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.
Monday, May 6, 2019
Sunday, May 5, 2019
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?
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?
Saturday, May 4, 2019
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.
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.
Friday, May 3, 2019
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.
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.
Thursday, May 2, 2019
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
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.
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.
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