My morning class we talked about jumping, I first began by jumping up and down and asking them what I was doing. After they had guess what I was doing we made a list of animals/things that also jump (our list got quite extensive), when we had finished our list of [mostly] animals we then talked about each one and acted out how they jump. After we had finished I mentioned that often when we talk about jumping there are three things that we look at, how far you can jump, how high you can jump, and how long you can jump. We first worked on how high they could jump (which there was really no way to measure but it was ok because they just enjoyed jumping up as high as they could), next how far they could jump (the 4 year olds didn’t care too much about how far they could jump but the 5 year olds really wanted to know who the winner was and of course the 3 year olds didn’t really get the concept of what they should be doing), and last but not least we did how long they could jump. Man, those kids can jump for a really long time, we started out by seeing if we could jump for 15 seconds and then kept on adding to see if we could do it longer, I think that the 3 year olds were able to jump for “47 seconds” but really the winners were the 5 year olds with 46 seconds, the 4 year olds had done 45 seconds and we were all dying by then so we just added one more second. My legs did not particularly enjoy jumping for that long, I got smart by the 3 year old class and did not jump with them the whole time.
In my middle class we were talking about folding blankets (as it is an essential in needing to know how to do :D). I began the class by laying out my blankets on the ground and pretending to sleep for a couple of seconds (I try to get as much sleep as I can in class, but the kids don’t generally let me get very far) and then stood up and said that I was done now I needed to put my blankets away, I then proceeded to pick up my blankets and throw them at the corner (one time I did not do my planning very well and threw the blanket into the fan :D). The kids all laughed and thought that it was funny but told me that I had done it wrong, that I needed to fold it in half- so I went and grabbed the blanket and folded it in half and then threw it into the corner, again they laughed and thought it was funny but I had done it wrong again. We eventually did get both of the blankets folded, with the class telling me how to do it. When I had finished folding both of my blankets I had each of the kids take turns folding the blankets for me. Next we played a game of button, button, who’s got the button with me always guessing who had the item, if I got it right about who had it they had to go to the blanket and do one fold on it, if I got it wrong they got a point and if they got a certain amount of points before the blanket was folded I was owe them a prize (which reminds me I need to find them a treat tomorrow). It worked fine except I didn’t really know how to do it for the 3 year olds, when they first came in we sat down and played a game of button, button, who’s got a button- I think that it actually worked pretty good as a game for them to play, but of course it did not last the whole period. When we had finished the game somehow the blanket landed on top of them (:D), that was my first mistake, I guess that they love to hide underneath things, they played at that for awhile I just was walking around saying “oh no, oh no, where have my 3 year olds gone?” it was fun, except at some point I made my 2nd mistake and laid down on the ground, next thing I know I was covered in a blanket and all of the 3 year olds were climbing on top of me. So somehow I became a jungle gym for my cute irresistible 3 year olds. At some point someone had a sat on my nose so when I got up for the next class it felt a little weird. The 4 year olds thought that it was rather funny that I kept on trying to readjust my nose.
