Weekdays
Taiwan Fact: They put street signs on the other side of the lights. In other words, when you stop at a red light, you can't see the sign because it's above you... It's infuriating, especially when you are trying to navigate by map in a place you've never been. "Hey, what corner are you on?" "Uh, the one with a 7-11 on each corner? Hang on, let me walk 50 feet and back each way so I can see the signs." I guess it's because their characters are really information dense and therefore complicated so you can't tell what they are from far away. And, of course, putting the names on BOTH sides of the sign would be a monumental task.
The days are flying by at the preschool, although it's irritating to be "observing" someone who is not as good with kids as I am. Today I got homework- I'm supposed to write about how I would run my classroom. I'm ready to start teaching on my own. Perhaps their plan is to make teachers ready to teach by making them sick of training. Anyway, I can teach at least as well as most of the teachers I've met.
Once I start getting paychecks and quit making training money, I plan on taking a Mandarin class. I've tried to start teaching myself and I'm getting better at hearing the tones. It's simpler than I understood from all the explanations people have given me. We use all the tones in English, but they don't have direct meanings. The first tone is just flat, no up or down, like a robot. Then second tone goes up like a question (it's hard to remember not to go up at the end of a question, but it will probably change the tone of the word you're trying to say). The third tone is down then up. It's hardest to hear but it sounds to me like when someone asks you something with an obvious answer and you're anticipating a follow-up question and you give em one of these: "...yeah?". You start out in the middle, go low, then high. The fourth tone goes down like a definite response.
In fact, we use all these tones to add different meanings to the word "yeah", so that's what I think of.
1st- flat: "Are you a robot?" "Yeah."
2nd- up: "I just saw a robot!" "Yeah?"
3rd- down then up: "Do you have all your toes?" "...yeah?"
4th- down: "You want a beer?" "Yeah."
Taking it back to the Fact, they do not put the accents on the English versions of street names etc, so you have a .25 x the number of syllables chance of getting the pronunciation correct if you don't already know how to say it. Which means you gotta do a lot of pointing to get anywhere in a cab.
It rains too much in this country. Gillian tells me it will stop by the end of the month. She also told me there were hot girls in this neighborhood. Later she told me she meant our roommate and herself, so that's as far as I can trust her.
The days are flying by at the preschool, although it's irritating to be "observing" someone who is not as good with kids as I am. Today I got homework- I'm supposed to write about how I would run my classroom. I'm ready to start teaching on my own. Perhaps their plan is to make teachers ready to teach by making them sick of training. Anyway, I can teach at least as well as most of the teachers I've met.
Once I start getting paychecks and quit making training money, I plan on taking a Mandarin class. I've tried to start teaching myself and I'm getting better at hearing the tones. It's simpler than I understood from all the explanations people have given me. We use all the tones in English, but they don't have direct meanings. The first tone is just flat, no up or down, like a robot. Then second tone goes up like a question (it's hard to remember not to go up at the end of a question, but it will probably change the tone of the word you're trying to say). The third tone is down then up. It's hardest to hear but it sounds to me like when someone asks you something with an obvious answer and you're anticipating a follow-up question and you give em one of these: "...yeah?". You start out in the middle, go low, then high. The fourth tone goes down like a definite response.
In fact, we use all these tones to add different meanings to the word "yeah", so that's what I think of.
1st- flat: "Are you a robot?" "Yeah."
2nd- up: "I just saw a robot!" "Yeah?"
3rd- down then up: "Do you have all your toes?" "...yeah?"
4th- down: "You want a beer?" "Yeah."
Taking it back to the Fact, they do not put the accents on the English versions of street names etc, so you have a .25 x the number of syllables chance of getting the pronunciation correct if you don't already know how to say it. Which means you gotta do a lot of pointing to get anywhere in a cab.
It rains too much in this country. Gillian tells me it will stop by the end of the month. She also told me there were hot girls in this neighborhood. Later she told me she meant our roommate and herself, so that's as far as I can trust her.