Yong Ping High School

Today we left Lin-Kou for Yong Ping High School, moving ever closer to Taipei city.  This is our six and last school visit in New Taipei City.  I was extremely sad to leave the Chengs this morning.  They have been so kind and generous.  We had a great breakfast together which made it even harder to leave.  Mr. Cheng has a sister in Vancouver so I’m hoping we can arrange a meet-up in Vancouver.  I need to take a visit there myself to see relatives I haven’t seen in years!  That’s for you, Aunt Edith and Uncle Dave!  ;)

When we arrived at Yong Ping the school seemed much smaller than all the other ones we have visited thus far.  However, the front entrance is very deceiving. 

My new family name - Bali!

Library

The school houses several large buildings for the junior and senior high school students.  Yong Ping is what we would consider a secondary school and has approximately 3,000 students.  In addition, they have a mammoth sports  complex with a pool, Olympic-size track, soccer field, tons of basketball courts, a weight room, table tennis area and a gym.  We were joking that this must be the jock school!  And it is. They have the Taiwan national championship girls basketball team and an outstanding table tennis team.  We got to watch the table tennis team practice and man, were they good!  One of the players asked me if I wanted to play and I respectfully declined.  Maybe later in the week after I mentally prepare for the whooping I will receive! 

We got an outstanding tour of the school from Carol before we were taken to the library for a student presentation on Yong Ping High School.  The library also houses a study room where students can go to study after school.  The Taiwanese study way more than American students, plus many students also go to “cram schools” after school and then study all summer too!  Even today, my new host family’s two young sons went to math school after a day of kindergarten and science camp.  In addition, the 3^rd grade senior high school students (our 12^th) student in designated classrooms from 5pm to 9pm every day to prepare for the university entrance exam.  Sometimes, I think our students could study more but I feel in some ways the amount of studying the Taiwanese students do is too much.  There’s got to be a happy medium. 

The student presentation was amazing!  The students were so energetic and funny. They shared with us many aspects of Yong Ping from their clubs and activities – every student must join at least one club to the requirement that every student also take either Japanese or German in additional to their Chinese and English classes.  The students really take pride in their school and it dawned on me today that schools in Taiwan are really the focal point for children.  Children spend so much of their time at school either taking classes, studying or participating in clubs or sports.  Even though school got out our first week here, every school we have been to has students milling around either participating in a summer class, academic camp, working out or practicing for a club or activity like dance or drill team.  At home, once June 15^th hit, all FCPS schools were ghost towns except for the 12-month employees. 

After our morning at the high school, Helen, the principal took us to lunch.  She is such a gregarious person.  No wonder her students gave such an amazing presentation.  They are just like her!  We were talking at lunch to several of our hosts about our time in Taiwan and they asked if we had been to get a head or body massage.  Only Jackie #2 had thus far and couldn’t stop talking about it, so of course we wanted to go.  Needless to say, we spent the remainder of our day pampering ourselves with massages and a blow-out for our hair all for less than $20 USD!!!  It was a great and relaxing way to spend our afternoon.  I am sure I will be back again to get my scalp massage, hair done and a massage before this week is done! 

We finally met up with Jimmy, May-Lee (I am fairly certain that is not how you spell her name, so I am going with the phonetic spelling, but it means “Beauty” in Chinese), and their two young boys, Allen and Erwin.  They are adorable!  Allen is 10 years old and Erwin is 8 years old.  Allen can speak some English, but when I ask him questions, he likes to answer “yes,” then “no.”  I think he’s trying to trick me!  I gave them Fairfax HS bags, a light-up pin and a pencil when we got home and they seemed to enjoy them.  I love this picture of them sporting their gifts! 

Erwin & Allen

Jimmy, who is a major in the Taiwanese army works at the school in what we would consider the school resource officer or safety and security, wanted to go for a run so I figured I would go with him while the his boys were at math school with their mom.  I was a little worried about keeping up with him on a run but I did okay.  We ended up running for about 25 minutes and then walked the rest of the way.   I feel like I have lived like a Taiwanese though, since Jimmy took us to the park on his scooter.  Thankfully, he is safe driver and there wasn’t much traffic on the road! 

I learned a lot on my run/walk with Jimmy.  We talked a lot about the Chinese – Taiwanese relationship and people’s views of the two parties – KMT and DDP along with Chiang Kai Shek.  Jimmy’s dad was in Chiang Kai Shek’s army and came over to Taiwan in 1949 after the Civil War.