After our middle class it is lunch and the kids take a nap while the teachers have some free time to either finish their lessons for the afternoon class or to sleep or to do basically whatever they want to, but I guess on Friday’s we are suppose to have meetings with Yuling and the other teachers. Natalie, Yuling and I met first at 2 to talk about tutoring schedule for the school year. Yuling went through who needed tutoring and who would be willing to take it, Natalie kind of annoyed me as she said she wasn’t sure how much tutoring she actually wanted to take as she wanted to have time off. She asked for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings off so that she could go to the Chou’s house, work with the missionaries, and in case she wants to do something for the weekend. I can understand wanting to have some free time but I think that she is forgetting that we came to Taiwan to work for the preschool and to do tutoring, I figure that, that should be our top priority and that if we have extra time after that we can do the extras. It just kind of annoys me that she thinks that the preschool should be working around her schedule rather than the other way around. Yuling told us a story about this couple that were here for awhile, the guy had served his mission in Taiwan and they had only been married for like two months when they came out. It was supposed to really be the wife that was teaching but the husband was doing it all, and he did terrible at it, he wasn’t really teaching the kids how to speak English he was trying to practice his Chinese. Anyway like two weeks before their contract was supposed to end the Chinese teachers called Yuling to tell her that there were no teachers there, Yuling drove over to the school and went upstairs (which she normally doesn’t in order to protect the privacy of the teachers) and found that their apartment was completely cleaned out and they were gone. After they were gone Yuling started talking to the other teachers and found out that they had not been very good and that the kids didn’t like them, it was also frustrating for Yuling because after they were gone they also found out that he was kind of getting greedy for more money and started taking on side tutoring jobs, when they were gone the kids that he started tutoring still wanted to be tutored and Yuling had no clue who many of them were. It kind of made me sad as it shows that all people are still human, even though you would expect better of LDS BYU students. When we were done with the tutoring meeting the other Chinese teachers came in for the teaching meeting—it was a very productive meeting, we were able to tell the teachers what we would like them to help us with, how they could help us and also ask them what they felt that we could do better. They told us that they have been kind of scared to say anything to us either both or good as they don’t know tons of English and they are afraid that what they are trying to say will come across mean, rude, and or angry when that is not what they are trying. We told them that we would much prefer them to tell us what they are seeing both good or bad as they see a lot of things that we do not, they seemed to understand that we want them to tell us what is happening, but I think that they will still be a little scared. (side note, as I have been writing this I have been getting eaten alive by bugs, for some reason our kitchen has been full of like 300+ small flies that don’t want to go away)
When we were done with our meeting we had maybe 20 minutes to prepare our lesson, I was feeling a little stressed as I didn’t really know what I was going to be doing (I wasn’t planning on having those two meetings, I didn’t know about them until right before we began). I quickly ran upstairs and did some quick searches and then looked through the books that I had on my desk and noticed that there was a book on party food, I didn’t really have any time to read it and so just grabbed it and ran downstairs to get some stuff from the kitchen. In class we first started by talking about the different things we had talked about throughout the week, when we had finished talking about that we read the Party Food book, it was kind of funny as each page had a picture of one kind of food and then the words “I Like,” it just fitted perfectly as we had been talking earlier in the week about that sentence, it fit in perfectly as we would talk about what was on each page and then the kids would say “I Like Chocolate, etc.” When we had finished the book I gave each child a piece of paper and had them write at the top of the page the words “I Like” and then draw some of the foods that they liked. While they were working on their drawings I put peanut butter on celery sticks and then gave them the celery with a handful of raisons to make ants on a log. It was kind of funny as I didn’t really think about that the kids are not used to having uncooked vegetables and that because of that they might have a little bit of difficulty eating them- some of the kids were pretty entertaining eating them, Meggy (3 year old) had not finished hers when her mom came to get her and at one point I walked through and her mom was trying to show her how to bite into it.
Natalie and I both finished our classes a little late and so were running late on the other end, I had luckily packed earlier before school had began but Natalie was planning on packing during our lunch break (which if you will remember we didn’t have much of), so she started packing at like 20 minutes to 5, I was kind of frustrated as we were supposed to be meeting Grace at the train station at 5, I also didn’t understand why she had planned on us meeting so soon after school got out. It was about 5 till 5 and we had not left yet when Natalie got a phone call from Grace saying that we were going to have a change of plans, that they would pick us up at 5:30 and take us to the train station and we would buy food on the train rather than grab food on their way. I was kind of grateful to not have to ride our bike over to the train station but still rather frustrated that Natalie was so late and that she didn’t really have any problems with that.
The Chou’s did not pick us up at exactly at 5:30 so when we got to the train station we were kind of running to get to the train, I hate being late and so this was kind of stressing me out, but we did make it before they left and we quickly found out seats. Natalie and I were in a seat beside each other and then Grace was in the one behind us, there was a guy who was sitting in her seat when we got there, he was hoping that Grace would be willing to switch seats with him as his seat was at the other end of the train and the rest of his family was all sitting around us, I kind of felt bad about us saying no but we didn’t want to be separated either. We had just sat down when we realized that there was a way to turn the seats around, we asked the family that was sitting around us how they had done it and they helped us do it, so we actually got to sit facing each other rather than our backs to Grace. I thought that it was pretty cool that you could do it, I said wow I didn’t realize that you could do that the last time that I rode the train, but then I really thought about it and the last time that I rode the train when I first got here and I would not have wanted to have my seat turned around as I was already uncomfortable enough, I wouldn’t want two more people staring at me. At one point we realized that the food cart had not come through and so Grace went out to find out why they had not come through, she came back and told us that they had sold out everything, she had never heard of that happening before. I fell asleep for like 20 minutes and heard Grace and Natalie talking for awhile. When I woke up Grace asked me if I wanted to play a card game, at first Natalie wasn’t going to play with us but then she changed her mind and decided to join us, we were just starting to play our game when I looked up and noticed Grace’s seat companion watching us, without really thinking or asking the others I asked her if she wanted to play with us. She accepted and we started to play some games. We introduced ourselves and learned that her name was Susan, and she was from some small town. She knew a little bit of English so it was fun, so we could communicate a little bit with her. It was nice to be able to play some card games, it made the time go very quickly and to meet someone new. At one point we were playing a card game called Heart Attack, Susan and I got out of cards very quickly but Natalie and Grace kept on going for like 20 minutes, so that part was quite boring as all Susan and I could do was sit there and watch them.
