Taipei City!

What I love most about being a normal adult again, I don't teach on Saturday's for the second half of the year, is that I get real weekends. Since I get two full days off, I took full advantage of it this weekend. A friend of mine and I hopped a bus bound for Taipei City!

Even though I have been here for a year and a half already, I still have not seen Taipei...at all. It is sad, I know, so I did something to change it. We left school right away on Friday and got to our hotel at about 8 that evening. Not much time for anything but a little BBQ and some Taiwan Beers. A good Friday night if you ask me!

Saturday we were up early and to the National Palace Museum by midmorning to beat the crowds. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has more original Chinese artifacts than the Beijing museum because a lot of it was smuggled out of the country for safe keeping when Mao took over in the early 1940's. So it's a really cool experience to have and we quite appropriately spent over 3 hours there. Time for a late lunch, rest time, and then dinner at a Mexican restaurant. A drink at a bar and then it was time for us dorky teachers to hit the sack.

Sunday we took a short MTR trip to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (Chiang Kai-shek was the first leader of Taiwan after they separated from China) which is very impressive. It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful day in February, so it was a good end to our weekend. A short bus ride back brings us back to reality, but it was a really great weekend away. And I finally got to see Taipei! A very nice Asian city, and a nice modern place in Taiwan...

Will I get My Keys Back?

We have been having problems in our bathroom recently with a leaky shower. So we called Daniel, the son-in-law of our landlord, who speaks awesome English and lives in the building next to ours. He came over a week ago maybe and took a look at it and decided he couldn't fix it. He arranged for us to have a handyman come and last night he finally did.

This was the same handyman I had try to fix our couch a while ago (see previous post on it...truly great) so I was glad to see him. Unfortunately, he couldn't fix it at the time either- he needed a new rubber washer before he could stop the leak. So Daniel suggested that I give him my keys and he would let the repairman in the next day around noon. "Well," I asked Daniel, "that sounds fine, but how am I going to get my keys back then?"

"Oh, I'll just leave them with the front desk workers for you to pick up" was his obvious response. However, I had flashbacks to the first time we tried to talk to them about our mailbox and why there was this weird colored thing on it, and it was a total and epic failure. He must have seen my face turn colors, because he assured me that he would leave a note or something. I have my doubts that this will work though. Unless his note says "There will be a crazy white girl who can't speak any Chinese needing to pick these up from you" I don't foresee this going well.

Everyone, keep your fingers crossed that I see my keys again!

Lantern Festival 2012

The Lantern Festival marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration each year. You probably picture iconic images of beautiful lit orbs floating away in a skyline of orange (see more info here), but unfortunately that doesn't happen too much anymore. Now the Taiwanese simply celebrate with street food (yum!), bad live music, and lighted dragons (since it is the year of the dragon now). Fingers crossed though, I should be getting some more pictures of actual lanterns being set off from school tonight, but until then take a look at the modern celebration we partook in last night at a park downtown! Happy Lantern Festival everyone.

Just your standard street food stalls. This one has some pig's blood cake I think...

Year of the dragon!!!

Just a couple of white people enjoying this Asian tradition.

This Means War!!!

As my previous post mentioned, there are definitely benefits to teaching at a private international school. I rediscovered another one: how much fun you can have with coworkers and students. I realize, again, that there is fun to be had in American public schools as well, but things are just more relaxed here. Like I mentioned in my previous post, the student-teacher relationship is just different when you are a teacher at a boarding school.

So one of my coworkers, Dan, loves candy. I don't think you understood me just there, you probably read" My coworker Dan really enjoys to eat candy", but what I mean is that my coworker Dan literally loves candy. It is hilarious and also sometimes an issue.

Take for instance today: I was out of my classroom down the hall for two seconds before my cleaners came (each student cleans a designated classroom between 6th and 7th hour each day at our school). As I was walking back to my room, Dan comes scurrying out while laughing hysterically and I find my cleaners looking somewhat scared and definitely confused holding various cleaning tools. Concerned, I surveyed my room only to find my Jolly Rancher container open and missing some candy! Dan!!!!!!!!

