Teaching in Feng Yuan

So what is teaching in Taiwan really like? Sometimes it feels like organized play other times it just feels like organized chaos. We tend to have some fun in nearly every class period but sometimes it feels like to just barely have a handle on what is going on. As my roommate Joseph so eloquently mentioned in his blog, the Chinese teachers have a one up on us in regards to classroom management. Although I don't agree with the Chinese teachers being able to physically punish the students it does make it a little harder for us to do our jobs. When the kids don't have to worry about us hitting them it makes us look like pansies. Well sometimes we have pure moments of delight though. For e.g. ( a word I recently taught some of my students.):

So those are the awesome teaching experiences that I have enjoyed so far while teaching in the little city of Feng Yuan. Perhaps the greatest part about teaching the second language though is that I know exactly what is going on in the conversation. However that will soon be changing. I talked to one of my students fathers today and he invited me to do a language exchange. Basically what that means is that I will be signing my Tuesday nights away for the next six months to try to improve a families understanding of the English language. In return I believe that they might purchase a few meals for me and try to pound a few more Chinese phrases into my head. I'm hoping that I enjoy this and honestly it should be an exciting experience. I mean who knows how many times I'll get to brake the Word of Wisdom by drinking a drink that turns out to be tea? On second thought, no one drinks while they eat dinner so that shouldn't be a problem either. Hopefully it will turn out all right but I am grateful for the opportunity to learn a little bit of Chinese. Who knows, maybe I will have the chance to share the gospel with this family and they might even invite me to spend the Chinese New Year with them. I'm hoping that it leads to great opportunities be it might just be a dud experience too.

So back to my teaching. On Wednesday and Friday nights I teach what some like to call a writing class. There are two girls and me. They are 14 and not really interested in talking to me. The first night of the class was. . . awkward. I had no idea what sort of lesson plan I should be following and the only things that I was told was to talk to them. Somehow I made it through two hours of murder and I had Wednesday night to look forward to. I decided that we would play Monopoly and that was my only plan for tonight. It turned out rather well. I just kind of sat there, had them read me the rules and we began playing. It might turn out to be an interesting game though. At the moment I have a monopoly on some light blue section, one of the girls is almost out of money, because I bid against her and dropped out when the price was too high. The other girl doesn't really like to buy anything and so now she is running out of money and has almost nothing to show for it. I am afraid that I am a little bit too competitive even against my students. If the game continues like this I will be the only person in a decent spot and I'll feel real bad for losing.
Well, seeing as it is now 12:30 I should probably post this thing and move on with my life. Happy hunting and have a great day.