Adventures with Very Small Pineapples, Broken Cameras, and Chickens with Scooter Helmets

Well! That's quite a title, eh? I suppose it's time to blog for the week and give everyone an update on what's going on here in Taiwan. Last week my classes all went fairly well, I think. My Bumblebees are showing a marked improvement in their behaviour and even my boss Jackson commented on how well-behaved they were when he did his class observation last week. Last Monday Jackson sat in on a class of mine for the first time and I was so nervous I didn't eat all day, but it went pretty good and he only had good comments for me. The rest of the week was pretty normal, as weeks go. Just teaching, grocery shopping, hanging out with roomates.
This weekend was a lot of fun, though. I slept in until 11:30 Saturday morning which was REALLY nice! then went out to lunch with all my roomates and we talked for a few hours. Then I had dinner and went to the night market with my friend Jimmy and we did all kinds of interesting things. We got these fake airbrushed tatooes (really cheap!) that are super cool and are supposed to last for about ten days, depending on how well you scrub in the shower. I got a butterfly on my arm. Then we bought these teeny tiny pineapple plants in little glass jars with rocks (really, they don't even have roots, they're just pineapple tops and you're supposed to water them like once a week and they grow teeny tiny pineapples! I saw them! So cute!) Then we went to a place where they had all these put-coins-in-and-move-the-grabbing-arm-to-pick-up-a-toy things like you see at the entryway of supermarkets in the US. So Jimmy spent a bunch of coins trying to grab this little round stuffed baby chicken with a big pink scooter helmet and were about to give up when I said "Let me try" on the last coin and I got it! (kind of on accident, I thought I was way off). So now I own a little chicken with a scooter helmet. I would post a picture of all this stuff, but...I kind of broke my camera... :(
Yes, the brand new one! Jimmy and I were taking pictures at the mango ice shop and it kind of got knocked out of his hand and fell on the table in such a way that the lens (that was extended because the camera was on), got knocked on one side and got stuck that way. So the lens wouldn't detract the way it normally does when you turn the camera off. The camera kept telling me "turn off and on again" when I hit the "on" button. Grrr...so today we went to the Sony repair shop here in town and they said something to the tune of "oh, hm...we've never seen this happen to a camera before" and that they need to replace the whole casing and it was going to cost me about $2500 NT (about $75 USD) arghhhh.... so it got mailed off to Taipei today to get repaired. So irritated at myself. *sigh*
Well, then we went to a used bookstore where Jimmy looked for textbooks for his classes (graduate school) and I looked for a Chinese-English dictionary. Which I found, but an old kind of dirty copy so I'm going to keep looking for a nicer newer one. They had a lot of English books and magazines there, which was nice and kept us busy for a long time.
Then today I went to church in the morning and a bunch of us went to eat Thai food for lunch (which was really good). Then to the Sony repair shop, Starbucks, English service, and cell group back at my house. So it was a good weekend, except for the broken camera Thing. :(
Next weekend I have tentative plans to hike a mountain called Big Snow with my roomate Katie Jo and possible a few other people. The weekend after that I'm going hiking with another group, my Taiwanese friend Annie from cell group invited me to go with. That's around Moon Festival time, so there should be barbecues and celebrations going on all over in a couple of weeks. Tomorow night I will go with Jimmy for my first hot pot in Taiwan (apparently hot pot is a very popular food thing in Taiwan, but I'm not really sure what it is. I guess I will find out tomorrow and blog about it next time) and then to a very much larger bookstore to find a Chinese English dictionary. I'll be speaking Chinese before you know it! And Wednesday I'm doing a bike ride up some mountain with Katie Jo and our other friend Josh who's really into biking. So I'm getting busier these days. it's kind of nice to keep busy and have plans instead of coming home to sit by myself like and watch TV like I did all the time in Alaska. :)
Yah, so perhaps by the time I blog next week I will have my camera and all my pictures back, and also have more new pictures of the Big Snow hike. Yay! Thanks again for all your prayers, everybody, they're always much appreciated especially since traffic here is so hairy and although I am getting better at scootering, things happen unexpectedly all the time and I'm so glad for God's protection.
Okay, zai jian! Until next time!

