17th March 
2 Comments The first day
The first day and already so many things to write! After really good sleep I woke up at 8 to get ready for the first time at the Nei-Li Senior High School, where I will help to learn children English and give the students and teachers some “culture lessons” about Czech republic. The family was gone to work so but they left me a breakfast – thank you so much:) Oh yeah! I haven’t introduced my family yet!! So my homepa or uncle is called Wen-Yuan Chang and he is a chemistry teacher at the school, his wife is called Bani (don’t know how to write it properly in pinyin but you read it [pany], and she is a public servant. Their sweet daughter’s name is Jamie, she is 10 years old, but her English is very good.
The first meeting with the family at the airport
Their house is really big, not only for Taiwanese conditions. I have my own bedroom, which is bigger then the one at home. The first thing that struck me was, that they do not have heating and also they leave the door out opened even in the evening. The winters here are not very cold, it is around 10 degrees, today was very warm and it was 22 degrees. Funny is, they are so used to hot weather, that in this temperatures they wear jackets and sweaters. Me being home I would take my summer dress! There are some photos of the house:
I wanted to take a picture of the dogs, but the small one Chocho is hiding in her blankets and the big one wants to snuggle all the time so I can’t get him.
Now something about the school. When someone says something is small in Taiwan, you have to know it is bigger than most things in CZE. So the “small” Nei-Li Senior High School has ONLY 3000 students! The building is so huge I couldn’t get a full photo of it so there are some pieces…
The school has it’s own playground, swimming pool, something like cafeteria and so on. Children are not allowed to walk outside the school and the lessons are from 7:30 till 17:00! The first half an hour is for preparing to school or sometimes writing tests, and then the lessons begin. After 50 minutes there is always a brake and they have time from 12:00-13:00 for lunch. The students wear uniforms, but the teachers dress casually.
I was introduced to Irene, who works at study affairs department and will take care of me at the school. Then we went to the English teacher’s office. There are only women teaching English in this school and all of them are very friendly. Some also said that they’ve been to Czech republic! I’m looking forward to cooperating with them. I went with one of them, Claire, today for a lunch. We had some seaweed with eggs and hard tofu, and then noodles with beef in soup. Imagine eating with the chopsticks the slippery noodles! It took me nearly an hour to eat it But I’m getting better. Claire said I’m very good at it. And the food again mňamííííí
After lunch Claire took me to taste one taiwanese speciality and that’s the bubble tea. It’s cold tea with milk and small jelly pearls or bubbles in it. It is served with ice and sugar and tastes very good. You drink it with straw, so you can see the bubbles coming up to your mouth
I met with 3 intern students from different international organisation. They were very kind and told me some other things about the school. There names are Janek (from Germany), Mary (from France) and Moe (from Japan). They are here from September till the end of June. They visit all the lessons with other students and study Chinese. I tried a lesson of Chinese with them today, but they are way ahead of me. Also the Taiwanese Chinese is a bit different, so I have to study hard!
One other interesting thing at school is their punishment system. They have something like a military department, where they monitor all the cameras that are at school and also the people here are in charge of punishing students. I have to find out more about the punishment, but I think it takes some form of service to the school. For example you can get punished for coming late to your lesson. Also there is no special staff for cleaning the school, but each class has it’s peace of school that they have to clean. Interesting…
I’ve learned a very useful sentence today – Wǒ chibǎole. Meaning: I’ve had enough to eat.