My mom recently told me a story about my little cousin in Taiwan that surprised me.

My uncle recently visited Taiwan, something he does maybe once every two years. He gave my little cousin, Karen (that’s the English name she decided upon in school), 200 U.S. dollars as a gift (red envelope kind of thing. Asian people like to give money instead of presents. It’s practical!)

So Karen recieved 200 U.S. dollars, but she couldn’t use it because it was U.S. money. At the time, it was 32 NT (Taiwanese currency) to the dollar. By the time it was 34NT, she asked her aunt, my aunt, if she could sell the dollars to her. My aunt said she could. Karen waited until the exchange rate was 35NT and sold her dollars to her mom.

The next day, the exchange rate had risen to 35.something NT. She told her mom that she should give her more money since the rate had risen. Her mom said that she had already sold the money, and that if that’s the way she wanted to play, then she would have to give back more money if the exchange rate lowered below 34NT to be fair. Karen kept her mouth shut.

The first thing that surprised me is that she understood exchange rates. How many kids in the U.S. understand that kind of thing? The only time I remember hearing it in school was in senior year during Economics class. She waited for the rate to go higher.

Also, we weren’t seriously doing compound multiplication until fifth grade. Karen was already comfortable with decimals. (And a whole lot more I’m sure).

And, where was Karen getting her info on the exchange rates? It’s posted on the news every night. And she watches it.

Oh, and the class size ratio of student to teacher has always been really high in Taiwan. 40 kids in a class is nothing and it’s an argument going around that I don’t really agree on. Although it might only work in Taiwan because the kids study like crazy and don’t distrupt classtime because they’ll get their butt kicked by both their parents and the teacher.

Not that I wouldn’t like to be hired, and having less kids in a class would probably only help, but just saying. http://www.arthurhu.com/index/classize.htm Found this. Interesting.