Seriously where does the time go? Tomorrow we start the grand ol’ month of October (oh and believe me it is GRAND- I get to see Nathan and Sallee, it’s Erin’s Birthday, it’s Jamie’s Birthday,and best of all it’s my birthday :D), I look back at the two months that I have already been here and I see so many adventures that I have been on, so many things that I have learned, and I look forward to the next two and half months for the adventures and learning that I will have. I guess among my excitement I should also say thanks, to those of you who have come along with me on my journey, you have all been a huge support to me, more than you will probably ever know.
I went to bed pretty early last night; it wasn’t even midnight- which I was quite proud of myself for doing. That was an extremely good thing especially considering that I don’t normally get to bed until after 1am. I woke up this morning feeling so refreshed, amazing what a little bit more of sleep can do. I didn’t exactly jump out of my bed but I was ready to face the day, with a smile on my face (oh yeah I forgot to add, I had even showered before I went to bed which makes it an even bigger deal).
In my morning class this morning we did something called a car wash. Basically the kids moved their hands in circles in front of their body a lot, pretending to be a car wash. Once they had figured that part out (yeah like that took a long time) we got into two lines, one at a time the kids would walk down between the two lines and be “washed.” Basically during this activity there was a lot of tickling, giggling, and a bunch of everything else that is generally involved with 3, 4, 5 year olds. The 4 and 5 year olds got it pretty well, but when I tried getting the 3 year olds to line up in two lines and it didn’t happen I figured that I was going to have to come up with a different plan really fast. So different plan I did, I showed the kids how to pretend to be a wash and then I would just yell out randomly that someone was a car and everyone would rush over and “wash” the person (meanwhile the person was trying to run away from their washers).All in all I think that the activity went pretty well and that the kids seemed to enjoy it, which in my book makes it a pass.
I think that I mentioned before that they absolutely love Christmas here, when I first got here it seemed like I was always hearing Christmas carols, but lately I haven’t been hearing any, but Natalie and I have been talking about different plans for the rest of the semester and Christmas keeps on coming up. So lately I have been getting excited and wanted to hear Christmas music, but it seemed that the only song that they seemed to know is Jingle Bells (which isn’t a bad song), so I decided that for today’s music class I would teach them a new Christmas carol, we started and it didn’t take me very long to figure out that the 4 and 5 year olds know more than just Jingle Bells. Every time though I would move onto a different song I would hear from several people that they wanted to sing Jingle Bells, so we went back to that song often- Natalie is going to teach them Frosty the Snow Man later this week, we will see how that goes.
Lunch was pretty unproductive, no peeing children (well I am sure that there were many children peeing, but luckily I didn’t see any of it :D) and all the kids that normally are the last ones eating finished first and everyone was done a lot earlier than normal, yippee! As I was going upstairs after lunch though Natalie was coming back down the stairs and stopped to tell me some bad/sad news. I guess because it is the national holiday the tickets for the whole weekend of the 10th have been sold out for a long time, so it looks like we won’t be going to Taipei, but while we were talking I thought that since we couldn’t go to Taipei maybe there would be a weird chance that we could go to Green Island instead. Natalie liked the idea and so I said that I would talk to Yuling about it later (which I did). Again during my break I was just kind of internet cruising, not doing much that was productive, though for once I didn’t feel tired and like I needed a nap. I went down early to talk to Yuling, I told her how Natalie and I were planning on going to Taipei for the long weekend, and she was like “Oh, you had better get your tickets” I told her that we weren’t able to go anymore but were wondering at this late of date would it be possible to get tickets to Green Island. She said that since Green Island is to the south and not to the north it will not be as bad and it is also not the season where everyone wants to go, she also told me that Natalie and I could probably each go for about $1600-$1800NT (so about $48-$54), that would include the ferry to the island, a bike rental, hotel for one night, breakfast in the morning, and a session of snorkeling. I think that, that is a pretty good deal and talked to Natalie about it, she thought so too, so I am pretty sure that now Natalie and I will be headed to Green Island week from Friday (sorry Nate and Sallee).
My afternoon lesson went really well, we were talking about our favorite flowers and shapes (ok more about our favorite shapes). I started with showing them some pictures of different shapes and then we went through and had each person say what their favorite shape was. Once that was all through each person was given a piece of paper to draw their favorite shape all over (see blog post Mommy, Look What I Did!). When they had finished drawing their favorite shape they were supposed to flip the paper over and draw their favorite flower, the shapes went pretty well but a lot of the kids didn’t get the flowers done, it is ok though. When everyone had finished drawing they handed back in their papers (it was kind of funny, when we were done Leslee came up to me and said something along the lines of “is this we take home,” I can’t quite remember the exact sentence but I do know that it was a jumble of words but I knew what she was trying to ask) and I showed a couple of them asking them what they thought was that person’s favorite shape.
*I don’t remember if I have mentioned (and I am too lazy to go back and look :D), but at the beginning of my afternoon class I let the kids pick two songs for us to sing, anyway last week when I asked my first afternoon class what song they wanted to sing they responded that they wanted to sing Teacher Beth’s song, so I made this song up on the spot- now they ask for this at least once a day during the afternoon class. So here is my song, it is sung to the tune of “I am 16 going on 17” from “Sound of Music”:
I am Teacher, Teacher Beth, I teach you every day. I teach you to be silly, and happy in every way.
It’s not very long, but I would also say not too bad considering that I made it up on the spot, words kind of just tumbled out of my mouth and they made sense.
When class was over I played with Wendy for awhile, while I was sitting on the ground she had climbed on my shoulders (she has gotten quite good at it) and wanted me to walk around, so I did the scary thing of standing up with her on my shoulders. We walked around the playground for awhile but then my shoulders/neck were getting tired so I took her off, but before I could walk away she grabbed my hand and just started walking around with me. I did that for awhile but then needed to go plug my laptop back in and so extracted my finger from her hand (yes I said extracted, it was a little difficult to get her to let go—not that I am really complaining :D). I came back upstairs and did a couple of things but then decided to run to the grocery store before it got any later or darker.
When I got home from the grocery store I didn’t have much time before tutoring (this week and last week I had my 5 o’clock tutoring canceled- it has been rather nice not having to rush up to that), so during my short little time I looked up some stuff on Green Island to show Natalie when we had time. Tutoring went really well, I think that this was the most that I have ever heard Mark talk, he really opened up tonight- which makes the tutoring session so much more interesting for me.
As soon as both Natalie and I were done with our tutoring we worked on a letter for Yuling, I am a little disappointed with it, it is not as professional as I think that it should be, but Natalie thinks that it should be more understandable than professional. It is done though and I sent it to Yuling so we will see what she says. Ever since I have been working on this journal and doing some other stuff (I am really good at multi-tasking, ok probably not as generally I don’t get very far on either :D).Now I am done and have some other stuff to work on, so I think that I am going to sign off, I hope that you all have a wonderful Tuesday. Love you all lots! ~Betherd~
P.S. I might be going to Hong Kong in 3 weeks!! Stay tuned as more details are learned! ;D
P.P.S.
Official Countdown
10 Days Until They Leave
12 Days Until They Land in Taiwan
14 Days Until I See Them in Hualien!!!! (Yep that is still the best one :D)
So I figured that I haven't posted my projects in awhile and decided that since I have quite a bit from the past few weeks that I would share, these are not all but I just thought that i would give you a little sample of what we have been up to lately at Owl Preschool in Teacher Beth's class!
Today in my afternoon class we were drawing pictures of our favorite shapes, so here are several examples of my favorite shapes (actually I don't really know what my favorite shape is though I do like stars and triangles a lot)
A
Another example (notice how good I am at remembering to write my name :D)
My favorite flower (mine is Gerber Daisy though I'm not sure if that really looks like one)
Another example, triangles.
This is my name sign from yesterday that is going to go at the top of my mobile, I am quite excited for when we finish those to see how cool they look.
A circle picture, I think that it is cute and turned out pretty good :D
Yeah this is one of my constellations, it was my 1st one and I am not quite sure what it is- not even sure why I am putting it up.
Another personal constellation, I do have to be honest and say that I did know what I was making this time and purposely put the stars where they were so that they would form the fish.
My shimmery stars that I made last week in the afternoon class.
We had extra glitter out when we were done with the shimmery stars so I took the glue and made a couple of pretty pictures- I gave one to Natalie and one to Rebecca after she had helped me a bunch without me asking.
This was not drawn by me, this is another circle picture and it was drawn by Leslee, it is her dear friend Jimmy.
This one is another picture that was not drawn by me (though still circle picture). In the 5 year old class I showed a couple of examples that people had given me from the 4 year old class, two of the ones that I had shown was the picture that Jimmy drew of Leslee and vice-versa. At the end of the class Joy came back and gave me this, from one direction it is Jimmy and from the other direction it is Leslee- now that just has to make your day :D
Another circle picture- a snowman
Yep, another circle picture- candy, yum, yum!
Last week in one of my afternoon classes we were supposed to draw a bunch of stars on our paper and then make them into a picture (our own constellation). I just placed a whole bunch of stars on my paper and then looked at it and saw this (not bad considering I was doing this in front of the class as an example)
Last week in one of my classes we did pictures using a circle, many of these are my drawings from the different classes- I was really happy with the original of this that I did, but when a cute 3 year old asks if they can have it, you just can't say no. So this was me trying to reproduce it and at some point it became my paper for trying other markers on.
Two weeks ago we did worked on numbers 1-5 in one of my classes, these are the different papers that we did in each class. This is the one that we did in the 4 year old class.
5 year old class.
3 year old class ( notice the black dots, that is what we did on most of the kids papers so that they could understand and follow)
I didn't actually draw this one, but it was given to me and it makes me laugh. This is another one of the circle pictures, it was drawn by Jimmy and it is Leslee (refer to the picture of Jimmy drawn by Leslee :D)
Ok I am not starting this as early as I had planned on, but I am at least starting it on the day of and hopefully will get it done quite quickly. I am happy that I am getting back into the swing of things (blogging that is).
I woke up this morning pretty tired, for some reason last night I was having several dreams about bugs being all over my room and that they were crawling all over me, needless to say when you are imagining lots of bugs crawling all over you and your room you don’t get lots of sleep.
Thankfully I had planned pretty easy things for my classes today. In my morning class I started with the good old classic “Who Stole the Cookie From the Cookie Jar,” in the 4 year old class they really got into it, after we had gone through everyone in the class they started accusing non-people objects in the room (different chairs, the white board, the paper Santa Clause on the wall, etc.), but these non-people objects still had to answer so I of course had to make up voices for each item, they thought that, that was pretty funny. The 5 year olds came into class and told me that Teacher Yuling had taught them that song (though of course they couldn’t really remember it and Yuling said that when she had taught them they didn’t really get it), it took them a little bit but they eventually got into the song, for some reason they liked to say that I stole the cookies a lot (I think that sometimes I was going every other person in the class). 3 year olds I of course have to do a lot simpler, I would clap (they of course would get into that part) and then sing the song, I would also prompt them with what to say. It was about when we had done every person in the room that the 3 year olds started to get the idea and when I asked them who stole the cookies they would start pointing to someone, it was kind of funny because I would ask whoever had been pointed at if they had stolen the cookies, they would tell me no and then point at someone else- it kind of made me laugh. It was so weird, at the very end of class I had asked the 3 year olds to be quiet for a little bit, I think that they were completely silent for almost one minute (you could hear a pin drop, except for the sound coming through the windows from the other classrooms), both Stephanie and I were surprised that they did it, but as soon as the silence was done it was definitely done (the boys went straight to yelling and climbing on top of each other).
I had remembered about the family call but had forgotten at the same time, it wasn’t until I sat down at my desk that I really remembered so I called in quickly. I enjoyed getting to talk to everyone, but particularly Sonia as I haven’t really been able to talk to her since I left Utah.
I think that I have mentioned before but I find it really funny that I can walk into the classroom and not really have any plans about what I am going to do, but it comes really fast as I start the class and then by the 2nd and 3rd class it is even better and planned. My middle class today was one of those, I knew that I was going to be talking about buddy systems but didn’t really know what I was going to do and particularly how I was going to make it last for 30 minutes. I walked into the classroom and the 3 year olds were of course running around crazy, strangely though today they got calmed down quickly and sat down faster than usual (I wonder how many of them are sick?). I was just about ready to start the class when Meggy walked in, of course all the kids wanted to run over and say hello (what kind of 3 year old would they be if they didn’t want to greet whoever was walking in?), luckily they again settled down pretty quickly. Since the kids were doing so well (and it helps to take up time :D) when they started talking about Yogi Bear I asked them if they would like to sing it, and of course they did. The kids love this song, particularly the last verse (Yogi has an enemy, Ranger, Ranger. Yogi has an enemy, Ranger, Ranger Smith, Bang, Bang. Ranger, Ranger Smith, Bang, Bang. Ranger, Ranger Smith, Bang, Bang. Yogi has an enemy, Ranger, Ranger Smith, Bang, Bang), they always pretend to shoot me and then I fall down at the last verse because they got me. When I fall down they like to climb on top of me like a jungle gym, I let them sit there for a little bit but then have them get off and go back to their seats.
