teaching, hong kong, and other things...

I am now closing in on my 5th week of teaching and I feel like I have been at it for months already. I started off teaching a class of 5-6 year olds for three weeks. Their previous teacher, Bryan, who is an American, got deported for visa issues. So I took over Bryan's class until the end of the semester and then took over Julie's class of 2-3 year olds at the beginning of the semester. Julie is a British teacher who is now moving to Egypt to teach. I will miss having her here because she has a great British sense of humor and has a funny way about just being very direct and realistic about everything. She is also the only other western female teacher in the school. My other co-teachers are Darryn (British), Matt (Australian) and Eugene (Canadian). Each teacher is matched up with a Chinese teacher for their class and I lucked out and got a sweet woman named Mia.
Last week with the little ones was quite challenging. I had already been at the school for 3 weeks so I knew the basic routine but I was starting over with a whole new group of kids and a completely different age group/level. Two of the boys (I have all boys in my class right now!) Max and Sean have been at school for over a year so their English is quite good. The other two new ones Aaron and Wade are a handful. Aaron is very much attached to our school manager and the whole first week he wouldn't leave her side. Wade is just rambunctious and will just jump on a group of children sitting nicely and cause mayhem. It is quite incredible though to see their progression because you can see improvement every day. It is also pretty incredible to teach someone their first words of a language. When they remember something I have taught them, it makes all the frustrations of crying, jumping, running away from me, etc not matter so much any more. Overall I like teaching a lot and the kids in the school are very funny. One little precious girl named Sylvia (if she goes missing you know who to look for!) is one of my favorites. I know you're not supposed to have favorites as a teacher, but she's not in my class so she can be one of my favorites. Yesterday she showed me something and I said to her "That's good sweetie" and she said "My name's not sweetie, it's Sylvia!". Too cute! I guess they don't know pet names in English yet.
If you'd like to check out Teacher Bayly in action you can go to our school's web site http://www.babyhome.com.tw/album.php?mid=240234. Click on the English tab up top right. Then click on "Album" then the Red tab in the middle. Then scroll down until you see "Blue Class" which is my class. There will be tons of pics up of the last few weeks as the Taiwanese LOVE their pictures!
Last weekend we went to Hong Kong to renew Alan's visa (pics to be posted soon!). It was a fun trip, although quick, as I had to leave after work Friday after work and had to come home on Sunday. We thought Alan had to go to the visa office and apply for a new visa since his was expiring but it turns out we just had to leave the country and come back. So he had to stay an extra day in HK and it turned out for no reason. Overall, HK was fun. You can buy cheap chinese type souveniers and the vendors are much more willing to haggle with you on the price than in Taiwan. We also went up on the 360 degree lift up to a Buddha statue. It was pretty foggy and cold up on the mountain but it was still cool to see the huge Buddha statue.

OK better get back to work...I'm in the middle of my bi-weekly reports. One of the less fun things that goes along with teaching...all of the side paperwork!

Water's Edge -7M3

Imagine, night has just fallen; many people standing near water’s edge with little paper lanterns. The hand crafted lanterns lifted into the sky with candles inside to light their way. The candles seem to reflect on the water's surface; the reflection speaks of an older time, ages ago, when the ancestors of the lanterns did the same thing. As the lanterns lift into the crisp night air they take with them sadness, happiness, and memories of a year’s passing...We tried to go to Yilan for the last day of the lantern festival, but when we got to the train station we found out that our group left early; we did RSVP late. The lantern festival in Yilan is supposed to be breath taking and we missed it...DOH! Well not to worry. We decided to go to Yilan, but this trip was for the beach. The train ride take about 1.5 hrs, not to bad for a day basking the warm sunlight on soft sand. The landscape was beautiful and we passed through a lot of little towns. I'm not sure if the train stations were created because people lived there or did the people build little villages around where the train company decided to put stops...either way. At many of the stops, villagers stand at the open doors and peddle sack/box lunches. An old man sitting next to me got one, and it looked good; rice meat, some veggies. He ate it and enjoyed, although I'm not sure how he chewed with two teeth on opposite sides of his mouth. We got to the beach station and walked into a quite world, not much going on there for a beach town; ohh yeah it is winter here. So it was about 10 minute walk to the beach. We walked down an alley with a brigade on our left to stop typhoon waves, and cute houses on our right. The houses all had gardens in front of them with irrigation. You walk down like 10 stairs to the garden and backup them to the house, this was another form of protection should the water of the ocean get over the 15 ft wall of concrete. None the less each house had a small garden with mostly cabbage, bokchoy, lettuce and other winter greens, I guess. We walked through the yard of a school; a very beautiful school. From the front is was a concrete building, but it was U shaped with an open court yard in the rear with an ocean view, a large green field and a basketball court with 9.5 ft rims...hehehe made me feel good to jump up and grab it. We walked though an area of of buildings; some were restaurants, some were surf board rental stores, but they all were closed. When we got to the beach it was rocky. Correction, the beach was rocks, but there was about 20 feet of pebble sand. One of our group members was going to surf but decided not to as the waves were smallish. We walked back through the school, past the station, and into a small village to find lunch. Thank goodness we had a Taiwanese friend with us, because there was one restaurant, not menu's and no English. She ordered for us, we shared dishes in a family style and had a wonderful lunch. Went back to the rocks, ahem I mean beach for a little while and just appreciated the fresh air. Taipei is wonderful, but 1 in 5 people wear a smog mask, and its not just a fashion statement. All in all, this trip was a nice get away and cost next to nothing. BTW...we found out we got off one stop to early and the actual beach was just around the jetty and we never knew it! An excuse to go back! The title of this post is a good song by 7mary3.