Thailand Tomorrow

Tonight we celebrated the Chinese New Year with the students. I got to eat traditional food and see some of my students dress up in traditional dress and sing. All in all, a pretty great night, however it has been greatly overshadowed by the fact that I fly out for Bangkok in less than 24 hours.

There are dishes left to clean, floors to sweep, and one giant backpack to stuff with clothes. And oh yeah, I still need to teach half a day tomorrow! Ah! I only take comfort in knowing that somehow, it will all get done and I will be happily sitting on a plane by this time tomorrow. I just need to actually do it first :)

Wish me luck and I'll be sure to post pictures when I get back. Bangkok here I come!

Positive Post-Class Conference

As a teacher, it is very easy to only talk to students one-on-one when something is wrong: too many homework assignments missed, talking too much in class, sleeping during lecture, talking Chinese in class, and the list goes on and on. Sometimes I focus too much on the negative and overlook the positives in my students and I know I'm not the only teacher to be guilty of that. So I've recently been trying to talk to students just to tell them how much I appreciate their hard work or recent increased effort.

Today, I called James back to my desk to talk to him after class. James is in one of the lower classes in 10th grade and his English is very poor. When James started the year, I could tell that he didn't understand anything I was saying. As the year progressed, he was getting better with the language barrier but was sort of apathetic when it came to Geometry (the nerve, I know!). For the past month or two however, James has made almost a complete 180 in my class; he is paying attention, participating in class, and has been acing his tests.

Yesterday I submitted my midterm grades and noticed that James' term 1 grade was 82%, term 2 was 92% and his midterm test score was 96%. I showed him that and told him that I have noticed his hard work and am really excited for him to continue improving and learning in Geometry. I told him that I'm expecting his term 3 grade to be even higher than term 2 and 1 and he said "95 I think" with a giant grin on his face. It's times like these that I realize just how powerful some positive reinforcement can be, especially to those students who aren't as academically focused as others.

Weekend Duty = Lots of Food

This weekend I was on duty with the kiddos. Every teacher has weekend duty about once every 6 weeks or so and this past weekend was my turn. Normally it is sort of a drag to have to spend more time with children on your weekends when you've already seen them for so much time during the week. However, with a positive attitude it can actually be kind of fun...and delicious!

Saturday afternoon we took the kids to a nearby town called Lugang about an hour and a half away. The only thing to really do there is walk up and down the streets and eat, so I found some students willing to hang out with me and let them lead me to their favorite spots. It was the best choice I've made in a long time; two of my 10th grade students led me around the entire time and ordered all of the best food for me. I even got them to haggle with a keychain making man to get me a pi keychain for 60NT! (= $2) Best purchase of the weekend, hands down.

Saturday nights we generally take the students to a local night market which has a large department store nearby. Normally, I spend my time on Saturday night duties in the department store because they have a bookstore on the 10th floor that has some English books and a grocery store in the basement that sells lots of Western food. However, the point of night markets is to walk around and buy cheap things and eat good food and I felt as if I was missing out. So this weekend I decided that I would get the true night market experience so again I convinced some students to take me around and show me the good eats.

These kids did not disappoint! First we had some weird/awesome assortment of dumpling type things that the kids picked out for us (a fellow Minnesotan coworker and I got to go to the night market on duty together this time). Then we moved on and had real milk bubble tea (I know the difference now because the real stuff is amazing) and followed it up with green onion pancakes (not our first in Taiwan...) that were to die for. All in all, that day I probably consumed more street food than I have since attending the Minnesota State Fair last year and it was great! Weekend duty isn't so bad when you use your students as translators to experience the best that Taiwan has to offer from it's street vendors!

Midterms Week

Today is the last day of midterms week here at school. Coming from a high school that never did midterms or cumulative finals, I can't really relate to what my students are going through. Obviously, I experienced midterms and finals while in college but I also only had to worry about four or five finals for one semester. My students have a midterm in each and every single class, eight to be exact.

For being ESL students and some of them pretty young for this sort of intense testing (even my 7th graders take the midterms), they are doing exceptionally well. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to take a two hour long test in a language that is not your native tongue. All too often I forget how exceptional my students are for this very fact- I think I would have a nervous breakdown if I had to take a physics midterm all in Chinese.

Needless to say, teachers and students alike are all pretty happy today to see midterm week over. For students, the reasons are obvious (no more tests!), and for teachers it will be nice to actually teach again! For the past four days I have just been standing in a room proctoring one test or another which is really boring. Bring on the math again!

Last Saturday Class for the Year

It is Saturday, January 15, 2011 and I will teach my last Saturday classes for the 2010-11 school year today. Whenever I tell people that I teach every Saturday morning, I generally get the same reaction: "What?!" And in truth, there have been times when the alarm clock went off on Saturday and I opened my eyes and grimaced at the prospect of teaching on a Saturday.

