Taiwan Big Brother

Louis Garza was a Taichung ETA from New York, who works primarily as a writer. He misses his students and Taiwan dearly, and continues to send them videos from home. Check out his photo journal amongst the ETA stories, and if you liked this piece check out his fiction and other work here: https://louisgarza.weebly.com/.

　　I’m not much of a morning person. The clock read five a.m., but my body claimed differently. Whatever the case, I was exhausted, and like a zombie, I walked out of the plane and into Taiwan for the first time. Baggage claim, customs, and even walking out into the terminal was a bit of a blur, but I eventually found my way to my coordinator, Yuwen, holding up a white piece of paper with “TAICHUNG” printed on it. Still asleep, I began talking to the people that would go on to be great friends, but I really only woke up when I saw Cameron running through the terminal in preparation for a huge bear hug two years in the making.

　　Cameron is my older brother, bound to me not by blood but a bond. I met him in college seven years ago as the assistant instructor of my Aikido class, but our relationship would grow far beyond what either of us expected. It grew to the point where Cameron sat next to my family at graduation (and was even part of my graduation photos), and my parents consider him as much of a family member as I do. Graduation was also our goodbye. After my graduation, he quit his job and embarked on a multi-year journey across the globe, living and adventuring in countries until he’d seen almost all of them.

　　As he hugged me in the airport, I realized that it’d been two years since I’d seen him. Two years where he didn’t just travel to places but lived amongst people, trying to enjoy as much of the experience as he could while avoiding being a tourist. He swam with whales, found friends, found love, experienced heartbreak, picked up the pieces, drove motorcycles, got a Polynesian tattoo, played with local kids in Ha Giang, prayed with Buddhist monks, and did so much more that I don’t even know about. It reminded me of how my grandfather, a Peruvian merchant marine, must have lived in the years he spent at sea before moving to the United States. I’d always heard and read Grampy’s stories, but I’d never seen them. Now, I feel like I have.

　　My journey in Taiwan began with my grandfather and Cameron in mind. It started at the airport and continued when I bought my new SIM card. I chuckled when I got the activation text, which started with (very directly translated), “Hello, Taiwan Big Brother.” It made me think of Cameron and all the help and advice he’d offered me over the years. It felt appropriate to channel him in my travels, because, as Cameron once remarked, we are the same person at different points in time.

　　Like him, I was always disinterested in the parts of travel most people found interesting, like skyscrapers or shopping for overpriced goods. Traveling and living, for me, is about the little things that people often overlook. Things like the butterflies that swarm you on a quiet hike in Taroko, the coffee vendor who gives you and your roommate free test batches of coffee because he trusts your judgement, the fresh dragon fruit farmed on site at an Airbnb, or candlelit picnics beneath a park’s pagoda. Everywhere I went, I tried to find these quiet moments, or better yet, let these moments find me.

　　Each of the experiences I hoped for did find their way to me, in their own way. I befriended locals, became a regular at a coffee shop and a climbing gym, went to parties, drove motorcycles, toured an art museum at the base of a small mountain, went tea farming, and visited three countries over the Lunar New Year break. Taiwan was more to me than just the teaching opportunity. It became my home for the little while I was there, and in becoming my home I found all the things I loved about it.

　　The thing that found its way closest to my heart, however, was my relationship with the students. Like all students, they can be a little rambunctious. Some kids are quiet, others scream, and some raise their hand for every question you ask. As I began to know them outside of the classroom, I saw them for the dodgeball champions, Pokémon lovers, dancers, musicians, and artists they were when not struggling with irregular verbs in English class. I became Teacher Louis, Teacher Spider-Man, and to some of them, even a fraternal figure, like who Cameron was to me. We played dodgeball at recess and ran around for intense games of ghost tag. Some of them even participated more in class as our relationship grew. My small interactions with the kids made the normally routine interaction of teaching way more unpredictable and fun, and the kids would come up to me more and more to show me the things they were excited about. By the second semester, we had really hit a rhythm, and I felt like all the lessons I had planned and all the loved ones I left behind made sense.

　　Then we were swept away amidst a pandemic. I had to leave Taiwan and my kids months before we were supposed to. I said a hurried goodbye to my friends, my climbing gym, my coffee shop, my host family, my school, and my kids. Everyone gave me gifts and said their goodbyes, but the kids showered me with them. Paper planes, chocolate, handwritten notes, their most treasured Pokémon cards, those little sheets that you fill out with questions like, “What’s your favorite color?”, and even a couple masks to use in the US flooded my desk. One 6th grader, Thomas, made me a very advanced PowerPoint goodbye set to music. A group of them charged me and asked me for my contact info, and told me that should I ever come back to Taiwan, all I had to do was text one of them and they’d be there, no matter where I’d be.

　　The day after their goodbyes, I went to deactivate my Taiwanese phone number. On my way to the store, I got a notification letting me know my bill was due, and that it was ready to be paid at 7/11. The text started with the same, “Hello, Taiwan Big Brother,” that I’d seen every month for the past year. I laughed again, but this time I didn’t think of Cameron. I thought of me at a different point in time.

My time in Taiwan:

(upper left)

My co-teachers and I welcoming students to their first day of school. The theme was captaining the school's education ship, so that explains the outfit.

(upper middle)

The students showered us with stickers that they posted on our bodies on Teacher Appreciation Day. They included really nice notes and funny messages. Spot me posing with some of the kids and the awesome principal!

(upper right)

Your friendly neighborhood Teacher Spider-Man in Action on Halloween! Spider-Man and I are from the same small neighborhood in Queens, so naturally the child in me wanted to become Spidey himself, and I did. 5-year-old me would be proud.

(bottom left)

The dodgeball crew during second semester. They were a dedicated bunch and played during every break they got. It's not the same dodgeball I'm used to, but it was a ton of fun.

(bottom middle)

Our hot chocolate class to end the semester. The kids loved it, and the small handfuls of marshmallows and chocolate chips they got while the milk heated up.

(bottom right)

A photo from one of the many adventures we had in Taiwan. This is at Taiwan's pride parade, where a group of us managed to hop on and kind of take over a float, which the company was incredibly happy to use as free advertising.