Traveling educators: Taiwan: School Days

We arrived at the train station in Taichung to find Samantha from National Taichung University waiting for us. We head over to the International House (our home in Taichung) and took a quick tour of the campus. (I noted the locations of 7-11 for future reference).

We came to Taiwan to participate in the Chinese Language and Taiwanese Culture Camp, hosted by National Taichung University.

It's a two-week cultural exchange program offering Chinese Mandarin courses along with courses on varied aspects of Chinese culture (e.g., martial arts, calligraphy, Chinese painting, tea ceremony). Its participants are from NCTU's sister institutions around the globe. In the past most participants have been from the USA. This year Deanna and I were the only ones from the US. 4 participants were from Korea and two from Indonesia. Our fellow participants were lovely, energetic, and infinitely patient with us as our exposure to and skill levels at varied aspects of Chinese culture/language was well behind theirs. For example, the calligraphy teacher, trying to make me feel better as I looked with amazement at their work, chuckled and said, "the Korean girls, they've done this before. This is easy for them."

The president of the university offering a welcoming speech.

Our first day consisted of a tour of the university's archive room, a lovely welcoming ceremony, and our first class, Chinese Painting.

Our first stop of the day was a guided tour through the archive, or history, room. The room displays and narrates the institutional history of NCTU. Archive rooms must be common features of Taiwanese schools as we noted one at a k-12 school we visited later the next week. On display were valuable paintings of a former faculty member. Artwork and posters from current faculty. Institutional artifacts such as past yearbooks. Gifts from the NCTU's sister universities around the globe were also on display. The guide made a point to tell us that we could open the cases to look at books, materials, etc. The point was interaction.

Past presidents of NCTU. The first four were Japanese soldiers as the university was founded during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.


Note Deanna helping Grace turn on her camera. Photos, photos, photos, I've never posed for so many photos, nor had so many photo taken of me during the course of a normal day. Those of you who know me, know exactly how much I like to have my photo taken!

4 of our wonderful camp volunteers (Isis, Dave, Samantha, Nicole) offering their own greetings as well as translating the welcoming speeches of NCTU's faculty and administrators.

An excellent lunch was prepared. Note the chopsticks. I was not too proficient. Interestingly, at the closing lunch, there was a basket full of plastic forks (mainly, I suspect, because of the obvious difficulty I was having). The folks in blue shirts were the camp volunteers. They were constant, friendly, helpful companions, all students at the University.