When we got to Taipei we went first to pick up our tickets for Sunday so that we would not have to do it later. As we were waiting in line there was this creepy guy that kept on walking away and then would come back and stand next to Grace, she didn’t really notice him as she was on the phone with her mom but both Natalie and I were kind of creeped out by him. The last time before he walked away he stopped by Grace again, pointed at us and said something and then walked away- Natalie and I were not sad to see him walk away. Besides the creepy guy we got our tickets with no problem, I guess that tickets on Sunday are hard to get and so you have to order them at least a week in advance, so luckily we had Grace who took care of all the details and ordered the tickets for us.
After we picked up our tickets we went outside and walked around the sidewalk a little bit before we were able to find Sister Chou, but find her we did. When we got in the car she asked us if we were hungry, we explained that they had been out of food on the train and that yes we were very hungry, towards the end of the train Grace had given us some gum to help us “curve our hunger.” Thankfully Sister Chou understood that we would be hungry and took us to get some food, she asked if we would like to have subway, Natalie got really, really excited at that and asked if we could, so that is where we headed. We pulled up to Subway and jumped out of the car and ran inside to order some of the food, besides that the signs were in both English and Chinese I would not have known that we were in Taiwan. They had all pretty normal flavors but sadly they did not have my favorite Chicken Bacon Ranch so I went with Italian BMT, it was pretty good- definitely not US subway but pretty darn close. After we had our sandwiches and cookies that Natalie insisted on getting for us we jumped back into the car and headed to the Chou’s apartment that they have in Taipei. When we got there I was the first one to take a shower and then I read for a little bit but quickly went to sleep. I was the last one to wake up Saturday morning, luckily I woke up as I woke up only 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave. It was kind of interesting as Natalie had been explaining to Sister Chou and Grace that morning about Mormon Standard time and then I think that we got to the temple like 20 minutes after we were supposed to be there (again that bugged me so much).I also got to try sugar cane juice ,it is not something that I will try again- it tasted like someone had take like 5 cups of sugar and mixed it into one cup of water or something, really, really sweet- I like sweet stuff but that was just too much, I could only drink a little bit at a time. On our way to the Temple we stopped to grab some breakfast, we got something called rice bowls (which really was not a bowl), it was made with purple rice (which is supposedly is better for you), mine was filled with powdered sugar and some other sweet stuff with some nuts in it also, it was rather good but kind of interesting at the same time- sadly I didn’t take a picture of it L.
I forgot to get my temple recommend renewed before I came so I was just going to walk around the temple grounds while they were inside for the session. I first went to the distribution center and looked around for awhile, I was quite impressed with how much stuff they had in English. I kind of made a mental list of things that I wanted to buy and decided to come back later. I next went to the store that someone had told me about across the street, it was called Bountiful Living, I kind of decided that it is Taiwan’s mini version of Deseret Book- except that they didn’t really have any books :D I looked through the store and made thought of the things that I liked and decided to go exploring to try and find an ATM as I only had like a hundred dollars, I only had to walk like 3 blocks before I found a 7-Eleven, I pulled out some money (with the ATM card that Yuling had given me the day before) and walked back to the temple. I took some pictures of the temple and then decided that I should probably get my shopping done as they were supposed to be coming out of the temple in like half an hour. I went back to distribution and got several things: a hymnal in Chinese with the words so that I can at least pretend to sing with people at church, a hymnal in English just because I have always wanted one, two different months of Liahona, and a church DVD with 6 different old church movies (including Family Forever and other cool movies of the like) then I went back upstairs (the distribution center is in the 1st floor of the stake building, where there are like 4 different wards that meet there and also the visitor center is there also) and crossed the street again to Bountiful Living where I bought a shirt that is CTR in Chinese, I also kept on going back and forth with buying a scripture case that is Chinese, I might buy it eventually but chose not to get it at this time.
