Wow I got really distracted, it has been over an hour since I last wrote something, now I really got to hurry to get caught up, as I was hoping to have this all done by the time that Natalie got home so that we could do our lesson plan and then maybe I could go to bed early. So I guess that, that means that I had better get typing.
The last time that I wrote was Wednesday night, and so I need to get started with Thursday. In my morning class we played a game that was supposed to be called “Hot Hoops,” what you were supposed to do is get hula hoops of different colors and set them on the ground. I was supposed to then have each kid stand in one hoop, then I was supposed to say “Red Hoop is Hot” or something like that and then all the kids were supposed to run to the red hoops, there was also supposed to be a rule that only like 3 people could be in each hoop. We didn’t have enough hoops, so I ended up just setting out different colored chairs around the room. I thought that it might be a little confusing for the kids if I said that only like 3 people could be a chair, so I would just say a color chair and all the kids would go running to the chair (they wouldn’t sit on the chair, they just had to be touching it). The kids seemed to enjoy it and we got to work on our colors.
In my middle class we were talking about insects. I started with reading a book about what insects do, where they live, and a book where it had two pictures of animals, one of an insect and one not- the kids had to identify which one was the insect and which one was not. Once we finished reading the books we got to go outside and explore the playground trying to find insects. I was really happy with the 5 year olds, the last couple of times that I have tried taking them outside for an activity they have ended up having to come back inside, but before we went outside we talked about what my expectations were and what would happen if they didn’t follow them, they followed it perfectly and didn’t have to come back inside.
For my afternoon class we were talking about mermaids, I tried finding pictures of mermaids. It made me quite sad how hard it was to find a decent, appropriate picture of a mermaid, most of them were disgusting and not appropriate for me to look at, let alone for me to show preschool kids. I decided that the best thing to show if we were talking about mermaids was to watch Little Mermaid. In my 1st class the kids were half asleep and watched the movie, it didn’t seem like they were very excited to watch it, but I guess they must have been because they told the next class that we had watched the movie in my class. When I announced to the 2nd class that we were going to be watching the movie they all got really excited and said Yeah!! When class was over I heard several groans, and so I continued to play the movie until I had to leave to go and tutor someone. It was funny to see them get so excited to watch the movie (I even had some kids from the 1st class come back in and watch more after the class was over). Because I had gotten the movie off of youtube the movie came in chunks of 10 minutes and so I had several different tabs open, Thursday night I finished off the movie :D it has been a long time since I have seen Little Mermaid.
I don’t really remember what happened Thursday night, which means that not much that much exciting stuff happened. So I guess I will continue onto Friday. Friday morning for my class we worked on our kicking, I didn’t really have any concrete plans when I went into class except that I had 3 semi-soft balls with me and that we were going to work on kicking. It didn’t take me very long to figure out that it was not a good idea to work on our kicking inside, the room is really small and the ceiling is really low (especially with the fans), so we moved our activity to outside. It was pretty hot outside on Friday so the kids were all searching for shade in the 4 year old class. For the 5 year old class we did it back inside but we tried it a little different, we stood in a circle and worked on our small kicks on the ground, on a scale I am not quite sure what score I would give that class.
Middle class: we worked on numbers 0-5. In the 3 year old class I had a sheet where it said a number and then you were supposed to color in that many of the picture beside it, I first did the whole sheet in front of the class so that they could get it. I then handed the papers to the class, Teacher Stephanie and I went around and dotted the pictures with a black marker to help the kids a little bit more. I was so impressed with Annie, before Stephanie and I had gotten to Annie’s paper she had already done 2 of them, the correct way. Annie likes to pretend that she is not smart sometimes I think and so when I saw her paper I was so impressed. For the 4 year old class their sheet had little pictures and then underneath them it had two numbers, one with the correct number and one of them not, the kids had to circle which one was the correct number. Then at the bottom of the sheet there was a mini color by number, basically just a square with mini squares with numbers in them, we worked as a class and colored in our “picture.” For the 5 year old class we did a color by number. This was one of the 1st times that I have tried doing different activities and I think that it went quite well, I think that I chose pretty well for the levels of each age group (though when the 4 year olds saw what the 5 year olds did they assured me that they could have done it too :D).
