National Hotel Taichung

... holiday celebrations in Taiwan. It was Moon Festival. The way they celebrate is similar to 4th of July in the states, BBQs, fireworks, and partying! Our principal, Bih-Hua had us all over to her house for a BBQ. The food was so good! She had steak, chicken, pork chops, potato salad, veggies, 3 pasta dishes, brownies, and cheese cake! It was wonderful! I had a steak, I haven't had one in 3 months! It was delicious! After we were done stuffing our faces we went inside. Karaoke is ...

... speak Spanish!! Who would have thought that I would be able to practice my Spanish while talking to a Taiwanese man in Taiwan? So there we were having a conversation in Spanish on the corner of the street. While we were talking with him and figuring out where we needed to go he was asking other taxi drivers around what the best way for us to get to the hiking trails would be. He ended up coming back to us offering to take us there in his taxi for 200NT ...

... door so the move wasn't very far but it was a pain to have to move everything. Right when I was getting into the swing of things in my classroom, I was thrown a curve ball. I spent my prep time on Friday getting everything ready for Monday. The class is all decorated....again and everything should be in order. I will also be getting some new kids on Monday. I am excited to get all my students there so we can really get the year started. Last week I took some pictures of my students ...

... its grounds because of the trees, silence, and overall campus feel compared with the scampering of the streets with partial sidewalks and rushed traffic experience. As we approached we noticed that it wasn't just us who knew of today’s eclipse as it seemed moments earlier, due to the normal traffic pattern of the streets and parks. We had a great time enjoying the eclipse, watching all the Taiwanese locals point toward ...

... heard of Minnesota nice but Taiwanese nice is even better. If I stand with my map out on the street people will come up to help me. I have also heard stories of people losing wallets and getting them back days later with all the money. Or people who have left things in cabs get everything returned. This also has to do with keeping face.

Those are just some that I can think of now....more to come later :)

I purchased my tickets to Thailand today! I am really excited for this trip, which we will be taking over Chinese New Years. Here is the plan for the trip (so far): I am leaving Taipei with about eight other staff members on January 25 and will be arriving in Bangkok after a four-hour flight. We will be staying in Phuket, which is one of the world's most famous beaches, for ...

... on a good note, I changed the channel. I decided to put on Taiwan ESPN. Although the channel is entirely in Chinese, it is sometimes nice to watch the sports highlights from the local baseball teams and watch the occasional re-run of the New York Yankees game (they are OBSESSED with the Yankees here because one of the team's starting pitchers, Ching Ming-Wang, is from Taiwan). But to my surprise, there was no Chinese ...

... resort or museum. It is a popular place for Taiwanese and their families to visit on the weekends. The grounds consist of a huge house (serving more as a gift shop and a restaurant), a very large coy pond, a man-made waterfall featuring a walkway that you can walk through, and a whole host of gardens and flowers. It was really interesting to observe the locals at this place. First, most Taiwanese women wore clothing that keeps their ...

As many of you know, a recent tropical storm (Tropical Storm Kalmegi) hit our island recently and has caused a lot of damage (read about it here). I thank many of you for emailing and asking about my safety. God has been watching over us because no one within our teaching family was severely affected by this natural disaster. I woke up on late Thursday night/early Friday morning to the ...

The summer program at Cornel is divided into two sections: summer camp and the summer session. Summer camp consists of fun activities and field trips for those students who wish to remain in school for the 2 week recess, while the "Summer Session" is essentially the regular school routine with some minor changes in the schedule. Summer camp lasts about two weeks during the month of July. I really play very little role in this because administration has set that ...