Part 2: Long Time Coming

(Reminder for those just joining we are starting from Tuesday afternoon)……When classes were over I ran upstairs to take my stuff to my room and to plug my computer in but for some reason I didn’t really feel too much like just hanging out inside my bedroom so I went back downstairs to play with the kids instead. I first talked with Teacher Stephanie for a little bit but then I tried heading over to one of the play structures where Areti, Ray, and Charlie were playing- as I walked up to them they grabbed some leaves and threw them at me, I held up the hula hoop that I had been holding and told them that they could not get me through my hula hoop that it had power and would protect me. They then continued on trying to get me with leafs, all the while with me telling them that they couldn’t get me. While they were not looking I wandered around the play structure to the back where the trees were and then tried to get them with my hula hoop, rather than be good little children and stand still they insisted on running and going down the slide off the play structure. Darn, now who was I going to catch, well I didn’t have to stand there for very long when they tried to sneak back onto the play structure, it didn’t take too many steps from me before they were running again (don’t worry they were laughing the whole time with a little bit of screams mixed in there). They were no fun to try and catch as they wouldn’t stand still so I walked towards the other play structure were where May and Allie were playing on a slide, I snuck up behind May and put the hula hoop around her. Allie then played the heroic friend and grabbed her hand and tried to get her out and up the slide. I let go and then ran away as I realized that I had other children on my tail. Somehow during all of this I lost my hula hoop and May and Allie had picked it up, before I knew it they were trying to catch me in the hula hoop (notice I said “TRY,” the first time they tried they didn’t go high enough and hit me right in the head, second time they were luckier and got me), after they had caught me they started pulling me towards the play structure. They wanted me to go up on it with them, but while they were both in the front pulling up I lifted the hula hoop and was able to escape. I tried running, but those kids are just too fast for me, they quickly caught up with me (:D) and got me again. They didn’t fall for the same trick this time, this time there was one in the front and another in the back of me, making sure that I didn’t escape. Somehow I did escape again and realized that these kids were too tiring and I snuck off to go back upstairs. I thought that I was going to be good and able to stay upstairs but when I walked into the kitchen I noticed that the water jug was empty so I grabbed it and ran downstairs to fill it up, while I waited for it to fill up I just wandered around the office for a little bit… I don’t know if I have mentioned it but I believe that having to fill the water jug every other day or so I am going to get some very strong arms along with my strong legs from biking.
When I had come upstairs from filling the water jug I had just laid down on my bed to read some when Brooke came barging into my room telling me to get up as we were going to go to dinner at the famous dumpling place downtown and that we needed to and be back before Teacher Stephanie was coming to pick us up- we had only like 40 minutes, I seriously doubted whether we were going to make it in time (as I know that I am not the quickest bike rider yet), but she thought that we had plenty of time so we headed off. I went to a part of town that I have never been to before, we took several turns but I am pretty sure that I could find my way back (I really want to too, because that seems to be where all of the cool stores are). We finally got to the night market downtown (it was huge, it took up probably 2-3 blocks on the side that we were on and it went to the other side of the street too), I had forgotten to put my watch back on so we were not aware of what time it was. When we were standing in a line we saw a clock and noticed that it was 10 minutes till 7 (Teacher Stephanie was going to pick us up at 7), the line was pretty long and so I suggested that I start riding back as I knew that I was a lot slower than Brooke, she liked that idea and gave me instructions of what to do. I took off and felt like I was making pretty good time, I got to the point where she had told me to wait for her and got off to rest my legs for a little bit. I didn’t get to sit very long when she caught up with me. We then started off rather quickly as we knew that we were late and we felt kind of bad. When we got back to the school Bob and Eliza (Stephanie’s husband and daughter) were sitting in the car and Stephanie and Natalie were talking, we both ran upstairs and grabbed our water bottles and our purses (with our cameras of course :D). My legs didn’t particularly like coming down the stairs, they felt like jelly after had riding that far and really fast, I really hope that my legs will get into better shape soon so that I don’t feel like dying after every single bike ride that is over 10 blocks away. We felt really bad as it was 20 minutes after but they didn’t seem to mind too much, we then headed off to the Aborigine night stone market. I was pretty excited as I had no clue what to expect. On our way there Brooke and I ate our dumplings, Brooke was not kidding they were amazing! And they only cost $5NT each (so like $.15 each), they were made there on the spot with fresh ingredients- awesome!
