Adventures with Doom - Death to Cockroaches!

So, I recall a much earlier post on this blog, before I even left for Taiwan, about how I read that there were so many cockroaches on the island. I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving to have not seen any cockroaches until this week they are abounding! I think they are getting up through the drains. It is 2:30 in the morning here and I am still online (on a Friday night so it's ok!) and my roomate Katie Jo just knocked on my door to inform me there was a Large Monster Cockroach in the bathroom and she needed moral support to Kill It. So I left her in charge of keeping an eye on The Monster while I went into the kitchen to get the spray can of Doom from on top of the fridge. Whilst I was journeying toward the kitchen a sudden movement at the end of the hall caught my eye and behold! 'twas another Cockroach! A much smaller one than the Monster in the bathroom though. So I sailed through the air jumping practically to the door of the kitchen from the end of the hall (which, is quite a ways actually) to fetch the can of Doom. As I stepped into the kitchen, a grisly pair of brown antennae caught my eye from under the corner of the fridge and who might they belong to but Bathroom Monster Cockroach's kitchen cousin, Slightly Smaller but still just as Ugly Cockroach. So I waltzed into the living room avoiding small Hallway Cockroach and stood on the sofa whilst I pondered how to obtain the Doom without jeapordizing my feet. It occured to me that Katie Jo was still bravely manning the Bathroom although high pitched sqeaks from her direction made me suddenly realize how close my bedroom door is to the bathroom door (very close) and how Imperitive it was that I fetch the Doom as quickly as possible. So I gathered up my late-night courage and bounded to the Kitchen and made it back with the Doom safely in my possession. Katie Jo courageously squirted Bathroom Monster Cockroach with all her might and it died a horriblely grisly Death in the hallway after doing the Poisoned Cockroach Dance (which is a most dangerous dance, as you never know where they might end up). I squirted Small Hallway Cockroach with all MY might (which late at night with three cockroaches in the house, is a lot of Might, probably more Might than this very small cockroach needed to die) and it died a sad death under a red storage Tub in the dining room and I will sort that out tomorrow. Katie Jo braved the Kitchen to find Ugly Cockroach and she kilt it with the Doom next to the sink and so now we have to re-do all the dishes tomorrow, a task which is well worth it to know there is one less cockroach in the world. And now I am so awake and it's quarter to three in the morning.
So tomorrow I will find drain covers for our bathtub as I think that is where they are coming in.
Ughck. Doom is not good for the human either and uughckk I can smell it. Actually I don't even think they call it Doom here, it's another brand. But I call them all Doom.
Um...so I just re-read this post and it's kind of funny. This is what happens when you are up too late. I'd probably should try to go to sleep but now I will be wondering if there are any in my room.
argghck.
Oh. and I did eat those Strawberry & Peanut butter M&M's. The outer layer is chocolate, then a layer of strawberry and then inside it is p-nut butter filling. It's like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with choclate and on a smaller scale. I approve.

Here are almost all my Bumblebees in one of the "medicinal" square pools. There was one older dude in there already and he is on the left in the red cap - look how annoyed he is that 18 little yellow headed kids have invaded his Bubble.

They had this cool ... slidey Thing...I can't tell which student this is but I think they're having fun.

Here are some of my girls having some swimming fun. From left to right, Rowling, Louise, and Ivy.

Here is the pool (kind of dark, sorry) you can kind of see the little walls where people hang onto while the adjustable squirty-jets massage them.

This is little fuzzy-headed Eathen, he is very tiny and under this yellow swim cap he has such all this sticking-up fuzzy hair. He is so cute. He is my "secret favorite". :)

More splashing kids.

Splashing, happy kids.

Strawberry and Peanut Butter (together, mind you) M&M's. Go figure. I actually haven't tried these yet. They are still in my bag.

Ohhh... let's see...I'm trying to remember what has happened since the last time I blogged..I'm sorry my blogging fans, but I have been too caught up in the day to day life that it is easier to post a one-liner on Facebook than it is to sit down and write a real blog!

