Christmas Concert 2011

Well, it's Friday morning. Which means the Christmas singing competition is already over. it was great, the kids were awesome and Archimedes House did really well! We are anxiously awaiting the results today, but in the mean time, here are some shots from the whole thing:

I'm Sorry! It's So Busy Here!

Ok, so I know I haven't posted in like over two weeks. I am terribly sorry about that. Really, I care about you all still, I do, but it has been so hectic and busy here. I haven't had a moment to sit and do this since the last one!

Where to even start? Well, let me first explain why it has been so busy here for us. Right before a major break, this one being our 16 day Christmas Holliday (yes!!!!), things go a little insane at our school. Everything that we have been putting off until "later" needs to be accomplished before we lose the kids to their parents again. So the "later" has become the "right now!" and we pack it all in. In the three weeks leading up to break (we are on the last and final week right now), I have had zero days off. don't be confused, I mean weekends too! Yikes.

So it all began with two weekends ago. I always teach on Saturday's so that's a day I don't get off every week like the normal teachers you all know. But two weekends ago I also worked on Sunday: my roommate and I took her World Religion class students up to Taipei for the day to go to a museum. It was a really cool experience and I loved the kids in her class, but it was still work on a Sunday for me.

Then last weekend I again taught on Saturday (a wicked cool Jeopardy SAT Math game that the kids totally got into. If you teach or just want to learn SAT Math, shoot me an email and I can hook you up!) and again, needed to be at school on Sunday. Every year we invite the Down Syndrome Society of Taichung to school for a concert and we generally donate money to them at that time. So we had that little party at that time. Again, fun to see the kids and listen to the singing, but it was working again on Sunday.

And finally we are on the home stretch. However, the light at the end of the tunnel seems dim right about now, even though it is Thursday of our last week. This week has been the most hectic of them all- I have been putting in 10-12 hour days each day this week and right now I'm at hour 5 of my epic 15 hour day. Ugh. At least today should be fun. Here's the schedule:

Thursday starts just like your average day. I teach all of my four classes, just like a normal old school day. Then after school, instead of having normal activity, we will all gather in our houses to practice for the singing competition tonight. At 6 the formal Christmas dinner will start where we get pineapple glazed ham and other treats. Finally at 7:30 the house Christmas carol singing competitions will begin. Since there are 8 houses and each house sings two songs, I think we will be here for a while tonight!

Lucky for us, tomorrow we only have a half day. So in 24 hours I will be done! After 18 consecutive days working, we will be free of all obligations and children until January 4th. Sigh....I can't wait! I promise to be better at posting, I'll even try to take some pictures tonight at the singing contest and post them tomorrow!

A little Late, but Happy Thanksgiving!

Ok, so I know I'm really late on this one, but I just got some pictures sent to me so I figured I'd write a blog post on it now anyway. Better late than never, right? Hmm, well here goes anyways.

Spending holiday's away from home and especially, away from your home country, is odd. You feel displaced, obviously a little sad, and sort of awkward. It's awkward on holiday's like Thanksgiving especially since it is an America specific one only; the Taiwanese have no idea what we're talking about when we bring it up and I don't blame them at all. So Thanksgiving can be a little rough when living abroad. For me, it is really the first time in the school year when I miss home with all the smells of a big Thanksgiving meal and the sounds of our incredibly loud family. It sort of reminds you how far away you are from the ones you love.

The nice thing about our school however, is that it is filled with teachers just like me. We are almost all from the Midwest so we all know the pangs of homesickness come Thanksgiving time. Thus, we band together and throw our own Thanksgiving feast! Now I must admit that it cannot compare to the wonderful food and festivities from home, but it isn't too bad for a few expats throwing together a potluck meal. I even made the stuffing this year, compliments of my Mom's recipe, and we had a big bird to carve from a local restaurant. There were cranberries and mashed potatoes, pumpkin and apple pie, and of course a fun time had by all. If I can't be home with my own family for the holiday's, I'm glad I at least have this adopted family to keep me company here. Happy holiday's everyone!

Deriving the Quadratic Formula

There are definitely moments when I look at myself and say, "wow, I am a dorky math teacher!" I like it, don't get me wrong, it's funny sometimes though.

Yesterday was one of those days. I was teaching my 10A students about completing the square to solve a quadratic function. The next thing we needed to learn was the quadratic formula; we all know it by the dorky song but I didn't really want to teach them that.

So I figured I'd take a more analytical approach. I figured it was a good group to do it with since they are all very quiet (I wouldn't get a lot of singing participation out of them to say the least) and very good at math.

So we started by completing the square on the general quadratic function: 0 = ax² + bx + c. Now I won't bore you with the process, but by completing the square (if some of you are curious about what I'm talking about, brush up on your math skills a bit!) with this general function, we derived the quadratic formula. That's right, instead of just making my students remember the quadratic formula, they now know where it comes from and why it exists! If that's not cool, I just don't know what is...ok, dorky math teacher again! Again, if your inner-dork is crying out for more math, this is a write-up of what was on my board yesterday and now in my students notes...so cool, I know :) Enjoy!

We Have New Furniture!

