Life Lessons Learned as a Jane of All Trades

Crossing Guard
- Dressing for the cold, sometimes less is more. Layers should be loose enough to have some give. If they are tightly packed on, the cold comes right through. I also learned that taping two handwarmers to myself (one to my back and one to my chest) worked wonders.
- Dressing for the cold is a carefully honed skill, but it can be done
- I still feel chilled after being in the cold for an extended amount of time
- How to give directions to the DMV that relocated during the time I worked as a crossing gaurd

Cleaner / Housekeeper
- How to clean a mirror or glass and leave no streaks
- A well maintained toilet is not hard to clean (actually it's easy)
- Cleaning is easier if using fewer cleaning chemicals for the following three reasons: 1) water, friction, and elbow grease are the main things that clean, 2) the chemicals are potent and not a lot is needed to kill germs, 3) the more chemicals you use, the longer it takes to rinse them away
- Cleaning is a physically demanding job, and the people who do it are doing honorable work
- The best rags in the world are not expensive, they are your old towels and wash cloths

Natural Landscaper
- Lawn is less awesome than most Americans make it out to be. It gives us no food, doesn't do anything for us except look vaguely pretty, and makes good picnicking spaces. But tons of people spend so much time, energy, and money to fertilize and mow these endless fields of grass to what point?
- There is huge diversity and beauty in Wisconsin's native plants and wildflowers

Restaurant Clerk / Busser
- The customer isn't always right, and they might just be at the wrong restaurant
- Subway should definitely have horseradish available
- Working in a high class restaurant, even in the lowest position, is a million times better than working at Subway
- The diversity found in kitchen staff of a restaurant can be one of the best perks to the job

Volunteer, Missionary / Living Overseas
- I don't need to be near my parents and family to survive
- Homesickness was never so bad for me as many people describe
- Being away from home opens your eyes to new worlds, new ways of thinking, new ways of life
- Opening your eyes to other worlds helps you see your own world more clearly
- You can't fix everyone's problems, even as a full-time volunteer
- Other countries have much to boast, but the longer I'm away, the more I appreciate the beauty Wisconsin has to offer
- Building relationships with people who speak a different language from you is possible, it just takes extra work

Nanny
- Kids can't be forced to develop in an area before they're ready. They can only be budged.
- Young children don't benefit that much from doing homework all evening after being at school all day. They would benefit more from eating a family dinner and running and playing like a kid.
- Kids are amazing creatures and parents are willing to do a lot for their success
- It is extremely rewarding to care for kids and to watch them grow

Parks and Rec Children's Activity Leader / Art Teacher / English Teacher
- Kids are a joy to teach, and very difficult to teach
- It is easier to focus on children's' behaviors than on the root of those behaviors
- I prefer teaching smaller groups of kids than large groups of kids. The benefit is so much greater in small groups or in one-on-one interactions.
- It is always best to come more prepared than necessary
- Being able to deviate from the plan in a pinch is a very important skill in teaching
- Kids are ALWAYS at least a little bit unpredictable
- Kids are a ton of fun to work with

Wife
- Onion and garlic breath are the worst! Kisses are better held off until the next day in extreme cases because toothpaste doesn't always help
- Getting married was a better choice than I ever realized it could be. I love being partners for life with my best friend, and I love waking up next to him each day
- The happiest husband is also a well-fed husband
- Guys are more sensitive creatures than people like to make them out to be. They need to feel respected and encouraged by their wives more than from anyone else in the world
- When your husband feels beat down by life, being there as his wife is one of the best things in the world to pick him up again
- While nobody is perfect, Rex is one of the most caring, gentle, thoughtful guys I have ever known. He is honest and wants the best for people, even if it means telling them something that is not easy to hear
- It is a lot easier than I ever realized to unintentionally say something about Rex that makes him feel discouraged or put down
- It is necessary to be willing to apologize and talk it out with Rex when I make mistakes (and they do happen!)

Daughter-In-Law to a Taiwanese Couple
- My mother-in-law has really good strategies for preventing nasty smells, cockroaches, and mold from filling your house
- My in-laws have different methods of showing their care and concern for us than the ones my own parents default to, but they really make a lot of effort to make me feel welcome and to make sure we're doing well - even with our little language gap

Living in a Tiny Apartment in a Tropical Climate
- It is totally doable, it only presents unique challenges not imagined by most of my American friends
- Plants, a couple of beautiful things, and personal photos go a long way to making a space feel like home
- Mold, cockroaches, and potent smells are some of the biggest motivators to maintain a clean kitchen
- Regularly doing just a little cleaning and straightening goes a long way to making a space feel like home
- Choose your purchases carefully. Each one takes up more space, and if it does that it needs to add somehow to the quality of your life

Thoughts of Beginnings

This is a little tidbit I wrote as I was still struggling through my first trimester:

"Each morning a struggle to get out of bed, each new day a struggle to eat breakfast without throwing it back up again, each day a struggle to find food that won't make me feel immediately repulsed, many days a struggle to finish anything before my energy is gone and I find myself simply exhausted, finished, and ready to sleep the afternoon away.

"This is the common struggle of many women long before they ever meet their child. For some the external symptoms are more or less extreme; for each person and each pregnancy, the experience is different. But before we know anything about the baby - personality, gender, physical features, etc., we fight through the days of exhaustion or nausea waiting until we know this child that seems to have come from out of nowhere.

"I have learned the stories of some for whom the morning sickness was so extreme that they felt suicidal - and yet would go through it again because they are now very happy and contented with their children and in their role as a mother. All these things a mother endures for her children - and this is long before the dramatic event of [birth], the continual [work] of feeding and nurturing, the struggle to teach the child how to live and live well as a person and as a part of society."

What an amazing process it is to become a parent.

On Learning the Chinese Language (and feeling it can be done!)

In March I began to take Chinese classes with actual classmates. I haven't had classmates that I can see with my eyes in forever because so many of my studies have been online. I find the experience enjoyable, if not at times grueling. The process is also very rewarding when you begin to see the results. It was a wonderful experience to read a paragraph to my sister-in-law recently who only had to tell me how to pronounce a couple of characters when I sat down to do my homework at her house recently. She was surprised at how much I am now able to read! I was happy to surprise her. My literacy still doesn't apply well to restaurant menus and groceries, unfortunately.

