The Beginning of the End

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!

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 is the whole class.  That's Cinderella in the skirt.

Here we have Cinderella looking for a taxi to take her to the ball.  

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.

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.

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)

This is what I look at every day except the desks are filled with students then

Here's one of our sinks.  They're outside several of the classrooms

The scooter parking lot.  Mine is the one with the helmet and rain pants hanging on the mirrors

Here is the playground. It's off to the right of the paved area in the picture below

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 

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!)

Here is our statue of Confucius

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.

Oh Second Graders...

Yesterday Siena and I were teaching our second grade class and one of the goals that day was to count to 20.  So for practice we had the students empty out their pencil cases and count each item in their pencil case.  Every student here has a pencil case and it seems like just about anything might be pulled out of those things.  Some of the highlights I saw the second graders count were a whistle, a watch, keychains, some kind of trading cards, many pairs of scissors (this is actually really normal and a lot of students have exacto knives as well...), bandaids (I don't think those were related to the previously mentioned items), lots of extra lead, rubber bands, random pen caps without the pens, of course normal things like pencils, pens, rulers and erasers, and a lot of other things I would consider "junk".

Next we taught them the little English mini dialogue for the chapter and it was "Have a seat!" "Thanks!".  We showed them the e-book and they repeated "Have a seat" several times.  Next

the e-book said "Thanks!"  Now these second graders have "Thanks!" down to a T.  It's one thing they actually have mastered.  So Siena exchanged curious looks when the e-book said "Thanks!" and the second graders shouted back "Effesuh!!" with great enthusiasm.  We played it a couple more times telling them to listen closely but after hearing various versions of "Effesuh" and nothing remotely close to "Thanks" we just switched to having them repeat us.  Not quite as exciting, but at least they were saying the right word.

Here I have a few pictures of these kids a few classes ago when we were playing a game where the teachers called out a letter sound and pairs of students tried to be the first to hold up the letter.  We didn't actually keep score or anything but they got super into it.

This was a practice round so the excitement hadn't quite built yet

Intense searching for the letter "T"

Success!

Nature Time!!

The other day I ran back to the office to grab some papers from my co-teacher, Siena's, desk for class and I couldn't find them so I started looking around and happened to open a flat box that was lying on top of her desk...not really paying attention to all the air holes punched into the top of the box.  To my horror it was filled with silk worms chowing down on leaves! All that registered in my head was, "they're alive!!"  So naturally I slammed the lid shut and fled forgetting all about the papers.  After class we examined the silk worms and she offered me one to take home...I had to decline...I knew I would let it die...I couldn't even bear the sight of it.

Anyway, that Friday I got to on a field trip with 502 to the Yilan Green Expo.  A couple days before we went my LET, Siena, handed me an ID badge and told me I'd need it to get into the Expo. Well I took a look at it and there was my grinning face...the only problem was that it was a picture from Halloween when I had dressed as a pirate!  So naturally I exclaimed, "This is the best picture you could find?!?"  But she said the rest she had of me were blurry and it didn't matter because no one would be looking at it anyway.  Well, before we even went inside on Friday, the students were all looking at my badge mainly to read my Chinese name, but then one of them noticed the picture, took a good look, and yelled, "Teacher Charissa used to be a pirate!!!" as he went running away. Wonderful.

Yep, this is what I wore all day

Well, the day was a lot of fun but one of the first things we did was watch a horrifying performance of these giant frogs who danced around and sang.  Later there was also a magician who was equally terrifying.  Basically, the magician wanted to steal the frogs' memories in order to somehow build a chemical plant where their homes are, but thanks to the littlest frog (there on the right of the picture) his plan was thwarted.

I thought the show was for children but the majority of the audience looked more like this.  And yes, the one in the red hat was most definitely asleep

The rest of the time we walked around looking at things.  They were going to have a more structured lesson that afternoon but I was only there for the morning.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with the kids outside of English class.

