Week 4

Alright, for all of you who hate reading novels, there are no spark notes for this blog, but....I do have a suggestion, Saturdays are usually the most eventful, so you can always just read my Saturday adventures!

Really, I can’t believe another week has gone by…some days seem slow, but when Sunday comes, I just keep thinking how fast time is going. I am having more and more fun here in Taiwan…adventures for the week:

Monday:

I went into work at 10:00 to prep for my classes for the day. Sherry (my boss) called and needed someone to help test a student, Sammy was the only one available for the next couple hours, so I had to cover his for current class. I lost all time to prepare for the day…oh the art of spontaneity—I am quickly learning, but as a planner, sometimes it can be difficult.

Little Joe in the SPE’s (kindergarten) acted out again, he does so frequently. He said that another boy scratched him and so he wouldn’t participate. I asked if he was hurt, but he wouldn’t answer. After minutes of frustration, I told Joe that he must be fine because he wasn’t crying….whoops, a minute later he had made himself cry—he also happens to be quite dramatic. Haha, I hope this doesn’t reflect my parenting skills. On the other hand, my older kids are getting more and more fun and I really enjoy teaching my 14-17 year olds.

After a long day at work I went to food street and tried to avoid the fried courses; I’m still, somewhat, trying to be healthy, so I decided to get a green pepper and cabbage. When I got my meal it was delicious, but covered in straight grease….my cabbage was dripping, ya I know, not healthy!

Tuesday:

During one of my breaks at work I had some time to walk over to 7/11—did I mention they’re on every street corner here; someone’s making a lot of money. Anyhow, due to my chatty personality I can’t help but say hello to everyone. So, as I was walking into 7/11 I said ni hao to a gentleman getting off his scooter….he replied in almost perfect English, “You speak Mandarin?” “Oh no,” I replied, “I’m an English teacher.” We started talking and come to find out he lived in Canada for ten years, as many of the Asians do. He studied there and now that he’s back in his home land he’s trying to find someone to do language exchanges with (unfortunately, my contract doesn’t allow any outside employment). Kevin, this man, wanted to exchange contact info, but still being a bit weary, I just gave him my email. He was a nice guy, but us Americans find that everyone wants to be our friend just so they can learn and practice their English.

For dinner on Tuesday we found the cutest little restaurant….it actually has fresh salads and sandwiches, I love it! Julie and her husband, the owners, also own an English cram school where our friend Molly works. Julie is soooo sweet and speaks English fairly well. For dinner, us girls got the combo. A mixed salad (ham, egg, sprouts, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, tomato, thousand island dressing), a toasted ham sandwich, and a drink…all for only 80 NT (WOW! That’s less than $2 US dollars). Julie also threw in some free gelato, mango and kiwi flavored! I’m not sure of the restaurant name, but there’s a big wishing tree on the wall, so I call it the ‘Tree House.’ The tree house has only been open for a little over two months, so I think Julie is just excited to wine and dine her new American customers. Really though, fresh food tasted so good—exactly what I needed.

Wednesday:
So, I feel somewhat grounded with my teaching that I actually took a break from work today, YAY! Tabbi and I went to CarreFour after lunch, it’s like a mini Costco. This place has everything! I had to get some essentials: shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent (yes, we have a washer and dryer), food, food, and yes, more food. Alright, so I didn’t get too much food, but Tabbi and I did invest in some Nature Valley granola bars and some lemon wafers for snacking. It’s hard to get too much food in advance because no preservatives are used; if you don’t eat something within the first couple days of buying it, it will go bad.

I had my older class again today, from 7-9 pm. I had two new students, Beth and Martin. Beth is so quiet and Martin is exactly the opposite. After taking their test, I gave the kids a subject lesson on American slang because that’s what they’ve wanted to learn for awhile. Oh my, Martin loves American slang. He started asking me some juicy questions; let’s see…he was asking all sorts of questions about making out and kissing, action, players, and the like. It was hilarious. Poor Beth was just sitting there not knowing what to do, and the other two kids just kept laughing. Martin wanted to know what you call a ‘girl player?’ Well, as his teacher, I couldn’t say slut, so I kept it PG and told him that’s the type of girl who ‘gets around’—I’m not sure what description was worse, ha. After that conversation, I told the kids they had gotten me too far off subject and it was time to go…no more questions! It was a fun class.

