness that is preschool for an hour while the kiddies sleep, or, more likely, pinch each other in the dark. I spent this morning asking Richard what he’s looking for up his nose, explaining how “it’s cold out so mama T needs a hat and baby t needs some mittens,” crawling on the ground like a cat, (not) smelling soap on kids’ hands, trying to respectfully dissuade my co-teacher from asking the kids, “Do you want to kill yourself?” when they hold scissors incorrectly, asking over and over again for Allen to wait until he’s inside the bathroom to pull down his pants, and all the time wondering, is this seriously my life? Not that it’s bad - as you can imagine I laugh a lot. I’m under no great stress, I’m happy, and yet still I wonder how I came to this part of the world, teaching preschool, living this bright, smelly life.

Most of the time I’m inspired to write when something out of the ordinary happens or when I experience some shock to my sensibilities but after four months of sloppy kisses and phonics a crazy day like this one is nothing out of the ordinary and certainly not inspirational. And so, in the name of honesty rather than inspiration I present you with, “A Day in the (Silly, Smelly) Life of Teacher Sophie,” and in doing so, dispel the fiction that my life is all sunsets, islands, momentous feelings.

Most days I wake up to Max’s phone alarm at 7:15 and accidentally drop the phone on his head while trying to turn it off, apologize, but secretly hope he will wake up and drink coffee with me. Most days he rolls over and falls back to sleep. I shower and get a little sweaty afterwards grinding coffee beans in our little manual grinder. If Max boiled water the day before I put it through the filter and then boil it again to make coffee in the french press and if he did not I pour tap water in the kettle and hope the purported metals will not cause permanent bodily damage (The Buddhist Master Max meditates with says American water will kill you and that Taiwanese water is good for you, so I find it useful to think about that.). I sit around drinking coffee and watching the Daily Show or listening to NPR, dress too carelessly, and rush out the door. Walking down Xiamen I nod hello to neighbors and hold my breath past those rubbing polish into their wooden and leather furniture.



(Xiamen Je)

Once I get to Tongan Road I join a stream of suited people on their ways to work. In the Guting MRT station the trains come fast and full and I throw myself into the almost entirely Asian crowd like someone drunk at a punk concert. If I’m lucky I can read a little bit on the train ride up North, but it’s more likely I’ll be pinned against strangers for those seventeen minutes, or at least until we get to Taipei Main Station.

For the first half hour at work I catch up with Kiah and Sebastian and Sean, the foreign teachers with whom I share desk space. We prep lessons for that day and at 9:40 we walk with trepidation upstairs to our classrooms. When the kids rush, smiling, to the classroom door in the morning and scream “Teacher Sophie! Everybody, Teacher Sophie’s here!” I regret my trepidation and count myself lucky for hugs, big personalities in little people, soft, squishy faces.



(Sophia's soft face, which I sometimes squish)

We play and talk and read and write and yell and eat and hush and make and cry and laugh from 9:40 to 12:30. I like to think I’ve become a better teacher since August but a more accurate description of my development is that I’ve become better at predicting when shit will hit the fan and learned techniques to avoid trouble when possible. I’m also better at plowing through the madness of a day with a good sense of humor. For example: if I give a lesson in glue application before passing the glue out only two kids will get stuck to each other and/or their art projects rather than five or six. If I ask kids not to draw on their writing books before I pass them out only half of them will draw on their writing books, etc… From 12:30 until 1:40 they nap and I escape to read or write or eat french fries somewhere before heading back to school at 1:50. It’s more playing, talking, reading, writing, yelling, eating, hushing, making, crying, laughing until 4 at which point I stumble out of school, sometimes passing Max on the way in to teach evening classes to older kids.

