I realized, in the weeks leading up to my departure, that most people were about 15% curious about the country, the school, and the culture and 85% enthralled with the prospect of a 14 day* quarantine in a hotel room. So I thought I’d document a detailed breakdown of what my day to day has been like in here.
*I got here at around 7:00am last Sunday and I don’t get out until Monday the 7th, so it’s really 15 full days, which feels like bullshit.

• 3:00am – Wake up inexplicably. I cannot tell if this is a product of jetlag or not. I left at night and arrived in the morning (albeit a day later) so I felt like my body was still pretty much on schedule from the start. But for the first 4-5 days I was wide awake for about an hour in the middle of the night. Typically I would turn on The Office, which has been my sleep aid for the past several years, but they don’t have it here! I get seemingly almost the full rest of the Netflix catalogue other than The Office and Parks and Rec. I’m trying to transition to Modern Family, but I haven’t watched it in awhile and it’s just too damn funny to not pay attention to. I think The Office is funny too, obviously – it’s my favorite comedy show of all time – but I’ve seen it so many times that I think something about the familiarity and predictability of it allows my brain to turn off. The real ticket is the sleepcasts on the Headspace app. Those things are incredible. They knock me out in minutes. But they’re not as funny. But in either case, after about an hour or so I usually fall back to sleep.
• 7:00am – Wake up for real. I usually wake up to several messages, which is nice. I’m sure it will die down after you all forget about me, but hopefully it lasts for at least another week. It’s really weird to get used to the time zone difference. There are a few precious hours in the morning at night during which we’re both awake, but other than we’re on completely opposite schedules, which is still wildly disorienting. Although I will say that this should force me to be present in what I’m doing during the day and not worrying about my phone, which feels like it will be a valuable exercise. Hilariously, the official Welcome to Cornel School handbook mentions that people have a tendency to drunk dial home. “Teachers have a habit of ‘drunk dialing’ — in fact, that seemed to be the only time I called home. My folks thought I had bit of a problem, but it was just that I got a little over-emotional after the 12th bottle of beer.” First of all, 12 beers. Respect. Secondly, if you get a phone call from me around noon central, you know what I’ve been doing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• 9:00am – Orientation over Zoom. Under normal circumstances, new teachers would have gotten here in June and used the summer for onboarding, orientation, observations, and planning. I personally and explicitly blame Trump’s handling of the pandemic for that not being the case. Instead, I have a few short meetings each day during which they walk me through the policy handbook, curriculum, and online resources. These meetings at least give me something around which to structure my day. I always leave them feeling a mixture of excited and overwhelmed. It simultaneously feels like there is a lot I should be doing and nothing much I can do at all. On Friday I got to observe another teacher leading one of my classes. You can only tell so much over a grainy video (the WiFi in this hotel leaves much to be desired) but I could tell that these kids are very smart, sweet, well-behaved, and eager learners. Being with the kids has always been my favorite part of teaching, and in fact the only thing that keeps me in the profession at all. It will have been about six months since I was last in the classroom with kids by the time I set foot in a classroom again, and, although I am admittedly a little nervous, I cannot wait for that day.
• 10:00am – Text my temperature to the police officer assigned to me. I’m honestly kind of surprised they let me do this on the honor system, unless there is a chip I don’t know about in the thermometer, which is fully possible. I also have to respond to an automated message from the Central Epidemic Command Center to let them know I am feeling well and healthy today, except a few days ago my phone seemed to run out of prepaid SMS time, so I don’t think my replies of “1” are going through anymore. I’m rather nervous someone is going to come knocking on my door at any moment. I’ll keep you posted.
• 10:02am – Try to understand TikTok.
• 10:04am – Close TikTok because every video is really fucking stupid. To be fair to me, I asked the other young people in my program if I was out of touch and they agreed that 99% of the videos are hot garbage. The main thing I don’t understand is why you can’t set your preferences to show you certain types of videos. I know it is supposed to learn what you like and adjust over time, but if I don’t like anything, how will it learn? In sum, I feel really good about not wasting time scrolling through this app. If people could just continue to send me the one really funny video out of every 10,000 that would be ideal.
• 10:05am – Listen to a podcast/audiobook and cross stitch. This has become one of my favorite activities in the day. I am currently listening to (do I dare call it “reading?”) The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It came highly and unanimously recommended from basically all of my best friends and they were not wrong. Current podcasts in the rotation include, but are not limited to The Daily, Fantasy Football Today, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Wind of Change, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Radio Rental, and You Meet in a Tavern, which is a delightful Dungeons and Dragons campaign (I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. Trust me. This is another post for another day.) As for cross stitch, it is a recently acquired skill/hobby inspired by my good friend Jordan and I absolutely love it. For me, it is a perfect blend of engaging yet mindless, artistic yet mathematical, and tactile yet low effort. I just finished my first project and have started on my second. This next project is my first attempt at a self-made design, so we’ll see how it goes.

