My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

The Fulbright people met us at the airport. Besides my family, there are 16 “English Teaching Assistants” (ETA), who will be the teachers. These are recent college grads from across the US. Although we all came on different parts of the US, the foundation arranged everyone’s flights so that we all arrived in Taiwan at about the same time. After we had all cleared customs, they loaded us on a bus and drove us to Taipei.

We had about an hour in a hotel room to shower and change clothes, then we had to go to the Fulbright office to start the process of applying for our Alien Resident Cards, Taiwan’s equivalent of the US green card. We went to have our pictures taken, and filled out forms. We also had a brief Q&A session with the foundation people. I was very glad to have done all the information gathering with my predecessors, so I was able to answer many of their questions.

I am very impressed with this batch of ETAs. Many of them have studied abroad, several have studied Chinese and been to China. They’re very bright and enthusiastic. I am optimistic that they will be good teachers, and have a rewarding experience here.

Finally that day, we had a big welcome dinner at Hakka (客家) restaurant in Taipei. This was 12 hours after we landed in Taiwan, after a long day of traveling with too little sleep. Both Ian and Evan were pooped. Evan was literally falling asleep on his feet. Stacy decided that she should stay in the hotel with the boys, while I went to the dinner with the ETAs.

The director of the Fulbright foundation in Taiwan joined us for dinner at the restaurant, which is an old house of Chinese architecture converted to a restaurant. It was a very charming atmosphere. We had an absolutely HUGE dinner: ten dishes, plus three desserts. Most of the dishes were completely new to me, which shouldn’t have been surprising to me, but it was. After 20-plus years of exposure to Chinese food, I thought I had seen a large part of the range of dishes. I was wrong. Some of the ingredients were new to me, let alone the whole dish. It was very good food, and we were stuffed, but we left at least half of the food on the table unfinished. I felt bad about the waste, but this a part of Chinese culture is to treat guests to a lavish dinner. They sure accomplished that goal!