After work I usually go to a coffee shop down the street from school called Ikari to write, or read when I can’t bring myself to write. On the way I pass a new bakery and hope the woman standing outside of it doesn't recognize me and offers me a fortieth sample of the same nutty muffin I've been "trying" for weeks now. From Ikari a whole wall of windows looks out over the busy street. I enjoy the lattes and the people watching and hate the awful “musac” they play. It’s a posh place (our school is in a posh neighborhood) and frequented by an odd assortment of people: old men with pocket-watches drinking tea while reading newspapers, old women lounging on the couches and rubbing their bare feet while they chat, brightly clad high school kids eating chicken wings from a bucket or taking “selfies” on their phone cameras before starting their homework. I’ve become quite comfortable here. I like to think of myself as a sort of fixture in this place - that girl who moves to “her” table as soon as someone vacates it and camps there for a few hours until the bearded guy comes and hands her a helmet at which point she packs up and hops on a scooter for home.

Max and I usually eat dinner together but sometimes we pick up food in his sister’s neighborhood and eat it together with her in her apartment. We get some delicious beef noodles for 90NT (less than three USD!) in the Shida night market or Japanese teppanyaki around the corner from her place. Sometimes we go to Gonguan market for Vietnamese or falafel or rice burgers at the Australian fast food chain “Mos Burger.” At home we like to make pizza and omelets while we watch Ugly Betty, three seasons of which we’ve devoured shamelessly in the past few months. Sometimes we read, sometimes I write while Max plays guitar. Less often we go out to see some music at a reggae bar near 101 or drink two for one beer at dark bars on Roosevelt or Shida. Some of the best nights are the nights we go to HJ’s, a restaurant owned by Kiah’s adopted godfather here, and sit at the bar talking with him and the cooks Willie and Sil while we eat his famous chicken salad and chicken hearts and drink his stinging Chinese alcohol.

Most weekday nights we go to bed around midnight tired and happy.
Of course, life interrupts this schedule, and sometimes I must adventure East for random provisions or to the Riverside Park for a run. For better or for worse (and usually for better) this is “A Day in the Life of Teacher Sophie,” and proof of my good fortune here in Taiwan.



(There's Sam and Willie!)

Most weekday nights we go to bed around midnight tired and happy.

Of course, life interrupts this schedule, and sometimes I must adventure East for random provisions or to the Riverside Park for a run. For better or for worse (and usually for better) this is “A Day in the Life of Teacher Sophie,” and proof of my good fortune here in Taiwan.

It seems I have nothing very tidy to conclude with. This not-story just kinda ends with the anticipation of another day and then unconsciousness.

For now it's lights out. The boy is already asleep.

For your enjoyment, a message to my dad from Jerry:

Hi Dusty,

I love you. I have cookie give to you. My name is Jerry. I like a transformers and spiderman and ironman and batman. I home I will play with Justin. My brother's name is Eric. I go to school I see my little brother (that's a lie). My class have Daniel Stone. Because I like some Richard. I like a Erica.

Bye bye

p.s. I give to you a fire engine.
p.p.s. Teacher Justin eats a pizza.
p.p.p.s. My favorite story is a transformers. I have a transformers underwear.
p.p.p.p.s. I like a monster give to you.




(Because you can't get too many Jerry pictures)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Green Island Vacation con Vivian



The writer of the Lonely Plant guide to Taiwan has only puked aboard a ship twice in his life - going to Green Island (1) and returning to Taitung from Green Island (2). With this knowledge we woke up two hours before departure and munched on some dramamine. A taxi driver arrived promptly at 8:30 to take us to the dock (we got an amazing package deal with all this stuff included). He had a sign with Max's name on it, and a crusty red smile full of betle nut (and in case you're curious what it looks like -
).

I'd heard that betle nut was much more popular down south but it's pretty shocking to see so many men and women with rusty lips and teeth. Taitung is a much smaller city with cleaner air. It reminds me a bit of Linkou, the Taipei suburb where Sam lives, but the buildings aren't so tall and everything is a little messier, smellier, more compact. While unpacking in our dim hotel room we heard firecrackers and announcements, or advertisements, broadcast from vans. Looking out the windows we suffocated on stinky tofu smell and caught sight of a parade snaking around the corner of the street. Walking around the city that evening looking for food, we heard this strange parade over and over again, and later, from bed, we still heard it. There's something eerie and futuristic about the chirpy voices sounding from the vans. Sometimes in Taiwan I feel as though I'm on the set of the movie "2050" with no sight of green, or perhaps a few scraggly sights of green, nothing but efficient rectangular buildings and advertisements as far as the eye can see. Max and I also get that futuristic feeling riding along the Riverside Park with long views of Taipei like a pastel-colored leggo creation beneath a sky that looks as likely to host UFO's as birds.