• 11:00am – Stare out the window. I feel quite lucky to have the room that I have. My initial reaction when I walked in was that it was really tiny, and it is, but I have a huge bank of windows that overlooks a fairly busy intersection, so I at least get lots of natural light and a decent amount of entertainment. Highlights so far include a moped-to-moped collision, a fight with some pretty respectable punches thrown, and an insanely efficient construction project. It took them like an hour to repave part of the street around a manhole cover. I couldn’t believe it. This almost certainly would have taken three weeks in the US. The vast majority of people here ride scooters, and despite the crash, I am really excited to get one and get riding. In fact, as a moped owner for nearly half my life, it was a strong factor in choosing Taiwan in the first place. The rules of the road appear to be a little looser than the US, but not nearly as hectic as what you might think of when you picture India, for example, where thousands of people are trying to kick and shimmy their way through an intersection. Plus, 100% of people here wear helmets, as they are required by law. So don’t worry mom, I’ll be fine.

• 12:00pm – Eat lunch. We get three meals a day delivered to our door. The first 3-4 days I thought everything was really amazing and impressive. Since then, I have realized that there may have been a little international adrenaline at play and the meals have become something less than amazing. They usually consist of some combination of lukewarm rice, meat, veggies, tofu, and some mushy things from the sea. For mass-produced quarantine hotel food, I don’t think I could expect much more, and it’s three free meals a day delivered to my door, so I don’t want to complain too much. I do think I’m really going to like the food here once I’m free. You can also order from Uber Eats, which is just nice to be able to switch it up once in awhile, and it’s super cheap too! I also brought along Clif bars, fruit snacks, and Dove chocolates for when the going gets tough.

• 1:00pm – Workout. I remember seeing a meme once that said “thinking about going to prison just so I can finally focus on my fitness.” This is funny because it’s true. I have worked out harder in the last week than probably any other point in my life. As my parents were sure to point out many times, I’ve gotten a little soft since March. I think quarantine has had this effect on many of us, so there’s no shame in that game. (Some call it too much beer, I call it SELF CARE!) This time presents a good opportunity to get back on track. Additionally, working out is a good way to kill 40-60 minutes each day. There is sufficient space in my little room for lunges, pushups, sit-ups, burpees, etc. so look out, Taiwan, Evan’s comin’ outta here jacked!

• 2:00pm – Another meeting with school. Typically these go something like, “Here’s all the curriculum for the year, why don’t you take a look at it and start planning things out.” And I say, “Okay, I will” then immediately feel extremely overwhelmed and clueless and close my computer and go lay down.
• 3:00pm – Unknown. “What time is it? What day is it? What have I even done all day?”
• 4:00pm – Watch a movie/play Zelda/nap/Duolingo. Chinese seems like it’s going to be really hard to learn, but I’m going to try. So far I know numbers through 10 and “My name is Evan, what’s yours?” So I’m basically fluent.
• 5:00pm – Stand in my nook. My bathroom has this great little bump out nook with windows on 2 sides and some pretty direct sunlight. Sometimes I just stand in there for a few minutes and feel the warmth and pretend like I’m outside. I’m 76% sure the windows are tinted and reflective, but if not, well, hopefully people have enjoyed what they’ve seen.

• 6:00pm – Try to eat most of the dinner.
• 7:00pm – Watch more Netflix, I guess? I don’t know. At this point it’s just run out the clock until it’s an acceptable time to go to bed. At least around now some people back in the states are starting to get up so there are some more messages to look forward to.
• 9:00pm – Go to bed.

Honestly, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The days mostly do go by fairly quickly, and I do a pretty good job of staying busy, moving from activity to activity, and keeping my mind engaged. Today marks the halfway point! I imagine the second week might drag a little more than the first, but there should also be a wave of excitement near the end that I can hopefully ride to the finish. Next time you go outside, think of me and be grateful for the fresh air.