Adventures in Exploring

I only took a few pictures on Saturday, but here they are. This is me with a funky Indian statue outside a little Indian shop we went to on art street.

Here's a (whoa darker than I thought here on Blogspot) picture of Jimmy and a malformed, very large, one-armed stuffed Giraffe. We didn't know why it had only one arm (all the Giraffes on the shelf only had one arm) but it was worthy of a picture.

A store sign I also deemed picture-worthy on art street. If this rings true, I guess I'm in trouble. :)

Jimmy and one of the cats in the Orange Cat restaraunt (see below). Obviously, the restaraunt wasn't named for this particular feline.

Well, my weekend was pretty good. I went exploring around town on scooter with my friend Jimmy. We ate lunch at a little Mexican restaraunt across town (surprise to me because I was under the impression there were no Mexican restaraunts in Taiwan)(well, I guess there is a Taco Bell in Taipei). Then we went to a movie and walked around a mall. Then we went to this street he called "international street" or "art street" because it had little shops from different countries like India. It was a really cute area. We stopped in this little restaraunt called the "Orange Cat" that was well known for having a bunch of cats roaming around the restaraunt that you could pet or play with. It was kind of strange and probably highly unsanitary, but since I haven't had a pet in so long it was nice to play with a bunch of large fat friendly fuzzy cats. Then we went to a night market where we got sweet potatoe fries and jie pye and then we hung out at a tea shop and then to another mall and a stationary store where we read all the greeting cards then back home to hang out. I've been so busy with work and starting to learn Chinese and all the general figuring out all the new stuff that it was nice to just have a whole day to explore and have someone fun who knows Taichung take me to fun places and just get to talk.

Sunday was pretty standard as Sundays around here go - church in the morning, out to lunch with friends, clean up around the house, to the English service, then after the night English service our cell group meets. It was a great weekend.

And then today came. Monday...aghhh..the great weekend Killer... and my very first class period is the one Jackson decided to sit in on for "observation" for the first time in my class. It was really crummy. I haven't heard my feedback yet but I was acutely aware the entire time that my boss was sitting in the back making notes on all the things I could be doing better. We're supposed to have our "meeting" about that tomorrow, so we'll see. Also I didn't feel very good today in the first place and this morning I was so nervous about Jackson visiting my class that I didn't eat anything until tonight.

On a brighter note, though, my friend Jimmy had gotten in a scooter accident last week (doesn't sound like a brighter note yet, does it?) and his scooter was all banged up and he thought it wasn't going to be fixed for another week and it would cost him around $10,000 NT (about $300USD) so he was really bummered out about that and also his work schedule that was getting overloaded and he was afraid to talk to his boss about it, but tonight the Scooter People told him his scooter was fixed and it would only cost him $500 NT (about $15 USD) and his boss approached him to tell him they were combining two of his classes and his hours would be less after all. This was so cool because he was hanging out with my roomates and I tonight talking about it and it turned out we had each of us prayed at different times throughout today for those specific things to be worked out for him and bang! it happened! It's really encouraging to see God answer prayer so quickly and in such an obvious way. So even though Monday started crummy, it ended on a happy note.

I have a really long day tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed. Wan an!

Okay, here's me in my bedroom playing with my new camera! Ni Hao!

Here's a photo that's also on my Facebook - a new Monopoly-ish sort of game the real name of which I do not know, but we call it "Uncle Wang" because the little blue guy on skiis there on the board is apparently named "Uncle Wang". You buy countries instead of Boardwalk or Park Place, etc. It's a good way to learn the Chinese names of some countries.

Here's another Facebook double-post of me and my roomates from left to right - me, Stephanie, Katie-Jo, and Amanda. We're celebrating 9-09-09 at 9:09 pm (or close to it anyway). I discovered ocean spray cranberry juice in 24 oz bottles at the 7-11 for about 50 cents and drink maybe two a day. I should be super healthy.

