Day #2-3: Oddities & a Few Life Lessons

The past few days have taught me several things. Among these is the realization that Asian airlines treat their customers considerably better than all of the various American airlines. Also, despite what airport you’re in (aside from Seoul, South Korea), there will always be some amount of pee dribble in front of the urinal. Another is to always take a close look at your food before trying new things, as I discovered on our flight over the Pacific when I tried what I thought were crispy green beans with my Bi-Bim-Bop (a mixed rice, meat, and veggie dish) turned out to be very crunchy little fish, complete with tiny eyes.

Interestingly, our most painful and stressful travel experience throughout the nearly 40 hours of travel time was the initial check-in at O’Hare International. We had to wait for nearly an hour in line, only to have the “do-it-yourself touch screens” not accept our information. When we attempted to get one of the very few employees scurrying back and forth to help us, we were either ignore or dismissed with a sarcastic remark (at one point Sara said, “we have a small problem”, to which the employee responded, “well I woke up this morning with a problem, too!” and proceeded to walk away). Eventually we were redirected to another line for people to have their issues figured out by an actual employee. Apparently, because our tickets were one-way, the machine couldn’t process it. Taiwan (in fact, many Asian countries) generally do not allow people visiting to come into the country without having already purchased a ticket to leave. Along the same line of thought, in order for someone to have an extended stay, they are required to apply for a travel Visa from a Taiwanese Consulate or Foreign Affairs Office. We had done this before leaving, as it was a requirement for our jobs. We were told to apply for a 60-day Visitor Visa, as applying for a Work Visa from the U.S. is expensive and takes very long time. In order for to get the Visitor Visa we had to show that we had tickets into and out of Taiwan within that time frame, as well as provide a brief letter saying that we’re here to do some sightseeing and other traveling before leaving for China. Due to this strange way of doing things, we have essentially been required to lie about our plans while in Taiwan to people in the airports (we had one scare at O’Hare when it didn’t look as if they were going to let us get on the plane without first having an itinerary showing we had tickets out of Taiwan. Fortunately, we pointed out that we needed to have this to even get the Visas in the first place, and we were allowed to continue). All of these minor headaches basically come down to the very backwards way that it seems the Taiwanese government goes about doing things, although come to think of it, I suppose the good ol’ U.S. of A. isn’t always particularly well organized either.

To our parents who are reading this, don’t freak out, but it is technically illegal in Taiwan to teach English to kindergarten-aged children. This has to do with people feeling that the children should have a very solid base knowledge of their own language and culture before another. Despite this, it is common knowledge and generally accepted that most children end up learning English at this age. In fact, we had lunch with some teachers from the school where we’ll be teaching and they said that some government officials made a visit recently. They called quite some time in advance with the exact day and time of their visit, which gave the school time to switch out all the books and materials from the kindergarten classroom, and on the day of the visit, the English teachers got to have the day off. It is common knowledge that many, if not almost all of the government officials who make these visits have their own children in similar schools. This is yet another example of the strange way things are done around here.