How to have an authentic cultural experience in a foreign country

If you want to have an authentic experience in a foreign country, let me offer you this advice:
*Fly to the country of your choice with only enough money to set up a meager and spartan existence in said country.
*Get a job.
*Make sure your visa is tied to your job.
*Insist on an employer who will illegally hold your passport for six months, so that even in moments of pure desperation you can't go home ;)
You're ready for the cultural experience of a lifetime!
As a bonus, I guarantee that under the above-stated conditions, you will be left saying the word ‘yes’ far more often than god ever intended.
This is how I started out my life in Taiwan. For six months, I kind of felt like I was trapped in that Japanese game show skit with Chris Farley. Except if Chris Farley had been there, it would have been more fun.
(see bottom of this post for Chris Farley goodness)
Anyways, what follows is the story of something that happened to me early on in my Taiwan experience:
It all started one fine afternoon. I was in the teacher’s lounge grading an endless pile of essays. My boss snuck up on me with the stealth of a ninja.
"Cami, you will like to tell a story in the park on Saturday?” he said.

I believe my response was, “Huh?” as I wasn’t entirely sure if it was a question or a statement.
“You would like to tell a story in the park on Saturday,” he said, barely masking his impatience.

“Yes, I think you will like very much. And maybe you sing song too.”
If confusion was apparent on my face, my manager showed no signs of knowing it.
“So yes, I think we will meet at sports park, 10am.”
“Huh?”
“Okay good,” my manager walked away from this baffling exchange, satisfied.
Thus began one of the most confusing and humiliating experiences I’ve had in Taiwan to date.
Because the information provided to me in this conversation was rather lacking, I asked my western manager what exactly I was expected to do on Saturday.
“I think it's like, an event for the children of the community. You just go to a park and read a story. It'll be fun.”
Far be it from me to turn down an 'event for the children'.

I pictured a quaint scene- me and perhaps 10 children, sitting under a tree in a secluded area of the park, reading a book of my choice.
On Saturday morning I showed up at the park around 9:59. Looking around, I spotted my manager. I waved cheerily as he rushed toward me and grabbed my elbow. “Why you are so late?!?” he hissed at me. He's steered me toward a very crowded public square next to the pond. People were enjoying meals at a cafe. Families stood at the waters edge, feeding ducks. Lovers embraced on park benches. All was quiet, except for the pleasant mingling of voices and children's laughter.

I spotted some of the staff from my school near a tree at the center of the crowded square. They were wearing plastic light-up devil horns, as if we were advertising a school of satan.
I tried to assess the situation as calmly as possible:

I fought the undeniable urge to run.
Without a word, one of my co-workers ripped my carefully chosen book out of my hands and replaced it with a HESS Language School story book. My dreams of awakening a passion for good literature in the minds of the children slipped away.

I’d chosen the book “The Little Mouse, the Big Hungry Bear, and the Red Ripe Strawberry” because this is an excellent book for children, regardless of their age or language abilities. I’d poured over it Friday evening, planning which questions I’d ask the children on which pages, where I’d pause, build momentum, etc. Now I was stuck with Hess’s crap book, which basically repeated the same damn sentence over and over again with no story line whatsoever.
But it got worse.
The dreaded public address system gave a shuddering whistle, causing people nearby to wince and cover their ears. That’s right, folks, your peaceful Sunday afternoon shall be no longer…

The other staff member from my school, we'll call her Alisha, grabbed the mic and, with a showmanship that shocked me because I'd previously thought this woman was shy, she began to warble into the microphone with enough enthusiasm to kill a small dog.

People turned to stare.

I expected her to stop speaking, since she’d said enough to introduce the basic concept, an English story in the park, right? But She continued to speak, until everyone near us had dutifully formed a small crowd in front of her. But that wasn't enough for her- her voice, which was already ear-splitting, went up in volume and my manager nodded wisely and turned up the volume on the pa system. People from across the pond turned and began to walk toward us. First the crowd looked like this:
And as my co-worker continued screaming into the microphone, the crowd only grew. In my mind, they should have been running away- the sound was unpleasant and the devil horns certainly didn't bode well, but people just kept gathering.

