Sea Shelling in Taiwan
Even before I came to Taiwan, I was interested in seashell collecting. As my new home was less than an hour (by bus) from the sea, I had many opportunities for collecting seashells.
Even before I came to Taiwan, I was interested in seashell collecting. As my new home was less than an hour (by bus) from the sea, I had many opportunities for collecting seashells.
I saw seashell collecting as a combination of several things I enjoyed. I could enjoy the outdoors, swimming, the thrill of discovery, learning, and collecting.
Over time, I collected more than 200 different species or subspecies of shells and identified more than 150. Each time I went to an unfamiliar beach, I found seashells I'd never seen before.
Eventually, though, I was unable to find any seashells that I hadn't already collected. That's when I took an interest in Taiwan's birds.
For more on my experiences in Taiwan, see my blog Taiwan as I Know It.
For more on my experiences in Taiwan, see my blog Taiwan as I Know It.
Is it Grils or Girls?
For six and a half years (beginning at mid-year 2000) I taught English courses at Grace Christian Academy (GCA) in the Nangang District of Taipei. At first, I taught very small classes (as few as five students) of the third through the sixth grades. As the school’s enrollment increased and GCA added more classes, the ages and numbers of my students went up. By the time I left, I was teaching the sixth through ninth grades.
One of my students, Sylvia Liu, couldn’t get the hang of spelling the word girl. It always came out gril.
Ever fond of assigning nicknames to my students, I gave her the nickname Gril. Furthermore, I told the students that, whenever they saw the word girl in print, they could get an extra grade point for the day by “correcting” it to gril. I did, however, expect them to spell it correctly when they wrote the word themselves.
The students never seemed to tire of this practice, and I continued it from then until I left GCA a few years later. Strange as it seems, this practice fixed in their minds the correct way of spelling the word. New students sometimes mistakenly misspelled the word girl; but they quickly learned the correct way to spell it. Not one of the students who’d been in my class for more than a month ever misspelled the word girl.
I still see Sylvia every few years. The last I heard, she was in college, either in Vancouver or some place on America's West Coast.
I still see Sylvia every few years. The last I heard, she was in college, either in Vancouver or some place on America's West Coast.