For my afternoon class we were talking about ocean, just as a general subject. I started by reading a book about saving dolphins (yeah it didn’t really apply, but oh well), the kids laughed and then enjoyed it. When we were finished we made a ocean bottle thing, it is where you start with a plastic bottle and fill it about 1/3 with water, then you food color the water blue, next fill the rest of the bottle with oil, close lid and then move the bottle up and down, it looks really cool. I came to class with the bottle full of the water, I asked the kids what I had (a bottle full of water, a water bottle!), next I put in the blue food coloring and shook it up and asked the kids what color it was (blue water!). I had got a package of plastic bead from Yuling and then one at a time I called each kid up to come and pick a bead to put in the bottle (to be our shells, of course!). It was kind of funny, the first person that I called up didn’t quite understand and they dumped their bead in with the oil rather than in with the water, I got a good laugh out of that, though I felt kind of bad for laughing because she didn’t really understand what was wrong with what she had done. Once every child had put a bead in the bottle I filled the rest of the bottle with oil. I closed it and showed the kids a little bit how to do it and then passed it around and let each kid play with it for a little bit, for some reason they all really liked to shake it up and down really fast so the oil bubbled up and the colors mixed together for a little bit. At the end of the class we had a few minutes remaining so we played a little game.
Because of the typhoon last weekend the BBQ had been cancelled, or so I had thought- but fear not I was wrong, it was only postponed to Friday! At first I had thought that Natalie and I were going to go to the church at 6:30 and we would catch a ride to the house it was going to be at, but then a couple of days ago the Sister Missionaries asked Natalie if she would be willing to go on splits with them Friday night, so that cancelled out our plans. At one point Yuling had said that Stephanie would be willing to give us a ride, so Friday morning I asked her about that, she hadn’t been planning on having to give us a ride (Yuling had told her that we would be going earlier) and so she had brought her scooter instead of her car, she asked if I would be willing to ride to her house afterschool to pick up her car, I have never rode a scooter and so was a little nervous but said that yes I would (obviously—she was doing me a service), so we had it all planned, later in the day though she told me that I was going to go with Yuling and Allie instead when they went, as they would be going straight to the BBQ once they were done cleaning up everything. I had considered not going to the BBQ as I am supposed to tutor the Chou family Friday night, but when I told that to Yuling she was like,” no I will cancel, they cancel anytime that they have something they want to do, it is no problem.” So it was kind of weird to be going out and doing stuff on a Friday night rather than preparing to leave to go and tutor.
It was kind of nice to go with Yuling to the BBQ, on the way we talked about lots of different things, particularly how I would like to go to different places while I am here, she told me that I should be able to go to Hong Kong for $200-$300, for three days and two nights, it should include the flight, the hotel, at two breakfasts, and they will pick me up at the airport and drive me to the hotel. That would be amazing so I think that I will look more into it, I still am not sure if I will be able to convince Natalie to come with me but it really is something that I want to do. I also asked her about where I could maybe get some plus-size clothes as my shorts are falling down more and more each day and some of my shirts are getting destroyed in the washing machine. It was funny when we were on our way to the house where the BBQ was (which I found out is actually Yuling’s Parents-in-Law) we had stopped at a red light and were just talking when all of a sudden we heard a bang and something had hit the back of the car, we both jumped and then realized that it was the bar that comes down when a train is coming. It didn’t do any damage to the car but it scared us both pretty bad, luckily between the lanes and the bar there is a lot of space so we were safe from getting hit, but Yuling and I talked about it and we decided that, that was a terrible place to have a light as it is on either side of the railroad tracks, and sometimes people will race through it or they will stop too far in like we did and it could be rather dangerous.