It is also a milestone to observe that many of my thoughts come to me in Chinese, and I even find myself waking up in the morning speaking Chinese to Rex rather than translating my initial Chinese thoughts into English. It's interesting how versatile the mind can be.

Chinese is a different process than learning, say, French, Spanish or German. Those are languages with a phonetical system of writing. Each word sounds like itself, even though there may be words that sound alike. In those other languages you can see a sign somewhere, sound it out, and ask someone what that word means (or guess at its meaning.) In Chinese you see a character, and until you have been taught its meaning and pronunciation, it will mean literally nothing to you. Chinese has one syllable words which could have a plethora of meanings on their own, and context is necessary for people to understand what you mean.

An example of the reality of this might be something like this following conversation.

Me:          What does "present" mean?

Teacher:   *blank stare*    Which "present"?

Me:          I don't know. (I try to pronounce the word again applying all four possible tones, which you might be able to imitate by means of my punctuation) Present? Present! Present?!?! Present...

Teacher:    Oh, do you mean the "present" like "gift"? Or "present" like the one that means you're here? Or "present" like the one that means "report"?

Me:         Yeah, the one that means a gift!

So you get the idea. One time I said "pig" instead of "Lord" to explain a song I know in Romanian. I had to sing a line of a Chinese song in order to give her the context because I had no recollection of which tone "Lord" is said with.

Teacher:    What was that Romanian song about?

Me:           It's just saying that God is truly "pig" over everything

Teacher:    *blank stare* You mean...

Me:           *singing* Lord, I come before you...

Teacher:    Oh, you mean Lord! That is in the fourth tone, not the first tone. Otherwise you're talking about a pig.

Chinese is also achievable; it just requires long, patient, persistent hours of effort in order to become literate. Each word has to be learned for itself, and yet the same parts of the characters are frequently recycled. One benefit is that there are words that you can "sound out" because it has a radical that often indicates a general pronunciation. But a character with that same radical might be said "zhong" "dong" or perhaps "chong". But it's helpful for guessing.

Chinese grammar is relatively easy especially compared to the Western languages we're accustomed to learning, but you do have to become familiar with word order and the logic about how to formulate sentences. We would say "I went to the store yesterday" but Chinese would say "I yesterday went to the store." We say an address starting with the house address, and ending with the State. Here they begin with the biggest thing first, for example: country, county, city, district, road, house number, name.

My listening and speaking in Chinese is still more advanced than my reading and writing, but I am happy to say that on both my final exams this year, I got 90 or 92%. I was surprised to get such a high grade in my August final exam because I had missed so much class time that semester due to morning sickness and/or an urgent need for sleep.

On Becoming Someone's Mama

Unless you don't know already, I'm expecting a baby! She is due on February 2 and we are becoming more and more anxious to meet her, not just feel her kicks.

I have a few observations about becoming a mom.

1. Mom's sacrifice a lot for a little person they know nothing about. Especially in the first trimester of pregnancy (and for some all throughout the pregnancy like my sister) we endure physical difficulties such as perpetual nausea, exhaustion, and a plethora of strange things our bodies do to us while forming a tiny person inside.

2. Morning sickness is worse than I imagined (and mine wsan't even that bad). It's not always like you feel normal and suddenly you have to puke, although that can happen. More often than not you feel like you're unwell with a stomach virus. You might feel better at noon, or you might continue to feel ill all day. I know one lady who had to stay in bed for 12 weeks of each of her five pregnancies and would throw up as much as twelve times a day.

3. Becoming a parent can be overwhelming. (I've got to take care of this vulnerable little life and be responsible for it until they turn 18 years old?!?!) Yet, the longer I anticipate the baby coming, the more excitement I get.

4. Each culture has very different ideas about what is good or bad to do during pregnancy and immediately after the birth. Chinese culture has an especially long list of superstitions, traditions, and practices that are not going out of vogue any time soon. Western thought is much, much different on these things and affords expectant and new moms a lot more freedom than Eastern culture. This merits a blog post of its own.

5. The first few weeks when you start feeling a baby kicking inside of you is very faint, and it seems somehow wrong that there is a living thing, maybe the size of your hand, kicking and squirming on the inside. Does it remind anyone of a parasite? (I apologize to my daughter if she one day catches a glimpse of this blog. I truly don't think of you as a parasite, but it truly is a strange sensation. Since you're not a boy, you have the chance to find out for yourself one day.) By the way, Rex loves feeling the baby's kicks, too!

6. Somehow, there is a love that grows for this unknown person growing inside. When all I know about the baby is that it exists, that it is growing, and that it is my child, it is still possible for a special kind of love to grow. I now know that my baby is a girl, that the doctor said her tummy is a little big, and that she likes to suck her fingers and spin in cartwheels (or did, she might be too crowded now), but I know nothing about her personality, her potential, what she will become one day, or anything.

7. It is super easy for my mind to become entirely absorbed by the subject of babies, baby prep, and baby care, as well as the development in the womb week by week. Four more months seems like an eternity to wait for her arrival, and yet it is also so very short!

Food and Predictability

I chuckle when I talk to my friend Amy who is spending the semester in Thailand. She told me once that she - the one who likes trying new foods and adventure - often finds herself opting for "the usual" when eating out. She actually has something that can be considered "the usual," something not usual for her.

I thought about this, and I thought it really makes sense. When there is so much outside of your control, it is nice to have something that is regular, something that you can control or at least know what to expect.

I find myself doing this with dumplings here in Taiwan. A bag of frozen dumplings from the grocery store is easy to prepare and it's filling. At restaurants where the menu is a list of bewildering and mysterious characters, it is nice to know where I can find a bowl of cheap but filling dumplings or wanton soup.

The other day I found a new restaurant and decided to try it out. They advertised beef noodle soup, a favorite food in Taiwanese restaurants. I decided to break out of my norm and order a bowl of the said soup. On the menu I recognized Beef Soup accompanied with other characters that I didn't bother observing or trying to understand. When the bowl came, to my surprise, it was full of beef broth with pork dumplings. They were tasty, but I was still eating dumplings

Today I went to the main station for buses, subways, trains, and the High Speed Rail. Inside there is a plethora of restaurants with incredible variety of choices. Here I intended to buy myself lunch. After buying a small dessert I walked around, decided there were simply too many choices, and returned home to cook for myself here.

