Note: Many of the considerations here are specific to Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETA’s) in Taiwan. If this exact grant doesn’t apply to you, you may be better off simply taking a look at the IRS’s guide for Fulbrighters and also the Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad. I am not a Certified Public Accountant, tax advisor, nor Enrolled Agent¹ so your mileage may vary. Consider yourself warned.

Leaving the States

First, make sure that any employers you’ve had so far this year know some permanent address of yours (your parents’, say) and will send your income statements to that address come next January. If they only have some temporary address of yours, try to see if you can change that record with your employers before you leave. Worst case, you won’t get one in the mail, and you’ll call them up when you start your taxes and have them send it to you then.

Your Taiwanese income

In terms of actually doing your taxes: there are a few things to note, most of which they will tell you during orientation or afterwards:

1. Your Fulbright payment will not exist in Taiwan for tax purposes—i.e., you do not pay Taiwan taxes—but they will count toward US taxes.
2. The ETA-ship payments, according to the IRS’s own guidelines count as wages, not as scholarships, for tax purposes as, after all, they’re paying you to teach.
3. You will not, however, receive a W-2 form for your “wages”—instead you’ll get a nice letter from the Foundation (with your income in US$) which you can use as proof of those wages.

All of the above are pretty straightforward. The bottom line is, you pay federal taxes just as if the job were in the US. The only major difference is that approximate payments will not be withheld from each paycheck like it would be in the US.

Filing your federal taxes

The fact that you’re filing from abroad, however, adds a few other issues:

1. Whenever you file from abroad, you get an automatic two month extension on filing. While there’s no penalty to do this and file by June 15th, if it turns out that you do owe taxes, those taxes will still have interest accruing since April 15th. So it pays to just figure it out earlier rather than later.
2. If you end up being out of the US for more than 330 days, as some ETA’s may (depending on their itineraries, or if they decide to stay in Taiwan afterwards), there’s an option to take a Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (IRS Form 2555), which lowers your tax liability in the US (and thus, lowers your taxes). It’s a bit complicated, however, so even if this option applies to you, if you’re like me and enjoy doing your taxes, you can calculate your taxes both ways: with and without Form 2555. My personal experience was that, as I was already filing for certain educational credits (Lifetime Learning), it didn’t matter whether I used it or not, so I didn’t.

State and local taxes

Finally, there’s the issue of state and local taxes. The bottom line is that you pay state and local taxes only for wages that were made in those states. The way this is done in most states is by filing a non-resident/partial-year-resident form which makes you calculate your total adjusted income and also your your adjusted income in that municipality, and charges you the appropriate tax based on your income in that place. As your Taiwan wages weren’t in any US state, they won’t count toward any state or local taxes.

Help is just a phone call away

If you get confused along the way, there’s always the option of calling the IRS. The IRS has a 1-800 number for individual taxpayers (1-800-829-1040), and 1-800 calls are free from Skype.

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Teaching at Dongshan every day involves taking the train every day, and I’m fully psyched about that. I was first quite worried as there are, according to the online trip planner, only three trains a day that go directly from Nan’ao to Dongshan but this has turned out to be false. It still does mean at least an hour a day on trains, but I’ve got my iPod with wonderful podcasts, and I’m pretty sure my class schedule lets me avoid transfers.

I’m also excited about taking the train so often as Dongshan has the newest train station in Yilan county. It’s a beautiful new modern design of tasteful glass and steel.¹

The school itself is much larger than what I’ve been used to, with five classes per grade of about 30 students each… therefore about 700 students total. A special characteristic of the school is kites… the school has a kite museum and students make kites and fly them. The English classroom closet was also filled with kites.

On the teaching front, I’ll be teaching grades 2, 3, 4, and 6. I’ll be teaching all of those classes once a week, focusing on storytelling. Today I told Jump, Frog, Jump! to second graders. I’ve never had the chance to really use the same lesson plan over and over, and I already can see that I’ll be able to learn a lot through the iterative process.

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Day 1: 北京，你好！

After getting into Beijing two Mondays ago, we took some time to explore the city. Our hotel arrangement (the Red Wall Hotel) was much nicer than in Hong Kong, with windows, free internet, nice decor, and a great location, on the north-east corner of the Forbidden City.

Walking around in Beijing, we were both immediately struck by the size of the city, in particular of the amount of open space. The streets were incredibly wide, with sidewalks and space between buildings! The landscape looked much more like an American Midwestern city than any other city I’ve been to in Asia.

In the evening, K80 and I met up with my high school friend Anna. Anna and I never took Chinese together in high school, but it turns out Anna now is on a Fulbright in Beijing researching environmentalism in China, particularly leading up to the summer olympics. She mentioned she would bring along a friend from her Chinese program who taught English in Taiwan last year, “doing something similar to you.”

It turns out this friend was one of the English Teaching Assistants from last year, in the exact same program that we’re in now. What a small world! K80 and he even lived in the same apartment! We had some great Korean food and shared had a wonderful time catching up.