When we were done with the song I asked the 3 year olds if they had remembered when we had talked about strangers, they didn’t really at first so we reviewed. We talked about how one way that we can work to prevent getting kidnapped by strangers is to always go with a buddy; we then took a “walk” around the classroom, everyone with buddies. It took a little bit to get the kids separated and to stand in a line but they actually did really well when we were walking, I was so proud of them. When we had finished our walk there was about 5 minutes left so I let the 3 year olds go and play for the few minutes that there were left. For the 4 and 5 year olds I knew that the taking a walk would not last the whole 30 minutes so with the 4 year olds I added a part after we went on our walk where I would ask someone to go and find something for me on the other side of the room where I couldn’t really see them, they were supposed to pick a partner to go with them and stay together the whole time. it went really well, I think my favorite part was with Yukai and Eric, I had asked them to take something back and to remember to go with a partner, Yukai walked up to Eric, grabbed his hand and then they walked and put it back- it made me feel good because they were listening to what I had been saying and remembered about the holding hands part.
When I walked towards the lunch classroom I looked to the left towards the other classroom and saw that Annie (3 year old) was crying, I have never seen Annie crying, I don’t even remember her crying when she first started (though I am sure that she did), she is always laughing, screaming and creating havoc. So seeing her cry was quite strange, I asked Stephanie what had happened, I guess that Annie had made a mess and she had been asked to clean it up, hence the crying. Anyway during lunch I looked over at Annie and saw that she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, I told Stephanie that she wouldn’t be having any trouble with her when it came time for nap time (I am beginning to think that, that might be why she flipped out so bad about having to clean up a mess- she was tired). Not long later Stephanie all of a sudden gasped and looked over at Annie, she had fallen asleep at the table, Kristy shook her awake and I had Annie come over and sit next to me in hopes that she wouldn’t fall asleep again, no such luck- we were cleaning when Kristy said something and pointed over at Annie. She was just sitting at a chair with an apple in her hand, again with her chin down and asleep. Stephanie woke her up and had her stand-up until the beds were laid out and it was nap time, in hopes that she would not fall asleep again. That was adventure 1 of lunch time, adventure 2: as I was walking towards the door to take lunch stuff back to the kitchen I looked up to see Yukai peeing his pants on the sidewalk right outside the door (yippee---NOT!),luckily I just had to carefully get out of there and then Stephanie cleaned it up.
I generally take a nap myself during the 1st hour of my break but lately I have been getting distracted doing other personal stuff (mostly just web cruising) for the 1st hour and then realize that it is the last hour and I need to make sure that everything is ready for my afternoon class. Today was again one of those cases. So no nap, I definitely think that I will be going to bed early tonight, as no nap and not sleeping very well last night do not add up well.
In our afternoon classes this week our lesson is “About Me,” when I first got here and I was researching for lesson ideas and themes I kept seeing ideas for this theme and I always thought that it sounded kind of weird, but as Natalie and I have started planning it I have actually gotten pretty excited about them. So we decided that we are going to make mobiles this week and each day we will make a piece for it (like we did with the passports), so today I had the kids make the titles for their mobiles (a piece of paper with their name on it- they got to color and decorate the paper that is going to go at the top), I also took pictures of each of the kids. In Natalie’s class she had the kids draw a self portrait of themselves, we are going to print a copy of their picture and then we will glue the actual picture and the self portrait back-to-back later when we make the actual mobiles. I am pretty excited about making these mobiles, I think that they are going to turn out really cool- the part that makes me laugh the most is that we of course have to make this with a Taiwanese twist…we had asked Yuling for a hanger for each child to be the base (I guess?) of the mobiles, this afternoon instead of hangers she gave us a whole bunch of cheap wooden chopsticks, I guess we are either going to glue them like a cross or something and use them. It is not something that I would ever have thought of but it makes sense, but it does make me laugh at the same time.
When class was over I took my stuff back upstairs and then went back down to walk around and record my school/apartment tour. Let me tell you something, the tour maybe took me 10 minutes tops to walk around and record but putting it up on the blog has taken me more than 4 hours, with our really slow connection it takes a long time to upload each video and I have several---so family you had better appreciate it (:D). When I was done with my tour I came back to my room and started uploading the movies to my blog and that was what I was doing until I had tutoring at 7 with Sarah. Sarah is so cute and really easy to tutor, she works hard and I never have to remind her to work, I did feel kind of bad though because I was having trouble staying awake while I was tutoring her- luckily I don’t think that she noticed. When we were done she left and I got myself some dinner and ever since I have been still working on uploading videos, writing up this, and doing more internet cruising.
I am proud of myself, it is 10:40 and I am done. I think that as soon as I am done with uploading the videos I am going to actually head to bed (early I know). Hopefully now the movies won’t take too long to upload. I love you all lots and hope that you have a wonderful Monday. ~Betherd~
P.S. Oh my goodness I can’t believe that I almost forgot to mention it, actually I think that I probably already did but I am really excited about it, yesterday while I was sitting in the office with not much to do I got my lesson plans ready for the next 4 weeks, now I all have to do is add my afternoon classes after talking to Natalie and I am set- that is just amazing to me! :D
P.P.S. I bet you thought that I had forgotten.
Official Countdown:
11 Days Until They Leave
13 Days Until They Land in Taiwan
15 Days Until I See Them in Hualien!!!! (That is the best one :D)
So here is my video tour of my apartment finally! I am a little irritated with how long it has taken to upload it all, but it is done with and I don't have to do it again, yippee!! Sorry for it being a little shaky, I am not the most steady camera person. I do also narrate the whole thing, you don't have to listen to that part if you don't want to (I hate hearing my voice on camera- ick!). Sorry about there being so many different videos, but it would have been worse to try and do bigger recordings, they go in order, left to right, down left to right, etc. Loves to all! ~Betherd~
I took a short little clip of outside this morning, the sound that you hear is the wind hitting against me and everything else that was in sight- sorry it isn't very stable, it is a little hard to do in the wind. I hope that you can see how much the trees and bushes are swaying and moving. It was kind of interesting to think that the typhoon hadn't hit when it had been doing that and worse all night long. Love you all ~Betherd~
It has been kind of strange since I have come here, it seems that many of our weekends they are warning us that there will be a typhoon, this weekend was another one of those. Yuling had mentioned Friday that a typhoon might hit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday time period so I wasn't too worried for this weekend. Yesterday morning it had been windy and rainy but it is like that generally so again I wasn't worried, but when I was in the kitchen I heard a noise outside, I looked out the window and could see Yuling, Joseph, and Yuling's dad- they were taking things inside the buildings and tying things down. Natalie came home soon and then we heard someone outside, it was Yuling coming upstairs; she told us that the typhoon was going to be pretty bad and that we needed to take everything inside the kitchen and do a major lock down on all of our windows and apartment. So we quickly moved everything into the kitchen and then helped tie down our tables together. Through this typhoon Natalie and I have been realizing more and more how many people we have here that care for us and help to make sure that we are aware of what is going on. We had dinner plans last night with Amy and some of her classmates, as we were pulling up to the restaurant Grace called Natalie and suggested that we should go home as there was a typhoon coming. Also while we were eating Stephanie called Natalie and told her that church was canceled for the next day and that we would be smart to head home soon. As we were heading out Amy and all of her friends told us to get home soon and be safe. We stopped at the grocery store and stalked up with things on our way home. Right after we had gotten home the Sister Missionaries called us to check and make sure that we had gotten home from the restaurant (they didn't trust that I remembered the way home) and to tell us that church was canceled. Then this morning Yuling called to tell us that church was canceled and that she felt that it might be better/safer for us to move downstairs. As we have realized how many people we have that are looking out for us we have felt very blessed the last couple of days. Our day today was a little long, the worst of the storm actually came before we even got downstairs, by the time we were all moved it was actually starting to calm down. I am pretty excited though because I had time to sit down and just look through all the resources that there are for us to use I have planned my next 4 weeks of lessons, except for the afternoon classes where I have to do that with Natalie. It feels so good to have all that done, especially with Nathan and Sallee coming (for those who are interested: they leave in 11 days, arrive in Taiwan in 13 days, and I will see them in 15 days--no I'm not counting down, I would never do that ;D) I will not want to take the time and plan my lessons. A couple of hours ago Yuling called us in the office and asked if we would like to come back upstairs, we said yes as we didn't really feel like getting up at 6 or so to get out of the office before kids arrived. I guess that the typhoon has changed its course and it will not be hitting Hualien at all (originally we were supposed to be getting the eye), we are a little dissapointed as school and work has been cancelled for all of Taiwan tomorrow, except Hualien that is (Yuling was pretty disappointed also). So good thing that I got all of my lessons and evaluations done earlier.
Here I am in the office modeling the flooded field outside.
Natalie chowing down on our lunch of frozen pizza.
A close-up of our lunch (yeah it tasted about as good as it looks- NOT GOOD!), Natalie ended up getting sick from it later in the day.
This just makes me sad, this is the garden that is right beside the school, I took this picture this morning- they had just planted these a couple of weeks ago.
So this morning we got a call from Yuling telling us that church was canceled and that the typhoon hadn't even hit yet, she felt that we should move downstairs to the office and that she would be by in an hour to open it up for us, these next few pictures are of all our stuff that we brought down with us (we really didn't know how long we were going to be there so we brought probably close to our whole kitchen of food :D)
Natalie eating her frosted flakes (she was super excited to have gotten them)
Part of the food that we brought down.
Our towels- they were both wet (funny story Natalie dropped hers when we were going downstairs and I dropped mine when we were coming back up)
A picture of the sky from last night.
Our group shots that we took before we raced home after dinner, Amy's friends were so nice and fun to hang out with (Note: Amy is the one in the front with the red shirt on and white jacket)
A picture that I took this morning of our deck- look how far the water came in.
The poor plants outside had all fallen down.
This sign is normally at the end of the street, Saturday afternoon they took it down and brought inside the gate- when Natalie came home later she and the Chu's missed the street because they didn't see the sign.
I took several pictures of the sky Saturday mid-afternoon, these are them (notice how pink the sky is)
This is our porch after Yuling came through and had us move everything, I think that it kind of looks really sad.
Our kitchen/living room (where everything was placed)
A closer view of everything in the kitchen (notice my clothes drying- I had just done my laundry when Yuling came upstairs)
One of the play structures all tied up.
The other play structure tied up also, it is a little harder to see this one.
Natalie and I are pretty excited about our lesson ideas for this week. I am sorry that I didn't write at all last week but I am thinking that I got so far behind that I probably wont catch up, it is probably better if I just start from here and go forward (every time I try and sit down and start writing I can't concentrate because there is so much to write about). I am hoping that as I get more used to my schedule that I will be able to plan better my writing. I love you lots and hope that you are having a wonderful Sunday (calmer at that). Loves to all, this is ~Betherd~, signing off!
I know, I know- it has been a week since I have posted. I am going to bed really early tonight, but wait for it and tomorrow I will post a nice long letter from the week. ~Betherd~
Ok, so I am soooo proud of myself- it is not even 7pm and I already have my evaluations done, my lesson plans done (except the part that I have to do with Natalie), and a load of laundry (yeah I had to do one on Sunday- we were gone all day yesterday), not bad if I do say so myself. But it is ok, because once again I have much to catch up on in my journal and I am sure that it will take much of my time tonight.
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 numberand 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!!!
Today Natalie and I went to Carrefour again, and of course we can't go to Carrefour without there being an adventure? Here are some of our pictures from the day (again refer to tomorrow's post about the past few days)
I got vanilla and oreo.
This was one of Natalie's many ways of trying to figure out how to get the box home, she really was determined to try it this way.
This is our cute new 'mini' mop that we bought today at Carrefour, we decided that if we really are going to be able to clean our apartment a mop is needed.
The many yummy flavors of ice cream that they had, we were a little worried about how we were going to tell them what flavor we wanted as there was no English words on the board but then one of the ladies handed us this pad of paper with the lists of all the flavors, we marked how many scoops we wanted and then what flavors we wanted. I was very grateful.
I love seeing the huge difference in the cone sizes, the smallest one is for one scoop and the larger one is for 3 scoops.
The prices for the ice cream, not that bad- for $1.50 you could get 3 scoops of ice cream.
Natalie went with good ol' traditional chocolate.
Natalie got a little excited about her new laptop and she opened in the parking lot of Carrefour.....
Ok not really, the box was a lot bigger then we had planned on and so it would fit into our baskets or backpacks, finally after trying to get hold of people for like an hour we decided to break it open and see what it was like inside-- we found out that it came with a carrying bag and that it could then fit into Natalie's backpack.
Last night I went to the Ji-An Branch "Moon Festival" (it was postponed from last week) BBQ. It was really, really yummy- I will write more about it later in my journal post but for now here are some pictures that I took last night.
I realized that I hadn't posted any pictures of Yuling, this is one that I took last night- though not the best, I will be sure and try to get some more better pictures.
Just a group shot from the side (the little girl in pink is Allie- Yuling's niece, and the little girl in white is Ariel).
Sister Wood, one of the amazing Sister Missionaries.
Stephanie modeling the yummy grilled corn.
A view of the yummy food, table 1.
There are many shots of this view, I was quite impressed with the brethren that were cooking the food, it was really hot.
Some of the kids playing.
Another view of the cooking.
An over the head view of some of the people.
Cute baby Daniel sleeping on mommies shoulder.
The Elders got the kids to play duck, duck, goose with them- it turned into a dangerous game as some of the kids were diving in order to get someone or not to get tagged.