We finally got to the BBQ safely without any more “accident,” the BBQ was interesting. The food was delicious; people were so friendly and kept on offering me more and more food- I don’t think that I had even been there for 5 minutes when I already had food in my hands ( I asked the Missionaries how to get it to stop- Elder Christiansen told me how to say no thank you but I forgot, he also said just keep pointing at your stomach and shaking your hand or something like that). It was kind of funny I would be talking to someone and then all of a sudden I would hear Yuling yelling Beth from the other end and I would go over and she would be telling me to try some other kind of food. We were there for over 3 hours, and it amazed me how people were eating for those 3 hours. It seemed like most people just kept on going the whole time and never stopped (I thought of you Erick while I was there, it looked like your kind of feast and how you can just keep on eating :D). Most things that I tried I really liked, but there were a couple of things that I didn’t like, it amazed me how food there actually was and how it just kept on coming what seemed out of nowhere. Natalie ended up getting to come for a little bit, the Sisters had pushed their appointments back a little bit so they could at least come and stop by, pretty soon after I got there Natalie and Sister Hill left, Sister Wood stayed all night as they had a couple of investigators there. One thing that I tried that I did not like was wheat tea, Sister Wood was drinking it and seemed to really like it, it sounded suspicious to me and I didn’t really want to try it. While I was considering trying it Elder Christiansen came up and was talking to us, he described it as a mixture of cigarettes and water (doesn’t that just sound lovely?), stupidly I tried it (just to say that I had-see how I am getting better at that, at least I will try it once), it was disgusting and I totally agree with his description of it.
When the BBQ was over I was more than ready to go home, I haven’t gone to bed early at all this week and so I was ready to get into bed, sadly though Yuling wasn’t quite ready to leave yet and so I was just standing around doing nothing. Finally she was ready and we all started walking towards the car, we got distracted and stopped several times but we did eventually make it to the car. When we got there I found out that Yuling would not actually be driving me home, she doesn’t see the best at night and so she was going to drive the scooter home (don’t ask me how that is better) and Joseph was going to drive me home in the car, we got home very quickly with no accidents, I was very happy to get home. Oh I almost forgot, on our way to the BBQ Yuling told me how she used to be able to balance with her feet on the pedals for a whole red light on her bike (which is like 60 seconds), I was quite impressed because I can only balance as long as I am moving (and sometimes not even then :D). She also told me that I should go to Thailand, but she said that it takes about a week for Thailand, I don’t really have a week open so I don’t think that, that will be happening L.
I wasn’t as smart as I had hoped to be when I got home and didn’t go straight to bed, Natalie came home and we talked for awhile and then I talked to Mom for awhile. I ended going to bed about 1am, but I did get to sleep in until like 8:45, which was kind of nice. When I woke up yesterday morning Natalie was not up yet, we had talked about leaving at 10am, but I didn’t think that we would actually be leaving that early. I got on facebook and started talking to Erin, I don’t know if it is because I am in Taiwan or what but facebook chat has not been working very good lately so I suggested to Erin that we get on MSN instead (Jamie and I had gotten it for her last year so that we could talk via it), we got on and found out that they have added an option of using video and phone call, we tried that, they were so-so, so I suggested that Erin download skype. While we were talking on MSN Shalynn came into the room and so I got to talk with her also and then also we added Jamie on our MSN conversation, it was so nice to be able to hear my best friends voices and to see them “in person.” Finally skype finished downloading on Erin’s computer and so we switched over to it, it was so much better (*if you are doing video or phone call totally do Skype over MSN, the quality is sooo much better and Skype is free). A little after 10 I realized that Natalie was up so I ended our phone call soon after that so that she and I could get ready to leave. Before Natalie and I left we cleaned out our food cupboard (we have been taken over by ants lately), when we were done we were both like we should have taken before and after pictures, but sadly we didn’t so you don’t get to see the amazing work that we did.