When we arrived at the stone market Bob dropped us off so that he could go and grab them some dinner, at the corner though was a little stand where a lady was selling quail eggs, they looked rather good but I am kind of glad that I did not end up trying one because the lady had put way too much pepper on them and Teacher Stephanie started coughing right after she ate one. There was a show that was set to happen at 8 and since we were a little early we wandered around for a bit, looking inside the first couple of stores. Brooke had found something inside a nicer store that she really liked (a piece of jade in the shape of an “8” they believe the 8 to be good luck) and was talking to the sales person (who spoke pretty good English) about the different kinds of jade and the prices when Eliza came into the store to get us as the show was supposed to begin pretty soon, we then walked towards the stage and were lucky to get seats on the front row, there were not too many people there when we sat down but about half way through the show I looked behind us and realized that it had really filled up with people.
The show was really cool, it was done by aborigine students who are going to school at a local college, and this is how they earn money- by doing this show every night. It was an amazing show; the dancers were in really great condition and danced hard. The guys were getting really sweaty from all of the dancing (which could be understood) and at one point there was a part where girls had to get up the guys backs, it was so funny when I looked up and saw one of the girls using the guys headpiece to wipe his back before she got up and I guess also someone else said that when one of the girls had gone to wave sweat had just flown off of her hand (ok so kind of disgusting but funny at the same time). There was also this part where all of the guys were on the stage doing a dance by themselves and it was this really macho dance where they showed their power and strength, etc.- really well done. Anyway they finished their dance, bowed and then they turned and “skipped” off the stage. It was so funny, but for some reason Brooke and I were the only ones that saw it as funny, I felt kind of bad though because when Brooke and I burst out laughing the dancers looked back to see what was funny. There was also one dance where they asked for volunteers to dance with them, Natalie and Brooke decided that they wanted to try it, Stephanie went up with them so that they could have someone translating for them. It was a pretty simple dance, but I don’t usually do stuff like that and I was taking pictures for them. About half way through the show they were selling these headbands for $50NT that went to help the students with college, I thought they were pretty cool- they braid 3 pieces of yarn together (to represent love, peace, and something else), I know that it is not something that fancy but I like supporting others when I can and it is still cool looking.
After the show was over the dancers stayed on the stage so that people could dance take pictures with them. We got pictures with the guys, but it wasn’t until after that we realized that we had been standing in the front but the guys were all pretty short so you can’t see a lot of them, with the girls we were a little smarter so Brooke and I stood in the back while Natalie kneeled in the front. While we were waiting for our turn to take our picture this guy came up to me and started talking to me, asking me where we were from and staying (what town, etc.), I explained that we were all working at a preschool here in Hualien and that I was from Oregon, and the other two were from Utah and California, he then told me that he and his wife were from New York, I wish that I could have had a little more time to talk as I would have got into how we were from BYU but our turn to take pictures came up and they were yelling at me to come so I didn’t really get to talk to him for very long. It is not very often that we run into others that are from home that are visiting so it was kind of weird to actually see someone besides my limited group of 10 or so that speak English.
When we were done with pictures and the show we started walking around the stores again. We didn’t really have any idea of what we were looking for but we knew that we wanted to get something. At about our 2nd store we found this really cool thing, this guy had a huge container of different stones, you could pick which stone you wanted and which string and then they would make a necklace for you, only for $100NT. I ended up getting four necklaces (Brooke told me to slow down and to remember that I was still going to be here for 4 more months, I realize that but I don’t know if I will ever go back there). Two of my necklaces were rose stone, a stone that is from Hualien and cannot be found anywhere else- a beautiful stone, one other one is a green and then the 4th one is a clearish/white stone. While we went through the other stores I would help Brooke search and see if they had the jade “8” and we look at it to see if it was any cheaper than the other store. I felt really bad though because at one store I pointed out to Brooke that they had the stone and she came in to look at it, the lady asked what she was looking at and got it out of the display case for her to look more closely at, Brooke quickly realized that, that was not what she wanted and kept on trying to leave- I think that she got stuck in there for like 5 minutes before she was able to just walk away (she and I kind of have the same problem, of not feeling bad and not being able to say no).