Another view of the people.
Again another view of the food table.
More of the Elders playing with the kids.
Yep you got it another view of the cooking.
Yum, Yum..he's cutting some of the yummy food.
I really don't know what this is, Ariel's mom called it Chinese Cake, all I know was that it was really yummy.
Just part of the bread that they bought for last night (yeah I also got sent home with one of the loaves)
I know, I know I am a couple of days behind, but I don’t really have a reason- it wasn’t like anything that exciting was happening. Oh well! I wrote on Monday but I didn’t even get to my day, so I guess that, that is where I will be beginning.
In my first class Monday morning we were playing a game called “Musical Lines,” basically you are supposed to tape lines down on the floor and then the kids have to walk around on the lines as the music plays and then freeze like statues. I couldn’t find any tape that would be safe to put on the ground and so I decided that I would just improvise—it was a good thing too, I learned that when it is raining hard the kids stay put and the teachers rotate instead (it was considered raining hard on Monday- yippee!...NOT). So my improvising- I just had the kids walk and dance around the room while the music was playing and then of course freeze when the music stopped, it was probably a good thing that they didn’t have to stay on a little piece of tape, I have some kids that like to go really fast and push and shove while others like to go slowly and so it probably would not have turned out very well.
When I was done with my class I rushed upstairs to call in on the family phone call, sadly no one was there. I wasn’t sure if I had just called in too late or if it hadn’t happened at all, so I called mom to check- it was nice we got to talk for like 20 minutes when it had nearly been a week since we had last talked (yeah I know, SAD).
For my middle class we were talking about being in airports and airplanes, yeah I realized afterwards that it came to being really close to when we had talked about transportation and I had talked about airplanes, oh well the kids seemed ok with it. I started by reading a book about going on an airplane, and then for the 4 and 5 year old classes I drew a picture of a airport and showed how there can be a lot of people, we went back to our stranger lesson and talked about how we should stay with our mommies and daddies while we are there (sorry mommy and daddy, when I flew to Taiwan I didn’t stay with you!) and then we got to play a game where we were airplanes..yahoo!!! In the 3 and 4 year old classes we just practiced flying from orange cone to orange cone but in the 5 year olds class we set up the cones so they made this little area to the side, all the kids started there and one at a time I would say “Tower One to Airplane______(put in child’s name here), it is safe to take off” and then they would “take off,” once in awhile I would also have someone land and then take off again, they loved it.
Of course after lunch I took a nap (what kind of day would it be without a nap?).
This week in our afternoon class our theme is Under the Sea (sounds mystical doesn’t it?), and Monday I was talking about waves and currents (ok not really currents that much), to begin with I started by showing a 10 minute clip of Finding Nemo (because what kind of teacher would I be if we talked about the sea and didn’t get to see Finding Nemo?) and then we looked a bunch of different pictures of waves of different sizes and also watched another little clip of different waves, as it is cooler to see the waves moving then just pictures of them. It was kind of interesting to be talking about waves right after we had a typhoon, all the kids were like ahhh, we know what that is. Once we had finished looking at the pictures and movie clips we got to play a game, I had brought a whole bunch of plastic balls (the kind that are in the McDonalds play structure) and a blanket from my room, then the kids got to take turns making waves with the balls on the blanket. I would always start the kids with doing small waves and then they could do big waves, the balls would go flying up into the air, in among the other kids and basically everywhere in the classroom, of course the kids loved it- every single time they screamed, laughed, and then went scrambling after the balls to put them quickly back on the blanket so the next group could go (because if they went faster there would be a chance of them getting to go again).
I don’t have any tutoring on Monday’s but I went downstairs and hung out with the kids again for awhile, at one point somehow I became the kid’s jungle gym again and got my hair messed up. I told them that their payment was that they had to do my hair, generally I love having my hair done/played with, this time was not the case- Allie was doing my hair and she would pull really hard, she also enjoyed (for some reason) pulling my hair straight out and then hitting it really hard with her hand (ouch!). Natalie came by and invited me to come with her to the Chu’s house for a single adult FHE (I guess Bro. Chu just got a new calling of the single adult leader or something like that), I hadn’t been feeling very good all Monday so I declined in hopes that I would go and get my journal done and then get to bed early. Well neither of my hopes got done, I went upstairs and started working on my journal- but of course I was in the kitchen and had the TV on and was getting very distracted (which would explain why I only got a little bit done on Monday night—though Natalie did walk in when I was almost done and was like wow you have a lot, I was like not really- I generally have this much for one day). I was just about to leave and go to bed when this show started, Amazing Race. I had never seen the show before but had been seeing commercials for the past couple of weeks, it looked interesting- Natalie and I both got hooked and couldn’t leave until the show was over. I have been a little sad as some of my favorite shows are starting in the next couple of weeks and I have discovered that the websites will not allow me to watch them from over here, but I think that Natalie and I are both interested in this so it might be our Monday night show (I know, I know kind of pathetic). I don’t know if anyone has ever watched Amazing Race but it looks interesting, especially since this time they are in Asia! When the show was over I headed to bed, again later than I had wanted to.
I also finally told Natalie about why I don’t generally accept her offers to go to the Chu’s house with her, about how I feel like a 3rd wheel. I know that she doesn’t do it on purpose but it doesn’t make it fun for me and so I feel more comfortable staying at home doing my own thing.
Tuesday morning. So I was really excited about all of my classes yesterday, especially my two morning classes! In my morning class I was teaching some simple sign language (I have always been interested in it, but last year and this year I have had many, many friends take sign language at BYU and they have absolutely loved it- I am thinking that it will be something that I look even more into when I go back), not very hard stuff like- apple, dog, cat, candy, thank you, house, school, hamburger, day, night, cold, happy, please, hello, good-bye, and strawberry (the kids love strawberries so I had to do it). The kids picked up on it pretty well, but I hadn’t realized how much until later during lunch when I was getting ready to serve the kids some of them called teacher, I looked over and they started doing several of the signs. It just makes me all tingly and happy inside when they remember things like that, that I taught them- it helps me to know that I am not just standing at the front talking for hours at a time, that I am making a difference.
Tuesday’s middle class is supposed to be something about music or literature, generally I have been using some kind of book or teaching about a instrument, which are very good topics but I have felt like I was getting stuck in a hole and wanted to add a little bit of something different, anyway last week I was using a random CD while we were playing a game and I started line dancing to the music (it was country of course :D) and I realized that it would be really fun to teach the kids line dancing. So that is just what I did yesterday, I made up a simple dance like 10 minutes before class started (because even the dances online that I could find that said simple were definitely not simple- 4 sets, 22 steps is not simple in my mind) and then I taught it to the kids, they seemed to really like it. In the 4 year old class I even gave the kids chances to lead the others in the dance, the first one that I had do it was Leslee- I figured that they wouldn’t really remember it that well, boy was I wrong, Leslee stepped up and was a pro, she was so cute and funny; I wish that I had taken my camera. I did find out though that dancing for an hour and a half is a good work out (:D) I was sweating like something nasty by the end of the class. All in all I think that it was one of my best classes yet, I have decided that every couple of weeks I am going to teach the kids some other kind of dance, which would mean that I would have to learn it myself, but I think that it will be fun for both of us. It made me really excited also to hear later from Natalie that the kids had come into her class all excited about it and showed her the dance, she said it made her wish that she was in my class. (oh yeah and the title of the post is totally the song that we danced to)
Lunch was Ali’s delicious curry! I think that I commented about it when we went to “The Curry House” but I thought that theirs was good but Ali’s is definitely better, I am kind of sad that she doesn’t make it a lot L.
For my afternoon class we talked about fishing (because of course you use the ocean and sea to go fishing). We looked at some pictures of different kinds of fisherman (not at all that interesting) and then I taught them a song, which for the life of me I am not sure why as the song had nothing to do with the topic of the day (that is how my scatterbrain works).
The Song:
A sailor went to sea, sea, sea. To see what he could see, see, see. But all that he could see, see, see. Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.
When we had finished that the kids got to color their own fisherman and then we put magnets on them and went fishing. Coloring took a little longer than planned again and so the 1st class got a little bit of fishing but the 2nd class didn’t really get to go at all.
When school was over I had half an hour until I had tutoring, I decided that I had probably throw in a load of laundry while I had the time as I was wearing my last pair of clean pants (yes I know, again). I was going downstairs when one of my tutoring students was coming up the stairs (I was a little panicky when I saw him but realized that he was 15 minutes early), I came upstairs and realized that our kitchen was infested with ants and started stomping like crazy, I guess the outside must have been too as Brian started stomping everywhere too- at least he was helpful for being there early. My tutoring went pretty good, while I was tutoring Yuling’s dad came by and fixed the light in my bathroom… so now I have a light again!!!
Monday night Natalie and I had talked about going out to dinner but because Natalie had tutoring until 9 she thought we had decided to do it another night, I thought we had decided to still do it and so was waiting until she was done to eat dinner. She realized that and so we still went, of course we went to the night market. We had been talking about trying the Indian BBQ and decided that, that was what we would try. I got some kind of Chicken Roll, it was pretty good, a little on the spicy side and a lot on the messy side. I was still hungry when I finished it and so got a crepe thingy too. I had my camera this time and took a little movie, but it was not the best so I will take it again with me next time and try to get a better one. Oh funny story though, Natalie and I have been staring to notice more and more places at the night market (like we both swear that the Indian BBQ had not been there a few weeks ago) and last night we noticed this shaved ice place, we both got really excited and wanted to get some. We saw what we thought was mango and so we decided that we would get one to share (as we remembered how big the last ones we got were), the lady didn’t speak English and so we just kept on holding up one finger and then pointing at it, finally this guy was walking by that did speak English and the lady called him over. He asked us what we wanted and we pointed at we thought was mango and said that we wanted one (if you haven’t figured out yet, it wasn’t mango), he told the lady and then she was like it’s not mango, it’s sweet potato, ewwwww. I am glad that someone that spoke English walked by because I would have been a little bit disappointed if we had gotten it and it had not turned out to be mango.
I thought that I was going to go to bed early but then I came home and again got distracted by something and then started talking to Sallee and looking at her pictures and others.
I woke up this morning feeling a little sluggish and very much wishing that I could go back to bed. But I am in the semi-real world and can’t go back to sleep because I am tired. So I got up and took a cold shower (I have been taking semi-warm showers lately) in hopes of waking me up, it didn’t help.
Luckily my first class was pretty simple, we were just singing the song “3 Speckled Frogs,” that went pretty well, the kids enjoyed when I got one of the cots down and used it as the log and I would shake it at the bumpy log part. By the end of my class I was having trouble keeping my eyes open and they were a little blurry so I decided to go up and take a nap during our break, that was the 1st time that I have ever done that and I am not sure how much it actually helped me as I kept startling awake afraid that I had missed my alarm and was late to class. But thank goodness I was not late and made it to class on time. I had chosen to do another song for my 2nd class, I don’t think that it was the best choice- it was kind of hard to keep the kids attention for the whole class.
When class and lunch were over I went straight to my bed and took a very refreshing nap, but once again I kept startling awake afraid that I was going to miss it. I got up and was preparing my lesson, it started raining but I wasn’t really paying attention to it, finally though when it had been raining for a little while I looked down and saw that most of my floor was covered in water, I got up completely freaked out and then ran into my other room and found half of that floor soaked too. I grabbed my towel and started mopping up the water.
In my afternoon class I was talking about octopuses, I first started with two movies (refer to previous post) about octopuses, the kids asked me to show the movies over and over, I limited it to twice of each movie. We then looked at some pictures of different kinds of octopuses (did you know that there is one kind of octopus that can get up to 40 feet across!!!!???).Then we got to make our own octopuses, we used half a paper plate- colored it and then stapled streamers to the edge for legs. The kids loved it, I guess they were really excited and went to Natalie’s class and were showing them to her. I realized that this kind of craft project is a little too much to do for that big of a group, the kids are not allowed to use the stapler and so I had to staple every kids, luckily the teachers helped me a little.
Tonight my last tutor student didn’t come and so I was done an hour earlier!! Yeah! Which meant that I got started on my journal earlier, which also means that it is not even 11:30 and I am already done with my journal! Hopefully that also means that I will be going to bed earlier tonight!
Monday Yuling told me some new tutoring that I will be picking up next week, so my schedule is going to be even more hectic. Hopefully I will quickly get into a system and get everything done and still get to bed early every night.
I am all caught up now, YEAH!!! So I guess that this is all for tonight. Love you all tons! And hope that you are having an awesome Wednesday morning, this is ~Betherd~ signing off.
In my afternoon class today we were talking about octopuses, I had always known that octopuses were pretty cool and that they could do some awesome stuff. But when I found these two movies for my class I learned even more some of the cool stuff that they can do. Color Changing Out of the Box
(Katie and Shalynn- two of my HOTT roomies from last year)
Today is one of my best friend, Shalynn's birthday. I just wanted Shalynn to know that I love her and that I am wishing her a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I hope that you have a great birthday Shalynn! Love Beth
I know, I know that I am behind by a couple of days, not because anything really happened but because I have been lazy. So I ended with Friday night, not much had really been happening, but I did get to talk to my dear friend Erin, Sallee, and Mom- I stayed up until 2am talking with them, but since I didn’t have any plans for the next day I didn’t feel too guilty about it.