Classes are going okay, but I am still learning how to handle discipline issues, especially with my evening junior-high aged class. Apparently, teachers are not so cool when you are in junior high and I get a lot of eye-rolling and sneaking of notes in class. Also the culture here requires that children are in school all day from about 8 am to 9 pm and then they have to go home and do homework and have to go to school on Saturday too, so I kind of don't blame them for being tired and restless in their night classes.

We are now in a unit about Butterflies in my afternoon Bumblebee class, and so now our classroom is fully decorated with ants and butterfly crafts adorning every possible corner and hanging from all over the ceiling. I must take a picture sometime soon to post.

Last Thursday we went to the swimming pool (see above photos). The pool here is way cool because they have not only a regular sized swimming pool, but also a shallower section for kids, and a whirlpool section, and a squirty-jets section, and then little spa sections that have "medicine" herb stuff in them to "heal" things and make your skin "whiter" (whitening is a big thing here in Taiwan - nobody wants a tan, they all want to be whiter. "Teacher your skin so white!" is actually a huge compliment although I ruefully crinkle my nose when they say it to me). Also just to observe all the people wearing those ridiculously nerdy swim caps is just a funny sight.

I am getting faster on my scooter now and I haven't had any close calls yet. I am loving the scooter freedom! The other day I accidentally left my keys in the ignition when I parked at the school and then I was freaking out because I couldn't find my keys and I thought I may have locked them in the seat (storage section) of the scooter, but I noticed my helmet had been put on my seat instead of in the basket where I left it, so when I picked up my helmet, my keys were there! Apparently some do-gooder had taken my keys out of the ignition and "hidden" them under my helmet so nobody would steal my scooter! Yay, thank you Jesus.

I don't know if anybody has been following the disaster typhoon Morakot left in it's wake in the southern part of Taiwan, but if not do a google search for "typhoon Morakot Taiwan" and read about it. There is still a great deal of work to be done to restore homes and businesses to order and help people who have lost everything in those towns and villages to get back on their feet. Our church is sending teams every weekday to do clean up work, until this weekend when the military took over. Then we found out yesterday that the military now needs volunteers to help with the clean-up. I would go except my work schedule is kind of non-flexible. :( But please if you remember, pray for those people. So many people lost absolutely everything, and there was even an entire village wiped out and buried by a mudslide. Thankfully Taichung is pretty protected by mountains on all sides, so we are usually ok in natural disasters, but not everybody was so safe.

So far, outside of classes I've been hanging out with my roommates, eating out with friends, helping other friends move and clean their new apartments, watching re-runs of 'Friends' (aahh it followed me here! :), night market shopping, etc. etc. Fun times to be had by all.

Well, I haven't got anything else truly interesting to blog about. So perhaps by the next time I "blog" I will have more interesting things to talk about. :)

Adventures in Scooting

I finally have a scooter! Yay! It's a little 50cc that I can drive legally with my international license, it's cherry red, and it has a basket! I also got my health card and my Visa debit card in the mail yesterday. So now I'm all set! :)
Scooting is way better than riding a bike. It's much faster, for one thing, and sooo much cooler (both the hip kind of cool and the wind/breeze in your face kind of cool). Traffic here is so funny to me. Instead of watching the traffic light, the people stopped at a red light will watch the little countdown walking guy at the crosswalk, because it counts down to when the opposing light will turn red. So when the digital crosswalk guy begins running and then says "stop walking", the traffic stopped at the red light will go even if the light is still red, because it is going to turn green in a few seconds. So far I haven't seen any accidents due to this but I'm sure they have them. I still wait for the light to turn all the way green. I saw a guy today carrying about 10 huge bags of leafy green vegetables on his little scooter, very cleverly perched all of them. It's amazing what people manage to fit on their scooters.

