Ladies Night 2011

This past weekend, some of the female coworkers and I decided that we needed to have a ladies night. And of course, what would a ladies night be without ridiculous outfits?! Luckily, the art teacher at school is very good with a hot glue gun thus we transformed ourselves into obscure animals for the night: a shark, narwal, crab, zebra, caterpillar, and fox.

Needless to say, we had a really great time and everyone at the bars loved us. It was such a conversation starter!

Ladies Night 2011 in Taiwan was an epic success!

All of the girls looking as normal as we can with those things on our heads.

Now we decided to act out our specific animals.

And this is when we had a "Land vs. Sea" battle.

No Tsunamis Here

For everyone that is concerned given the news recently, do not worry because Taichung is totally intact. We didn't even feel a tremor here when the massive quake hit Japan and we're inland so the waves didn't effect us at all. I'm also fairly certain that the coasts of Taiwan, although got baby tsunami waves hitting them, are totally fine as well.

Unfortunately, Japan is a different story. It looks pretty bad there and we have a few Japanese students at school who are very upset about it. It breaks my heart because I can't imagine what it would feel like if a huge natural disaster hit home when I wasn't living there. I know that I will be praying for everyone affected by the quake and resulting tsunamis and I ask that everyone reading this do the same. If you don't pray, that's cool, just send good vibes and positive thoughts over in the general direction of Asia.

You are Wrong, but you Don't Know that you Are?

I am having issues with my students. Don't worry, they're still respectful, quiet (for the most part), and hard working (again, for the most part). But I'm having issues communicating to them that they are wrong and do not actually know everything.

It has hit that point in the year when they can't rely on what they have learned in previous math classes anymore to get them by. New material is getting harder and my expectations have risen since the students are progressing through that material. Yet almost all of my classes stare at me blankly when I ask if there are any question on the homework problems each day in class. It honestly baffles me because I put the answers on the overhead and I see them looking at them, but they don't actually check to see if their answers are correct. I have to literally say "Jeffrey, did you get #7 correct?" When Jeffrey undoubtably says "Oh, uh, no...." I just shake my head. Why do you think I put those answers up there?!

When I was a student, I remember checking my answers against the solutions my teacher would give on the board because it is just what you do. I also remember trying to figure out where I went wrong if I didn't get the same thing. However, my students seem to have no concept of this process. I don't know how to get them to understand they are getting problems wrong and THEN it would be nice to get them to pay attention to the right way to do it. But we'll just take it one step at a time here, I'm going to focus on making them realize they are wrong first.

We'll just see if I can accomplish that goal first, I'm getting close to resorting to public humiliation to make them aware of their flaws but I won't pull that card if I don't have to. However, it would be sort of fun to make public humiliation a daily part of Ms. Pint's math class so maybe I'll try that tomorrow! "You're wrong! You're Wrong! You're REALLY wrong!"

Yoga IS Dangerous!

It's no surprise that I am not the most graceful person ever. So me doing yoga is always a sight to see to say the least. Almost every pose I look absolutely ridiculous but I still try my best! I'm pretty sure the instructor thinks I'm somewhat of a lost cause.

Last night we had our weekly yoga class on Tuesday nights. I've been getting really close to getting into an actual headstand and last night I made some great progress. I can get one leg straight up in the air but when I go to put the second one up, I freak out and fall over. No big deal, I fall a lot in yoga.

Attempting side crow was more comical for me last night though. I was holding it, a very hard position if you ask me, for a full five seconds! That was, before I fell straight on my head. My skull hitting the mat made this sort of sic thudding sound and the whole class looked back at me and went "ooouch!" Classic moment for me in yoga!

Not quite what I looked like before my nose dive, but close!

Mast Minds Succeed yet Again

My after school activity is called Master Minds, and we think a lot and come up with masterful solutions to things. I'm always trying to come up with fun challenges for my kids to do and I think I hit the nail on the head with this last one:

build the tallest free standing structure you can with 5 sheets of computer paper and no glue or tape. Go!

Asian Haircut

Tonight was my first international haircut. I said "Some layers around the face and a little trim to cut off some of the slit ends."

I got the one-eye Asian school girl bang. Whatup.

World Math Day!

Today is World Math Day and my after school activity, Master Minds, was TOTALLY into it! Basically you compete against kids your age from across the globe in one minute games of simple arithmetic and see how many questions you can get correct. Not the most complex game I've ever heard of, but the kids loved it so Ms. Pint was happy!

The website chooses people at random to put you against (normally 2-4 kids at one time) and three different computers of our club got onto the same game here! What are the odds???

Jill was one of my Math Olympiads and has been playing this world math day site since I gave her login to her two weeks ago. She can get over 60 questions correct in 60 seconds. She is awesome.