I was really lazy Saturday morning, I set my alarm for 9ish but didn’t wake up until sometime around 10, as soon as I got up I went to the kitchen and laid down on the couch and just watched TV for a couple of hours. When I decided that I was done being lazy and that I would go take a shower I went back to my room, I found that Natalie had written me a message wondering if I was interested in going swimming and making dumplings later with her and the Chu family (did she really have to ask?). Sadly it wasn’t until nearly 3pm that we got back in hold with each other, they weren’t sure yet if the swimming pool was open and so they were going to call me and then get back to me. We found out that it wasn’t open, as they had closed everything because of the typhoon that was supposed to be hitting (which as of then had not yet happened), we were all sad.
I guess though that the girls decided to go on a bike ride and Bro. Chu went with them and took them swimming at the river (funny though, when they talked about going Sister Chu was like “no, there is a typhoon it could be dangerous” and so Bro. Chu was like ok and took them on a bike ride, pretty soon Natalie and Grace realized that they were headed towards the river. When they got there Bro. Chu just jumped into the river with his clothes on, the girls followed suit. Because it was pouring rain they were completely soaked by the time they got home and so Sister Chu doesn’t know that they went.).
When they got back from their bike ride Natalie and Sister Chu came and picked me up, I grabbed some stuff while Natalie grabbed some dry clothes. We headed back to the Chu’s house, they live very near at housing owned by the University,they live on the 11th floor- I don’t think that I can even begin to comprehend living that high up in an apartment building. As soon as I got there I was put straight to work chopping up cabbage (and I mean a lot of cabbage—probably two heads), I got to use some of my mad chopping skills (:D), they were all impressed with my chopping, though I don’t think that they are that impressive compared to what I see on the food network. Though because I was chopping so much my hand has been kind of hurting for the past few days, that hasn’t been too fun, especially when I have been trying to open things or prepare dinner last night. It took us a couple of hours to prepare it all and then we got to eat some of what we made, and let me tell you it was delicious! Natalie and Grace had rented a couple of movies the night before so when we were done with dinner we decided to watch a movie, we watched the 5th Harry Potter, I thought that the movie was very well done, though I was a little sad to see how much they left out. When we were done with the movie they were talking about watching another movie, it was already late and I didn’t really feel like staying the night there. I felt bad about asking but luckily Sister Chu was still awake and was willing to take me home.
We were all kind of a little frustrated as there had been no typhoon that had hit by this time and all of the activities that we had been looking forward to had been cancelled (especially the Chu family they were planning on going to Taipei on Sunday for the Moon Festival to visit all of their family), Sister Chu and I talked a little bit about that on the way back to the apartment. I did actually go to bed pretty early, not staying up too much later after when I got home. I woke up several times during the night, the typhoon had started- it wasn’t too bad though, just lots of rain and wind. But when I did wake up in the morning for church it sounded pretty bad and because I am not used to this kind of experience I thought that church would be cancelled and so I went back to sleep, not waking up for several more hours. I found out later when Natalie came home that it had not been cancelled, she asked how to wake me up in the mornings- I told her that it is pretty hard and good luck.
After I woke up I took a quick shower, talked to Natalie for a little bit, had a lunch and then went to work on my evaluations and lesson plans. Generally on Sunday afternoons I start on my journal first and then start working on my lesson plans and evaluations which normally leaves me at the end of the day with not everything done and then turning things late into Yuling (which I don’t feel good about). So I was happy with myself that I had everything done earlier (which is partially why I didn’t write anything last night). At about 4:30pm I went into the kitchen to start preparing dinner, I had decided to make mashed potatoes for dinner, when I had bought the potatoes I thought that the Sister Missionaries were going to be joining us for dinner, so when it was only 3 of us 8 potatoes was a little too many. I still decided to make them all into mashed potatoes because I would be more likely to eat it as mashed potatoes rather than as baked potatoes. Natalie and Amy helped cook up the chicken nuggets and vegetable mix that we were also going to have for dinner.
We hadn’t been eating for very long when I looked up and outside on the porch and thought that I saw a shadow moving towards us but I wasn’t sure, I guess that I gasped or something because I scared Natalie too, I was right, it was a shadow moving towards us- the Sister Missionaries. They were just coming from their dinner appointment (they had felt bad because they had, had to cancel on us because an investigator or something had invited them to dinner) and they had decided to come and visit us. We offered them some food, Sister Wood can always keep eating and so she had no problem eating food. We asked them if they had, had dessert (they hadn’t, but I have a feeling that Sister Wood would still have accepted even if they had), we invited them to join us for ice cream sundaes, poor Sister Hill can’t eat dairy (she is like we thought that I might be- can’t eat the liquid forms of dairy- milk, ice cream, yogurt) and she is vegetarian, so while we were all chowing down she was eating some of my delicious mashed potatoes (or at least everyone said they were good- I didn’t have a good tool to mash the potatoes so they were a little clumpy). When we were done with dinner Natalie and Sister Hill washed the dishes while Sister Wood and Amy talked about some gospel stuff.
When we were done the Sisters had to leave as they needed to go to an appointment. It was very long until they came back upstairs, I guess they had left their bikes outside the gate and had forgotten to put their locks on; anyway both of their bikes were gone. We felt really bad because they had been stolen from our place. They both have these really nice boxes on the back of their bikes and in them they had the book with all of their investigators numbers and they had just gotten their mail- like 5 envelopes each (they only get their mail when the mission president comes down to Hualien), they didn’t even know who the mail was from. In kind of a funny way though right as they were going downstairs the 1st time Sister Hill told us that we need to start making a list of our blessings, I say they have one to count, yeah they lost their bikes but at least they had their cell phone and their cameras with them upstairs. We told them that they should call someone to drive them home (they had to call and cancel their appointment), but they said that they still had an hour till they had to be home so they decided to walk home.
We did end up having a solution for them (thank goodness as they have to buy their original bikes and that would really suck if they had to buy new ones), Luke and Kaylene (if you don’t remember who they were they were the couple that was also interning here) also had one of their bikes stolen and so they had borrowed two bikes from missionaries that were going home. They were still hanging around at the preschool and we had asked the missionaries about them a couple of weeks ago but they hadn’t any clue about them. Well now they are coming to good use, the Sisters came and got them today (I am glad, I would have felt really, really bad if they both had to buy new bikes).
*Sorry Nate and Sallee, this does mean though that the bikes that I was going to have for you to use are no longer available, you will still have to rent bikes when you come.
I know that I haven’t yet covered today, but it is already 11:30 and I am very tired. I will write about today, tomorrow.
I love you all and hope that you have a great Monday!!
Saturday night the Chu family invited us over to make dumplings with them, I did take some photos but did not do as good as I normally do.
Here is Natalie, Grace, and Grace's roommate Cindy working on putting together the dumplings.
The vegetarian dumpling filling.
The meat dumpling filling. (yeah I chopped up all the cabbage for those!!)
Some finished dumplings.
The bag of dumpling shells (Sister Chu can make them but we were making nearly 200 and so she just bought the shells- she said that they are not that hard to make...exciting part- we can buy them in the US!)
A pile of the shells on the floured table.
Putting them into the water
Another view of putting them into the water.
The set table with our dumplings!
Doesn't that look delicious? Yeah, that's right, I made them!! :D
So I am a little behind but I wanted to show how we had prepared ourselves for the "huge" typhoon that we were going to be hit with.Our sweet water jug that I have to re-fill like every other day.
The two extra water bottles that we filled.
I tutor a family on Friday nights and they gave me all of this stuff for Moon Festival.
I was super excited to open this package of mango cakes. There were tons of different flavors.
Our food shelve, notice how full the top shelves are.
Our freezer, a lot of it was for our dinner on Sunday night.
If you have not been able to tell from the past couple of posts, we are supposed to be having a typhoon this weekend, originally the forecast was that it wouldn’t even hit Taiwan, but with the last few the days the forecast has changed and it will definitely be blowing right over Taiwan, and it keeps getting bigger as the moments go on, so we are not sure how big it will be when it hits or how long it will last. So because of this aforementioned typhoon the things that I was the most excited about for the weekend have been cancelled (yes I know that I posted just about that last night but I am really bummed), one of my tutor students parents asked me tonight if church will be cancelled, I had thought about that but am not sure, I will have to find out some way I am sure. The typhoon is supposed to hit tonight but not sure when, I believe that as I am writing this it might be beginning, it starting to rain pretty hard outside. Now that I have updated everyone on the conditions of the weather here in Taiwan let’s move on to things that are of more interest (well I find them of more interest). I last finished with Wednesday night and have had much happen since then. Yesterday morning in my morning class we played balloon volleyball, we were supposed to work on our counting, that didn’t go so well, but the kids did have fun, that is until one of the balloons popped in the 3 year old class (I was actually surprised that it had made it all the way to the end of the 3rd class). Because the classes are getting so big we had to divide the kids into groups when they were playing, for the most part I just did boys and girls. In my afternoon class I was talking about simple machines, I sometimes feel that we are stuck inside the class for too long of the day, the kids get to play outside for maybe like 10 minutes in the middle of the day and then they can play at the end of the day until their parents pick them up, so I try to find ways to take them outside once in awhile. I first read a couple of books to the kids about simple machines and then we went outside on a “treasure hunt” to find some of the simple machines (in one of the books it had talked about springs, levers-sea saw, ramps up and down-ramp and slide), once we found these different things that kids got a little bit of time to play on the toy. In the 4 year olds class they did awesome, they followed directions perfectly and had tons of fun, but when it came time to the 5 year olds class they had some difficulty. I had given the 5 year olds simple directions, go up the ramp, come down the slide and then get in line at the end, at one point I looked behind me and had some kids going down another slide, a couple of kids running around the building, kids cutting in line, and others just playing with other toys; I asked the kids to get back in line and follow directions, but for some reason they could not so again we had to go back inside, sit down, and wait quietly until the end of class. while we were sitting there, there was all of a sudden a big bang and then we heard a bunch of wind and then lights went out, all the kids gasped and some of them jumped up, looked outside and informed me that a typhoon was coming, it was kind of funny though as Rose also used her hands and did like this huge sweeping thing around her head to illustrate in case I was not sure what one was. For my afternoon class we were making decorations for our birthday party (because what kind of party is it without directions?), in reality we were just making a paper chain, each of the kids got like 4 slips of pieces and got to decorate them however they wanted, with whatever colors they wanted, and even whatever shapes that they wanted. The kids seemed to enjoy it, I saw so many different decorations- one person drew a train on theirs and another Taipei 101 (I would have to say that, that was the most impressive of all the ones that I saw). When they were finished with their slips for the chain they brought them up to me and I stapled them together along with a slip of piece of paper with their names on it, the plan was that I was going to take them down today when the “party” was over and give the kids their chains back, but our party went a little long and I realized that it was kind of a crazy idea. After I had stapled their chain together they grabbed a brown paper bag that already had their names on them (yeah I am smart like that as I know that 3 times out of 4 the names don’t get put on things), they then got to decorate their treat bags for today, again however they wanted. I found it interesting this week though, when I generally do craft projects I only allow for like 20 minutes and the kids seem to do fine with that allotted time but this week we have been just doing a craft project for the whole class period (45 minutes), I don’t know if it is because the groups are getting bigger or just because the kids kind of mentally know that they have more time to fill, it also kind of worries what will happen in the next couple of weeks when I try to do a craft project again for only 20 minutes. On Thursday’s I only have one tutor student (Sam and Rose’s older brother Willy), last week Teacher Stephanie told me that their mom had called and was wondering if I could move the tutoring half an hour earlier, that was fine with me, that just means that I get done half an hour earlier. So this week I wasn’t sure if he would be coming at the original set time or half an hour earlier, so basically I was just hanging out for half an hour until he came (I guess that Teacher Stephanie never had gotten back to the mom and told her that it was ok). Natalie had asked if her tutor student got there first if they could be inside, I was ok with that, but luckily Willy showed up like 3 minutes before Natalie’s tutor student, so I did not have to be outside and get eaten alive by bugs. Willy is a really smart kid and he works right through the hour, I don’t ever have to remind him that he needs to be working, which I like very much. About 5 minutes before we were done I heard someone outside and looked up to see Rose running through the rain and stomping on the porch, she came in and handed me money (to pay for tutoring), she was going to go back downstairs but I suggested that she just sit and wait until Willy was done so that she didn’t have to get wet again so soon. As we were finishing up the Sister Missionaries arrived and Willy’s mom came upstairs also, she had a big umbrella to try and stay dry, she knows quite a bit of English so I was able to tell her that I would be fine with tutoring half an hour earlier. Amy had not yet arrived so I was able to do some stuff really quick, but then the Sisters wondered if maybe she was downstairs just waiting for us, so I spent a few minutes frantically searching for the poncho that I had thankfully bought just like Monday or something, finally I was able to find it. We went downstairs and did indeed find that Amy was there waiting, I quickly put on my poncho and then we all hopped on our bikes (and scooter in Amy’s case). I didn’t know exactly where we were going but I knew where we were going (sorry if that is confusing), Natalie had told me that we were going to eat curry somewhere, I remembered that the Sisters really liked this