English classes in Taiwan are a very unique thing in that they seem like 50% learning English, and 50% therapy. I've talked before about how much pressure is put on people by society and how family, coworkers and even friends will judge you quite harshly should you fail to live the way society dictates. This is what makes English classes so unique. Because the other students are viewed as strangers who you are outside of their lives, and because everybody is speaking English instead of Chinese, people have a way of opening up to each other in the classes.
Since for most people it's after work, so almost like a tv sitcom bar, people will come to class and just unload all their stresses from the day, even before class has started. Added to this is the fact that in our classes, teachers want the students to really express their opinions and share their thoughts using English, so a lot of the material is aimed to getting people to not just talk about themselves but talk about their deep thoughts which they don't normally share with others.
I know one activity I like to do for a new class is discussing some embarrassing questions. Nothing too embarrassing, but just enough to get people comfortable sharing a bit about themselves with strangers. it's always fun to see people start the class nervous and by the end laughing and having a great time.
Another activity that comes to mind is one i made about morality. I think on the surface most of us have a very similar moral code, and we rarely let people see our true morals. This activity always fascinates me, as you can see some students are sharing some beliefs they have that they've never shared with anybody else before. Usually this is where I would make some sarcastic joke about how it's because of how great a teacher I am, but really i quite admire these students and their bravery. Especially for some people I can see it also means a lot to them to finally show some part of themselves to others.
As for the picture, it's very loosely tied to morality, in that it's part of my "taiwanese are so friendly" list that I break out every time a Taiwanese person tells me "taiwanese are so friendly" the same way that you would say "the sky is blue." A pet peeve of mine is that Taiwanese people, especially older women, never scoot over to the window seat when on the bus. Even when somebody wants to sit there, instead of moving over, they will just make the person step over them to get to the window seat. However this rarely happens as most people are too embarrassed to step over somebody, leaving the front of the bus full of people standing while their are eight free seats in the back.
