2008 May | Taiwaneers

Come Gatherin’ Round People Wherever You Roam

May 252008

Wow. The year is coming to an end. Changes are taking place.

Today I rescheduled our flight to Michigan. We recently found the apartment we want to live in next year in Taipei and this week we’ll seal the deal with the landlord there. Now I need to find someone who has a truck and can help us move and schedule a moving day. Also we need to go down to the immigration office and get our ARC (Alien Resident Certificate) cards renewed for next year. What do all these things have in common? They all signify the end of this year and our eminent departure for home!!!!!

I’m pumped! I’m pumped to eat Qdoba. I’m pumped to drink some real beer. I’m pumped to understand the sermons at church. I’m pumped to drive a car. I’m pumped to work without it being related to teaching English. I’m pumped to see family. I’m pumped to see friends. I’m pumped to just hang out in completely familiar surroundings with completely familiar foods, sounds, smells, and the rest of it.

I’m crossing over into “its been nice but time to go” phase. The “I’m not here but I’m not there yet” phase.

We’ve met some great people here in Taoyuan though. I’ll be sad to be in Taipei next year and therefore see a lot less of our good Taoyuan friends…..overjoyed to have a shorter commute but there are always trade offs as we’ve learned from Gregory Mankiw’s 10 Principles of Economics.

Emily and I, while we’re home, want to spend time at both of our families homes, make a trip south for the annual Muffett family-get-together, earn enough money to cover airfare as window washers/odd jobs doers, and visit as many friends as possible before leaving again.

By the way I’d just like to take this opportunity to say I’ve married an amazing women. She found us a primo apartment in Taipei in a primo location for an incredibly awesome price. The only hitch is its a shared apartment so we’ll have the ‘ol dice throw to determine good roomies or bad. I’m fairly excited about it and really grateful both to God and to Emily for all her hard work and taking the time to look and find a good one! I’d also like to take this opportunity to let you all she’s first in her class (or maybe its second?) and was accepted into National Taiwan Normal University which is one of the more prestigious universities here in Taiwan to continue her studies next year. I’ll let her tell you more about that but needless to say I am proud.

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May 092008

Well I’m starting to get some of my midterm grades back. I did better on average during the first semester but thats to be expected I guess since many of my classes this semester are the second semester in year-long courses so they are harder. I did pretty horribly in Calculus which means that I’m going to have to work really hard for the rest of the semester.

Emily and I are working on finding an apartment for next year. We want to move to Taipei so my commute isn’t as far and so we can be closer to friends. She’s planning on transferring to another university so it should work out really well hopefully. Getting used to living in a metropolitan area where commutes are apart of life has been interesting.

We both went and had dinner with a girl that my parents met back home while she was studying at MSU named Gilda. She brought a friend along who had also lived in East Lansing and it was great. We talked about Meijer’s and all the great things we miss from the States even though they are Taiwanese and more at home here. They were two really sweet women who after dinner took us to walk around looking for “for rent” signs since we were near where we want to live.

I’m starting to look ahead and really decide how we can make money for plane tickets this summer in the States. I’m still leaning towards starting a window washing and painting business with Emily. My friend Marty gave me the low down on how he made money washing windows and it seems like a good idea. Its just the whole self-motivation thing that concerns me.

Our scooter has been making funny noises lately. I need to take it down to the shop and have them check it out but I think its a bad muffler….hopefully something simple.

This semester I started out with a pretty rocky relationship with one of my teachers. He’s an American who teaches my Sociology course. We didn’t exactly click and so the first several weeks we butted heads quite a bit. Its much better now though. We’ve had some conversations and I’ve started to understand him better and I think he’s had a chance to understand me better too. I’m glad.

Its funny because I have to bounce back and forth between teaching styles here. Taiwanese teachers are much more “I’m the teacher, listen to what I say and then do what I say” oriented and western teachers are more about asking questions and trying to lead the student to find their own answer. Sometimes my mind can’t keep up with whatever way I’m supposed to act for that particularly teacher and I think that might be why me and Mr. Sociology started off badly.

I still enjoy Economics class even though the teacher isn’t so great. I like reading the textbook and trying to apply Economic theory to real-life situations.

Its interesting too because I find that my idea of the rest of the world is changing as well. I’m meeting people from all over the world and making observations. I’m also making observations about the United States in different ways as well.