We were having tons of fun, though we all felt pretty bad when we were almost done with the stone market and Bob and Stephanie told us that it was their anniversary (13!!). We felt bad because we thought that they should be out doing something together rather than driving us around. They didn’t seem to mind though.
After we were done with the stone market Stephanie asked if it would be ok if we went to one of the night markets that was nearby (of course, when someone else is driving you, you are almost always willing to go). We drove over there and walked inside, it was crazy, insane, and amazing. It was like a huge carnival with tons of booths- food, games, and things to buy. At one point Brooke asked Stephanie if this was just something that ran during the summer, but nope it is something that goes every night all year long. So it is actually pretty cool Hualien people can go to carnivals anytime of the year that they want to. One of the things that got me pretty excited was that there were also firework stands everywhere throughout the night market- so I can buy fireworks anytime that I want to!! It was kind of insane how many different carnival games there were, one of the things that kind of made me sad though was at some of the ring toss games there were cages with animals in them, one of them had a pig and the other one a rabbit. I felt so bad for them, they looked so scared and were shaking, it was so loud there I could understand them being scared. We were mostly just walking around but we did stop at this one food booth to try something. They started with some kind of tortilla (but it was really thin and didn’t taste like a normal tortilla) and then they shaved some sugar peanut block thing, put in on top of the tortilla and then added two scoops of ice cream (some people also added cilantro on the top), it was not my favorite but I am glad to say that I did try it once. Besides the ice cream treat I did buy one other thing at the night market, we were passing this aborigine booth that was selling some jewelry and I saw these hand-painted barrettes, it is really pretty and as barrettes are the only thing that I can really do with my hair I thought that I would get it. It was also $100NT, so maybe a little bit on the more expensive side, but it was hand-painted.
When we were done looking at all of the booths in the night market Stephanie asked us if we wanted to go down to the beach (the beach was right behind the night market), so we walked up the short little hill and walked down to it. This beach was not really like our beach, it had no sand just tons of big rocks. As we walked down we passed several booths selling fireworks and people having fun setting them off. We passed these two older gentleman who were playing with fireworks and who were laughing like they were little boys playing- it was rather cute, they had such big grins on their faces. Natalie, Brooke, Stephanie, and Eliza decided to walk down to the water but I felt more like just sitting and relaxing my feet, so I sat down to watch some others playing with their fireworks. Right beside me there was a family doing fireworks together, it was fun they had ground bloomers and rather than doing the normal thing of lighting them on the ground they were lighting them and then throwing them into the rocks, it was really cool as all you could see what some light flashes and hear “pop, pop” against the rocks. It wasn’t very long until the others came back, I didn’t join them at first but when I went back up the stairs I noticed that Natalie and Bob were just sitting but the others were walking away, I asked Natalie what was going on- they had gone to buy some sparklers for us to play with. These sparklers that they came back with were not normal ones, I think that they were probably closer to being 3 feet long, it kind of sucked when they first lit them some of the sparks landed on my feet but it wasn’t too bad, more just a shock. They were really fun, but very hot and let off a lot of smoke. Oh I almost forgot to mention, when I was standing up at the rocks I looked down and noticed that there was something at my feet, it was a “sweet” fan, so now I have my own fan :D. We hadn’t realized it but when Stephanie had lit the sparklers she had burnt her hand and it was starting to sting a little bit, it was really sweet as were walking back Bob stopped at a booth and bought water for her to put on her hand. I don’t think that Bob is LDS but he seems to be a really nice guy and is extremely kind.