Types of Adventures

I realize that when I went to Romania, there was a sense of excitement of seeing a new foreign place - a place in Europe. I had always wanted to go to Europe, albeit Germany or England, not the rural backside of Romania. I loved Romania, aside from the dust, the stray dogs, the culture in the South part that included yelling to be expressive whether you were angry or not, the blunt honesty if something was considered offensive or irritating by one of the locals, the overly traditional views of gender roles that were more frustrating than helpful. I loved the food, I loved the warmth of the people, I loved their enthusiasm for life, their passion, and I loved the sound of the language. Romanian rolls off the tongue and caresses the ear, unlike the strange tones of Chinese with uninteresting sounds not nearly so beautiful as those in Romanian.

I liked that Romanian sounds in some ways more expressive than English - especially if you're irritated you can sound like you're sincerely angry without actually being so. It was always fun reverting to Romanian when driving the car with phrases such as, "Move over!" "Goodness, you should be careful" or things like that. I especially love to tell people to "silence the mouth" (taci din gura!) when I don't want to hear what they have to say. The expression is not nearly so impolite as shut up.

Coming to Taiwan hasn't seemed as much of an adventure. I have had to handle much more of the paperwork on my own, I am joining family not simply exploring a new place, knowing new people, etc. I have had to look for work and become the provider of my tiny family of two while Rex is in the military. I am also living in an enormous city which is quite urbanized and shows less uniquely Taiwanese culture than if I were living in a rural area as I was while in Romania.

Taipei is also a relatively new city in a lot of ways. Only 50 or 60 years ago it was not much more than a fishing village recently developed by the Japanese. Prior to that Taipei City was just a fortress not much bigger than several city blocks - perhaps you could consider it a large neighborhood. But now, suddenly, it is full of new skyscrapers and high rises with a population about half the size of Wisconsin squeezed into this bowl surrounded by mountains.

Because so much of Taipei is new, there isn't all the old architecture you could see as if you visited some cities in Europe. For these reasons and because the city is just so convenient with restaurants on every block that it doesn't feel like an adventure or the same kind of challenge that I saw in Romania. I'm also a little older and more experienced than I was when I went to Romania. Regardless, Taiwan has seemed much more a puzzle than Romania because learning the language has been challenging in a different way. I'm also here with my husband in his native country. Perhaps that's the biggest reason it doesn't feel most of the time like I'm in a foreign country or a strange place. It is also very easy for me to feel like the United States is not that far away.

What strange things feelings are, aren't they?

My Personal Linguistic History

In the last ten or twelve years I have had an interesting relationship with languages. I was reminded of this journey when I arrived home and found my in-laws watching a movie in French. It was the first language I studied, but my comprehension of it is very limited.

I remember telling my mom that I wanted to learn Norwegian - the first language I was interested in learning. To this day I have only learned how to say Thank you, I have to use the bathroom, and I have to fart. You can see the influence of the high school kids who taught me these phrases.

The next language in my life was French - a high school requirement from my mom. I didn't really want to learn French, but I enjoyed the studies and worked hard, probably harder than I studied on anything else at that time. I was actually disappointed when we learned that the curriculum we used required families to pay a decent sum for additional students watching the language lessons. This was a ridiculous requirement for a home school video curriculum, in my opinion, but mom and dad couldn't afford to pay for Ginnie and me to learn with Laura, so Laura continued studying French without companions.

At some point in my high school days my parents bought Rosetta Stone software - this time a language of my choosing. I learned German in the next several months and my brothers also tagged along. I progressed quickly, but realized after some years that I really had never become conversational and understood very little of the language when actually interacting with it. This revelation was given to me by my German roommate when I went to Romania as a young adult. Her father and a friend of his visited her for a few days and I realized that my German was inadequate.

It was because of this revelation that I decided to learn Romanian to the point of conversational proficiency. When my college financial aid was lost and my work had little for me to do I found myself with plenty of spare time on my hands. I decided to use the time for learning Romanian and working on my art. Because I had not gotten very far using typical classroom approaches in previous languages and because little was readily available for Romanian language curriculum, I devised my own approach - an approach I later realized did not work as well for learning Chinese as used in Taiwan. It was fun to take the big fancy Latin borrow words we use in English and change the pronunciation to be more like Romanian and find that I could be understood. I even fooled a few Romanians that I am Romanian - something I wish I could do here in Taiwan but can't because of my physical appearance and limited language ability.

After I became proficient in Romanian (a process of about two years) I began to pick up bits and pieces of languages of those around me at my work. There was Russian from my Ukrainian coworker and Spanish from my Hispanic coworkers. I suppose I am just nerdy, but I picked up Russian phrases like "I want coffee" "How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you" and "goodbye". In Spanish I picked up little things like how to say towels, bedrooms, and "What do you want, man?" "I don't want anything" "I want you to hurry up" and even "My sister is here with her baby." It was easier to pick up on Spanish after learning so much Romanian which is much more similar to Spanish than English. People often say that English is a lot like Spanish, but I feel that English has a much closer relationship to German - a fact backed up by linguists.

Then, of course, Chinese. Why Chinese when I had never been interested in the language, in the people, or ever visiting Asia? Well I was dating (long distance) a Taiwanese guy and we were talking about getting married - what would we need to do in order to make family relationships work well if we get married? In order to talk with his parents and family I would want to speak Chinese and one day when we have a family we want our kids to be bilingual so they can speak Chinese with Rex's family and English with my family. It would just have to be a normal part of our life.

After learning Romanian where I felt I could communicate (poorly and with many errors and misunderstandings) after about 8 or 9 months, learning Chinese has felt like such a slow process. I couldn't read the language and sound out the words to learn without extensive copying and pasting into Google Translate. Google Translate used weird translations for many words. Most apps and language learning curriculum is designed for Mainland China usage - i.e. simplified characters rather than traditional, as well as words that are not commonly used in Taiwan. I also didn't have the time to dedicate to study the language like I had when I learned Romanian. I was, after all, working (whether in missions or my work back in the States), in school, working on knowing thoroughly a guy I intended to marry, eventually planning our wedding, and finally moving three times in one year. The time to dedicate to Chinese studies just wasn't there.

