Thursday, April 10, 2008
A Traumatic Memory
I'm starting to get excited about leaving! Two more weeks at work, and a total of three more weeks in Australia. I've found once you let yourself start counting down days (or months in the case of Taiwan) you allow yourself to start thinking of home. Which is a good thing, because it helps me feel ready to leave.Anyway, my first stop after Australia is Taipei. I'm so excited to see Kathleen B. and Julia again, and to visit students and staff at Fuhsing. But tonight, it brought to mind one of my most traumatic memories. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was devastating. I wanted to read my blog post to compare my perspective at the time, but no post. I read my sent emails to friends and family: nothing! So, a year and a half late, the true story.
It was Christmas Day 2006. It was a Monday, so my roommates and I had already celebrated Christmas on the 24th because we had to work on the 25th. It's hard to explain the level of stress we were all under in the lead up to Christmas. Fuhsing's tradition is to put on a Broadway quality performance with military precision. Thinking of creative elements and training children to perform such a feat is all the English teachers think about for a month.
Alot of the writing of scripts, the training of children and the pressure fell on the foreign teachers. For example, as a grade two teacher, I had daily responsibilities to prepare the grade two students. The Taiwanese teachers expected me to use my lunch break to train performers, to write the script for the play and to act in the show. But, they didn't take into account that, as a foreign teacher, I taught grade one, two, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten! I had responsibilities for each grade to prepare them for the show, and, as the only teacher involved in both elementary and junior high shows, I had rehearsals every weekend. And, of course, there was the stress of being away from home and family for the holiday. It was just a really rough time.
So, slightly miserable to be working on Christmas day, we arrived for the elementary show in the morning and junior high in the afternoon. Things went well, but I was exhausted. In the afternoon, a roommate said someone had been in our apartment at lunch moving things around (the apartment was supplied by the school, so they had keys). I was worried as I walked into the apartment after school. I opened the door to our living room and immediately started crying. I couldn't stop sobbing at the shock of it.
There was an extra bedroom that had been the dumping ground for every previous teachers' junk when they left Taiwan. The school staff had moved everything out of the spare bedroom and piled it in our living room and through all the halls so you could hardly walk. There was an extra couch in the living room, and it was totally unlivable. The extra room was empty and set up for a new roommate. I had no idea where we could put the "stuff", and I was so stressed by the idea of having another flatmate (there were already five of us sharing one apartment).
When I called (crying) for Julia to ask my supervisor what was going on, she said the Principal had decided a teacher would be staying, and my supervisor didn't know if it was for one night or permanent. No warning, and on Christmas day! I knew it would be a Taiwanese teacher, as it had been during my first year in the apartment. That roommate situation was horrible! We couldn't communicate, and we had totally different living standards. Eventually, her husband and daughter both we staying in the room, and the apartment was disgusting. He would smoke in the living room and I'd come home to a terrible smell in the apartment and found he had used the toilet and didn't flush!!!
Anyway, I did assume the worst, but I was at the end of my emotional rope! Thankfully Julia and Louise came home and talked me down a bit. And in the end, nobody came. At all. The principal put us through all that and the visiting teacher ended up staying in a hotel for one night. Nobody came to move things back, but I moved all the stuff in myself after a day because I was fed up of feeling so out of control.
I have so many other stories like that from Taiwan (don't even get Louise and I started on the whole wanting-to-kick-us-out-of-the-apartment issue). I guess I tried to keep my blog full of happy stories, but I am daily proud of myself for making it through one the hardest jobs (teaching at Fuhsing and living in Taipei) that I hope I will ever have to face!
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Then we went to Dan Ryans and had a great Christmas dinner. Good times.