The kids are checking out the bees pollinating the flowers

Everyone became enthralled by this bee on the ground...well, except for the fellow who's using his umbrella as a gun

Cocoa the Cat

We've had a visitor at one of my schools for the past month or so.  A mangy, disagreeable looking cat who roams the school grounds and once in a while lets out a plaintive yowl.  The children have started calling him Cocoa because of his fur color.  On Monday, as I was sitting at my desk, Grace urgently told me to look!  And there was Cocoa on the top of a tall cupboard in the office.  I jumped up to snap a few pictures, thoroughly enjoying the excitement while Grace went next door to get a teacher to shoo Cocoa away.  The teacher came and chased Cocoa away with a broom and it was all highly amusing (for me at least).  Apparently this isn't the first time this has happened and I secretly (well, not so secretly now) eagerly await his return.

Cocoa was very interested in this box

He decided to climb into the box 

Cocoa had crazy eyes.  I wasn't able to capture the full extent of their craziness but here you can get a glimpse

Children's Day

Thursday, April 4th was Children's Day so we had a holiday! Woohoo!  And on Wednesday I showed up at school and was informed that there were going to be special activities all morning for Children's Day.  In fact it was starting in just a little while with a fun run.  The only problem is that the words fun and run are oxymorons in my book and my LET suggested I could run with the 5th graders (their class is one of the most fun ones).  I asked if she was running, but no, she was standing at one of the corners of the course directing kids where to go.  I tried to get a job like that too so I wouldn't have to run but to no avail.  I was leaning towards declining (I just really don't like running!) but then she said the student who has leg braces and who has to use a walker was doing it, so I would be okay.  I felt like I needed to do it after that...

And so I ran the fun run.  It was a struggle, but I made it.  It didn't help that all the other grades had just gone once around the course so I thought that was all I needed to do but as I neared what I thought was the end, I noticed the lead kids going around a second time.  I hoped that I would be able to discreetly stop after once around (in my exhaustion forgetting that the only foreign teacher in a tiny school can't "discreetly" do anything).  But as all the other students and teachers began cheering "Teacher Charissa!! Teacher Charissa!! Jia you!!!  I found some inner strength to keep running (at least while I was within their line of vision!)

Anyway, once I had recovered from the run, the jump roping was starting.  Jump roping is much more up my alley so I went to go check it out.  I thought it was going to be some kind of competition, but it was just like half an hour of jump roping fun.  So I just moseyed around between groups and joined in the jumping, sometimes twirling the rope for other jump ropers.  I joined it with a huge group of 5th graders to see who could jump the longest (and won!) so I was feeling pretty good.

The last activity we did was have all the students make paper airplanes to throw off the second floor.  I think they were supposed to write their hopes and dreams on them and it was something about letting your dreams fly.  Anyway, whatever it was, it was super exciting for everyone (especially the first and second graders whose classrooms are only on the first floor).  And after they threw them down everybody spent a few minutes just throwing the airplanes around and at each other.  I was constantly turning around to small voices yelling "Teacher Charissa!" and an airplane would come flying my way.  Everyone was in good spirits and it was a really fun day!

The Staying Healthy Dance

At 10:15 every day we get a 15 minute break that the kids usually spend running all over the place or doing who knows what, but on nicer days they spend about 7 minutes doing this dance-type activity to keep themselves healthy.  In fact, at certain parts of the song they all shout something about staying healthy.  It's a little hard for me to understand them, since they don't yell it exactly it unison.  Anyway, the other day I whipped out my camera and tried to capture some footage.  The closest students in the video are the 1st graders.  We've had several new students the past couple of weeks so some of the students who are standing around and not really participating are new...some of them are just students who apparently didn't feel like getting involved that day.  The confused little fellow who kept getting re-directed by the principal is one of the new kids.

Peanut Butter and Jelly?!?

I'm going to try to tell a few more anecdotes from school, but the thing is, amusing things happen pretty frequently, but so often it's all about the facial expressions and just knowing the kids, that I'm afraid they lose some quality in the retelling.  But I'll just tell a few things that have made me chuckle lately anyway.

Actually this one happened around Christmas time.  I had a first grader ask me if I seen Santa Claus and I told her I hadn't and she seemed absolutely shocked.  I started to wonder if I had heard her correctly when she exclaimed "Doesn't he go to foreign countries?"  My teacher took over for me here,  since my Chinese wasn't able to cover any sort of answer, unless I told her straight up "Santa isn't real" which seemed like would have been a bad choice.

