I have arrived in Taiwan safe and sound.  I found an apartment that is owned by a lady who has 2 daughters at the school.  It is new and I’ll be the first person to live in it.  On the bottom 2 floors will be her tea and flower show, and above me are 2 other floors that will have other people living there.  One will be another teacher at my school and the other will be his friend who will be teaching at a different school.  There is also one more apartment that is for rent but it is small and I didn’t want to live there.

The school is nice.  I am not sure if it is bigger than I expected or smaller, but it is a good size I think.  I saw the Library and there is a lot to do.  There are boxes of books that need to be cataloged and processed.  Over 30 boxes of withdrawn and discarded books donated by another international school plus over 30 new books that were purchased by the school from Scholastic over the last few years.

I can tell it is going to take a long time, but hopefully I’ll be able to get it in shape soon.

In 3 weeks I’ll be back in Taiwan. I lived there for a year before studying Chinese and teaching English. I blogged about my time there on my old blog. Last time I was in Taipei, the capitol. This time I’ll be about an hour southwest in a city called Hsinchu and I’ll be the Librarian at an international school.

Hsinchu is known for its high-tech sector (the “Hsinchu Science Park”) and has offices of many foreign companies there, both business. manufacturing and some R&D. The school I’ll be at (Hsinchu International School) was founded by the Dutch company Phillips, for the purpose of educating the children of their employees. Phillips no longer has as strong a presence in Hsinchu, but the school remains, as does its mission and its original name.

Image from http://www.pin1yin1.com

So while people call it “Hsinchu International School”, its legal name is still “Hsinchu Dutch International School”.  There are a few other schools focused on foreign education in Hsinchu: “Hsinchu American School” (which today I found out will be where another friend will be teaching) and “Pacific American School” .

It has been very hot in Taiwan lately and friends report it to be about as hot as it has been here in Pennsylvania which I find interesting because the fount of all internet wisdom (wikipedia) claims Hsinchu has a nickname of “The Windy City” which would make me think it is cooler, but I guess sometimes the internet is wrong.

And in case you wondered: Hsinchu [spelled Xinzhu in Hanyu Pinyin and not Wade-Giles] 新竹,  literally means “new bamboo”.  Two of the surrounding suburbs mean respectively, “North Bamboo” (竹北) and “East Bamboo” (竹東).  Can you guess where they are in relation to Hsinchu?

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC 2 weeks ago. It was a very informative and educational and I am quite glad I attended.

I was able to go to sessions on nurturing early reading habits, including programs that could be done at school and at home and a few on helping ESL learners to read. I was also able to meet a few other international school librarians which was beneficial. I had planned to blog more about it, but like all other conferences I was too tired at the end of the day to do so. I did offer a few tweets from a few of the sessions, so I guess that counts?

Right now I am just focusing on going to Taiwan in 2 and a half weeks to begin my new job. I am very anxious and excited to go.