May 8, 2007
Meet Ermendarde, the newest addition to our cloth doll family. Kaylen did most of the sewing on Ermengarde:
Here are the dolls we have made so far - Hannah, Ermengarde, Yoko and Fiffy:
We got our pattern for these dolls from a Martha Stewart Kids magazine that my sister Erica had. Hannah and Fiffy we made in America with Erica, and Yoko and Ermengarde we made after we got back to Taiwan.
May 5, 2007
Friday playgroup this week found us at a new (for us) indoor recreational spot in Taipei – the exclusive Beitou Resort.
Located at the Fuxinggang MRT stop on the Red Line, this resort was originally created for MRT staffers to use. It is one of those weird government projects that you encounter occasionally inTaiwan. A big cavernous, lonely, wind-blown place for which a lot of money was spent to build, but which was never planned to be used, a slush-fund project. It takes me back to communist China and all the cavernous, lonely, pointless, wind-blown structures there…
The first surprise we had is that we must enter the Resort from the MRT station. Then we walked across a bridge over the train yard to get to it. Since it is cleverly disguised as a either a train depot or a prison, we weren’t at all sure we were in the right place. We found the expansive steps leading up to the main door, but the main door was locked. There was not a soul around. The only sound was that of the weed whippers at work mowing the grass between the tracks in the train yard. We found a stairway leading downstairs and headed that way. Luckily, there was someone filling an ATM and he was able to give us general directions to the main desk. We pressed on down wide hallways, past huge banquet and meeting rooms. Finally we found someone at a desk in the exercise room.
Seeing all the benefits of this place we quickly bought ourselves a NT$200 membership in the club. One mom took the wiser approach of getting a guest pass to check it out before committing.
Membership lets you use the facilities for a small extra charge: NT$60 for the kids’ playroom, NT$90 for the pool. The pool looked nice – a lap pool, a kiddie pool and a diving pool.
The kids had a great time in the playroom, and we definitely plan to go swimming there at some point. It is a nice place to add to our (short) list of good indoor places to go for playgroup.
So, if you want to go, just get off at the Fuxinggang exit and ask for directions. You will need two ID photos and some picture ID to get a membership card made. Children also need cards so bring photos and all for them as well. Children need socks in the playroom!
Places in Taiwan are funny: they are either super crowded or super dead.
Beitou Resort is the blue and grey building off to left, next to the depot:
Inmates, er, “members” this way:
Landscaping crew at the Resort:
May 5, 2007
May 4, 2007
The air quality today in Taipei is a RED 115 – UNHEALTHY! I have never had allergies before but I have them now! Sneezing, blowing, itching, stuffy nose, watery eyes. People tell me it is the Mongolian sandstorm blowing in leaving sand particles in the air and creating a brown cloud of pollution all over Taipei. People say, added to that, there is a sandstorm from Japan that has blown in bringing lots of pollen. Great! The thing to do, (people say), is to put some small pine trees on your yangtai to clean the air as it comes in. Hmm, why do I feel this is not going to do it for me? I have two big Honeywell aircleaners going full blast in my house and I still feel bad.
May 4, 2007
Last week we went on a daytime outing to Yingge with another homeschooling family. We met there at 11:00 am on a Thursday morning, so there were not many people there – we noticed a couple groups of school children and a tour group from Hong Kong.
It was a nice little adventure for Kaylen and me. Dacheng usually drives when we go outside of Taipei but since he was working we decided to take the train.
The train was great! So fast and so cheap. Adult tickets to Yingge are NT$31 and a child’s ticket is only NT$16. If you buy a round trip ticket it is even cheaper. Trains that go through Yingge leave about every 15 minutes from the main train station. Almost all the trains heading south from the main station go through Yingge. The trip takes just under 30 minutes.
You can just show up and buy tickets the day you want to travel. If you know what you are doing at the train station, you only need to allow yourself about 10 minutes to get tickets and get down to the platform.
Check the train schedule to Yingge: http://163.29.3.96/twrail_en/index.aspx
Once you get to the Yingge train station the Lao Jie (old street) is about a 10 minute walk. Or there are plenty of cabs waiting to take you there.
There are lots of DIY places on theLao Jie where kids and adults can try their hand at throwing pots or doing pinch pots. One place we found seemed to be a bit more reasonably priced. It was NT$150 to make one piece on the pottery wheel which includes adding some decorative touches after you have made the pot, another NT$150 for firing and glazing (sorry, you can’t pick the glaze color), and another NT$100 for shipping the piece to you. It is only NT$150 to ship 3-10 pieces so if you ship as a group you can all save some money. We spent NT$330 per child to make one piece, but it was a whole afternoon of playing. The teacher was really good with the kids and helped them a lot on the wheel and rescued their pots if they got out of control.
