Well, I haven't done a super great job about keeping this updated in the last while but I figured I should at least say something before I leave, if only to let people know that I'll be returning to Minnesota in a few days. Yes, I'll be getting landing in Minneapolis the morning of the 4th of July. It's going to be fun to have my immediate family together again for the first time (well, excluding a couple of moments on Skype) in over 18 months!
The past week has been a little bit nuts trying to say goodbyes and begin the packing process (how did I end up with so much more stuff than I came here with?) But most of the goodbyes started yesterday and will continue until I leave. And the intense packing and cleaning is happening today and the next couple days, along with some goodbye dinners here and there and of course, I can't miss the water fight with 502 coming up this afternoon when I go to Dong Shin for the last time.
I would appreciate any prayers, especially for peace of mind and I guess just being able to have good goodbyes and to end well. Saying goodbye is something I can never get good at no matter how much practice I've had and leaving Taiwan is super hard. One of the last goodbyes I will make (and one I am especially dreading) is the one to all the wonderful friends I've made at The Home of God's Love.
A few weeks ago when I knew the end would be approaching soon and would be extremely difficult, I decided to make a list of some things I'm looking forward to in Minnesota. Of course, compared to leaving people I love, some of these sound kind of silly (except of course, returning to other people whom I also love) but I thought I'd share some of the list with you (it's a work in progress and I haven't worked on it too much):
1) Seeing friends and family
2) No more cockroaches or giant bugs in general
3) Bread will last more than three days without molding
4) Toilet paper, soap and some kind of method of drying hands in public restrooms
5) Garbage cans in public areas (like parks, malls, etc.)
6) Good milk
7) Grilling/picnics
8) Lying in the yard
9) Mowing the lawn/yard work (let me just put a disclaimer here since I know the kind of family I have so I won't get all kinds of offers from aunts and uncles to come over to help them with their yard work. Going for a while without working in the yard at all did make me miss it a little bit, but I will get my fill of it very quickly.)
Well, that's a start although I'm sure there will be more things I remember missing once I get reunited with them! Anyway, I'd best be off for now. Perhaps if I need a break from packing or cleaning in the next few days I will post again (I'm sure I'll leave the water fight this afternoon with a few stories!) But for now, this is it!
Friday, June 28, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
English Easy Go
May 25th. A date that will be ingrained in my mind for ages. We had been working towards it since the beginning of March. Ah, yes, English Easy Go.
English Easy Go is a county wide English competition, mainly for 5th graders but you can pick the best English speakers in the school I think. There are all kinds of categories, but all schools with an ETA have to compete in at least either the Reader's Theater or the Song and Dance competitions. The schools either compete with small, medium or large schools. So I had Shun An competing in Reader's Theater in the medium school group and Dong Shin competing in Song and Dance in the small school group. And as one of my LETs told me, "English Easy Go is not easy. It should be called English Hard Go. And every year, the teachers get mad at the students because they do not take it seriously." I don't think I ever saw my co-teachers really get that mad at the students though...I guess there's a first for everything!
Shun An held practices twice a week starting in about mid-March and moved up to four times a week in May during the 40 minute period after lunch. I guess technically it's considered rest time, but I've only seen about one person resting during it, otherwise the students are running around doing I'm not really sure what or having orchestra practice or cleaning the school or countless other activities and the teachers are generally all just working. Anyway, I know The True Story of the Three Little Pigs like the back of my hand...better even. I know exactly how each kid says each phrase and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when, at the competition, James successfully said, "So of course, the minute he knocked on the door it fell down" as opposed to, "So of course, the minute he knocked on the door, he fell down" which was what had been happening every day in practice.