A couple times I've been teaching about something or other (once it was teaching the vocab word "sandwich" and another time about American lunches) and the fact that American eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (for lunch no less!) shocks the class.  I've never seen my sixth graders so passionate about anything before as they were about how outrageous peanut and jelly is.  My co-teacher tried to compare it to stinky tofu saying that Americans think that stinky tofu is terrible because we aren't used to it and they think peanut butter and jelly is terrible because they aren't used to it.  But the students would have none of it.  They said things like, "But stinky tofu is so good!" (I had to bite my tongue at that point...I would bet large sums of money that whoever you are reading this, you would not like stinky tofu).

Anyway, in second grade the other day we were teaching the word net to go with the letter n and there was a little clip on the e-book of someone using a net to try to catch a butterfly, which he didn't end up catching.  We watched it a few times, saying "N, net"and then the kids would all start yelling, "jia you! jia you!"  Cheering for the guy to catch it this time...apparently no one had caught on that it was the exact same cartoon each time.

A couple weeks ago, after my new fifth grade class a student came up and asked me to draw something.  I told him I didn't know how to draw and he asked if I'd draw a person.  Well, I really can't draw people so then when he asked if I would draw a rabbit I thought I had better agree before it got too difficult.  So the next thing I knew I was sketching a little rabbit in the middle of his Hello Darbie! English book...only after I started did I realize that a teacher probably shouldn't be promoting drawing in the middle of textbooks, but I was using a pen so it as too late.  Anyway, he seemed happy enough with it and the next week a small group approached me after class with a pen and a post-it note requesting another rabbit.  He brought his book along to show me "like this one".  So I drew another rabbit (and signed it this time).

All the students here carry pencil boxes around full of all kinds of things besides pencils and pens.  Once I watched a third grader pull out five rulers and three erasers (nothing like being prepared!)  And nearly all of them have exacto knives and/or scissors in there which I generally forget about until they start fooling around with them, usually by threatening other kids (although thankfully, I've only see that in jest).  Oh the excitement never ends...

Thailand!

Yes, that's right! We went to Thailand for two weeks of our winter break. Woot! True, this was a while back, but I started writing this when we got back and then didn't add to it for ages, so I figured I'd just quickly finish it up so as to not let it go wasted!

So in mid January the semester ended and we kicked off our winter break at the Fulbright mid-year conference at this cool resort in Northern Taiwan.  And just a couple days after the conference was over, some friends and I boarded an early plane to embark on our journey to Thailand!  We split up the trip by the three places we were going (Bangkok, beaches and Chiang Mai) and different people planned each section.  I actually was the only person who didn't help plan anything...oops.  But in all honesty, that was probably for the best for everyone.

We started the trip in Bangkok where we stayed in a neat hostel, Mile Map Hostel, I believe it was called.  The couple of days we were in Bangkok we spent most of the time touring various places, like the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, the Grand Palace and Wat Arun.  For those of you who like me, didn't know what a wat is, it seems to mostly mean a temple in Thailand, Cambodia or Laos (don't quote me on this, I'm not sure of the exact definition).  At the temples and the Grand Palace all the girls had to wear ankle length skirts and not wear tank tops either.  Fortunately, the places all had skirts we could rent since we were not dressed appropriately since it was sweltering in Bangkok.  One day we also went on a bike tour which was a super fun way to see some parts of the city we wouldn't have visited otherwise.  And after a few days in Bangkok we got on the overnight train to head south to make our way to the island of Koh Tao.  When we got our train tickets we also got bus tickets to the ferry and ferry tickets to get to the island which we were told was the way to do it...although I'm not convinced that it ever is the way to do it even under normal circumstances.

The overnight train was an interesting little set up.  There were single seats facing each other on both sides of the aisle and around 10:30 or so someone came around and folded them into beds and also pulled down beds from the the ceiling.  Shortly after we started our trip though, the train stopped for over an hour and later it stopped for a long time again.  For some reason, I didn't think about the fact that that would probably affect our arrival time, but sure enough we got there about two hours after we were supposed to, and to cut a long story short, we missed the bus and the ferry but eventually made it to another pier where another ferry left at 1pm which we arrived in plenty of time for...over 4 hours in fact.

