After substitute teaching on Monday and Tuesday of last week I was ready to take on another interview and teaching demo come Wednesday. I was also feeling ready to tackle an audition I had lined up.
My teaching interview went quite well and the location of the school was very convenient for me. I left the interview with the assumption that I would be hired and to my enjoyment I received an email that evening asking me to come in for a trail day on the coming Monday.
Before I had gotten the good news about the job I had to rush off directly to my audition. This was to be my first audition since I was 8 years old and I had low expectations for the outcome but though it would be fun none-the-less. They filmed me reading a few lines and by the time I left I had an acting job lined up for the upcoming Tuesday.
On that very hectic Wednesday I had one last interview to narrowly make it to. My last interview was actually a meeting with the school at which I would be substitute teaching at for the following 2 days, simply to meet me and go over the lesson plan for the days to come.
The school I was subbing at was a kindergarten that is less than 5 minutes walk from where I live. I taught (if you can call it that) a class of about 12 five-year-olds. I probably sounds like hard work but really it was surprisingly easy. Thursday began with nearly an hour of “indoor park time” which was followed by a snack, bathroom break, and “breaktime”. We played kickball in the afternoon so between all the playtime, scheduled bathroom and water breaks, I probably had to teach for about 20 minutes. The following day was just as easy and I was set with some cash for the weekend.
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| At The Nightmarket near my apartment. |
One of my roommates had some friends from Nova Scotia who came to visit for just 2 nights. Being as we had to show the visitors a good time (and I wanted to celebrate my recent flood of employment) I was pretty much obligated to have a couple of nights out on the town.
Cash is needed for any weekend in Taipei. Night-clubs can be very expensive here, at least relative to the general costs of living. Entry fee alone to a club on a weekend can easily amount to 10% of my monthly rent. That said, the nightlife is great here and predrinking in front of convenience stores is a fun way to save money.
This morning (Tuesday) I began the day by walking over to my acting job. I received the script by email night and found that I would have just 7 simple lines. The filming was as easy as I expected and only took 1 hour to complete. The agreement is that I get paid a minimum of 3 hours at a rate of $20 an hour so I actually got paid $60 CAD for just 1 hour of work. The filming was for an English language learning website and magazine that also produces short video clips to assist learning. I will be filming again on Thursday an assuming all goes well I will continue to film with this company for weeks, if not months to come.
I also had my official first day at my job today which went as well as any other day of teaching I've had so far.
I've started putting quite a bit of time into studying Chinese and I feel like I'm learning a lot.
Everything is still going exceptionally well and I'm having an amazing time here.
More interesting things about Taiwan:
- Every receipt from every store has a lottery number at the top. There is a draw every 3 months with prize amounts as high as 1,000,000 Taiwan Dollars ($33,333 CAD). Saving receipts is a pain in the ass.
- People chew betel nut here. Betel nut is the same stimulant leaf and nut that everyone chews in India and spits all over the streets. At least here nobody spits on the street and instead spitts discretely into a can or cup.
- I had one of the best hot-dog like products I've ever had here. It consisted of a Chinese sausage (sweet and greasy) inside a halved rice-filled-sausage that acts as a bun. Its amazing and greasy.
- My toothpaste is “Whitemen” brand.