Dong Shin chose to participate in the song and dance category because the night before English Easy Go they had a big school wide performance night and the fifth graders were going to put on the play Cinderella in English. So my task was to find an English pop song that had some sort of Cinderella theme. Instead I thought to myself, "What song could I listen to multiple times a day for a month or two and not get sick of?" Call Me Maybe was the obvious choice. So with a little help from my roommate, Kenton, I rewrote the lyrics of Call Me Maybe to be about Cinderella...sort of. Fortunately, the students really liked the catchy tune and worked really hard at learning it. But after they learned it we kind of stopped practicing it and devoted the time to the practicing for the play, so actually Siena ended up making up the dance and teaching it to them the Monday and Tuesday before English Easy Go...so since I go to Shun An those days of the week I didn't really help much with that. Most of the boys were playing girls parts (hence all the wigs). At English Easy Go we added a little bit of the play to the beginning and end of the dance so it would meet the five minute minimum time.
Here's the link if you care to watch the performance on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy1Dz1jBVC8
It was easier to understand in person (and probably also due to the fact that I wrote the lyrics...) but anyway I was really proud of them for how hard they worked and how much they improved (and their great attitudes about the whole thing). Also for singing just with music. I know a couple of schools had their students singing with the actual recording which was obviously way easier.
Then at English Easy Go all the ETAs had to work at stations for all the students to come through to practice English. We were told to spend about 30 seconds or so on each student to have a mini dialogue with them. My group decided on a restaurant theme since we knew the school where English Easy Go was being held at had a lot of fake food we could use. So for about 3.5 hours we gave student after student a little menu and asked what they wanted to eat. We got little breaks to go watch out own students perform and then came back to the station. Good times.
Just today, we had a little party at Dong Shin to celebrate English Easy Go. And like anything else with that class it was very fun and more eventful that I expected. There were 3 kinds of cake (black tea, lime, and peach), sweet potato chips and milk for the students (I stuck with my tea). Everyone was happy and excited. Of course we couldn't get through the whole party without incident so I shouldn't have been that surprised when Nick sneezed (or coughed? I'm not really sure) with a mouth full of water and incidentally sprayed water all over poor little Kitty, who sits next to him. Considering her whole right side, desk and cake were covered with water from his mouth, she handled it very well. Oh 502, the excitement never stops.
English Easy Go is a county wide English competition, mainly for 5th graders but you can pick the best English speakers in the school I think. There are all kinds of categories, but all schools with an ETA have to compete in at least either the Reader's Theater or the Song and Dance competitions. The schools either compete with small, medium or large schools. So I had Shun An competing in Reader's Theater in the medium school group and Dong Shin competing in Song and Dance in the small school group. And as one of my LETs told me, "English Easy Go is not easy. It should be called English Hard Go. And every year, the teachers get mad at the students because they do not take it seriously." I don't think I ever saw my co-teachers really get that mad at the students though...I guess there's a first for everything!
Shun An held practices twice a week starting in about mid-March and moved up to four times a week in May during the 40 minute period after lunch. I guess technically it's considered rest time, but I've only seen about one person resting during it, otherwise the students are running around doing I'm not really sure what or having orchestra practice or cleaning the school or countless other activities and the teachers are generally all just working. Anyway, I know The True Story of the Three Little Pigs like the back of my hand...better even. I know exactly how each kid says each phrase and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when, at the competition, James successfully said, "So of course, the minute he knocked on the door it fell down" as opposed to, "So of course, the minute he knocked on the door, he fell down" which was what had been happening every day in practice.
Dong Shin chose to participate in the song and dance category because the night before English Easy Go they had a big school wide performance night and the fifth graders were going to put on the play Cinderella in English. So my task was to find an English pop song that had some sort of Cinderella theme. Instead I thought to myself, "What song could I listen to multiple times a day for a month or two and not get sick of?" Call Me Maybe was the obvious choice. So with a little help from my roommate, Kenton, I rewrote the lyrics of Call Me Maybe to be about Cinderella...sort of. Fortunately, the students really liked the catchy tune and worked really hard at learning it. But after they learned it we kind of stopped practicing it and devoted the time to the practicing for the play, so actually Siena ended up making up the dance and teaching it to them the Monday and Tuesday before English Easy Go...so since I go to Shun An those days of the week I didn't really help much with that. Most of the boys were playing girls parts (hence all the wigs). At English Easy Go we added a little bit of the play to the beginning and end of the dance so it would meet the five minute minimum time.
