The large majority of westerners in Taiwan are teachers. Due to the strict rules of who can teach at elementary schools and up, most teachers teach in cram schools.
Cram schools are basically another school that students go to after their normal school. it's where they have more classes, and have tests and do homework, etc. Even more insidious is the fact that most cram schools work with the main schools to plan the curriculum and what will be taught and what the assignments are. What this turns out to mean is that basically the students are going to the same school for over 12 hours a day, just half of it is in their normal school and the other half is in their cram school.
English cram schools are a bit different, in that they just teach english and the older the students are, the less coordination they have with real schools. This is also where almost all of foreigners teach. Because students are either students or working professionals, most of the classes are in the afternoons after kids finish school and evenings after people get off of work. There are some exceptions to this of course. The first being some foreigners teach kindergarten which starts in the morning and can finish any time between 11am and 3pm. And more and more teachers will go to the office of companies to teach english to some employees.
Because of this foreigners usually have very unique schedules. Often free in the mornings and early afternoons, then going to work and working until around 10pm. As many foreigners are young kids who just graduated from college, they enjoy this schedule as it affords them the ability to party all night and sleep in most of the day. However others can hate this schedule, as it means you are only free when your friends are at work, and when they are free, you are working.
This is especially true when you factor in that the busiest teaching day is Saturday. Almost all teachers teach on Saturdays, with even a few schools being open on Sundays. Many foreigners work six day weeks with only Sundays off, a few get two days off, with Monday and Friday being main days off. Friday is because most schools schedule classes to be monday and wednesday, or tuesday and thursday, so friday classes are a bit rare. While Monday is a treat for those few who can have the Sunday and Monday two day "weekend." However even this has it's drawbacks as many things in Taiwan that are open all week long (markets, museums, restaurants, etc.), take a rest on Mondays. So your options for things to do on Mondays is pretty small.
While in the end a teacher's schedule might not always be the most convenient, there is one time when that doesn't matter at all. That time when after lunch when everybody is in their offices yet you get to take a nice peaceful walk along the river, with the feeling like you have the whole city to yourself. It's true serenity. The above picture is of one such moment, where during a leisurely stroll, i stopped at a riverside cafe (closed because it was a Monday) and sat down to enjoy the peace. While I don't know the people in the photograph, we do understand each other. We all share the knowledge of that secret happiness that most people will never experience.
