I forgot to mention...

After getting a few inquiries, I realized I never did let you guys know about how my kindies did on the KITE test. (The international English proficiency test) They did great! Out of the nine kids that took it, all nine passed. And three of them got perfect scores! And all of them on the Monday after the test kept saying "it was so easy!" Yay for my kids!!

Apparently I lost one of my students though. One of my kindies just stopped showing up last week, and when I asked Jennifer if she was coming back (half-seriously), Jennifer said, "Probably not." No one tells me anything at that school! All of her school supplies are still at the school, books, blanket, toothbrush, etc. I wish I knew why she left, my hypothesis is that her parents weren't encouraged by her improvement. She definitely struggled a lot more than the rest of the kids, and just couldn't retain a lot of the new words that we had been going over. She was a sweetheart though and always cracked me up because she was always very talkative, except during a lesson. Now I'm down to 11 students.

I forgot to mention that we went to Xindian with Todd (and met up with some of his dormmates) to see Dragon boat racing during the Dragon Boat festival. It's a festival to commerate the death of an advisor to an emperor who drowned himself because the emperor thought he was lying. At least that is how the story goes. The villagers didn't want fish to eat the body of such a good man, so they threw rice dumplings into the river so that the fish would get full on the rice and not want to eat his body, and they would hold dragon boat races. So people nowadays make sure to eat rice dumplings and go watch some racing. It wasn't too exciting when we went because we saw mostly preliminary racing, and left before any serious action took place. I did get a few nice pictures though. I got my fair share of rice dumplings, my school gave me a big box, and Andrew kept getting them from the parents of his students.

This past weekend I got to see Kate and hang out with a bunch of Canadian ice hockey players. The ice hockey time that Clayton plays on was in the semifinals of their league, so we were invited to go out and watch, and I helped convince Kate to come up for the weekend so I could hang out with her. The game was on Friday night, pretty late at night, so we didn't get home until about 2am. It was lots of fun, I miss going to athletic events and cheering, and we got to see a zamboni in Taiwan! On Sunday, we went with Clayton and Kate to the Ice Hockey League Banquet at a country club in the hills. The club had a big pool complete with squirt guns, water polo nets, and a water slide! The buffet was ok, and we didn't get any of the jokes when they were handing out awards, but the pool made it worth it. We played a fun game of water polo, and then headed back to Taipei to eat at Alleycats, and eat some really yummy calzones.

And tomorrow, I have my last bushiban class. It seems pretty surreal typing that, it hasn't really sunk in that i won't be teaching my crazy 7 bushiban students anymore. They were lots of fun to teach, and I will definitely miss their "jokes" they would try to tell in class. Or just laughing at me and saying "May teacher is crazy," or "May teacher so funny." It will be nice to be done at 4pm everyday though, I will not mind having a whole evening free on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

And I hate to admit this, but I have been sucked into the latest craze in Taiwan, 7-Eleven Hello Kitty magnets. You get one for every $77NT you spend, and they have one for each year from '74-'04 and also 7 Taiwan magnets with Hello Kitty in front of a famous Taiwan landmark. The kids trade them like trading cards, and I am also part of the trading. I'm only missing two years, and one Taiwan magnet now. Apparently they have clubs set up where people can go to swap, and they are selling them on e-bay as well. Jennifer and Clayton have been giving them out as rewards, I won't be so generous until I have a full set. :)

Upcoming adventures: Trying to remember to celebrate July 4th, Andrew's birthday, Chicago at the National Theater with Todd...

Happy Father's Day! (Graduation photo shoot and more yuckiness)

To my dad, and all the great dads of the world, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!!!!

So Thursday was the kindergarten graduation photo shoot. Jennifer warned me it would take the whole day, and it did, the photographers came at 9am, and didn't leave until 4:15pm. I was exhausted and could barely hold onto consciousness for my bushiban. First they took shots of each kid dressed in mini graduation robes/cap and a fake scroll. Then we took group shots, and then onto the costumed themes. The photographer just set up a blue sheet, and then his assistant and I proceeded to change the kids into about 6 different costumes, ranging from traditional Japanese robes to fancy ball gowns. The only break we got was the 20 mins for lunch, the kids didn't even get nap time! Each costume equalled about 5 minutes worth of photo taking per kid (they posed with different props and poses for each costume), so if I have 12 kids, and there were about 6 costumes for each kid, you can imagine how long that would take. Plus I had to keep the kids in line while they were waiting to be changed or standing to be photographed, in addition to changing kids in and out of costume. Ugh.

