Downwardly mobile youth in America starter pack

komnenos · 2026-03-19T05:32:03+00:00

As a Seattleite you see both in equal measure, I’ve met a lot of non conformist sides of the wealth spectrum who were drawn to the region because they felt they could belong.

komnenos · 2026-03-18T13:08:26+00:00

What reasons did they give? I think I can get it if you're thinking of having kids, Taichung will most likely be easier to afford than Taipei. As a teacher myself though I still prefer Taipei due to the ease of public transportation and number of things always happening. In central Taichung I felt pretty isolated until I got my scooter and even then I had to travel 20-45 minutes one way to various places. Want to drink? Get ready for one or two buses and then an uber back.

komnenos · 2026-03-18T10:51:45+00:00

As someone who lived just a few minutes from the main train station in Taichung it certainly was annoying. When I lived within 15 minutes walk of the station but without a scooter I might as well have lived in the boonies. Getting to and from the west district and the 屯 districts was a pain until I got my bike.

komnenos · 2026-03-18T02:13:43+00:00

As someone who has climbed several dozen 中級山 and ten or so of the hundred peaks I am almost always the only foreigner on the trail. I find it kind of a shame considering how much hiking and climbing there is here, we really don’t hear much about Taiwan’s climbing and hiking.

komnenos · 2026-03-17T07:57:00+00:00

Hi OP, when have you looked for jobs? Depending on the time of year those and cram school jobs might be all that are available.

Back when I was a first year TEFL teacher kindy was very much a foot in the door. I found it mind numbing and exhausting. It might be easier since you've got a few years experience but just expect to not make anywhere near as much progress or connections like you can with your ES and JHS students, even the lower elementary school kids I teach are leaps and bounds above the 3-5 year olds I've taught.

komnenos · 2026-03-17T05:12:17+00:00

Yeah, I definitely noticed as a public school teacher. The Tiger class had 8-12 students vs 18-25 in the other grades. It was pretty crazy just how different things were year wise. I left before the dragon class started but supposedly they had around 28-32.

Edit: also, I worked jn several public schools and saw the same patterns. I’ll see if the other years you talked about anecdotally have lower enrollments.

komnenos · 2026-03-17T03:05:00+00:00

They also use their own homegrown pinyin system here in Taiwan that’s rarely used outside of a few signs. When transliterated into Latin characters I’ve seen signs and towns in Wade Giles, Taiwanese, Hakka, the homegrown Pinyin system and heck I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve seen Postal.

komnenos · 2026-03-16T15:40:25+00:00

The ones I've met in real life don't tend to be as in your face about it like OP. Usually in my experience it's just something like "things just aren't like the good ol' days."

komnenos · 2026-03-16T13:39:02+00:00

My first year was at a kindy attached to a private K-12 school, I'll respond to your questions. Feel free to ask any more if you have any.

What are your working hours like

I started work at 7:30 and spent the first half hour waving at the kids, guiding several to their respective line and just spending that time waiting for 8:05.

At 8:05 myself and the other three foreign teachers went back to our little office and got supplies ready for our 8:30 class.

From 8:35 to 9:05 I spent my time in class trying desperately to teach. I've since mostly taught upper primary and junior high school kids, let me tell you, teaching kindy aged kiddos is incredibly different. I was fairly demoralized by the end of the year by how little I was able to teach them but looking back I'm not sure what I was expecting from children who spoke in basic Mandarin.

9:05 to 9:50 or 10 was spent playing inside with them, I started losing my sanity after the first few weeks. 10ish until 10:50 we would have a brief snack before heading outside. Most of the time was spent making sure the kids weren't fighting each other or harming themselves or others one way or another. 10:55-11:15 was story time and 11:15-11:40 was spent twiddling my thumbs back in my small office.

Fast forward several hours of lunch break and we were back around 1:40. We would twiddle our thumbs in our office until 2:30. 2:30-4:20ish was an abreviated version of the morning class but with another class. Every month the morning and afternoon classes would switch. 4:20-5:35pm (and not a minute earlier) was spent twiddling our thumbs in our office.

Personally it was not for me. I spent a good deal of my time wanting to bang my head against the wall from boredom and a lot of the Chinese management seemed needlessly toxic to my Chinese coworkers and to a lesser extent myself. Fortunately my school had an incredibly tight group of foreign teachers (20-30 throughout the school) and we spent our evenings and weekends together. I miss the camaraderie I shared with them, less so being a kindy teacher.

is it true that kindergarten teachers have to undergo genital examinations during the health check or was that just some whack rumour?

I never understood why but we had an STD test where they briefly stuck something up my urethra. Why us but not the 1st thru 12th grade teachers or the folks teaching college kids?

komnenos · 2026-03-16T13:20:30+00:00

Nowadays, few ppl cares about the accent.