Finally I am getting to Wednesday!!! Yesterday in my morning class we were talking about clocks and telling time, I stuck to the basics of the short hand tells what hour it is and the long hand tells the minutes. I tried staying basic by only keeping the long hand on the actual number so we were only counting by 5.I first used a normal clock and had kids turn the hands to set a time and then we would figure out what time it was together as a class. When we had done that for awhile I drew the other kind of clock on the board and would right times into it and we would again figure out what time it was a class. I was really impressed with Jonathan, he was getting the clocks and time so quickly yesterday, while the rest of the class would still be trying to figure it out he would yell out the answer to what time was on the clock.
Now to my middle class, it was a rather interesting day for it. We were supposed to be talking about speaking levels, since I start with 3 year olds I figured that it would be a little hard to explain that and work with them on it so instead I decided that we would just play a couple of games about following directions, we started with duck, duck, goose and then we also played musical chairs- except when you play musical chairs with the 3 year olds you play it a bit differently, you always have enough chairs and just cheer them when they sit down. 4 year olds again kind of started with a hard time yesterday but we were finally getting down to business with my lesson when all of a sudden I heard a Christmas tune being played really loudly, I didn’t really know what it was but it sounded like it was pretty close. I started talking a little bit more when all of a sudden Teacher Jane came rushing back into the room, she was saying something about the government was coming and that I must sit down in a chair in the back room and that we (the kids, her, and I) must not speak any English, only Chinese. Inside I was kind of freaking out as I had no clue what was going on, Teacher Jane quickly grabbed some random things from the class and started to teach a lesson in Chinese, it wasn’t very long before a couple of woman walked into the classroom with clipboards and stood watching Teacher Jane for a little bit and then walked up to her and asked her some questions about her, and she had to identify herself. They watched again and then walked back out of the classroom, Teacher Jane continued to teach and finished off the class. I was still rather confused and had no clue what was going on, I felt kind of bad because at sometimes some of the kids would try and talk to me but I would have to hush them and tell them to listen to Teacher Jane. When it was about 5 minutes after we were supposed to have switched classes the kids finally were able to go to the next class, my 5 year olds came stumbling in and sat down at their seats. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to teach my class or if Teacher Michelle would be, so I was kind of just wondering around the classroom, out the door and then back into it again. Finally Teacher Michelle walked into the classroom and I asked her if I was supposed to be teaching or if she was, I told her that I had no clue what had just happened and that I was kind of freaking out, she thought that it was rather funny. I guess that the people had left but the stupid Christmas tune kept going off like every minute or so and each time that it did the kids would run from their chairs to the box that was emitting the sound (which I did find out was very close to where I had been standing) I taught my 5 year olds the actual lesson, I am glad that I was able to talk about speaking levels but I do not think that it will ever be a 30 minute lesson again.
It wasn’t until after my 5 year old class that I was able to find out what had been happening. I walked into the office and asked Yuling about it. I guess that for some reason the Taiwanese government does not thing that their children should be learning Chinese and English, they think that they should be learning Chinese and Taiwanese. They don’t like that some people want their children to learn English. So they have some kind of thing where they say that English cannot be the main language taught or something like that and that we (the English teachers) cannot be the teacher we can be teaching assistants, and if we are standing in front of the room that means that we are teachers. So I guess that they only have these drop-by visits once, tops a year and it just happened to be yesterday. I guess that it is no big deal, but it really did kind of stress me out as I had no clue what was going on. It didn’t help matters that they had told Natalie about it and that it might happen sometime so she wasn’t as freaked out about it and stressed. Now that it is passed it is rather funny but at the time I didn’t think so.