Lastly, thank you for all of your messages to check in and encourage as well as your responses to my blog and instagram posts. They mean a lot, especially during this time of solitude. If you haven’t already, enter your email and click subscribe and you will get each post in full delivered directly to your inbox.

I’ve never known the exact meaning of “straw poll,” but I’m pretty sure I took one recently when I asked several of my friends this question. “Would you rather be ridiculed or unseen?” Before you answer for yourself, take a guess at what you think most of them said. If you guessed that 100% of them chose “unseen,” you are correct. Now guess what my answer is. I’ll give you a hint: people who prefer to be unseen don’t typically publish blogs. After about a 9 year hiatus, this is now my second attempt at documenting my life by way of a blog. I could only glance at a few posts from my first one. For one, I am very critical of my own writing, and while my stream-of-consciousness style usually feels right in the moment, rereading it makes me wish I could go back and clean it up. (Damn you, grad school, for acid-raining on my creativity parade.) It’s as if my goal for writing is to send these thoughts out into the universe, but then I want the wind to carry it away and hopefully the seeds get planted somewhere else. (Or get stuck to your pants and then you throw them in the garbage, which is fine too – survival of the metaphysically fittest.) The second reason I cannot reread my first blog is that it’s intensely embarrassing to go back inside the mind of 23-year-old Evan (he had a good heart, but he was an idiot). I can’t wait to chuckle at this paragraph a decade from now. So anyway, ten years after that original endeavor as I sit, well, not exactly in Taiwan, but inside four walls within Taiwan, here we are again. A few things are the same: I’m teaching abroad, I’m on the pursuit of happiness, and you’re reading my blog, but mostly everything is different: all of my friends have two kids, there is a global pandemic (what’s the difference, amirite?! jk love you all), and America is as un-great as it has ever been. 

Back to the point. My reaction to everyone choosing “unseen” made me feel unsurprised, yet perplexed. How could anyone want to go through life like this? Is it fear? Self-consciousness? Social conditioning? Minnesota niceness? Or am I the crazy one? A Dove chocolate once told me (or was it a refrigerator magnet?) “I came to live out loud,” to which I thought solemnly to myself, “yes queen.” If you were still unsure of my answer to the original question, not only would I rather be ridiculed than unseen, but I have been, particularly post-28. I should be married by now. I probably should have boughten (That can’t be a word, can it? Can someone please clarify?) a house by now. I dated her for too long. I should have tried to make it work that one, everyone really liked her. I’ve learned the hard way that Minnesota (see also: passive af) teachers are supposed to keep quiet and do what you’re told, even if it’s not what’s best for kids. I’m supposed to want more money. I should probably move into admin, that’s where the money is. Cut your teeth in the inner-city and then move to the suburbs where the kids behave better and there’s nicer houses and little streams of apple juice come a-bubblin’ down the rocks. Aren’t you going to finish your PhD? You were so close! Aren’t you ever going to move back to Wisconsin and settle down?

And while each of these comments, hints, and reminders on their own are each benign, at some point they start to stack up and get a little harder to brush off. It’s great to be single… but less great when all of your friends are married and have to be home by 7:30. It’s awesome to travel… but it sure would be more fun with a partner. Societal norms, coupled with the fact that all the other people in my program are 25 and under, sometimes makes me feel like something went wrong in my life that caused me to end up here. But then again, as I was doing my daily calisthenics (thanks, Will, for the word), I heard an Atmosphere song that reminded me, “Gotta get yours like there ain’t no wrong way; the worm and the bird both worked a long day.” Shel Silverstein corroborates, “If you’re a bird, be an early bird, but if you’re a worm, sleep late.” Maybe I spent too much time comparing myself to the other birds when I’ve actually been a worm all along. Worms are nobody’s favorite animal, but without them, there would be no flowers, no fruit, and eventually, no life!

So when I can allow myself the grace to get past the comparisons, the “shoulds,” and the self-doubt; when I stop trying to be an early bird and accept my life as a worm, I realize that I’m actually happy. Or as Taylor Swift sings as if anybody asked, “I’m doing good I’m on some new shit.” (We didn’t ask, T, but thanks for checking in.) I’m doing things people are jealous of. I’ve done things most people never do. I’ve had some down years recently, but this chapter I’m entering feels like I’ve righted the ship, set the sails, and I’m ready to go where the wind takes me. (Full disclosure: I know nothing about sailing so this is an irresponsible guess of a metaphor.)

