The grass is always greener, right?

Two weeks of teaching done. It has been insanity.

No computer until the third day of classes. Repeatedly being told, “Oh, you need to be doing this and this, oh, and that,” after we’ve already fail to do this, this and that because no one told us ahead of time that we needed to. Building multiple curriculums from the ground up while having to teach them; like building a car while in the process of driving it down the road. And so many more things.

It’s been a bit of a shock for us. I left Beijing thinking that teaching in Taiwan would only make school more organized and predictable, and have since discovered just the opposite. A fellow teacher who’s been at my school for a number of years asked me last night what I thought of teaching in Taipei. “It’s like Beijing, but on steroids. No, wait, like speed, like Beijing on speed.”

It seems to be more intense for the students too. In Beijing, students arrived at school around 7:30 am and worked until 8:30 pm; a long, long day, granted, but they still were given many breaks throughout the day, some as long as a full hour. At my school in Taipei, students also arrive around 7:30 am, but their day is very different. Ten classes a day, only a five-minute break in between classes with one 15-minute break in the morning. School ends at 6:00 pm, but then most students head off to what are known as “cram schools,” where they do even more studying. Only after that do they actually start working on homework. Some of my 7th grade students don’t get to bed until midnight. It’s a system that puts a lot of expectation and pressure on teachers and students alike.

In the midst of this, it’s easy to think back to Beijing with a little bit of longing. Longing for those shorter teaching days, for a familiar curriculum, for a less pressure-filled work environment. But I also need to be careful to remember how difficult life was in Beijing also. Despite the stress of work, I feel as though we’re already developing healthier lives here in Taipei. We’re surrounded by green trees, the air is fresh, we’re making friends, we have a place of our own to call home. And nostalgia for our old school quickly faded this week when we heard from a friend back in Beijing that the principal was just fired and my former supervisor is leaving China. It's a reminder that, though things are tough here, things are not necessarily better elsewhere.

To an extent, you make the best with what you have and where you are. I don’t regret our decision to move, though I miss my students and our friends in Beijing. This year is going to be really, really challenging for us professionally, but I know that we are capable of rising to the challenge and we’ll be better teachers in the end because of it.

It’s Saturday afternoon now. This feels like a hard-earned weekend and we are making good use of it. Went out to breakfast this morning and had eggs and sausage and waffles. Walked back home through a morning market and bought fresh fruit (giant yellow mango, pears, star fruit) and vegetables. Grace is napping. I’m drinking coffee and typing on the couch. It’s rainy today, and the coolest it’s been since we got here over a month ago (80F). Maybe later this afternoon we’ll jump on the scooter and vroom over to the flower market or one of the colorful Buddhist temples. Or maybe not. It’s nice to do nothing.