As if that wasn't funny enough, he then proceeded to send his cleaner, 8th-grade Julia, down to my room with one of the empty wrappers and instructed her to tell me "Mr. K said it was delicious! Thank you!". What he didn't realize however, was that he started a war. I already have the perfect retaliation, but I am not allowed to discuss it here because he may have spies who read this blog.

I love teaching at a private international school! So much fun :)

My Students Feed Me

There are definitely perks to teaching in an international private school. One of those perks that I experience on a daily basis is the general kindness of all of our students. I realize that in public school, there are plenty of nice kids, but the student teacher relationship in America is significantly colder than here. In the States it is common to ask a teacher, "how was your weekend?" and it is equally as common for the teacher to respond with a simple "it was good! Ok, take out your books..."

Here, I have a much stronger connection with almost all of my students because, frankly, I have to. We are a boarding school so all of my students live here without any sort of parents involved. A lot of them are even alone on Parent's Day...which is twice a year. It's sort of sad when you think about it.

Lucky for me though, they sort of treat us teachers as their parents/mentors/older siblings I guess. They ask us how our weekend was and expect a real answer, so I have gotten in the habit of telling them the rundown of what I did on the weekend. They know when I clean, when I go shopping, and what my favorite restaurants are.

Another great thing about our teenage students is that they are always hungry. Thus, they always have food in class. I allow it in my classroom because I have a standing rule about eating: it's fine as long as you give Ms. Pint some. I have them trained so well that one of my students, Jason, just walked into my classroom and without even sitting down walked over to my desk and offered me a cracker. I'm starting to get nervous that the American school children won't share their candy with me when I return...

Zoo Project

It's that wonderful time of year again, the one where I hear the groan of geometry students and get to see the cogs turning in their minds. That's right, the 2nd annual Biology/Geometry Zoo Project is upon us!

I just passed out the project description sheet to my two classes today and I am excited to see what this year brings. If I haven't preached to you about this project before, let me take this opportunity to let you know what I'm talking about (and tell the rest of you about it again, yay!). I created this project last year off of a similar type project I found online and it is my favorite geometry project. It challenges the students to not only complete the list of requirements and follow directions carefully, but it allows them to be creative and figure it out for themselves.

Basically I partner with my friend Kate who teaches Biology to the exact same classes that I teach Geometry to. In this project the groups of students design a zoo following certain requirements we give them. There are 5 animal types they must use with specific enclosure requirements they must follow (for example, the elephants need 300 square feet each, there will be three in the zoo, and the enclosure must be either be in the shape of a rhombus or a kite) and they are in charge of picking a 6th animal to put in their zoo. For Kate they turn in a report on what the zoo needs to do to take care of their 6th animal and any other information they think is relevant to keeping their animal in captivity. For me, they complete a scale drawing of their zoo complete with all area's of the pens and their work in finding that.

This year should be a good year because I have examples to show my classes this time around. Some of my students last year did a really nice job on it and I am excited to show these examples and challenge my current students to top them. We start work days tomorrow so I'm excited to see what they start cooking up! I'll keep you posted :)

Hong Kong for Chinese New Year....Sorry for not Posting For Forever!

I don't even know what to say, except "sorry"? I was planning on posting when I got back from Hawaii, I was, and then life happened. Back to school, getting ready for midterms, writing midterms (blah!), and then midterm week. And then we left for Chinese New Year Break! Not a good enough excuse? I know, I'm sorry.

So let me fill you in a little (this could take a while, better get another cup of coffee!). Where I left you last was right before Christmas break, so let me elaborate on Hawaii a little...it is AWESOME! I have heard from many people that they love it and I knew it would be great, but I liked it a whole lot more than I was expecting to. It didn't hurt that I got to see my family (sans Melissa) either. All in all, it was a really great family vacation in a really great state. I loved it.

