Visit to a Taiwanese school December 2019 part 1

25/07/2021 

On the 17th of December, my mother and I gave a presentation at the LioHe(六和) high school in Taoyuan, on the outskirts of Taipei. Mom's friend was a geography teacher there and she had invited us to talk about what is was like to live in Tahiti and France, to two classes of year-ten students and one class of year-eleven students, in Chinese. I was quite apprehensive as my Chinese level was that of a local eight year old but Mom said that she would talk half of the time while I switched the slides.

LioHe is the biggest high school I have ever been to. It has three buildings, a basketball court with benches on the side, a soccer field and a FamilyMart (a convenience store), in the main building. Hanged on that building's facade, spread across the entire building vertically, were the names of all of the ex-student's who had entered top Universities in Taïwan that year. Spread in the middle, was the name of the only student who had entered Tai Da University/Taiwan National University (NTU), that year. Each character of that person's name was the size of a pick-up truck. When we arrived, I played basketball for ten minutes with some girls in sports class. Then, we entered a building and my Mom's friend, Olivia, introduced us to some of her students who were cleaning the bathroom. As we went by some classrooms, we saw that all forty students were cleaning. They told us that they did that at the end of every class. In each classroom, there was a TV attached to the wall in a corner, it was used for announcements: signalling the end of class, who was called to the principle's office, what their next class was... 

As the bell rang, we entered another classroom, the bell's ringtone was surprisingly soft, it sounded like the attention call at an airport rather than the usual "Driing!" I was used to. Surprisingly, everyone clapped and cheered for us. It was great and I was instantaneously filled with the courage I needed to speak out, at that moment, I felt I could have spoken in any language in the world. I spoke to the forty-nine students about what my daily routine was like, and how Tahiti was so different to anywhere else. They were very surprised to learn that I went to school for seven or nine hours per day and had about one hundred ninety days of vacation per year, as their classes started at 8h and ended at 20h and they only had about seventy-five days of vacation per year. Once we had finished answering all of their questions and I had taught them how to say hello, thank you and I love you in French, by their request, Olivia asked me if I could sing the French song "Frère Jacques" as there is a Chinese Version with different lyrics called "Liang zhi lao hu (two tigers)". It was quite embarrassing, but was worth the claps I received at the end. The bell rang and my mom left my brother and I money to buy lunch at the school cafeteria, while she chatted with her friend. 

The school cafeteria was on the ground floor, spread across the entire length of the school. There were three vendors: one for dumplings and noodles, with as many varieties as you could imagine; one for rice and marinated beef and one for fries and hamburgers. There was barely anyone at the fry vendor. Some students brought their own lunch to school since they didn't like what the school served. My brother, Louis, and I, couldn't understand why. We would have eaten that every day if we could. We ate in their classroom and talked to a few students. Then my brother started drawing on the whiteboard. The bell rang again, a girl turned the lights off, and everyone folded their arms and fell asleep on their desk. We left the classroom and went to buy milk cartons at the FamilyMart, and found Mom and Olivia there. They explained to me that the students slept half an hour after lunch everyday. They did only have forty five minutes to eat after all. Olivia introduced us to some of her colleagues, two English teachers and a Chinese teacher. I played ping-pong with one of the English teachers for some time, before we made our way to the next classroom. We repeated the presentation two more times and I sang "Frère Jacques" to those classes as well. The students were very well behaved and were listening to us intently. Some of them then gave me" thank you" notes and their Instagram© usernames. When we left LioHe, some students waved us good-bye from the second floor. 

I would really like to thank all the LioHe students and staff who welcomed us to their school. 😊