After 16 Saturday's, I can officially say that this is my last. I am definitely not sorry to see them go, but it hasn't been all bad. Usually classes are more relaxed on Saturday and since my classroom is tucked back in a corner up on the 5th floor, no one ever really checks in to see what I'm teaching (or not teaching) on Saturday. My first session is six eleventh graders who I teach during the week so it was almost like an extra class period each week to go over concepts that they were still struggling with from the week. My second session was an entirely different (and sometimes horrible) story, but after 11:45 a.m. today, I won't have to deal with them again!

Needless to say, my outlook is pretty bright on today. I know that I have to actually teach for three hours still, but at this point in time I can see the light and I am in a dead sprint to get to the end. Is it noon yet?

I Live Abroad

Ever since getting back from my Christmas vacation in Vietnam, I can't help but feel differently. It could be the malaria drugs we took, they're supposed to give you weird dreams and I can now say that is true, but I think it's more of a mindset type of thing.

For the first few months living here, I sort of felt like I was on vacation every day. Even working 50+ hours each week didn't drive home the fact that I was actually living somewhere other than the U.S, not just touring around Asia for a while. But ever since traveling here and then coming back to Taiwan, it has started to feel more real to me.

It feels good to be back in Taiwan and more importantly, I have stopped thinking about how many months I have until I go home for the summer and started to just appreciate my life here. Of course there are things I miss about home- heating in all houses, English being spoken in (almost) all situations, Target, Mike and Ike's, etc.- but I've started to think more about the pros and cons to living anywhere. For everything that I can think of that I miss about home, I can come up with at least one thing that I love about Taiwan that makes up for it. The only exception to this rule is my friends and family; I have yet to find Asian replacements for them...

Hello Finally!

I am still alive and kicking, do not fear friends and family! I apologize for not updating my blog since returning from my travels in Southeast Asia over Christmas but it got very busy very quickly here when the students returned. After writing my midterm exams (30+ pages after all is said and done for my three classes) all day today, I finally have a few moments to update my blog.

Now I know that reading long blog posts about travels that you have not experienced yourself can be a little dull, and I don't want to bore you. So I'll give you the highlights from the trip.

Cambodia:

Jane, Kate (the two girls I was traveling with), and I all really enjoyed our time in Cambodia. The poverty is very depressing and always evident, but it was such an amazingly unique place that it was great just to experience it. We toured the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and also made it to the Heart of Darkness (which is a nightclub). We took a bus to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, the largest religious complex in the world built in the 12th century, and wished we would have had more time there. It was so impressive!

Vietnam:

After four short days in Cambodia, we took a bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City. Our first impressions of Vietnam was that it was busy! Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City) has some of the craziest traffic I have ever seen! In the beginning of our time in Vietnam we really only spent about 12 hours in Saigon because we caught another bus the next day to Dalat, a resort type town in the mountains.

Dalat was an interesting town that I wouldn't need to go back to anytime soon, however we were all very glad that we made a pitstop there because the bus we took from Dalat to Nha Trang was the most beautiful ride I have ever taken!

We arrived in Nha Trang, the "#1 beach in Vietnam," on Christmas Eve for some much needed rest and relaxation in the sun. It was such a unique Christmas since it was 85 degrees and sunny on Christmas day and I swam in the ocean- it was awesome! Of course, I missed seeing my family and thought of all of the gatherings I was missing all day long, but it was pretty fun spending it in Nha Trang.

After Nha Trang, we flew up to Hanoi to spend some time in the Old Quarter of the city. We all really liked Hanoi but it was a little chilly compared to Nha Trang so we missed our sun and sand. After two days in Hanoi, we took a two day overnight trip on Halong Bay- another very beautiful place in this world. Although two days and one night was very short, we all really enjoyed our cruise on Halong Bay and would gladely go back someday.

After spending some time in the north, we headed back down to Saigon to finish up our trip. We were right about our first impressions of Saigon because the traffic was still crazy to us when we returned by the end of our trip. It got even crazier when we went out on New Year's Eve in Saigon; traffic was so thick that once we were out to dinner, we couldn't cross the street to go to a different place until well after midnight. Although we were confined to one side of the street, we still had a great time bringing in the new year in Saigon- definitely the most exotic new year's I've ever spent!

14 days went by very quickly and before we knew it, we were back on a plane heading home to Taiwan. Even though we loved our time in Vietnam and Cambodia, all of us cheered when the plane touched down in the Taipei airport- when you've been away from your home base in Asia for a while, you miss it! Being away from Taiwan makes me realize how nice of a place it is that I live in. I had fun, but I'm glad to be "home" finally.

Now I only have three more weeks before I depart for Thailand for Chinese New Year. Rough life I'm living these days!