First of all, I want to apologize for being so lax in my communication. I think people who are away from home expect everyone else to make the effort to stay in touch. I certainly thought to myself that 'there's only one of me, and countless amounts of them. I should be able to just sit here and everyone will be dying to talk to me'.
But as we all know, that's not how it goes. Everyone has their own lives so it's up to me to make an effort too. Hopefully, this will be the first of many posts that will at least open up the lines of communication between me and anyone else who cares!
So, where to start?
Well, for those of you I haven't spoken to at all I've been living and working in Taiwan since September 2010. After finishing college last year, I decided I wanted to take a year off and see the world. Get it out of my system, as people said to me. The fact that I've little to no chance of getting a job in Ireland only made me want to leave even more. So the world of TEFL called and I answered.
We arrived in Kaoihsung, Taiwan and headed for our small coastal village of Jhunan, where we would spend days lazing around on the beach before strolling to work and having fun teaching English to Taiwanese children. This would be foliowed by quiet drinks on our balcony overlooking the sea.
'Perfect", we thought.
As anyone can imagine, this is not how it panned out. Of course, it couldn't pan out like that! Who lives that kind of life?
The first problem was that Jhunan is a small Taiwanese town but it's gigantic by Irish standards. To put scale in Taiwan in perspective: it's the second most densely populated country on the planet after Bangladesh; It has almost 24,000,000, mostly crammed into one side of the island; it's capital, Taipei, has almost 9,000,000 of that population, along with the second tallest building in the world, Taipei 101.
So, they don't do 'small coastal villages' like we do in Ireland. Jhunan has over 70,000 people in it and basically merges with the next town over, which has another 70,000 or so.
It also has about 5 buildings over 15 stories high, which for an Irishman amounts to a skyscraper. The rest of the area is covered in buildings. Just buildings, no fields unless it's a 'designated scenic area' or something.
So it's fairly built up but they do have some pretty class public parks which are developed for purpose. Everything has a purpose. The beach is about a 15 minute cycle away so we haven't been able to laze out in the sun as much as we wanted.
The other reason for this is that the weather in northern Taiwan is terrible in winter. It's been properly cold and rainy for ages, not as bad as back home in December but if you think of Ireland in maybe October then that's what it's like.
Also, while teaching English is relatively fulfilling and you get paid well (at least twice as much as locals), the hours are hard and it can be draining. I teach 250 kids a week and Katie does about the same. So by the end of the week we've each taught the equivalent of a relatively big school back home. This usually means we're pretty wrecked so have to give the drink on the balcony a miss!
The weekends are short but we're managing to fit a good bit in. Some aspects of the job are easy but others are amazingly difficult. The language barrier is really tough sometimes but it's amazing where pointing and grunting will get you!
But the biggest thing we didn't account for before we got here was just how different it would actually be. We obviously knew it would be different but you can't imagine the differences until you live them everyday. For example, we eat our dinner with chopsticks everyday. Everyday. I could barely eat piece of sweet and sour chicken with chopsticks before I left! And, of course we knew how different the language was but we were told and believed (in our ignorance/naivety) that everyone would speak English anyway, so it'd be grand!
Not so much.
Sometimes just the effort of going to buy something like a bottle of milk will put you off. But the next day you'll be sitting there raring to get out there and test your Chinese again - it's mad. One of the things I've definitely learned is that communication is just so important. Without a common way of communicating, even the smallest thing becomes impossible.
The other thing I've learned is that being a white person in Taiwan is kind of like being a celebrity, except without the perks! Heads turn, mouths gape, elbows nudge and fingers point everywhere we go. A guy came sooo close to crashing his scooter one day. It's mental. There's not really any ill will towards us, just curiosity. Really makes me wonder what it would be like to be Asian in Ireland.
That was a fairly haphazard rundown of our experiences so but I'll try come up with a way of making more sense and not just blurting everything I think of down on a page in the future.
Overall, the last few months have been equal parts fun, frustration, and f**k ups but at least I've got a story to tell.
