Dragon Valley Hotel & Spa Taichung

I had a great week! It flew by so fast! It started off on Monday which was Teacher's Day here. The school treated us to Pizza Hut for lunch and many students bring in gifts for their teachers, fruit is very common. One of my students brought in some fruit for my Chinese teacher and myself. One of my students gave me the gift of behaving during class! :) He is usually my most active in the classroom and he can never sit still. He was wonderful on Monday. He even wrote, "Happy ...

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One funny story from class, I was getting the students lined up at the end of the day and one of my students turns to me and says "Teacher why are your those things so big?" (while asking this he was pointing to his nostrils) I was caught so off guard that I started laughing and of course when I laughed my nostrils flared so they got bigger. He goes "WHOA!" haha we all got a good laugh! haha

Also you may have heard that H1N1 is spreading through Taiwan ...

... Morakot hitting Taiwan! It was the first typhoon of the year and it was a big one....so big that we got a Typhoon Day on Friday (the equivalent to a snow day in MN but we knew the night before that we didn't have school so we got to sleep in!) The typhoon didn't hit Taichung directly. We got mostly the after effects of it. Taichung sits on the other side of a mountain range so we don't get hit too bad from typhoons. On Thursday night we had a lot of ...

... and the new friends, I will also be sleeping on a regular mattress! Right now we sleep on more of a box spring, as I’ve mentioned before, and I have to often play tug-of-war with Ben for the covers at night so that my ever so growing body isn’t exposed to the fan, which Ben must keep on high as we sleep. Going off to training also means that we are embarking on ...

... we are headed out of Taichung! We are going to go and see some monkeys and then go to a place called Sun Moon Lake. As long as the weather holds off and it doesn't rain it should be beautiful. We will be taking a train out of the city and then spending the night at Sun Moon Lake. It will be a nice relaxing weekend before starting teaching on Monday!

I will write more after the trip!

Until then.....love ya and miss ya!

... she was double-booked and was scheduled to work with the kindergarten program that was held in a different building. So, I was paired with Sandy, who is not a Chinese "teacher" so much as she works in the administration offices and is fluent in both Chinese and English. What makes Sandy's abilities more impressive is that she is about four years younger than me and is a recent high school graduate. The ...

... to be a legendary performance that would be discussed for years to come. I was very nervous that morning, however, it definitely helped that Cornel sends two emcees with their story tellers (Jonathan, one of our teachers as well as Linda the secretary, who serves as a Chinese emcee). The program goes as follows: Linda says a few lines about Cornel Language School and introduces the storyteller to the group (she ...

... well... it makes for a pretty difficult challenge. I can tell that Johnny is a leader in the group. Anytime there was an awkward silence or he could tell that I was beginning to panic due to the lack of participation, he would raise his hand and put forth an effort to initiating conversation. I had a chance to talk with him after class, and to my surprise, he speaks nearly perfect English. I told him that, in the United States, he ...

... right after the movie and drove home. It is a must-see. It's dark, creepy, action-packed, (somewhat) funny, and a great plot with great acting. Seeing a movie in Taiwan is very similar to seeing it in the states. However, there are some differences too. Let's compare and contrast... 1) There are just as many previews in Taiwan as there are in the states. 2) Movies come out the same day here as ...

... trail that led high into the mountains, stopping occasionally for him to pick some fruit. He would also walk around and spray all of us with vinegar as a means of keeping the mosquitoes away. There were also some points on our walk where he would just spontaneously run into the woods, completely disappear for about twenty seconds, and come back holding two or three small geckos by the tail in which he would let the kids play with. He even ...