For dinner I went to the tree house again, this time by myself. It was relaxing. I got the combo, but instead of a sub sandwich I got a bagel sandwich. Julie’s husband brought me out a bing sha (I think it was passion fruit), with mango, banana, and kiwi gelato on top…so good, and so free! I tried to pay for it, but they wouldn’t let me—that’s the Asian way.

Thursday:

We got paid today, yeah! Alright, so there’s not that much excitement because our checks aren’t too big, but when you’re carryin ‘1000’ dollar bills, it’s as though you’re rollin in the dough. At least it will pay for some fun trips! I took another break today in between my classes. I was able to come home and post a few pics, not many though. I also got to talk to mom! So fun.

All of us roomies went out with Juila, another Asian friend, for dinner to plan out our escapade in Kaohsiung (gao-shung). Julia goes to school there and we were planning another fun weekend trip. We went to a pretty tasty Indian restaurant, which was, once again, all new food to me. I had chicken and potato curry on garlic nan bread. I liked it a lot, I think I could do Indian again. After dinner we met Julia’s parents. Her mom came up to us as we were talking in the street and asked whether we liked gummy bears, of course! The next thing we knew she had bought us gummy bears and dehydrated cheese, interesting! The gummy bears were yummy, the cheese, well….it was unique. It had a sweet tangy flavor, something you must get accustomed to.

Later that night we just hung out. We were going to go see the new Harry Potter movie, but it was opening night (going to be packed) and we were exhausted (that’s what kids will do to ya).

Friday:

So every month I have to make a newsletter for each of my classes. The kids take them home to their parents and use them to study. I thought it would be simple, but it took me forever. I know it’s my first one, so I’m hoping I get faster in the future. I have to type out all the kids’ spelling words for the month, definition and sentence, show a briefing of their grammar assignments and reading, and then put together all their subject lessons. Alright, so it may not sound all that bad, but after a couple hours of looking up new spelling words, I kinda get bored!

In my 2A-2 class today, Hank was so funny. He’s my trouble maker. I like to call him my favorite student outside of class, but my worst student inside of class. All the other kids get frustrated with him because they lose candy with his many outbursts. He’s starting to catch my drift though. He was so good in class. Arms folded, sitting straight up in his chair, raising his hand every time he wanted to talk. It was hilarious, I mean, I’m not that strict.

Nightly ritual, bing shas, you know, the frozen real fruit smoothies. Well, I went to the same old place and there is a cute high school girl who works there. She doesn’t have an English name so we call her LuLu. I will no longer be known as ‘Big Nose.’ She complimented me on my eyes…”they are so big and beautiful,” she said. I thought, of course they are, compared to…you know what. Ha, I’ve gotten that a couple of times though…the people love my eyelashes because many of them don’t have long eyelashes or eyelashes at all.

We had a full house Friday night. Lisa and Sunny came down from the other school. Manti, Sean, and Steve came over, as well as Julie. Julie is another Asian who is a member. She always brings us treats. She brought over some Wintermelon Tea drink—pretty sure it’s safe to drink. It tastes like maple syrup; too much sugar for me!

Saturday:

What an amazing day! We planned a trip to Kaohsiung—about a three hour train ride from Changhua. We got up super early to catch the train, about 6:00 am. Lisa and Sunny came with us and we met up with Julia at the train station. The train wasn’t too bad; we sat in some nice reclining seats, so I slept the whole way. Our whole trip to Kaohsiung was planned to see the World Games that are being held there this year. The games are every four years and the competing sports are those that aren’t played in the Olympics. We wanted to go watch sumo wrestling, but it was sold out, so sad! We tried to get tickets to any other event but everything was sold out! No worries, Kaohsiung is the 2nd largest city in Taiwan, so there was plenty to do.

Julia took us to the new stadium that was built for the games, it’s really modern looking, and I liked it. After touring the stadium, all of us were so hungry we went downtown and met up with our new friend, Charles, who took us to lunch. We called him Charles in charge because he was our personal little tour guide—love him! We ate at a street vendor for lunch, about $1.50 for a whole plate of food. Who knows how long the meat and veggies had been sitting out, we ate it anyway. From lunch we started walking toward the metro, which by the way is very clean. If you get caught eating, drinking, or chewing gum, you’re slapped with about a $50 dollar fine.

As we were walking we ran into the sister missionaries. We saw Sister Jao (Rao), who lived above us for a bit, she was just transferred. Random. Her new comp is Leslie Dunn, who actually has some relatives in Southern Utah.

