A student's life in Asia

The life of a child here in Taiwan is led by rules, discipline and honor. The pressure I see bestowed upon these children daily is seriously incredible. My best students rise daily at 5am to begin their day of studying, school, extra school (buxiban) and homework, not returning home until 10pm at night. The hours they spend at home are busy with homework and studying for a single exam that will dictate the direction of the rest of their life upon its completion. This is no SAT, this is the high school entrance exam all Taiwanese kids must take. The results of this test will determine what high school they can attend which will determine which college, which will determine their future jobs. The results of this exam will also be the pride or chagrin of their parents. Mind you, these are the parents that they hardly see, who are off working hours upon hours to pay for their child's extensive education.

It is the end of the summer and summer vacation is coming to a close. Yet, most students have no stories of trips to the beach or picnics in the park, but only a summer spent in extra buxiban courses, at educational camps and doing more intense studying for their upcoming exam.

Since when did Asia decide that the responsibility free portion of life be taken away from their young population? I'm not sure, but this intense focus on education permeates society, and is now a way of life for nearly everyone except those too poor to afford it.

I've always cherished my childhood memories, my summers spent care-free, running around in the sunshine and outside in the sandbox all day. I'd return home wonderfully tanned and covered in filth to a big home cooked meal and make plans for what tomorrow's adventure would be. Sure, I had hardships too. After all I used to have to clean the bathroom and weed my garden in order to get my weekly allowance, which was eagerly spent with a bike trip to the town grocery store. Candy was a quarter and I could fill my bag to the brim with Fun Dip, the childhood equivalent to cocaine. But mostly I spent my days adventuring throughout nature, studying any new bug I came across and playing in the stream with my dog. My family would go to the lake, or out on the boat and some summers I even spent learning to ride horses and taking pottery lessons. I cannot begin to imagine the lessons I learned while playing in the neighbors cornfield, losing myself in nature and feeling overwhelmed by the beauty of the big blue sky above me. Perhaps with every breath of fresh air I was reminded of my small and inconsequential existence in this massive world, of the bigger things, the more important things in life. Or perhaps, more likely, I didn't learn a damn thing out there in that corn field except not to run around the day after the manure was spread. But at least I was allowed to experience that feeling of freedom, the lack of responsibility and time to explore on my own without dictation.

These kids will never have that, they will never have endless days to explore all that is around them, through touching, smelling and playing, not studying. They'll never get to let their curiosity run wild and guide them to learn about what they choose. Arts, sports and music are pushed to the wayside here, for there's not enough time in the day to study for 15hrs and do a sport as well.

One of my favorite students, Linda, is a perfect example of how different our two worlds are. She slowly shuffles her way into class every Tuesday night, 20 minutes late, looking disheveled and exhausted. She tries not to fall asleep as class ends at 9. She studies hard and has good sense of humor, so she does well in class considering her lack of energy. This weekend she graduated her 16th level of English studies. While other students posed for photos with their diplomas, she helped me clean up and when asked how she'd celebrate her graduation, she said she'd be studying all weekend, and every weekend, until her high school entrance exam was taken. This exam doesn't take into account that she's a budding female Tiger Woods or that she's woken up at the crack of dawn for the last year to fit all of her studies, including extra English class and practice into each day. This exam will only acknowledge what she has memorized at that moment, on that day. She said that her mother has never really approved of her love for golf and that scholarships for that kind of thing aren't really available, so its a waste in most respects. But its the one thing she loves, so she'll keep making it fit into her schedule as along as she can. Once she finds out what high school she tests into, she may find that playing golf is no longer feasible for her. She won't return to English class this new semester and as sad as I am to see her go, I hope that she can make some use of the extra four hours a week she gains, by sleeping or playing golf, but I know she'll most likely spend it studying.

And to think, when I was her age, the most pressing matter of the day was what to wear on my first day of high school, and where the hell my locker was.

Even at a younger age like 2 or 3, when I was probably still in diapers and crying for my mommy, Taiwanese kids are already feeling pressure to perform. Of the 20 2-3 year olds I teach daily, nearly all of them can take off and put on their own shoes, feed themselves (this entails pulling out their own bowl and spoon, cleaning them off after and putting them away), go to the bathroom themselves (I mean it, no help wiping even) and are responsible for themselves in more ways than most 6 year olds in the U.S. are. Currently they all know their colors, numbers, alphabet and emotions, all this in a second language. They come in each morning stating "I am angry" or "Today is Sunny and hot". All of which blows me away everyday. To think a child not even up to my waist can do all of these things is incredible to me. But to the parents, it's just what they expect of their pride and joy and many expect even more. One student's father has told me if she can memorize and recite the alphabet clearly (of her 2nd language, at AGE 2) she can go to Disneyland. She knows everything but forgets the letter X sometimes. Another parent complains to me hat his 2 year old doesn't fully understand the meaning behind the full sentences she's learned like, "This is a zebra." As if I could teach a 2 year old what it means to 'be' let alone what it means to be a zebra. Its absolutely insane, but alas, this is Taiwan.