When I came out of the store I still had sometime and so I went back to the stake center and found a seat and sat down and started to read/people watch (more people watching than reading :D). it was kind of interesting, I saw sooo many white people come through (a group of 4 guys-very good looking by the way :D, a group of 3 guys, two guys, an elder, and four sister missionaries; there might have been more but that is all that I remember right now). While I was waiting this one lady came through the stake center and I thought that I recognized her, I waved to her and smiled, she waved back and then stopped she started talking in Chinese, the guy that was with her asked me if I spoke Chinese, I said no and he said oh (I think that, that was the extent of his English), I said something about Hualien and then the lady was like “oh, Hualien” and then said goodbye. It ended up being another hour after they had told me that they would be out so it was a good thing that I was good at entertaining myself. They finally came out and found me and they wanted to go to the store also, so I had to wait while they shopped, the store got so crowded and so I went outside to wait for them, I got a neat experience- to watch a guy cooking dumplings and noodles, that doesn’t sound super exciting but I really hadn’t been able to watch a street stand do it yet. Natalie ended up getting the same t-shirt as me, she was so excited that we had gotten the same thing, I was a little peeved :D.
After they had finished shopping we walked down the street to eat some lunch. We went to this interesting little place where they brought us a plate of tortilla type things and several different plates of food that we would just scoop up with our chopsticks and put them in it and make a little wrap thingy kind of thing. It was interesting, I liked the tortillas and the cooked eggs but I didn’t really like the vegetables that there was to put on it, nor the shrimp. I was very full by the time that we left the restaurant.
We then headed back to the Temple to grab the car. We were headed towards a museum when we passed something that Sister Chou called the White House, but it was really their government building where the congress meets. She pulled over and allowed us to run over and take some pictures of the building. It was kind of funny, the moment we started walking towards the building there were several different guards that started watching our every single move that we made. We all decided that it is a rather interesting and intimidating to have a guy with a big gun watching every move that you make. We tried to quickly take our pictures so we could move away, while we were still taking our pictures though some girls came up and asked me if I would be willing to take a picture for them, when we were walking away Grace told me that they were from Japan (how she knew I do not know, but I guess there must be some way of distinguishing).
Sister Chou drove us to a museum and dropped us off, it was starting to rain just as we were getting out, luckily she had umbrellas in the car that we could take with us. We started walking towards the end of the line but luckily Grace stopped to ask someone and we learned that we had to first go to the front of the line and buy our ticket and then get into the line. As we were walking towards the ticket booth someone stopped us and offered us to buy one of theirs, I guess they had bought one too many or something. We were very lucky that this lady had stopped us as when we got to the booth we learned that you had to have a ID to buy a ticket and I had not brought my main wallet with my ID in it and would not have been able to buy my ticket, so I gave Grace my money and she bought one and then just gave me the other one that the lady had sold her. We then proceeded back to the other end of the line. We got to stand in line for over 2 flipping hours!!! And guess what I got to do the whole time…? Listen to Natalie and Grace sing songs, mostly John Bytheway songs! I like John Bytheway songs but when you hear them nearly 30 times in only like 20 minutes you are ready to scream. I felt bad for those people that were standing around us, I understood what they were singing but those people around us did not know what they were saying but I am sure that they knew that they were hearing the same thing over and over again. We were going to the Taipei Natural History Museum or something like that, they were having a special exhibit of paintings by Jean-Francois Millet and many others (including Constant Alexandre Famin, Auguste Giraudon,and Charles Lhermitte), he lived in Paris in the 1800’s and painted several different paintings, I guess they brought the paintings over from Paris to Taipei for this special display. When I heard that the paintings were done by Millet I kept on thinking that we were related to some Millets and began to wonder if we were related. I kept on thinking that it would be really cool if we were related (don’t worry I did come home and go to the family website and looked it up and found out that our Millets are not spelt with one “t” but with two.). The paintings that they had were amazing but I was done within the first hour, whereas Natalie and Grace were still going after two hours (they for some reason felt the need to stay and stare at each painting for like 10 minutes), anyway by the time we left I was more than ready to go and get on to some other place. Oh I did find it interesting that they stamped each painting on the edge so that they could tell if it was touched or replaced with a fake. The thing that I actually found the most interesting was of some of the first pictures ever taken, they were amazing, with such detail and clarity. While I was waiting for them I did walk out like 3 different times and went through the gift shop area but would get so really annoyed with all of the shoving people that I would go back in. I did buy some postcards of two of the most famous Millet paintings.