Now that I am in Taiwan, I have begun to see a lot more growth because I have the opportunity for immersion, I am being  given instruction and corrections by a teacher, and I am being taught piece by piece the most commonly used Chinese characters for typical conversation and communication.

Perhaps I'll write sometime about my strategies and methods for learning language that have worked or not worked for me. It could be of use for someone else.

Practicand Romana

Acuma eu citesc povestea lui un autor. Autorul este Beverly Cleary. Ea a scris despre experiente ei in zilele Great Depression-ului si de Al Doilea Razvoi Mondal. Chiar daca mi se pare razvoiul era un lucru mai grav decat Depressionul mi se pare ca fata de Beverly viata nu avea la fel greautatea ca Depressionul. Se poate razvoiul era mai usor pentruca a putut sa castiga mai multi banii si nu mai luptea cu mama ei in fiecare zi, in fiecare scrisoare, si asa mai departe. Avea si ea un sot, un om bun spre ea, si ei au putut sa apreciez viata dupa un sens nou.

In cand in cand, ma gandesc si eu sa scriu, dar nu cred ca am ceva asa de interesant despre ce sa scriu. Am incercat sa scriu lucururile din fiecare zi aici in Taiwan, dar problema este ca viata mea de acum nu are foarte multe conversatie interesante cu alti oameni. Sunt mai mult singura la teme, la pregatire pentru munca, sau curatenia in casa. Conversatile interesante cu alti oameni sunt mai putine pentruca folosind limba chineza nu pot sa vorbesc despre lucrurile interesante.

In trecut m-a gandit sa scriu pe aicia despre lucruri pe care am invatat. Relatie distante, scoala si metoduri de invata, limbe si cum sa le inveti, si cum sa te muti la o tara straina. Mai pot sa vorbesc despre lucrurile aceste, dar n-am luat timp ca sa le scriu si mi se pare trebuie mai mult timp decat cei ce vreau sa folosesc.

Beverly Clearly a scris poveste foarte interesante pentruca ea scrie sincer despre lucrurile reale din viata. Ea e sincer despre probleme din familia, cu munca, cu bani, si povestile ei nu preface ca viata e perfect si usor. Asta e cea mai special lucru din lucrarea ei.

Teaching English (part 2)

In addition to some classroom teaching, I have been teaching English online. One factor that is definitely involved is cultural differences and culture shock on the part of parents who might not even be visible to me during class time, but who can see and hear the entire class.

In English, the phrase, too bad, is never used to describe something as bad - at least not as far as I understand. Perhaps with the exception of a sentence such as, "This item is too bad to use". Too bad is nearly always a phrase used to express sympathy, empathy, pity, compassion, or even disappointment. In a recent class I taught the word "sad" and then asked my student if he was sad (and he answered he was). The parents (who admitted their English is not very good) took this with offense, assuming that I meant their child's English or response was bad. I told this to a lady here in Taiwan whose English is very good and she said evidently it must be culture shock.

I feel bad for those parents because they will probably be upset over a plethora of little things done by their son's English teachers that are simply lost in translation. I truly feel this is too bad.

I had heard before, actually, that much of China is so unaffected by outside and/or international cultures that when Chinese interact with foreigners or move to other countries they suffer more severely from culture shock than people who have plenty of foreigners living around them or near them.

Teaching English Abroad

You never thought that teaching your own language would be very difficult - and in a lot of ways it's not. Yet, as I set down to plan a lesson or talk to a classroom of anxious, shy students afraid to speak louder than a tiny whisper, I wonder how to transfer what I intuitively know and understand into their little minds.

It can be so hard to know how much they understand because, on the one hand, they follow my English directions for activities (if not by understanding my words, at least by mimicking me or following my body language), but they often don't answer questions and give me blank stares when I talk or ask them questions.

And so begins the challenge, faced by so many English teachers I'm sure, how do I get these kids to talk? A few points are obvious and some I have realized over time:

- Make class interesting
- Get the kids physically involved in the lesson
- Find ways to involve humor
- Create some competition where kids have to talk in order to win

I think I also need to help them digest the information they will need to use in order to interact - even though they are getting it in previous lessons. I need to reinforce what they are taught in the lessons when I'm not in class in order for them to be able to use the vocabulary, etc.

I also realize I need to have some questions available for them to use in order to help me reinforce their own understanding when they aren't understanding. For example, "What does ___ mean?" "Can you say it again?" "Can you say it slower?" "How do you say ___ in English?"

For some reason this process is much easier with babies than with elementary students.

Not quite so illiterate as before

I have now been taking Chinese classes for a total of about two and a half months and I am really beginning to see the work pay off.

Today I was able to recognize cabbage dumplings in a menu and just asked the clerk to verify if there was meat inside (to ensure my stomach would be full when I was done eating). I have been able to recognize (on some signs) about half the characters and even if I'm not entirely sure of the meaning, I have at least some idea of what it might be talking about. There have even been times that I have recognized all the characters in a sign and actually understood it!

This feels like a huge break through after all those vulnerable moments where all I could do was look at a menu in bewilderment. Granted, I still am left clueless as to most of the foods listed.

For example, yesterday I went and tried to order something besides my typical go-to dumplings and wantons and order Beef Noodle Soup - a favorite food of many Taiwanese. When the food came it turned out I had ordered pork dumplings in beef broth. I certainly recognized "beef soup" in the name, but failed to recognize the significance of the other characters in the name.

Regardless, I still tried something new, wasn't altogether clueless as to what I was getting, and it filled my stomach.

Life in a foreign country is always full of surprises!

It's the small things...

I ordered something new of a menu today because I read it and wanted it. (The menu wasn't in English and I didn't use Google Translate). I ordered something that is a twist on the dumplings I typically revert to eating (for the sake of relative familiarity), but it was still a new food and I still  ordered independently and all in Chinese. I was happy to know I wasn't just guessing at a food and hoping it would turn out to be good.

It's a small victory, but perhaps it is a victory all the same.