Soon after we were finished cleaning we took off to Carrefour, I could totally feel that I have gained more strength; I wasn’t as tired this time on the way there (not to say that I wasn’t tired). We actually got there very quickly this time, it was kind of funny though on the way, at least 3 people on the other side of the road (4 lanes and a median over) yelled hello to us as we rode by, we are POPULAR! When we got to Carrefour our 1st stop was the laptop area, to look for a laptop for Natalie, we looked for quite awhile and talked about the pros and cons of each one, she had decided on one and then we went to look at other areas, while we were in the movie section Natalie got hold of her dad and so she went back and talked to him for awhile about the computers that there were. They had decided that one of them was a good deal and that she should get it, so we headed back downstairs to the ATM, we both pulled out money and then went straight back upstairs (Natalie was carrying a lot of money, strangely she didn’t really feel like walking around the store with all of it). We explained that we wanted to buy a computer and which one we wanted; the lady went and got it for us. The lady told us that if we signed up for a savings card we could get money back (it was a big purchase obviously), Natalie decided to do it, she had just finished filling out everything when the lady said that they were having a special right now with that certain company of laptops, she pointed out a poster and it said (obviously we couldn’t read it) that if you bought an acer computer then you could either get $1000NT off of a monitor, a free TV box, a free flash drive (I think that, that was what it was), or a free printer, Natalie got pretty excited about the free printer offer, and so she said that, that was what they wanted. They were out of the printers (luckily as I was kind of worried how we were going to get the computer back home), but they would be ordering them and when they came they would call Natalie.
Along with getting the free printer we also got these coupons for $2000NT off our next purchases (for signing up for the card), that is a lot of money ($60) and so Natalie is pretty excited about that. They also gave us this coin keychain thing that we can use over and over for getting our cart (at Carrefour you have to put in $10NT to get a cart, but then when you return your cart you get it back so I am not quite sure if I get the point, but Natalie was pretty excited).
*Because I keep getting distracted and it is getting pretty late I am going to omit part of the story from yesterday.
We were at Carrefour probably for like 4-5 more hours, just wandering around looking at everything tossing random stuff into the cart, checking off items on our list, etc. When we were finally done I was starting to get pretty tired of being on my feet all day and was more than ready to leave. We took our cart out with us as we figured that it would be easier to take the cart to our bikes and arrange the stuff. It didn’t take me very long to figure out that the box was not going to fit in either of our baskets or in our backpacks or anything, but Natalie was determined to try and fit it on somehow. We probably stood there for 20 minutes trying different ways, I finally suggested that she go and call someone and see if they could possibly come and get our stuff (ok I had been suggesting it several times but finally forced it as an idea), so she went inside and tried calling people, she couldn’t figure out the phone for awhile so finally probably an hour after I had been standing outside with our stuff, holding our bikes up (they didn’t really like balancing with all the stuff in them) Natalie came out and decided to open up the box and see what it was like inside. We quickly found out that it came with its own computer bag and that if Natalie put it in that she could fit it in her backpack and then we could break down the boxes. We felt kind of stupid for having stood there for so long not trying that, but its all part of the adventure. We were soon off after that.
When we finally got home I was quite tired, but we were both really hungry so Natalie offered to bike to the night market and get us some food, while she was gone I posted some pictures on my blog and got caught up on what had been happening all day. When Natalie got home we ate our dinner and then we turned her computer on, it didn’t take very long until we had figured out that it was in Chinese, we tried changing it to English but we couldn’t figure it out. (Today Natalie brought it to church and had some people look at it, they think that the only way to fix it is to take it back to the store and have them download the English version of Windows or something like that, so she has asked the Chu family and they are going to take her back to Carrefour on Friday afternoon) I felt kind of bad that it was in Chinese but there really wasn’t anything that I could do, so I went to my room to try and work on some stuff, instead I got distracted by Erin and we talked on skype for probably another hour (it’s ok, it was a good distraction…hehe, Erin that reminded me of something….. ;D), when she and I were done talking I went to bed and then got up this morning.
It is already 10:30 and I haven’t even talked about today at all. I think that I am going to sign off for tonight and then talk about today in tomorrow’s post. Natalie and I still need to finish our lesson plans also and this is starting to get pretty long. So this is ~Betherd~ signing off, I hope that everyone has a wonderful Sabbath. LOVES!!!
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