As the Taiwanese say, "Ay-yuh." What a tangent, teacher.

Where were we, Taitung? OK.

To our delight the sickening boat from Taitung to Green Island is called, "Uranus." (As you can imagine, a series of dirty jokes followed this realization.) While waiting at the pier a woman offered us a banana and later an orange. A man looked at my hair and called me beautiful. The boat was wide and the seats spacious but so full of barf bags we approached them nervously. Twenty minutes later Uranus hiked up and down waves like shark's teeth while we knocked around in our spacious seats and watched water fall over the windows. Only a few minutes into the trip the puking began. Vivian Max and I tried to block out the sounds with our ipods but with ten minutes of boat ride left Max finally hit the bag. We walked off the boat with weak legs and collapsed on our beds at "Jack's Boutique Hotel." Right away the woman in charge of the empty hotel, Angel, set us up with a map and two scooters and off we went for lunch and then adventure. We went to the restaurant she recommended, "The Fisherman" (where Angel also happens to work). We ate beside the water, which chilled our fried rice and kept the sashimi cold. Later we'd acknowledge that we all felt a little disappointed just then. We'd only seen the least beautiful stretch of island and there is a gloomy mood to the people here - a content but sedated and dark, wintry mood - so unlike the cutesie, friendly mood of Taipei. Of course that makes sense though. These people brace against cold winds, care-free foreigners and wealthier Taiwanese. There are two or three communities comprised of a few dozen ram-shackled cottages, restaurants, some bigger but abandoned-looking homes or perhaps motels, lost roosters, stiff-eared muts without homes to lose, deer with ropes around their necks and goats attached to gates. Below is a picture of such a deer.



People sit around in living rooms with gold and red shrines, bathed in florescent lights, spitting betle nut and enjoying each other's company. Some people run errands or work in the restaurants, some fish, some find work in the tourist industry. Teenagers hang around the 7-11 slurping hot noodle soup from paper bowls or hang over the rails looking out at the ocean with cigarettes between their lips.

After lunch at The Fisherman we took a nap and woke up around dusk, scurried out the door to the hot springs, one of two natural salt water hot springs in the whole world. We took a left instead of a right out of Jack's, and, though it was dark, saw the outlines of mammoth mountains and chunks of rock like black pieces of torn paper stuck in seething water. The hot springs by the water blew us away and initiated the theme of the vacation - surprise and wonder. Max and I boiled our bodies in salt water while the wind off the water twirled our hair and burned our eyes. Eventually we joined Vivian in a warm and sheltered pool and stayed there for awhile just sitting and breathing.

We woke up the next day to the sound of a tearful Chinese voice wailing. Between two boarded up shops a crowd gathered to listen to the person in the gold robe standing before a shrine. A funeral. After breakfast we watched a somber but musical parade pass by and saw a large picture of the man who had died.



That day was one of suprise and wonder. Surprise and wonder, over and over again. I relished the free feeling of my own scooter and the cliffs hovering over the empty road, the sound of The Pacific roaring, the site of it crashing in teal and bubbling over in white, cloudy skies, palm trees and also dune grass - an implosion of vistas. We stopped and got off the scooters now and then to hop along rocks and search beaches for shells. We spent the whole morning this way and barely made it back by two for our snorkeling adventure.