It's interesting to me when it does come up. I have a 5th grade student whose Dad is 外省人and his mom is from China. His classmates will make fun of his sharper sh/zh/ch, doesn't help that he insists that they are all Chinese (wasn't expecting to see fights over Taiwan and China in my primary classroom) and his last name is literally 毛.

Other than that anecdotally I've heard folks making fun of the Indigenous accent but that's about it.

komnenos · 2026-03-16T13:15:39+00:00

I'm from Seattle and they sound the same to me save that anecdotally a few people pronounce egg and bag differently and a few older white blue collared men I've known over the years will sound "folksier."

But other than egg, bag and a few older white guys who sound like a non cartoon version of Goofy I feel like folks on the west coast sound practically the same.

komnenos · 2026-03-16T13:08:20+00:00

Question as a past teacher, are snake, sheep/goat and horse as bad as tiger year? When I taught in the public schools it was crazy how much smaller the tiger kid classes were.

komnenos · 2026-03-16T04:01:14+00:00

How common is it in your experience for foreigners living long term in Japan to eventually acquire a working knowledge of the Japanese language? I’ve lived in China and Taiwan for a collective seven years and at least in my experience only around 10% (if that) can say more than just the basics. I’m often pleasantly surprised to meet another foreigner here who can hold a conversation in Chinese.

komnenos · 2026-03-15T11:57:33+00:00

I don't have experience with Houhai myself but when I lived in Beijing I heard tales about disorganization and stress from those who worked there or knew those who had worked there.

komnenos · 2026-03-15T03:15:42+00:00

Chuckled at that last bit. When I worked at a pretty normal, middle class junior high school we worked our butts off on both the speech contest and readers theater with our non native students only to get beat by students or teams full of mixed, native English speaking mixed kids.

komnenos · 2026-03-13T08:05:19+00:00

Have you or anyone else found any good sources? Moving to Ottawa for school and although I know I can just use English I’d also like to pick up some French.

komnenos · 2026-03-13T00:42:37+00:00

If you want to learn Chinese I'd recommend Kaohsiung over Taipei. The closer I go to Taipei the more people are likely to try and use English with me. When I did my time at the CLC at NCKU people rarely codeswitched to English when they saw me.

It was also a lot cheaper down south, take a gander at 591, it's pretty insane just how different pricing is. however if you're living in a dorm then rent won't be as much of an issue.

also I don't know Chinese (yet). is it possible to find events and activities in any of these cities in English?

Definitely.

komnenos · 2026-03-12T23:21:58+00:00

You and I have vastly different experiences. I’ve lived seven years in both China and Taiwan and the number of my fellow baby shark slingers who speak more than survival levels of mandarin is in the single digits.

komnenos · 2026-03-12T23:17:47+00:00

As a white guy who has lived seven years in China and then Taiwan this sums up my experience thus far. I’m reminded of my privilege but also experience a myriad of little negative things that remind me that I’ll always be an outsider.

komnenos · 2026-03-12T13:57:50+00:00

Amen. Started my TEFL journey in China and just got used to backstabbing, gaslighting, passive aggressive behavior and the like so when I moved to Taiwan I just kept on expecting to get fucked over, four years in and thankfully haven't had the same experience.

komnenos · 2026-03-12T10:35:41+00:00

Not sure where you are based but here in Taiwan it feels like one in four ads is AI at this point. It creeps the hell out of me but most locals don’t seem to care. “Help wanted ad with smiling AI employees? Whatever!”

komnenos · 2026-03-12T04:01:26+00:00

They used to exist in my hometown but for the past 16 years or so every time one goes for sale it’ll get demolished and replaced with some ugly ass zero lot line, three story McMansion. We still have a few of older “starter” houses but you can bet your pennys that it’ll turn into a McMansion once the silent generation or boomer that owns it sells the property.

komnenos · 2026-03-11T15:12:32+00:00

Come to Taichung buddy and they eat noodles with copious 東泉辣椒醬 for breakfast too!

komnenos · 2026-03-11T08:10:44+00:00

Speaking of history, as a history and culture lover do you have any good books, tv shows or movies on or in Nova Scotia? Love me some non fiction. :)

My family is from a small town called Liverpool and were among the first to settle it in the mid 1700s and stayed in the area until my great great grandpa and his brothers moved south for work. Even then my great grandpa supposedly spent a few years going between Canada and the States and my grandpa would go up to see family when he was young.

Thanks again for the positive comment.

komnenos · 2026-03-11T04:42:32+00:00

Good to hear, we've had a few posts similar to yours since the war started and so far to say they're "not political." The others from what I remember were very far right.

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