Water Balloons=Wet

Several weeks ago the theme in our afternoon classes was balloons, and of course you can't talk about balloons without doing something with water balloons. We had to wait over a week because of rain but we were finally able to do the activity in the afternoon class, of course because we had not been able to do it on the original day not everyone had extra clothes and it was a little on the colder side so we ended up only having 15-20 participate in the water balloon part and the others did regular balloons with Andrea.

When we were finished we quickly had to change because we were having a Birthday party also, as I walked by to go upstairs and change I looked in the yellow class and this is what I saw---Kevin, Ruby, Cindy, and Jason all stripping down...hehe!

I totally drenched myself with water balloons, I would bite a little hole for the kids in the balloon and then they would squirt each other with water, unfortunately probably every other one popped on me. Because I was already wet I just poured the buckets of water on myself---the kids thought that it was hilarious!

To Let Go

While blog stalking Amy (a previous intern at Owl) I read this poem, it is beautiful and very true.

"to let go isn't to forget,

not to think about, or ignore.

it doesn't leave feelings of anger,

jealousy, or regret.

letting go isn't about winning or losing.

it's not about pride

and it's not about how you appear,

and it's not about obsessing or dwelling on the past.

letting go isn't blocking memories

or sinking sad thoughts,

and doesn't leave emptiness, hurt, or sadness.

it's not about giving in or giving up.

letting go isn't about loss and it's not about defeat.

to let go is to cherish the memories,

but to overcome and move on.

it is having an open mind

and confidence in the future.

letting go is learning and experiencing and growing.

to let go is to be thankful for the experiences that

made you laugh, made you cry, made you grow.

it's about all that you have, all that you had,

and all that you will soon gain.

letting go is having the courage to accept change,

and the strength to keep moving.

letting go is growing up.

it is realizing that the heart can sometimes

be the most potent remedy.

to let go is to open a door,

and to clear a path and set yourself free. "

unknown

Don't Breathe

I stumbled upon Anita Renfroe a couple of days ago, she has some quite hilarious songs. (You may have heard her song "Mom Overture") I thought that this one was funny, a pretty good parody of I Can Feel You Breathe by Faith Hill

A (More Real) Love Story

This is another song by Anita Renfroe, is it pathetic that I feel like crying at the end of the song?

Hairs a Thought

A couple of weeks ago I was tutoring Jenny when we had a little bit of time left at the end before her Dad showed up. Jenny noticed my earrings on my desk and picked them up and started looking through them, she tried every single earring on me and decided which ones were the most pretty. Somehow she went from looking at my earrings to doing my hair, this is the result...

A couple of days ago I decided to see if my hair was long enough to do the cone head, it works but I think it would do better my hair was a little longer and if it was straightened.

When I was walking around after-school yesterday Zoey told me that I look like a Christmas tree...quite funny! So then as Wendy was leaving she said "Good-bye Teacher Beth Christmas Tree!"

Yuling told me that I was "brilliant!"

PhotoHunt: Addiction

I admit that I probably have more than one addiction, but this picture is definitely 3 of my favorites :D I love babies (Sonia was holding my newest niece at the time, Aubrey...did I mention that I have a new niece? Her name's Claire and I can't wait until I get to meet her in July!) and little kids. They are happy, carefree, silly, beautiful, loving, sweet, honest, and I can't get enough of them. Besides babies and little kids I also love being with my family, my family is big, loud,

Mango's Come In a Glass

We got to Far East a little early and we were both hungry so we decided that we would try one of the little stands downstairs in the food court. I ordered a mango yogurt smoothie...

...I might possibly be willing to go back just for that, because I ordered it with something else it only cost me $20 NT or less than a $1 US! It was so delicious, it really tasted like mango's, was icy, cold, yummy, milky---all the things a good smoothie should be!

For my main course I ordered tortilla wraps. Basically it was tortilla's deep fried with meat, cheese, lettuce, and pineapple- it was actually quite tasty. It also came with chips and "salsa" definitely did not taste like salsa but it wasn't enough to deter me from the rest of the meal :D

The Others

I can't show you Leslee with showing you some of what her "competition" was :D There was definitely some extremes, some attitude, some who were too young to be there, some who had done it before, and everything else in between.

This poor little girl is adorable and she had to come out first...I'm pretty sure that she was the youngest there. Her brother was so sweet and walked out with her.

This kid cared a lot about his appearance, he walked in with total confidence, straight back and danced very well.

This kid was hilarious, he was supposed to be saying something but instead just kept on blowing into the microphone. He did it several times and then was trying to get his Mom and the other guy to blow into it too.

These two were sisters and had a some major attitude.

This girl had some major skills on the roller skates (who am I joking...any skill is major skill compared to what I can do)

His orange kind of reminds me of a fish. He sang and played with the sticks.

Nobody could tell that this was his Grandma :D She was dancing and singing the whole time, it was super cute and fun to see her so excited for him.

I have dubbed this the volcano hair...I only wish my hair did that.

She wasn't in the competition but I still think she's cute...this is Alice P. one of the 5 year olds. I had her on my shoulders so that she could see above the others.

For some reason his outfit kind of reminded me of a lion (the color) and a snake (the thing on his forehead)

This kid was seriously wearing a dress made out of tin foil!

