Life in Taiwan through my eyes
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Looting the grocery store!
Earthquake
The other day around five in the morning I was woken up by my bed shaking. At first I just thought I was feeling things or I was still half asleep, or dreaming. But soon after the shaking became more and more violent. As I sat up in bed and looked around I realized that I wasn't imagining things and that my entire room was shaking not only my bed. I was still half asleep so I was super confused on what was going on hahaha it wasn't until after the shaking stopped that I realized I had just sat through an earthquake. That was the first earthquake I had ever experienced so I wasn't sure what I should do so I just went back to sleep. Later that morning I asked Joe if he felt the earthquake too, he said he did but he thought he was dreaming ha! So we decided to check online really quick to double check if it was really an earthquake or if we were just imagining things. Apparently the earthquake was a 6.0 I guess thats a decent sized quake from what I'm told.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
dinner with the family
Saturday, May 26, 2012
gym time
Sorry for such a blurry photo iphones not the fastest camera in the world |
My new home for the time being |
When I left the states I wasn't too confident that I would be able to find a good place to lift and practice. But Luckily as Joe and I were skating around the local University campus by our apartment we found the University gym it's kinda ghetto, wait scratch that it's really ghetto! But hey you work with what you got. Luckily for me they have some pretty thick mats for practicing martial arts as well so a great place to trick and it's free..for students at least, but I hear they don't even bother to check so I should be good. I was a little worried I wouldn't have anywhere to train and was going to get really rusty while I'm out here but I got lucky and this will definitely get the job done. There is actually a World Gym (which I'm pretty sure thats what Golds Gym used to be called before they swapped names) by the school I teach at, but it's monthly fee is freaking ridiculous! it was like $700 U.S. for a year membership. No wonder everyone in Taiwan is skinny no one can afford a gym membership they rape you out here! Obviously I'm not going back there such a rip off! So I'm going to have to settle for this ghetto University gym so it's back to basics and fundamental lifts which might not be so bad. I'll have to force myself to do all the lifts I hate the most but that are probably the best for you anyway. Hopefully I can find better facilities later in the future but for now I'm happy with at least this.
First week of observation
So I just finished my first week of training at Kojen and the training has been interesting to say the least. They pretty much just stick you in the class room and let you observe the other teachers as they teach their classes. Which isn't exactly what I expected but it hasn't been all bad, and you get some one on one training with a teacher trainer. I actually kind of prefer it compared to the crazy training Hess was going to give us. I feel the training at Hess may have been a little more in depth and may have helped us feel more comfortable as teachers more quickly. but I think I prefer this type of training and feel it suits me better anyway, and it's actually been really helpful. Plus I really wasn't looking forward to the crazy training schedule that Hess was about to put us through. My administrator/trainer Howard or whatever his position is called not quite sure, has been great and really accommodating. The first week here at Kojen was an interesting one when I first arrived there had been some lack of communication between the head office/recruiting manager Christine and the branch I was to be working at. When we arrived we were under the assumption that everything had been worked out and we were good to go. However the first day I arrived at the Branch I was supposed to be working at I was promised I would have about about 18-24 hours of work, not at first obviously, but when I got here to speak to Howard I was told we were in an unique situation. The situation was that he didn't realize I was going to be there so soon so he actually didn't have any available hours for me, and was a little hesitant to bring me on. The reason being is my particular branch is kinda slow right now and many of the teachers there were only working about 14 hours a week and most of them were wanting more hours. Which in the back of my mind I had a feeling this could potentially happen. Howard however was really accommodating and did everything he could to help me work something out. So what happened was he had a some hours he was teaching that he was willing to part with. He also talked with another Kojen branch manager that had some hours available as well and they are going to let me split hours between my branch and another branch. So now I have a decent and comfortable schedule to start out with working between two different branches. Which obviously not ideal but not a big deal at least I'm able to work now and have a decent amount of hours. So it was kind of a sketch at first but it all worked out in the end. At first I wasn't too impressed with Kojen but luckily I got a good director who is really willing to help and work with me, so I'm super grateful for that this could have gotten way more stressful than it already was hahaha. Can't wait to actually start teaching though should be a good time!
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