Lost in Thoughts (and books)

We drove down the highway. Ahead was a river of shimmering lights - white lights approaching from the left and red traveling with us on the right. The mountains stretch out beyond the shining river, the sun leaves a pink glow in the grey-blue sky which will soon deepen to black. In the car is the sound of classical violins and the fluctuating tones of a one-sided conversation of my mother-in-law on the phone. I don't understand most of the words, I don't even bother trying to pick up on the meaning. That would require effort that I might need to apply at another time, there's no point in exhausting myself for a conversation not relevant to myself.

On road trips like this I often become lost in my own thoughts. I can't think of anything to talk about, so we ride on in comfortable silence. Since Rex is on this road trip, most of the actual communication happens between my in-laws and him. That's what you call the path of least resistance. My own thoughts lately have involved books downloaded on my phone. I am often transported from Taipei's busyness to the lives of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, or even Beverly Cleary herself.

My only concern with my increased reading lately is the relatively reduced opportunities I grab hold of to practice speaking and listening in a Chinese world.

Street Food in Tainan

      The five of us were walking down the road like a row of ducklings down a narrow road. The sun blazed on us as we shuffled past a long line of people waiting for some delicious street treat (who knows what), and avoided the motorcycles zooming past on the right. Above spanned the multitude of advertisements for wares and goods (who knows what) in those mysterious Chinese characters. 

        My mother and father-in-law are looking for a place to eat. Food surrounds us, the choices are endless. We cross the road to turn onto the next street and stopped at a restaurant with no front wall or door. Everything here appears grey; the stainless steel cupboards, counters, stove, refrigerator, the stony floor, the canopy above, and the asphalt road outside. Only the two workers behind the counter seem to add color to the scene with their brown skin, black hair, and blue or pink t-shirts and the essential Asian piece de resistance - their light blue face masks.

Beverly Cleary - Binge Reading on my Morning Commute

I have been binging on Beverly Cleary books in the last week or two. It has been extremely rewarding and very fun.

After finishing listening to The Coddling of the American Mind, and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, I found on Scribd a collection of the Ramona and Beezus series all in the form of audiobooks. There were:

Beezus and Ramona
Ramona the Pest
Ramona and Her Father
Ramona and Her Mother
Ramona Quimby Age 8
Ramona Forever, and
Ramona's World (not necessarily in this order)

This series was a lot of fun to listen to because nobody in the story is perfect, everyone has their struggles, and it portrays the challenges of a child growing up and trying to match up to the maturity of her older sister, often messing something up when trying her very best, and so on. Even Ramona's parents have your common, real-life struggles. There is one part where the family has had an exceptionally long day so much so that even Mr. and Mrs. Quimby are unreasonable and cross like they always tell their daughters not to be. They get into a silly argument over something very pointless and their daughters go to bed worried that their parents will divorce or something. The next morning when all is well, the girls ask their parents about it and it is explained to them that even parents have bad days, it doesn't mean it's the end of the world. It is this way that Ramona and Beezus realize that even parents cannot be perfect all the time.

I then began to read (read, not listen to) Fifteen which is one of Beverly Cleary's first love series. It was really cute. I finished reading it, amazingly, while riding the bus standing up. I didn't even get car sick, which is potentially a great victory in itself.

One of the most remarkable scenes from Fifteen involves Jane eating at a Chinese restaurant for the first time, not knowing what any of the food is in front of her while being teased about things like beetle juice (which was actually soy sauce), and trying to use chopsticks and successfully spilling much of her dinner on her clothes.

I like the story in that Jane realizes that if any boy is going to like her, he had better like her for who she truly is and not because she was acting like someone else in order to win favor. She also realizes that her crush is still a normal person, not some high and mighty thing that needs to be constantly impressed. The story is cute, and so well portrays Jane's character and agonizing over whether she is really the kind of person that Stan would like.

Learning a Local Rather Than Standardized Language

As much as I complain about the difficulty of reading and writing here in Taiwan, I'm beginning to feel like I'm actually on the road towards literate fluency. I can recognize parts within Chinese characters, even if I don't know what the word is, and that makes looking up a word much easier. I even got a 98 on a Chinese writing test yesterday. No characters were written the wrong way!

I also feel that I am learning a plethora of useful terms, phrases, and vocabulary mostly from hearing teachers explain concepts that I'm already somewhat familiar with. They drop in words such as other, choose, answer, question, begin, finish, test, quiz, and so much more. So often I'm trying to get the point of something that is being said that relates to the here and now or near future plans, but I have fewer explanations from family and friends about grammar, sentence structures, sentence patterns, proper usage, etc. Now I have teachers who are paid to fill in those gaps.

I had a revelation today. I may have been learning Chinese over the course of the past three years, but the reasons I am not further along include:

1)     I have been focusing on getting married, graduating, and moving three times in one year (once internationally)

2)     While in the States I gave up on trying to use apps, Google Translate, or Chinese curriculum in general because they have simplified Chinese characters rather than the traditional characters used in Taiwan as well as a Mainland China pronunciation, accent, and usage of vocabulary that is not consistent with the Taiwanese way of saying things.

3)     I gave up on using Chinese curriculum in general because they seemed to all start at the very beginning with concepts I already know and were too easy or too boring for me to follow for very long. Since I already know greetings and some conversational Chinese it is hard to find a curriculum that is actually at my level.

4)     Since there can potentially be a wide variety of words that have the exact same pronunciation, or same pronunciation with a different tone, there is just too much room for error when trying to use Google Translate to figure things out on my own. I decided it would be better to learn more in person that virtually.

I've heard of people learning Arabic have similar issues when wanting to learn a particular local dialect. They were advised to wait until they were in the country they were heading to to learn the language in order to bypass the issues of learning a variety of a language that will not be useful for every day life.

Now that I am spending a year in Taiwan and it is the perfect opportunity to bypass all these problems I have previously experienced. I can make language learning my part-time, if not full-time, work. It feels rewarding to be mounting the obstacles which previously have been leaving me so forlorn!

The Bootcamp Episode

Rex left for bootcamp on Monday of last week. Day after day went by, the first two days had no calls, and the third day of his absence I had to share a fifteen minute phone call with other family members. By the time the weekend came, his absence was quite noticeable. During the weekend I was camping with my in-laws. There were brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, and parents with a slough of small people running around underfoot at the campsite.