I wanted to throw myself over my co-worker, wrestle the microphone away from her and throw it in the lake. Like, "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! CAN'T YOU TELL THAT NOISE ATTRACTS MORE OF THEM! AND QUIT DANCING AROUND! THEIR VISUAL ACUITY IS BASED ON MOVEMENT!" (Okay, super quiz, who can tell me what movie that last line is from?)
Finally she finished talking and passed the microphone to me, with a look that said, 'There! I warmed them up for you!'
And then it was just me and them.

you've got to understand my shock. Once again, here's what I expected:
And here's what I got:

No sooner had I sat down than the PA system burst forth with the opening notes of "Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes". It's as if the sound waves propelled me out of my chair. I could see my manager out in the crowd, menacing look on his face.

I glanced sideways at my co-workers to see if they'd be dancing with me, but they just backed away, smiling supportively. My mind didn't really have time to catch up with what was going on around me. The song's intro was quickly coming to a close and I knew that soon the words would begin. I had to make a decision now- would I dance? Or would I run?
I woodenly went through the motions of head shoulders knees and toes, like a patient with PTSD.

Just when I thought my humiliation was coming to a close, the opening notes of "Do Your Ears Hang Low" blasted out of the speakers at close range. Thankfully I was blessed with a sort of out of body experience feeling. Maybe it was the trumpet fanfare in this particular version of the song, or maybe it was that the lyrics mentioned a "continental soldier", but I really got into character, marching around like a soldier, swinging my arms as if they were an incredibly long pair of ears. During the interlude I tried to convince some of the children to join me in dancing. But apparently the kids knew that this ship had sunk long before it set sail, because they refused me with pitying looks.

The song ended. I sat down and read the stupid Hess story. The crowd stared politely. I finished and they dispersed.
The bad news is that this was not the last promotion I did for Hess Language Schools. The good news is that there was someone in the crowd that day who offered me a better job.

As promised, the GREAT CHRIS FARLEY!

Everything about that skit is so brilliant =)

Help YoSelf

When teaching an English class in Taiwan, my main goal is to get the students to speak and listen as much as possible. For this reason, I open each class by writing a question on the board and having every student in the room answer it. I generally go with typical “Getting to know you” questions, for example:
*If you were stuck on a deserted island, what three items would you want with you?
*What was the best gift you ever received? Why?
Sometimes I have to get a bit more creative when I run out of normal questions. For example, I recently asked-
*If there was a zombie apocalypse, and you had three anti-zombie vaccines that you could give to anyone you wanted, who would you give them to, and why?
For some reason my students didn’t like that question much, and the explanation for “zombie apocalypse’ effectively took up half of the class time.

When I posed the zombie apocalypse dilemma, roughly half of the students said that they would give the vaccine to no one, as a world filled with zombies would suck anyways and they wouldn’t want to be alive in that. One guy even went so far as to say he would give the zombie vaccines to his worst enemies. I let them know that I didn’t appreciate this defeatist attitude and that when the real thing comes, I wasn’t going to give any of them any of my vaccines.
Anyways, after asking such questions five nights a week for over a year and a half, I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel for questions.
The opening question sets the tone for the entire class, and the wrong opening question sets the wrong tone. Then, for the remainder of our two hours together, I have to stare out into a sea of vacant eyes, behind which I imagine my students are sobbing in bored agony.
The most common look a boring teacher gets is the dead fish stare:

Grumpy panda is also common, particularly in Asia:

then there's sleepy bunny. Cute, but it's the kiss of death to teachers everywhere:

and finally angry aardvark. This is when you just want to duck under the table to escape:

Here is the human version of these looks. Tell me, if you were teaching, and this was staring back at you, would you be afraid?