Another Facebook double post of me and Katie-Jo. The flash went off right in my face. We're about the same age and both like to hike and do kind of the same stuff, so it's fun to get to know her. She speaks really good Chinese.

Here we are at the night market with our Watermelon Juices. This is funny, because Jimmy, our Taiwanese friend in between me and Katie Jo, taught me how to say "watermelon juice" in Chinese - Shi Guo Jir (I don't really know pinyin either so that translation could be completely off, sorry!) so I practiced and then trotted off to successfuly order my own watermelon juice. Then when I came back to the group, Colin , Jimmy's roomate there on the far right was getting taught by Jimmy how to say "watermelon juice" and then he trotted off to order his "shi guo jir". Then when he got back to the group, another friend with us, Roger (who is taking this picture) was getting taught how to say "shi guo jir" and he trotted off to get some. Then Katie Jo decided she wanted some. Then Jimmy went. One. at. a. time. The Watermelon Juice lady probably thought we were nuts.

Here's me and Katie Jo at the Cash Box on her birthday I think. Cash Box is a KTV place (read: Karaoke TV). I didn't realize until looking at this picture just now that I had stuck my face in the guy body. Oh well.

Ah, here we go: classroom pictures! Here is a Monster my little Bobby made with bottle caps dipped in paint.

Here are some remnants of our Butterfly Theme: handprint butterflies! I am especially fond of the crooked Googly eyes.

Supposedly this project was to demonstrate the symmetry of a butterfly's wings. You paint half of the thing then fold it and smoosh down and it's suppose to end up symmetrical. Yeah, well the paint we used dried too fast to transfer to the other half and we ended up with many very non-symmetrical butterflies. Oh well. Live and learn. Read: won't be doing this project ever again.

Here's one of our Ant projects that flutters about in the wind from the fan every day. You can see my students are quite creative. They really love to draw and color and make stuff. This bodes well for me as their teacher, as I too am fond of these things.

Also from our Ant theme, learning about ant communities and behaviour, each student drew their own version of an "ant home" underground ant nest with chambers, each with a tunnel leading out of each corner of the paper so they could get tacked up to make one giant "ant nest" this worked quite nicely, I think.

Here is "My Domain". This is where I stand and teach for 3-5 hours every weekday. Notice all the fruit posters on the sliding glass door. Those were our only real wall decorations when I started teaching in this classroom. We now have lots more. Yay!

Here are some of my Bumblebee boys on break playing a game of "Paper, Scissors, Stone". This is a very popular game here and is also a basis for many other hand games. Also, it's a GREAT way to keep things fair in class. If there's ever a quibble about something being fair, we "paper, scissors, stone" it and whoever wins gets to do whatever it is or whatever. "Paper, scissors, stone" is like the law to kids around here. I love it.

Here is my class from the door. The kids are on a break so they're allowed to play games like Uno or read books or whatever on the mat.

My classroom from the door. It's a pretty good sized classroom, lots of wall space for our crafts.

Here is the downstairs "computer lab" area, and meeting area. That's my co-worker Karen, another foreign teacher doing some kind of prep at the table. There on the back wall there are four corkboards with pictures of each of the four foreign teachers and some basic information for the parents (where we're from, our experience, etc.) Mine is the pink on the left.

Here is my (very messy today) desk.

Here is the teacher's area facing the front of the school. It's little messy.

Here is my favorite tea drink: "duo duo lu cha" which is yogurt green tea, which I order "ban tang" or half-sugar and it comes out just right (still plenty sweet) and with ice. oooh it's so gooood... and I have gone to this one tea shop around the corner from my school so often that all I have to do now is pull up and they know what I want. Notice the sealed plastic "lid" which is the most clever thing ever. Scooter-proof!

I bought a new camera! I braved my way to the Nova (a conglomeration of electronics vendors - Dad, you would have a ball there) and bought a brand-new 10.1 mp Sony Cyber-Shot, a cuter, smaller, much newer version of my broken clunker of a 5 mp Sony Cyber-Shot. It's red. I'm happy. And I think I got a pretty good deal. So, with that, I present the above photos I took yesterday in my classroom. And also a few other places.

