Marshal Hotel Taichung

... 4 3rd graders and 4 4th graders. These will probably be my hardest classes because I hate grading writing. It just takes so long! haha It is nice getting to work with various ages though. It will be good experience.

My other new thing that I started this week was kindergarten remedial. I have 4 students that I pretty much tutor. We work on their speaking and letter sounds. They are a fun group and I will be able to do some fun activities with them to get them ...

... something from another teachers room next door and I came back in my classroom to find the student pouring his pop into his water bottle so that he could be sneaky and drink it without me knowing. Well I caught him red handed and was pretty mad. To make matters worse before I went home for the day I went back into my classroom to find a nice surprise, ANTS! They were all over the student's desk who had the pop, clearly he had spilled while pouring! It didn't take long for the ants ...

I can't believe how fast time time seems to go by here! Last week was over before I even knew it. This weekend was pretty quite. A group of teachers went to see Public Enemies. It was ok, a little bit slow moving but it was still fun to go see a movie. On Saturday I went to a day market with my roommate. She was looking for some new Taiwanese clothes to bring with her when she goes home for the month. I didn't buy anything but it is fun to look at all the ...

... and after a windy ride up into the hills and speeding past half-eroded asphalt we heard the call for GuGuan, gathered our belongings and exited the bus. Tania and I turned to each other, each giving and receiving a look of "what do we do now"? We found ourselves in the middle of a small and quaint village, reminiscent of a half-deserted rocky mountain town in Colorado. We asked a few nice looking folk where the “GuGuan hot springs” are, and they all ...

... have stuck to fried rice, dumplings, and veggies. The school provides lunch for us everyday. Some days the food is a little scary but you can always count of having rice. Each day for lunch we get 2 hours. It is a nice break in the day but it makes it very hard to come back to work after relaxing for 2 hours. It isn't like the lunch break from student teaching where you ate your food in 15 mins! We also went to a night market last night where I was able to ...

... would be no brats. There would be no potato salad, there would not even be hamburgers. No, instead we were told by those teachers who were in attendance last year to be prepared for anything. I started to sweat with nervousness. Chiayi led us by scooter-caravan to her house on the other side of town where we were going to grill out. She was visibly excited to have people over to her house and was eager to get the food prepared and on the ...

After determining we haven't done anything "cultural" for the past two weekends, we decided to take a small road trip back into the mountains to visit one of Taiwan's more popular tourist destinations, Sun Moon Lake. The name Sun Moon Lake comes from the fact that, according to the locals, the lake looks like a combination of a sun and a crescent moon. Although we all looked at a map and tried to make this connection and had very little luck. Sun Moon Lake is to ...

... version of the story, but I guess the United Nations or the International Olympic Committee has not recognized Taiwan as an official country out of fear that it could increase political tensions with China. Therefore, the nation must bring their "Olympic flag" to the games and not their official national flag due to the fact that they are not an officially recognized country, even though they have the tenth best economy in the world at the moment.

... about the necessity to be flexible as an educator and began organizing my things to begin teaching third grade the next morning. I came to school the next morning and was just emotionally drained from all of the events of the past few weeks. I really did not want to get out of bed, and no matter how much coffee I drank, I just couldn't find the energy to get excited about teaching a third grade class for my ...

... humidity), you need to realize that these Taiwanese students are only given 40 minutes of outdoor play per week. It is even less when the regular school year starts rolling along (15 minutes per week). So when an opportunity arises to go outside, hang out with their teachers, and throw a Frisbee around for three hours, they take full advantage of the opportunity... and a smile never leaves their faces. It was a lot of fun and I am anxious for our next two field trips.