This is WAY deeper than I was planning on getting in my second post on my fifth day, but we all knew we’d get here eventually, so might as well dive in. The last thing I want to say to anyone still reading is that this post and it’s preceding revelation is inspired not only by Atmosphere, Shel Silverstein, T-Swift, and Brené Brown, who taught me to be vulnerable (Mount Rushmore of writers?), but also by all of the friends, and you know who you are, who have encouraged me to embrace my worminess over the last couple of years. Not only are worms better than birds, but birds aren’t even real.

So I now, in turn, and at the risk of sounding like an eighth grade girl’s graduation speech, encourage you. Don’t go unseen. Don’t live a life uninspired. Don’t settle. Don’t put limits on yourself. Don’t listen to the shoulds. Don’t have 2.3 children, because that poor .3 child is going to have a very, very tough life. And I know we hear these clichés all the time and they turn into white noise, but I encourage you to think of one specific area of your life where it might apply and see what you can do about it. Take a risk, put yourself out there, and when people ridicule you, tell them that you can’t hear them because you’re busy breaking down and enriching the soil and doing your little part to make the world a better place.

August 22, 2020 is a day that won’t go down in infamy, not for me at least, because I never experienced it. I took off from O’Hare Friday night around midnight, flew for 15 hours, and landed at 4:00am Sunday in Taipei. (It is unclear if this day still counts against my age or if I am forever one day younger.)

What a long process this has been. I signed a contract to teach at an elementary school in Taichung, Taiwan at the beginning of January. Since then — well, no one needs a reminder of how the last eight months have gone, but let’s just say it was filled with anxiety, uncertainty, and more downs than ups. But to spare you all the details, and because I want to look forward and not backward, I’ll just say that I’m here. The flight was smooth and the entry process was very efficient and painless. It helped that there were only about 50 people on the 500+ seat plane, including some very safety-oriented passengers.

So now what? Well, now I sit in this tiny room for 14 days. Taiwan has done arguably the best in the world at handling the virus. They took it seriously early, they shut things down, they closed their borders, they wore masks, they made people quarantine, and they fined people who didn’t follow the rules. They also have a culture that prioritizes public health and human lives over the economy and getting haircuts. (Imagine that!) Seven COVID-related deaths in a country of 23 million people is nearly unfathomable. They have had zero cases for the last several months! So yeah, if I were them, I would make me quarantine in a hotel room too.

While the prospect of trying to keep from going crazy in this 200 square foot room is somewhat daunting, I know that it’s very temporary, and it will be very worth it. I’m glad to be here. Teaching abroad has been on my mind ever since I got back from Uganda 10 years ago, and I feel very lucky to finally have this opportunity again. I’m grateful that I made it through all the uncertainty. I’m thankful that they let me in. I’m proud that I stuck with it. I’m excited to be back in the classroom for the first time in what seems like forever, and I’m relieved that I don’t have to deal with the… chaos(?) that is US education this fall. (Sorry, teacher friends.)

To close the first Evan on Earth post, I would just like to say thank you for coming and reading. I don’t necessarily feel like I deserve my own website or that I’m doing anything particularly special. I’m not even necessarily sure I want to put myself out there in this way this time. When I was 23 and teaching in Africa I thought I was doing something really cool and wanted to show it off. At 33, I kind of just feel like I’m an average person doing a common job in a regular city that just happens to be on the other side of the world except with the added thrill that I can’t read any of the signs. But it seems like every person I talked to over the last couple of months said something to the effect of, “Oh that’s so cool, I want to follow along, you’ll have to keep us posted.” So here I am, keeping you posted. We’ll see how this goes. Feel free to pass this on and share with whoever you think might be interested in reading the emotional ramblings of some guy who is trying to make the most out of life. If you have any particular questions or thoughts, please comment, email me, or message me on What’sApp. (Goodbye, old phone number.)

Lastly, here’s a picture that I accidentally took of myself while trying to take a video of my room and the view. I just feel like there must be some particularly good lighting in here or something idea because I have no idea how my hair looks this good after a 15 hour flight. I’m not usually this self-indulgent and I promise I won’t make a habit of it, but sometimes you just gotta love yourself, ya know? Peace and love to you all!

Welcome to my blog! I’m going to be teaching in Taichung, Taiwan for the next year and will be using this page to journal, document, process, and share. Thanks for your interest, I’m glad we’re both here!