In no time a man we were instructed to call "Coach" had us outfitted in wet suits and snorkeling gear. We were the only foreigners in our group but luckily one of the Taiwanese men spoke English well enough to translate for us. Unfortunately, he was a very literal man who took Coach for his word when he recommended stuffing leaves in our ears as ear-plugs... The water is a colder blue color, not aqua like Puerto Rico where the three of us (+ rum) snorkeled before, but very clear. We walked carefully out on the coral before reaching the drop-off. All the Asians in life jackets followed coach around on a chain of intertubes but we were given permission to swim around on our own. Surpise and wonder. Below the lake-blue water were thousands of the most beautiful fish imaginable, swimming inches from our faces or puttering around and sucking off mansions of coral reef below. Every once in a while Max and Vivian and I would explode through the surface to exclaim something but for the most part we just wandered around in the sea world by ourselves watching the

yellow wrasse,



moorish idol,



blackbelt hogfish,



and bullethead parrotfish.



The next morning we breakfasted by the water and took the scooters to the entrance of a trail we'd caught sight of the day before. This day was cooler and cloudier than the last, a good day for moving. The "ancient" trail was well established with stone steps and signs to help hikers identify different native plants, but no words of warning regarding the yellow and black spiders with bodies the size of our palms and legs so thick we could see the joints. We walked carefully, keeping an eye out for those spiders, which we've since learned are golden orb spiders.



(there it is eating a bird!)

We smelled the dead baby deer before we saw it. It's head had caught on a metal-wire fence and it's face had been eaten away by bugs and maybe birds. Later we saw a baby goat caught the same way and two women bent over it, helping the little one out of the trap while its mother looked on.

It was a beautiful walk. We sat and nibbled dry fruit from a look-out before hopping on the scooters again and discovering the "The Little Great Wall of China."



We confused our tired bodies in the hot springs for hours later that afternoon, moving back and forth from hot to cold springs. It was nice to see clearly what we had only seen in shadow before and Max went hopping along the rock trails by the water and eventually scaled a mountain to find Ireland. Vivian and I soaked and talked in an outdoor pool before a bearded and flanneled man talked us out of the water and into climbing up the hunk of land to see what he had seen. Surprise and wonder.




That night we ate the most delicious meal at a small restaurant owned by Green Island's most bohemian couple. She wore a long skirt and played latin music, which thrilled Vivian who's been missing reggaeton.

The next day, our last full day on the island, we set out with lose plans and found a temple inside a cave, a graveyard, an old abandoned prison, a rocky path to a beachy inlet walled in with cliffs and crags, a treasure chest of beautiful shells. I looked through shells for hours thinking about nothing memorable. Vivian searched for shells in the watery places and found tiny purple jelly fish. Max risked his life scaling yet another mountain and at the top found himself face to face with a huge black billy-goat. He sidled his way along the grassy plateau, avoiding the wrath of the horned goats, and ran back down through the Gonguan Community, through the graveyard and down the path to find me at the beach with a furrowed brow and a lap full of shells. We stayed down there for hours, mostly in our own worlds, wondering at this Green Island. Afterwards Max took us up to meet the goats in China (for some reason that particular chunk of land belongs to China). We ran around in the grass and climbed a mound of rock to look out over the grass and beach and ocean.




This morning we woke up to see the sun rise from "The Great Little Wall of China." We nibbled on bread with sweet beans and watched the clouds turn a little pink but the sun did not show itself. It was still nice to see a new day glow open.

Now we're back at Jack's, assembling our stories and clothes and things, preparing for another sickening boat ride. It feels as though I've been away quite awhile. I read over my post from the train and I'm happy to say that I fell asleep red-faced and wind-whipped after every day spent with The Pacific. I've been red-faced most mornings too, for though the sun hid it burned. I like the full circle of a trip like this... home - train- boat - island - boat - train - home... and I'll be so happy to see our little apartment on Xiamen je. Going away makes coming back so sweet.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