Sometimes I find myself rambling, trying to find something, ANYTHING, to catch their attention. A boring class sends me flailing about into the abyss, trying to steer the class out of the waters of tedium.
This happened on New Year’s Eve, when I asked my students about their New Years resolutions. It turns out that New Years resolutions aren’t very common in Taiwan and therefore nobody really had an answer to my question. The silence was deafening. Finally, one of my students who is particularly awesome when it comes to saving me from the abyss, asked me how I come up with my own New Years Resi’s. I jumped at the chance to answer a question, and, as is common when I’m teaching, I started spouting off before I even thought about what I was going to say. What followed was a synopsis of every goal/purpose seeking activity that I’ve ever heard of or read about. During my formative years, I was fed a steady diet of self-help books, motivational seminars, wildly experimental behavioral modification programs and therapy, things which your average Taiwanese person has never had the fortune of experiencing.
Here is a scientific chart detailing my meteoric rise in self-help knowledge:

Because of my extensive experience, I felt that I could authoritatively share this part of American culture with my students.
I kicked it off by telling them about a meditation technique I’d read about, oh so many years ago, on StevePavlina.com. (you may remember from the chart that I became familiar with Pavlina’s work during my post-graduation/break up with crazy dude crisis.) I explained that, according to Steve, when you are faced with a conundrum and do not know what to do, you can meditate to gain an interview with your future self, who can sometimes give you a clue as to what you ought to do with your life. (see: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/08/my-favorite-meditation/)
The same helpful student asked if I’d ever done this meditation. I have. But only a few times and I didn’t find it too helpful because my future self, instead of candidly answering questions as Steve’s future self does, smiles in a peacefully then proceeded to whisper platitudes and pat my shoulder in a patronizing manner.

I met my future self on the beach. She was older than me but not wrinklier at all. And she was peacefuller. She was wearing a white dress and has a wizardly aura about her.

I think the reason she said nothing specific or even helpful was because my subconscious mind didn’t want my conscious mind to know the whole thing (the meeting on the beach, the beatific smile, the wrinklessness) was a sham.
When my students seemed satisfied that they understood the concept of meditating to meet your future self, I busted out the next self-help technique out of my bag-o-tricks- COLLAGES BABY!
I’m not sure where I even heard about this, but I think I’ve done my own sort of mash-up, combining concepts from the Celestine Prophecy (which I read at age 16 during the seminar madness years) and other self-help style books.
The whole idea behind the collage is that you whip through a pile of magazines, ripping out any picture that catches your interest. Don’t think about it too much, just tear those pics out, then cut them up and arrange them into a collage. I’ve also done this technique, but since I’m a bit on the compulsive side, the resulting collage was about 11 feet long. Here’s a picture. Take that!

BAM!
Anyways the collage thing is supposed to give you a visual representation of your goals, something you can display proudly (if it’s not 11 feet long) to remind you of your purpose and direction in life.

Another technique, and I’m pretty sure this is from Think and Grow Rich Happy, is that if you’ve got a really important goal, write it down every morning. I’m pretty sure they say this in The Secret too (I missed out on the great THE SECRET craze because I was anti-self-help when it came out, but I was unfortunate enough to sit next to someone who was enamored with THE SECRET and spent an entire three hour flight telling me about it)

Anyways, I tried this (writing my goal every morning) once, with surprising results (maybe I’ll write about it in my next post)
Here’s a pic of my journal when I was doing the ‘write your goal every day’ thing. I wrote this in May of 2008 when I had absolutely no means to get myself to Taiwan.

I didn't even write it every day, and it still worked!
Anyways, this is how my last class of 2010 went.
I was careful to end my self-help/goal making chat by warning my students about the dangers of goal-making and self-help in general. I drew them a diagram, similar to this:

Peace be with you my friend, and remember, be not troubled for the future, for I say unto you, everything is going to be just fine…
Happy 2011!!!

The squat- your best bet for quick results.

My sister brought up a good point. I said that the most important word to learn in another language is "Thank you" and she said that it's "Bathroom". She's a bright one, my sis. Bathroom is a good word to know.
I realized, about a year into my sojourn here, that I didn't have the slightest idea what the word for bathroom is in Chinese. So I asked my student/Chinese teacher/17 year old buddy what the word for bathroom was. The sounds that then issued forth from her mouth were like rushing water, a breath of fresh air, and spring all at once. I immediately imagined myself running across a green field, arms flung wide, into the embrace of an invisible lover.
If I were to romanize these sounds, it would look something like this-
"Tschuuuh Shwo" Except the first sound is like a highly controlled sneeze and the second sound is sort of like an uber aspirated S (there, don't tell me I can't remember anything from my linguistics minor- aspirated, suck on that! And uber is from my philosophy class- Nietzche, biotches!) except this S-sound is so pure, so unadulterated that the sordid human mouth ought never to utter it.
Anyways I tried to say this word about four times and gave up completely. The sneezy sound is represented by this innocuous-looking bopomofo character.