Day 2: The Forbidden City

Magi and we met up in the morning for some breakfast, and then it was off to the Forbidden City (故宮)! The Forbidden City is quite literally a “city,”¹ but it now a museum with many gardens and historical relics, about half of which is off limits to the public. While most of the “better items” are in the National Palace Museum in Taipei (the joint result of ”history” and Mao, for he is beyond history), I was pleasantly surprised by the items in the City. That being said, I do think the best parts were the architecture and the gardens, which include various perilous hills.

We started in the back (north)—the rather unconventional route—having curry for lunch halfway through. The north half houses most of the exhibits, after which the second half is mostly the larger-ticket items, and a number of large courtyards. The City is definitely not just preserved history… Starbucks most famously had a brief stint in the City for a few years, though it is gone now. The curry was good and it was nice to be inside for a bit, satisfying priority one.²

There were a few items of particular note here. First of all, I was surprised by all the signs having both Chinese (traditional, the real Chinese) and Manchurian on them… it turns out the Qing dynasty court used Manchu as a primary or secondary language throughout its rule. I never expected to see that interesting script there.

Second, I was surprised to see a bicycle inlay on the ground… this led to my skepticism of the Forbidden City actually being built in the 1400’s.³ I present Exhibit A:

Finally, but not least: my four-star toilet experience.

Meet Mao

South of the Forbidden City is the Gate of Heavenly Peace, though you might have heard it as 天安門 Tiānānmén. You know, where the tanks ran over protesting students in 1989.⁴ Everyone and their mother has seen a picture of the huge wall with Mao on it… what you don’t realize is that it’s HUGE. I was standing in front of it, a decent ways away, and it didn’t fit in my camera’s viewfinder. K80 did one of her American Pledge of Allegiance photos there too.

Temple of Heaven

Afterwards we went to the Temple of Heaven (天壇), a large park a little south of Tiananmen Square. There were some really cool trees, including the camouflage tree, below. The gardening organization of the vast expanse reminded me of the Gardens of Versaille. Surely it would have been even more beautiful in the spring or summer.

Afterwards we had some Beijing duck for dinner, though priority one was sadly unfulfilled.

Houhai café

On our final leg of Day 2, we went up to the hip Hòuhǎi (後海) area, basically a lake with many bars and restaurants around, with many traditional Chinese streets (胡同) nearby. We stumbled upon a cute café where we drank some citrus tea, tea, and some cakes, all ordered off of their hand-written menus. It was a little hold in the wall, but fulfilled priority one, and had some great conversations about life, politics, and food. Thus concludes Day 2.

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Day 1: Trains, buses, and talk

I met up with everyone in the morning at the Hualien train station. Living in Nanao, I actually live really close to Hualien (about 40-50m) so I just elected to take a local train and meet the crew there. We then drove around to a couple interesting coastal points. (The one taking pictures below is Dale… I’m sure his blog will soon have photos more beautiful than mine.)

An unfortunate theme of the trip was riding coach buses on ridiculously narrow roads atop steep cliffs, winding back and forth for thirty minutes at a time, and then check out a vista for 15 minutes, then get back on the bus for another half hour.

In the evening after dinner we had the Midyear Conference proper. We got status updates on all the grantees’ research projects, and we ETA’s presented on our experiences thus far. Some of these research projects are really fascinating, and I had a great time listening to everyone. I felt the same thing as the last time I met many of these scholars at Orientation, that I miss academia: the research, the people, and the stimulation. ^^

Day 2: Taroko National Park

The Taroko National Park (with a beautiful website worth reloading over and over) is one of Taiwan’s six National Parks. Taroko is named after the Taroko people (“truku” in their language, Seediq, the other Atayalic language¹). It is a mountainous region a main river and its thirteen tributaries, with rich ecosystems. Hualien is known for its stone exports and Taroko also is quite rocky. That said, the photos speak for themselves. ^^

Ah, Fulbright fraternity. ^^ We had lunch at the Grand Formosa hotel up in Taroko. More camaraderie ensued. ^^

After lunch many of us walked over to the Buddhist temple across the river. The sky which had stayed overcast for most of the day actually was sunny for this one hour window or so, resulting in gorgeous photos. I also got to have Erik fill me in on a number of temple-related subjects, including who Dizang (地蔵, じぞう, in gold below) actually was. The white bodhisattva is Guan Yin (観音, かんのん). There was also a beautiful pagoda.

Again, they’re Buddhists, not Nazis. Finally, here’s a scene from Myst VI: Buddhist Temple:

In the afternoon we took an hour and half hike along one of the many trails in the park. Many of the trails require some sort of permit, even with a tour guide, but this was one of the open ones. At one point I found a bunch of white shells along the trail—odd, as the trail was a good ten feet away and five feet above the river.

There was a bridge right outside the trail with some cute stone lions.

A couple of them looked just like me!

At night, a number of us walked out toward Hualien downtown, which was about a 30 minute walk from the hotel. We checked out their pretty big and hip night market, and I was amazed by how large the city felt, and how many young people I saw (sorry, no pictures). Maybe it’s just where I live now, where the people my age are either out in another city at school or already married, but it’s really refreshing to see people my age.

