Dude I've been having nightmares about getting dumped by all my private students for being a bad teacher. Oh the uncertainty. I'm trying to show my student everything this book we're reading has to offer but how do you teach someone to think?

Looking through books about English grammar in the library, I stumbled across a book called "Teaching in Taiwan: The Underground Guide". It's full-on vintage, from like 1986. In 20 years not that much has changed except that Taiwan is now better than Japan for pay. It tells you how to get a job, how to not get screwed, and how to actually teach. You little beauty :-) It has a little section on culture shock, and this is the part I found most interesting. Symptoms of culture shock include

compulsive eating
constant fear of being cheated
negative stereotyping of the local population

Dude, I was a textbook case. I am heaving a big sigh of relief because it means I'm not the only one who came here and turned into a Fat Paranoid Racist for six months.

Everything has changed. I knew it would but I didn't know when. 

In other news, I seem to have lost a little weight thanks to the 7-11 salad diet, which consists of two cherry tomatoes, five bits of lettuce, 10 shreds of carrot, and a few corn kernels for lunch, complemented by a can of tuna at 10:15pm when my body screams out for some food and I drive down to the Welcome mart before 11pm when the gates shut and there won't be another chance to go and get food. Gone are the days when my bedroom was five metres away from the pantry cupboard.

In other news my Chinese really stinks now but it's alright, there are ups and downs with it. I've initiated Operation Make Lots of Chinese Friends, You Idiot and it's slowly getting under way.  
  ¶ 14:34