Thanksgiving and the past two weeks

Wowzers… Long time, no update.

It has been an awesome few weeks. I have been so busy that I am exhausted, but it is a good busy.


Last week I taught in the English classroom. The interns and I taught on Restaurant vocabulary. I've also had several girls dinner and one on one dinners with women in my small group! It's been awesome!

Last weekend, I met my fellow Foreign English teachers in Kaohsiung (a town about 1 hour away) for some sight seeing. We had a really good time. We viewed the Lotus Pond, the dome of lights and went up Monkey Mountain where there were tons of scary Monkeys. It was really fun to see everyone and catch up with the people I came to Orientation with.  

This week was Thanksgiving of course. Although, I did not have the day off, I still managed to enjoy it. By now, I have had three Thanksgiving dinners, all including Turkey. Wednesday night, I got together at a restaurant with my English Small group from church and had an awesome turkey dinner. The pumpkin pie was especially wonderful. It was a small group, but we had a lot of fun. Thursday night, my Taiwanese coworkers, the interns and myself all had Thanksgiving dinner together at a restaurant. It was very good and very fun. I got to pray before the meal and explain the origins of Thanksgiving to the Taiwanese. We also found the wishbone and broke it. I won!

Friday morning during my break, I played volleyball with the 11^th PE class. It was a lot of fun. I accidentally hit the ball once and hit a kid in the face. It was ok because a few minutes later, someone hit the ball and because a teacher was talking it me, I didn’t see it and it bounced off the top of my head. They were so funny and so concerned for me, but it didn’t even hurt. 

Also on Friday I headed to Taipei to see Alicia for the weekend. After a quite eventful trip, I made it to her church and attended the last Alpha meeting (I was there for the pre-Alpha event the first time I went to Taipei). There was good food and entertainment. I even ended up singing in the choir (Imagine that). After Alpha, Alicia and I went and got YoFroyo (yogurt) and watched a movie while she cut my hair.

 Saturday we went and saw Joshua (a baby in an orphanage that she helps take care of). Joshua is severely disabled and has very bad seizures, but Alicia loves this little guy with all of her heart. It was so good to meet him and all the people at the orphanage that she talks about all the time. While she did Joshua’s exercises, I played with the other kids. It was a blast. After that we went and  ate lunch at MaryJane’s pizza! The best pizza ever! Then we went to Chiang Kai Shek’s memorial.  (probably grossly misspelled) While we were there we saw the soldier’s ceremonially take down the flag which was really cool. We took tons of cool pictures before heading back to meet Caty, Dillon, Cindy, and Joe at Tostaria, a grilled cheese restaurant. It was fun and we sat and talked for a long time!

Sunday we went to church and then I went to Moses and Joyce’s (Alicia’s pastor and his wife) house to cook. I made grandmother’s apple salad and it turned out ok. Not as good as hers, but decent. There were probably about 30 foreigners and Taiwanese there. Everyone brought a dish and it was delicious!! It really felt like Thanksgiving. After we ate, we sat around and told stories about family Christmas and Thanksgiving. 

 

Monday, we got up and headed to DUNKIN DONUTS to meet Caty for her and Alicia’s weekly “catch-up”.  Amazing Donuts!! After that, I got on the HSR and headed home. At 3 pm. I met Evie Bielby and we went and saw Breaking Dawn. Honestly wasn’t that impressed with it but we had fun. There weren’t many people in the theatre and Evie and I laughed and whispered all the way through the movie. Most Taiwanese don’t have the same sense of humor as we do, so we were the only people laughing at most of the jokes. 

It was a great weekend with good friends and lots of spoken English. I now go back to struggling to learn Chinese and communicate in the hardest language EVER!

I can't believe it is really November...

Is it really the middle of November already. It seems like just yesterday that I hugged my family and Malory goodbye in Birmingham and nervously boarded a plane... Wow...

This week has been excellent. Despite the fact that it rained from Monday to Thursday, it has still been a fantastic week. My classes have all gone smoothly and I have really enjoyed them. I still get anxious when it comes time to plan for the next week, but that is ok. I learn from my mistakes and move on.

Because of the rain, I didn't do much of anything this week. I did go to Chinese class on Tuesday but I did not go anywhere else. The rain and my fear of slippery, wet roads is too great for me to risk the 30 minute ride into Tainan city. Happily, the rain has abated and the sun is peaking out now. It is also getting a little bit cooler, which is nice. One day I will have to break down and buy a coat, but for now, I just wear a sweater.

A few funny things happened this week. Twice this week, I taught for the first part of class with no coteacher and no translator. With the 10th grade regular class, it was ok; they understood most of it. However, with the 11th PE (Sports) class, we just laughed a lot, because neither of us could understand the other. Oh well... it was funny.

Speaking of Chinese, I think I am doing well. I can now order food like a champ. I also am learning very random words from the students which is very funny. Every time I say something correctly in Chinese, they laugh and clap for me. I can count fairly well and I understand words here and there.