We took the metro to the bay area so we could see the ocean and University where Charles goes to school. Oh, it was so beautiful, black sandy beaches. Charles’ school is right on the ocean, I don’t know how you could study there. Near the school, we walked up some steps to an old temple. We were also introduced to Bai Bai, a ceremony where the Buddhist people pray to the Gods and burn spirit/ghost money. By the temple we saw the British consulate—I tried to read up on the history, but everything was in Chinese. The view was amazing from the temple and consulate. You could see the ocean coming into shore and the whole city of Kaohsiung—the air smelled so clean, I miss fresh air. Changhua is much polluted with all the people that live in such a small area.

Oh man, while we were touring around the temple we heard someone shout out, American. We looked around and saw a white guy. All day long we had been seeing white people (World Games), but most came from Europe. We met the Swiss Tug-of-War team, the German artistic skaters, some Ukrainian dragon boat racers, and some British rhythmic gymnasts….oh yes, back to my story….so we turned and saw this young white guy. He came over and started talking to us. Come to find out he’s from Boise, Idaho, he studies at Boise State, and he’s Mormon! Apparently there are about 30 American’s studying at a University a couple hours away from Changhua. His name is Mike and he was on a home visit with another family. After a little chatty talk, Mike and his host family ended up spending the rest of the day with us!

Next stop, we took a ferry ride to a little island off the coast of Kaohsiung. I believe the name of the island is Cihou. There was a typhoon coming so it was super windy! When we got off the ferry we took a stroll down a fun little street with lots of shopping and more food. We visited the most ancient temple in Kaohsiung, Tianhou Temple. It dates back to 1673 and it is the temple where the Mother God, Mazu, is worshipped. I found this sweet cowgirl hat that I’ve never seen before…Penny Barben’s advice kept ringing in my ear: If you want, buy it, because you’ll never see it again….yes, I bought it! About $8.00 US, so it was a pretty good deal. I’ll have to post a pic, no promises.

It’s so funny walking down little town streets here. Everyone looks and stares as though us Americans are movie stars. They ask to take our pictures and the little kids who speak English always like to say hi. When we were walking along, a middle aged Asian came running up to us and started talking to Sunny (Sunny is half Cambodian, half Chinese, but grew up in West Valley). Sunny had no idea what the guy was saying. Come to find out, this Asian saw Sunny with a bunch of ‘Americans’ and assumed he could speak Chinese and English—he wanted Sunny’s help translating for some other foreigners in a restaurant nearby. Classic.

And the rain came down. Charles was taking us to the beach and the rain came pouring down. Asians were running for cover everywhere. Our entire group got out our ponchos and rain gear except for Julia and Charles. After putting our gear on, the rain stopped, ha…Charles just laughed. I’m sure he was thinking, stupid Americans.

The beach was fun! I’ve been waiting to go to the beach. It’s crazy how most Asians are afraid of the water and some Asian’s we’ve met can’t even swim. We stuck our feet in the black sand and played for a minute before we made our ascent up this huge mountain to a cool light house. At the top of the mountain we came upon this old Taiwanese Fortress that had been destroyed by the Japanese in ‘some’ war, I’m good at history, I know, ha. It was sweet though. The wind kept howling with the ‘supposed’ typhoon that was coming—I felt like I was going to blow over, but at least there was no rain. Walking around the mountain we saw old caves and torn down buildings entwined in the jungle vines, it was sweet. We also watched the sun go down over the ocean, white caps crashing, with boats out at sea. Seriously, it was picture perfect.

For dinner we went to a pasta restaurant. Charles was explaining to us our choices. It’s always fun trying to interpret the Asians. Charles told us we could pick between a cream sauce or a potato sauce. I kept thinking, potato? Interesting. Ha, I went with the cream sauce, but the potato sauce was a delightful red color, can you say tomato!

From dinner we walked to the Love River to watch some fireworks. The river was lined with lights and boats that were also lined with colorful lights, it was so romantic, well, not for me…but I could see how it could be. The fireworks were spectacular and ended the night great! I was so thankful for Charles and Julia taking us around. I’ve just been meeting more and more people—it’s so fun!

Sunday:

Well, as you know, writing these novels takes most of my day, but I did go to the Chinese ward today. I sat next to Julie—she’s sweet! The Chinese ward is kinda fun because they feed you lunch afterward. Lets see, I took a nap, and it looks like Julie, Manti, and Sean just arrived. Gotta go! Love you all!

P.S. Food for the week: Quail Eggs. Not too bad when they're boiled!