place, Sister Ni (the Taiwanese Sister Missionary who was here for like my first week and then was transferred) even had several business cards for them in her wallet. I was right we were headed to the curry place, it is actually pretty near and I could find it again pretty easily, it is called “The Curry House” and it is owned by a guy from Sri Lanka, it was good curry but not the best that I have ever found (Ali’s is better, especially with her yummy fresh apples on it!). The Sisters had to be at an appointment at 8 and Natalie had a tutor at 8:10 so we all broke up at about quarter till 8, it was really fun to go to dinner with the Sisters and Amy, except I am so mad at myself- I had forgotten to put my card back in my camera from the night before when I was getting pictures off. I really like the Sister Missionaries, they are really enjoyable to be around, we are supposed to be having them over for dinner on Sunday night but we will see how that goes. I was so proud of myself, I left before Natalie did as she was talking with Amy, but not very long before her, I thought that for sure she would pass me, but she didn’t!! I kept going the whole time and kept a good pace, I think that I am getting a little better as each day goes on, especially since it was all uphill back to the apartment. Once Natalie was done with her tutor student we started working on the piñatas, rather than bring my laptop in and listen to music I decided to turn on the TV (I actually haven’t turned on the TV for like the last week before that). We first caught the end of a Jackie Chan movie, Natalie and I were so excited as it had random parts that were in Chinese and we were able to pick out words that we understood, it was actually quite humorous about how excited we would get when we recognized a word. When the Jackie Chan movie ended the movie “World Trade Center” started, I had never wanted to watch the movie as it kind of made me sad to take an event like that and turn it into something for entertainment, I was quite impressed with the part that I saw though, it is about 5 police officers who went into one of the towers and how only two of them survived, and it was a true story- I didn’t watch very long, I actually went to bed early- but I guess that Natalie did watch the whole thing and she was rather chatty about it this morning. I guess that sometimes it kind of makes me sad how people talk about that event; they are kind of flippant with it and are not very feeling about it. This morning in my first class we played color tic-tac-toe, now you may ask how in the heck can you play color tic-tac toe (ok you may not have actually been asking yourself that question, but now you are right ? ;D), well let me tell you. You first begin with colored something’s (in my case I used colored pompoms), then you have one kid at a time pull one of the colored something’s out of the bag (without looking) and then place it somewhere on the tic-tac-toe board. The kids seemed to enjoy it, it was kind of entertaining listening to them telling whoever was going where they should put the pompom, especially one time where it was only like the 2nd pompom but there were two kids who were very adamant about which way they should make the tic-tac-toe go, when in reality both ways would have worked. In the 3 year olds class I just had them each pull out a pompom and tell me what color it was. For my 2nd class I was a little late, I had a lot more to prepare for the class than I had realized and should have started a little earlier but it was ok I got everything done eventually (which reminds me, I just realized that I left my stuff in the classroom, I guess that I will have to get them on Monday). It didn’t help matters of making me on time that I forgot and went to the wrong class, I walked into my normal class in time to hear Natalie say “Good Morning Class” and I was like what is she doing in my class and then I remembered and left really fast (she said that she didn’t see me, so that is a good thing :D). I got to my actual classroom (I don’t know if I ever told you but on Friday’s Natalie and I switch because she uses something called BoBo songs and it is on a DVD, my classroom is the only classroom with a TV!) I found the 5 year olds sitting very quietly, which made me feel even worse about being late, but when I told them that I had gone to the wrong class Teacher Michelle just laughed at me. In class we were making time capsules, just basic ones that is. I made a piece of paper that had a spot for their favorite color, shape, letter, and toy. The kids filled out their papers and then put them in an envelope with their names on them. The plan is that like the week before I go home we will fill out the same paper, with our favorite color, shape, letter, and toy; then we will take out the one that we did now and see how it has changed- I kind of think that it would be really cool if the future interns were to do it and like you could have a 3 years worth of papers for the 3 year olds and they could look back and see how they had changed. It was kind of funny, Leslee drew a Barbie as her favorite toy, and so kind of scary, Jimmy also drew a Barbie as his favorite toy- I think that there is only so far that 4 year old love can go. I feel kind of spoiled, today when Ali (the cook) went to get stuff at the market for lunch she remembered that I do not like fish and so she made sure to get beef instead of fish flakes. I was so grateful to her, I don’t think that I always realize the small little acts of service that people do for me. Lunch today went very smoothly, I had several kids that wanted to help me take the food from the kitchen to the classroom and return it to the kitchen when lunch was over, it is kind of nice having kids that want to help me rather than me doing it all. There two helpers in particular today that I really appreciated during lunch, first of all was Rose, she helped me stack all the chairs and then offered to take things back to the kitchen, I think that she made like 3 loads back to the kitchen for me. I also really appreciated Annie, if you don’t remember Annie let me remind you, she is the one that is normally very loud and isn’t the best at following directions, anyway today she finished her lunch very quickly (which she doesn’t normally do either) and then came over to me and pointed at the beds, she wanted to help me set up the beds. I wasn’t quite done eating but she went over and stood by the beds until I was done eating and then she helped me lift every single bed off the pile. Seeing the kids like this makes me appreciate and love them in a whole other way. The other day, I made a comment to Natalie that I had been watching one of the kids leave and I was like they are pretty cute and then I started thinking about it and realized that they are all pretty darn cute, we are so lucky of the kids that we get to work with- especially when they come up to you and tell you that you are beautiful, pretty, or that they love 24 times. Natalie and I still had much to do before our afternoon class so we both opted not to take a nap like we normally do (good thing too as we were working right up to the last minute) and so we came upstairs and grabbed the piñatas and went downstairs and got to work, I also grabbed two of our water jugs and took them downstairs to fill them as I figured that it would be better to be over-prepared for the weekend rather than under-prepared. Natalie and I didn’t really have any ideas of what we were going to do to cover the piñatas, so we first filled with candy and then taped them shut, we found some tissue paper and started gluing them on, luckily Allie had come from school and she was there to help us pull apart the pieces. I think that the piñatas ended up looking pretty cool, if we had, had a little more time they would have looked a little better and nicer done, but I try to ignore that fact and just enjoy what we did. I ran and grabbed the chains and treat bags right as Teacher Jane was ringing the bell to signal that it was time for class to start, I rushed to class and was lucky that there was no rain at this point as it would have been kind of sad for the chains to get wet and get ruined. Natalie and I had decided that we were going to do 20 minute classes and then have like the last 45 minutes together to do the piñatas. Both of the classes went very quickly for me, first we sang our song, we then took a picture of the class with their chains and then we had to hang the chains up. I kind of wished that I had, had a little more time in the class but realized later on that with all we were trying to do it might have been better to just do the whole class time together, oh well we learn as we go. *note: I guess that the typhoon has actually not decided to start quite yet, it was just a playing games with me earlier. It was crazy having all the kids together in one class, I would say though considering how many of them, they did awesome at listening to the teachers and following directions, it was really cool when we sang some songs to hear all of the little voices together singing the songs. We had so much fun with the piñatas, Natalie and I were concerned that the piñatas would not be thick enough and they would break with the first hit, we need not be concerned, the one piñata made it all the way through the kids and then it took all of the teachers to break it. Once we had finished the first piñata with the kids the teachers just broke open the other two (but of course the kids got the candy). I had so much fun and I hope that the kids did too; it was kind of interesting having to do it inside because of the rain. When the class was over I was a little late starting with Kristy again, so I asked Teacher Stephanie if it would be ok if I could go and tutor Kristy and then come back and help clean up the room. Teacher Michelle had only given Kristy two short little books that she went through in probably less than 2 minutes, which left us with 18, I got to be resourceful and write sentences for Kristy to read, because for some reason she doesn’t like to read the same two books over and over for 20 minutes. When I went back downstairs I found that the other teachers had completely cleaned everything up and that there was nothing for me to do, I kind of felt bad but grateful at the same time. As I was standing there Teacher Stephanie handed me two packages of these pineapple things, they kind of look like Fig-Newton’s, they were extra snacks and they could help us last through the typhoon. As soon as I had checked with Teacher Stephanie that everything was clean I decided to head off to the grocery store to get stuff to last me through the weekend. I was also looking for stuff for dinner with the Sisters, we had decided to make mashed potatoes, chicken, and have banana splits- I am in charge of the mashed potatoes and chicken but have decided that I don’t really feel like cooking chicken and think that we will be having some chicken nuggets that Natalie bought today, anyway it took me awhile to find the potatoes, they were packaged a little different than I am used to (I will try and remember to take a picture when I prepare dinner with them). I left a little later than I had planned on and it took me a little bit longer to shop than normal so when I got home I did not have very long till I had to head out again to go to my tutor session at the Chou families house. Again I am very lucky that I bought a poncho, except that for some reason the poncho did not get the memo about where it’s hood is supposed to stay up and so generally by the time I get somewhere my head is soaked. Mrs. Chou was very nice when I got there and got me a towel to dry off on though and she also was very nice and called down to the cook and had her bring me up some chicken soup, though it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when she said chicken soup, it was just broth and kind of oily-oh well it tasted good and warm going down. Tutoring went very quickly, Angelo and Abby sometimes have difficulty staying on task but they are both very smart, I also enjoy working very much with Cammi, she is very smart and a little bit older so I feel more on level with her. When I was done with tutoring the cook brought me a plate of food, the food was ok, but I am thinking that it is probably better that I don’t know what I ate (:D). Mrs. Chou also gave me a bag that had a red bean moon cake (the kind that I don’t like sadly), some mango cakes (which I am really excited about trying!), and some kind of bread that is hard and has like a orange swirl through it. Once I was done I went home very quickly, as I had heard at one point that the typhoon might hit sometime around 9 (it was about quarter till) and I just wanted to be home anyway. Natalie is spending the night with the Chu family tonight and so she had locked and closed all of her windows but as soon as I got home I went through the rest of the apartment and closed the windows and locked them, I have since also cleaned my room and put stuff away as I felt like everything was going crazy again in my room. Now I am just sitting in my room waiting for all my pictures to download, the typhoon to start and finishing off my journal. *note: I was reading Kaylene and Luke’s blog (the couple that was here but has gone home) and during the last typhoon when the power was out Luke decided to go shower outside in the rain, I have not gotten to wear my swimsuit since coming, so I think that I will be doing that tomorrow-so at least I have one thing to look forward to this weekend! :D I love you all and hope that you are having mild weather, have a great Friday and amazing weekend! ~Betherd~
This is probably going to be one of my biggest picture posts, but I don't care- there were so many awesome pictures taken from today's birthday party that I just wanted to share and document everything! (ok so you should be grateful, I don't think that I even put up half of the pictures from today's birthday party)Someone mentioned that they hadn't really seen any pictures of the teachers, so there are several in this post. This one is Teacher Stephanie with the blue pinata.
When we had first hung up the pinatas we hung them from the fan (future note: BAD IDEA!), and so I had to grab them every time someone hit it and stop them from turning and shaking the whole thing.
I would have to say that this is one of the hottest hats that I have ever worn, when the pink pinata broke the top broke off perfectly to make a hat.
I don't have very many good pictures of Rain, as he normally doesn't like to have them taken but I thought that Natalie did a pretty good job with this one, particularly with him sharing what he got in his candy bag.
Teacher Stephanie taking a whack at the pinata of fire (as Natalie called it).
It was kind of fun to see the teachers getting into hitting the pinatas as much as the kids. This is Teacher Michelle putting her whole self into it.
I love the expression on Teacher Jane's face, it is priceless! I think that Natalie and I did a great job and that we got some awesome pictures from the day. Now here are a bunch of the kids taking their turn at the pinata. Lucy- age 4 Rain (with the help of Teacher Jane)-age 4 Fiona-age 4 Wendy-age 4, another greet expression Jimmy-age 4 Cindy-age 4 Una-age 4 Sebastian-age 4 Zoey-age 4
Yukai (also with the help of Teacher Jane)-age 4
Leslee-age 4
Little Alice-age 4 Little Little Alice- age 4 Annie- age 3 Sam- age 3 Jeff-age 3 Josii-age 3 Eric- age 4 Ruby-age 3
Rennie (with the help of Teacher Michelle)-age 3 Jared- age 3 Little Erik- age 3 Meggy- age 3 Teacher Stephanie with the blue pinata (now didn't that just turn out awesome?) A bunch of the kids waiting in anticipation for the pinatas to start.
Cindy and Leslee- both age 4 Sebastian- age 4 Ruby again- age 3
The kids and I singing a song while they were finishing putting up the pinata. More kids waiting. Teacher Michelle and Teacher Stephanie trying to figure out how to hang up the pinata. More kids! Teacher Michelle with the Pinata of Fire. Me handing out the candy bags to the kids.
More of the same.
Again more of the same (oh my goodness- look at how many kids there are!!!) Teacher Stephanie hanging up the pinata from the fan. View from the back. These next few shots are of the kids with their candy bags and with their chains that they made. The chains all hung up together.
Teacher Stephanie working more on hanging up the pinata. More handing out bags.
I just have one thing to say tonight and then I am headed to bed. Stupid Typhoon, the forecast for typhoon has changed and it has gotten a lot bigger and is now going to hit Taiwan, so because of it the dumpling class has been canceled, the BBQ has been canceled, and the hike that Natalie was going to be gone Friday night and Saturday for has been canceled. So once again, STUPID TYPHOON!
A husband!!! (Did you really think that I would tell all of the fun surprises that I am bringing home?)
Baby bumble bee, won’t my mommy be so proud of me? Buzz, buzz, buzz, oh it bit me!
