Wo ai Taiwan! (I love Taiwan!)

In July of 2009 I moved to Taiwan a month after graduating college. I went for a few reasons: work, travel, fun and to learn Mandarin. I was interviewed and hired before I went by Hess Educational Organization. My two years in Taiwan started off with a 2 week Hess training in the capital Taipei where we learned teaching strategies - everything from classroom management to how to explain adjectives. This was a great time to adjust to the time changed, make friends and learn about the culture all while being housed in a nice hotel and fed 2 free meals a day. I made friendships those first two weeks that I still have today. After training I moved to the port city of Keelung where I moved into an adorable, small Japanese style studio apartment and started teaching ESL. I started out teaching at Hess's kindergarten in the mornings and teaching elementary and junior higher school students in the evenings. A typical day involved riding my scooter to kindergarten - teaching 3 year olds for 2 1/2 hours then having lunch with my fellow teachers (usually something made by the kindy aunties - delicious Taiwanese food). Teaching kindy was really fun in the sense that we were really involved in every aspect of the kids' education, from teaching them phonics to teaching them how to clean up and how to be polite. I taught the same kids two years in a row and it was so amazing to watch them grow up. By the time I left they were 4 and 5 and could speak English really well. It's also challenging teaching the younger kids though, it takes a lot of patience, and sometimes it seems like the kids have better relationships with their Chinese speaking teachers (which makes sense of course). I enjoyed teaching the older kids as well, although teaching till 8:30 at night was not on my list of favorite things. The older kids really appreciate learning from a native speaking teaching and while you have a pretty strict curriculum to follow there is always time to share your culture and get to know your students and their culture.

Hess as a whole was a really supportive school. I would definitely recommend Hess to any one starting out teaching abroad. They offer a lot of support such as finding an apartment and helping with necessary but very difficult tasks, like setting up a bank account, filing taxes and going to the dentist. The Taiwanese teachers we worked with were awesome too, they were really helpful in and out of the classroom.

I loved my experience in Taiwan. A huge reason I went was to study Mandarin and live in an Asian country. I made some amazing friends - the Taiwanese people are some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. They are so welcoming and love sharing about their country. The city I stayed in was just the right size, big enough to never get bored, small enough that you became familiar with the area and people pretty quickly. There was a cafe called Leaf Cafe in Keelung where I befriended the owner of the cafe. Of all my experiences in Taiwan - studying Mandarin at the Normal Taiwan University, going to glorious Green Island, lasting through a Typhoon, experiencing Lantern Festival (and ALL the other festivals), going out in Taipei - the thing I am thankful for the most is that little cafe and all the wonderful memories there. When you travel it's hard not to feel like you have to be living on the edge every single day, seeing new places, trying new foods, meeting new people, but at the end of the day that gets pretty exhausting especially when you're living and working somewhere for an extended period of time. By the end of my two years in Keelung I was so thankful for my curry place where the owners knew my favorite dish, for the comfort of having friends nearby, for my faithful scooter that gave me freedom to explore, and for a beautiful, ancient culture that will always be a part of me.