Tonight I will head to Taipei with the director and another English speaking person (Kai, he is a soldier from Canada assigned to the school) to pick up a group of ESL teachers from.... Georgia! They will only be here for a month, but I am so excited!

On a sidenote, I am finding how important my... southerness is to me. When you are in the middle of things, you don't appreciate them, but now that I am away from it, it is something that truly defines who I am.  The South is a hard thing to explain, and I have tried, but often I find myself saying, "It is a Southern thing." Part of me finds this hilarious and part of me is truly in awe of my heritage. Thanks to my father, I had a deep sense of this history and culture of the South. Yes, there are aspects that I am not proud of and things I wish I could change, but for the most part I am so proud to be a southerner. More importantly a GRITS (Girl raised in the south.) Being surrounded by Taiwanese and the occasional International person or American (from the North) shows me how much I love the South and those who are from the South.

Starting to feel like home

So it has definitely been a long time since I have written anything. Life goes on… I teach and go to church and stuff…

A few fun things have happened.

A few weeks ago, I went to the night market with some of the teachers from the school. It was fun. It was a bunch of food stands, fair games, and shops. I tried tons and tons of new food.:Oyster omelets, stinky tofu, some kind of fruit drink, and waffles. I hated the stinky tofu, tolerated the Oyster omelet, and loved the waffles. It was fun. 

Stinky Tofu

Waffles

During Halloween week, I taught about Halloween, even though it really isn't my favorite thing. After teaching about the origins of Halloween we made Halloween masks in the Jr. High School. In the regular High School classes, we had a costume contest. Most of the students did a great job and I was very impressed. In the PE classes, we bobbed for apples which was hilarious. Go check out my facebook for some fun videos.

Last weekend, I went to Tainan County with a lady from the church and several of her friends. It was interesting. We went to this mountain where there were monkeys everywhere. It was pretty cool. We also tried lots of new food.  

Last Sunday I had what I am going to term “American day.” After church, I had lunch with David and Amy Bielby (missionaries at my church). We ate hamburgers and then went to see a movie (The Three Musketeers). It felt like I was back in America for a few hours. It was really nice. 

Also the past two days (Thursday and Friday), the students had field days. It was some of the most fun days I have had since I’ve been here. Basically for two days the students competed in normal track and field activities, plus the fun field day races too. They had track races, relays, tug of war, potato sack races and so much more. It is still hot here so that was my one complaint but I had so much fun. Basically I just walked around and talked to teachers and students. I cheered for the kids and learned how to cheer in Chinese. Thursday was like the preliminary races and the top of each of those races, competed on Friday. Friday was crazy. I felt like it was the Olympics. There was an opening ceremony and each class had to do some kind of performance for the audience (dignitaries and school officials).  

Because I don’t have a specific homeroom class and I teach almost all the students in the school, I didn’t feel like I had someone to cheer for, so I kinda tagged along with my co-teacher Amanda and her 12^th Grade PE class. It is kinda funny, because I don’t actually teach them.  

At the end of the day, they had a presentation and the PE classes had a shaving cream fight (okay I admit it, I kinda had a part in it too…) Then we proceeded to take pictures. At one point, the PE boys began picking up one of the teachers and throwing them into the air with a basket toss. I started to edge away because I knew it was only a matter of time before they decided to toss me too… After they tossed all the teachers, they saw me and started after me. I ran, but they are faster… It was terrifying and hilarious and fun. I was mainly afraid that they would drop me. But they didn’t. 

I really needed these fun days because on Wednesday I had an evaluation. It was nerve wracking because about 15 people come and watch you teach. I had no idea what they are looking for and I did my best. I taught a lesson on how to write a letter. We did pen pal letters to two students in America and I thought it went really well. After class, I had to go and interview with a professor from a university in Taipei. She was the same professor who worked with us in the orientation time. She was very smiley, but she sat there for about 40 minutes and told me what I needed to do differently and change about my teaching style. Some of it was true, but some of it seemed off base because she was basing her observations off of one visit. Also some of it seemed contradictory. Also someone else talked to my co-teachers by themselves. Then they sat there and talked about me in Chinese so I didn’t understand any of it. But it is ok. I felt very defeated and upset that day, but by Thursday, I felt some better. Several of my teachers came to me and told me that they liked how I was teaching and that what I was doing worked for the school, even if she didn’t like what I was doing. I plan to change a few things, but not much. 

Church is also going very well. I have made some good friends with some of the NCKU students. I am getting more involved with my small group and am really enjoying it. 

I’ve also started running again. There is a university campus near the school where I teach so I go there after school or in the mornings. It is funny because the baseball team practices there in the afternoons. The guys are so funny because they have started saying hello. I’m pretty sure that is the only word they know in English. Other than blisters from my new tennis shoes, I’ve really enjoyed it.

It is starting to feel like home.