You'd think the children of Asia would be on the verge of mental collapse, that the pressures placed on them by society and their families would be too great for their small shoulders to carry, but they know no different and all their friends do exactly the same. Most children even display an innate sense of maturity, that motivates them to learn a new language no matter how much extra homework and studying it involves. Instead of crying or whining over the long hours of studying, they find joy in a good grade or a classroom friendship. They find time to pass notes and discuss crushes and I've even seen them laugh until tears rolled down their cheeks. Amazingly, they're not unhappy children. In fact, I think they're very happy and are able appreciate the little things more than any spoiled American child ever could.

Will the youth of Taiwan look back 10 years from now and question where their childhood went? Will they wish they spent their Saturday mornings watching cartoons and eating sugary cereal? I think not. They'll remember their friends from school, their crushes and inside jokes; and maybe even their English teachers and they'll do it all in perfect English.

It must be because of all the 'effin cute Asian babies

In case I haven't told you, I now live in a warm, bubbly world where cartoon characters rule the streets. Taiwan's infatuation with cuteness can best be explained as a Disney Princess that met Pokemon, fell in love, had babies and then started an advertising firm. Everywhere you go you will be surrounded by cartoon logos and Asian caricatures. From crossing the street where the crosswalk symbol is a little man in a rice paddy hat waddling two and fro, flashing green, to ordering dinner by pointing at the precious baby cow cartoon on the menu, you will find life is increasingly adorable (much like Sarah Palin). Nearly 80% of all reputable companies' logos are composed of a baby animal or make believe creature with giant enticing eyes. Ohh ok, I'm making that up. But I dare you walk down a street in Taipei and not see an adorable construction man cartoon telling you to wear a hard hat. It's impossible.

From Happy Chan to Domo, Doraemon to the walking talking head of sushi that represents Sushi Express, life is nothing but cuteness on a stick here in Taiwan (or so they want you to believe). Yet the cartoons don't stop with the logos, nope. They are plastered across the bodies of grown women, women covered head to toe in Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. Not an ounce of shame in their eyes as they make their way to the office in the morning, prancing around like a 5 year old on Christmas day in their new Hello Kitty pajamas. And its not just women! Grown men walk around in clothes and hats covered in crazy monkey cartoons, wearing shirts with teddy bears that are holding hands and kissing (and you wonder why my gaydar is officially broken).

Unbelievably, it gets even worse. Even the government here has taken a liking to all that looks fat, funny and happy. Informative and critical emergency protocol is often presented in hysterical cartoon form. MRT escalator warnings are shown by what looks like the waist down of Mickey Mouse (if he were to accidentally get his foot caught in the machine that is). And as for elevators, well just imagine, as the elevator doors open you watch your friend walk into not an elevator, but an open shaft of doom. This fun scenario is cheerfully represented in most elevators by a cute cartoon man, screaming his face off and freaking out as his friend plummets to his certain death. Nearby a cute puppy naps in the corner. I'm not joking.

The amazing thing is, from a business perspective, this kind of thing had to be approved by not just one high up executive, but passed through layers of account managers and designers before each detail was refined and settled upon. These hilarious cartoon warning signs probably took months to develop and approve, each time, some brilliant government employed designer saying to himself "Yes, this is perfect. The cartoon freaking out reminds you of the gravity of the situation, while the puppy reminds you life is worth living." Meanwhile the MRT public service announcement designer thought, "Indeed, this weird animé subway rider has just the right look to motivate individuals to check the balance on their prepaid metro card."

It's these geniuses that also go around approving TV commercials compiled of complete nonsense. I know, I know, you're saying to yourself, "you don't even speak their language of course it doesn't make sense to you." But believe me when I tell you, no spoken words could make sense of an iced tea ad where a nerdy life guard teaching old women water aerobics is smashed in the head with two giant lemons, falls in love with a human sized penguin and then falls down an iced tea waterfall with his new penguin friend. But alas, all of it is so darn cute. Perhaps they're onto something. Wouldn't you want to dance with a life size penguin? I know we all would if we were being honest with ourselves here.

