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and enjoy delicious vegetarian cuisines. In addition, Taiwan is also known to produce some of the best tea in the world. Famous Mao-kong tourist tea gardens are in fact close to National Chengchi University. CIEE students in Taipei were able to enjoy and learn about tea making industry in Taiwan, as well as the art and the standard of tea preparation during their free time. Taken as a whole, with the climate discomfort, contradictory attire
assumptions and distinctive culinary culture of Taiwan, some CIEE American students experienced minor culture shocks while some simply acknowledged the dissimilarity and quickly acculturated.
4.2 PARTICIPATION-OBSERVATION
As soon as the CIEE students arrived in Taiwan, I involved myself in the orientation party that was held by CIEE Taipei center to welcome the new students. I took this chance to introduce myself to everyone and mingle among the students. My role as a
participant-observer generally began in this way and my observation sets off immediately when they arrive in NCCU. Nonetheless, it is imperative to first discuss my cultural observations of students in the classroom in section 4.2.1, then in section 4.2.2, cultural observations of students outside the classroom will be exemplified through incidents from certain cultural trip.
4.2.1 CLASSROOM
As CIEE students begin to attend CIEE core course and Chinese class that were arranged by the Chinese Language Center, students typically stumble upon two major issues regarding the differences in the teaching system. The first main concern students came across was the accessibility of a course syllabus and subsequently, the difference in
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the teaching style. As mentioned earlier in Chapter three, in order to observe students in the classroom setting, I also participated in the CIEE core course lectures and bilingual
discussion. First from plain observation during core lectures, I have noticed that students always will have questions at the end of the lecture and are quite willing to inquire every guest lecturer for clarification or more information. However, during bilingual discussions, students seldom had the chance to express or further discuss about the related topic.
One of the major problems derived from the lack of an organized syllabus for the bilingual discussions. It was noticeable that graduate students like myself, who were suppose to lead a “discussion” relating to the prior lecture, in fact, created complete lesson plans for the students but did not inform the students ahead of time of the type of activities or the style of the discussion they will be involved in. As a result, every week, students often felt puzzled as they somewhat aimlessly follow the graduate students‟ lesson plan. A few students from Fall 2010 suggested in the final discussion feedback that it would have been better if there was a course outline given to them before each discussion. She felt that it would have been more organized and they would have had better chances to participate more extensively in the discussion. Although the prepared lesson plan included discussion sessions and fun activities, most of the time students were given another set of lecture that involved students to just sit back and listen. This different set of teaching style where students were just given more information and not more learning through participating essentially bothered many American students. For the most part, with the lack of a syllabus for bilingual discussion and the difference in the style of teaching, CIEE students‟ class performance considerably becomes poor because they seldom have the chance to express their opinions to form discussions and frequently felt lost without understanding what the main objective of the prepared lesson plan is.
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From sunshine to rain, then back to sunshine, then rain again. Such unpredictable weather has been known to be common in Taiwan. Despite long weeks of unstable weather, students continue to be enthusiastic in learning and exploring outside the classroom.
Besides going to language class and CIEE‟s core course, students also had the opportunity to tour around Taipei as they participate in CIEE arranged events, and plan their own individual trips or activities.
Shortly after the students‟ arrival, the first CIEE activity they participated in was a scavenger hunt event where they had a chance to explore and get familiarize with Taipei‟s transportation, well known places and food. I was fortunate to also participate in the activity and was given the chance to be able to become acquainted with some students.
During the scavenger hunt, one thing I noticed immediately was that students enjoyed the extra attention from the Taiwanese since they often were quickly recognized as foreigners.
As it seems, Taiwanese tend to be extra friendly when they come across foreigners. The friendliness soon progressed to an approach to making friends with them and at times, random just met Taiwanese stranger would even volunteer to take CIEE students to explore other places in Taiwan. Although it may appear common for foreigners to receive
disadvantages in another country, American students discovered that for the most part in Taiwan, Taiwanese are extremely friendly to foreigners. Realizing this fact, students
deliberately spoke English to each other to gain attention from the Taiwanese. This unusual behavior is fascinating to observe because it does somewhat encouraged me to also bring out my American side.
On the other hand, for foreigners to constantly attract attention to one self to the Taiwanese may not always is good idea. Often times, problems such as miscommunication arise during shopping at night markets and ordering food in a restaurant. Although CIEE students do comprised of Asian-Americans who possess oriental appearances that perhaps
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can blend in with the Taiwanese, once the store owner discovers that they are Americans, the Taiwanese most often like to attempt to speak English with them. This can be a problem to the students because they usually felt offended and looked upon as foreigners who cannot speak Mandarin; likewise, Taiwanese who force themselves to speak English to the students often times prevent students from practicing Mandarin with the natives.
Furthermore, several times as I joined students‟ social dinners, I have noticed that they often attempt to order in Chinese by themselves. However, sometimes when they use Mandarin to order food to the server, the orders seem to turn out to be something they did not expected. One time, two CIEE students of 2011 and I walked in to a dumpling
restaurant. The female student was a vegetarian thus told the server, “我不要肉 (I don‟t want meat),” and asked the server to recommend something that does not have meat.
Surprisingly, the server responded with “我知道, 我知道 (I know, I know),” but ended up giving her a plate of duck meat. I guess the server did not really know what she wanted.
For some reason, there was misunderstanding and the reason probably was because the Taiwanese owner assumed that all foreigners probably want the same kind of dish in her store.
In addition to special treatments and miscommunication, there is one social phenomenon in Taiwan that puzzled and bothered a lot of the CIEE students. Students could not help but noticed that majority of the Taiwanese girls, especially customer service personnel, often spoke in a “cute” high-pitched voice. This high-pitched voice
phenomenon appears annoying and fake to many American students and they often do not understand the purpose of elevating one‟s voice to appear „cute‟ or to catch attention. When it was explained to them that the customer service personnel usually purposely elevate the pitch of their voice to appear polite and to show courtesy, students strongly agreed that it was not effective at all. Instead many of the CIEE students agreed that “cuteness” from the squeaky voice is in fact obnoxious and uncomfortable.
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On the whole, students‟ unusual behavior, cultural misunderstandings and
encountering social conundrum are the results of experiencing Taiwanese culture. I was able to, as a friend, find out how they felt about life in Taiwan, what they thought about the cultural differences and notice their behavior and reactions due to their cultural experiences.
Being able to socialize with the CIEE students, I was also able to discretely ask questions about their cultural shock experience in Taipei and discover quite a few interesting responses.