Haňule z Kyjova

Today I woke up with a start. I was full of energy and feeling well. I went to school with homepa, and we stoped for a breakfast at a traditonal chinese breakfast shop (don’t know how to call it). I got some hot food, something between a pastry and a dumpling and a filled dough, very difficult to describe, and a cup of soya milk. It was all very different, form what you get in CZE but I think I can get used to it, and the soya milk was very good.

When I got to school, I went to english teachers’ cabinet looking for Claire, but because she wasn’t here I started talking with other teachers and one of them took me immediately to her class. It was 1st grade 6th class, children around 16 and 17 years old. First I wanted just to watch how they study and how the teahcer is teaching, just to know the school system here. The teacher went with them through a text in textbook, they have done the vocabulary before. And then she explained all the sentences and grammar in chinese. For you to know, it is not easy to teach in the classrooms. There is always more then 40 students in one class, and they are quite noisy. Some just lie down on the desk and fall asleep during the lesson. Some go walking around the classroom just like that They are often shouting on the teacher and discusing with her… Sometimes a mess a bit!

After the first lesson I wanted to leave, but the children wanted me to join them and go downstairs for a lunch with them, so I agreed. They took me 5 stairs lower where is the canteen, chose me a meal in a box and payed for me!! They are so nice! Then we got back to the classroom. There is one thing, we had to use the stairs because children are not allowed to use the lifts. But it is good for me, because I’ll definitely put up some weight beacuse of the food I am always given. So I continued with them in the english lesson, and after that I stayed to eat the lunch with them in the classroom. They surrounded me and had so many questions that I couldn’t eat at all! They were really sweet, but Claire nearly must had come to save me. She wanted to have lunch with me but couldn’t find me. But I got a lemon drink with jelly (they put jelly everywhere) from the other teachers.

After that I met with Sarah, another eng. teacher and another kiond person. We talked a lot, she told me more about Taiwan, for example that there are 4 main groups of people – the taiwanese, the Hakka, the aboriginals and immigrants (a lot of them from China). Also they have different dialects, but nowadays you can rarely tell by there speech if they are Hakka or taiwanese. The dialects are dissapearing. She also told me to be careful to discuss the politics, because of the history. There are people that support the democracy and separated Taiwan, and some that want to join China. This is more difficult theme, so I will certainly try to know more later…

Then I was invited to watch an english speech contest between the students. There was about 20 students form 1st and 2nd grade. They had to make a speech or some story about a picture that they were given only 6 minutes before, and they had only 1.30 minutes for the speech. Some of the children made really good perfomance, very interesting and fluent.

The last thing today at school was a lesson with Daisy. She is a teacher in special english class, so the children are a bit better in english. They had 10 minutes to ask me some questions. In the start they were very shy, but then they started asking a lot After school i went home with homepa and Jamie and after that we went to Bani’s brother’s house for dinner. This was really something delicios, so I took pictures for you. It is a fish and than a hard tofu with meat and we had also bamboo and califlower. Really good! Auntie is a very good cook.

Oh it’s really late! I have to go to bed, because in the morning I have to wake early and get ready for the lessons!

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.

I finally got a shower! I couldn’t sleep much in the plane, so it is 3 o’clock in the CZE and I’m going to bed. Of course there is nearly 10 pm at Taiwan

The flight was great, my new family is very nice and caring, the first chinese food was delicious! I will write more about everything tomorrow, today I’m really tired so just a few photos…. Good night.

beautiful Dubai airport… and essencial prayer rooms

a flight from night

above clouds…..and some mountains around Nepal (couldn’t get the Himalaya, it was on the other side of plane )

delicious food! or what was left sorry I was hungry so I forgot to take picture before eating it all

After friday dancing training, saying many goodbyes to my friends, last czech beer, sleeping about 3 hours and oversleeping, very quick packing the last things, going to Brno, getting on “yellow bus”, going to Vienn and having already a half hour delay, I checked in!!! Some would say the airport in Vienn is dumb-person-proof and really it is! So now I’m sitting, watching planes land, eating viennerschnitzel made by my mum and finaly writing something on this blog.

For start I would like to write about how I got the idea of going to Taiwan. The truth is, I always wanted to travel, but never had the guts to do so. I had too many things holding me back at home and I couldn’t leave them. But many things have changed and finally the time came. And why Taiwan? The story is very poetic – I needed 2 more credits at school and because I like foreign languages I chose to study chinese for begginers at the university. I’m really fascinated by asian culture and my brother studies japanese, so why not try something else?!

My thanks go to AIESEC organisation, and espessially Michal Matoušek – without them my dreams would never go true!

SO see ya and next post maybe from Dubai