Hotel Dion Taichung

... for this week is to be able to say our phone numbers in Chinese and also a friends number. I have been practicing already, maybe by Thursday I will have it figured out. I went to badminton last night at a kindergarten student from Cornel was there with her parents so I was practicing my Chinese with her. She did a lot of laughing at me but I think young children are the best partners when studying a foreign language. It doesn't hurt your feelings as ...

... Everyone has been taking precautions to prevent it but it seems inevitable that it will end up being spread more before it goes away. We still get temperatures taken and our hands sanitized before coming into school everyday. I will keep my fingers crossed that I can stay healthy! <br><br>One last thing about school, I was scheduled to have my second observation this week but right before I went to class my boss said that she didn ...

... note. Then you also need to give a general comment about the students progress and what they still need to work on. It is quite the process! And since all our comments are in English we then have to hand everything over to our Chinese teachers to translate everything into Chinese so the parents know what is going on. <br><br>Another random note about school would be with homework. We are required to give homework every night to our ...

... got on his phone and called his girlfriend telling her to pack a suitcase with only the essentials. He panicked for the 30 mins. But then when the drill was over and people just got back on with their daily lives he realized it wasn't anything bad! Good thing I knew it was a drill, I might have been a little freaked out otherwise! <br><br>After the drill 2 of my roommates and I went out and about for the evening. We hit up an English teacher store, it is a great store with a ...

Well I survived my first day of teaching. It is a relief to have that over with. The day went relatively smooth too! I have the kids for 4 hours during the summer program and I only have 6 students this week. I don't know what I would have done if I was thrown into a classroom of 20 or 30 students on the first day of teaching....NO THANK YOU! I am now getting into the swing of things. Planning is still a little overwhelming and I can't wait for the ...

... starting a fire! The ladies then set out the evening's food spread on a table in the garage. The cuisine consisted of chicken, pork, shishkabobs, shrimp on a stick, oysters, and fish. It was definitely a variety of items that were available for us to eat and I must say that I was not used to attending a cookout where there was shrimp on a stick as an option. We grilled out in the middle of the street (they do not have a backyard) and enjoyed ...

... have cost about $6). The taxicab ride was one to remember. I do not know what it is about riding in a taxi in foreign countries, but I always seem to end up fearing for my life and saying about a dozen prayers before I reach my destination. The driver (while wearing some very Top Gun-esq aviator sunglasses) drove up the mountains at an insane amount of speed. I actually looked over his shoulder and noticed that we were going 140 kilometers per hour (about 90MPH ...

... It was a fantastic feeling to receive that first paycheck. We all took a group trip to the local post office, which is where we, as alien citizens, can open a bank account. One-by-one we walked up to the window with our school's Chinese interpreter and organized our own account. We were given a bank statement, a checkbook, and a debit card with a cute little dinosaur on it (everything around here has some sort of "cute" cartoon ...

... a strong earthquake. This was rather ironic news due to the recent trip to the earthquake museum just last week. Thankfully, the earthquake's epicenter was toward the southern tip of the island, and the effects were minimal in my city. I asked all of my fellow teachers who all stated that they did not feel a thing. However, the event did cause me to ask our administrator about our school's ...

... some errands within the school in hopes the rain would die down). Needless to say it was rather frustrating and not the birthday gift I had hoped for. When I walked into the apartment building, soaking from head to toe, I walked past our security guard. He yelled something at me in Chinese and I sort of let out a groan because I half expected to be scolded for being so wet. However, the man was holding up two packages (clearly written in my Mom's ...