So we eventually made it to Koh Tao which was a beautiful island...oh, I wish I were there right now...Anyway, we spent most of our time relaxing on the beach (some people from our group played a lot of volleyball, I was not one of them).  One day we did go snorkeling and I was slightly petrified.  I went along figuring I could always just stay in the boat, however I got so seasick that being able to get off the boat into the water was actually a relief! Anyway, I ended up having a lot of fun and enjoying myself despite the fact that I can't really swim (obviously we had lifejackets though) and had to get towed back to the boat by one of my obliging friends each time we stopped.  Perhaps one of the low-points was when I wasn't getting pulled along fast enough for the guy in charge so he threw me the life ring and towed me to the boat himself.  I probably should have been more embarrassed by that situation than I was though...

After several relaxing days in Koh Tao we ventured on to our last destination: Chiang Mai!  Because we put off buying tickets until the last minute and because there was a big party on a neighboring island, we ended up having to take an overnight seated train back to Bangkok instead of a sleeper.  This was a fairly unpleasant ride since we had to sit up all night and I was freezing most of the time (that pesky air conditioning) and also it felt like the train was going to derail at any minute.  The train was only two cars long so perhaps that had something to do with the derailing feeling.  Anyway, we made it to Bangkok where we took a plane to Chiang Mai.  I really liked Chiang Mai because while the other places we visited were very neat, they were also very touristy and Chiang Mai just seemed more livable, although plenty touristy as well.  We saw a bunch of temples there, wats, if you will, and I for one, truly enjoyed all the great puns (if there is such a thing as a great pun) you can make with the word wat!  "Wat" was one of them, you might ask?  Well, I'll spare you the details, because you can probably get the idea.

While there, we also went to some kind of elephant reserve where we got to feed, wash and ride the elephants.  This was really neat although I was kind of nervous.  Elephants are huge.  We rode the elephants in pairs and of course the elephant that Emily and I had was a trouble maker and insisted on carrying a log around with him the whole time.  Doing so made him trip occasionally and made his head go all over the place and at one point when we were going downhill, I was convinced that I would just tumble off over the front.  Stressful.

Oh, also, it should be mentioned that going to Chiang Mai fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine because when I was about nine years old my family moved to a different city in China, and my friends there would go to a conference in Chiang Mai over the Chinese New Years break and my family's were always in China (which was also cool, although I didn't realize it so much at the time).  Anyway, I got this idea that Chiang Mai was a magical place that I needed to visit, and I'm so glad I finally was able to.

Anyway, after Chiang Mai, we just went back to Bangkok for one day where we checked out the floating market.  Or we thought that's what we were doing.  We found it all right and walked along the river but thought we would take a boat around to where we thought the main part of the market was but we ended up accidentally just taking a boat tour with no market in sight, so I think maybe we were already at the main part...I'm not really sure.  The next day we made our way back to Taiwan and enjoyed the next two weeks off from school. Lovely.

Anyway, I think it's safe to say a grand ol' time was had by all!

Finally Some Firecrackers!

It was Chinese New Year last weekend and every night since then fireworks have been going off.  I didn't get in on any of the action because I didn't see any fireworks for sale ever, but some friends and I had been talking about getting some and then this Saturday night it finally all came together because Tyler knew where the firework stands were and I found out that he and Sarah hadn't set any off before!  As an enthusiastic pyromaniac, I couldn't just find out that information and not take any action, so Emily and I set off to purchase some fireworks.

So we got to the fireworks stand and began to inquire to the saleslady after the prices.  She also recommended a few as we were picking up pretty much everything there and inspecting it.  We had only been looking about a minute or two when a jolly, portly, slightly intoxicated, middle-aged man came up from somewhere within the store and began miming what each of the fireworks did as we picked them up.  We would kind of nod and smile and at one point the clerk told him that we already knew what they were.  I assumed that he was her husband or at least had some affiliation with the store and he eventually stopped miming and took out a cigarette and lit it (right over the table of fireworks) and then casually started flicking his lighter on and off.  Although he was holding it a foot or two above the fireworks, I couldn't help but think it wasn't a great idea.  He also would randomly burst into song, joining in with the music that was coming from somewhere in the back of the store.