Baby rattlesnake, won’t my mommy shiver and shake? Rattle, rattle, rattle, oh it bit me!
Baby dinosaur, won’t my mommy fall right through the floor? Gobble, gobble, gobble, oh it ate me!
On Monday in my morning class I taught the kids this version of the song, they seemed to enjoy it and still are requesting to sing the song (which is a good thing as I was starting to get quite tired of the 4 or so songs that they requested every time). we have added lots actions to the song and so it makes it even more fun, the kids especially like to slap the floor and stomp when we talk about mommy falling right through the floor.
Little Alice was back at school on Monday, she didn’t look any wear for worse though she did have some kind of shiny rub stuff on her cuts. Though it was rather interesting, Teacher Jane wouldn’t let her participate in any of the activities, she just sat on her chair behind all the other kids, I don’t know if it the grandparents request, a culture thing, or just Teacher Jane- she didn’t seem to mind but it kind of made me sad to see her missing out on things.
I know that I have much to catch up on, on what has happened in the past couple of days, it is already almost 11 o’clock so some things might be shortened a little bit just for the sake of things but I will try not to do that too much.
I already covered the morning class that we learned the song I’m Bringing Home a Baby Bumble Bee, in my middle class we had our safety/health lesson for the week. We talked about stovetop safety and how we should not grab pans right off the stovetop, of course I had to begin my class with doing in the wrong way, I had the kids decide what we should make for lunch and then pretended to put the ingredients in the pan; next of course we had to put it on the “stove” and mix until the timer went off, the first time I would grab the pan with my bare hand and scream bloody murder. We talked about how it is very hot and that we should not grab the pans, if we have to grab a pan we should use a towel or a mitt (I was really impressed that one of the kids actually said that word and not me). After we had finished talking each of the kids got to take a turn taking a pan off of the “stove.” I was really impressed with the 3 year olds, I had told them that if they could sit and listen to the lesson for so long then they could have the remainder of the time at the end to play, they have been doing really well all week and so we have been kind of using that as a strategy, I just increase a little each day how long they have to pay attention to the lesson, I am quite impressed with them this week (even Annie and Jared are getting a lot better).
This week for our afternoon class we are talking about birthday’s and birthday celebrations, for Monday both Natalie and I decided to keep the lessons pretty simple, we each picked 3-4 party games that we would play in class. When we talked after class we discovered that both classes had gone rather smoothly and the kids seemed to have enjoyed everything, it is really hard sometimes as we plan what we think is the simplest lesson and then everything goes crazy, so we were both really happy to see our lessons go well and smoothly.
Monday when Natalie was done with her tutoring she asked me if I wanted to go somewhere for dinner, I kind of wanted to start working on our piñatas that we were going to be using for our class on Friday (we hadn’t ended up getting started on them over the weekend like I had hoped), but decided that I would go with her. I suggested the night market as I still wanted to get back and get to work and didn’t really feel like wandering out too far. She said that she would be willing to go there if this one place was open that she had tried the other day, so we headed down there. It was open!! Thank goodness because it was amazing, I hadn’t thought about taking my camera because it was just the night market we were going to and I had gone there before. The place that we tried was amazing!! It is like a crepe thing with really good food in it, Natalie got it again tonight and so I took a picture of it, I am going to take my camera next time and do a video of her making it, it was really cool. Of course when you are at the night market you also have to go to the fruit juice stand, I got mango and pineapple with milk, not my favorite that I have ever gotten- but at least I have tried it once. While we were also at the fruit juice stand they had these boxes of fresh cut fruit 3/$100NT, really good Natalie and I each bought 3, by yesterday afternoon Natalie’s were all gone- I still have one more to finish. Oh and also randomly Natalie has met this guy from India at the night market and I guess they own a Indian BBQ place, we are excited to try it sometime- so look forward to reports on that place too!
When we got home Natalie and I went straight to working on our piñatas, they looked pretty interesting, lots of colors. We hung them up outside to dry, but yesterday morning we came outside to find two of them on the ground, I think that the heat might have been too much and popped the balloons, so we now have a couple of very funny shaped piñatas.
Yesterday morning in my class we played the game Simon Says, the kids seemed to enjoy it. I played a very basic version and wasn’t too picky about who should be out, I tried a couple of times but found that it was easier to just laugh and remind them that I needed to say Simon. I would do some pretty funny things and the kids would all do it, making me want to laugh- while we were playing that game was again one of those moments that I wished that someone would follow me around with a camera.
For some reason after my morning class I decided to stay downstairs with the 3 year olds rather than go upstairs, I sat down on the floor across from Meggy and Sam. They were coloring and I started coloring on a flower of Meggy’s, for some reason she ended up having me color much of her picture. It was rathr frustrating though, for some reason Little Erik decided that I was going to be his current mommy or something because he spent more of the time climbing all over me and kept on like crawling into my lap and putting his head on my chest. I was not quite sure what was going on or why he decided to do that, and he wouldn’t stop, so I was more than ready to stand up when it was time for class to start.
In the middle class we talked about rhyming, I first would put one word up and then the kids helped me come up with words that rhymed. Next we read through a little bit of a Dr. Seuss book and searched for the different rhymes that he had used, when we had finished that I read the whole book through to the kids and had them listen for the different rhymes that they could hear, I think that by the time I was reading through the book the kids weren’t really looking for the rhymes but once in awhile I would hear one of the kids yell out the rhyme.
For my afternoon class we were playing the game Pin the Hat on the Clown, first the kids got to decorate their own hats, I hadn’t thought that, that would take so much time but for most of the kids it took a big chunk of the class, so in my first class we didn’t even get to play the game and in the 2nd class we started and had gotten like 3 people through when they lost the opportunity to play because they were talking too much.
When I was done with class I wanted to run to the grocery store really fast before my tutoring job because I didn’t really want to go when I was done, I was going out the gate when Teacher Stephanie called to me that I had better have food prepared as there was a typhoon coming. She told me that she hadn’t seen any news but look up in the sky and see how red it is (I thought about it later and realized that it made sense as I remember how mom used to say something about red skies in the morning, sailors take warning or something like that, and sailors would definitely want to take warning about a typhoon). I realized that it was a good thing that I was running to the grocery store so that I could get some stuff to be stocked up. (funny story I mentioned later to Natalie about Teacher Stephanie saying a typhoon might be coming and she said that earlier one of her tutor students had noticed the red sky and said “red sky” and she had just agreed with them and had not really gotten their point).
I raced back and got home maybe 20 minutes before my tutoring was supposed to start, I ran downstairs and quickly put my laundry in the washer (as I was wearing my last pair of clean shorts :D) and filled up our water jug thing, while I waited I talked to Teacher Stephanie for a little bit, she showed me a website that will show typhoons and earthquakes, particularly the typhoon predictions.. www.cwb.gov.tw (click on the English at the top right), it is a pretty good site and you can see typhoons all around the earth, while I had some free time I was also looking at the earthquakes list, and we have had a lot more than I had realized. My tutor student came and he was so sweet, he had brought me a box of moon cakes (I was super excited as I really like moon cakes), tutoring was pretty easy- he is very smart and time goes pretty quickly with him.
When we were done with tutoring I prepared my dinner as fast as I could so that I could get out of the kitchen as Natalie had a tutor student only 10 minutes after we were done with the brothers. I grabbed my food and got out, I just did some browsing for the next 20 minutes ( I guess that I could have been working on my journal :D) and then remembered that I had put a load of laundry in and so went downstairs and got it and hung it up. Once she was done with her tutor student we worked on our piñatas again and then I was really tired when we were done, I talked to Kyle for a little bit and read a couple of pages in my book but went to bed pretty early.
This week we have another new 3 year old, this 3 year old is much different than any other new 3 year old that we have had. He came in on Monday, I was walking out of the class when he came in, he basically said good-bye to mom walked in and sat down at a chair. He has caught on so quickly and I have not seen him cry once. I was talking to Teacher Stephanie yesterday about it,I guess they had come and looked at the school a couple of weeks ago and they had also looked at some other schools, when the mom had asked him what school he wanted to go to he told his mom that he wanted to go to the one where all the kids cry (haha that pretty much made me laugh for awhile). Also I guess Monday morning when he came to school he got all of his bedding together himself and then told him mom “I know that you are not ready to go but I am,” and when they got to the school gate he got really excited because it was the right school. That is not normally the reaction of a new 3 year old and so we are all kind of surprised and are not quite sure how to react.
Today in my morning class we wrote stories about the clown Fred (see two posts down), it was fun, it sometimes took some promptings but the kids did pretty good and laughed at a lot of what they wrote.
In my middle class we were supposed to be doing some kind of trust games (because for some reason that is what I decided to do?), I decided to just bring a blindfold and a ball, I would blindfold a person and then the kids were supposed to give directions of how to get wherever the ball was. The 3 year old class we just played a game of where I hid the things and then they would all try and find it, in the 4 year olds class I found out that they do not know their directions very well (I guess that, that would be a hint to me to have that as a topic in class?) and so it was rather interesting. Leslee kept on putting the blindfold on and yelling “it’s dark” I couldn’t seem to get across to her that that was the point of the blindfold. In the 5 year old class it went pretty well, they could give pretty good directions, but they got too excited and didn’t know when to stop and listen to me so they had to stop playing and sit quietly for like the last 5 minutes of class.
I wasn’t sure if I had been too harsh on them and so I talked to Teacher Michelle and Teacher Stephanie about it later, but they told me that what I had done was good, the kids get excited but they know better and need to remember when to stop and listen. Teacher Michelle said that she had asked them later why they had to sit quietly and they all remembered why, so she said that it was a good thing because they won’t do it again because they know what will happen.
This morning Teacher Stephanie was talking to me a little bit about some of her frustrations, she was talking about how because of what she believes she always tries to do extra then is asked of her, but she is now afraid that it might have been a bad thing- Yuling sometimes now expects her to do those things as part of her “job” and she isn’t willing to pay her more for it. I know that this is Yuling’s business but it kind of makes me sad and not understand why Natalie and I get paid the most, more than any of the Chinese teachers, and what makes even less sense to me is that Teacher Michelle (5 year old teacher) gets paid more than Teacher Stephanie and Teacher Jane, I would think that they would get paid more as they work with all the little kids who are still crying a lot and are learning the most. I just don’t understand. Teacher Stephanie I guess maybe thinking about looking for a different job somewhere else, where she has a little less hours (she usually doesn’t leave until after 7pm) and a little more pay, it would be kind of sad to see her leave.
Today in my afternoon class we were talking about birthday cards!! We pretty much decorated our own birthday card with pictures of things that we think go with birthdays, I saw many, many different things (Barbie being one of them :D). The class went pretty well, no big problems, it was even kind of sad- Jared was very quiet and cuddly with the teachers (not like him at all), we figured out that he is probably sick, it is strange to see him so quiet, I almost wish to have the loud Jared back.
I have been spending more and more time downstairs with the kids when school is out if I don’t have tutoring, the kids are really fun to be around and I want them to not just see me in a classroom setting, I am a fun person and can be a “friend” to them too. Anyway today I stayed downstairs after Kristy and I had our 20 minute tutor session. I was mostly playing with Leslee, Wendy, and Zowie. At one point I got tired of running around and being chased and went into the office, of course they followed me and collapsed down on the couch too. I was sitting there and they went and grabbed some paper and markers and started coloring. They all started coping whatever I said, it was pretty funny to hear some of their pronunciations of words, I did English for awhile but then started doing some Spanish words too, it got pretty funny with those pronunciations.
I don’t know if I told the story, but a couple of weeks ago I guess Natalie was having the kids draw pictures in her class and most of the kids were drawing a picture of themselves with their mom or something, anyway Natalie went up to Jimmy and there was a big heart with a girl and a boy in it; she asked him if it was his mommy and he was like no, it’s Leslee and who is the boy? Me. She looked at Leslee’s picture and found the same thing. Anyway to add onto that today when we had walked into the office there was a picture on the table, I guess that Jimmy had drawn it (it had a picture of a girl and a boy) yesterday or something and Leslee had known that because she went straight up to it and picked it up and kissed the boy. I had to keep myself from laughing.
When Wendy and Zowie were gone (their parents had picked them up), Leslee and I were still doing copy cat, I started doing sentences like “mi amigas es…..” and then I decided to do “mi amigo es Jimmy,” I am not sure if Leslee totally understood what I had said but she got this huge look on her face and said “AHHH.” It was quite funny.
For some reason I guess Yuling is still in the hospital and will be there until Saturday, and for some even stranger reason Joseph came over tonight and was just sitting downstairs in the office with Daniel and Alli, well at one point he had a stinky diaper (Daniel that is, not Joseph :D) and he went to pick him up, for some reason I looked over and saw all the kids rushing over to smell Daniels dirty diaper, I would have thought that once would have been enough, oh no they each smelled it like two or three times- not exactly something that I ever thought that I would see.
I had several tutoring jobs tonight, they went pretty well, but Natalie didn’t come home as early as she had said that she would so we didn’t get started on our piñata’s as early either, but luckily I have typed pretty fast tonight and am done!!
I love you all and hope that you have an amazing Wednesday, as mine is ending!
