1. Prehistory: Seattle
I graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in International Studies in The Year of Our Lord 1999. Aside from my B.A. I had an extremely questionable TEFL certificate from a sketchy "institution" in Montreal, Canada. A few weeks after acquiring both my B.A. and my TEFL certificate I was on a plane to Taiwan, a country I had never visited before.
Why Taiwan? To be honest, it's hard to remember. At the time I'd been accepted into the JET Program, but my Japanese girlfriend broke up with me shortly thereafter, and as a result I changed my mind about going to Japan. Besides the JET Program I'd also been accepted into the Peace Corps, but teaching in Turkmenistan didn't appeal to me at all. Back then China and South Korea were also big markets for those who wanted to teach English overseas and make money, but neither of those countries did much for me. China looked crowded, and South Korea's weather was too much like Seattle's.
I can remember coming across a Taiwan tourism video put out by the Ministry of Tourism in my university's library. After watching it I thought, "Yeah, I could live there," and the rest is history.
2. Taichung I: Cool Place To Be or Retarded Version of High School?
My first job in Taiwan was at a private kindergarten on Anhe Road, south of Tunghai University. For whatever reason the words "tunghai" (東海) have figured into my life several times.
My first day at work, embarked upon with ZERO teaching experience, was an unmitigated disaster. Oh, the crying - it still haunts me in my dreams. My second week was a little better, and my second month was better still. It took me a while to get the hang of teaching kids, but then again I was pretty much thrown into the deep end of the teaching profession, with almost no preparation beforehand. It was sink or swim from the very beginning.
Taichung at the time was very different from what it is now. For one thing Taiwan Boulevard was known as Taichunggang (台中港) Road, and for another thing many of the areas I knew as "rural" are now buried under newer residential areas, shopping arcades, parks, factories and even an airport. Most of the restaurants and bars I used to frequent are now long extinct, and if given a weekend in Taichung I'd probably have a hard time figuring out what to do there. I still have a couple friends in that city, but I haven't seen these friends in a long time.
For me, as with many other foreign guys living in a big Taiwanese city, it was the usual round of dating followed by marriage and a kid soon after. I was both married and a father in less than a year after my arrival.
A decade later I'd meet another expat living in Taitung who moved to Taichung around the same time I did. From his perspective Taichung was a real shithole, enmired in a foreign social scene which resembled nothing more than a retarded version of high school. I can't say that I got the same impression from my time in Taichung, but individual experiences will vary.
To be fair, I've met more "artistic" expats in Taichung than anywhere else. I'm talking about the kind of people who style themselves actors, poets, musicians or all three. Taichung seems better able to sustain those types of people. Why this is I cannot say.
3. A Year in Hsinchu
I moved to Hsinchu after completing a Masters in Teaching degree and receiving a Washington State teaching certificate at Seattle University. I spent my time in graduate school certain that I would return to Taiwan, and I can remember thinking that I should find a more "impressive" job upon my return.
After a cursory job search I wound up at Canadian-American English School, a rather shifty institution run by two hardcore alcoholics who eventually tried to cheat me out of my pay. It was a weird chapter in my life.
At that time we lived behind the Hsinchu Train Station. A lot of that year is a blur to me now, but I remember riding the bus or train on visits to strange mountain towns between Hsinchu and Taoyuan, going to a night market underneath an overpass, and several pub crawls with a friend who I later learned was doing heroin. I was teaching a class of five small children who got sick often, I was probably drinking too much after work, and I was secretly unhappy about turning 30 whilst doing a job that seemed to have no future.
Wind City 風城 Department Store. I saw Sin City there. It was also a place I passed through during one of my more drunken episodes, a day in which I drank an entire bottle of Absolut Vodka and blacked out in a KTV. I was truly out of control that day, and even now I can't fully explain why.
4. Taichung II: Return After Three Years Away
Hsinchu having proven itself a debacle, we moved back to Taichung, where I worked at the same private kindergarten on Anhe Road. Have you ever returned to your parents' home after a long absence, put on some of the clothes you left there years before, and wondered at the person you used to be, the person who wore those outfits? That's exactly what going back to work at that kindergarten felt like. There wasn't anything wrong with it exactly - it wasn't any worse or any better - but I was different, and thus less satisfied with the job.
My second daughter was born during that fourth of four years in Taichung. We knew she was coming toward the end of our stint in Hsinchu, but thankfully she waited until I was settled into a new/old job in Taichung to arrive.
I remember almost nothing from that year except a strange British-German coworker who had an affinity for the Nazis. He had plans to move to Germany after his year was up, and he may be educating Germans on the tenets of national socialism even now. My wife wound up being his co-teacher, and it was a real nightmare.
