My parents flew in from the States to visit Floyd and me for Christmas. It had been a year and a half since we’d seen each other, and we had a great time together! It was fun to show them around our home, school, neighborhood, and country. They spent a morning in my classroom, met many of our friends, and even had the excitement of a 6.8 earthquake on their second evening here.
However, we were disappointed to discover that pretty much every trail was off limits. Thanks to the earthquake, there had been landslides everywhere, and we kept seeing signs warning us to keep away. Road crews were hard at work clearing away debris and repairing damage to the roads, but they hadn’t fixed up the trails yet. And with the danger of aftershocks causing even more landslides, no one was allowed on them. Oh, well.
From what we hear from the States, it seems that swine flu is a big thing in the news there right now. It’s certainly a big thing here in Taiwan, and although it’s widespread, the Taiwanese are taking great precautions to try to keep it under control.
For a couple of months now, Morrison has been requiring everyone (students, parents, teachers, janitors – everyone!) to get their temperature taken before entering campus in the morning (see picture below). Anyone with a fever is immediately sent home, and everyone without one is given a little colored sticker to wear on their shirt all day (a different color each day). If we see anyone at school without a sticker, we’re supposed to remind them to go to the nurse and get their temperature checked right away. Many public places (churches, the zoo, etc.) have been doing temperature checks as well, and requiring everyone to take a squirt of hand sanitizer before coming in.
You’d think that with those precautions H1N1 would have been kept at bay, but a couple weeks ago we got word that three high schoolers on our campus had come down with it. They (and their families or roommates) were quarantined their homes or dorm rooms for five days, while the rest of the school prayed and hoped no one else would come down with it. All the elementary teachers breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t been elementary students who got sick, because the government regulations are stricter for elementary. If two or more students in the same class get swine flu, the whole class has to be closed and every student in it (and the teacher) must go through the five-day quarantine. Morrison has a system in place (and we’ve all been trained in it) whereby we would teach our lessons over the internet if that ever happened.
Everyone keeps saying that it’s not a matter of if, it’s when, and yet somehow we’ve all managed to assume such a thing would only happen to other teachers’ classes. But – not any more.
When I came to school this last Friday, I received the bad news that one of my students had been diagnosed with H1N1. Not a serious case, thankfully, but the first in the elementary school, and of course it was worrying. I had a total of three students absent that day, and I couldn’t help wondering what the chances were that either of the others had it and just didn’t know it yet.
Well, the principal came by my classroom in the middle of the day, and sure enough, he had more bad news. The office had just received a call from the parent of one of my other absentees, and it was confirmed that she had H1N1 too. Now the office was about to call all my students’ parents to come and pick them up, and I had about forty minutes to prepare the kids to continue school from their homes for the next several days. Yikes!
To make a long story short, I told my students the news, gave them a quick refresher course in how online education is supposed to work, explained the afternoon’s work which they’d have to complete at home, handed out several worksheets for the next few days and a hastily-written letter from the office explaining the situation, got them to pack up most of their textbooks, workbooks, and notebooks; made sure each student had an adequate supply of lined paper (not easily available in Taiwan except through the school), and answered about fifty frantic questions (everything from “Am I still allowed to fly to China next week with my family if I’m quarantined?” to “Will my hamster get H1N1 too?”) and finally let in the parents who were congregating outside the classroom door waiting to take their kids home.
For most of the students, the worst part (once they heard that their sick classmates were doing all right) was that they would have to miss that evening’s concert. The Elementary Thanksgiving Concert had been in the works for months, and though it featured mainly the kindergarteners through second graders singing, all of my students are in either the band, orchestra, or choir, which were scheduled to perform afterwards. Several students went home in tears that their hard work and all those hours of practice would be for nothing; they were not even allowed to come back to watch. I couldn’t watch, either, being quarantined myself; but I heard that the concert was only half as long as usual. The band director was quarantined too, since his daughter (in my class) was one of the swine flu cases; and apparently the orchestra and choir directors decided they couldn’t perform with so many students missing. What a disappointment for the whole elementary school.
So now my students and I are all stuck in our respective homes, though I’m supposed to go back to work tomorrow (shut in my classroom, staying away from everyone else) to teach from my computer there. I will be communicating with my kids and their parents through email and “Moodle” (Morrison’s online education system), which I’m sure will be an interesting challenge. I’ll have to post lessons and assignments, answer their questions, grade completed work, give students feedback, and even take attendance, all online.
The good thing is, we’ll only really have to do that for two days. Monday and Tuesday are regular school days, but Wednesday is a half day with a special program in the morning, so I wouldn’t really have had to teach in any case. And we have Thursday and Friday off for American Thanksgiving, though the quarantine would have ended after Wednesday anyway. So, all things considered, if this had to happen, it’s about the best possible timing (except for the concert).