I would like to state some kind of amazing fact about the happiness created by these cartoons here in Taiwan, like 'suicide rates are among the lowest in the world due to happy baby animals enticing me to deep fry their delicious carcasses', but a quick google search proved that theory wrong pretty quickly. Instead, I'll just leave you with some of my favorite day to day images from the cutest advertising execs in the world:

Local Steakhouse, "Come eat me, I'm all dressed up for dinner!"

Mister Donut: "Come eat me, I'm a baby lamb/cruller"

Japanese Steakhouse "Come eat here, you have the choice of adorable baby pig or adorable baby bull on a platter, both cute, delicious and viciously slaughtered for your convenience"

Local sandwich shop "Come eat me, I'm a piece of bread with a bow in my non-existent hair"

Hello Kitty Cake: "It's not enough that you wear my image plastered all over your body, come eat my face too!"

Sushi Express: "I'm a walking talking piece of sushi, I have raw fish for a hat. Eat me"

MRT informational animé. I mean really, just picture animé at Grand Central informing riders how to check their metro card balance and try not to laugh

Moving truck company: "Why hire someone that looks like a reliable, strong individual, when you can have a funny panda clumsily move your valuables while attempting to walk upright instead, teehee"

Construction site warning: "bricks may fall from the sky at any moment. Wear a hard hat or end up retarded and legless like this guy"

Elevator warning. (Sorry this pic is so bad! I'm too embarrassed to openly take a good picture in front of other elevator passengers and admit I'm not actually laughing about a funny joke I heard earlier) Actual translation from above: "Holy FFFFF, dude you just fell down the shaft! That's what she said."

And this one has nothing to do with cartoons, but just cracks me up. I love old people (when they're not walking in front of me) because they're just so out of it and so funny. Just look at these two in an MRT ad promoting respecting ones elders by giving up your seat on the subway. They're so happy about something as they stare off into the distance, dazed, confused, having no idea that subways even exist now. Grandpa is thinking about prunes for dinner and Grammy is just waiting for the bitter sweet end to it all. Next time you see these two, you'll do the right thing, I'm sure.

And that's when someone said, 'Why the hell not?'

After playing a long hard game of tennis, you ache for something that can quench your thirst and only one thing comes to mind, ice cold, delicious, Lactic Acid Drink. Nothing says sweet relief, like acid in your mouth.


Lactic Acid Not your cup of tea? Are you in dire need of making your piss stink immediately? Try some sweet and healthy Asparagus Juice in a carton. When you're on the go and need some funky smelling piss asap, this drink is for you! If you're still thirsty there's avocado smoothies, fish eye ball lemonade (not really but it looks like it) and good ol' poisonous tap water.


For those of you with a big appetite, freshly made Belgian waffles topped with a scoop of day old tuna fish will leave you satisfied. After all, 72 % of people who like waffles also enjoy tuna fish. This courageous combo was created to meet everyone's needs. It's available at high end coffee shops where we found most consumers expressed a need for a Belgian waffle tuna explosion in their mouth.


Pork ear cookies look gross, and taste like nothing! Why waste precious calories on food that tastes good, when you can eat things that resemble something gross and taste like salty sweet cardboard?

And for those of you sick of everyone beating around the bush, let's just get to it then. Yes, this meat on a stick came from an animal as filthy and vile as this thing pictured here. Yes, we all know, deep down, you want that thing in your stomach. Sure, maybe it could be an endangered animal, perhaps the last of a prehistoric breed of boar, but look at it, don't you want to eat it? I mean we cut it up real nice and then put it on a stick, you know its good.

Very potent, not so potable

Ugh, I'm so bad! It's been a month, so I'm sorry!!! It's not that I haven't been eating, because I have. Actually quite a lot. Actually the personal trainer at my new gym even told me I'm a mere 3 percent away from being in the obese category. He also told me that the muscle in each of my arms only makes up 1.6% of all the muscle in my body. This may explain why I can't do a single pull up. His name was literally Sparky so I don't really care what he or his electro pulse machine has to say about me and my lack of muscles and abundance of fat :)