Recently I mentioned what conversation is like in a Chinese world. Basically, I find extensive social scenarios that are primarily in Chinese to be quite exhausting and there's only so much I can endure before I go find a quiet place apart from everyone else. I have nothing against the people I'm with, I even find them to be quite enjoyable and supportive, but my mind trails off and spaces out in this context.

My mind had extensive empty space over the weekend; it was almost too relaxing, especially in light of Rex being gone. An absent husband and an empty mind are really a bad combination! By the time the weekend was over I found myself exhausted and emotionally a bit unstable. The emotions made the exhaustion worse.

Monday and the return to class was really what the doctor called for. A return to class, a return to work, a return to using my mind extensively, and a return to sanity. Less opportunity to think about the fact that Rex is gone for another week, more opportunity to explore and tend to responsibilities.

I'll be glad when he's back from bootcamp.

A Glimpse into the Every Day

I walked to a nearby restaurant to get dinner for about $3 (if counted in USD). The meal I had in mind was that milkfish soup. That's a safe bet because I like milkfish with its fresh and somewhat tangy flavor, and usually it doesn't have any bones in it. It really doesn't taste fishy, so it's a rather refreshing dish to eat.

As I approach the restaurant I come to a large intersection where I have the option to wait at a light, or climb up some stairs to cross above the traffic. I opt for the stairs and as I get to the other corner I realize it probably would have taken just as much time to wait for the light and would have involved less climbing. Well, conserving steps isn't really a concern for me.

At the restaurant one of the ladies asks me what I want. I say, there's a soup and it has that white fish in it. The lady says something back to me and I just say yes. I then ask about leafy vegetables (always a good way to make the meal more nutritious). She says you can find the types of leafy vegetables on the sign above you. The only word I recognize on all three signs is the "tsai" or vegetable part of it. I ask her to repeat her sentence because the place is noisy and she was talking fast. I caught what sounded like what I remember to be spinach from the past, so she makes a couple of marks on the menu, I see the price, and I count out some cash.

When I get my food I realize that the fish didn't seem to be the kind I had in mind, but still tasty. The vegetables turned out to be cooked cabbage, not cooked spinach. The soup also turned out to be mostly broth with a few pieces of fish in it and plenty of ginger. Less substance than I was hoping for, but still not a bad meal.

I took it to a park to eat.

In the park a group of middle-aged to elderly citizens gathered without my realizing it and started swinging arms back and forth, over and over, to the rhythm of a recorded lady counting higher and higher. At one point I hear her say what sounded like "disgusting" and realize instead she must have been saying "twenty seven" because the voice was really doing noting but counting. (Twenty seven is erqi and disgusting is erxing, and the tones are similar.) Passers-by seem to start swinging their arms as well as they listen to the rhythmic counting from the speaker.

As I finish consuming the meal before me, I check my watch, 7:47. My phone is dying and Rex has been calling at about 8:15 every evening from boot camp, so I hurry home so as not to miss his call with no cell phone battery. 

Reading in Chinese Part 2

I forgot to mention before those moments when I can recognize all the individual parts of a character and therefore feel like I should be able to read it, but I can't. Or the times where I find a character I've written or learned before, but can't remember what it is. Or the times I see a character that looks almost exactly as another word I know, but one or two small details is different. That happens all the time.

Last but not least are the moments I can tell you what a character means, but I have no idea how it's said in Chinese. I always wonder how this is possible.

I guess it's better than understanding nothing.

Reading in Chinese

I was riding in the car with my husband's mom, dad, and sister yesterday. My sister-in-law said to me, read to me what you are able to off of the signs around us. So I did.

"Very xx xx xx xx" from one sign. Were those last four characters representative of "Jesus" and "Church?" It turns out they were.

"Today" from one enormous sign with lots of words, "device" and "car" from another which together - it turns out - means motorcycle, "noodles" "xx xx four people" on the side of a taxi cab. But what about four people? I wouldn't have known unless she told me, "that says the car can seat four people."

You get the idea.

In a very large sign full of mysteries of the Chinese language I read two characters from one part, not recognizing any characters in a long sequence I skip ahead to the next one I know. I'm corrected, of course, because I'm told the next word is a different word that I didn't say. Well, I knew that, but I wasn't reading the whole sign, just the parts I know how to read.

And of course, my Chinese lessons are full of repeating vocabulary about the school being behind the swimming pool and where are you going and when and for how long. So the impressive length of the paragraphs I read in Chinese from my textbook are a little misleading because of how often expressions are repeated within the text: "Today I will go to class, tomorrow I will go to the library from 10-12 to read a book. Does your mom cook food? Yes, but not well. My dad cooks good food." It really is not like what you would find naturally occurring in people's speech. But it's still helpful because the repetition helps concrete the grammatical form and make the ideas flow off my tongue readily as needed.

I wonder how Chinese ever are able to read and write and speak in their own language! More and more I am truly impressed by the ability to read a long document and understand it in a glance.

Enter the Life of a Toddler

Do you remember those moments as a kid when your parents were in a long, dull conversation with their friends and you got bored and either egged your parents on to get a move on, or found some more interesting, exciting play to engage in?

We all have known some mom or dad who complains about their young child just learning to grasp language, but not yet able to make themselves fully understood, throws tantrums and fits because they can't make themselves truly understood.

I feel like I'm living the life of one of those small children. I'm a slightly more competent toddler, though, because I can hop on a bus and get myself to the university every morning for Chinese class. When I'm in a social setting my mind blanks out quite quickly because I can only keep up with a minimal amount of the information being exchanged. When I engage in conversation (and I've been avoiding simply reverting to English although I could generally get by with it) the interaction requires 2-5 times the energy because I have to stop the speaker to ask the meaning of a word, or I have to get at an idea in a round about way or try to ask how an idea or word is expressed in Chinese.

I am listening to the Ramona and Beezus books on my phone right now and I found that I can empathize with Ramona when she is learning to read. When she was just beginning to learn to read words, she would read books by inserting a buzzing sound for each word she did not know. "The boy zzzz the zzzz on the ball and zzzz zzzz into a zzzz. How fun!"

This is me when I listen to Chinese, and it's even more exaggerated when I read.