Of course, I have to remind myself that just because this is happening to my class now doesn’t mean it will never happen again. An individual may be immune to swine flu after having had it once, but my class isn’t immune to being closed again just because we’ve done it once! I can only hope and pray that it won’t happen again (or to any other classes), but that if it does, we’ll all be prepared.
I had a fun weekend with friends in the little mountain community of Gu Guan. It was refreshing to get out of the city and actually see some green!
Peggy, Natalie, Fiona and I spent time hiking through the forest, soaking in the hot springs, and hanging out in 7-Eleven. Yes, even in Gu Guan!
I found these ripe cherry tomatoes growing wild by the side of the road as we hiked. They made an unexpected, tasty snack!
Do not stay out after 2 a.m. All stores are closed.
Plant a tree when a person dies or is born.
Always go outside to get fresh air.
Only use up to ten tissues a day. Don’t waste.
If you have a harmful sickness tell the government and they will put you into custody until you get better.
Do not use powers or transform into a monster inside a house.
You cannot exit at the entrance or go in the city at the exit place.
Be modest.
Floyd and I are enjoying our fall break here in Taiwan. We spent three or four days this week in Taipei and had fun playing tourist. Here are a few snapshots of our experiences there.
The Museum of Drinking Water! Yep, it was about as exciting as it sounds. But the building was beautiful, and you can actually touch the old pumps and water-purification machinery.
We spent a few hours in Danshui, an historic area outside of Taipei. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pictures of the fort we explored, but this church – planted by pioneer missionary George Leslie MacKay over a hundred years ago and still holding services today – was interesting too.
Riding the Miramar Ferris Wheel for a twilit view of the city was a fun way to end the day.
We spent Thursday morning at the Taipei Zoo, where the pandas (donated by China last spring) are by far the most popular animals. We had to get a special ticket at the front entrance which said what time we were allowed to go to the panda exhibit (to reduce crowding). They were cute but a bit of a let-down after all the hype, and their enclosure was nothing to write home about. (Most of what you see is a mural on the back wall.) Now the tigers, THOSE were fun to watch. Almost as fun as the hedgehogs.
This was Floyd’s favorite! The Taipei Fine Arts Museum had a special Pixar exhibit where we spent a couple of hours learning more about the making of Cars, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, etc. Floyd was like a kid in a candy store the whole time!
Another good way to end a day. We had seen the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial before, but never at night. The monument itself wasn’t particularly well-lit, but the gates were. They’re especially beautiful with colorful skyscrapers showing through in the background.
So, who wants to come with us next time??
Hello from Taiwan! We’ve been back about a week and a half, and a full week and a half it’s been! We didn’t expect to be greeted by a typhoon and a kidney stone, but I’m getting ahead of myself….
Floyd and I arrived last week on Wednesday morning, and spent most of the day cleaning our new apartment and getting ready to move in. Apart from a large number of tiny millipedes (or some such invertebrate) (which even now continue to appear out of nowhere in every room as often as we squish them), it was in good condition.
We spent Wednesday night in our old apartment as guests of our friend and coworker Rhoni, who has moved in (and was no doubt eager for us to move all our furniture and boxes out of her extra bedrooms, though she was very gracious about it). Early Thursday morning, just a couple of hours before the moving company was due to arrive, Floyd woke up with severe abdominal pain. It soon became obvious that not only would he not be able to help with the move, but he was in fact in urgent need of medical assistance. Remember, we have no car in Taiwan (and no drivers’ licenses there anyway), and in spite of his pain Floyd refused to cancel the move. Rhoni was still asleep (and she needed to be home to communicate with the moving company anyway), so I hurried down to the third floor where some of our other coworkers from the school live. I knocked and woke them up to ask for help, and John kindly agreed to drive Floyd to the hospital.
So the two of them left, and I stayed behind to help coordinate the move. The moving company was half an hour late, but they finally got everything into their two little trucks by the end of the morning. They had so many questions that I knew I could never have managed without Rhoni to translate, so I was really thankful she was able to be there. (The only English they understood was “no” and “okay”.) I went along to show them where to put things in the new apartment, and on the way I met Floyd, who had just returned from the hospital with the news that he had an impacted kidney stone. (Some of you may remember that he had a similar experience two years ago, when we were new in Taiwan. We were so grateful for the many friends back then who stepped up to help with transportation, translation, meals, etc. But we never thought it would happen a second time!) Because Floyd had eaten breakfast that morning, they were unable to operate, so they gave him some basic painkillers and told him to come back on Saturday. As you could imagine, he wasn’t very happy about the prospect of living with it for another two days, but what else could he do? At least the painkillers had kicked in and he was no longer in excruciating pain.
