K: The many joys of the Taipei, Taiwan airport

On grounds of not displeasing a most beloved father (whom I made a promise with that I would write in the blog before the end of this week), here I am making my second, yes, second, post! I know, Nicole totally has me whipped at blogging, but hopefully I can slowly redeem myself beginning right now (with emphasis on “slowly”).

I believe my last post dealt only with my plane flight to Taiwan, so I’ll skim over a couple things and do my best to catch everyone up!  Basically, I got off the flight in Taiwan and (having thankfully listened to Nicole’s step-by-step recordings of telling me what to do) followed the majority of my fellow flyers to the customs line. Once there, having no idea what was going on, I simply jumped in line (which of course, wasn’t what I was supposed to do). After waiting patiently for several (or more like twenty) minutes with an over packed carryon that I was regretting more and more by the minute, I reached the front desk and spoke with a man that immediately asked me for my paper work. Now, if I had been paying more attention, I would have noticed that before most of the individuals were getting in line, they were filling out a small piece of white paper with basic information on tables nearby. I, being somewhat dazed due to the 14-hour plane flight, had completely missed this small detail and was sent back to fill out the slip. After getting back in line and reaching the same man yet again, I was told that because I didn’t have my visa (thanks to the San Francisco Embassy who had been in the middle of some switchover before Nicole and I left, or something of that sort) I needed to go to a different line and then come back. I tried to explain that the school, Berhan, was going to get my work visa once I got there, but I think that when he heard the “six-month” part he didn’t think I wanted to get the temporary visa that would have allowed me to go to baggage without any problems. So after leaving the line yet again, I got in a third line, spoke with an individual who was confused as much as I was (I think the whole language barrier was the majority of the problem), and ended up simply jumping back in the line I had just left. Once again, I returned to the front of the customs line and this time, speaking with a different gentleman, was allowed to get a 90-day visa and be on my way.  Hallelujah! I swear I could hear the angels singing.

Once I got to baggage and found my luggage, I stayed calm, found Nicole waiting for me, and made it to Berhan without the slightest of struggles. NOT. I mean, where is the fun in having something workout according to plan? Instead, I got my baggage, couldn’t see Nicole anywhere, and slightly (okay, maybe more than slightly) began to panic. I sat down on my suitcases, pulled out my laptop, and got on facebook to see if Nicole had written me. While reading her message that she had made it to the airport, I began responding when I heard a voice ask if I were a teacher going to Berhan. I looked up and with a flood of relief, realized that I had just met one of my fellow teachers, the amazing Kylie Weiser, and instantly began a conversation.  Nicole and the fantastic Sunny (also another teacher) met up with us after a few minutes, and thus began our journey to Berhan

Okay, seeing the length it took me just to tell the above story, I should probably take my own advice at the beginning of the post and condense. We found a currency exchange station, traded out our money for our first Taiwanese bills (well, with my college funds it wasn’t bills quite yet, just coins), and found a pay phone. Surprisingly, using payphones in the Taipei airport is about as fun as waiting in lines at the DMV on your day off (you can all thank Nicole for that brilliant analogy). After finally receiving help from a woman at the lost and found, and thanks to Nicole’s Chinese skills (which although she says are “ incredibly limited… sad, really” are ten-thousand times better than any of the other teachers at Berhan), we were able to reach the school and let them know we were on our way (or more
correctly, Nicole was able to reach the school and let them know we were on our way, while I read a  fascinating display on the quality of Taiwanese coffee beans). Once finished with the phone, we made our way to the side doors of the airport, bought bus tickets to Taichung Station (or so we thought…), and boarded a bus that started us on one awesome adventure.

As the hour is growing late, I’ll end here with promises of posting again on the morrow (…or maybe in a few days)! Trust me, the story is worth reading.

N: Chinese New Year Adventures

Before I got to Taiwan, I was thrilled by the idea that I'd be spending Chinese New Year there!  It was an experience I couldn't WAIT to have.  Then my dad booked a flight during Chinese New Year and I knew it would be the most epic week of my short 20 years.

FRIDAY:
Dad got here on Friday and poked his head in my classroom window.  "Xiao pengyou hao!" He said.  I was happily surprised!  He was supposed to get there like an hour later and Gerald would go pick him up, but he just used his Mandarin/ direction skills and just walked from the station to the school!  (Yeah, I know he's awesome.) He hung out in my classes, entertaining my kids (especially Eric who could NOT stand still-he just wanted to climb all over him).  After my morning classes, we went to got some lunch from A Bao house and a bing sha from our little bing sha place on the corner of the street.  (Man, a pork burger and a chocolate banana bing sha has to be the best lunch ever!)  I gave my other classes some American goodies that my dad brought up for me: valentines, silly bands, candy hearts and life savers.  They were a big hit!  After my 6th grade class, I had my High School class, which is only one girl, so we went out to a Japanese place for dinner. Super good.  It was a good day! 

