| I absolutely love the little critters!!! Will hopefully post some pictures after this Saturday's birthday party (yes, I am working 6 days this and next week to make up for my New Year's vacation on 1/1/2008 and 1/2/2008....so much for the meaning of the word vacation).
One of my kids laughed so hard in class today I cracked up in the front of the class myself. It was hilarious...I can't even remember what I said to make him laugh but it was something not even funny like drawing a cake upside down...the other day he cracked me up as well. He's a very small kid named Tom (maybe about 8 yrs old or so but INCREDIBLY small, yet looks polished like a businessman at times) ...so we have 2 Jim's in our class and we distinguish between the two by calling one (S) Jim (stands for small) and one (B) Jim (stands for big). The two of them always writing (S) or (B) next to their name on their tests, etc. The other day I collected the test papers and when I got to Tom's test, I saw that he had written Tom (S). HILARIOUS if you know how little he is. Loved it.
Good day but I spend way too much time on lesson plans/report cards/caring about my kids...
Got my official rubber stamp today that has my chinese name on it in order to open a bank account....sadly my Chinese name has like 7 characters when it's only supposed to be 3...
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| My new favorite hang-out is the 3-story Starbucks in Ximen. You would think that 3 stories is overkill, but there's a new group of people walking up the stairs pretty much every 30 seconds. There haven't been any open seats since about 2pm...I expected it to be a lot more empty with a lot more foreigners, but the environment is surprisingly Taiwanese.
Although there's Starbux much closer to my home and it takes me about an hour to get here, this place is hustling and bustling with people, I can get fried onion pancakes, and do my therapeutic shopping for the week. Plus, there's something strangely soothing about taking public transportation (especially considering it's clean!). It reminds me of home, getting off work, and going to the south bay...it's a change of atmosphere that allows me to have my comforting American experience in midst of a Taiwanese atmosphere.
It's interesting how shy the people are here. I will start to speak with my broken Chinese in a store and the clerk will respond to my question, which I of course do not understand one word of. Then there will be silence for 30 seconds after I turn down every attempt the clerk makes with "I don't understand." Suddenly the clerk will break out with amazing English. Although I greatly appreciate the fact that they let me try out my Chinese (unlike happened in Hong Kong), the conversation could have been a lot more efficient if the clerk had broken out his near-perfect English.
If I'm sitting on a bus or a cafe I usually have the luxury of having the seat next to me stay open because the Taiwanese will usually pick an open seat next to a Taiwanese first. Perhaps I smell (: The clubbing scene is also quite a bit different....
I wish I was learning more Chinese...and I wish I had more 1:1 time with the kids. I feel like everything is rush rush rush. Even if I WANTED to put my all into helping the kids learn, there's no time at all. I have to somehow learn how to attend to every student's need while teaching 17 kids at once. But the lesson ALWAYS has to include every student every second or you start to lose their attention and the class is shot for the day. It doesn't help that a lot of my classes get eaten up by school activities. It just pushes things back further and further that I have to just rush through them. |
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| I am officially a Taiwan resident today!  |
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| I haven't officially started writing in this blog for multiple reasons...one of which is that I haven't had a camera. I will be making a trip to Taipei tomorrow to do so!!!!
Things are going well here...I'm only occasionally homesick, much better than I expected!!
More to come as soon as I receive my resident status (: |
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