If you ready my last blog post, you know there was going to be a change in our apartment. It came last night at around 7 p.m. in the form of a big, ugly, very awkward Taiwanese version of a futon! Yay!

As much as I hate the fact that we got a random piece of furniture that in no way shape or form goes with the other couch and has a ver bizarre design, I love not having a broken couch in our apartment anymore. It may not be the perfect piece of furniture, but hey, it's new! And we went to Carefore last night right after it was delivered to get some pillows for it to make it more usable. All in all, I would call this a success for the apartment and even a mild victory for future house guests: it may not be super comfy, but it was described to us as a "sleeper couch." Again, more of a crappy futon type thing, but it will work. Yay, new couch!

A Taiwan Repairman

It is pretty standard in Taiwan that if something breaks, they can and will fix it instead of automatically replacing it. Scooters that would have been discarded years ago in other countries are still alive and, for the most part, running here. Chairs that are so broken they make odd popping and screeching noises when sat upon, are glued up and screwed back together to last another few months. It is impressive in a "reduce, reuses, recycle" sort of way, but very frustrating when you just want things to work sometimes.

Our couch at our apartment is a classic example of this. It started breaking at the beginning of the year and got progressively worse with each dinner party (people don't look where they are sitting when they have a full plate of enchiladas apparently) and finally got to a point where we couldn't use it anymore. I was pretty sure that it was ready for the dump, but when we called our landlord (our apartment is furnished by her) she told us she would send over a repairman. Fine, just fix it then; we just wanted a useable couch.

Little did we know how funny and productive it would be to have a Taiwanese repairman come to our apartment! I was home alone at the scheduled time and he managed to call our apartment phone which has NEVER rang before. I answered it with the classic Taiwan phone greeting "Wei" (pronounced "way") and a man on the other end started speaking in Chinese. I thought it was maybe the front door guard asking if I had a repairman coming, needing him checked in, so I just said "yes" in Chinese, but he kept speaking. I didn't know what to do at this point, so I just kept saying "what?" in Chinese. Eventually, I realized he couldn't get up the elevator because we need to scan our cards every time we go up or down for security purposes. So I went down and met him at the door. I had no idea what Asian man it would be, but I was pretty easy to spot being the only white woman in the lobby so he jumped right out at me and pointed to his hammer and other tools. Those were good enough credentials for me, so we went back up to the 10th floor.

After about 30 minutes of taking a hammer to our couch (it was really broken), I could tell he had given up hope. Total shocker! I thought he would have whipped out the tape and staple gun and sort of patch it back together before giving up like that, but sure enough he called our landlord and told her we needed a new one. What?! A new couch?! How could this be?!?! Then he kept saying something to us about 7, but we couldn't understand what he meant by that.

To our total shock, we got a knock on our door at 7 p.m. sharp. It wasn't a new couch, but it was the son-in-law of our landlady there to take the measurements for a new couch. This is going to be awesome! He said it is going to be delivered on maybe Wednesday of this week and we will have a new couch in our apartment! It will be like we're back in the States again- something breaks and you just get a new one. I don't think we'll know what to do with ourselves when it is delivered... a new couch, a new couch. Wow. This is going to be cool: I'll post a picture when it comes!

Forcing Students to Do Good

For any of you familiar with my school or at all familiar with the stories I tell, you know that the school I teach at is a very expensive private school here in Taiwan. It is the second most expensive school in the country and we generally teach students whose fathers own the factories that made the shoes you are wearing right now. Needless to say, our students generally lead very privileged lives.

So once a year, we like to force them to give back to the community just to prove a point I guess. We call it Common Good Day and it turns into a pseudo house competition. The basic idea is that each house (we have 8 "houses" in our school, just like Harry Potter) choses a charity or act of community service to do on the specific Saturday we set for this forced philanthropic work. Last year my house, Archimedes House, picked up garbage on the side of a mountain. I cannot even begin to explain to you how hot and totally pointless that was.

This year we decided we wanted to actually do something cool for Common Good Day. As a house we decided to put on a Coin Wars competition in the week leading up to the big Saturday. We set the rules a little differently than what I've done in the States but the same basic concept. Each house competes for the most points and you get points by collecting coins in your house jar and you can give negative points to other houses by adding paper money to theirs. Then to raise even more money, we decided to have a scooter and car wash for the teachers and other faculty at the school (see adorable pictures below).

To our complete amazement, both ideas were huge successes. In total, we raised almost $1400 in U.S. currency. We were so proud of our kids because they had everything to do with it: they were excited about it (completely different than last year), they took ownership in the activities (again, so polar opposite of last year) and had good attitudes on the actual day. I had no idea that they could wash a car so well! It was really great to see them work hard for something that was not directly benefiting them.

I think the best part about the day however, was deciding what to do with the money at the end. We went though a website called kiva.org that gives out micro-loans to people around the world that wouldn't otherwise qualify for them to help improve their lives. The cool thing about the website is that you can scroll through the people and chose who you want to donate to. All of our students in Archimedes House intently clicked through countless profiles for the better part of an hour decided exactly who they wanted to help. When they made their decisions they had reasons as to why they wanted to help the particular people that they chose and were really into it. It made me really proud of them- it's how community service is how to feel.