For some reason I asked them what their favorite fireworks were and the store clerk said something like "they're all good" but this man picked up this massive snowman one and tried to make me buy it.  He also wanted us to buy matches but we didn't need any, but then with a benign smile, he gave me his own lighter that he had been fiddling around with.  Eventually Emily and I were satisfied with our selection and decided to make our purchase so we paid her and the clerk bagged them up for us and this man started grabbing handfuls of those butterfly fireworks and tried to put them in our bag telling us that they were a gift. The clerk however, kept taking them out of the bag and pulling it away from him saying that she had already given us a discount.  At this point I still thought the man worked there and I thought to myself "ah, we can see who is the business minded one here."  When the clerk turned around to get us our change, the man sidled up to me and discreetly handed me a giant stick of punk, which I took and discreetly put it into my bag.  Please remember that I thought he worked at the store and wouldn't rest until he had given us something.  The last part of that is probably true too: he was very persistent!  Well, we turned to leave and he started offering me a ride home on his scooter which I declined and Emily and I had only walked a little ways before who should pull up on his motorcycle but that man! Again, asking if we'd like a ride, but this time throwing in in English "only one! Only one!" (since he apparently couldn't fit more than one of us on his scooter.  I am fairly confident that in his state he should not have been driving at all, let alone with a passenger! Anyway, we declined again and he drove off somewhere and right about then it hit me that he probably did not work at that stand...so I guess I just kind of stole the punk...oops.

Anyway, the fireworks were super fun and the clerk's recommendations proved to be solid so we went back later that evening to get more to light off (that man was no where to be found, but I think the clerk's actual husband was).  And for those of you who are wondering Roman candles get you the most bang for your buck.

Christmas Weekend

So the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas were rather exciting days...well, they were different from my typical weekend anyway.  Saturday was a workday in exchange for getting Monday, December 31st off, but my school decided not to make it like a regular Monday and had a school wide talent show all morning, which was fun for the first hour or two.  But after nearly 4 hours and watching Gangnam Style get danced to 3 different times, I was ready for it to be over...There were a lot of really cute performances though and some were just funny, so I'm definitely not complaining about having a talent show instead of classes!

On Sunday my other school had Sports Day.  I guess December 25th is their school's birthday so they had a big event that Sunday morning to celebrate.  It was super cold that day and raining at first, so I was quite thankful for the complimentary matching pink vests all the teachers had to wear that day.  I was grateful for every layer I could fit on.  The day started off with a couple of speeches.  Somehow I found myself sitting on the stage with all the important people, and even though I had been told to sit there, I spent most of the day walking around getting closer to the action.  After the speeches, there were several performances.  First there was a recorder choir and then there was a special lion dance that they've done at at temple before too although I'm not really sure what the significance is.

Besides the four lions (each one had two kids under it) there were two kids with massive head/masks who waved green leaves around

At the end this bigger lion came out and held a banner

The recorder choir was made up of fourth, fifth and sixth graders

After that the students also all did dances that they've been working on for a while.  Below are some clips of them.  The first one was a kind of warm up dance type thing that all the students did.  The person leading them is our principal.  Then there is the fifth and sixth grade dance, the first and second grade dance and a really short clip of the third and fourth grade dance.

Then there were some performances by two groups of middle aged women (actually the second group had some men too).  They mostly danced to Chinese music but I nearly lost it when they started dancing to "Achy Breaky Heart".  It just seemed so out of context.  After that amusing interlude, I spend the rest of the day watching the kids compete in goofy little contests.  Although some of them were really cute because there were so many parents and grandparents there that about half the activities included them and it was just really nice to see the kids and parents and grandparents all working together and having fun.

This group also did a dance with fans

This is the whole school standing with their grade 

Some fourth and fifth graders dancing (the one in the front is the same jump roper in the photo at the end)

Sixth and fifth grade

Third and fourth grade

The fifth grade contest involved a relay of putting tennis balls on the frisbees and then picking them up again...it was much more exciting than it sounds

The sixth graders had to race around while only stand on those foam squares

The third and fourth graders competed in a jump rope race relay.  This little guy couldn't jump rope at all (you can see everyone else had finished by this point).  He even lost his shoe during it but he never stopped smiling

After Sports Day was over, I hopped on my scooter and drove to the orphanage to see what they were up to for Christmas.  That was what really got me in the Christmas spirit I think because all the kids (well, not just the kids) had so much excited energy there and it was contagious! There was a massive gift exchange and they had even gotten me a gift! It was so sweet of them! All in all it was a wonderful day!

Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays!!