This place is at 55 Chongqing Street 2F, near the intersection of Lao Jie and Chongqing Street. Their phone number is 02-8677-2547. They also have a tea shop/restaurant. And a website: http://www.ccv.org.tw/yingge/
Kaylen wearing her train floor-green pants, reading the paper on her commute to Yingge:
Arrival:
Hanging around on the Old Street: Kaylen, Sharon, Mark, Charlotte, Matthew and Timothy in the front.
The whole gang at work at the wheels:
Kaylen and Charlotte decorating their pots:
May 3, 2007
I have found 三桐花 variously translated as paulownia, the phoenix tree or the tung tree. It may be the tree that in Japan is called kiri. Kiri is often used in furniture in Japan and there is a romantic story as to why it is: when someone had a baby girl, they would plant one of these trees in the yard. By the time the girl had grown up and was about to be married, the tree was big enough to make most of the furniture for the newlyweds, which is what the father of the bride would do.
Daddy and Kaylen with Tung trees in the background:
The tall straight trees grow in the mountains in Taiwan around Hsinchu, and Sanhsia and Tucheng, among other places. In the spring the tree tops are full of white blossoms that look a little like apple blossoms, only bigger. You can see the flowers as you drive past the wooded hillsides, but once you get into the forest you can’t really see the flowers until they fall down. Then the ground and stream beds are covered with white blossoms. People here call this phenomenon ”Spring Snow”.
We went with some friends to see the Spring Snow a couple weeks ago. We found a trail to walk on in Da-hsi. The blossoms weren’t at their peak but it was still a nice outing. The trees themselves are really nice – towering straight, smooth trunks that are pale green. As I said, I am not sure if this is the same tree, but the tung tree is where tung oil comes from, the oil that my mom used to use when she was refinishing some piece of furniture she found at a garage sale. (You rub in several coats and it protects the wood and gives it a bit of a shine, but not as shiny as varnish.)
It was a hot, humid day on the trail, and not a breath of wind - plenty more of that ahead of us! The girls had a great time collecting blossoms, putting them in their hair, arranging them on the ground.
Kaylen with 三桐花 and a cute yellow something:
Kaylen and Eevie collecting blossoms:
A floral arrangement:
April 27, 2007
April 23, 2007
Thanks for your comments, folks. From what I have heard from other homeschooling families in Taiwan, the regulation of homeschooling differs greatly across counties. For example, here in Taipei County we have four home visits from the school each year and only the teacher and the counselor, and sometimes only the teacher, comes to visit. A family in Taidong told me they were having 12-15 people showing up at their house for these visits. So, there the rule is: the school shall make home visits each semester, but how that rule is executed makes a big difference. One to two people coming for a casual visit is tolerable, 12-15 is ridiculous and intrusive (seems like they are just coming to gawk at the foreigners).
Taipei City and Taipei County handle assessment in basically the same way. The City/County sets up the assessment day. Homeschooling families are divided up by household location and scheduled to meet in groups of 4 families with members of the homeschooling committee (the panel members). The student presents, the panel members look at the materials the student has brought in, there may be time for the parents to talk a bit about what the student has been working on this year, then the panel asks questions and makes comments. In Taipei City the panel seemed to give the families a pass/fail response right on the day, while in Taipei County the pass/fail notice is sent out later. I don’t know how much weight Assessment Day has in determining pass or fail in Taipei County. Our school teacher says they go completely by the teacher’s recommendation, so it makes you wonder why we all have to go through this…
I have often wondered what would happen if, from the beginning, our daughter just didn’t go to school, or petition for homeschooling approval and just use the rationale that she holds a foreign passport so she doesn’t have to go to school. We didn’t ever seriously consider that because we wanted to do things by the books. My husband felt better about doing it by the books, otherwise he felt like we were sneaking around. And this way it is much easier to justify to my in-laws: I just tell them Kaylen is registered with the school and if it is ok with the teachers and the county and the Education Bureau then it should be ok for them. So, that was the right choice for our family. Other families might not care about doing things by the books and find the county oversight too intrusive, so not petitioning is the right choice for them.
