In the public schools our fall semester ends on January 23rd, and my winter vacation begins on the 24th. The calendar is a little weird this year, due to the fact that the first three days of next semester are actually the last three days of this semester. This means that during January 21, 22 and 23 I'll be teaching next semester's English. Are the students going to remember anything from those last three days? I highly doubt it.
On January 19th I'm teaching part of an English winter camp. "Camp" in this context means "class" since there's absolutely no camping involved in our camp. Someone in the Education Bureau will select 50 elementary school students and 50 junior high school students for the camp, and these 100 students will be split between one winter camp in Chenggong and another in Taitung City.
There are at present (and to the best of my knowledge) 20 Foreign English Teachers (FETs) in Taitung County, and these 20 FETs will teach the winter camp in four groups of five teachers. Each group will teach their own version of the winter camp to a class of 25 students at one of the two locations for a single day. I was originally part of a group going to Chenggong, but I, being the gentleman that I am, switched with another FET so that she could go up there instead.
What are we teaching at this winter camp? English of course, but beyond that there's a vaguely defined curriculum centered around four parts of Taitung County, these being: [the] South-Link [area], Taitung City, [the] north coast and the East Rift Valley. The completist in me wishes there was a fifth part for Green and Orchid islands, but oh well.
So yeah, once the camp's over I'll have another week of [marginal] classes and then I'll have a long break. Honestly, I feel like I could use it. This school year has been better for me overall, but there have been some ups and downs for sure.
On the evening of January 23rd we'll be packing our three cats into the car and heading to Kaohsiung for the last week of January and most of February. I'm still not sure how long I'll be in Kaohsiung this winter vacation. I might come back to Taitung earlier, but as of right now I'm thinking close to a month. We'll see.
I have no real plans for our time in Kaohsiung. There was talk of going to Japan or South Korea during the break, but I'm not sure if this will happen. I suppose that if the tickets were super cheap I'd consider it, but I was in South Korea not long ago and I'm not that keen to go back. Japan is always a good time, but then again there are the hordes of Mainland Chinese tourists to consider. They can make even the most fascinating tourist site less interesting if there are enough of them crowding into a small enough area.
There are also pictures to take and places in Taiwan to explore. I'll be roving around Daliao, Fengshan and Niaosong districts at some point, as well as Nanhua, Nanxi and East District in Tainan. In the course of photographing Nanhua and Nanxi I'll probably spend the night in Yujing District. It's not the most enthralling part of Taiwan but I like it.
Aside from that I'll just be hanging out. I'm fine with Kaohsiung, and I feel like Kaohsiung is fine with me. The LRT and MRT go near almost everything I like in that city, and where those two fail there's always the train.
Here's wishing you a happy 2026 and a Happy Year of the Horse ahead of time. It's not long now!
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