Well, Christmas has come and gone...but in a small way I sort of feel like I'm still waiting for it.  This year was definitely different, which is no surprise of course.  First of all, being in a totally different climate this year didn't prepare me as the bitter cold and snow of Minnesota usually do, by making me realize it's winter and that Christmas will be coming.  Then of course, there weren't finals (not that I can say I missed those!).  But I've sort of gotten used to those as being the last thing to conquer before I can really delve into Christmas festivities completely.  And finally, here in Taiwan we had no Christmas break and in fact, I also had to work on the weekend before Christmas (more on what those days involved later), so I joked about the 12 Days of Work instead of the 12 Days of Christmas...which doesn't actually sound funny now, but for some reason I found it amusing at the time.  Anyway, despite all that, I would still consider it a really great Christmas! And the title of this post isn't trying to be ironic or something, it's just stating a fact.  There really is nothing like being with your family for Christmas! But I had the joy of being with my family via skype on Christmas Eve during our family celebration.  Besides the fact that I wasn't actually there to give everyone hugs...it pretty much felt like I was there (until I signed off and went to work...that was probably the low-point of the day).  But through skype we all took turns opening our gifts just like usual and I even had some to open due to a wonderful friend from college (thanks Amy!).  Then my dad read the Christmas story from the Bible (which we usually do before presents, but in the excitement of skyping we got things a little out of order).  Anyway, I was (and am) very thankful for technology because it really makes the distance seem much smaller!

Despite the fact that (and maybe because of it) Christmas isn't celebrated much here, I got to teach about it in school.  We even got to have class in a different classroom with a projector that day just for the occasion! We sang some songs and I gave a little presentation about Christmas traditions and then shared what my own family does.  Cutting down Christmas trees was a subject of fascination and one fourth grade class in particular asked tons of questions.  They wanted to know how much they cost and if you had to pay more for bigger trees and if you could just pay fee and then take as many trees as you'd like, and lots of other things...Then some of the classes got to play Pass the Parcel which is always a big hit.

Just talking about Christmas to one of the classes

Who will get to unwrap the parcel?! (Clearly that's what they're all wondering)
By the way, if you noticed the face mask on the little boy, that's totally a common sight.  People wear them whenever they have a cold or cough

The excitement of Pass the Parcel never ceases!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l3e-xe9iEg

Here is a link of the second graders at one of my schools doing a funny little dance to Jingle Bells.  They could sing it really well, but multi-tasking was a little difficult for them.  They actually practiced this for a couple lessons so  performing it and getting recorded was the reward.

And below is a video from one of my first grade classes on Christmas Day!  This was at my other school and the first graders are singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas (and also doing a funny little dance).  This was only a one day thing, but I think they did a pretty good job! In the video they are practicing because they went back and performed it for their homeroom teacher.

Are you an American? Or a foreigner?

I realized that I haven't said much about what I actually spend most of my time at, which is at school, so I figured I'd take this time to tell a few stories to prove that I actually work sometimes and tell a few things that have happened at school.

Earlier in the fall I was sitting in the office and some men came in with all these blankets.  Turns out they were traveling blanket salesmen.  I thought it seemed kind of random for them to show up at a school to peddle their wares, but no one else seemed to think so and they made a fair amount of business that day.  I guess they had come last year too and business was just as good then.

A few days after that, I walked into the office after teaching a class and what should I find but a grey parrot in a box.  Apparently it had escaped from its home and flew into a classroom so somehow someone had caught it and boxed it up and it was waiting for its owner to come retrieve it.  I was disappointed I had missed all the commotion of trying to catch it, not that I actually heard that there was any commotion, but I imagine that trying to catch a parrot is no easy task!

For Halloween, there were a bunch of school-wide activities in the afternoon and we were assisted by parent and grandparent volunteers.  At my beanbag toss station, I had the pleasure of working with these two precious grandpas.  I loved how good natured they were about wearing these random blue wigs just to get in the spirit of things.  Unfortunately, they only spoke Taiwanese, so our communication was rather limited, consisting mostly of smiles and some attempts at Chinese on both sides.