Dad talking to the kids, while Eric waits eagerly for his turn to jump on him

SATURDAY:
Saturday morning, we went out for an amazing breakfast.  Some hot dojan (hot soybean milk), a baozi (soft bread filled with meat and veggies), and a dan bing (like a green onion omelet in a thin tortilla).  YUM.  After, we went to Taichung to check out the mission home.  My dad was so pumped!  He a bunch of pictures of the area and the place he stayed his first night on the mission.  Then we walked around the Art Museum (it was closed for CNY) and just enjoyed the sights and the amazingly beautiful weather.  Later, we tried to go to Lukang.  It had been a while since I went last, but I was pretty confident I knew how to get there.  Well, we got there alright, but it took a lot longer than I had remembered and it was dark when we got there.  On top of that, nothing was going on.  I was super bummed out...not necessarily because I really wanted to see Lukang, but because we spent a lot of time and stuff getting there to have to turn around.  But we decided to try to go another day.

Dad and the mission home in Taichung

Beautiful, isn't it?

SUNDAY:
This was a pretty cool day!  Dad and I decided to go to the Chinese ward near the school rather than my branch in Taichung.  He knew there was a sister that served in his mission who went to that ward, Sister Lin.  Well, she was apparently out of town wen we got there, but we still enjoyed the meeting (only had 1 meeting for CNY).  There was some other information we were also looking for there.  My dad's mission friend from home told us that she had a friend, Frances, she taught on the mission that she would like us to visit!  We asked around to see if anyone knew her phone number.  Well, the people are so amazing, someone got her on the line for us AND my dad's friend who was out of town.  We got to talk to both of them.  Frances came to the church and we got to talk to her for a while.  She is so nice! It was really a lovely visit.  Then, Sister Lin invited us to come by and visit later that day, and we did!  It was so nice.  We looked though all their old mission photos and they talked about all their friends and stories.  It was so much fun to listen to my dad speak Chinese with others. 

With the Lin family

MONDAY:
Today was another rockin day.  Kaitlyn, my dad and I went to Sun Moon Lake. We first stopped in Puli to get some pictures and footage of it to show my dad's friend and old mission comp who served there.  We weren't exactly sure where to find a chapel, so my dad started to ask around.  We walked into a little food place and my dad asked some of the people sitting in there (I think they were part of the family that ran the place).  We ordered a dan bing (it had corn in it!) and they looked up the address.  The lady who was making our food told the people we were talking to to drive us there!  So they drove us over and we snapped a few pics and they drove us back to the bus station.  Such nice people!  On an earth nerdy-note: Puli is the epicenter of the big earthquake here in 1999.  It was kind of exciting to be there for that reason:) Sun Moon Lake was gorgeous.  The lake was huge!  We took a boat over to the other side to ride on the cable cars over a hill over to the culture center.  It was so beautiful being above looking down on all the trees, giant patches of pink flowers, and then the lake.  Awesome.  We wandered around the streets, got some fresh squeezed orange juice, and mu gua niu nai (papaya milk), or was it dong gua cha (winter melon tea)?...either way, something delicious.  We ran into a bunch of missionaries hanging out on their Pday!  That was cool.  (It seemed that we saw missionaries everywhere we went this week).  We took our time looking around, taking pictures and soaking it all in, then headed back!

Some beautiful geology upon entering Puli

TUESDAY (As my dad called it: Tainan Tuesday):
Today, dad and I took the bullet train down to Tainan.  We walked around a big Confucian Temple where there was a bunch of fun things going on in the streets.  People were drawing on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk, selling, buying, performing (there was a couple American guys playing country music! Haha.  Oh, and there was a cool mime), and enjoying (yet again) the beautiful weather.  We spent all day just walking around!  We saw two church buildings, one of which my dad went to on his mission.  He was amazed by how much has changed since he was here.  So many buildings now fill the giant empty fields that surrounded the building when he was here last.  Adventurous day!

