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September 2008 ESL Newsletter

Hey Everyone!

Newsletters are back and they are here to stay! Each month we will be sending out information about upcoming events and activities, articles from your fellow teachers sharing their experiences, and informative information to help you adjust to your new lives here in Asia!

Sincerely,
Reach To Teach Team (Mitch, Richard, Mike, Andrew, Avi, Alex, Sarah, Ben, Chelsey)

The Reach To Teach Team - ESL Abroad

Photo Contest

ESL Teacher Amanda with her students during halloween festivities An example of a fun picture of Amanda with her students!

Reach To Teach would like to announce our first photo contest! We want to see pictures of you enjoying your time in Asia, wherever you might be! The winner of the contest will win a 4G brand spanking new iPod Nano (if you want, you can also choose cash)! All entrants will be treated to a couple free drinks at the next RTT event, so everyone's a winner!

Sounds great, right? Here are the rules:

  1. You must submit a minimum of five (5) pictures. More is fine!
  2. At least three (3) pictures must be of you in your school, preferably with your students
  3. The rest of the pictures can be of anywhere or anything in Asia.

How will the contest be judged? Excellent question. We will make judgments based on the following three factors:

  1. How clear the pictures are
  2. How creative your pictures are (location and poses)
  3. Great pictures of you and your students are a definite bonus!

The deadline for this contest will be October 15th. All submissions should be made to Andrew at Andrew@ReachToTeachRecruiting.com

Some of your photos may even end up being featured on the Reach To Teach site!

Upcoming Events

Reach To Teach Event at Citizen Cain - ESL in Taiwan You know a Citizen Cain event is all smiles with good friends!

We had a fantastic night out at Citizen Cain two weeks ago. August is always a busy time for us with lots of teachers arriving and it is great seeing smiling faces and new friendships being formed. If you missed the event, well shame on you, but you can check out some of the photos at our Website!

Our next event will be held on Saturday, September 13th at the Taipei Beer Gardens. This is a great venue and an awesome opportunity to get out there and meet some new people! Hope to see you all there!

Wondering how to get there? Follow this link to Google Maps. I created a map so hopefully it should be pretty straight forward.

Here is the address just in case:
85, BaDe Road, Sec.2, Taipei

To get there you are going to need to go to Zhongxiao Xinsheng MRT on the BLUE line.

  1. As you come out of the station (exit 4) you will hit a big road (Xinsheng Nan Road) with a lot of construction. Take a RIGHT and follow this street
  2. Proceed one block. You will hit a road going at a diagonal, this is BaDe Road. Take a RIGHT and follow this straight
  3. You will hit a major intersection. As you cross the street you will pass under a large overhead highway. Keep going at a diagonal along Bade Road
  4. BaDe Road will merge into another street. At this juncture along the NORTH side is the Taiwan Beer Gardens. You will see keg shells forming a wall
  5. Once inside walk straight and all the way back to the bar area
  6. You're there! This walk should take about 10 minutes

Beef Noodle Soup by Andrew Putt

Andrew Putt - ESL Teacher in Taiwan Andrew during his travels through Malaysia

This really isn't a guide to eating here in Taiwan but rather how I have come to survive each day. Like many of you I have just arrived into Taiwan so my knowledge of language and culture is at a bare minimum. This makes things like eating a little more difficult but much more interesting.

The key to my limited success has been to wait at least 10-12 hours between my meals. This allows me to be so hungry that I can hardly even think straight. When I am in this condition it makes for some very interesting restaurant choices. Before I embark on a live or die mission to eat I have to decide, "Do I want to try a night market? Should I just walk into the restaurant with the most people inside? Should I let my fear overtake me and just eat a snickers bar from 7-11? Or should I really wuss out and just point to a cheeseburger picture at McDonalds?" I am happy to say that I have only lowered myself to the last option once since I have been here.

Once I am out in the street I really start to feel strange. Not only is my stomach a barren wasteland but I also feel like a cake roasting in an oven. I need food FAST so that I can retreat into my lair of AC. Around the corner is my token noodle shack followed closely by someone yelling for me to try their new deep fried liver sausage (at least that is what I think that is). Hmm, not today. I venture forth.

The places that really intimidate me are the ones that only have a menu in Chinese characters and some old guy cooking on a grill. These places always seem attractive because the prices are often quite low, but require a lot of pointing and making unintelligible hand gestures until some sort of agreement is reached. In this way I have had varying degrees of success (hey I am still alive!), but a lot of times I am so hungry that I confusedly wander from restaurant to restaurant hoping that someone will simply say, "I know exactly what you want. Come on in and we'll get you feeling better." This might actually be happening to me all the time and I just don't know it because I can't understand anyone.

