Crazy Day

Spirit week has been probably the best week at school all year (see previous post for further details). It all culminates in today: Crazy Day. I'm pretty sure the teachers are committing to this way more than any of the students are!

Four of my advisees got dressed up. But of course, I looked a littler "crazier" than all of them. No surprise there.

Costumes Makes the Day Fly By

This week is Spirit Week at our school. Much like Homecoming week from my high school years (minus the big football game seeing as how we don't have a team), each day of the week has a different theme for dressing up.

Today it is Disney characters day and my coworker/friend Kate and I decided to be Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Once we reached this decision of course others joined in; we have an Alice and a Queen of Hearts. Dress up days make teaching fly by! So much fun, it's like I'm back in high school again but with more authority!

Advisees: A Constant Source of Entertainment

Being a teacher at my school, I am in charge of 6 kids in 7th, 9th, and 10th grade. My advisees, which I think I've mentioned a time or two here before, are always keeping me on my toes. They are all adorable little Asian school children but you also never know what is going to come out of their mouths (kids say the darndest things!).

In all honesty, I love my advisees. They are great kids and I enjoy sitting at a lunch table with them every day. We have great conversations and I have truly bonded with each and every one of them- I might even miss them when I go home for summer!

ReRe gives me songs from her vast Kpop collection frequently, Ariel hugs me almost every day, ViVi makes me laugh, and Angel...well, she tests my patience daily. To say that Angel is full of energy is probably the understatement of the year.

During my last prep hour today, my classroom door flies open and there stands Angel, with fake flowers all over her head. She proceeded to run around my classroom yelling how funny she looked while I desperately tried to make her go back to class.

This is not the first time she has skipped class only to do something ridiculous to get a rise out of me nor will it be the last. Oh Angel, you are one unique kid!

Monday is a No-Fun-Day

Today is Monday...ugh. This weekend, although fun, went way to quickly and left me terribly unprepared for the week to start. It is days like today that I wish I just had some sort of desk job so I could saunter in, sit down, work for 8 hours, and then just be done with it (until Tuesday that it).

Being a teacher is great because I DON'T have a desk job and each day is different which makes the time pass quickly. Days like today are simply the downside of such a profession: my body aches from a long run I took on Saturday, I'm tired from the even longer night I had on Saturday, and yesterday I couldn't get nearly as much planning done due to an Easter Egg hunt we had in a park near school. Students don't really care if you're tired or cranky either, they will be loud and complaining just like always. Saying things like "Kids, quiet down because my head hurts" only proves to increase the decibel level in the room. It's basically a lose-lose situation when you work with children on days like today.

In all honesty however, it is probably a very good thing that I don't have a desk job because look how well I'm using my prep periods as it is! If I did have a desk job, I'm sure there would be a terribly huge portion of my day wasted blankly staring at a computer screen. At least the children motivate me to stand up and speak for 50 minutes at a time. Now if I can just handle the 7th graders after lunch, it will be a giant victory for me!

Oh Master Minds...

As a teacher at our school, we are contractually obligated to offer an after school activity. You have two options as a teacher: Monday-Wednesday-Friday sport related activity or Tuesday-Thursday more curricular related activity. Seeing as how I have no athletic ability and have never coached a thing in my life, I clearly opt for the Tuesday-Thursday option every term.

For the past two terms now, I have offered the activity called Master Minds. In the beginning I started out very strong offering cool activities every day that got the kids engaged. We did math problems and group solving with hands-on activities. But as time has progressed, my flock has strayed a bit. I really can't blame it on the sheep either, the shepherd has gotten a little lazy admittedly. I can't help it, planning a good activity for them is like prepping for another class every Tuesday and Thursday and lately I've been simply running out of time to do so.

I truly enjoy the caliber of our students in times like these though. I have nothing planned for 14 students to do for 55 minutes. A normal (i.e. average American) classroom of students who have been cooped up all day long would be tearing the place apart. As I scan the room, I see 5 boys in the corner playing Halo on their computers, one boy playing Tetris online, two boys playing chess, and three kids working on sudoko puzzles I randomly gave them. It is no louder in here than it is during a normal class period. I love our tame children!