The first graders all think that I understand Chinese fluently.  The fact that after they rattle off all kinds of stories to me and I just kind of smile and say "oh?" hasn't seemed to change their opinion yet.  So the other day I was working with a group of them and one asked me out of the blue, "Teacher Charissa, ni shi mei guo ren, ha shi wai guo ren?" (are you an American or a foreigner?).  Everyone looked at me expectantly and were shocked when I told them I was both.  I didn't know how to explain it, so I just let them be amazed, as if it was something I had any control over.

Recently, before I was to begin reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears to the same first grade class, the students asked if I'd be reading it in English.  Grace, my LET, jokingly asked if Taiwanese would be better and then someone shouted that they thought Japanese would be good! I have no idea why since no one in their class understands Japanese.  Also, immediately upon seeing the picture of Goldilocks in the book, a few students wondered whether that was me.  No kids, I'm not Goldilocks.

Then of course, there was the day Grace and I walked into our fourth grade class and after the usual whole class shouting in unison, "Good morning Miss Yang!  Good Morning Teacher Charissa!" a kid said that his pants ripped.  No one seemed too concerned as I replayed what he said in my head and decided that that was in fact what he had said, but then he proceeded to show us and the whole class that his pants had indeed split completely down the middle.  Thank goodness for long underwear!

We do a whole lot of singing (our Hello Darbie textbooks have a lot of songs.  A lot of songs) and of course I sing along with everyone, usually kind of loudly at the beginning so they can hear how the words are pronounced.  I decided to take it as a compliment (and believe me, it could go either way) when the fourth graders wondered if I was the person singing on the "Hello Darbie" CD.

Most recently, yesterday in fact, there was an old dog just hanging around the school all day.  He didn't really move all morning and the kids were being told not to pet him since no one knows where he came from.  In the afternoon apparently some of the fifth graders put him in a box and moved him to the orchestra classroom where their plan was for the orchestra to take care of him.  This morning when I got to school I found out that after the orchestra teacher said they couldn't keep the dog (no surprise there), the students moved the dog to the bathroom where he apparently spent the night and is still there this afternoon...I'm curious to see how this is going to turn out...

Well, those are some of the first little stories that came to mind to give you a glimpse into my typical day...if there is such a thing as a typical day.

Hetal's Visit!

Yes, that’s right.  My good friend and fellow ESL major from Northwestern visited me for a couple of days at the beginning of November when she was passing through Taipei on her way to teach in India.  It was so much fun to have her here and to show her around.  We also did plenty of exploring of some spots that were new to both of us.  I learned that I’m not the best tour guide there ever was, and if you want to know what the plan is…you will probably be disappointed because there probably isn’t one.

I met her at the Taipei train station (where the airport bus dropped her off, but that’s a whole other story in itself) at the bright an early hour of around 8 am on that Saturday morning.  After our joyful reunion we spent a significant amount of time roaming underground through the train station, bus station, MRT and an underground mall that was connected to it all, trying to find lockers for Hetal to store her luggage, find a place to get wireless internet, find some food and figure out what we were going to do that day.  We didn’t really pick a priority out of our list of things to do so we spent a significant amount of time running about not really getting anything accomplished and I even asked a local man who kindly tried to help us because he thought we were lost, “What do you think we should do today?”  He was very kind but not a whole lot of help in the matter.  Finally though we found the lockers, food, and internet and after a quick phone call to my friend Sarah to help us out with directions, we were on our way to ride a gondola up a mountain to where there were a lot of teahouses.

Well, we made it to the place to ride the gondola and promptly got our tickets and boarded our gondola.  Our fellow passengers in our car were an elderly couple from Hong Kong and their friend.  Somehow the wife ended up sitting between Hetal and me and they were all quite chatty.  I probably would have been more so if after about 10 minutes I hadn’t begun to feel so ill.  Not only was I going backwards, but it was also a pretty windy day so the car was swaying all over the place.  After about 10 more minutes we could finally get out as we had reached the final stop.  However at this point I still felt weak and faint and Hetal’s long hours of traveling and jetlag were catching up with her so after going about 30 steps up the mountain in search of a teahouse, we turned around with the idea that there had to be teahouses that we could get to by going downhill and we finally found a place that not only had oolong tea, but also waffles which is exactly what I was craving (but let’s be real, when am I not craving waffles?).  Anyway though, the view was absolutely breathtaking.  Then we headed back to the bus station and did a little shopping along the way, picked up Hetal’s bags (once we eventually found the lockers) and made our way back to Luodong.

