A Day in the Life...

What's a day in the life of a Morrison teacher in Chiayi, Taiwan like?

The alarm rings at 6:00 AM and I scan the floor and walls for any crawling critters that have been out and about in my bedroom at night. When I'm sure the coast is clear, I get up and begin getting ready for the day... each trip into another room of the house in the morning begins with a quick scan for gecko's, cockroaches, spiders, or whatever other visitors have emerged in the night time! On a good day, I find myself alone in my house (or at least I don't SEE any of my visitors).

By 7:00 AM I am downstairs and starting my scooter. Christina and I are now caravaning to school, me on my scooter and she on hers. I'm still not quite brave enough to go all by myself. The morning time is very busy becuase we live near a school. The traffic is wall to wall with scooters, cars, bicycles, pedestrians. There are official crossing guards at each intersection to try and keep things moving in an orderly fashion. The air is filled with the sounds of students chattering, engines roaring, crossing guard whistles blowing, and horns honking.

At 7:15 we arrive at school and get ready for the day. The students begin arriving at 8:00, we begin class at 8:15. We have a PE teacher that comes for one hour each day, first thing in the morning to do PE class with our kids, so I have a prep. period from 8:30-9:30. I don't know how I'd be able to be ready for each day without that time! It is a challenge to juggle three grade levels, and the preparation and planning are VERY time consuming! We do reading, writing workshop, and science in the morning. At 11:45 we all begin moving lunch tables into the hallway. Christina and I eat lunch with the kids at tables in the hallway. After lunch we have a short recess/inside work time which is also supervised by Christina and I. Our afternoon time is filled with Bible, Chinese, and math. We throw in art and music when it fits in with other subject areas. The days go by really quickly because I'm busy every minute with the three different grade levels! By 3:15 we are ready to dismiss.

Christina and I generally stay at school till 5:00 PM planning, correcting papers, taking care of school business, having meetings via camera phone with other campuses, etc. At 5:00 we head home through the busy afternoon traffic. The ride home usually includes a stop at the market or grocery store to get some things to make dinner.

I do a lot of my own cooking. Most Taiwanese people eat out for most meals. It is very inexpensive to eat local food. It is very convenient for most, but not so easy for me, becuase I can't read menus or ask what things are. It can be a bit scary to point to a random menu item and just wait to see what you get. It would be fine at home where I'm used to most of the food... but if you do that here, you are likely to end up eating pigs ears, chicken heads, and pork blood tofu with a side of octopus balls (all very popular foods here). It is more expensive, and less adventerous to cook my own food... but for now, it is the best option!

The evenings are usually spend catching up on e-mails, cleaning the kitchen (which I'm fanatical about becuase I don't want a cockroach infestation), and watching an episode of CSI. There is one TV station here that plays various CSI episodes nearly 24 hours a day! Wednesday nights I meet with my Bible study group (lead by Christina) for a few hours. Thursday's I usually meet with my OMF (my mission) prayer partner. Weekends are spent grocery shopping, and spending time with some of the friends I've met here, and sometimes traveling to other places in Taiwan. It is hard to see those people during the week becuase most of them teach at "bushiban" or "cram schools" where the children go after regular school for several hours each night to learn English. They work till 9:00 PM, when I'm just about ready to wind down for the night, so we generally catch up on the weekends. My church is small (4-10 people on any given Sunday). There aren't many English speaking ex-pats in Chiayi!

So, there you have it... a day in the life of a Morrison teacher in Chiayi, Taiwan.