Day 3: Hualien: American streets, rocks, martial law, and cheerleaders²

Hualien is a beautiful city, one of the largest on the east coast (larger than Yilan or Luodong), known for its jade and mochi (麻糬 in Taiwan, pronounced in Taiwanese, like mwájǐ or something like that—don’t ask me for Pe̍h-ōe-jī.) This morning one of the grad student researchers Katie and I took a walk. Our first stop was a nearby museum with a strange rock (奇石) collection, including the head of Lee Teng-hui, and an outdoor sculpture park.

Right behind it was a pillbox on the hill above the ocean, a relic of Taiwan under Martial Law. Note that the pillbox is pointed at the city, not at the ocean.

As we walked around, we saw some old run down Japanese houses, and then ran into some cheerleaders. We were totally confused as to what was going on, but it was apparently some sort of fire department demonstration/show for kids, and that was some supplemental entertainment.

We then walked down to the Pine Garden (松園別館), a café, art and concert venue, which originally was a Japanese government building. The lore says that this was where Japanese soldiers were given their sending-off sake before going on their kamikaze missions, some of which left from Hualien. It seemed like a beautiful little venue, and had some cool decorations on a few of their windows.

There were also some trees with IV’s in them. Apparently they’re pesticides.

Something I was amazed at how American the streetscapes felt. Walking down their sidewalks (!) along their wide streets, it just felt like the geography of a spread-out, hilly Midwestern city. They even have English on the post boxes (sort of). Not quite rows and rows of houses with the windows painted blue, but very American nonetheless—it was oddly both comforting and disconcerting. ^^ I’m sure there’s even more in Hualien still worth checking out and as it’s so close from where I live, I’m sure I’ll be back again.

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Krashen is kind of like the Chomsky of language acquisition and teaching—a huge and controversial (some may say incendiary) figure who you can love or hate, but can’t ignore. Last Wednesday in our weekly workshop, Dr. Collins delivered a chronological run down of Krashen’s theories.¹ As an entertaining aside, one task given to us was to draw a schematic diagram of Krashen’s view of language acquisition and production. Below is Dale’s drawing, which eerily reflects the geography of the brain… the input comes in through the ears (or eyes, at the back of the brain), then hits the Affective Filter (the amygdala), goes to the Language Acquisition Device (the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas), then the output is filtered by the Monitor—a product of conscious learning—(the frontal lobe). Pretty creepy.

Krashen’s talk² was fascinating, albeit not what I expected: given that the workshop’s focus was on the teaching of reading and that he himself has been a big advocate of recreational reading for language learners, I expected more on teaching English reading as to non-native speakers. The majority of the talk, though, was on writing and the composing process: “reading more makes you a better writer, but writing more makes you smart.” He talked about how the act of (regular) writing clarifies and organizes our thoughts, and advocated for a writing process which involved much revision as, “every time you have to revise, it means you’ve become smarter,” and building relaxation (to allow for eureka moments) into the process. His conclusion and analysis are important for first-language speakers just as much as the second-language learner, and the talk did feel more like a writing seminar than a pedagogical one. Krashen is an engaging and entertaining speaker, using many examples from famous writers and common experience to draw his conclusion.

The intensity with which he spoke and the passion for thinking about thinking reminded me of Sally’s Honors Analysis class, which was as much about thinking as it was about mathematics. Sally once told us that, when we’re stuck on a problem, we should find someone just about as smart as us and just explain the problem to them. He claimed that the majority of the time, the simple process of explaining the problem outloud and answering clarifying questions would make the solution come to us. It’s a powerful technique that I’ve used many times at Chicago and elsewhere, and Krashen’s analysis of what happens when we write thus struck a chord with me.

Afterwards I was fortunate enough to go out to dinner with the speakers, some of our advisors, and some faculty from the Institute that hosted the workshop. I had some great conversations about my background, where my future directions may lie academically, and of course the ideas. ^^ It reminded me of dinners with linguists back at home, after a workshop or CLS. I realized I miss the fraternity of academia—the sense of mutual respect and interest academics have for each other’s work and ideas, even if the “other” is only 22 years old.

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A group of 11 6th graders from Penglai have been practicing for the song competition for the past month or so under my co-teacher Jennifer’s direction. They sang and danced to the Fiona Fung song “Proud of You.”

The military guy and I met the kids at the train station at 7AM.

The kids liked playing with my camera and abusing me.

The competition was held at 凱旋國小, a huge elementary school.

We first practiced downstairs a few times and hung out. They were all wearing little angel crown-ish things, black t-shirt with a gold “belt” of tape, and bells on their wrists.

Our school was the third group in the later-morning performance group. They were not at all nervous and did fabulously!

All of us ETA’s were of course all there with our respective teams. In the photo below Katie is videotaping another school’s choreographer standing in the back of the crowd dancing with/directing the kids. He had this whole face, haircut, and outfit that screamed “I am a choreographer.”

Then we came home. A great time was had by all. ^^

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