Disappointment
Last week was probably the worst experience of my year here in Taiwan, which, aside from the occasional run in with shrimp and a hefty dose of TEH CRAZY has been rather lovely. I’d gone out to buy lunch before heading back to meet with some students who needed help with their letters, and when we got inside the classroom, I left my wallet out on the desk to act as a paperweight on my lunch leftovers.
The rest of the day passed in a blur and I left feeling really frazzled. I took a taxi home because I was in a rush to get home in time to regroup before Chinese class. I paid, got out, and remembered to check the back seat because I had multiple bags with me and felt so frazzled. About an hour later, I woke up and left for Chinese class in a minor panic because I couldn’t find my wallet. No worries, I thought, I must have left it in class. Only it turned out that I hadn’t. A niggling feeling told me that I had not left it in the taxi, but it seemed improbable that a student could have stolen it.
Only it wasn’t. It came out last week that one of my sixth graders, a very quiet girl who I barely noticed had stolen it in the middle of class. Yes, with me, Lucy, and her classmates around her, she had slipped unnoticed to my desk and pocketed the wallet. She has a history of mental problems and theft, which made me feel a little better (as in providing a rationale for her theft). I returned from our Fulbright rafting trip to Ruei Sui to Lucy telling me that she had discovered who was responsible, and that we would be meeting with the girl and her mother on Monday during cleaning time.
The meeting was alright, but watching how much anguish the girl’s mother was in was awful. By the end of the meeting, her mother was sobbing and when she bowed to me to apologize (something which I get is a cultural thing but makes me SO uncomfortable), she was crying so much her tears were spilling out onto the ground. It sucked. I wanted to dissolve into tears on the spot myself, but figured that wouldn’t be the best course of action. It was also deeply uncomfortable reciting off how much I had paid to replace my cards and how much money was in the wallet. Not that I didn’t feel I wasn’t owed compensation, it’s just never a place I wanted to go in the first place.
The student in question has started to get professional help, and has to do work for the school as part of her punishment. All in all, I think the situation was handled quite well – the school took pains to make sure the student in question was not found out to be a thief by her classmates, and the meeting was non-confrontational even if it was an unpleasant experience to endure.
There’s still the fact that I am not convinced she threw out my wallet as she says she did because her story doesn’t add up on a number of different points, but it looks like I am not getting my cards back, which is annoying and sad (my WesID was in there and I loved the picture on it, vain, I know). Still, in the grand scheme of things, it’s better that it was a student than some random stranger who might well have used my credit card and gone to town.
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