Whew, it took a long time to upload and type all that. I'm not great with the layout of pictures, so sorry if it's a little confusing to follow.

I have to go to bed now. I'll try to type more stuff this weekend. And hopefully there will be more pictures posted more often now that I have a working camera. Yay!

Zai jian!!

Adventures in Blogging

As you see, I have updated my blog (thanks Corrie and cutestblogontheblock.com)! I figured it was high time for a change. I'm not sure about the font though, I'm thinking perhaps it might be too hard to read? Leave me some feedback.
Well I had a whole bunch of things to blog about tonight, but then I got kind of caught up in changing my background and now it's almost 2am and I think I'd better go to bed.

List of Happy Things that have Happened This Week:
1.) My students all capitilized the first letter of their sentences and put periods at the end of all their sentences today. This is a great breakthrough, made possible only by the wonderful JacksonFive point (coupon) system, whereby they purchase cool Things with the coupons they earn in class. They earned five coupons each (kind of a lot) by remembering to capitilize and period their sentences today, but only if every single student remembered to do it to all their sentences, otherwise nobody got any coupons. They rocked. I'm so proud.
2.) I started meeting with my Chinese tutor today and learning the Chinese phonics (whoa, so hard).
3.) Went to the E1 weekend at Banner church (kind of the membership class, where they explain the vision of the church and go over things like how much God loves us and presenting the gospel (mostly for brand new beleivers, but a requirement for anybody wishing to become a member). Good stuff. Banner church has a great vision and has experienced tremendous growth over the past few years. They are planning to one day send thousands of missionaries into China and Chinese communities worldwide.
4.) Bought bamboo - happy!
5.) I'm really tired.
6.) Goodnight!
7.) (Don't forget to comment on my new font - yay or nay!)

