Hi, I’m Mark, I’m on a Fulbright scholarship to Kaohsiung, Taiwan to teach English in elementary schools.
So, it’s my 6th day here in Taiwan, and it’s been a very short week. Long days make for short weeks, and we’ve been pretty busy. Arriving with all of other Fulbrighters on 8/1 was a good day. We’ve spent the majority of the week organizing our living situations here, getting cell phones, applying for our alien residence cards, opening a bank account, etc.
Kaohsiung English Teaching Assistants (ETA) 2010 - 2011
Fonda and Alex are both employed by Fulbright here in Taiwan and have been terrificly helpful getting us set up. As Paul, one of my buddies, was saying, it’s like having a personal guide, who if you ask for something, has a good answer and will even show you where you need to go to have it done, and instead of us paying her, she’s paying us.
As far as what we’ll be doing, we’re going to be placed in 2 elementary schools, and have 16 hrs of class a week that we will be co-teaching (english) with a Taiwanese english instructor. My personal project while here is food related. Basically, I hope to use food as a way to look at a culture, so I’m going to be eating and cooking a lot to try and explore this. Sadly, I have yet to take pictures of the food here, but have had some fabulous meals, including a few very Taiwanese dishes like stinky tofu, oyster glutinous pancakes and taiwan shaved ice.
Taiwan is hot, shaved ice is cool
Speaking of which, I’m off to explore a night market tonight, so I’m going to get ready for that.