When school was out I was really tired and I came upstairs hoping to get a nap, but I had just laid down when Brooke came into my room asking if I was ready to go. Her tutor student was out of town and she wanted to leave earlier if we could, so the nap that I was hoping to get was a no-go. I got ready and we walked out and got on our bikes. Brooke first needed to stop by at the ATM and get some money out, it kind of worked nice for me though as I didn’t know where the ATM was and I would need to soon know that detail. After she quickly had grabbed some money we headed off again to what she called the blue store (I guess because it is blue ;D), she told me that in the future if I am going to buy peanut butter that, that is the place to get it as it is the cheapest (I know, I know random) and she also pointed out some other things that are cheaper if I am out and about. While we were at the store we bought some snacks for the movie (it is really weird you can bring any food that you want, there are tons of booths and stores outside the movie theater and people just buy their dinner and then bring it in with them—it smelled sooo good in there). After we were done we headed off, we didn’t know when the movie started and wanted to be sure to get there in time to buy our ticket and then to eat before the show started. After we had bought our ticket for the show (oh I don’t know if I ever said but we were going to watch Made of Honor) we started walking up the sidewalk to see what they had to eat. The first place that we went inside looked like a little nicer place, Brooke asked if they had a English menu, the guy nodded and then pointed for us to follow him, he lead us through a doorway and pointed us to a desk (it was about this time that we realized that we were in a hotel/restaurant and that, that was why it was a little more expensive—about $320NT for a meal) when the lady got off the phone we asked if they had a menu in English, the lady pulled up piece of paper that said in English, “the main courses are different, the sides are all the same” and then she pulled out the menu in Chinese, we decided that it wouldn’t do us much and so we thanked them and then walked out. We then continued on down the street until we reached where we realized that there was no more food, we then crossed the street and started walking back towards the direction that we had come from. Brooke mentioned that there was a noodle place that she had tried before but she had kind of been wanting to try something new but she asked me what my opinion was, I really didn’t care so we stepped into the noodle place. This place actually had a English menu for us, I didn’t understand all of the translations on the menu and didn’t really feel like being too adventures and so I just ordered the fried rice with egg. It didn’t take them very long to make our meal and it was brought quickly to us. It tasted really good and was really filling; unfortunately I was really thirsty and finished my water bottle and the grape juice that I had bought at the store for the movie. My dinner was really cheap too, it only cost me $50NT. When we left the restaurant we realized that I was kind of a dork and had been off by an hour of what time it was (don’t worry it was that we had an extra hour and not the other way around), so we had time to kill. We first went to the arcade that was just around the corner from the movie theater and played a couple of games- air hockey, basketball, and then we each tried the claw game (those claw things are everywhere, I think that just in this “arcade” there were probably 50 different machines and at the grocery store that we shop at there is probably at least 6 of them). We didn’t really feel like spending too much money there so we headed over to 7-Eleven (my first time since being here!!!-and they are everywhere), I wanted to get another water bottle before the movie started and to go there just to say I had. I was really feeling like having a slurpee and they had a mango flavor, it was really good and only cost like $25NT, the only problem was that I kept on going really fast and got like 3 brain freezes.
After we grabbed our treats from 7-Eleven we decided to head inside, even though we still had like half an hour until the movie started at least there would be air conditioning, so we hoped on an elevator and rode it up to the 6 floor and sat down to wait. As we were waiting we both kind of realized how tired we were and how much we had been doing in the past couple of days so we didn’t really talk while we waited. Finally a couple of minutes before the movie started we were allowed to go into the theater, we found our assigned seats (weird huh?) and sat down- they were actually pretty good ones too, right in the middle of the row above the door so no one would be in front of us. The movie went pretty smoothly except there was this one movie commercial that kind of made me laugh, it started with this Chinese boy saying 4x2=8, 5x2=10, 6x2=12, 7x2=14, 8x2=16 when the old lady behind him said “if I slap you 7 times a day, how many times would I slap you in two days?” that was just so random that I thought that it was funny, except I think that the actual movie is supposed to be sad- who knows it’s a Chinese movie. The movie was pretty good, shorter than I thought it was going to be, there was just one scene that I felt really didn’t need to be there.
The ride home was pretty uneventful, kind of long and far. At one point I was trying to cross the road and doing it in a weird way when I guess that a car was coming, some guy that was on a bike waiting for the light to change yelled at me to watch out and to be careful (in English), I yelled “che,che (thank you)” and then kept on going. It was kind of funny though, today Kyle and I were talking about how random people come up to him and will just start talking to him in French, for some reason thinking that he would understand- last night when we were at a red light some lady pulled up on a scooter and just started talking to me in Chinese, Brooke told her that we didn’t speak Chinese. She again said something and then started laughing, then the light turned green we all started going forward, as she sped off she yelled good-bye to us in English- just some of the random things that I run into. One thing that I did realize though on my ride home last night is that I have really bad knees, I can’t go very far without them kind of cramping up and hurting really bad, I hope that, that will solve itself as I get into better shape and that it doesn’t turn out to be a problem for me in the future.