WEDNESDAY:
It was nice to sleep in and take it slow on Wednesday.  We lounged about in the morning until about noon, and we went over to the old school (the other school's location across the street from the owners of Berhan)
for a lunch with Gerald's wife's family.  The way they presented the invitation, it sounded like a low key kind of come in, grab some food , say hi and socialize a bit.  What I forgot was that I was in Taiwan and it was Chinese New Year.  There were so many people there!  Tables with elaborate pink table cloths, wine glasses and plates waited for us.  And then the food came.  SO MUCH FOOD!  When Gerald mentioned ten plus courses, I thought he was joking.  He wasn't joking.  We started out with a tray full of fish appetizers, sahimi, squid eggs (which didn't quite make sense to me because they looked like jerky), abalone, and duck (okay, that's not fish.).  Then came a soup with shrimp, bamboo, and some other things that I never got to ask what they were...  It was good, though!  Then we got a giant fish that we just all dug our chopsticks into.  The next thing we ate was crab.  Now, this was no ordinary crab.  It was an entire crab.  Legs, shell, pinchers and all.  It was deep fried to the max-you just ate the whole thing.  It hurts me to admit, but it was my favorite thing we ate that day.  I had at least one an a half.  Dang it was good.  Then we had a little stir fry with scallops and veggies.  That was pretty good, considering scallops aren't my all time favorite seafood.  If the the crab wasn't enough, out came lobster!  This little guy wasn't fried, but still really yummy.  Then we had another soup with veggies, which was really good.  THEN we got a plate with fried pork steaks, and one with spring rolls, rice dumpling-type things, and a bean pastry thing.  I was stuffed to the max by the time dessert came!  Cake, little jello cups, and chocolate ice cream hearts.  Gosh.  Definitely on my list of most amazing food experiences ever.  After socializing for a little while, we went back to the school for a bit.  Then my dad and I went on a bike ride.  The bike path was super crowded!  But it was still really fun.  We went on the bridge to the tunnel through the mountain to Houli.  It was such a nice ride!  The weather was great (still) on top of everything. 

a pineapple field!

THURSDAY:
Sister Lin and her two boys took us over to Lukang!  Yay!  I love Lukang.  Because of CNY, it was super crowded, but still really fun.  We didn't dare try to squeeze in the little alleys we like to shop in when we come here, but we went over to the bigger streets and the Oldest Temple in Taiwan.  We watched as everyone prayed, burned incense, and hit the big golden gong (we did, too!).  Sister Lin got us all a bunch of yummy things to try and showed us places to look and shop and walk around.  She is awesome.  Such a wonderful guide and friend!  I got some Moji.  YUM.  Love that stuff.  We hung out that afternoon, and I started reading The Notebook (which, FYI, is totally different in than the movie.  Love the movie, love the book, but besides the main premise, there's not a big similarity).  Then we went shopping downtown for a while.

FRIDAY:
Nearing the end!  Tried not to think about it.  Today, Sister Lin and her two boys came again and took us to the COOLEST day market I have ever been to.  It is down town and it is super cheap and really exciting.  I will definitely be going back.  That was pretty cool.  We got lunch at Le Chie's and got bing sha's, then had the best lazy afternoon.  Dad updated facebook and we took naps in the lounge.  It was awesome.  I contemplated taking a walk because the weather was so nice, but the sun shining through the window and the wind blowing in made the big seat I was reading in 100 times more comfortable and I finally gave into the nap urge.  It was marvelous.  AND I finished The Notebook (they DON'T die in the end.)!  When it started to get darker, we went to the night market.  To our surprise, our little night market down the street wasn't there!  Probably for CNY... So we ventured on down town and hung out there and did some shopping and had the most delicious bing (shaved ice) with chocolate, peanuts, strawberries and sweetened condensed milk.  When we got back, it wasn't too late so we popped in Freedom Writers.  It was great.

Bing in the making

Watch it-Don't drool on your computer, now

Tired, walking through crowds and the smell of stinky tofu, but worth it!

SATURDAY:
Woke up at 8:30 so we could go back to the yummy breakfast place we went to the week before.  It was great, as usual.  With the few hours remaining before he had to go, dad packed and then we went for a little bike ride.  We rode down to the bike path to Dongshi, but we stopped at some benches along the path and just enjoyed the environment!  I love this bike path.  I couldn't help but take a video.  It was a perfect day!  The weather was lovely, birds were chirping, butterflies all over the place, and people passing by, saying hi to us.  It was great.  We went for one last mu gua niu nai and a chocolate banana bing sha and waited for awesome Sister Lin to come by and take dad to the train station.  It had been a awesome, awesome, AWESOME week.  Of epic proportions, as I predicted.

After dad left, I plopped myself in my comfy chair in the lounge and started reading The Help.  Then I watched Pitch Perfect, The Frog Princess, and a bunch of Psych episodes.  It was awesome.  I love not doing anything productive and it being okay!!

I spent today, my last day of break, at church, then at home writing this, sending emails, hanging out, eating all my apples for lunch and dinner, and dancing on the roof.  I'd say it was a good last day of break.  I will definitely never forget this great week!  I'm ready to see all my kids again:)

N: Stories about my kids

I'm going to dedicate this post to the notable stories about my kids so far.  Some will be funny, some will be general, some cute, and some you just have to know the kid to love the story (I will do my best to describe them enough to enjoy the story).


