Okay, my day today. I went running in the morning with the girls, then we picked up Luke and got breakfast. They all went to get the stuffed steam bread things, but I went across the street to get a breakfast hamburger (remember, that's the only time they eat hamburgers). When I got home, I bit into it and realized that it had to have been some kind of veggie burger. I looked at the patty and it looked like it was made out of the same vegetables that they stuff in the steam rolls. It was good, but I was expecting meet, not just vegetables and eggs on a bun.
After my shower I had to go online and find pictures of transportation vehicles for my lesson, and so I was cutting it a little close this morning while I was getting ready. So my first lesson was on transportation. The first session of it, I ended too soon and had to come up with time fillers, quick. But the other two sessions went too long and I didn't show all my pictures. Whatever, all the kids learned the same stuff, but some just had to repeat it more is all that that means. For my second lesson, I had just planned to practice the songs the kids are singing for graduation. But, the third grade teacher told me that I shouldn't be doing that because it's boring for them (which sucks, because Josh told me that I could plan on taking up time teaching the 3 year olds songs every single day, and the others I could teach 1-2 times a week). And then in the 5 year old class, Josh told me to teach them "Rock Around the Clock" but when there was only 5-10 minutes left of class, the Chinese teacher told me that I wasn't supposed to teach that song (she hadn't been in the classroom or paying attention the 20 minutes prior, so that's why she told me so late). So, the other two songs the 5 year olds are learning, I hadn't learned yet. But I put the music on and hoped that they knew the song. Luckily they did, but what if I hadn't started teaching them "Rock Around the Clock" right away? My 30 minute lesson would have been over in 7 minutes.
Then I went to lunch with the students like normal. Today we had spaghetti. It didn't taste like the spaghetti I'm used to. It was good, and you could definitely tell what it was, but you could also tell that it was Asian spaghetti. For one thing, the noodles we had with it were like top-roman noodles. During the break, Nancy and I took our bikes down town and she showed me the
martyr's shrine. Apparently it's Hualien's claim to fame. There wasn't much too it, just three buildings with boards with names of martyrs on it. I'm sure if I knew more of it's history or had a tie to it, it would have been more special, but since I don't, it was a pretty short visit. Also down town, we stopped off at a little candy place so I could try some authentic candies. The place we stopped didn't have too much variety. It really only had two options: jelly candy and mini pastries. I bought like five of the jelly things (a strawberry one, peanut butter, taro, pine apple, and some other one) and only one of the pastries. The pastries were good, so I should have gotten more of them, but their wrapper wasn't see through, so when I bought it, I didn't really know what I was getting. I tried one of the jelly things after buying it, and it was .... interesting. It tasted okay, but the texture was questionable. It's not that I've ever eaten one of these, but I want to say that eating the jelly was like eating a sea slug. It was was soft and chewy, and it stuck to your mouth, but it wasn't really sticky. I don't know, there is no real way to describe it, you have to actually eat it to know what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, when Nancy and I were coming back from the shrine, we got behind this little old lady on her bike. It was hilarious, she had adult training wheels. I really wanted to take a picture, but the stop lights have counters on them, and I saw that I only had 8 seconds before it would be our turn to go, and that's not enough to pull my camera out, take a picture, turn it off and put it away. But it was funny.Right before lunch we found out that instead of two 45 minute afternoon classes, we were just going to have one 30 minute class because we were taking the school pictures (this time, all the kids had on their uniforms). So that pretty much rocked that we only had one class. The problem was that Nancy and I teamed up and brought all the kids together. Oh goodness, that was crazy! But we survived and we made it out to pictures in one piece. Picture day went a lot easier today then last time. Yuling must have threatened the kids this time as they were lining up or something.
Pictures finished early and Nancy and I didn't have anything planned, so the Chinese teachers just popped in cartoons. So I watched Little Red Riding Hood and Peter Pan not only in Chinese, but in Chinese Animation, you know, with the big eyes and the like. After school I tutored a new group of kids. That went well, I bribed them with the candy Swedish Fish, and it worked pretty well.
Right after tutoring I had to rush upstairs and grab money to go to dinner (because Nancy has a limited time break). We went a couple streets over to a little stand and got "famous" fried chicken breast. Nancy had been telling us about it for a while, so we went and got it. They also had sweet potato fries so we ordered some of those too. It really was good stuff. Nancy didn't get the spice on it because she thought it was too hot last time she had it, but I didn't think it was really hot at all, and I think that that's what made it taste so good. Poor girl, she missed out by not having it.
After dinner I decided that I needed to go pick up some fruit because that's a healthier thing to snack on then candy. Nancy was tutoring and Kaylene and Luke didn't want to go, so I headed out- the fruit stand isn't that far, it's on well lit streets, and I'd been by it enough to know where it is. But, as soon as I got out of the gate, I decided that I wanted to try to see where the other night market was. I'd only been there once, and we hadn't gone directly there, so I don't know why I thought that I could find it on my own, at night! But I did, so there! I started off the way we went to get to the elementary school the night that we went with Yuling to the night market, and then I looked for things that looked familiar. There were a couple times when I thought, oh no, I've gone too far, I better turn around. But right after I would think that, I would see something that I remembered from the last time. And, eventually, I made it there. And I don't say eventually because I made wrong turns and had to correct myself, nope, I went straight there, it was just down further then I had thought it was. Sad thing was, it was closing up by the time I got there. So, I probably bought the most expensive fruit at the most expensive carts, but, I was excited just to find the place, and I wanted fruit, and I'm coming to realize that fruit is never going to be cheap no matter where you go. I went to one cart and bought a mango (it's a different kind then I'm used to though, it's longer and all orange, not small and green and redish/pinkish) and two oranges. Then, as I was leaving, I stopped at another fruit cart that had apples. I picked out 2 apples, the lady weighed them, took out a different bag, filled it with 3 different apples, and then told me it was 50 dollars. So I handed over the money, whatever, I'll eat 3 apples, but what was that all about?
On my ride back I remembered where I came from, so I didn't get lost, but as I was riding down one of the streets close to the house, a dog ran out of its drive way and started chasing me. I pedaled faster and it stopped running, but it scared me. I didn't want to get my ankle torn apart by some mangy mutt.
Dang shoot, I always forget to write about stuff, and I could go back and insert it where it really happened, but I choose no. Okay, coming back from the shrine we had to stop at a super market so Nancy could get peanut butter. She also wanted to pick up some candy for me, Kaylene, and Luke to try- they're called Hi-chews and they're really good. So, I looked at a bag of chocolate candies and asked if they were supposed to be Hersey kisses, but Nancy told me no, Kaiser's was the name of a Taiwanese chocolate company. So I bought a bag so I could try Taiwanese chocolate. Sadly, it's not too great. If you've ever had those koala bear cookies that are filled with chocolate, that's pretty much what this tastes like. It's good enough, but it's not like the chocolate back home. I went a little further down the aisle to the dried fruit/candy section and asked Nancy to tell me which of those were any good. I warned her not to lie to me, and she pointed out "Dried Roselle", which is a pressed, dried flower, coated in that sour sugar stuff. Those are really good, but I wonder if anything would taste good as long as it was covered in the sour sugar.
Alright, I'm pretty sure that that's all that happened today (oh, besides that I saw a KFC today).
No comments:
Post a Comment