Leaving Beigang and quitting a job in a Taiwanese public school

I found a job teaching college and so I will be leaving my teaching job in Beigang/Shuilin and moving to the big city.  I will follow up with a best of Beigang post just so that the handful of people who make it there know where to eat/get their hair washed/find a dance studio.  Basically, I’ll give you the info I wish I had when I got there.

Beigang was nice, but it was difficult living there as a single expat.  There just aren’t many other expats or that much to do.  I also got kicked out of my place.  Here’s what I think happened.

I was supposed to teach ballet classes in exchange for rent, but there was confusion from the start.  I’m a belly dancer, not a ballet dancer; a critical difference.  I did bail on my end of the bargain, and was refused my offers to pay rent.  I did hold up my end in terms of tutoring my land lady’s kids, but she wasn’t that interested in that part.

What really sucks about the above is that finding an apartment in Beigang is this side of impossible.  One pretty gnarly place was trotted out, and that was my only choice.  Thankfully the job in Taichung, where apartments are more plentiful, popped up.  And the apartment I found here is nicer than any I’ve seen in Beigang.

My apartment is cool

Here are two cultural differences that were highlighted in my varied exoduses.

Firstly, the Taiwanese yes. “Yes, you can move in.  Yes, it’s ok that you aren’t a ballerina.  Oh wait, I wasn’t allowed to rent you the space and I thought you were only staying a month.  You have to move out.”  This was the dialogue about my apartment.  I’m still perplexed about who was lying, but someone was in order to save face.  The man who found me the apartment either forgot to tell my then future land lady that I was planning to stay for more than a month (I had 8 months left on my contract) or that I was a teacher at his wife’s school (implying a stay of longer than a month), or my former land lady really did rent me a space she had no authority to rent, which is weird.  I’ll say this; someone was very careless/thoughtless because as previously mentioned, finding apartments in Yunlin county take connections.  I worried that I had offended or been somehow wanting as a tenant.

I heard through the gossip mill (which is prevalent in rural anywhere) that the land lady was pissed about the ballet classes.  Well, I tried to make amends, so life goes on.

My leaving the school was another cultural difference.  To quit, you need to give 30 days.  That’s just a heads up to the five of you reading this.  Your boss has to “let” you quit, which is jarring to an American. My bosses and recruiter (Teach Taiwan) initially told me they could have me deported (they can’t).  Slowly we moved from “We can have you deported” to “We’ll let you go after 3 weeks and you get your full pay, but you won’t get your termination documentation for two weeks, so your new job won’t be able to pay you on time.”  I considered that to be as good as could be expected.

So now to new adventures in Taichung.