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| Here is the whole class. That's Cinderella in the skirt. |
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| Here we have Cinderella looking for a taxi to take her to the ball. |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy1Dz1jBVC8
It was easier to understand in person (and probably also due to the fact that I wrote the lyrics...) but anyway I was really proud of them for how hard they worked and how much they improved (and their great attitudes about the whole thing). Also for singing just with music. I know a couple of schools had their students singing with the actual recording which was obviously way easier.
Then at English Easy Go all the ETAs had to work at stations for all the students to come through to practice English. We were told to spend about 30 seconds or so on each student to have a mini dialogue with them. My group decided on a restaurant theme since we knew the school where English Easy Go was being held at had a lot of fake food we could use. So for about 3.5 hours we gave student after student a little menu and asked what they wanted to eat. We got little breaks to go watch out own students perform and then came back to the station. Good times.
Just today, we had a little party at Dong Shin to celebrate English Easy Go. And like anything else with that class it was very fun and more eventful that I expected. There were 3 kinds of cake (black tea, lime, and peach), sweet potato chips and milk for the students (I stuck with my tea). Everyone was happy and excited. Of course we couldn't get through the whole party without incident so I shouldn't have been that surprised when Nick sneezed (or coughed? I'm not really sure) with a mouth full of water and incidentally sprayed water all over poor little Kitty, who sits next to him. Considering her whole right side, desk and cake were covered with water from his mouth, she handled it very well. Oh 502, the excitement never stops.
Monday, June 3, 2013
東興國小
(That's Dong Shin Elementary School for those of you who can't read Chinese). Way back in the fall I posted some pictures of my other school, Shun An, fully intending to post some pictures of Dong Shin soon after, but time slipped away from me and then it rained basically every day (or so it seemed) and I try to avoid getting wet at all costs so I didn't want to walk about the school grounds if I didn't have to. Anyway, last Friday was a mostly sunny day so I took a stroll about documenting a few things that I see every day that I'm there.
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| Here's the hallway as I'm standing outside the teacher's office looking towards the English classroom and 1st and 2nd grade classrooms (and the scooter parking lot way at the end) |
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| This is what I look at every day except the desks are filled with students then |
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| Here's one of our sinks. They're outside several of the classrooms |
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| The scooter parking lot. Mine is the one with the helmet and rain pants hanging on the mirrors |
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| Here is the playground. It's off to the right of the paved area in the picture below |
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| This is the front of the school and the big paved area is where the kids play during breaks, do their stay healthy dance, and line up at the end of the school day before they are released to go home, among other things |
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| Here's a diagram of the school (although I've never seen any other foreigners at the school, let alone any in hot air ballons!) |
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| Here is our statue of Confucius |
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| And last but not least, it's the track |
Well, that's a little bit of Dong Shin (also spelled Dong Sing and Dong Xing-you can take your pick) where I spend my Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. It's smaller than Shun An and only has about 120 students, so each grade only has one class except for 5th grade which has 2 classes of 14 students. Apparently 28 was the cut off for size because the 6th grade class has 27 students.
One thing I should have taken a picture of (although a picture couldn't do it justice) is the brick road that goes around the school to the parking lot. This road is the bane of my existence. Most of the bricks don't lay flat but instead stick up or are missing. Every day I bounce down it on my scooter struggling to keep a pace that gets it over with as quickly as possible (and past the amused stares of all the 6th graders who are strewn about cleaning the school grounds, except on days I arrive a bit late, in which case I drive even faster) but I also struggle to keep the pace under control so I don't go off the road into the gutter or just go completely flying off my scooter. Every time it's a close contest between the road and me, although I've seen steady improvement (in myself, the road has stayed pretty much the same) mostly because I've found the parts of it that are the smoothest and easiest to drive on. Oh Dong Shin. Always an adventure.
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