We spent Thursday afternoon and most of Friday unpacking and arranging our new apartment. We love how spacious it is! Though it’s only got two bedrooms, it’s still bigger than anywhere else we’ve ever lived. This is partly because of the huge kitchen (at least three times the size of our last one, with quintuple the cupboard and drawer space – no exaggeration); and also because of the the “breakfast nook” that we’re using as a dining room, big dining room that we’ve set up as a living room, and extra living room that we haven’t quite decided what to do with yet. (We’re open to ideas – the best one we’ve heard so far is to use it as a dance floor!) Plus, we have our own laundry room, coat closet, linen closet, storage closet off the balcony, and a walk-in closet in each bedroom. Chinese apartments are not known for their storage space (you usually have to buy wardrobes and portable cupboards because they don’t come with any built-in closets at all), so we’re exulting in all the unaccustomed storage in this custom-designed-by-and-for-foreigners apartment.
Last year we were hoping that this year we could have a high schooler living with us. A lot of staff members do that; there are often more Morrison students who want to board than there is space in the school’s dorms, and we wanted to be one of the ones to open our home to some teenager whose parents live in another part of the island or even another country. Toward the end of last year, we were contacted by a family whose son would be attending Morrison and needed a place to stay, and we thought we had all the details worked out, but then he changed his mind and backed out unexpectedly. A little later another family contacted us, and this time we really thought it would work (to the point where we went and got a desk for the boy and everything), but they too changed their minds. So now we have a furnished guest room and no one to live in it. We were disappointed that our boarder arrangements fell through, but we know God knew what he was doing. We are just praying that this room will be a blessing to somebody, somehow this year.
We were glad to find out last weekend that our new apartment is almost entirely typhoon-proof. That’s right, on Friday Typhoon Morakot welcomed us back home by hitting the island with a vengeance, but the worst damage we suffered was a few drops of water that made it through one window as far as the sill (not even to the floor). Outside our window we could see a shed whose roof had blown off, and there were some broken tree branches around, but that’s about as hard as it hit our neighborhood. The biggest inconvenience was that even if it had been safe to go out in the wind and rain, nothing would have been open. Our church was cancelled on Sunday, and we soon felt as though we were going stir-crazy. Being stuck at home for several days isn’t such a big deal unless you consider that we were newly-arrived in the country and had not yet had a chance to do much grocery shopping. Fortunately we did have a few things in our fridge, but we were definitely ready for a change in diet by the time the storm let up enough for us to go shopping again.
Unfortunately, not everyone in Taiwan made it through Morakot’s wrath as well as we did. From our perspective, it was no worse than any other typhoon we’ve experienced in the last two years (actually a lot better, now that we were out of our leaky old apartment). However, other parts of the island – especially the southern regions – experienced the worst flooding in fifty years. We watched news clips on the internet and were horrified to see images of bridges collapsing, houses being torn from their foundations and spinning down raging torrents, and an entire hotel toppling into an ugly swollen river. Whole villages were buried in mudslides, millions of dollars’ worth of crops were destroyed, and though the official death toll stands at a few dozen, hundreds more are still missing and presumed dead. Taiwan doesn’t experience such catastrophes very often and so was not very prepared to deal with the situation. The government’s rescue and relief efforts have been criticized as too little and too slow, and though other relief organizations are starting to step in, many of the hardest-hit areas are practically inaccessible except by helicopter. It has been a tragic time for Taiwan. (If anyone is interested in helping out, World Vision is working in Taiwan and is providing shelter, food, and clean water for the needy. You can contribute online to their Morakot disaster relief at http://www.worldvision.org/.)
On Saturday Floyd braved the storm and was able to take a taxi to the hospital for his kidney stone appointment. The doctor located the stone and did something ultrasonically to break it up and make it easier to pass. He sent Floyd home with instructions to drink lots of water and return in a week for a checkup. Floyd was in a lot of pain that evening, but for the next several days he only hurt a little here and there. He drank as instructed, but nothing much seemed to happen. Yesterday he went back for the checkup, and was not very pleased when the doctor did an X-ray and announced that the stone had moved no more than two centimeters since the week before. Now he has an appointment to go back next weekend for more invasive surgery to remove it for real this time… unless it removes itself before then.
This past week has been a busy one for me, as I’ve been getting my classroom ready for school to start. I had been told at the end of last year that I would have 29 students this year, and because that’s four more than the usual limit, I would get a paid aide four hours a day. I had been looking forward to that all summer, but on Monday morning another teacher told me she had heard there were now only 28 registered for 5th grade. I went to the school secretary to find out for sure, and she told me that actually there were only 27, and apparently there never had been more! One student on the list I had previously been given had left unexpectedly at the end of 4th grade, and another had apparently never existed in the first place.