So most of the reason I've been so busy is because of work, but I was also sick. My stomach finally gave way to the bacteria of the new world and I spent 3 days struggling to keep anything in my stomach. Initially I was confused. I mean, I'd been eating random meat products from street vendors for 2 months now, so why was my stomach defeated from a bowl of rice with vegetables? It didn't fit. And after three days of pain and discomfort I saw the key to my illness: my roommate. Kind, but clueless, he had been feeding me tap water for weeks. Tap water in the U.S. can be laden with lead and other eventually harmful trace elements, however it won't make your intestines curl into a tightly wound spring ready to burst at any moment. In Taiwan however, the water cannot be consumed without being boiled first due to harmful bacteria the government says is drinkable but really isn't (it's on their website, the big liars!) All Taiwanese boil their water, and thus usually end up drinking warm water even though its 95 degrees outside. But the roommate, god bless him and his unfathomable logic, thought since I was a foreigner, I was impervious to the Taiwanese water bacteria and told me to drink freely from the Brita filter he filled daily with unboiled tap water. I assumed he boiled it. But we all know, assuming makes and ass out of u and me. Amazingly enough my stomach lasted two weeks on Taiwanese tap water. After that it gave way and punished me for my stupidity. And after three days of watching me dying slowly, my roommate refilled the brita filter in front of me, with tap water and I asked him, "Have you been drinking that too?" He replied "No, of course not, I never drink water unless its boiled." Too weak to strangle him, I was relieved; I finally had my answer. Upon refilling my body with amoeba free water, I quickly returned to my normal state and took solace in the fact that I can still eat anything, its just the water I need to watch out for.

Ironically a week later I took my kindergarten kids on a super fun field trip to the Taipei Water Treatment Facility, half education/half water park! During our tour of the park we watched an educational film all in Chinese that toasted the achievements in water filtration in Taiwan and even showed children drinking straight from the faucet at home. I was appalled. It was worse than the blatant lies that the U.S. government feeds us. They even have a museum here called "The Museum of Drinking Water," what a farce! Such a place should surely not exist yet, as there is no water suitable for drinking still. Yet for such a ruse they have going on here, everyone on this island still seems to know that you must at all times, boil your water. Our field trip ended with my 15 toddlers, sweating in the midday sun, eyes agape, watching the other children play in the sprinklers and wading pools, not allowed to go near it, not even stick a finger in it, because my school deemed it all too unsafe. My thoughts exactly...



http://www.twd.gov.tw/watertravel/wpark/english/museum/museum.htm

The museum of drinking water. The website is so cute with its happy water drop mascot, yet note, not once do they mention dysentery.

Where for art thou, oh sushi love of my life?

I’ve been meaning to write about Sushi Express for about a month now. Anywhere that gives you instant access to as much sushi as you can eat at the rate of a dollar per plate is incredible right? It really is a magical place where you sit in front of a conveyor belt loaded with a rainbow of raw deliciousness, where plates of sushi come marching your way, two by two, hoorah hoorah; A veritable endless parade of fish, rice and seaweed.

However, now a month has gone by and in that month my immediate infatuation with Sushi Express has dwindled into just a fond memory of what could have been. After such a perfect first date, I should have known not to have such high expectations for our second encounter. After all, it was a rushed, impromptu meeting, just a quick bite before heading to work, not like our first leisurely dinner date where the green tea was sipped and my stack of 6 plates took an hour to form. Date two was just business, and four plates of mediocre sushi (and one plate of questionable sushi) later, my infatuation with Sushi Express was over. Maybe it was because it was 3:00 in the afternoon, too late to have fresh sushi from lunch and too early for the dinner rush. Maybe it was my placement at the end of the sushi circle where I was left to dig through the plates examined and rejected by all the other sushi-goers. Or perhaps, like all second dates, the rose colored glasses had been lifted and I realized, much as I had realized when grabbing the one perfect looking plate of sashimi that actually was the plastic sashimi display, anything too good to be true, usually is. You really should see the plastic food displays in this country though, they are seriously exquisite! It really wasn’t until I was trying my hardest to pry the clear plastic cover off the sashimi and was holding it sideways, that I realized, “Wow, this sashimi defies gravity, oh wait, it’s so shiny, oh I see, its not real, damnit.” I then had to coyly slide the fake plate back onto the conveyor belt, squishing it between the questionable looking sashimi, hoping no one saw the stupid foreign girl who tried to eat the plastic display.

In any event, I’ve decided not to see Sushi Express again. As my mom always said there are more fish in the sea, fresh, raw, delicious fish that won’t leave me wondering if I should find a toilet soon. Hopefully I’ll have more successful sushi tales soon, a true sushi love story. Here I come prince Nobu.

Jess and Stephanie's sea slug sushi selection (say that 5 times fast!)

the damage