taken from http://bailalotaipei.com/
Two of them made acquaintance when Prof. Chang was doing her PhD in US, she was doing interviews with Salsa dancers, and Maggie was one of her respected person.
Maggie was a native of Polish, moved to Canada in her early years, and work as flight attendant before settling down in Taiwan.
Like the rest of foreigners, she came as a student studying Chinese, alongside with her husband, a music performer. She is fluent in several language including Polish, English, Portugese and French, with her learning experience in language, she thought it wouldn't be too hard? 10 years has gone by, best she could do was speaking Chinese in understandable manner, but can't write still. I grew up speaking and writing Chinese, I have no idea how hard can it be for foreigner XD
Maggie is a strong independent lady. As a student, she has took up a lot of part time jobs, teaching English, Dance and some other minor stuffs. But these experiences helped her setting up her own Dance studio, thanks to all the students she teach all over the years.
To start with, she spent 6 months looking for a suitable venue for her studio, coming across with hundreds venues, but couldn't get a good one. Luck came some time later, through the social network she built over the years, someone offered a good place with reasonable price for her studio. She had to deal with a lot of paper works, travelling back forth bureaucracy, making sure the venue meets the safety requirements and so on.
After setting up the studio, you will meet a lot of trouble like hitting the required revenue, local competition (some people would report you over the agency), maintaining the studio, doing marketing and promotions. Maggie again did a wonderful job of handling these issues, and she also have help from her generous student.
She has passion in running her business, she treats her students/customers with respect, to the extend of went out and took lessons she is not familiar with, just so that she can put herself in a situation where her students might face difficulties in learning as a beginner. In a city where people are so stress dedicating most of their time in work, this is a place for them to reduce stress.
Overall, she's a very positive person, set out to do the things that against all odds, she also earn the trust and love from her associates and friends. I could tell that, despite of staying for so long in this country, she didn't influenced much by the local mentality, she stood firm of her own. This is quite a feat to achieve by a foreigner who wants to settle down in Taiwan, she is respectable and I definitely will want to set her ways and discipline as an example. I'm lucky to meet this person.
For a person who is so down with my life recently, this encounter is an inspiring one. Thank you.
