First Week of School

So first day of school Monday July 8^th … it’s different than American schools as in no English is spoken because most teachers know very little English. Thrown into that environment was difficult to adjust to coming from the American Chinese class that I am used to where Chinese was taught and explained in English. The start of class Monday I was put in A3 from the scores of the placement test which started with the second book, and I thought that it was going to be at my level. So the A3 class had 3 other Americans however, I thought A3 was easy because I could understand. So after class I told the office that I wanted to switch to the B1 class and they told me that they were in the middle of the 3^rd book and if I would be able to be okay and I told them I would work hard.

 Tuesday July 9^th was my first day of the B1 class. First before starting class they got to ask me any type of questions to get to know me better as in where was I from and how many years I studies Chinese in the states. Since I learned simplified characters in the states and in Taiwan they study traditional characters it was difficult to get used to reading traditional. The B1 class had 3 people from Japan and 2 people from Europe. The teacher in B1 seemed to be a better fit because she is willing to work with me if I don’t understand something we covered versus the other teachers in A3. The B1 book is better for my learning style because it has English to explain versus the book for A3 which had no English. The second day Wednesday July 10^th in B1 wasn’t as bad as the first day because I knew what to expect it but was still difficult to translate what they were saying from Chinese to English then to answer to translate my answer from English into Chinese. Coming back from class I never knew that 3 hours of straight language class was so tiring so most of the time I have to come back to my room and take a nap and recover then start the homework starts or review vocab.

Wednesday night we are going with our landlord to KTV (Karaoke) because I have never been to one before especially in Asia where it is really popular. We didn’t get back from singing until 3 am from singing karaoke and we had school the next day so it was tiring but fun. Thursday July 11 we heard that there was going to be a typhoon coming so we were going to be prepared so after school we went to the mall to buy groceries because when a typhoon comes people are supposed to stay inside. To prepare we went to Top City which is a mall in Taichung where people can buy groceries so I bought meat, cheese, and bread just in case.  I also stocked up on water because a typhoon can be really unpredictable. So the weekend will be filled with catching up with sleep from traveling and preparing for school on Monday.