My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

Stacy talking with our three-year-old niece, Leilei, first thing in the morning: Good morning. Did you have a dream?

Leilei (babbling incoherently): I dreamed about a magic ring…(unintelligible)…the bad guy…(unintelligible)…the good guy…and then…(incoherent)…(narration continues for about a minute).

Stacy: That was your dream?

Leilie: No.

I have been craving honey nut shredded wheat since August. You just can’t buy it in Taiwan.

Today I got a care package in the mail. My little sister sent me THREE BOXES, plus other American food goodies. The cost of the postage was probably three times the cost of the actual contents of the package. 🙁

Thanks, JM! You’re the best!

This one’s for you:

So exciting. You can see pictures of my beautiful city.

The cars didn’t make it to my apartment, but here’s my office. Click More > Street View to see the picture.

How fun! I’ve been exploring my city virtually all morning.

This morning I gave a seminar on integrating teaching and listening into language lessons. When we were talking about practicing sentence patterns as part of a language lesson, I asked the teachers how they teach the pattern. They said that they go over the pattern, then drill it as a whole class, in groups, with partners, until the students “get” it.

I told them that this approach, called “drill and practice,” has been renamed “drill and kill” in the US. They thought that was kind of funny. I was a bit surprised that they hadn’t heard that term before. Maybe now that they know the new name, they will be motivated to seek alternative ways to practice grammar?

Nice writeup in the NY Times about an old house in Macao. I went there earlier this month.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/travel/21headsup-1.html?8dpc

This is creeping me out – first the Taiwan hot springs, now this. I think the NY Times might be following me around.

“There is nothing quite as bracing as the smell of rotten eggs in the morning.”

Truer words have been spoken, but it’s a good lead-in to the story. There is a good writeup about the culture of hot springs in Taiwan in Sunday’s New York Times, with nice tie-ins to history and tourists from the mainland:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/travel/21journeys-1.html

But Yilan’s hot springs are better. 😉

A huge dust storm rolled out of the Gobi Desert in China, and caused major air quality problems in Beijing. Here’s a shot from the Taiwan Public TV news:

What does this have to do with Taiwan, you may ask? Well, the wind blows from Asia right onto Taiwan, which means that Taiwan gets to “enjoy” the dust storm as well. The dust storm hit Sunday morning. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in Beijing, but everything that was left outside, like cars and bikes, got covered with a fine coating of orange-brown dust. It was really disgusting. All day it was very hazy, like there was a forest fire in the vicinity, and there was a faint burning smell in the air, like someone had set of firecrackers in the distance.

The government advised everyone with respiratory problems to stay indoors if at all possible. We had planned to go to the Taipei zoo and see the pandas, but Ian is fighting a cold, and we didn’t want him to develop any complications from breathing the dust, so we stayed home and kept the windows shut.

My sister Margaret sent the boys an Easter care package. Thanks, Yangs!

Stacy: Ian, your feet stink!
Ian: Really clears out the sinuses, doesn’t it?

Hilarity ensued (not!)

Across the street from the train station in Yilan is a strange metal “tree” with this sign in front of it: The Diu Diu Dang Forest.

There is a Taiwanese children’s song called “diu diu dang.” Here is a nice rendition of the song:

When we moved to Yilan, several people mentioned that the song originated in Yilan, although we never could find out the exact origins of the song. Well, we found it!

The lyrics of the song describe a train going through a tunnel. In the very north of Yilan County, at the border of Yilan and Taipei counties, there was an old train tunnel. The tunnel goes through a mountain to avoid an outcropping of the island.

It was constructed over a three-year period during the Japanese occupation.

It was subsequently replaced by a larger tunnel, and fell into disuse. A few years ago it was re-purposed as a bicycle path. The tunnel is two kilometers long, and biking through it is very cool.