Sometimes when Rex is driving the motorcycle and he wants to find some food for dinner, he'll ask me to keep my eyes open and tell me what I can see. I don't really like that suggestion, so I do what I can realistically do. In a sign full of what may as well be nonsense, I recognize a few sparse words, "hand" and "beef noodles" and "coffee" amid long lists of menus with some mysterious foods listed.

I tell Rex, "Let's go to the place where we can eat hands!" Because I can't actually offer anything useful in this scenario.

Teach English, Learn Chinese

This year one of my main goals is to learn Chinese. In order to make sufficient income I will also be teaching English. I feel like my brain will go through the ringer in order to create lesson plans and transfer information to students as well as to collect information in order to perform up to class expectations and my personal goals for the year. Reading and writing in Chinese is really my biggest challenge in this area. Because every character has to be learned one by one, and you can't simply read something by "sounding it out" as we are accustomed to doing in English from the time we were in Kindergarten.

The purpose of learning Chinese, of course, is primarily for building relationships and opening up opportunities for the future. I don't want a language barrier to exist between me and my in-laws.

Another opportunity has opened up as well for Rex to improve his Taiwanese. There is a church in Taipei that has a Bible study in the Taiwanese language. Rex's Taiwanese is a little broken, which makes communicating with his grandma more troublesome. If he attends this Bible study he can improve his speaking, understanding, and even reading of the language. Even most Taiwanese who have spoken Taiwanese at home with their families don't read the language because in school they primarily just learn Mandarin. This is, of course, because of the Nationalists bringing and enforcing the use of Mandarin in Taiwan when they came after World War 2 to Taiwan.

What I realize is an easy pitfall is the possibility of forgetting my Romanian language. I don't want that to happen, so one of my goals is to listen to things in Romanian and keep up relationships with my friends in Romania.

Maybe my expectations of myself are too high. I guess we'll see.

Travelling Around the Island

Recently I returned home to Taipei from a trip of a lifetime. My husband and I got to take my parents on a loop around Taiwan and see some of the incredible scenery here. Taiwan is an island of which about 70% is mountainous. So while there are some plains, they are largely limited to the Western side of the island and are filled with large cities and farms. As Taiwan is an island about the size of Lake Michigan, the ocean is never terribly far away. In practice this results in the people consuming probably more seafood than land animals in their diet.

Because of the presence of mountains and ocean there are always beautiful sights within easy access. The mountains are full of tropical plants and flowering trees this time of year, including the famous Sakura Japanese cherry blossoms. Since the Japanese colonized Taiwan for 50 years, there are places they lived and planted this beloved tree.

Probably one of the highlights of the trip for me was seeing Taroko Gorge. I have wanted to visit Taroko Gorge since before I ever came to Taiwan. Taroko Gorge is basically an enormous crevice in the mountains with the rock foundation of the mountains carved out and exposed to view. There is a river flowing through at the bottom and it has a blue hue to it, unlike the brown rivers we're accustomed to in Wisconsin. I believe the color is caused by the presence of algae or minerals in the water. Sometime when I'm able to access the photos from my laptop I might share some of them with you.

We also got to see surfers out on the ocean, drink coffee grown in Taiwan (which is not exported because the quantity is only enough to consume locally), see how salt was gathered from ocean water in ancient times, eat Aboriginal food, and much more. But the truth is, we only touched the tip of the ice berg.

Names Across Cultures

I was sort of interviewing my sister-in-law recently about her childhood nanny. She was born when my husband was already ten years old, so there's a big age gap between them. The nanny was from the Philippines and her name was Rosy. She would use English with the kids and taught my sister-in-law all kinds of things, like how to cook and bake.

Rosy was also the reason my sister-in-law chose her current English name. She used to be called Pinky, but then there was a commercial for candy with a song. The song had something about pinky in it and my sister-in-law's friends would tease her about it. Rosy once told her about kings and queens, and my sister in law asked, what if you added Y to the end of queen, what kind of name would that make? Rosy told her that would be Queeny. So my sister-in-law decided that is what she wanted her English name to be.

The story is somewhat reminiscent of my husband's story of choosing his current English name. When he was young he was called Mickey, but at some point he decided that name was too cute. When he read that Rex is Latin for king he decided that was a cool name and his English name has been Rex ever since.

In addition, my middle name is the name of a historical queen. A random funny little tid-bit is that while I was in Romania I would introduce myself to kids. My name, Rachel, doesn't sound like a girl's name in Romania (since girl's names all end in either E or A) and I didn't usually tell them my Romanian name, Rahela, because it caused other complications (kids arguing with each other about what my name really was, Rachel or Rahela). Since Rachel is unfamiliar, the kids would often ask if my name was Regina, a familiar word to them. Regina in Romanian just happens to mean queen.

In Romania, Rex is a dog's name. I suppose I could always have call him Rege (Re-Jeh) if I had wanted to avoid his being referred to as "The Dog Rex".

Fruit in a Tropical Climate (with mountains)

In Taiwan there are a plethora of tropical fruits available, but because of the mountains in Taiwan there are also your typical fruits that you might find back home in Wisconsin that require some kind of a winter in order to do well. I would not call what we are experiencing now "Winter", although the locals do. It is more like late Spring or early Summer to me.

So for fruits I can readily find at decent prices starfruit, dates (fresh, not just dried like we see in Wisconsin), dragon fruit, papaya, guava, Asian pears, a large variety of oranges and tangerines (some are sweeter, some peel as easily as clementines but are larger), as well as apples, cherries, etc.

I hear in the Summer there will also be very fresh, juicy, sweet mangoes. I'm sure I'm only seeing a fraction of the kinds of things that will eventually be in season. Regardless, I'm enjoying the new selection of produce available to me.

Shared Experiences

One of the most fun parts of coming to Taiwan has been that one of my best friends has moved to Thailand for a semester abroad only a week after I came here. This means that we get to compare all kinds of random experiences. Visa applications, food, climate, apartment layout, traffic, classroom styles, honor and shame culture phenomena, and the feeling of helplessness when not knowing how to communicate across a language barrier.

Granted, I have it much easier in so many ways than she has had it. I have some knowledge of the Chinese language, I have had exposure over the last three years to Chinese culture even if it has sometimes been minimal, I have some friends here, I have family here, and I am here with my husband who is a Taiwanese native. Last but not least, I have been here before.