Bopo is a phonetic alphabet for Chinese. More on that later.
Anyways, I haven't had much occasion to use the words for bathroom anyways, because there are no friggin public restrooms in Taiwan. I mean, I'll be eating at a restaurant and I'll ask to use the restroom and the waitress'll look completely harassed. If I insist she'll lead me to the private bathroom of the family who owns the restaurant. There are restrooms at my work (though they refuse to provide TP) and train stations, and all western import restaurants (THANK YOU MICKY D'S, KFC'S AND ALL OTHERS!)and that's about it. I stick close to those places.
But I have, on occasion, had to ask to use the restroom in an unfamiliar place. Now, I handily mime hand-washing to let my needs be known. But the first time I needed a bathroom I tried everything ("bathroom" I said with a blind, child-like belief that the waiter would be able to help me, then, pleadingly, "restroom? Banyo? W.C.?") and when that got me no where I mimed lowering my pants and then I squatted.
Here's a tutorial to walk the novice through the process.
Step 1:


Step 2:

A word of caution on step two. If not completed correctly (for example if you actually do pull your pants down instead of just pretending) it could lead to disastrous results.
step 3-the squat:

SUCCESS!!!! (although I guess that depends on your definition of success. If being a dignified representative of your country is a priority than the squat is not on the menu my friends...)

Lore Lore, my latest rescue dog!

I love this pic, I don't think her feet are even touching the ground!



I found Lore lying outside of my friends house. She'd been hit by a car and couldn't walk, could only sort of wave around balanced on two legs. When I approached her, she looked completely panicked and like she wanted to run, but she didn't have the strength. Mosquitoes were biting her nose and she didn't even bother to flick them away. I let her smell my hand then petted her, and when I petted her, she closed her eyes like she was grateful and so relieved that I wasn't trying to hurt her. I knew right then that I was in love and this dog was not going to fade away into the streets of Taiwan, dying a miserable death.
Now Lore's legs have healed and she can run and jump with the best of them. She is the sweetest, funniest little dog. She gets along great with my dogs, my friends, and unfamiliar dogs and people. She's spayed, vaccinated, and ready for adoption. I'd love for her to go to America. If you'd like more information about adopting Lore, or any animal from Taiwan, please feel free to contact me at camikayadair@gmail.com
Here's some videos of Lore baby (also featuring my dogs Dresden and Romulus)!

Lantern Festival- like Disneyland with out the rides...on acid. and with a lot of crazy lanterns...

I thought the Taiwan Lantern festival (which was held in Yilan this year, a city about 20 min from where I live) was just a time for people to get together and write their wishes on paper lanterns and watch them fly up into the sky...but it was so, so much more. I think the title of this post says it all, but I'll post a bunch of pictures for you to feast your eyes on...

To the dismay of event organizers, this years lantern festival was haunted by the presence of a demonic man sporting blue bunny ears. Local police have dubbed him the "Chubby Bunny".
He has often been spotted carrying a trident and sneering at on-lookers...

I think it's safe to say that the creator of this lantern has a great deal to learn about the fine sport of surfing...or, as Amy says, "Every surfers dream- to slide down the back side of a wave..."







Sorry China! We realize that you want Taiwan to be part of your massive and quite frankly frightening police state, but as you can see here, Taiwan is pictured in green and China in red, indicating that they are, in fact, different countries. And the lantern's already been made. So let's not make a big fuss about it and just keep things the way they are, shall we?

Who hasn't had the inexplicable urge to suck the teat of a alarmingly obese plastic Taiwanese bovine friend? REFRESHING!
I must thank Jody for the incredible placement of the camera on this one. That cow was actually MASSIVE.
Yes there was actually a glowing fetus in that belly- too bad the camera didn't pick up that detail!
Accidently posted this twice and can't figure out how to delete it...