My Corner for Education

The other day I went out for lunch with a couple of friends who were originally from Hong Kong. YZ has all her family members in Ontario, but KC’s relatives are all in Hong Kong. I asked KC if she had been back to Hong Kong after all these years in Canada. She replied that it is very difficult to plan a trip, which is also extremely costly, for her family of five to travel back to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, her children have gradually lost touch with all the family and relatives on the other side of the world. I felt for her and understood her sentiment as I was listening to her and thinking about my own family.

 

One disadvantage about moving to a foreign land is that it is so darn difficult to visit family and friends back home. During the first few years in Canada, I could not travel freely because of the immigration process and my study at the Faculty. A few times I had to make a few emergency trips to fly home for funerals. Then, summer time is the only time that teachers can take different courses for professional development or for higher education. So, I spent many summers to take AQ (additional qualification) courses and for my graduate study. We don’t travel to Taiwan frequently because we simply could not afford to do so due to our vacation time arrangements and mostly the pricey travel expenses.

 

First of all, a flight ticket alone is so expensive during the peak summer season. Unfortunately, being a teacher, I can only travel during the summer time. (We do not have a long winter break. My Christmas and New Year break is usually about 12 days. Da Pong can get five days in total. ) When we plan a family trip to go somewhere in the summer, it is not an individual outing but a whole family event. So, you can imagine the total price of the plane tickets alone could be substantially costly.

 

When we go back to visit Taiwan, we don’t tend to stay for a week or two because of the time difference and jet lag. It would take up at least three days to travel and then a couple days to recover from jet lag. So, at least we (or I) would have to stay for a month (four weeks). I have the perks of having the summer off, but Mr. Da Pong does not usually have that kind of luxury. The maximum vacation time he could get is probably two to three weeks. Then he would also need a couple days to recuperate from the jet lag before going back to work.

 

Living cost could be expensive as well for travelers. Travelers also have to eat as well. (It might also be a good time for us to go on a diet. Ha-ha) How often can you live off family and relatives’ kindness and have feasts from one invitation to another? Often we have to pay for food or take them out to dinner in return, which could be quite expensive when paying for the large group of people. We usually avoid accepting any invitation to a banquet. This way, we could cut down the frequency of spending money at the fancy restaurants. But, it is inevitable that we would have to eat at restaurants whenever we were on the road to visit people or places. You can imagine that the traveling expenses for a family could be skyrocket high.

 

We already passed that backpacking age, but we do enjoy walking around town as much as we can whenever we visit a place. However, there is a limit to how efficient we can move around in Taiwan. Transportation is extremely important when we plan a trip in North America, so we drive or fly. In Europe, the railway system is so convenient; there is no point to rent a car. In Taiwan, to be honest with you, according to our last trip to Taiwan, there is NO WAY that we are capable of driving safely there. For the sake of keeping our life expectancies longer, I think we would rather take the public transit. At least the transit system is very convenient in the big city of Taipei. Plus, we still can rely on millions of roaming taxis to take us places.

 

Another traveling cost would be spent on the presents. We would have to purchase some presents for family as well. I know my family and friends do not expect me to bring everybody a present; however, it is a custom to bring something when you visit a family in Taiwan. You can imagine the long list of people whom I have to visit and certainly the list of presents to bring would be longer. I used to travel a lot. Whenever I had a chance to go overseas, I always shopped for family and friends for those hard to find items. I remember once my Da Pong drove me around to visit at least five shopping malls in order to locate this particular colour (purple violet) lipstick by Elizabeth Arden. I ended up buying all the stock they had, probably 15 lipsticks altogether. I really cleaned them out. Anyway, my point is that the added cost for shopping for others could be very high as well.

 

It would cost thousands of dollars to make our trip to Taiwan, and it takes a while to save up for that kind of traveling expenses. Two years ago, I missed my mother dearly so we ended up paying for my mother to come visit us instead. It was cheaper for her to fly to stay with us. I haven’t been back to Taiwan for a few years and probably would not be able to find my way around anymore. I was hoping we could go back to visit Taiwan this summer. Unfortunately, due to our passport renewal and Da Pong’s limited vacation time, we could not make it. Sigh. I guess it will take a while for that trip to happen.