Tropical Fruit

One of the major advantages of living on a tropical island, besides the weather obviously, is the tropical fruit that goes with. It is mango season in Taiwan and I love mangos. I tried to buy a mango at a fruit market the other day but got home and realized it was either a genetically modified mango (it was gigantic compared to what a mango should be) or it was not a mango at all.

After a few minutes on the google machine, I realized I had indeed bought an impostor fruit: papaya. I wasn't all that upset however, this huge tropical fruit cost me no more than $2 and I'm sure it will be likewise delicious. Next time I will be more careful in my mango searching though!

Busy May

First of all, let me say sorry for my lack of posting recently! I know that some of you cannot possibly function without a new post on "Taiwan of Bust" to start their day (clearly joking), but I've been busy. This May is shaping up to be the busiest month of the entire year!

With the end of the school year fast approaching, May is the month in which everything that still needs to be done gets crammed in. Art show, choir concert, hiking trip, senior trip (to Guam! I'm not going, don't be too excited), graduation, the list could go on forever! And those are just the weekend activities that I will need to attend in the coming weeks. On top of those, I need to write my finals, finish the grades for this term, teach for two more weeks, and wrap my entire year up. Yikes!

I knew that the end of the year would go quickly, but I didn't think it would go this quickly. With this crazy schedule in May, I am going to be home before I know it. As the count stands right now, it is 30 days until I board a plane in Taipei for home this summer. Minnesota look out, I'm going to be back before you blink twice!

My Favorite May Weekend

This past weekend was as close to perfect as any weekend has ever come for me. Friday night was a good meal out to eat with friends and then a really fun time at a local bar we frequent to celebrate a coworker's sister's birthday. Pretty standard Friday night after a long week.

Staying out late made Chinese classes on Saturday morning a little rough, but luckily we were all tired so we all got a little silly by the end to say the least- it's amazing what lack of sleep and trying to learn a foreign language will do to a person. Then that entire afternoon I spent out and about with two coworkers.

My one coworker, Kevin, has lived in Taichung for over 3 years and is completely fluent in Chinese. So of course we made him show us around for an afternoon! It was really nice because he can accomplish lots of little tasks for us much quicker than we can ourselves since he can communicate. I put minutes on my phone, made some stamps, got mango shaved ice (as delicious as it sounds), and bought new speakers for my computer/iPod. Such a success!

Saturday night we accompanied Kevin to a night market for some street food and people watching which is my favorite part about living in Asia. And after staying out late on Friday night, it was nice to be home by 10:30 after we had enough fried squid.

Sunday was the ideal icing on the cake of this weekend: pool day. We recently discovered a public pool that is pretty cheap near our school. Two coworkers and I got there at 11:30 and stayed for three hours or so. It was the perfect weather for a pool day: 85 and sunny. I finished up my weekend by watching a movie in my apartment with a bottle of wine. Who can beat that?!

This weekend leaves me completely recharged for Monday morning. Who wants to learn about geometry! Only three more weeks of learning children, then it's review for the finals. Oh how this year has flown by!

First Day of Project Presentations

Today the geometry game projects were due. I collected all projects from the kiddos and started the groups on their presentations. I expected to get through all of the groups in both classes because I honestly expected the groups to stand up, explain their game, show how to play it for a few minutes, then sit down.

Oh how I was wrong! In both classes we only got to see one group present! Not because it was terribly bad or something really wrong happened, but because both groups were awesome! My first hour, Tommy and Howard, used my projector to display their board. Then using the Nerf Gun I purchased a few nights ago, their game had a pretty simple concept:

What was really great about Tommy and Howard's presentation however, is that shooting Nerf darts at a board wasn't the whole thing. Oh no, they made an entire review game out of it (score for us teachers!). They split the class up into two teams and made people face off on geometry questions from the entire year. If you answered correctly, you could shoot a dart at the board and try to score some points for your team.

Obviously this went on all hour because they had enough questions and the class was reviewing for the final in the process! I never told the boys to do this, they just decided to. It rocked.

My second class of the day is always a little more interesting than my first hour. I struggle on a daily basis to control them and they are somewhat notorious in the school for having behavioral issues. Today with them however, you would have never guessed that.

One group of girls decided to put water balloons on a styrofoam board and throw darts at it. Great idea because they had different sized water balloons to account for geometric probability. Also a great idea because it was different and we could go outside to do their presentation:

What was also awesome about this activity, is that it kept these particular 9th graders entertained for the entire hour. The girls brought enough water balloons for everyone to go several times:

Ms. Pint even got a chance to throw a dart or two:

And of course, when there were extra water balloons left at the end of class, Ms. Pint got hit with not one, not two, but three water balloons! I wasn't mad however, because I was also pelting my students with water balloons so it was not unprovoked :)

All in all, a very good first day of presentations so I am excited to see what tomorrow brings!

I Love Geometry Projects

Every math teacher has a preferred area of mathematics. My coworker/friend Kate loves trig and calculus, my boss likes algebra, and I just so happen to love geometry. I think what I like about it is that everything has real world applications. The pictures help visual learners make sense of things and it seems to be more of a hands on type of math for some reason.

All of those reasons, AND I get to do some really cool projects with my geometry classes of course! Geometry just lends itself to cool projects because there are so many cool things you can do with shapes, area, angles, you name it.

This week I have started my geometry kids on a new project: the Geometry Game Project. Each group has to make a game based on geometric probability, like darts, and be able to play it with the class when they are due at the end of the week. Lucky for me, my students have totally gotten into it and I think some of these projects are going to turn out very cool.

I will just say this, I am now a proud owner of a Nerf Gun (for geometric purposes only, I swear!). These projects are going to rock! Stay tuned for how they are going, this is what they look like so far:

Best Geometry tool I have purchased thus far.

Two girls are making a game sort of like Plunko- how cool is that?!

Lots of cool looking posters with geometric shapes and calculations on them. Can't wait to hang these on the classroom walls!

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!