5. Taitung I: Teenage Wasteland?
After searching for a while I came across a public school job posting in far off Taitung. Keep in mind that in 2006 the internet wasn't what it is now, the then-FET Program was still in its infancy, and getting any information about any job was a lot more work. Nowadays one can apply on their website, but in 2006 it was a lot more difficult.
My job interview at Tunghai Junior High (there's that "tunghai" again) was one of the most stressful job interviews I've ever taken part in. It wasn't that there was a lot of competition for jobs in Taitung in 2006, it was just that the hiring process was a lot less streamlined than it is now.
I flew to Taitung City from Taichung. Afterward I was taken to the school, where I faced an interview with all of the school's administrators and English teachers. It was a BIG room. Almost none of this interview was conducted in English, and it went on for almost an hour. After this interview I was led to a class of eighth graders which I was then told to teach - for a full 50 minutes - without any warning or prep time beforehand. Seriously. I'd just gotten off the plane and that was what they asked me to do.
In a way it was good, however. If I'd known too much beforehand I probably would have overthought the whole thing. As it was I had no choice but to answer questions honestly and lean upon my teaching experience. It went well, and I was offered a job on the same day.
And that was 20 years ago now. Time flies, doesn't it?
My two years at Tunghai JHS were... OK. I'd give myself and the school passing grades. Teaching junior high was an adjustment for sure, but during most days it wasn't all that different from teaching elementary classes. More rudeness, more attitude, more angst, but overall not that different.
Trouble was that I started to have another kind of problem toward the end of my second year in Taitung: I started to hate Taiwan. Call it "Grass is Greener Syndrome" if you will, but it got to a point where I was extremely dissatisfied with my life here. Maybe it was the trash I saw on the roads, or maybe it was the way certain people looked at me. Maybe it was the tone of voice someone used, or the way they negotiated traffic. Whatever the reasons, I grew desperately unhappy during my last semester at Tunghai JHS, and that unhappiness led me back to Seattle.
6. Taitung II: Getting Better All the Time
2009 is the year I started writing this blog. Visit the Blog Archive 1 for details.
After a disillusioning year in the States we moved back to Taitung City, where I got a job at Tunghai (!) Elementary School. I didn't know that I'd be spending the next 11 years of my life at Tunghai ES, but all lights were green and I felt very good about the new placement.
I look on the previous year in America (2007-2008) as something I just had to get out of my system. I got an actual job as an actual teacher (not student teaching), my wife went back to the hotel work she'd done when I was in graduate school, and we put our older daughter into daycare thinking that we were in America long term. As it turned out, however, my heart wasn't in it, but it took a year in the States for me to realize that.
My work at Tunghai Elementary turned out to be a lot more pleasant than what I'd endured at Tunghai Junior High. It also put me in an advantageous position in that I was sitting next to the coordinator of the local FET program in one of the city's largest schools. I can remember encountering obstacles in my first few years there; I can even remember thinking about quitting, but after year three or so I was very comfortable at work and very much in my element.
By 2009 my older daughter was nine years old and my younger daughter was four. Their ages at the time made us more concerned about the stability of our lifestyle, and moving to other areas became less desirable. We didn't want to move them around so much when they were little, and this contributed to my staying at that school so long.
I've had many good times in my life and I'm thankful for all of them. I'm thankful for the friends I've had, the people I've loved and the people who've loved me. No matter how shitty a job, living situation or place of residence was, I can always remember good times in the midst of whatever issues I was having. This said, my late 30s and early 40s were spent in Taitung, and many of those years seem to have a particular glow about them. Maybe it was my attitude toward things back then, or maybe it's just nostalgia, but whatever the reason those years are foundational for me, in that they've contributed a lot toward making me the person I am today.
...and in terms of work I genuinely miss what the foreign teachers of Taitung County had back then. It was a good run, even if it wasn't meant to last forever.
7. Pingtung: Fangliao
During my last year at Tunghai Elementary I began to seriously consider leaving Taitung County. I wanted to see if what I did at Tunghai Elementary would work somewhere else, and I was a little burned out on some of the personal relationships I had going on at the time. It was also the perfect time to make such a move, given that both of my daughters were moving over to Kaohsiung to study.
I entertained the idea of transferring to Hualien for a while, but they wanted me in Hualien City and I've never really liked that area - too rainy. I knew a person who knew a person in Pingtung, so I opted for that instead. This person placed me in Fangliao Township, about halfway between Pingtung City and Kenting.
