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Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Hopping Around and Learning


Well, dirving here is quite something. NO ONE needs to worry or concern themselves with anything going on behind them. It is weird. Just focus on what's in front of you, but at the same time people mostly anticipate what the other crazy driver is about to do. I don't even know why they bother painting lines on the road, because apparently they don't really mean anything at all. Be super careful when opening your car doors as it is common for scooters to come crashing into them, however, the scooter diver can sue you and will win every time. Bicycles are not as common but despite that they still get stolen all the time!

There are some interesting things I have learned here. Like for example, if you are a Taiwanese couple and get a divorce, custody of the children automatically goes to the man. However, if you are a foreigner married to a Taiwanese, custody will always be denied to the foreigner and always go to the Taiwanese parent. Another interesting fact about this country; teaching to kindergarten students, as a foreigner, is illegal. Yes, that's right. The majority of the ESL positions here are for young students who would be in kindergarten but the Taiwanese government does not want foreigners to be on the same premises as their young children. They believe that their children must master their mother tongue before learning a new language. It's actually pretty corrupt here. The big chain schools will hire foreigners to teach kindergarten, the officials will call the school ahead of time to let them know they are coming for an inspection. The school will notify the foreign teachers who will then either leave the school for a couple hours, or hide in a closet, etc. The big chain schools also pay off the officials and will not be busted. Some of the police officials are parents of children in these same schools. The same type of things go on in the smaller schools, but if the foreign teachers get caught, it's deportation. The reason, the smaller schools, mostly privately run, cannot afford to pay off the government officials and so they get the boot. In this case both the employer and teacher are in serious trouble. After the teacher is deported, the employer will normally have to close that school and open up a new school under a new name, in a new location and pay a fine, etc. So it's some pretty serious stuff. Henceforth, I have been turning down every kindergarten teaching opportunity that I have been offered.

On to the more positive stuff, this place is absolutely beautiful! After exploring Hsinchu we headed to Taipei, however, we did not stay there long; one night. We headed to Yilan to visit Stephanie. Stephanie was a girl who did a home stay with Matthew's parents back when she attended high school in Smiths Falls. She then continued to visit his parents on weekends when she was attending Queens University. Yilan is a very beautiful city, right on the East China Sea. Yilan is located on the north east coast of Taiwan. We got to meet her parents and see a little bit of Yilan. It was a very neat place; houses along narrow roads surrounded by rice fields.

Stephanie's family put us up in the Shangrila Boutique Hotel in Yilan. It was very lovely. We ate a huge buffet dinner and drank. Well actually, it was mostly Matthew doing the drinking. He just cannot be stopped once the Sake is out. After dinner we headed to our room for some zzzzz. It was probably the most comfortable bed I have slept on in ages. The next morning we got some FREE buffet breakfast. Before leaving we decided take advantage of their hot springs pool and the sauna. There is nothing better than pure relaxation. On our way out Matthew got caught trying to sneak a towel. Tsk tsk tsk! the little Asian woman came running out after him, all the way to the car. FAIL. The drive home was shorter than we had expected as we luckily did not get stuck in the crazy traffic that seems to be the norm here.

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