When we got home I was going to do the laundry but looked at the washing machine as we went upstairs and realized that Natalie already had a load going, I went into the kitchen to ask her to tell me when she was done so that I could do a load. She asked me to come into the kitchen so that we could talk. She wanted to figure out how we were going to get Brooke downstairs today during our last class, as we had a surprise birthday party for her (will explain more in a little bit), we talked a little bit and then decided that Natalie would just straight out ask her to come downstairs at 4:10 today. After Natalie had done that I came into my bedroom to begin my catching up journaling, when I was like part way done I was able to throw in a load of laundry and get more done.
When I finally went to bed last night (I have to be honest after I finished writing at midnight I laid down to read my book, I ended up finishing it and didn’t go to bed until nearly one in the morning, so with the combined of not going to bed until one last night and after midnight the other two nights these past couple of days have been fairly long) I fell to sleep fairly quickly (thankfully), as quickly as I might have fallen asleep 7:30 came way too fast and early this morning.
Today was not as eventful as yesterday. In my morning class we talked about fishing, I wasn’t as prepared as I would have liked to be for any of my classes today, I have had a lot of fun but feel that I have been a little behind in preparing for things. So we just briefly went over what fishing is, what we use to fish and then how we use bait. I then had an alphabet set that had magnets on the back, I did it a little bit differently in each class- 3 year olds- asked them to find a particular letter, 4 year olds- they “fished” for a letter and then had to tell me a word that began with that letter, and 5 year olds- told them a word and they had to find the letter that, that word began with.
My middle class we talked about hibernating (not really!) basically we talked about how bears eat a lot of food and then take a really, really long nap and then we read the stories “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?” and “Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?” and that was my class (again I didn’t feel very well prepared for today’s class).
During lunch I got a chance to talk to Kyle in Paris and Mom in Oregon on skype, that was nice to be able to hear their voices. We didn’t talk very long though as I was not feeling ready for class and wanted to try and find something to do. I finally found a whole bunch of plastic foods and we sorted them into piles of whether we eat them for breakfast or not.
For our afternoon classes we had made them a little shorter so that we could have a surprise birthday party for Brooke, she is leaving on Monday for home and her birthday is Tuesday, so she will be travelling on her birthday and she is going straight to Utah so she will not really be with family. She had also been talking to me about how she was sad that she didn’t get to see the kids very much before she left. So we had arranged with Yuling to get a cake and then in Natalie’s class we had the kids each make Brooke a birthday card. It was kind of hard because I kept on wanting to tell someone what was going to happen, Brooke is the one that I would generally tell here but I couldn’t tell her because it was for her. I guess though she had kind of figured out what was going on because Natalie had only asked her to come to the last 20 minutes of class and only during the 2nd class (which is normally when they have birthday parties) and she had also asked her to bring her camera, then when Brooke was out with Amy, Amy had wished her a happy birthday- Brooke told her that it wasn’t her birthday yet, Amy was like oh but they are having a birthday party for you at the school. So Brooke was pretty sure that she knew what was going on, but we did surprise her with the cake that we got, I think that even though she was kind of expecting it, she still felt pleased especially with all the cards that the kids made for her.
I have been feeling slightly overwhelmed because I have been not keeping up-to-date on everything this week, so tonight Amy, Natalie, and Brooke went out to dinner and instead of joining them I stayed home to finish up on my journal and some other things. So here I am, finally finishing up and being up-to-date on my journal (for now). Tomorrow afternoon, right after school Natalie, Grace, and I are leaving for Taipei and will not be returning until Saturday night, we will be going to the temple, Taipei 101 and doing some fun shopping. I am not sure what time we will be getting home, so I will probably not be posting again until Sunday afternoon (when again I will have much to catch up on). I cannot believe that I have finally finished- 13 pages!!!