My afternoon class, the Bumblebees, we've been doing a summer theme unit on Ants. Today we made models of the Ant Family with silicone clay. Silicone clay is awesome. I don't even think it's on the market. I think my school has some because one of the kid's parents works at some hi-tech place that does stuff with silicone and he invented it. Silicone clay doesn't dry out, stick to things, or get hands dirty. It's cool.
The kids had a lot of fun with that.
Also today we practiced writing sentences again. The Bumblebees are learning to write for the first time this year, so their sentence skills aren't so great. But this one little guy, Hank, was so funny - the kids all got this worksheet that had half of a picture of a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end, and they were supposed to finish drawing the other half of the picture and then write a sentence about the picture. Most kids finished drawing the rainbow, maybe a flower or two, or another pot of gold. Some kids drew people. Most kids wrote sentences like "I can see a rainbow" or "Look at the beautiful rainbow". But one little boy, finished drawing the other half of the rainbow, and then underneath the rainbow he drew two obviously dead-looking monsters. Then he wrote this very short sentence: "Two monsters die."
I laughed so hard. Then I gave him a star. (they get stars when they complete their worksheets) Kudos for creativity.
They had another worksheet where they had to do the same thing, finish this picture and write a sentence. The picture was one-half of a hot-air balloon floating over a river. Most kids wrote stuff like "I can see a balloon" or "Look at the beautiful balloon" (sensing a theme here?) but this kid drew a person in the balloon, holding a fishing pole that went all the way down to the river, and wrote "I am fishing from the balloon". He got a really big star. That's my kind of kid!

Tomorrow we're taking a school-wide field trip to some farm place. Fun times to be had by all!

The other night I learned how to play mah-jong. I actually learned more chinese words learning how to play mah-jong than I did my entire first month in Taiwan. I learned how to count to ten, how to say "north, south, east, and west" and then all the other names of the tiles. It's very much like Rummikub, only more Chinese and more complicated. :)

New Things:
1.) The best kung-pau chicken in the world - see pictures on my Facebook because I am having a problem uploading them to my blog for some reason.
2.) How to get gas for your scooter at a gas station - pull up, open the tank, smile real big at the attendent and point up (as in fill it up because I don't know how to say that in Chinese yet), pay the NTD equivalent of about $3 USD, then scoot off! A much simpler and cheaper process than putting gas in my car in Alaska in freezing wind and snow.
3.) Discovery of Funnyions at the Carrefour. "Funnyions" are like onion rings only with no real onion. They're onion flavored rings. Actually Funnyion is the American version and I discovered a chinese version but still a very happy discovery.
4.) The milk ladies at the Carrefour. I was looking for "my" milk there the other day - the bottle with the red lid that means "whole milk" with the famous baseball player guy on the front holding a bottle of the same milk with a cow peeking around it, and whilst I was in the midst of looking, I was bombarded by Taiwanese Milk ladies asking me stuff in chinese and it scared me away and I never did get my Milk. :( I think they were probably asking me if they could help.
5.) The gas guy. Apparently Gas Guy comes once a month to read the gas gauge. I was home in the morning yesterday and he rang the doorbell and I opened the door to Gas Guy, only I didn't know it was Gas Guy because at first he was just Strange Old Chinese Guy I Couldn't Understand. So I kept saying, "No thanks, I don't want any!" but he kept saying "Gas-uh! Gas-uh! (chinese who don't speak English very well add "uh" to the end of their English words) and finally I got it! "Ohhh... GAS!!" so I let him in and he checked the guage and then bowed a lot and left. I can't wait to learn Chinese.

This list had five things the other day but I had problems uploading my pictures so I just saved this blog and posted the pictures to my Facebook. So I will now add a couple of new things to this List:
6.) A Costco card! I got caught at Costco using my roomate's card yesterday and I was so grumpy that they told me I couldn't buy my stuff with her card, but I did the math and figured that even if I only bought two packs of ground beef there per year it would still come out even with the membership fee (ground beef here is REALLY expensive and buying the Australian ground beef in bulk at Costco is the best and cheapest option by far) (also I can get Ghirardelli (spelling?) brownie mix there in bulk) so I figured it was worth it and gave in. Yay me.
7.) Um...can't think of any more right now. Gotta go out and get stuff done. :) More later.

Adventures in Typhoons

This is the canal (kind of a sewage canal but sort of cleaner) tree-lined road I walk up and down all the time. In the typhoon, these trees were bent waaay sideways, the canal was full of rushing water, and branches were all over the road.

