Happy New Year! (Xin Nian Kuai Le!)

Ni-hao Family and Friends! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years! It was very different for Kate and I this year, but very memorable all the same! As it grew closer and closer to Christmas more and more stores were setting up decorations and blasting “Last Christmas” (by WHAM!)… Seriously, we were beginning to think that is the only Christmas song they know here! Turns out the students also know “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Despite having to work on Christmas Day, Kate and I did our best to celebrate together. On Christmas Eve we went to the Shangri-La Far Eastern Hotel with some friends (our “family” here) to eat at the best buffet that you can possibly imagine! There was Chinese, Indian, Italian, Japanese and a smattering of other cultural food to choose from… and there was turkey! Here is a family photo that we took by the hotel’s fake hearth.


On Christmas Day Kate and I exchanged small presents (we’re trying to save money for the big trip at the end of January), went to Christmas Mass and came home to eat French toast and call our families (for whom it was still Christmas Eve). That’s about it! A simple Christmas that served to remind me of how important my family and friends are and how unimportant the material side of the holiday truly is! I miss my family tons; my younger brother Derek also had to miss Christmas as he is living and working in Australia right now. Yes, the Thissen family is slowly covering every continent… Just a different Christmas for all of us this year!

I met a German woman named Silke at yoga a few months back and she asked me if Kate and I could show her son (Rene) around the city when he came to visit her for the holidays. Being on the lookout for more friends, I happily agreed to acting as a hostess in a city that I barely know for two weeks. Rene turned out to be a really cool guy and Kate and I miss him now that he’s gone back to Germany. We spent our New Year’s Eve with Rene and his family and friends (our ‘adopted’ German family) at a rooftop party hosted by a German satellite company in Taipei. We had a perfect view of Taipei 101 and it’s 21 million dollar firework show at midnight!! I encourage you to watch the 4-minute firework show on You Tube (click here) as it’s really something! Funny thing is, I returned to work a few days later to hear the kids say that it wasn’t as good as last year’s! Could’ve fooled me.


We had a lot of dinner get-togethers over the last few weeks and have made many new friends! It’s quite uplifting to meet other young foreigners who are also taking in a new culture. We have a lot of fun exchanging stories and talking about our first impressions of this crazy city. Though, just last night Kate and I were saying how quickly we got used to this place! We remember looking at photos of the city on Google before we left and thinking about how bizarre it was! Now, that’s just part of everyday life!

I’ve acquired one tutoring job for now. It’s a pretty great deal! I meet Michael at Starbucks on Sunday mornings and I make a nice amount of money for conversing with him and teaching him English idioms. Afterwards, he takes me out for lunch somewhere! It’s a good way to get to know new restaurants without having to spend any money!

In regards to my teaching job… I hate to say it but it’s the only part of Taiwan that’s causing me grief. I’m very tired of the dominating “business” factor of the school; it’s all about the money… an idea that is quite foreign to me having worked mostly for non-profit organizations. I have very difficult classes where I’m teaching one or two students and the rest are throwing things above my head or at me, speaking in Chinese so loud that I can’t hear myself think (they aren’t allowed to speak Chinese in English School) and just coming and going as they please, ignoring my “no bathroom” policy.

Many of you are probably thinking, why doesn’t the school just kick out the bad kids? My thoughts exactly… but it’s a business, not a school. As long as those kids’ parents are paying tuition, I am required to ‘teach’ them. I’m told the most important part is making sure the kids fill in their workbooks so their parents think they’re doing work and more importantly, learning English. So I have to write all of the answers on the board so that the kids can copy them into their books. It’s really wearing me down, this false atmosphere of a school. It seems that the other teacher’s cope by putting up a barrier and just treating it like any other job. Unfortunately for me, I take just as much from my working environment as I give; that’s the way I’ve always been.

In happier news, Kate and I are leaving for Singapore and Malaysia in less than two weeks! Hopefully this trip will give me a nice reminder of why I’m here! To travel and experience more cultures! Then maybe I will start viewing teaching here as more of a means to an end. Thank you to everyone who sent Christmas and New Year’s cards and emails! I will write an update after our trip and soon I also plan to write an entry strictly on some of the many funny every-day occurrences in Taiwan. My family really gets a kick out of some of my stories so I’m sure everyone else will too!