Today Went from Bad to Bubble Tea Awesome

Today started very badly. Everything about the beginning of my day was wretched and I was not a very happy camper.

Most of my classes were either apathetic or in dire need of ridalin, bad news kept popping up left and right, and to top it all off I wasted two of my preps. I spent over two hours registering for three different standardized tests I need to take this summer in order to keep my teaching license in Minnesota. After too much time spent on it and $265 charged on my credit card, I am officially registered for July 14th and 15th. Oh joy.

By lunch time, my mood was noticeably gloomy; my advisee Angel even asked me "Ms. P., what's wrong with you?" At which point I started ranting to this poor child who understood about every 5th word of what I was saying. She was a good listener though!

This was shaping up to be perhaps the worst day I had experienced in Taiwan yet. Somehow in between lunch and the end of school however, my day switched from terrible to terribly awesome. During my 8th hour prep my other advisee ReRe gave me 20 new K-pop songs (which I am listening to as I type). Not only did I get new music but ReRe, who is apparently somewhat of a computer wiz, changed a bunch of settings on my notebook and made things better/more awesome (if that is possible).

After uploading some free Asian pop music and getting a computer makeover, I took off to get my scooter fixed: it was leaking a LOT of gas when I drove to yoga last night. I went to a repair shop that every coworker of mine uses and was back on my scooter in 15 minutes. Perhaps more exciting than the actual quick fixing and super cheap cost of it though (100 NT which is like $3) was the fact that I had a pretty long conversation in Chinese with the mechanic. It went a little something like this:

(after the 15 minute fixing had concluded)

Me: Thank you! How much does it cost?

Mechanic: 100 NT

Me: Ok thank you.

Mechanic: You speak Chinese?

Me: Only a little bit.

Mechanic: That is good! Do you teach?

Me: Yes, I am a teacher.

Mechanic: Ok, thank you. Goodbye!

Me: Thank you, goodbye! (cue scooter noises)

Ok, so it was not the most complex of linguistic exchanges, but keep in mind that I am only taking Chinese classes once a week for two hours and it is a HARD language to learn. This was completely in Chinese too, no acting out what I meant or slipping back into English for words I don't know! I gave myself a pat on the back.

The afternoon ended with a good book, my iPod, and a bubble tea on the roof of school laying in the sunshine of a beautiful April day in Taichung. Given the horrible start to today I was very pleased to find it ending exceptionally well. However, I would prefer if tomorrow started a little nicer for me...

Math Attack!

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm prone to yell things out at random intervals. Just this week, my 9th grade geometry class figured this out as well.

My coworker and future roommate, the social studies department chair for next year, and I have a friendly banter going on. She insults math and any sort of geometric shape and I respond by mocking the study of history. Generally we have our shared 9th grade class carry mock-insulting messages back and forth and 9B truly enjoys this.

Yesterday, the message from 9B was "Ms. H says Geometry sucks!" Them were fighting words! So I appropriately responded by saying "Well you can tell Ms. H that we're going to have a battle! Math versus history!" My 9th graders seemed to think that math and history can't have such a battle so I proceeded to make something up on the fly, just like any good teacher would do. I decided that the way Ms. H and I would pit our subjects against each other would be to shout random vocab words from our respective disciplines at each other in a battle. Kind of like the way Pokemon used to be played (or so I've heard); it's like you're using an equilateral triangle to do your bidding and you wait to see what the other person throws at you (Julius Ceasar!? Oh No!)

Of course I had to demonstrate to 9B just exactly what I was talking about, so I started shouting things out while flailing my arms and legs like horrible karate moves: "Rhombus! Trapezoid! Parallel! Isosceles! Dodecagon!" 9B was literally rolling on the floor laughing so hard and of course as soon as class ended they ran to Ms. H and told her it was on!

Now not only is it a battle between the history and math departments, but the rest of the staff has caught on too. At any given time, you can hear random vocabulary words from all different disciplines being shouted out by staff in our school and I take full credit for this. My headmaster is somewhat concerned about his staff, but I see it as a positive thing. If anything, it gets the students excited about vocabulary!