When we were done with the museum we walked out to grab our umbrellas from the rack (you were not allowed to bring them in), I felt so bad as I could not find my umbrella, it was kind of funny though as they kept on grabbing different umbrellas and asking me if it was it, I could remember so many different details of the umbrella that I had been holding (I guess that, that is what you get when you are bored for over two hours and have nothing to do but stare at your umbrella :D). I felt even worse when we told Sister Chou and she told us that, that was their grandmother’s umbrella or something like that.
We then headed towards the subway, we found an ATM on the way and Natalie was able to get some money (luckily I was there as she didn’t know what the pin was for her ATM card- Yuling just uses the same one for both accounts-she uses the same ones every semester). We then finally found the subway and caught one, we were going to go straight to Taipei 101 but Sister Chou had suggested that we stop for food first, so we got off at a different stop and went and found some food. It was pretty good food. It was kind of funny though because as we were talking Grace told us to save some stomach for dessert, it probably doesn’t sound very funny here but it struck us as rather funny. For dessert we had shaved ice, not quite the same way that we do it in the US. They serve this huge bowl of saved ice (and when I say huge I mean HUGE) and then pour sweetened condensed milk over it and then mine had mango and strawberries on it (YUMMY!!). I thought that mine was delicious but Grace’s and Natalie’s were kind of weird, it had green beans, black beans, sweet potatoes, and some other interesting stuff on it- it did not look very appetizing to me. When we finally finished dinner at like 9:20 we decided that it was time that we had better head out towards Taipei 101, we again got on the subway and headed towards 101. We got off the subway and asked several different people how to get to 101 (kind of funny how it is the tallest building in the world and you have to ask how to find it), along our way to 101 we saw many things that interested us, first a cool bunny statue thingy that we all to take pictures with (of course :D) and then at this store that was called New York New York, there was a statue of the Statue of Liberty, we were able to take pictures with it and the Eifel Tower at the same time (I was rather confused where I was :D). We finally found 101 and went inside; our first stop was the potty! We noticed that most of the shops were very expensive (some including Prada, Ralph Lauren, Tiffany & Co., Swartsky, and many, many others), we started taking the escalator up and when we got to like the 5 floor we asked someone and found out that they close the elevator down at 9. So obviously we had missed it. We then started going back down and I looked over and realized that a guy had been following us up as we went and shutting down the escalators as we went. We found a tunnel thing and followed it back to the store New York New York. We were wondering through there and noticed that again everything was closing as we walked through it. It was 11 o’clock when they kicked us out. Grace called her mom to find out how to get to the night market, her mom told us that it was too late and that we should take the subway and come back to the apartment (as we had to catch a train at 7:40 in the morning).
We were kind of disappointed to not to get to go to it, but it was probably a good thing as both Natalie and Grace started falling asleep on the subway on our way back, I was ok and could have kept going (or so I thought). Anyway we rode the subway all the way back to the zoo and were waiting for the bus to come and get us when Sister Chou pulled up and picked us and drove us back to the apartment. We made a list of things that we still would like to do in Taipei during future Temple trips: Taipei 101, night market, the old palace that has been turned into a museum, the zoo, and several other places- I hope that we will be able to go to all of these places eventually.
When we got back to the apartment it was after midnight, I quickly took a shower and then lay down, I was out very quickly- I didn’t even hear when the other two came in after having taken their showers. I think that I was more tired than I thought, as it has been a very long weekend since that trip. It is now midnight and I am only to the end of Saturday. I think that I am going to sign off and I will finish Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday tomorrow night. Love you all! ~Betherd~
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