My wife and I weren't that enthused about Fangliao at first. I can remember the two of us driving there from Taitung and thinking: "What? This is it?," but after meeting the two principals of the schools where I'd be working I felt a lot better about the place, and we began looking for houses in and around Central Fangliao.
As it turned out renting a house (and we insisted it be a house) in the vicinity of Fangliao was a real pain. We looked at rentals between Jiadong Township and Central Fangshan, and every place we saw was not awesome. A real estate agent in Fangliao also tried to scam us on a house, but (thankfully) gave herself away before we signed any papers or gave her any money.
Eventually we went to one of the villages this realtor had shown us, sat down at the local store, and bought a couple drinks. After I'd had a couple beers one of the locals walked up and asked us what we were doing there. One thing led to another, and after indicating which house we thought was the nicest this person got in touch with its owner. This owner was glad to rent us the house, a three-story structure with a yard and a parking space located near the halfway point between the schools where I'd be working.
My first year at Fangliao Elementary School was my best year in the FET Program, a program renamed the TFETP Program that year. I had my principals' support, I got along well with the Local English Teacher, and the students at both schools were easy to teach.
I also felt validated. I'd proven myself in another county, I was getting a much better sense of South Taiwan as separate from East Taiwan, and I knew that after 40 you can start over. True, many aspects of my life in Taiwan remained the same, but I felt that I'd changed my way of living enough to say that yes, I could make it anywhere in Taiwan if I wanted to.
All of the above said, life in a place like Fangliao can be lonely. I appreciated that interactions with locals were less burdened by impressions carried over from previous exchanges with other foreigners, but the number of expat friends actively in my life dwindled, and daily life, for the most part, shrunk to the size of whatever my wife and I wanted to do that weekend. We drove to nearby Chaozhou, Pingtung City and Kaohsiung often, and when we weren't doing that we rode our scooter aimlessly between Donggang, Linbian, Chaozhou and Fangshan to the south.
When we got REALLY bored, and if the sun had gone down, we'd walk, bike or drive over to a pineapple field overlooking the Pingnan Industrial Area. We'd bring chairs and drinks, and sit there gazing at the lights from the top of the hill.
As good as that first year in Fangliao was, all good things come to an end, and toward the end of my first year in Fangliao COVID happened. Classes went online, people got paranoid, and the world shut down intermittently for an extended period of time.
I have a funny memory of my wife, my daughters and myself eating Pizza Hut pizza inside our car, on a secondary road in Chaozhou, in the midst of COVID. We were scared people would see us eating in the car, so we pulled up all the sun visors and tried to remain inconspicuous while we shoved oily pizza into our mouths.
In the wake of COVID my Fangliao "dream team" fell apart at the end of that first year. This kind of thing often happens in rural schools. My principal was reassigned, the English teacher wasn't rehired for my second year, and the two schools where I worked became estranged for various reasons that had nothing to do with me. By the end of my second year Fangliao had partnered up with Pingtung's Tunghai Elementary School (yep, there's "tunghai" again), and my school was asking me if I'd stay on and work at Tunghai Elementary instead of Yuguang, where I'd been teaching up to that point.
The Pingtung version of Tunghai Elementary was, to put it less than kindly, rather infamous at that time. I decided to pass on their offer, and instead requested a transfer south to Hengchun, where I knew another FET who was leaving her position at both Hengchun Junior High and Hengchun Elementary.
8. Pingtung: Hengchun
Hengchun Junior High was the worst job I've ever had in the (T)FET(P) Program. It was stressful, it was a less than friendly place to work in, and I hated my job for most of the time I was there. The school seemed to like me well enough, but the sense of ambivalence pervading that place was a palpable thing.
Hengchun Elementary, on the other hand, was a good gig. Hengchun Elementary was a lot more like Tunghai Elementary in Taitung City, and I felt very comfortable there. The trouble was that I only had six classes a week in that school, and the remainder of my 19-class schedule was spent at the junior high.
During that year I thought about quitting many, many times. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that if I quit it was the same as admitting defeat, and that if I could just hold on for a year I'd be leaving on my own terms, not theirs. Throughout my second year I also thought about quitting from time to time, but my wife wanted to go back to Taitung, and quitting before my contract was up would have made a transfer back to Taitung more difficult.
When I wasn't at work, however, Hengchun was a good place to live. The house we rented was garbage, but the location was convenient and getting away on the weekends was easy - traffic was always going in the opposite direction. I miss having places like Nanwan and Baisha minutes away from home. I miss The Button Factory and Houbihu. I'll be going back to Hengchun for the first time in almost two years at the end of this week, and I'm looking forward to the trip.