The next day we decided to venture to Suao, a nearby town, and check out the habour and a beach which I had heard were pretty cool.  We decided to take the train to Suao and then take the city bus to the harbour.  The fact that I haven’t taken the city bus anywhere yet didn’t really seem to be important to the plan at the time.  The friendly conductor asked if we were going to Suao and the whole train ride was going quite well until we found out that Suao had two train stations and I didn’t know which one we wanted to get off at.  We hopped off at the first one to check the platform out to see if we could find any answers before the train took off again and sure enough as we scurried about the platform looking for who knows what, the conductor motioned for us to get back on the train so we frantically ran into the nearest car.  Apparently that first station isn’t really by anything much.  In our new car there was a couple and an older lady (traveling together, but I can’t remember the relationship between them) who struck up a conversation so we covered the basics about where we’re from, how long we’ve been here, what we're doing here…it turns out the wife went to one of the elementary schools that I teach at! They live in Taipei now but her mother lives in Suao and they were going to visit her.  Once we all got off the train, they asked what we were doing and I told them of our plans to take the bus to Nanfangao (the harbour) and they told me where the bus stop was (since I was completely clueless).  So Hetal and I thanked them and went towards the bus stop…but our hesitant steps must not have gone unnoticed because the older lady showed up behind us and ended up walking us all the way to the bus stop and told us when the bus we wanted came to raise our hand so it will stop.  They were so helpful and kind! 

The harbor was super cool.  There were just a lot of neat looking boats and people working on them.  There was also a fish market that this random old man told us we should buy fish from and he showed us his purchases and seemed pretty insistent, so we walked through the market to appease him, not that we were planning to buy any fish.  I had also heard that there was really pretty beach around there somewhere so we kept wandering about and then I saw a sign that I read, “Chinese-character-I-don’t-know-Chinese-character-I-don’t-know 20m”.  I pointed out that something cool must be 20m up that road because the sign looked interesting (as in, it was painted kind of cool, since I couldn’t actually read the words on it) so we ventured that way.  It turns out that the unknown characters and 20m were the name of a restaurant (which was significantly more than 20m away from the sign) but the restaurant also happened to be on the beautiful beach so it all worked out anyway.

One of the boats in the harbour

The way back into Suao we had to take the bus again and since I wasn’t 100% sure about anything I decided to ask the bus driver if it was the correct bus to get to the train station.  He gave it some thought, checked which station we wanted and then announced that it was! So we began the ride and as we neared our stop (it was the same route as how we got there so we knew we’d be the third stop again) I heard a voice from the front of the bus shout (in Chinese naturally), “Train station friends! We’re almost at your stop!”  Yes, that bus driver was certainly looking out for us.  I kind of wanted to duck down in my seat because every single other passenger was looking at us (how did they know we were the "train station friends"?) but instead we went up to the front of the bus and the driver began to give me directions on how to walk to the train station from the bus stop.  At the same time, the man in the front seat began to give Hetal directions as well.  But it’s a good thing I already knew because I’m not sure I would have understood the directions…plus the bus driver gave me two options of how to get there which generally just confuses me.

That night we did some shopping and eating at the Luodong Night Market, which is always a treat.  One thing I noticed about the time that Hetal was visiting was that I ended up speaking a whole lot more Chinese than I usually do.  Probably most of this was due to the fact that since we didn’t plan things out, I usually had to ask a lot of questions to figure out what was going on, but my Chinese got quite a workout!  Another thing I noticed (more than I already have) is how incredibly helpful people are!  We got so much assistance with people going out of their way to make sure we ended up in the right spot.  It was incredible.

This is how we got around

Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent at my school and then we went to see some local sights each day.  Monday we went to some waterfalls (where my camera completely broke and I haven’t even been able to get the pictures that were already on it off it yet…but I’m working on that.  So these pictures on here are courtesy of Hetal's facebook) and then she also got to meet most of the other ETAs and Tuesday we stuck around Luodong and ended the evening at the night market again and on Wednesday morning we went to the airport where she took off for India to continue her adventures and I made my way back to Yilan to continue mine! 

Us at the waterfall

Hetal, me, and Grace (my LET)

Us and one of my first grade classes-what adorable children I teach!!
(notice the two girls making a heart in the middle of the picture)