Um...this is a bottle of lychee fruit wine I took this picture for Michael (this wine smells really really gross and was a gift to a friend of mine but I thought it was funny to see lychee wine)

Sharon and the Giant Mango. this picture also is on my Facebook so most of you have already seen it.

Sorry still not very many pictures. :(

Whoa! First typhoon day in my first week of teaching! Classes have gone better than expected but I was supposed to take my afternoon class, the Bumblebees, to the park to observe ants on Friday. We took them on a school field trip on Thursday afternoon to this children's library place and they were just bouncing off the walls! It's been raining all week so the kids have been penned up inside. So I wasn't looking forward to riding my bike in the rain (again) to work and coming up with a last-minute lesson plan to replace the park idea because it was raining (again) and the kids would be all hyper, but then all classes got cancelled island-wide to the Typhoon Morakot! hip hip hooray! So I had actually no idea what a typhoon really was. Turns out this particular typhoon was 1.) a looot of wind on Friday but very little rain - but so much wind it blew over tree branches and store signs and stuff. 2.) hardly any rain or wind on Saturday but very overcast and kind of eerie, and 3.) a LOT LOT LOT of rain AND wind today! We don't know what's up with the typhoon.

Great Things Taiwan has that they should have in the States too:

1.) Sealed plastic lids on to-go drinks. This is a GREAT idea! They put your drink in this machine that seals a plastic lid on it, then you stick your straw through the lid and you have a practially spill-proof drink! It rocks.

2.) Umbrella covers in store entry ways. A machine you stick your umbrella in and it puts on a plastic umbrella-shaped bag to keep it from dripping in the store. Genius!

3.) In more remote towns closer to the coast, I'm told the houses build metal pull-down walls around them so when a typhoon or whatever is coming they just have to pull down the metal wall thing (like a thin garage door) instead of spending tons of time taping windows and barring doors. Brilliant!

That's my list so far. I'm sure I'll be adding to it in the days to come.

Adventures in HOT

Yeah...I've only taken two pictures total since my last post - one of a bottle of Lychee Wine (just to post for Michael who is a big fan of Lychee Fruits - the wine is really gross but I thought the idea was interesting) and one of a street. But I'm too lazy to go get my memory stick and upload them. Hah!
So time marches on...as it inevitably will. Yesterday, all day, was terribly miserably, awfully HOT. I learned later (like at the very very end of the day) that it had been about 38 degrees C (which I think is around 100 Fahrenheit!!) which is why even the aircon wasn't helping a whole lot. I would step outside and become a large wet Blob of Sweat. It was not cool.
But today it is raining and I got to bike home from Jackson5 in the rain which was admittidly cooler but also not so much fun! The guard at our apartment laughed at me when I pulled in, probably because he doesn't see so often wet dripping nerdly-helmet foreigners.
My first three classes went well, and my Bumblebees are a handful but manageable with the help of my Awesome chinese co-teacher Tina. They ooh-ed and aah-ed over the pictures of my family, King Salmon, mooses, snow, and appropriately went "eeeehhhhhh!!!" when I told them you can fit 26 Taiwans into the entire state of Alaska. We learned today that all insects have three parts and six legs. What's really fun is teaching small Chinese children to say "thorax" and "abdomen". Oh yeah. But teaching, I did learn today, is not going to be a job that when you don't feel good or are distracted by other Things in Life that you can slack off on. I can't just stare into space for five minutes in my small cubicle when I feel sick because I don't have a cubicle! I have 18 active wiggly kids with (hopefully) their small eyeballs glued on ME! You have to invest all your energy and attention and focus on the kids and the lesson when you are in the classroom and so it was very mentally exhausting for me. I suppose it will get better with time. But as for tonight, I'm going to get some food and take an ibuprofin and do it all over again tomorrow!
Tomorrow I also start my evening class with the Koalas, they are older but I'm told their phonics skills are terrible so Phonics focus it is!! whoo hoo.
My blogging is probably going to be fewer and farther between but I'll try real hard to have some pictures next time. =)