I was also surprised to find a religious perspective being expressed by a member of the panel. It seems the homeschooling committee is trying to bring in people other than school teachers or principals, so have a couple homeschooling parents on the committee. This woman is a veteran homeschooler having homeschooled 5 of her own. Probably most of the “veteran” homeschoolers in Taiwan are Christians as they were the earliest group pushing for the right to homeschool. I almost fell over when I heard her say, “And remember moms, a happy mom makes a happy household!” But I have to say she looked like she was infused by the holy spirit or something, her face was all lit up and she exuded all this energy, she has one of those round, shiny foreheads like Xu Zhenchang and Chen Shuibian that sends out a beam of light…
Another thing that happened was that the panel was wondering how they could be of service in arranging networking activities and get-togethers for homeschooling families. We all declined the need, said we could take care of it ourselves. I find it strange that the county would offer to take on this task; in the US the attitude is, you have rejected the public school system, you go set up your own damn network if you need it. And, who would want another level of county involvement anyway? Just introduces another area for them to control.
POI: The Organization to Promote Independent Learning based in Taipei is holding their annual meeting this Saturday afternoon. Check out their webite for info: http://www.alearn.org.tw/
April 22, 2007
Kaylen just had her homeschooling assessment for 2007. It is the big final year-end grade given to us by Taipei county. A panel of three representatives from the committee which manages the homeschoolers in Taipei county met with four homeschooling families in our area.
We brought piles of stuff to show them what we have been doing – workbooks, posters we have made, scrapbooks, artwork, drawings, knitting, crochet project, embroidery, dried flower and leaf collection album, stamp album, etc. Kaylen gave a slide show presentation. The other 4 kids did slide show presentations or reports from a scrap book.
The panel did not comment specifically on anything we showed them. It felt kind of anti-climactic. All that work preparing for a ten-minute review by the panel. I guess we should be happy that they were not critical of what we were doing, and seemed to think everything was going fine and there was not much to comment on.
The three panel members took turns giving general comments to the group. Here are some of the things they said:
1) Parents should figure out their child’s strengths and then nurture them and work in that direction.
2) The best part of homeschooling is being able to design your own program; don’t feel you need to follow the school formula.
3) Use resources well – make use of resources in the community like the library and museums, and even the school’s resources (hmm, not sure what those would be in our case).
4) We like to see lots of variety, that you are exposing your kid to lots of different things; we’d like to see you doing it even better so that we can be more confident about what you are doing. (A bit patronizing but the guy who said was trying to be really supportive throughout the meeting and I think meant well.)
5) The child needs to interact with other people.
6) The parent should get the child’s input and thoughts on what to learn; set up the curriculum together.
7) Sometimes life is the curriculum.
8) One Christian homeschooling mom on the panel made these comments: Our children are not our possessions, it is not for us to decide what to do with them. God will lead them in what they need. Parents need to take care of their own relationship and work on communicating with each other. A happy mom makes the whole household happy.
Two years ago I attended the homeschooling assessment of a friend of ours in Taipei. She (first grader) did a nice presentation in Chinese and had lots of materials to show the panel. All the kids seem to do a good job that day, however, then panel still had negative things to say. My thought then was that, no matter how well you perform that day, they will still have to have something negative to say because they fundamentally do not llike homeschooling, or feel it is their job to raise criticisms. One woman’s comments really stuck with me: 1) homeschooling students better not fall behind with learning Chinese characters because they are just going to keep piling up and the student may fall behind and what are you going to do then? 2) It is really nice that you are coddling and protecting your child now, but eventually your child will have to go out into the world, you cannot protect them forever, eventually they will have to go out and meet someone to marry. 3) You kids are so lucky that your parents are coddling and protecting you so much! How nice for you! (very sarcastically and ironically, meaning those kids are not lucky at all!)
The comments and reactions of the Taipei County panel did not lead me to think they were looking for us to be doing everything according to the school schedule, or that we were doing something bad that was going to hurt our child for life, or that they were hostile to homeschooling in general. They didn’t even ride us about ’socialization’, the usual favorite thing to flog homeschoolers with. One panel member asked if we felt good about our current social activity situation, we said we did, and he said, “Great. Perfect. Just wondering if we could be of help but if you are ok then that’s fine”.
So, all is well. We now start to get ready for next year.
April 16, 2007
I guess the illusion I am thinking about today is the illusion that Billy Collins sat down at his famous table next to his famous window surrounded by his famous wall paper and wrote his poem “I Ask You” in about five minutes, the same five minutes that I took to read his poem. That his poem was composed as a smooth complete lozenge ready to be consumed. That nothing was crossed out or erased, that there were no other possible choices for words. That the poem was inevitable and fell from his mind like a minted coin falling off the press. I sometimes think that one good poem can last a person a lifetime. Maybe that is actually how long it takes to write a poem, or at least that it took one’s whole life up to that point.
A book of smooth lozenges:
A window muse:
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