The costumes desperately needed to be cleaned, and I was a little grossed out by the fact that the assistant pulled out a tube of lipstick that she applied to each kid, with no pre or after wipe after each application. Who knows how many lips that one tube of lipstick has touched?! Yuck.

Even more gross however, is having Vincent throw up on Friday right before everyone was about to have lunch, and after nap time, Sam "missing" in the bathroom and proceeding to track his poop around the bathroom, and get it on his leg, socks, and shoes. Things I will not miss when I am done teaching. I feel really bad for Vincent though, because he has been throwing up a lot lately (twice on Tuesday.) His stomach always hurts because he has about three things going on with his stomach, and an infection in his ear, so the poor kid has to take one packet of medicine powder everytime before he eats, and then after he is done with his meal, he has two more packets of medicine and 10cc of liquid medicine. It's when he's taking his medicine that he throws up because the powder makes him gag. And if he does throw up, he has another combo of meds to take. So he hasn't really been eating as much as he used to, so now he's really lethargic because he really isn't getting enough food to support him, let alone the growing that he should be doing right now. (He's one of the taller boys in the class.) Poor guy.

On a happier note, Andrew and I are treating ourselves to a fancy prime rib dinner tonight at Lawry's upscale restaurant in Taipei, tomorrow I get to watch him get his butt kicked in basketball by high school students, and we're going to see about courses in Indian cooking. An Indian restaurant in Taipei had an ad in the paper saying it held Sunday cooking classes. And I only have two more weeks and I am done teaching my bushiban!

Taiwan weather news: We've had a lot of rain this past week, and a lot of southern Taiwan cities are under water right now because of severe flooding. Crazy stuff! This weekend is the first dry weekend in awhile. Hopefully it'll stay dry for awhile, but I doubt it will. At least it isn't cold and damp anymore, now it's hot and humid!

Rules of the Road

I drove Mei to work today because I don't have to be at work until 3:00 today, and my lazy butt was actually up. Coming back home, I had some thoughts about the rules of the road here in Taiwan that I don't know if I've articulated before...

* Size matters! You know, in the States, I began to get so haughty taughty about being a pedestrian. Crossing the streets, especially after going to school, where there are nothing BUT students, I had the high-nosed attitude of, "You dare get close to ME?! You're a car, I'm a person, you better stop for me!!" Not so extreme, but... you get the idea. In short, the pecking order in the States seems to be pedestrians, then cheaper cars, then richer cars (who's really going to yield, the guy in the 2005 Lexus or the guy in the '84 Chevy?), with bikes thrown in there somewhere. Here in Taiwan, bigger is better. The trucks have the right of way, then cars, then scooters work their way around them, and heaven forbid if you're a pedestrian. Even the sidewalks aren't safe. I can't figure out exactly where bikes are here in the pecking order.. but they have to be somewhere between stray dogs and garbage thrown onto the street. Riding a bike in the city is begging for disaster. Too many cars, too many scooters. Going over bridges, bikes are lumped into a narrow lane with scooters. You can imagine the fun with that in the pouring rain. Not good. Taiwan: a biker's nightmare.

* Are you trained? Todd told me (I think) of an article that said that people who play video games are better drivers. Which is totally understandable. I mean, people who play video games EXPECT random crap to happen.. sure, a random door opens? No problem! A car suddenly pulls out into the road? No problem! A five car collision? No problem! No, but the reflexes of people who play games has to be better than the average person. Anything where you have to judge people's speeds: playing sports (like basketball would be perfect, right Hiro?), competitive bike riding, even long distance running in packs, playing video games, they're all are good training.

* Forget about the past! Driving here, you really don't need to worry too much about what's behind you. The unwritten rules are you look out ahead of you, and if you want to pass someone else, that's YOUR responsibility to do it safely. For instance, my left rear view mirror is next to useless. And how's my dirving affected as a result? Minimally.


