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.