We left in a haste for the 15th Annual Education Bookfair and International Conference of Teaching in Taipei. We came home after work on Friday and left almost immediately for the train station. We got there with time to spare. Since we had gotten our seats on Monday online, we had sitting seats on the train.
However, there were a lot of people in the train station.
People everywhere.
We took some pictures of the train station. Our departure was mired by getting onto the wrong train. Train stations can be confusing, especially when you do not speak the language. You never know if you are getting on the right train. I asked, but the train we got on was the train a few minutes before ours going to Taipei.
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I cleared up a mystery that had been plaguing me since I arrived. Every time when the first graders got ready to go somewhere, I would hear them scream “Bah” 6 times. Other teachers had noticed this too, but had never elucidated this mystery. I kind of liked the way they were screaming it, it had a certain ring to it. So I started joining in.
Meaning that I starting saying “Bah” with them when I heard them or I was at my desk.
This had been going on for some weeks.
Now I finally managed to asked the Chinese homeroom teacher what the kids were screaming and why they were screaming “Bah” and if it meant anything. She was a bit confused. At first she didn’t understand what I meant with “Bah”.
She then told me that the kids were saying “Hands up!” and “Hands down!”. The class leader says it first and the other kids repeat it. I asked her in which language. Flabbergasted, she said in English. I answered “Really?”. It then dawned on me that I wasn’t hearing “Bah” at all, but the end of “Up”.
That was pretty funny.
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Heard in the teacher’s lounge.
Is the correct anatomical word for butthole anus?
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We arrived without incidents in Taipei and took a cab to our hotel. I had to point to where to go. It always surprises me that cabs do not know certain roads. They guy didn’t have any idea where our hotel was. I made him stop and we got off at another hotel. This time, we hadn’t booked a hotel. We learned that the prices are cheaper if you just turn up. We finally made it to our hotel and rooms were available and yes they were cheap.
We went to Mos Burger after that, a burger chain in Taiwan. They have some interesting rice burgers. They are made with patties of sticky rice filled with stirfry. I find them quite good. They also have the traditional burgers, but they just taste ordinary.
We got up early the next day and made our way to the the conference. We were impressed that the university was right next to The Grand Hotel. The first conference was terrible. It was about the correlation between different types of intelligences and ways of learning. It sucked bad. The audience drilled holes into the speaker for not doing her research properly. We then had lunch, which sucked. My wife had told me that at teaching conferences in Canada, the food was quite good. Not here.
We then took place of an interesting workshop on how to develop fluency in our students. It was interesting and the speaker was Canadian.
Then, we skipped out of the rest of the conference and went to The Grand Hotel.
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Featured Photographers in this post
memoirs on a rainy day 
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