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)