Half-way Through the Week

Today was pretty eventful although not much happened. I hope you understand that line better as you keep reading.

Nancy and I went running this morning, and we stopped off at the whole in the wall breakfast shop on the way back. We pointed to a picture on the wall that looked like it was a hamburger with a crepe bun. What we got was not a hamburger, but it was still good. It was a thick onion crepe with an egg inside. Not what I thought I was getting, but if I would have known about it, I probably would have ordered it. While we were in there, it got so crowded. This really is a good place to stop, and there's usually always people there when we pass it in the morning, but we couldn't even make it up to the counter to pay when we were done eating. Part of the reason why it might have been so crowded was because it started to rain while we were eating. And Nancy and I had to book it back one, because breakfast took longer then normal, and two, Nancy and I had to e-mail our travel agents before they left work.

We found out last night that Nancy waited too long to extend her flight, and so she might have to go back super early. So, on our run, we were thinking of different ways she could fix that problem and she had to hurry and e-mail her travel agent her ideas. We'll see what happens, but so far, Nancy doesn't have too much hope that she'll be staying as long as she wants.

I had to e-mail my travel agent because I originally wanted to come back August 28th, but to match my visa, we booked me to come back July 28th. After a couple days, maybe a week, here I e-mailed her and asked her to change the date to August 28th because I can get my visa extended. But, she e-mailed me and said that the 28th was all booked and that the closet thing to it was the 25th of August. I said okay because she said is was all that was available, and I was worried that if I didn't book it, then I would have to come back sooner. But, when I was planning on staying until the 28th, I was so excited that I would be able to spend my birthday (the 26th) in Taiwan. So, this morning I e-mailed my travel agent to see if I could come back on the 29th of August. That's cutting it pretty close to the start of school (September 2nd), but it would be worth it if I could spend my birthday in a foreign country. Unfortunately it's not available, and so I have to come home one day before my birthday. Sad day, but at least it's not July 28th.

I was excited about my morning lesson today. I got to use one of the sock puppets I made in Drama Fall semester (yes, I said one of, I most definitely have 3). I brought them because I figured "If I can't use these with three year olds, then there's pretty much no hope for them." So today I used Martha the Caterpillar to read the kids a story called a "Katie the Caterpillar's Big Change." The kids loved Martha, and I was so glad!!!

My afternoon class went better then I thought. When planning the lesson, I was really excited about my word sort, but as I was putting it together and getting the cards ready, I got nervous and thought this was too advanced for them. Nope, I was able to present it in a way that made it fun and was leveled appropriately. Go me- and go genus kids.

We had curry for lunch today. It was super mild, but it reminded me how Victoria had made curry for us back home and how I haven't seen a curry place around here. I told Nancy that we have to find one soon because trying it today at lunch made me really want it.

Nancy had too much to prepare today at lunch, so we didn't go exploring. I dinked around on the computer for most of the break, did some planning for my lesson, and took a tiny tiny nap. You can't blame me for the nap, it was a fairly gloomy day and gloomy/rainy days always make me sleepy.

My afternoon class didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but we ended with a game, so I know the kids enjoyed my lesson.

After school I tutored Kristy and then had a class of 8 year olds to teach. That went well, and luckily after 50 minutes of class (we still had 40 minutes left) I figured out how to make phonics fun. I made the kids follow me as I ran around the classroom, then I said "sh" they copied, and I asked them what letters were in "sh" then I had them make and "s" and an "h" with their bodies. That was a warm up. The two sounds we were working on today were "nt" and "nk" so, for each of those, we ran circles, then made the sound, named the letter, and formed them with our bodies. That really woke them up, and I told them that if they forgot what sounds "nt" and "nk" made after all of that, they were in trouble. Don't worry, they remembered.

After tutoring I went upstairs and saw Kaylene. She asked if I was headed out to dinner and if she could come. So we headed out and I wanted to show her the larger night market. Which, apparently is really like an afternoon market because stores were closing when we went there, but at least she got to see most of the stuff and now she know how to get there and can go back in the afternoon sometime. And, it was beneficial to go, because for my lesson tomorrow I needed white flowers so that I could show kids that flowers really do drink water (put a white flower in colored water and the flower turns colors) and I kept forgetting to pick some up. So, I saw a flower place and picked up 4 long stem roses- that was the only white flower they had out. Don't worry, it's not like I dropped a wad of money on them, each rose was only 10NT$, which means that one long stem rose is 3 cents in US money. Crazy, right? Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

There wasn't too much in the way of dinner at that market, especially because everything was closing, and so we rode back to our night market (meaning the one that's closest to the school). We weren't in any kind of hurry to do anything, plus it's a really cool night out, so it felt good just to ride around. Kaylene already knew that she just wanted a fruit smoothie for dinner, and on the way over I decided that I was going to try fried squid balls. Nancy had told me about them before and I wasn't too excited, but I knew I had to try them. I did, and I can say that I've had squid balls, but I will not get them again. Okay, first of all, squid doesn't have too much flavor, so it's nothing special. Then, it's got a weird kind of chewy, can't break it apart so you have to put the whole thing in your mouth type of texture, so that's not too appealing. And then, she put nasty dried fish flakes and mayonnaise on top, with wasabi on the side. I do not like mayonnaise at all! So that was gross, I tried the wasabi, and that's not good. So the dinner was standable, but not at all tasty. Which, when you're out to try new things, you're not going to like all of it, so I'm okay.

Nancy's tutoring right now, but when she's done, we're going to head to the fruit stand, because I'm kind of craving mango and pineapple. At the juice place where Kaylene bought her smoothie, they sell boxes of cut fruit, 3 boxes for 100NT$, but their pineapple comes with less in it then the bags at the fruit stand, but I would have bought it anyway if they would have had watermelon, but they didn't, so I just figured that Nancy wouldn't turn down a trip to the fruit stand later. It's funny. She's totally got a boy toy down there. The fruit stand plays rap music, so one time she went and we were loopy and so she started dancing to the music and she was asking the boy at the stand where his dog was and acting weird and I noticed that he gave her quite the discount on her fruit. So now we think that it's a grand adventure to go to the fruit stand and see how much Nancy can get knocked off the price of the fruit.