My friend in her first week had no one to talk to in English, no one to give her recommendations for food to buy, couldn't even figure out how to buy toilet paper for her apartment. Let's just say she has had some challenges that I have not had to deal with. Even traveling to Romania I would stay with people I already knew, or was at least connected with.

But now that her classes have begun things are better. She has connections with other people, is no longer confused about how to register for classes, and has begun to fall into a regular routine. I'm happy for her because there is some stability and now she has some human connections.

Cultural differences

A few cultural things I have discovered so far:

When planning a wedding, it is inappropriate for the groom to invite and call those who are in the grandparents' generation. That is up to the father of the groom. It has something to do with the honor/shame culture as well as the hierarchy that is interwoven into the culture.

When my husband's little sister, Queeny, addresses me, Nai-Nai (grandma) considers it inappropriate for her to call me by my name, instead it is proper to call me "number two sister-in-law" or Er Sao. (Good thing it's not too long.)  She told me today that she was scolded for calling me Rachel, so I need to know that if Nai-Nai is present and Queeny says "Er Sao" she is talking to me.

When eating at a restaurant, it is fairly common for the servers to provide a small bin where you can put your purse or backpack rather than having to place the backpack on the floor. This small bin can be slid under your seat.

When we are home and my in-laws arrive, it is considered respectful to greet them and include "mama" or "baba" (mom or dad) rather than just saying hello. I heard that my brother-in-law likes to say "hello" without saying "hello, dad." When he does this, my father-in-law will ask him, "Why didn't you greet me?" This rule applies to all the people in the family in the older generations. So in my parents' generation or grandparents' generation, it is necessary for people in my generation and younger to greet them each by their title (not their name). So if we arrive at a family gathering we would be a good son and daughter-in-law if we make it a point to go around and individually greet, "hello aunt, hello uncle, hello grandma" etc.

When using a bathroom, it is very typical for the hot water to not even be connected to the sink. That means that if you turn the faucet handle towards hot, the water will entirely stop running. I saw this in Romania, too, but the difference here is that even high class restaurants might not have hot water connected in the bathroom sink. Also, bathrooms often have no towels, so you have to let your hands air dry and resist the temptation to dry your hands on your not-so-clean pants. The reason we always dry our hands in Wisconsin (especially in winter) is to prevent chapped skin.

Since I was sick for the last week, I got a lot of advice from everyone about what to do in order to get better or feel well. Traditional Chinese Medicine will tell you that if you have diarrhea you should not eat spicy, oily, or sweet foods. Spicy food can make your tummy feel more irritated. Oily foods can pass through your digestive track more quickly. Sugary foods can feed the bad bacteria. I also was told that milk can exacerbate diarrhea. When I had a cough I was told to drink a lot of water, even if it makes me have to return frequently to the bathroom. I was also told that if I drink a lot of water and eat until I'm full, I will cough less. Someone even pushed some accupuncture points on my arm to see if it would help me feel better when I was coming down with a fever. I was also told not to go barefoot on the cold floor, to wear warm clothes and allow myself to sweat even though I was very warm (from the fever) and had changed into a soccer jersey to cool off.

When I had a coughing fit one day, I was handed a face mask. Talking to Nai-Nai I felt like my face lacked expression, so I pulled the face mask down a little. She motioned to me to put it back. I think the real purpose of wearing the mask was to prevent Nai-Nai from catching my cough.

When shopping for a wedding dress (you need at least two, possibly as many as six, in a Chinese wedding) you can't choose dark or deep colors because they would make me look old. Older people (like my parents' age) can wear those dark colors alright, but for me as the bride to choose a warmer color like that would not be young enough. I will therefore be wearing a very bright red dress, similar in style to the traditional Chinese qipao style, but a more modern version with a lot of lace. I will also get to wear my original wedding dress over again. Hopefully my weight hasn't fluctuated enough to make that a problem. I think I should be fine, it's just that I was kind of under weight at the time of my wedding because of having gotten sick three times.

I think there are things Asians do that Westerners consider strange, but when you understand the reason for doing it, it doesn't seem quite so strange anymore. Facemasks, for example, are frequently worn here because the air is considered to have a lot of pollution. There are ways to find out how bad the pollution is on a given day, and people keep track of it like we do the weather. If the number is really high, people might avoid leaving the house or keep their face covered, especially if riding a motorcycle because the amount of pollution you breath in increases. Since motorcycle is a very typical transportation method here, I have found myself in a face mask more often than I could ever have predicted.

Sometime I'll have to post about the odd things I see here, like poor English translations on signs. It can be pretty funny sometimes.

What happened this month?

This past month has been a hectic one.

My husband was preparing for his dissertation proposal (this is not the defense, but the proposal for the topic of the defense), we were packing/moving out, Christmas was coming, and I got sick. So many of my plans for packing were changed, and while other people were preparing their cozy Christmas celebrations I was taking apart my home piece by piece. (That's what it felt like, anyway.)

Our flight left on Christmas day and we spent four days with some friends of ours near Vancouver, Canada. Taking those four days was helpful considering how exhausted we had both become. After I recovered from my illness, Rex also got sick with a cold. I then caught his cold and then caught another bug, probably a stomach flu or food poisoning because I ended up in bed with a fever which was followed by some unusual bowel movements. However, I am feeling much better now and am back to my normal self.

After flying to Taipei we went to my in-law's apartment and we have been staying with them while we get things figured out about where we will be posted for Rex's military service. Once we know his location we will know where to look for an apartment and in which area I should look for work, although I'm considering online work right now since this coming month and a half is quite an unusual one.

Our two main goals in this trip are for us to develop the relationships with Rex's family, and for me to learn Chinese. There are other important things that need to happen during this year in Taiwan, but those two things are our highest priorities since we have unique opportunities in those areas.

I must say that since arriving in Taiwan, it feels like vacation compared to all the demands we had to meet before leaving. Regardless, almost every day we have been running errands, meeting with people, and now we are even planning a wedding banquet for February. For this last reason I feel I'm living in a reality show or like I could write a story. It would probably be called "My Big Fat Greek Chinese Wedding."

I also could write a very classic sounding Christmas story because of our packing and travelling experiences during the Christmas season. You might see that story in a future blog post.