~Betherd~
Oh my goodness I can’t believe that I almost forgot to mention this, so this morning Teacher Stephanie told me not to forget about Saturday, I told her that I wouldn’t- that I had it written down on like 3 different calendars- I don’t think that they realize quite how excited I am about this activity! I will have my batteries fully charged and will probably be there way too early, as I am way excited! Look forward to my post Saturday or Sunday about it. :D
Again just random pictures from the last couple of days. Not in any particular order as I am too lazy to re-arrange them especially since I am working on my journal at the same time.
For those of you who have never made pinatas before this is what you start with, newspaper and lots of it! :D
You then also begin with empty balloons like these above, when you add air they become like those balloons below.
We made birthday cards today in class, Ray told me that mine wasn't pretty :(, so he tried helping me a little bit (see red mark center above "H" in birthday)
Today in class we got to write stories about my friend, Fred the Clown and I thought that kids did pretty good (with only a little bit of suggestions from me). The 4 year olds and 5 year olds wrote a story and then the 3 year olds got to hear their stories. I was quite impressed with their stories and how cute they ended up being. (It starts out with the lists that they made about Fred and then their story along with their title)
4 year olds story:
Clown
Rainbow hair
Two colored eyes-pink and purple
Happy
Fred, The Happy Clown Fred is happy today, he is happy because he got to juggle. He was juggling red, yellow, green, and blue balls. Fred is a clown because he likes to work with kids and he is always very happy. One day Fred decided to be very silly and color his hair with all of his markers. That same day that Fred was being very silly he decided to color his eyes, his eyebrows, his nose, and his lips. We are happy that we got to meet Fred, the happy clown.
5 year olds story:
No hat
Juggles
Clown
Blows up balloons
Can do magic
Happy
Rainbow hair
Fred Clown's Story Fred is a clown because he likes to make people happy. Fred is happy, he is happy because he got to stand on top of a ball juggling and his pants fell down. (They thought that this was the most funniest line that they made up) Fred was blowing up a blue balloon, shaped like a elephant when it POPPED! Fred screamed and fell down! Fred is now sad, because he fell down and lost his favorite magic rainbow hat and it's all dirty. (I know he really couldn't have lost it and know that it was dirty but I thought that they were doing really good) While looking for his lost hat, Fred fell into a rainbow and changed his hair rainbow colors. And the end!
I have had a couple of really late nights and am feeling a bit bogged down tonight. Unfortunately there was no post last night and there will not be one again tonight, I will try and have one tomorrow night. Love you all and wish you a great Tuesday! ~Betherd~
I will start with updates: I forgot to ask someone about the boy today at church and so do not know anything about him. Little Alice: she is fine and did not have to get any stitches (I guess that her grandma was a teacher but now she is retired and she wasn’t upset at all she just said that she understands that little kids get hurt all the time. Yuling: I found out it was her appendix, they did surgery Friday night and they were able to get it out before it exploded. Thank Heavens!
I know that I missed posting yesterday, not that I didn’t post yesterday but I didn’t post about yesterday, but it is ok I will cover yesterday and today in today’s post and then we will be all good :D. (man that sentence had a lot of the same words, it sure gets confusing when you are talking about the same thing). I will start with yesterday:
I didn’t go to bed as early as I had hoped to on Friday night, when I had posted that I was going to go to bed I did, I went to bed, but then I pulled out my book and read for awhile, but it was kind of nice- it is not very often that I just get to relax at night and read, when I could not keep my eyes open any longer I did finally go to bed. I generally wake up at about 7:30-7:45ish and I decided that because it was Saturday and I had nowhere to be I was going to sleep in a little bit, I set my alarm for 8:45 and I actually got up then ( I probably could have gone on sleeping for several more hours). I browsed on my computer for a little bit and then grabbed some toast to tide me over until Natalie and I went out for breakfast. Natalie was not up yet and so I decided that I would do some cleaning and organizing until she woke up, my first task was trying to move the mattresses around on my bed so that they would not fall off but they were too big for the way that I wanted to put them. I then also put stuff away that had been sitting out for awhile and needed put away. I was happy with the result, while I was in the kitchen filling up some water bottles Natalie came out of her room and she was all ready to go. She asked me if I was ready to go, all I needed to do was throw on some clothes and then I was ready to go.
While I was in my room getting dressed I guess that Sister Chu called Natalie and had many questions to ask her, because when I came out and went to Natalie’s door she was on the phone talking, I had to wait for like 5 more minutes before she got off the phone and so we could go. Of course when she got off the phone she wasn’t quite ready though so I had to wait for a little bit longer, finally at about 10:30 we headed off towards the triangle morning market to go and get breakfast. It wasn’t a very long bike ride there and luckily for us it was still open (normally when we ride by in the evening time it is closed so we were not quite sure when it would be closed). For my breakfast I had some dumplings (I am finding out that dumplings are kind of like a universal item and that you can have them for any meal- no matter where you go), they were ok but not my favorite dumplings that I have had since coming to Taiwan, I also had a roll kind of thing, I am also not sure if I liked it- it was sweet but then at the same time the outside seemed to be covered with the batter that you put on fried chicken (probably not quite the same thing as what you put on fried chicken but that is the only thing that I can use to describe it), I had Natalie try it too and she understood my description, she was not sure if she liked it either.
When we were done with our breakfast we ran back down to the bakery, for once I was one of the people that are riding their bikes down the street backwards!!! Though I did feel a little funny riding my bike for like 15 yards, but oh well. Like I have mentioned in the past, having a fresh bakery nearby is not a good idea for me, I went back and found another type of bread to try and some several other things that looked very, very yummy. While I was looking around trying to decide what I wanted to get Natalie started looking through the coolers and looking at the cakes that they, she thought about getting one for Grace as her birthday was on Friday but then in the end decided not to, though she did ask me which one was my favorite?
Next after the bakery came the yellow store where we needed to go and find some glue and balloons for our piñatas, we were able to find the glue but no balloons (but that is ok later last night Teacher Stephanie let me into the preschool and I was able to get some from the craft supplies closet). While we were at the yellow store Natalie and I kept on getting distracted very easily with things, but it was a lot of fun, though it was very good that neither she nor I had places to be as we probably were there for close to an hour just wandering round looking at things and making jokes about them. While we were at the yellow store Natalie told me about a dream that she had, had the night before- I guess that she and I were somewhere and we saw this snail, it was not any ordinary snail though it was big, black and fuzzy, oh and it could go really fast. Anyway I guess that I threw salt at the snail and it started to boil and fizz, and then it turned into a lamb or something like that, later I told her that I had not actually thrown salt at the snail I had actually thrown a pineapple at it. Which is kind of funny, as ever since she told me that story snails keep popping up, first of all last night when I was talking to Teacher Stephanie we saw one and I asked her if she had a pineapple (it was funny she was like “You want to cook it?”), I then of course had to tell her the story and then also tonight we found a snail on our lettuce and Natalie thought that it was cute and wanted to keep it as a pet (she has difficulty killing things- my first week I walked into the kitchen to find a jar on the kitchen table with a cockroach in it).
We finally came home and I first tried calling mommy, but sadly she did not answer her phone. I hadn’t talked with Nathan in awhile so I tried calling him, I found him and Sallee just leaving the state fair with Sallee’s parents and so they asked if I could call them back in a little while. While I waited to call them back I worked on my journal. It was nice to talk to them, I enjoy talking with Natalie, Teacher Stephanie, and Yuling but it is not quite the same and I enjoy very much when I get to talk to my friends and family. It was quite late for Nate and Sallee and they were getting up early to go canoeing and so we hung up, I went to work finishing the cleaning that I wanted to do- the only thing that I didn’t get to yesterday that I had wanted to was my laundry. I was thinking about it, last year we always complained about when we had cleaning checks and about having to do all that work, but as I have been here and have not really done any cleaning it has really disgusted me and I was happy to see my bathroom after I had done just some simple cleaning—thank you for RA’s for making us clean our room!
When I was done getting my cleaning done I decided that I would just lay down and relax for awhile reading my book, Natalie was also in the kitchen laying down on the couch reading a book so I decided to go and join her there. We hadn’t been reading for very long when all of a sudden it started to rain really hard. I ignored it at first but then I was like oh no and jumped up starting running around closing all the windows again, it hadn’t been very long but already just from one window there was rain on the ground probably 4 feet away from the window.It was kind of funny, as soon as Natalie realized what I was doing she also ran into her rooms to make sure that all the windows were closed, I was pretty sure that I hadn’t opened mine from the last rain storm but went into check anyway. As I walked past my bathroom I looked up above the window and pretty much scared myself, outside in the grates there were probably 6 birds all trying to be protected from the window, I also scared them and half of them flew away, I then walked into my room and in those grates there were at least 12 birds all sitting, I went to grab my camera but when I tried taking a picture they all flew away, I was able to get a picture with one bird but that does not even begin to show what it was like. I quickly went and got Natalie and had her come in my room and look, she went to check hers but she didn’t have any in her grates.
Natalie called Teacher Stephanie to find out when we would be going, I found out that we would be leaving in about an hour and so decided to go back to reading for awhile. When it was about 15 minutes till we were supposed to leave I went downstairs where Teacher Stephanie and Eliza were (Teacher Stephanie had tried to come and call Kevin’s mom but she was ignoring her phone call). When Natalie came downstairs we headed out, we were first going to Yuling’s house to pick up Allie (her niece) who would be going with us (because Yuling was stuck in the hospital we were getting to use her tickets and did not have to buy ours like we thought we were going to have to). After we had gotten Allie we headed out again, Teacher Stephanie asked us if we were hungry, we admitted that we were and she asked where would we like to go, she suggested McDonalds’ and we kind of jumped on it (of course Allie and Eliza were all for the idea :D). So now I have eaten at McDonalds in Taiwan, the price was about the same for a meal, I had a chicken sandwich with fries and a drink and it only cost about $100NT, though the ice cream was much cheaper, it was only $10NT and it tasted soooo good- exactly like American soft serve ice cream! Though it was funny, they put the ice cream into the cups and then put the cone on top of it and then they placed all of the ice creams in a bag, which was kind of nice so then we had time to eat our dinner first before the ice cream.
We arrived at the place where the performance was going to be. When we were walking up the stairs we saw May (6 year old, now that summer is over she no longer goes to Owl Preschool L), we were so happy to see her (she was one of our favorites), at first she was a little shy but then she soon opened up. As we were standing there waiting for Teacher Stephanie to get our tickets we also saw Mark (one of our new 5 year olds) walk up with his dad (it was kind of funny he had seen Natalie the night before on her bike with the two Sister Missionaries) and then we also saw Denica (a 7 year-used to go to Owl Preschool) and her brother Shawn (3 year old) come up with their mom. Shawn was not particularly too happy to see 3 of his teachers outside of school, he immediately started to cry, we felt so bad, every time we passed him we would cover our faces so that he would not see who we were. We had really awesome seats, Natalie and I were almost in the middle on the 4th row and then Teacher Stephanie with Allie and Eliza were on the 7th row. While we were sitting there Natalie and I were pretty sure that we saw this random lady taking our picture (we have noticed that it has started happening quite a bit), we thought about giving her a bad impression of us and start picking our noses or something but then we didn’t.
The show was really awesome, I tried explaining the show to Nathan and Sallee but could not very well, if you are interested in it I posted information about it 2 posts below. I was quite impressed with it and grateful that we could be there. Most of the audience was parents with their children (I am guessing that they went to a lot of schools to advertise), it made it that more fun to hear all the kids sitting around me laughing, a child’s laughter can make anything better than it already is. They obviously were quite good as they were able to keep probably close to 600 people (with the majority being children) enthralled for close to 2 hours. During the intermission it was so much fun, Natalie and I stood up and were stretching our legs, when all of a sudden we heard “TEACHER BETH, TEACHER NAT-A-LIE!!!!,” we looked around and saw different kids from different directions, some really high and some really close, all students waving at us (besides May, Mark, Denica, and Shawn we also saw Ray and Little Annie), it was so fun, if ever we stopped waving they would start waving again or their parents would. It made us feel so happy that the kids were that happy to see us out of school, even Shawn waved and smiled at us once he realized that his mom wasn’t going to leave him with us.
Once the show was over we went outside and they had some of the Diabolo’s or Chinese Yo-Yo’s for sale, they had these really cool ones that had flashing colors but I didn’t feel like spending $900NT for one, I did end up getting one of the cheapest ones, Teacher Stephanie said that they are professional ones so they are really nice. We went outside and stopped at some grass to try doing it, I of course could not get it, but Natalie was able to get it on her 3rd try, it is ok though, the toy belongs to me and so I will get plenty of practice..anyone want to try the Diabolo when I get home be sure and let me know.
When we had finished playing with the toy for awhile we headed home, first dropping off Allie. When I got home I was too tired to write my journal but I did finish my book and went to bed much, much earlier than I normally do.
I woke up for church this morning and quickly got ready for church, thankfully Teacher Stephanie had reminded us that it was fast Sunday (I had remembered last week but did not remember last night), and so I didn’t need to get any breakfast. When I was ready I called to Natalie and asked if she was ready to go (I doubted that she would be as she had only gotten up like 15 minutes before I like to leave for church, but I still thought that it would be polite to ask), she wasn’t and so I told her that I was headed off for church. When I got to the Relief Society room Ariel’s mom asked me if I had brought the CD
(in a couple of weeks we are singing the EFY medley in Relief Society and I had told them that I had the music, I was going to make them a copy. I had seen that there were some CD’s in my desk and so I had thought that I was ok, it wasn’t till last night when we got home that I checked them and found out that they were actually blank DVD’s.)