I was confused and disappointed, but I went to work preparing my classroom, including writing students’ names and numbers on various items. Then the next day I was told that one of the 27 (an incoming new student) was probably not coming to Morrison after all, so I would be down to 26. The next morning I was informed that actually she WOULD be here. On Thursday morning I got an email that another family was withdrawing their two sons (one of whom was supposed to be in my class) from the school for financial reasons, so I was down to 26 again. Later the same day I got another email saying that a new student had just enrolled in 5th grade – and surprise surprise, he was the same one I had originally been told had never existed. So, as things stand now, I’m at 27 students, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that changes again before school starts tomorrow!
In a little while Floyd and I are planning to leave for the night market, where we can buy all kinds of strange and interesting delicacies for dinner (most of which come grilled on a stick). It’s so good to be back in Taiwan, millipedes, typhoons, kidney stones, and all! I’m looking forward to meeting my new class and beginning a brand-new school year tomorrow. Floyd is looking forward to starting his Chinese studies in earnest tomorrow (he will be joining the high school Beginning Chinese class this year) and to starting up his Bible study again in a few weeks. We thank the Lord for bringing us back here, and trust that this year of serving Him at Morrison Academy will be even better than the last two.
P.S. Sure enough, I was down to 25 students by the time school started. So, no aide! 🙁
The day really isn’t celebrated here in Taiwan, so we haven’t seen any chocolate eggs or bunnies or other decorations around – which is actually kind of nice. I think it helps us focus on the real meaning of the day when all the extra stuff isn’t there (much as I’d enjoy a Cadbury creme egg right now – the one in the picture is making my mouth water!). But our church had a special Easter service this morning with several people giving their testimonies, and at least two people committed their lives to the Lord! Now that’s worth celebrating!
Then this evening Floyd and I splurged and took a taxi out for Easter dinner at our favorite Thai food restaurant downtown. Not that anything they served would have been seen on the table today in the average American household (unless you normally eat deep-fried sea bass or stir-fried morning glory or satay pork in peanut sauce or mystery-fruit ice cream for Easter dinner), but we enjoyed it very much all the same. Of course, it might have been nice to have a table with a view of something other than the backside of the idol outside the window, but I guess you can’t have everything.
We’re nearing the end of our week-long break from school, and I don’t think any of the teachers really feel ready to go back to work yet. But the fun part is, the new classrooms that have been under construction all year are finally finished. We all got a couple of extra “moving days” before Easter break started, to transfer everything from our old classrooms in the temporary block to the new ones on the other end of campus. I must say, the new buildings look great, both inside and out! The middle school students all spent a morning helping to carry desks and things as a service activity, and there were a number of parent volunteers as well as a professional moving company to handle the really heavy things, so we had lots of help. I love the way my new classroom looks now! (The picture above shows an area at the side of the room where I have the students’ “cubbies” set up, and the one below is our classroom library.) So as much as I’m enjoying my time off, I must admit I’m looking forward to finishing the school year in the new room.
The other best part of our Easter break was our vacation in Kenting, in southern Taiwan. Click here to read my blog post about that.
We just got back from a fun little four-day vacation in Kenting (pronounced “kun-ding”) at the southern tip of Taiwan. We went with some friends from Morrison who were nice enough to let us ride with them in their van (we don’t have a car here in Taiwan). Kenting is one of the most famous tourist spots on the island; sooner or later everybody goes there to spend a few days at the coast. Although we enjoyed our stay, I must confess I’m not sure why it’s so popular.
A lot of people love the beaches there, and I guess they were okay, but they were too crowded for my tastes (and there was far too much trash on them). Maybe I’m spoiled after having grown up in Kenya, where the coast at Mombasa is so pretty. Or after the year I spent in Indonesia, where the remote beaches I visited were literally an unspoiled tropical paradise. I must admit, however, that these ones are nicer than the beaches in Southern California!
One thing we did enjoy was walking around town. There’s a touristy area where there are lots of shops and stands selling souvenirs and interesting things to eat. If you ever go there, though, make sure you notice the mannequins in the clothing stores. They have a bit more, shall we say, personality than most. If they came to life and started walking around, it would make for an excellent horror movie.
Floyd and I agree that the best part of our Kenting experience was the aquarium. If you ever go there, you have to check it out! Our friends who were with us had elementary-age kids, and they loved it; but really, the two of us enjoyed it just as much as the children. There’s something there for everyone:
touch tanks…
all sorts of sea creatures, (our favorites were the beluga whales, rays, and angry-looking whale shark), clearly visible from a winding glass tunnel people can walk through under the water of a gigantic tank…
…and of course the submarine simulator arcade games!
They also had separate areas for habitats like antarctic waters, kelp forests, and the deep sea (you know, with the glow-in-the-dark fish). Part of the aquarium was designed to look like the inside of a shipwreck, which added to the fun. All in all, we spent quite an enjoyable morning there!
Ever wonder what a dog’s life is like in Taiwan? I’ll give you a hint: scooters and clothes both play a big part!