On the Train to Taitung


A man in a sharp blue suit sleeps not a foot away from me. Vivian Max and I sit on a train to Taitung, a city in the southeast corner of Taiwan, from which we’ll depart tomorrow morning for the beautiful Green Island, a rocky pebble tossed and stuck in the massive Pacific somehow (there is something so frightening and impossible to me about little islands in big oceans). The man’s snoring is not as loud as some I’ve heard but it rattles so deep within him I feel it in my own bones. The man in front of us shoots his phlegm around from the back to the front of his throat, his neighbor sneezes, and the man two seats in front of Max hacks and coughs as though he will die before we get there. These morbid coughs are interrupted by lighthearted burps, the kind a person pops out for fun, or snot-rockets, so at least he’s enjoying his untimely death. Either I’ve been in masked Taipei too long or these exceptionally fluid-filled people go out of their way to maneuver the stuff around. Besides these sounds I hear the hums of the train and feel the rumble of train on track. A little girl with wild hair squeals and leaps around the floor of the train car like a frog while her grandpa chews on the beetle nut that puts a smell like celery or radishes in the air. As for the sights – not even phlegmy sounds or bitter smells could take away from such beauty.

We decided to take a slow train to Taitung because we are in no rush to get there and because it’s significantly cheaper (30 USD to go from the North of the island all the way down South and back again). The windows are tall and wide and through them we’ve seen mountains so tall we have to dip our heads to see the tops, the Pacific lapping sandy or garbagey shores, and mini-mountains growing out of the shore like the brown drippy castles I used to make on the beach with my mom. We’ve seen rickety towns and bigger towns like Hualien. It’s only 4:21 now but the sun’s already fading, blurring the faint distinction between blue sky and blue mountain, and the foggy air lends a hand in the merge. I saw the Pacific as a baby and from the edge of an expensive hill in San Fransisco a few months ago, but babiness or fascination with a pretty city prevented my being fascinated with something as big and cold-blue and far away from “home” as The Pacific! And there it is looking like a quilt of blue with ominous grayish patches, patches as aqua as my mom’s eyes, some a little more seaweed-green, and the rim the chilly color of sun fading behind clouds. I look so forward to the week we have to spend without even a slice of glass between us, getting to know each other’s blue moods. I want to be exhausted by it at the end of every day I spend on Green Island, red-faced and strung-out with wind and spray.

I’m already exhausted, but it’s a medication/four-year-old-children-induced kind of exhaustion. My legs are stiff with want to run faster and longer than it takes to catch up a baby in my arms. I will miss them though. I’ve spent some of every day in the past few months basking in their love. I’m sure this time away will remind me how lucky I am to have this job.

Vivian came just in time for Thanksgiving (the Wednesday before!) and spent the day with us at school before settling in at Kiah’s home for delicious turkey, potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole (apparently it’s a Midwest staple?) and pumpkin pie. It is so good to have her here. It makes me feel a swirl of things - a little startled, mostly safe, and the world seems at once smaller and bigger. Smaller because here she is just like that (snap) and bigger because it doesn’t change to fact that the rest of my family is still so far away. She’ll stay through December and then we’ll find ourselves in another month. The thought makes me feel like I’ve been on a train this whole time with experiences flashing past so fast I can’t possibly catch sight of them all. For whatever reasons (I have some ideas) some things catch my eye and others don’t. I’ll never go on this ride again, though, so this is my only shot. I’m glad to have caught sight of the things I have and grateful for the time to send them through this portal to you. dddddddddddddd


Ghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Sssssssssssssssmmmmmmmmmmmvvmvvvmvmvvmvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvrvrvrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzppppppppppppppppppppphphhphhhhhhhyhhhhhhhhttthtthththffffftttytttttbbbbbbbhbbbbbbbbhbbbddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd1dd22222222222222233233233333333333333333333333333xx3x3xx3x3x3xxxdxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx……………..>>ddfhrdddddddddddjjjjjjjjjmmmmmmmmmbbgggggggggggggkkkkkkkgjfjygfkjyflkfglinhyxxxxxjjjjjjliiiiii,gffjhgljghng5ekjfkjyfkjhrooomjhhhhhghmnbvbgcawGGGGGGGggggggGGGgggggggggggggGGhgggGgGHgIGgggghgddddtssaaaaaassdfffffghjkl;;;;;;;;;;;;;’’

That’s a message from the girl with wild hair.