If you haven't read or heard anything about Willie, he is in my group of 3-4 year olds that I teach in the morning.  He is so funny!  He remembers words like it's nobody's business, and he has some difficulties paying attention and listening to directions.  He speaks better English than any of my kindergarten level kids.  I think the biggest reason he acts out a little in class is not necessarily that he has atttention issues, but that it's below his skill level!  We are teaching all of the babies colors, flowers, butterfly, sun, cloud and songs that help them learn Engish words, when Willie can put every word we are teaching into a compound sentence.  Haha, I feel so bad for him sometimes.  If I was in that class, I'd be so bored!  But he definitely makes it interesting for himself (and for us, too).  When Willie finally is standing still and participating, he will say the exact opposite of what we are trying all the kids to say.  We will say, "Look!  Mina is wearing pink socks!"  And Willie will say, "Mina is wearing blue socks!"  If we say, "doggy-woof woof!",  Willie will say, "cat!  Meeyow!".  Or one of our personal favorites, "Emily Elizabeth is a girl"- "Emily Elizabeth is a boy!".  The best part is that no matter what song we are singing, he will yell, "JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY!"  Kaitlyn and I just look at each other and laugh and the secretaries will go over and quiet him down (with kids that little, the secretaries hang out and tell the kids what to do if they won't understand it in English).   In fact, one time one of the secretaries came over to Willie behind him, put her hand over his mouth and gave him a couple good shakes, saying, "Shut up, Willie, shut up!"  She is such a sweet girl and Willie was just taking it so well that we couldn't help laughing, trying not to be obvious.  One last thing about Willie, every day, he will take off his shoes and start climbing on the stacked nap time beds.  Without fail.  Haha oh, Willie. :)

 

Also in that group is Lillian.  She is the sweetest little girl ever!  She always wants to be in the front of the line so she can hug my legs while I wait for all the other kids to line up.  Some of the other kids saw her do that and now I have to break up fist fights over my legs in the front of the line.

All of my little kids have washcloths in the pocket of their aprons, where they put tokens they earn for speaking correct English. Well one day, Aison (I love Aison!) folded his washcloth into a little cone and started putting his tokens in there.  The entire rest of the day, he would yell out English and hold up his little washcloth for us to drop his tokens in.  It was really funny.  We went downstairs later that day and Aison came up to me, help up his vest, and said, "baby".  Weirdly, I knew exactly what he wanted.  He wanted me to roll up his vest and fold it so  it looked like a baby.  I did and he held it gently.  Then he put it behind his back, tilted his stool off its back legs and quickly sat back against the wall, smashing his vest between the legs of his stool and the wall.  Then he got up, handed me his unraveled vest and said, "baby!"  Silly little Aison:)

 

Proud teaching moment!!  The other day, a little white butterfly fluttered into the school.  All of my babies and some of my older kindergarten kids were sitting and waiting to go home.  I was talking to Gerald about some of my classes when I heard, "butterfly!  Butterfly!"  All of my little babies were using the new word they learned a few days before.  I was so proud!!

I teach a pair or twins, Caleb and Gabriel.  They are great!  They wanted to do thumb wars with me, but they only knew the little thumb war chant in Chinese.  They're not supposed to speak Chinese, so I taught them how to say, "one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war".  They beat me every time ;)

Gabriel (he has a little freckle on his nose)

 

And we can't forget Wesley, my little Gangham styler, hopping into class every day!  I have resolved to get a video of him before I leave!

To my older kids in AK (7-8 year olds), They are just super fun!  They have enough English skills to understand me, but not quite enough to say what they are thinking in English.  Some of their funny Chinglish terms are: "He is funny me!" (He is making fun of me!), "My know!" (I know!-they are getting a lot better at correcting each other with this), "Can I have a one..." (they put measure-type words in funny places), "a there and a there!" (My older KE kids do this too-when they don't know how to say something, they'll just say "there").  One of my kids, Ivan, is pretty proficient in English, but he's a little stinker sometimes!  He steals the other kids tokens, but he's so good at looking cute and innocent, that it took me a little while to believe the other kids when they automatically accused him of taking their tokens.  They all would have like 5 and he'd have 9 or 10.  Oh, Ivan! haha.  One more thing about this group, we have a CD of 46 songs, but they have started to outgrow them, so they like 3 3 of them and ask to sing them every day: 5 little monkeys swinging from a tree, Peanut butter, and Tudy ta.  I have those three songs stuck in my head all day!  I want to get some good pics of them, they are such a fun group.

I have many a story of my 6th graders, but nothing really tops my last story about them, so we'll leave the stories I do have for another time.  Build suspense.


That's it for my noteworthy stories, for now!  I found it really difficult as I was writing this to not give a bio of each one of my kids.  I am so tempted to do it now, because I love them all so much, naughty or nice, rowdy or quiet, attentive or all over the place!  Even though my kids will grow up and forget these stories, and very possible me altogether, I will never forget them! (And this just got weirdly sentimental...     Cue the really cute Chinese New Year Pictures!!)

 

Thanks to Holly for posting these:)

THE END!