All Day Field Trips and a Fuzzy Kitten. and a Sunburn.

Last Wednesday we went on an all-school, all-day field trip to some farm/entertainment park-ish sort of place in Miaoli. I had a bunch of kids to keep track of since I have two after noon classes now. We did lots of fun-ish sort of things like..."making" cookies, which involved squishing cooky crumbs into a wooden mold sort of thing and then banging the mold up-side down on the table to make the "cooky" fall out; making pinwheels, taking a tour of ancient tea-making machines, and watching a great clown/magic/fire show thing, which is where this picture was taken:

This dude is spinning some "glass" (really not glass because he dropped one on accident and it bounced - uh, huh...) bottles that are on fire, and he is blindfolded. It was a pretty impressive show, and as you can see there is a huge clown balloon on the stage.

This is a Bee I caught with my camera. He was a bugger, too. I chased him on 7 flowers before I got this picture.

Here's my "cooky-making" set-up. One box for cookys - check. One cup of crumbs - check. One wooden spoon mold thing - check. They're smiley faces.

Here's my Dolphin class! Cute, aren't they?

---aand, here are the Bumblebees, taller than ever and mostly paying attention to the camera. That little orange shirted kid on the left is Louie and he actually belongs to the Dolphin class. His English is lower than the other Dolphins and he I guess didn't understand the "move this way, Dolphins!" to get them all out of the way.

Here're two of my Dolphins, Little Shawn (we also have a Big Shawn...) , in orange and Hugo in white. They are showing off their tea leaves. Little Shawn is a silly, very friendly outgoing child who speaks pretty good English for his grade and loves to talk to me. He also loves to be silly when he shouldn't and gets in trouble a lot. But he's very sweet. He made me a paper heart at home last week and presented it to me first thing the next morning. Aw...

This is Samson, chillin' with the Word.

He's got to check everything out, you know. Even the camera.

This is one of only two pictures I took in Kenting this past weekend. The day we went out to the beach and on a scenic scooter drive, I forgot my camera in my room! *bad Sharon, bad Sharon!* I tried to take with my cell phone but didn't work. Phooey.

This is my and my friend Annie diggin' some groovy hats in the night market.

Kenting is in the southernmost tips of Taiwan and has some beautiful beaches. A couple of cell groups went on a weekend trip for fun. We spent most of the day Saturday at the beach and then went on a scenic drive around that area on rented scooters (we also had a slight delay with a broken down scooter and had to get that fixed somehow out in the middle of nowhere, but that's another story and I'm kinda tired, and it's a long one).

I applied sunblock once before going in the water. We were in the sun for .... a looong time...like...4 hours? at least. I "snorkeled" a little bit (not like, really professional...like with a kiddie snorkel), but I saw some Nemo fish and his buddies. Well, apparently my sunblock got washed off fairly soon after I was in the water, and I ended up with the mother of all Sunburns. My legs are deep dark red from the mid thigh down (I had a skirt Thing over my swimsuit) and although my back and shoulders are burnt, my legs are way ouchier. They're swollen and extremely painful - on Saturday night I nearly passed out in the night market and on Sunday I had to take ibuprofin just to stand and there was still pain. I went to Dr. today and he gave me cream and pain meds, but is still very painful.

Lesson learnt. Re-apply, re-apply, re-apply.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

My students told me I looked like a pig, and some other students said "Tr. Sharon SO SCARY!!!"

I was like a walking Sun Safety ad at the school and everywhere else I went today. They were whispering - look what happens when you don't cover up in the Sun. Hrmphphph.

I won't post a picture. The kids were right. Tr. Sharon really is SO SCARY.

Well on that note, i'm going to take those meds and go to bed...

good night.