9. Taitung III: Stranger in a Strange Land?
In the beginning coming back to Taitung seemed both too easy and too good to be true. Within days of applying for a transfer I was informed that I was being assigned to Hot Spring Elementary School, in the Zhiben Hot Spring Area.
The first thing my wife and I did was drive up to Zhiben from Hengchun, where we learned that the principal of Hot Spring was a guy I'd already worked with for a couple years at Tunghai Elementary in Taitung City. Taitung is small in its way, and things like that happen.
It was very weird how the whole thing fell together. I'd originally assumed that the TFETP would offer me a tiny school in a less convenient location. Instead I got a school 25 minutes from my apartment, with a student population already eager to learn English. Hot Spring, it should be said, was once the location of the Taitung County English Teaching Resource Center, so the students in my new school already had a history of participation in county English programs and competitions.
I'm 3/4 of the way through my second year at Hot Spring, aside from a few ups and downs it's been a surprisingly easy transition. I get along well with all of my coworkers, and I've never found the job particularly stressful. I hate our county FET meetings, but that's my only big objection to working in Taitung so far.
Being in Taitung again? I don't have much to complain about. We still own an apartment near Baosang Elementary School, so we didn't need to scramble for housing. My best friends in Taitung are for the most part still around, though a few did move away during my stint in Pingtung. I still like living here, and my day-to-day life is relatively unchanged.
For the time being I've decided to stay on for a third year at Hot Spring. After that third year who knows? For my wife and I Kaohsiung is always on the table, but I doubt we'll be moving there anytime soon. We own another apartment in Kaohsiung, and I'm to be found there for most of every winter and summer vacation, but an actual move to that city seems somewhat unnecessary.
10. Parting Thoughts
I've written about all of the events described above in this blog before, but sometimes it's good to stop and take stock of things. It helps me make personal decisions. It also makes me a happier, calmer person, and serves to adjust my attitude where and when such adjustment is necessary.
I don't know how many printed pages this blog entry would equal, but I'm guessing it would be a lot. While writing and editing this massive (bloated?) thing, I couldn't help but think about all the years that have gone by, and all the changes I've seen on this island since 1999. When I first got here Lee Tung-hui was President, and since that time I've seen the KMT diminish in stature while the administrations of Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ying-wen have come and gone. I'm now on Lai Ching-te, my fifth Taiwanese President, and who knows what the rollercoaster that is Taiwanese politics holds for us in the future.
Aside from Presidents there are other changes to consider. When I first got here people didn't think about TSMC half as much, even though that company's fortunes have been steadily rising for decades. When I first got here there was only one freeway down the west coast, no high speed rail, and Taitung, where I now live, was less a tourist spot than a backwater few thought about visiting. I can remember when the Taipei 101 first opened, I can remember when the Kaohsiung MRT first began operation, and I can remember when toll booths disappeared from the freeway. Anyone else remember how hard it used to be to get to Kenting? Or how remote some parts of New Taipei City (i.e. "Taipei County") were in the early 2000s? Or even life before Taiwan had Family Marts, 7-11s and Starbucks everywhere?
Reading back over this entry, I can also see patterns in my life and how I've lived it. There's definitely an ebb and flow at work in my attitude toward various jobs, and points of frustration and/or boredom between working in one place or another. I can see a desire to be "useful" or "effective" in much of what I did before, and also worries over money, worries over my age, and worries over my family. In much of the above I can also feel my wife's influence on me, her presence calming me down when I might have otherwise lost my temper or resorted to something drastic. A lot of what is recorded above is her story as well, though of course she's in possession of extra chapters involving matters which it's no business of mine to discuss here.
One aspect of my life that's become clearer to me is how often I've tried to find some kind of nemesis in my life, someone who I thought - rightly or wrongly - was working against me. I can remember several such scenarios in the context of almost all of the jobs discussed above, and I think this is an aspect of my own psychology that I really ought to look at. Needing to measure yourself against someone else, or needing to exceed them in some way, seems like a very obvious flaw in my character, and something I need to reflect on more in the future. This, and many of the "adversaries" I've imagined having often prove themselves straw men, whose interests actually aligned with my own.
I'm also thinking, having considered all of the above, how I might live my life better in the future, how I might be a better person, and how I might help others to do the same. It's not the type of self-analysis that bears easy fruit, but I do think I'm on the way to some deeper knowledge of myself, perhaps the kind of realizations that lead to real, measurable change.
I'll let you know if I reach any moments of enlightenment in the near future. If no words of wisdom are forthcoming, just know that I'm doing OK and I'm always trying to do better.
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