Leslee's Big Day

Friday morning when I came to class I was handed an envelope from one of the other teachers. I opened it and inside I found a card from Leslee (one of my previous students and now a tutor student) and her Mom, inviting me to come to Far East Shopping Mall on Saturday to watch Leslee compete in a model show.

I was already planning on going there to do some shopping and jumped at being able to support Leslee (I had helper her a couple of weeks ago work on introducing herself in English in case she got invited to this competition).

She started out in this cute blue dress with a teddy bear clutched in her arms. She walked in and gave the judges a big smile and the traditional peace sign. Then she talked to the guy in Chinese for awhile, ran back stage...

Her family and friends were prepared with a couple of signs, it has her name in English and her Chinese name (Yo Tien Hwa)

...she came back out dressed ready to cheer. She was cute and did a dance to "Oh Mickey."

Her score! She was number 32 and the best that you could get was 30!

Afterwards Leslee and Alice (one of the 5 year olds) hugged, played, and ran around like little girls do.

Drum-roll please...out of 50 participants Leslee got 2nd place! So she along with these two others will be going to Taipei in two weeks to represent Hualien in a bigger competition.

They looked thrilled (or distracted at least :D) by their prizes.

I looked over to see Alice scrounging through my purse...naughty girl!

Our beautiful winner! (I'm not a proud teacher :D)

PhotoHunt: Covered

My freshman year I was a custodian at the Cannon Center. Every evening we had to wait until Tomassitos (a pizza place) and Cosmos (a hamburger grill) closed so that we could do their dishes. Because Tomassitos wasn't that big of a place they would fill those grey tubs up with ice and keep the food containers in the ice. Most nights we would melt it in the sink, but one night for some strange reason Matt agreed to let Cari dump the ice on him after work. So here he is covered with freezing cold ice water.

$10 Challenge

I stumbled upon a CNN article tonight for a $10 challenge, to see what you could buy. You can see the article here. I was really impressed with how far some people could make their money go. I think that it will be something that I will do when I get home, I really liked how some people were able to do their meals for a week on it...but one that I was really impressed with was this guy, how he was able to have a full days worth of adventures on so little money...

Going Virtual

I was having a strong desire to play hymns on the piano this evening and as I don't have a piano I thought that was going to be slightly difficult. Bus alas it is not as difficult as I thought, I simply googled "play piano online" and soon had a list of virtual piano websites. I tried a couple of them but this one is my favorite, you can do it with your mouse or they have even assigned certain keys to certain piano keys (it takes a little bit of playing but you get used to it). Besides piano they also have the organ, saxophone, flute, pan pipes, strings, guitar, steel drums, and double bass.

Looking for a fun way to play music? Check it out HERE

Bug Attack

Tuesday evening I was supposed to have tutoring at 7pm, it got to be 7:15 and I hadn't seen Jenny yet...I decided to go outside and see if she was hiding or something (because that's the sort of thing these kids do), I stood up from my desk and noticed 3 bugs flying in my room, I was annoyed to see them but didn't really think that much about them. I opened the door to outside and see at least 60 of the same bug flying around the light on our porch, I'm pretty sure that I screamed and slammed the door to our room at the same time.

Andrea (who was tutoring in the kitchen) turned around at my scream and her jaw dropped, the girls that she was tutoring freaked out! They started screaming and opened the door to the kitchen so even more flew in there.

Andrea and I went crazy with the fly swatters, pretty soon the floors and everywhere else was covered in wings, quite disgusting but we rather have the wings than the flying objects.

At one point I turned off the lights outside and they all rushed towards my window (the lights were on still inside), kind of funny but I wasn't excited to be in the way of the direction they were all flying.

I asked Teacher Stephanie about it on Wednesday, she said that they are flying ants and that when it has been warm and then starts raining they all come flying out and head towards the light. My Mom suggested that also because it is spring there is an abundance of them, all I know is that we were not happy to see them.

Our tutor students told us though that we should keep a bowl of water on the ground in the kitchen, the ants will think that it's light and fly to it, but will die because it's water---works for me!

Easter Surprises

Last week I was sitting on my bed reading something when Andrea walked into my room and said "Happy Easter" handing me this basket. She had surprised me and filled it with some of my favorite things...sprite, a cheese bagel from 7-Eleven, jelly beans, marshmallows...

...and these cute tiara/crown earrings, because my Mom always calls me Princess...

...and pink polka dot socks, because I LOVE pink, polka dots, and socks!

Andrea was so sweet to surprise me with this!

Easter Egg Hunt

Last week in honor of Easter we did an Easter egg hunt for the kids during one of our afternoon classes. While the kids watched Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo, Andrea and Yuling hid the eggs outside.

When it was time Yuling came and explained the rules, if they brought in one egg they got one sucker, if they brought in two eggs at one time they got one suckers (the objective was to make it last as long as possible so we wanted them to bring them in one at a time).

The 3 year olds got to go first, for 30 seconds and then the 4 year olds joined them for 30 seconds and finally the 5 year olds were released (they were anxious to go, with their shoes already on by the time it was their turn).

The kids had a blast rushing to try and find eggs and then running like there was no tomorrow to get their suckers. When class was over there was still 3 that had not been found, so Yuling offered a bigger prize for the 3 lucky people that found them. Later when I came back downstairs, Wendy (who had found one of the 3) was so excited to show me her big candy cane that she had won!