Our First Week in Taiwan

In today's blog, I will be sharing more about our first week in Taipei, Taiwan.

We boarded our plane from Singapore on 10th May at 8.50am. 

Upon our arrival at Taipei, we made our way to our apartment where the 7 of us would be staying for the next 5 weeks. 

As our schools started only on 14th May, we had some time to visit several places in Taipei. This photo was taken during our bus ride to Jiufen.

Jiufen was a beautiful place representing the Taiwanese old streets and traditional culture and snacks.

This was a popular peanut ice-cream snack in Jiufen. It was freshly made by shaving a block of peanut and sugar and putting it together with ice-cream and coriander. It was really tasty!

This photo depicts the busy streets in Jiufen.

This photo was taken when we were travelling around the areas of Ximen. 

We also visited the popular shopping district "Ximending" where we shopped and ate a lot of local Taiwanese street snacks!

On 14th May, we made our way to NTNU for our school tour before heading to our respective schools. Their campus was really big and impressive. This picture shows NTNU's main building. It is currently undergoing renovation which explains the scaffolding in the photo. 

After which, we went to our respective schools where our 5 weeks of IP will take place in. When we arrived in Taipei Xinmin Private Elementary School, we were given a warm welcome by the students and the staff. This picture was taken when the Grade 1 students were going to put garlands on us to welcome us to their school. Following that, we were taken to the library of the school where students put up special performances for us. We also got to meet our CTs there.

As for my IP, I am attached to a Grade 2 class where I will be observing and teaching the English lessons. As my CT is a native English teacher, I am able to easily communicate with her without any language barriers. In Taiwanese schools, they adopt the homeroom teacher culture. Therefore, there are no staff rooms for the teachers as the teachers' desks is situated at the back of the classroom. This was something that was very different to me. However, I could see the impact that it had on the students as the teacher- student relationship that they had forged was really strong. 

I was really amazed by the classrooms in this school as every classroom had a smartboard. Therefore, teachers could seamlessly weave in IT tools in their lessons. This helped the students to be actively engaged as well. 

I had been following the Grade 2 class for almost every lesson, This picture was taken during their art lesson whereby they were doing a card to show how a seed grows into a plant. I was impressed as to how the art teacher weaved in things that they learnt in their science lessons into their art lessons!

After the first week in Taipei, I feel that the 7 of us have gotten closer to each other and I am looking forward to the following weeks to learn and grow together!