Adventures with Taxis, KTV, Night Market, and Ghost Month

Whew, what a title! Time marches on...
Last week I had my first (real) KTV experience (karaoke). I thought I would be more fun and sing and really get into it like I did in my Oak Cottage days (Julie remembers) but actually I didn't want to sing at all! Your group rents a KTV room with a big screen and a Karaoke machine and you punch in your songs, and they have English songs that are mostly oldies and 70's songs, and then they have these really tacky background videos that play during the songs as it highlights the words for you on the screen. Mostly the videos are of pretty 80's women in funky clothes wandering aimlessly (but beautifully lost-looking) through forests or along roads or beaches or something. That part is pretty entertaining. It's kind of loud though, and the microphone kind of makes your voice echo and bounce around the room and I wasn't so excited about that part. But it was a new experience and therefore fun. And it's funny to watch other people belt out songs like "Yellow Submarine" and "Funkytown".
This month is Ghost Month here in Taiwan, and I don't know all the reasons for Ghost Month but I do know it involves housholds and businesses burning a LOT MORE paper money in barrels and at temples than usual. Paper money, I don't know the reason for that either, but they offer it to their..ancestors maybe? by burning it at temples. Anyway, our apartment building had their paper money burning day on Sunday and a big tent was set up in our courtyard where the tenants could go burn incense, and two big barrels were set up outside our back fence by the 7-11 where they could burn paper money. I made the big mistake of taking out the trash that afternoon and the trash recycle bins are right next to where they had the burn barrells with the paper money and I ended up with paper money ash all over me. It was yucky. The air has been more smoggy than usual because of all the paper money burning but we've had some nice rains thankfully that washed most of it away. Yuk.
So the other day my scooter wouldn't start (it's temperamental and sometimes the humidity or if I run it too hard the day before then it decides to not start to get me back, and I don't know how to kick start it yet, apparently there's always a way to kick start your scooter when it decides to not start the Real Way but I can't do it yet) so I was running late so I took a taxi (there is a stand right around our corner, yay for Convinience!) and it's cheap to take one here (about $3 USD to get to my school) so I took one. When I got in the cab and told the driver where to go (in Chinese even!) we started off, then he turned to me and said "JESUS-UH!" (again, there's the "uh" at the end of all English words) and I was like "OH! I KNOW JESUS!" but he didn't really speak English, he could just say "Jesus-uh good!" and pointed to a cross hanging from his rearview mirror where the trinkets and temple baubles usually hang. So I thumbs upped him and wished desperately in my head that I could speak Chinese. It was a fun interaction for the day though.
Speaking of learning Chinese, I finally found a Chinese tutor! Two hours every Friday morning. Not a lot of time, but better than nothing. I know about 50 Chinese words now, not including nubmers and how to count.
Oh and speaking of things around the corner from our house, there's a Jie Pie Guy! (I totally don't think I spelled jie pie right in PinYin but that's how I see it in my head) Jie Pie (prounounced jee-pye) is like little pieces of fried chicken goodness in a little paper bag and you spear them with really long toothpick Things to eat them. Usually you buy it from a night market stand, but there's a stand right by the taxi station next to our house! HURRAY! The Jie Pie Guy also sells sweet potato fries and they are SO GOOD! Such an exciting discovery.
Speaking of food, here are some new foods I have tried lately:
red bean tea - not so excited about that one.
stir fried cabbage (which normally I like) in a lunchbox, but with little freeze-dried (plumped up in the dish though) shrimpies, with their heads and tails and eyeballs and all still intact. It was really creepy. It's like..ooh my favorite cabbage..UGH what's this ugly Thing in it?!?! I didn't eat it.
mango shaved ice - SO GOOD! OH my goodness! shaved ice with milk, then topped with this sweetend mango mixture with huge chunks of mango all over. it was WONDERFUL!
sweet potato frieds of course, and jie pie
watermelon juice! a number one favorite now. they basically take chunks of watermelon (including the rind!) and grind them up in a blender, mixed with some milk, strain out the chunks and seeds, and that's it! it's SO GOOD!
Okay, speaking of food, I went to the night market again the other night and I don't think I've blogged about night markets yet. I love the night market. I'm going to try when I finish typing this blog to upload my night market pictures but I've been having SO MUCH trouble with my stupid camera and last time I tried it wouldn't work, so sorry if I post this without any pictures. The night market is mostly clothes and trinkety jewelry and various shiny baubles and fun Things, and food stalls! The best is the food, but also I like to go read the clothes. The sayings they put on clothes here are SO FUNNY to me. I really want to take pictures but I think it would be kind of rude. English is apparently cool on clothes so even if it doesn't make the slightest sense but has English letters, it goes. Most things are simple misspellings like "Carifornia" but somethings don't make ANY sense: " Good vibe go always in the neighborhood!" or some such strangeness. "Beauty is the world round goes". I mean you kind of know mostly what they are trying to say. I did see a shirt that had just letters all over it running together : alkdnlksndklnlin. Eh, what? Oh but this one was so cute: "Love is when you meet someone who's heart sings the same tune as yours" or something like that. Also reminds me that our DVD player on the blue screen says "DVD Playper". that's funny to me.
Okay, here is a list of things I'm glad I brought to Taiwan with me:
McCormick's original Chili mix (the small seasoning packets) I love Chili and I am almost out of the ones I brought with me so if some wonderful person wants to send me a care package full of these I would be So Happy!)
Jersey Knit Sheets - every night, so thankful I brought these!
Sunblock - they only sell teeny wheeny bottles here and it's all some kind of whitening formula. Yeah, if I used a whitening formula, I would go invisible.

That's it! Such a short list! Most everything else is readily available here for similar or less money than in the US. But there are a couple of things I would like to find that I don't even know if they have here: that Mahatma's yellow rice they sell in the US grocery stores in small skinny packages - I haven't seen yellow rice here at all and I love it (ooh that could also go in a care package along with the chili mix!) and Cover Girl makeup. :( Oh well!

Okay, well this turned into a monstrously long post, so I'll try to upload my pictures now and then go to bed. Wan an! (good night!)
well, i'm pretty sure my camera is permanently unfixably broken now and I'm sad because I had a couple of really good night market pictures on that stupid memory stick. *sigh* no more pictures for this blog for a while! :(