Near old scientific drilling holes in Volcanoes National Park. You can still feel warm steam!

Of course respecting this holy place of the native Hawaiians...

From there I flew all the way back to Taiwan by myself, which was a little sad after so much time with family, but was welcomed back with a New Year's Eve party when I returned. It was nice to see friends again and bring in the new year by watching fireworks off of our 10th floor balcony in Taichung. Like I mentioned before, midterms dominated my life for the next week or so and then when midterms week actually hit, it was nothing but play time for me! It was great! :)

It turns out that if you do not need to plan lessons for classes and grade at night, it leaves you a lot of free time. So while proctoring midterms during the day, I spent my nights seeing movies and going out to eat; it was really a nice break while still working. And then came our actual break!

So with the same group of girls as my last year's Chinese New Year trip to Thailand, we took off for Hong Kong. It was a nice trip filled with Western style food (and some Indian, Thai, and traditional Chinese thrown in there too) and good beer finally. Hong Kong isn't a "sight seeing" type of city, but we did see some cool gardens and temples. We caught the light show on the harbor (the world's largest and longest standing permanent light show at 8 p.m. every night) and saw fireworks for Chinese New Year over that same harbor. We stood outside to watch the Chinese New Year Parade and even saw the Rams cheerleaders who flew out to participate...it was odd to say the least! And we even took a day trip via ferry to Macau (Asia's gambling capital, very much like Vegas).

Old streets of Macau- a Portuguese colony hence it felt very oddly European.

Hong Kong skyline at night.

Is that Bruce Lee?

I don't want to bore you with the details of everything we did, but I do want to tell you one story in particular. Above Hong Kong's soaring towers and crowded streets, there sits a very large statue of Buddha. All of our friends who have been to Hong Kong before told us it was pretty cool, so we planned on seeing it one day. Unfortunately, all of our friends saw it in summer or fall, not winter. Needless to say, we had some faulty advice on the site and we didn't think about it enough to foresee the problems we encountered. So let me tell you this little cautionary tale.

There is a cable car that leads up to the Buddha which is supposed to have spectacular views on the way up and down. So we waited in line to take the cable car for well over an hour; since it was Chinese New Year it was pretty packed. Once up the mountain, it was cold. Now I'm from Minnesota, I know what cold is, but this was brutal. I think I heard it was about three degrees celsius (or roughly 37 degrees Fahrenheit) and we didn't have any sort of winter jackets. We made the best of it though, we already made it up there so why not?

The only good view on the way up. Everything else was just white from fog.

Unfortunately, it also happened to be cold enough that day where the moisture in the air turned into a thick/freezing fog. We literally couldn't see the big Buddha even when standing right beneath it. Again, it was funny to us because, well, why not laugh at the situation? We had some fun posing with some statues, laughed a lot, and genuinely enjoyed the cold time we had up there.

Is that a Big Buddha there? I can't even tell! :)

Just as we were beginning to lose feeling in our fingers and toes, we headed back to the line to ride down. As we approached, there was an employee there saying that cable car service was "temporarily" suspended and they were getting buses to take people down. Fine, no problem, just get me somewhere warm were our thoughts. And that's when we rounded a corner to see probably a thousand people already in line. We laughed about it for about a half an hour....

...and then we just got too cold to laugh. And anger set in. Then despair, and finally ironic bitterness.

Up on top of a mountain, standing in near freezing winds and mist, with rain jackets and sweatshirts beneath only, we waited. We waited in line, outside mind you, for over two hours. Finally we were ushered onto a bus for a forty minute ride down the mountain to the sounds of a fellow passenger losing their lunch because of the windy road. We finally made it down and were reimbursed for our cable car ride to a Buddha we couldn't even see. Sigh. I guess there's always one terrible day of travel for each trip!

Hong Kong is great, but I just wouldn't suggest taking a trip to the Big Buddha in January :)