After I have walked for about 45 minutes to an hour around these new streets I realize that a new problem has arrived, I am completely lost. But before I can have a freak out session about finding where I could possibly be, I really need to get full. This is why knowing the phrase for beef fried noodles is so very important. This wonderful dish is good, cheap, and can be found on almost every street. This dish is a safe bet to getting me feeling like a human again and thus being able to take on the new challenge of getting back to wherever it is I came from.

Getting to eat new and exciting things in Taiwan is one of the best parts about it. But sometimes you just need something that will work and will get your brain and stomach back into proper order. Maybe one day I will tire of the beef fried noodles but it is not this day. When living in Taiwan the thing I have found to work best is to not be picky and to always have a fallback plan. Good luck and bon appetite.

If you would like to read more about Andrew and his experiences here in Taiwan, check out his blog at http://whatisputtdoing.blogspot.com/

Have some of your own experiences you would like to share? Email us and we will put you in the next newsletter! Mitch@ReachToTeachRecruiting.com

Chinese Lesson

Learn Chinese - ESL in Taiwan

A big part of getting comfortable in your new environment will be tackling the challenges of learning Chinese. It's not easy. In fact Chinese is one of the hardest languages for Western people to learn. But the rewards are many and include a full stomach, being able to get home, and many new friends. To this end we would like to kick off our newsletter with some basic Chinese to help you on your way!

Numbers:
1 - yi (sounds like 'ee', said with a flat tone, character 一)
2 - er (sounds like 'are', character 二)
3 - san (said with a quick falling tone, character 三)
4 - si (sounds like the 'si' from 'sichuan', character 四)
5 - wu (said with a slow rising tone, character 五)
6 - liu (said with a quick falling tone, character 六)
7 - qi (sounds like 'chee', character 七)
8 - ba (said with a flat tone, character 八)
9 - jiu (said with a slow rising tone, character 九)
10 - shi (said with a quick rising tone, character 十)

From here you just start putting two numbers together. For example shi-ba = 18, er-shi-san = 23, san-shi-liu = 36 ect. Probably the hardest number for most people to say is 44 = si-shi-si

100 - bai (said with a slow rising tone, character 百) yi-bai = 100, wu-bai = 500, san-bai-wu-shi-er = 352 ect.

1000 - qian (sounds like 'chian', said with a slow rising tone, character 千) Same principle as above, yi-qian = 1000, si-qian = 4000, qi-qian-san-bai-ba-shi-er = 7382

Good luck and keep practicing!

FYI, a great site to keep learning Chinese on your own is www.zhongwen.com

Tastes of Taipei by Mitch Gordon

BBQ in Taiwan - ESL Abroad

On Civic Boulevard, just outside all the hustle bustle chaos of the Zhong Xiao Fu Xing area, sits a little gem of a Japanese style BBQ restaurant (Civic Boulevard, Sec. 4, No. 78). It's a nicely laid out restaurant for those seeking a comfortable environment in which to each the flesh of as many animals as possible. Much of the wording uses Japanese hiragana script and the restaurant clearly strives to create an environment mimicking the feel of a genuine BBQ spot in Japan. The front of the restaurant contains an endearing brick oven, in which the BBQ coals are heated before being placed in a grill and brought to customers.

Dao Wai is the culinary epitome of the saying, "quality not quantity". They have a relatively small menu, of which each item is delicately sauced and brought out to the meat connoisseur. They have four choices of beef, divided between thinly sliced and thickly sliced cuts. The chicken was delicious, fresh and clearly marinated well ahead of time in miso and spicy flavors. The clear highlight of the menu, however, was the lamb. The lamb chops were thick and juicy, spiced with a variety of delicious herbs. The truly unique item on the menu is ka-bobbed lamp, generously spiced in the Xin Jiang style. The lamb tastes as if it was taken straight off the BBQ pit of a family run stand in Xin Jiang on the Mainland. It truly makes Dao Wai stand out from the pack for the lamb meat lover.

Dao Wai also carries the usual variety of vegetables available for BBQ. The seafood is fresh, with shrimp, squid and fish choices. In one of the clear indications of distinction and separation between restaurants in thee BBQ world of Taiwan, the fresh shrimp are served pre-shelled and well spiced. Other unique menu items worthy of room in your intestinal tract include medicinal chicken soup and a mildly delicious bowl of stir fried brown rice with pieces of mushrooms, meat and vegetables.

Overall, Dao Wai is an excellent choice and well worth multiple visits. The menu is small and simple, but every item is well done and served fresh and with care. We often get caught up in a quest for variety and multiple menu choices. Dao Wai concentrates on what they know best, with savory results.

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