I explained to her what had happened, I felt really bad because I didn’t have it for today but I did take my laptop this morning and we just turned it up as loud as it could go and played it for the sisters. I will be sure and go to the store and get some blank CD’s tomorrow so that I can make them the CD. It was interesting practicing the song, when I have my music playing, loud as it can go seems really loud but when there is a bunch of sisters in a larger room it doesn’t sound very loud.
For Relief Society Sister Wood did not have her manual so it was harder for her to follow along, so none of really got much out of our lessons today. Though during Sunday School she started having Natalie and I just read different paragraphs out of the manual as the teacher was reading the paragraphs and then rephrasing them in a way that Sister Wood could not follow along with. As it was Fast Sunday today it was testimony meeting in Sacrament Meeting. There were many good testimonies given. Today also Baby Daniel was blessed (Yuling’s baby). They had let Yuling out for a couple of hours in order to let her come for the Daniel’s blessing. When it was time for testimonies Yuling stood up to bear hers, she started with explaining a little bit of what had been happening the last few days and about how grateful that she was to be there as they weren’t sure if she was going to be able to be there or if they were going to be able to have Daniel’s blessing today. She told of the lady who was in the bed beside her at the hospital, how she was much worse off than her- she had been there for 10 days already. Then Yuling talked a little bit about Allie and how grateful she was to have her, I guess that a sometime this week they had stopped by at 7-Eleven to get slurpees and Alli was like no we can’t go and get them, when asked why she said because all they have is Coco-Cola and that black stuff (coffee), when Yuling went it and found out she was right she felt so grateful that Alli had been listening in church and that she was trying to live the gospel standards and teachings. She also said that before they had found out what was wrong with her Alli had said a prayer to Heavenly Father to help bless Yuling that she would get well and be able to return home quickly. It was kind of funny, when Yuling had been talking for about 10 minutes the Branch President put a piece of paper up on the pulpit saying that she had been talking too long, rather than stop Yuling just flipped over the paper and continued talking for awhile longer- everyone thought that it was funny. So because of Yuling when the next lady came up to bear her testimony the 2nd counselor immediately gave her a piece of paper saying about how long a testimony should last.
When church was over Teacher Stephanie came over to me and asked if she could borrow my computer so that she and a few others could practice the song, I was like sure and went to hand it to her, than she was like but I don’t know how to use it so I would like to borrow you too! I thought that, that was funny, and of course I agreed and went downstairs back to the Relief Society room with her. We practiced the song probably close to 5 times, by the time I got home it was close to an hour after when church got over. I found out something, when you go home from church there are many more people to flash than when you go to church.
I came home and took a nap for a little over an hour, I was quite surprised, normally on Sunday afternoons I set my alarm and then when it goes off I turn it off and then go back to sleep for several more hours, today when my alarm went off I set it for another half an hour but when it went off I got straight up and started working on my journal.
We had invited the Sister Missionaries to dinner and they had agreed to come along with Amy. About 20 minutes after the Hualien branch got out Sister Hill called to tell us that they had been invited by the Relief Society President from the Hualien branch to dinner, the lady had acted as if it was already planned, the Sister Missionaries agreed to come and then called us to see if it that was ok and to say that they were sorry, we were sorry that we would be joined by them but it was ok we weren’t planning on having anything too special- just sandwiches (Natalie has been wanting to have them for several weeks now and finally I was like ok). We have planned that they will join us next week though for dinner (we had better do something special it is the moon festival). By the time that Amy showed up (2 hours after her branch got out), Natalie and I were very hungry but we did get a special treat, the Sister Missionaries came with her to see us for a little bit before their dinner appointment. We sang a hymn and then they gave us a message but then they had to be off.
Sometime since Natalie has been here she bought a package of lunch meat, it has been in the freezer so last night we pulled it out and put it in the fridge to let it defrost. For dinner we just had simple sandwiches, but they tasted oh so yummy. It was kind of fun with Natalie and Amy, but I guess because I don’t really know Amy that well and I wasn’t here during her conversion to have that bond with her I kind of feel like a 3rd wheel, I hope that it gets better as time goes on.
Once dinner was over I came to my room to finish my journal and work on my lesson plans for the week, I am quite happy to say that it is only 10:30 and I already have my lesson plans done for the week except the afternoon class because I need to talk with Natalie about that, and then once I am done with this I will do my evaluations! When I don’t sleep as late in the afternoon I get so much more done, hopefully I will be able to keep continue not sleeping as late.
I guess that I am done with today! Wow, I can’t believe that I am on my 6th page! I love you all and hope that you are having a wonderful Sabbath, I am now off to work on my evaluations. ~Betherd~
This afternoon I walked into my bathroom to see a whole bunch of birds up in this grate, unfortunately all of them besides this one flew away before I could take a picture.
These are just of outside during the rain, I thought that it was very pretty.
I have found out that the show that we went to last night is called Diabolo (read more about in the next post), here are a couple of websites that I found to tell more about it, as I am not very good at describing it. Diabolo Performance Video Performance Group's Webpage Diabolo Wiki Page
Just some pictures from the day.This morning Natalie and I went to the bakery and I found this yummy looking loaf of bread, so along with my normal bread I bought this- I have yet to try it.
If you can't tell, Natalie and I like bread a lot- there is at least 4 loafs of bread on the shelf with other bread stuff.
Sister Wood had a really good idea, she bought a sock to put around her water bottle when it sweats, so these are my cute socks that I bought this morning for $.60!!!!
Cute headband that I bought.
Yummy looking bread. It was good but not as yummy as it looked.
The fancy mooncakes that Joy's mom brought for us.
Again I am glad to see the end of the day and week come, it was not such a good day for all around me. First of all as you know Yuling is out with her problems, I still do not know any new details- except that I think that Teacher Stephanie said that they might have taken some of her stitches out but I am not sure.2nd of all this afternoon Teacher Stephanie told me that last night when she went home she had a message on her phone, apparently a boy in our branch had been playing chase yesterday at school and somehow he fell down and cracked his head/skull. Teacher Stephanie was very worried and tried calling the family today but could not get in contact with the family, so I am adding the family to my prayer tonight, I know very much how that family feels and what they are going through. And then today in my middle class we were playing musical chairs and I had two different people fall down and hurt themselves-in two classes. The first one was Josii in the 3 year old class, they were running around and somehow she tripped and hit right under her nose on top of a chair. I felt really bad but Teacher Stephanie took her and got her some ice to put on it, she was ok for the rest of the day just was walking around with an ice pack for most of the day. Then in my next class the 4 year olds we were also playing musical chairs and when they were running around Little Alice tripped or something and hit her face against the kids cubbies, somehow she ended up with a cut above her eye and a cut below her eye- I felt so bad, she was crying pretty hard. Teacher Jan took her to the kitchen to get some ice, they were still there when class got over.
Oh and also I guess that we lost a student today (no he didn’t die), I guess allof the teachers were in their classrooms when Kevin (a 4 year old) showed up with his mom, she had him take his backpack into the classroom and then he came back out, there was no one outside (which makes sense, since all the kids play inside in the morning before school starts), the mom was not very happy that there was no teacher outside to greet her child, so she took Kevin and went home. When she got home she called the school and Teacher Jane had to go and talk with her on the phone (since she is the 4 year old teacher) and I guess the mom was not very happy or very nice. I think that, that is kind of stupid, I can’t really understand her overreacting like this, it’s kind of stupid, especially since he is not a new kid at the school she knows that her child is perfectly safe and that he is not going to run outside the gate and get hit by a car (which is what she was supposedly scared about). The teachers were all sad to lose him, I am kind of sad but if that is how his mom always acts I am not too sad to lose her!
Now that I have covered the bad news for the day I will move on to the rest of my day.:D
I woke up pretty good this morning though I did feel a little slow at first, it is definitely getting colder here, it took me forever to get in the water of my shower. For my breakfast this morning I had some toast, last night Natalie and I had talked about getting up earlier this morning and going out for breakfast but I think that we both stayed up a little bit later than we had meant to and so did not get up early this morning, what with my blog and tutoring it is hard to get to bed really early for me and so I sometimes struggle to roll out of the bed at 7:45 when I set my alarm for.
In my morning class this morning we were talking about graphs, I started out with the basic of just counting how many boys and girls there were in the class and then we graphed it. Once we had done that I would take a survey of peoples favorites (apple, banana, or grapes; star, triangle, or square; red, blue, green, or yellow; etc. ) and then we would graph each result. For the 4 year olds is worked pretty well, but with the 5 year olds they thought that it was the funniest thing to have everyone say the same answer and so I started having to add my own votes so that they could see the idea. They loved it when one answer would have 13 and then something else would only have 1 or 2 and it would go much, much higher than the other one. In the 3 year old class we just worked on counting (how many boys, girls, how many wearing shirts, how many sitting on a blue chair, things like that), I figured that it kind of corresponded with what I had done in the other classes.
During my break I came upstairs and was able to talk with Ben for awhile and with my friend Erin, it was good to be able to talk with both of them but I kind of had to cut both conversations short so that I could grab my stuff for my class and then run downstairs for my next class.
For my middle class I was talking about hanging up clothes (so my for my middle class I am supposed to be teaching about something that is everyday life/chores, I am kind of getting past all of the topics that have to do with clothing if anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it). Once again I started with hanging my clothes the wrong way, it was kind of cute- before I had even asked if someone would like to help me every time I had someone offering to help me hang it correctly. In my class I first had each kid take a turn hanging an item of clothing (it was kind of funny to see how many boys got stuck with hanging up my skirts :D) once they were done each having a turn we were going to play a game of musical chairs for the remaining time, the twist- if they got out they hung up a piece of clothing. You already know how that game turned out, I know that I shouldn’t feel totally to blame, kids get hurt all the time- but I still don’t like seeing kids tears and seeing them in pain so I feel really bad and have decided that we won’t play musical chairs for awhile. It was cute though in the 3 year olds class, when we played the first round of musical chairs Little Erik was just sitting on the side watching, but when we started the 2nd round I looked up and watched him sit walk over and sit his water bottle on the table and then start running around the chairs too with a big smile on his face.
Because of Little Alice getting hurt in my last class lunch time was a bit crazy. Teacher Jane was helping take care of Little Alice and I have no clue where Teacher Stephanie was for the very beginning of class. I had already brought all the food to the classroom and was ready to get everything started when Teacher Michelle walked in and quickly dished out the food for the kids but then she left and I was left alone to lunch again. For some reason none of the kids wanted to eat the food, they all thought that it was disgusting, several kids came up to me and pointed at something saying “that is bleh!” and then use their thumbs to point them down. If I wasn’t supposed to be the teacher it would have been kind of funny seeing their different expressions, but I was the teacher and so I felt a little bad because Ali spends the whole day cooking and preparing the food. While the kids were eating I started setting out the beds, I was about half way done when Teacher Stephanie came in, she told the kids that we would be separating into two groups for naps and those who were done needed to take their stuff to the other classrooms, she then explained to me that Little Alice’s grandpa was coming to get her and was going to take her to the hospital to see if she needed stitches and Teacher Jane was going to go with him and that was why we needed to separate into two groups. It was about this time that Little Alice’s grandparents showed up, the grandma was there too and she said that Teacher Jane did not need to come, that they could take it from there- I hope that the school does not get in trouble because of this. Then because Teacher Jane did not have to go with Little Alice to the hospital they were going to split into the 3 nap groups again so all the kids had to bring their stuff back to our classroom.
It was really cute, Little Annie (3 year old) was picking up her stuff to carry it the other classroom when I looked up and I saw Ray (5 year old) walk over and pick up her stuff and carry it to the other classroom for her, he then ran back and got the rest of her stuff for her and took it over. It always makes me so happy to see the little kids do things like this for each other, Teacher Stephanie said that they are neighbors, I don’ t care if they were brother and sister, it is still very cute to see kids doing kind things for each other.
When the kids were done with their lunch they got to have fruit, yesterday they were having guava, two of the kids (Ray and Kristy) put it in the mouth and were pretending that it was their tongue or something like that and were going up to people and pretending to lick them. It would have been funny if half of the kids weren’t already having difficulty their lunches because they thought that they were disgusting and so that added distraction didn’t do much for helping them get their lunches eat faster. But finally with Teacher Stephanie in the classroom she was able to help the kids get done a little faster. As I was walking upstairs towards my apartment I again heard thunder and from upstairs I could hear the kids scream as loud as they could every time it crashed. For some reason it can be completely silent in the sky until it is nap time and then the skies open up with their music and sounds. I again took a nap, having no clue what I was going to be doing for my class when I woke up but trusted that I would figure out something.
I began my afternoon class by showing the kids the pictures that I had taken the day before of our mummies; they thought that they were very funny and cute. I then showed them a couple of pictures of Antarctica and talked about how it is complete ice and snow. To show them my point I pulled out a bowl of frozen water and walked around and let every kid feel it, it was very cute watching them all feel it- they would touch it and then jump and laugh and then say something in Chinese and laugh again. Because it was Friday and the kids had been really good it class all week and it had just been kind of a stressful week
This is my friend Fred the clown before he was given any color.
Our new way of drying the pinatas that we discovered last night.
The inside of my card (yes I used my Spongebob 