MISCELLANIOUS STUFF

* As mentioned before, we're nearing our time of departure in Taiwan. Three months to the day, in fact. It's good, it's bad... gonna miss a lot of things, not going to miss a lot of things, looking forward to a lot in the States, not looking forward to a lot. I'll explain more when we're actually closer to our time of departure. But I am looking forward to traveling! Woo!

* I saw my first accident here. Well, I didn't see it actually happen, but I saw 0.5 seconds BEFORE and 0.5 AFTER. Mei and I were leaving the relatively smoke-free internet cafe (WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!) when I look left, look right, look left, and start to pull out. A scooter that just passed us goes... "CRACK!" A car had started pulling out, and the scooter hit the front edge of it and he crashed. The guy was ok, after taking a little while to fully make sure.. what made it funny was that the guy got out of the car, saw that the guy on the scooter was ok for a minute, then they both go back to their scooter/car. Kind of like a mutual responsibility thing, and since health coverage is so fantastic, they don't really need to worry about that... "I'm ok, you're ok, both our vehicles are a little scratched.. ok good times, see you later."

* I am applying to medical school. For those of you who don't know, I have decided awhile ago to apply. And I used the wrong tense. As of 20 minutes ago, I can say that I APPLIED to medical school. Round one, anyway. It's a long process that involves a secondary application, and then an interview. Regardless, it's a great feeling to be done with round 1! Thanks to mom and dad and Mei for doing some serious editing and REALLY helping me!

Take care everyone! With the app done, I should be online to write more!

A post at last, with lots of big travel news!

Hello everyone!

When I left off last time...We tried to go to the comedy show, but after much frustration in trying to find the stupid thing, we came up short. We found the building that was listed in the bulletin from the newspaper, however, it was a very sad looking children's center that was having nothing going on, let alone a comedy festival. Last time I look for events in the Foreign Community Calender in the China Post. Sheesh.

The past two weeks at work have been alright, not much new to report, the turd kids are still being turds, and the good kids continue to be angels. And I only have seven more classes with my bushiban class, so that's a little exciting, it ends on June 30th. Woo! Although I will miss the overtime pay that I get for teaching the class.

This weekend was pretty quiet, on Saturday we spent pretty much the morning and afternoon at the internet cafe (details on that coming in a few sentences...) and Sunday we went to the Jade and Flower Market in Taipei to just browse around and get a few small things for my fish tank when I get home. I also had a quick trip to DaAn park to stroll around and take in the nice weather.

And now, drumroll.....

We will be touching down in SFO for the first time in 14 months on October 18th, at 7pm. In other words, that's when we'll finally be home!!! For those who are doing the mental math, that leaves a 1 month, 5 day gap from when Andrew's contract ends and when we get home. After much deliberation, debate, stress, and input, we have come up with our travel plans in Asia, since we are here, we're young, and we have the time!

So here it goes: Where we will go before we go home~We're going to Southern Taiwan to visit Kate, go to Kending National Park, and Penghu (islands SW of Taiwan). Next is flying to Hong Kong for a day stopover to get a visa for China and for Andrew to say he's been to Hong Kong. I've been there twice already, so it won't be too thrilling for me. And then on to China! We're going to try and get on a river cruise and try to see what's left of the Three Gorges, travel on to Beijing, see the Great Wall and Forbidden City...

Then on to Singapore for a few days, train into Kuala Lumpur for a couple days, then fly to Thailand!! We'll spend about two weeks in Thailand, our main points we have planned so far are Chiang Mai, Bankok, Ko Samui, and Sri Racha (they have a zoo there where you can hold and feed baby tigers!!!). We're avoiding southern Thailand, for pretty obvious reasons. (It's a Muslim area that would like to break away from Thailand, lots of fighting.) And then we'll fly from Bangkok to home, with an hour stopover in, Taipei. Ha! We didn't plan that, it was just the cheapest flight from Bangkok.

So that's it. My time in Taiwan as an English teacher is starting to wrap up, it seems like so long, and yet so quick. I still have two months to go, so not too much reflecting, yet.