Pacific Wellness Spa & Club Pei-tou

... like. We saw a couple little baby ones that were super cute too. We hiked on the trail for about 1 1/2 hours. We were then all sweaty, hot and tired. It was probably in the upper 80's and sunny. We headed back to take a train then bus to Sun Moon Lake.

We got in around 6:00PM on Saturday night. Our first task was to find a place to sleep for the night. The first couple places we went didn't have anymore rooms. I got a little concerned that we ...

... your temp. I was one of the lucky ones that was too hot, I got my temp taken and luckily passed and didn't show signs of swine flu.

After leaving the airport we were greeted by Jilda, someone from the school. We then had a 2 hour car ride to get to my place. Dawndra, another new teacher from MN, and I were able to get to the house and have some time to get things into place. We waited up for our 3 ...

... especially as a relatively new person into the field. I definitely got a lot of perspective into the life of a student based upon my conversations with parents during last year's parent/teacher conferences. I was anxious to see how much I could tell when the parent spoke little to no English. I was supposed to stand with my Chinese teacher, Iris, who was to serve as my translator for the evening ...

... to the core in today's post-9/11 times that we are currently facing. I decided to have a little fun with my Lazy Ozzie experience. I decided to go out and put together a set of clothes and create a mask (complete with feathers) so I would resemble Ozzie while storytelling. For my activity, the students were to make and color masks of their own so we could re-tell the story together as a group. I had a feeling it was ...

... is also expected of these students when they attend Chinese school that they sit attentively and never talk while in the classroom. There is a lot of emphasis on memorization and direct instruction when it comes to learning in a Chinese school environment. Therefore, when they come to English school and encounter a teacher (such as myself) whose whole philosophy on teaching is that children learn by doing rather than listening ...

We planned a group outing last night to see The Dark Knight. I am a huge Batman fan and have been anxiously awaiting this film for the past year or so. Needless to say, I was so excited that I did laundry the night before just so I could wear my Batman t-shirt to the event. The movie, as expected and reviewed, was absolutely fantastic. I couldn't help but feel like the Dark Knight himself when I hopped on my ...

... and rattle it in hopes of getting the monkey upset. The money did nothing. However, he asked that a female teacher come and just lightly tap the cage. One teacher did, and the monkey just went bazzerk; flailing his arms all over and throwing things in his cage. I believe the farmer made some sort of dirty joke in Chinese, because only the Chinese teachers were (nervously) laughing along with him as we continued our tour. He took us on ...

... it neatly and put it in the wastebasket next to the toilet. - Don't drink the tap water. Drink from the water dispenser. You have a choice of very warm or very hot. Cold drinks are bad for your health, you know. - Garbage trucks that play ice cream truck music. - Nearly everything that is typical of Taiwanese food has some kind of sugar in it, although those things you expect to have sugar in them often do not. For example, you bite into a lovely puff ...

... get comfortable was to get on the floor and rest my head on the bottom of the seat as Eva, sitting comfortably in her Asian-compatible sized seat, stroked my head to comfort me. As difficult as the 13.5 hour flight was, the 1.5 hour bus ride from the airport to Taya was exactly the opposite. The bus ride felt more like a Winnebago ride (circa 1976) as the interior was decked out in wood tones with fully reclining, extra wide leather seats (also, inexplicably, wood-toned) and the ...

... into Josh, and we started up a conversation. Within a few minutes of talking to Josh, I was very impressed. He spoke near perfect English, with an American accent even, though he had only been to the United States for three short weeks. He told me he was currently working on his Masters in biochemistry at TaiDa University, the highest-ranking in Taiwan. We learned that we have lots in common, including love of travel, love of live music, and ...