Leaving the country involves deciding what to take and what to leave behind. Experiences can’t be chosen either way, they stay here without us and keep happening. One of the things I’ll miss is LakeMary’s Special Olympics team. This weekend I’ve been on what will be my last Kansas Special Olympics trip for at least a year. It was a great tournament, and Bob and I managed to get a handful of pictures of the events. Some are up now, others are being uploaded as I type this, hopefully they’ll all be there by the time I press “Publish.”
I knew when I boarded the bus this would be it, but now that it’s done the finality has struck me. It’s not for good, but I’ll miss the guys a lot while we’re gone, and I’ll misses the coaches as well. The one time in person today seems somehow insufficient, so goodbye again you guys. Judy, Jeff, Bob, Lindy, Carolyn, former coaches like Tracy, Greg, Shawna, and anybody who has temporarily slipped my mind, thanks for the good times, the hard work at the tournaments, the Carlos O’Kelly’s after, and the sunflower seeds, bonfires, and shared beers in between. I love all of you, and I thank you in advance for all the times yet you’ll remind MB for me that he’s a punk.
So, by popular request, I’m going to talk about our new jobs. Not that I really know much yet. But still, here are the details, thanks to Lindsay’s thoughtfully specific questions. She writes:
I want to hear about your new job in Taiwan! Tell me all the info! You have to be there on the 28th? Where will you live? What will you do? What will you eat?
So, we’re going to be working at the Chi Du branch of the Hess Schools, near Keelung City. Where’s that? Turns out it’s about 40 minutes away from Taipei. In the map to the right, I’ve put a yellow arrow pointing to it. It’s spelled differently there (Chilung instead of Keelung), which has to do with the system of romanization of the language used. In addition to being about 40 minutes from Taipei, it’s also about 40 minutes away from the northern coast. Apparently, that coast has some of the best surfing beaches on the north half of the Island. Who knew?
When we first arrive, we’ll be in Taipei for training for about 10 days. After that, we’ll go to Chi Du, where our manager will help us find an apartment. They’ve told us that Chi Du is one of the cheaper places to live, so we’re excited about that. I’m pretty sure some of that cheaper living will be due in part to living in a teeny apartment, but that’s okay. Seth and I managed to not kill each other during our first few months of marriage while living in a 400 sq. ft. one bedroom apartment, and we’re not bringing along nearly as much stuff as we tried to cram into that place.
We have to be there for training on July 28th, which is a Saturday, so we’ll probably be leaving on the 26th. The flight is a looooooong one. I’m not so sure I’m looking forward to that (although I’ll have my shiny new nano filled up with audiobooks and music to help me get through it), but it does appear to be a necessary evil. I’m sure Seth will also fill up his laptop with games and movies, so between the two of us, I think we’ll be fine.
We don’t actually know exactly what our teaching schedules will be like until we get there, but we’ve both asked to be assigned to teach a combination of kindergarten and language school. Essentially, kindergarten is more like what we think of as preschool, 2- and 3- and 4-year olds. The classes are in English in the morning and Chinese in the afternoon, so we’d be there in the morning if either of us get that assignment. The language school is an after-school program for kids in primary and middle grades, so it’s like a supplement for them. Kind of like Sylvan, but I think much, much more prevalent among students of all abilities.
What will we eat? That’s a very, very good questions. I was pretty apprehensive about learning to eat in a completely different culture, especially since you all know that calling me a picky eater is an understatement. The running joke Lindsay started is that my favorite food groups are white, mushy, and cheese. Admittedly, this does cover quite a few of my favorites - macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy, fettuccine alfredo - but to be fair, I do like some green things too. Like pesto. And pistachio ice cream.
Erm, sorry, I went on a rabbit chase there. Anyhoo. I’m sure we’ll eat plenty of noodles and rice while we’re getting settled. That seems to be a pretty universal cheap option for people everywhere, right? And then, we’ll begin to explore our options - I’ve read that street food is consistently very good and very cheap. Dumplings sound promising (I mean, it seems to be a pasta-ish pocket of savory goodness - that’s a lot like ravioli, right?), and I’m trying really hard to head into this with an open mind. Of course, that’s easier said here and now. My track record on eating unfamiliar foods is spotty at best. I guess I’ll just have to deal with it as it comes.
So, that’s enough for today. If you, like Lindsay, have questions of your own, leave them for us in the comments. We love comments! We’ll answer your questions! And, I promise, one or both of us will write again soon!
- New jobs. For both of us. On the other side of the world.
- My weight loss.
- Our quest to get rid of all of our superfluous stuff.
- Our quest to get our house ready to sell.
- Our upcoming trip to Michigan.
- My improving running abilites.
- My recent iPod Nano purchase.
- How all of the above is freaking me out and causing me to grind my teeth at night, leading my dentist to suggest I might need to get myself a mouth guard to wear at night, in order to prevent the aforementioned grinding.
So, what do you want to hear about first?
It’s for real now. We’re going to Taiwan.
No matter how many times I say it, it doesn’t seem entirely real. I know we have jobs there, and that we’ll be on the ground in a couple of months, but the statement “we’re moving to Taiwan” carries about the same weight for me right now as “I just bought a bridge.” It’s very exciting, don’t get me wrong, and a little bit scary as well, but I’m having a hard time grasping the reality of it.
We’re supposed to be there no later than July 28th. The rain is preventing us so far from getting our house painted or having a garage sale, and the heating stove is more than a little in the way of my sanding the floor, but we’re making progress, and hopefully someone will want to buy our cute little two bedroom home. For sale, cheap!
Our contract is for one year, with the option of additional contracts at higher pay rates at the conclusion of that service. Whether we stay longer depends on how well the school determines we’ve done, and how well we like what we’re doing and where we are.
Where we are, incidentally, will be Chi Du, about 40 minutes by train from Taipei, and I believe we were told 20 minutes from a beach.
So here we go! If anyone needs anything they’ve seen in our possession, give a holler, more than likely if we haven’t earmarked it for someone or sold it, you can have it, at least for the time we’re gone.
Incidentally, since I haven’t done the three minutes’ research it would require, does anyone know if Taiwan uses the NTSC television standard?
So, if things go as planned, we’ll be going to Taiwan in August. We’re applying to teach English there, and we’re bucking our trademark spontaneity (”Hey Mom, we’re getting married…next month”) and actually planning and preparing.
We’ve been going through our stuff, deciding which books we really want to keep, considering whether there’ll be storage space for our favorite-enough-to-keep but not favorite-enough-to-schlep-on-a-trans-oceanic-flight things, and figuring out what to do with the stuff we don’t want to keep, which we figure should be most of our worldly goods. What good is a (hopefully) life- and consciousness-changing experience if it doesn’t make one at least a little less attached to material possessions?
We’re also dealing with the fact that we will be going there with nothing more than the language school’s crash course in Mandarin, with jobs that consume as much as 32 hours of each week. There’ll be a bit of free time, it would seem. So although we’ll certainly want to spend a lot of time immersing ourselves in the culture, learning the language, (there’s one-on-one peer tutoring and classes in addition to the default immersion by way of just being there,) there’ll be days when we’re just homesick, too, and need some brainless sitcoms or zombie-killing action. So I’m (slowly) ripping our DVD collection to the computer, with the intention of tossing it all on a portable hard drive, and watching it there on a laptop. It’s a slightly wonky process under Linux, in some ways more straightforward than under Windows, but with slightly less predictable results, particularly with regards to file size. I won’t bore you with that right now, though. I’ll do it some other time in another post. A looooong one.