Best Tuesday on Record

For some odd reason, the stars have aligned for me today: best Tuesday ever. For no particular reason at all, my day has just gone off without a hitch. More than that, I genuinely enjoyed almost every minute of today (with the exception of parts of 7th hour, but they can be challenging 11th graders).

My first hour of 10th grade students was wonderful as always; they do exactly as they are told and in fact, even understood most of my jokes today! Total success. I ran to the post office during my 2nd hour prep, always a good thing to sneak off campus for a few minutes just to get a break, and then met with my advisees during a break between classes.

During my third hour prep I received some very good news from my headmaster. He called me to his office to ask if I was willing to be the Mathematics Department Chairperson for next year AND confirmed that my friend Nichole and I will be living off campus next year (something we have been crossing our fingers about but are never sure with him). That is completely unheard of: getting two pieces of good news from him without getting yelled at once while in the office. Score!

To top it all off, my 7th grade class actually worked today! I was literally flabbergasted at the end of the hour with all the things we accomplished in class because they were good. All of the boys in that class who have been literally trying to make my life a living hell (or at least that's how it seems) were not only silent today, but actually trying to work and understand the concepts. It totally rocked my educational socks off.

Great Tuesday, now off to yoga to top the day off. If I can get into a real headstand tonight it will be the day sent from God himself. Let's just hope I don't break my neck in the process!

Debbie and Virgil in Taiwan

I miss Mom and Dad already. It was a wonderful week but it went far too quickly for my taste. Everything went exactly as planned, some things better than I ever could have expected, and we all had a great time.

I took my parents to Taroko Gorge, the number one spot to see in Taiwan for good reason, for the first half of the week. After a few days there, we headed down to Kenting which is the "beach scene" of Taiwan. We were successful in driving a car cross-country to get to our first destination and made our way to the opposite end of the island by the high speed rail.

We saw breathtaking views around almost every corner and I, myself, am now convinced that Taiwan is the most beautiful country on Earth after this trip. We ate awesome Asian food and sat on beaches that had some of the bluest water I've ever seen. Virgil drove not one, not two, but several different scooters on the streets of Taiwan and Debbie was a trooper riding on the back of my scooter all week.

The Taiwanese people were gracious hosts and Virgil took advantage of making friends with a few braves ones that wanted to practice their English. In Kenting we ran into a few different groups of school children who absolutely loved us. One school group shouted "Welcome to Taiwan!" in unison to us across a ravine. Another group of high school girls stopped us on the street and took lots of pictures with us (I'm pretty sure it's because we were such an attractive trio of white folks!).

Looking back at our week together, I can't imagine a better Spring Break vacation. Not only did I get to see probably the most beautiful places on the island that I hadn't gone to before, but I got to spend an entire week with two of the most important people in the world to me. Being away from home for so long (7 months+ now) sort of made me forget how much I love and enjoy being around my family.

At the end of our week together, the inevitable had to happen however. Saying goodbye to Mom and Dad at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning was harder than I expected. I cried when I hugged them when I left Minnesota in August, but I was also going off to a great adventure awaiting me which made it easier. A few days ago when their flight was scheduled to leave Taipei International Airport at 9:45 a.m., I cried again when I hugged them goodbye; it was much more difficult than in August. I walked upstairs to a quiet bedroom, alone. Minutes before it was occupied with two people whom I love more than words can express and they were in a car heading to an airplane that would take them very far away from me again.

This weekend I have been slowly cleaning and straightening my apartment again, effectively erasing any evidence of them being here. It's been really hard for me because no one is waking me up in the morning anymore and greeting me with a smile. At night, the room I'm sleeping in is silent, absent are the snores I had become accustomed to during our week together. It's just me again.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm VERY excited to teach tomorrow again just to see my kids! I need them to keep me company for two more months and then I'll be on my way home. It will go quickly, I know that, this weekend has just been a little long and a little lonely. Tomorrow is a new day though and I'm sure there will be some sort of Asian adventure awaiting me!