Alighting from the bus, we were led to the conference room by the teachers in Jian Guo High School. After which, we were broken up into groups and went to different classes. Then, buddies from different classes went into the conference room, each of them holding a card with our names. My buddy's name is Xie Sheng Rong.
The first lesson we had was Chinese lesson known as 国语 in Taiwan. I had a "cultural shock" at the start of the lesson. The teacher walked into the class and started his lesson immediately, without the students greeting him. On top of that, a students who was a few minutes late strolled into the class without acknowledging the teacher and was still playing with the basketball in his hands. The teacher did not reprimand the student and seemed nonchalant about it. During the Chinese lesson, I was quite lost and my buddy managed to explain it to me patiently. I realized that the Chinese they learn in Taiwan is the 文史 we learn in Singapore which is about 中国上下五千年, with characters like 鲁迅. Halfway through the lesson, I saw a student sleeping soundly at the back of the class. However, the teacher continued his lesson nevertheless and did not wake the student up. Then, I thought of the 'freedom policy' that my buddy told me yesterday- Students are able to do anything they want as long as they get good grades. Having so much freedom seem to be too good to be true. However I think that too much freedom is not good for the student. I certainly do not want to be in an environment where students can sleep in class and arrive late for lesson. I find these actions distracting and will affect other students too as they will make the environment not a conducive place to study. On top of that, I did not like the teacher's nonchalance. I feel that the teachers should care more about the students and keep the discipline in class. Also, the way the teacher teach was to talk and talk without stopping to check the student's understanding. At that moment, I felt appreciative of the teachers in Singapore because they care for their students.
Afterwards, I had the chance to be in the English, a CCE-like and Japanese class too. I have learnt alot in these two days of immersion and get to have first-hand experience to what Taiwan educational system is like.
After Jian Guo High School, we went to Martyr Shrine. When we reached there it was time for the change of guard and we got to watch it again (for the third time) To be honest, I was quite bored of it already. Due to the fact that we were late, we were unable to get into the shrine. I felt that we have wasted our time to travel there :( But at least we got to take some photos outside the shrine.
After dinner, we went to Eslite bookstore. I was excited to go there initially as I wanted to buy some books back to Singapore. As expected there was a wide genre of books ranging from Teenage fiction to TCM books to books about fortune telling. However much to my dismay, 95% of the books are in Chinese and I couldnt really find English books. Also, the Chinese books are in traditional Chinese and I couldnt read them very well. So I left the bookstore empty handed and feeling disappointed.
BUT yay Kudos to me for not spending even a single cents today 👏 sigh about 2 more days to the end of this OELP trip *cries* Having quite a high fever today, so I Mrs Tan gave me the permission to skip reflection and rehearsals. Hope I would be better tmr!
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