Piddly Day Off

Not the most exciting day off ever. I might as well have gone to Taichung with Ronald, I would have gotten about the same amount of stuff accomplished. I didn’t plan any excursions because I wanted this to be a day that I got a lot accomplished. I wanted to tidy up my bedroom and the bathroom, I wanted to write the script for the 3 and 4 year old graduation play, I wanted to plan my lessons for next week, and I wanted to get more things prepared for my lessons tomorrow and Friday.

Well, I succeeded in cleaning up. After my run (another day where I added on a little extra) I came back and stayed in my nasty running clothes and cleaned up. Then I showered and got dressed. That was actually pretty nasty because I put lotion on because the lotion had aloe in it and I thought it would be good for my sun burn, but because it’s so humid here, the lotion never sunk into my skin. It was already a really hot day today, so I woke up sweating and it only got worse, but to try to have lotion on my back made me feel so nasty. I worked on my computer in front of the fan until the lotion sunk in.

I was successful in writing the script of the play, which didn’t actually take as long as I thought it would, although it did take a while. I emailed it to Yuling and asked her to show Teacher Michelle (over the 3 year olds) and Teacher Jane (over the 4 year olds) but I didn’t see Yuling all day, so I don’t know if she actually got around to it. But, after I finished the play, I tried to work on my lesson plans- next week and this week’s. But my computer or the internet or something was acting up so I spent all day trying to look up stuff and pretty much got nothing done. During the lunch break, I did take a little nap- not because I needed it, but because I was so frustrated with my computer.

Oh, I did get something else done today. I did read a little about Taipei in my travel book to see what Nancy and I might want to check out. But, seeing as Taipei has 2 chapters dedicated to it, and when I started reading is when I felt the need to nap, I didn’t finish reading everything. But, I told Nancy she was in charge of where we’re going because she’s already been so I don’t want her to redo her trip, so she has to pick things that she hasn’t seen. Except that I’m making her take me to Taipei 101 which is the tallest building in the World (it has 101 stories). It cost $10 (US) to go to the top, so Nancy told me she would go, but she’s staying on the bottom because she’s not paying again- okay, I can handle that.

Yeah, so at 4:30 I tutored Kristy who is one of the 4 year olds. She is so cute and so smart. She reads super well, but her mom wants me to talk with her more to help her be less shy. Yeah, not so much. I try talking to her, but she just looks up and smiles at me, or she’ll answer in the least amount of words possible. I know she’s way smart, and she talks in class, there is just something about walking up the stairs to come to tutoring. But, she’s getting better now that I’ve tutored her a couple times. So, we’ll see how things go. Maybe eventually we’ll get to 10 minutes of reading and 10 minutes of conversation instead of 17 minutes of reading and 3 minutes of conversation.

Then I had my tutoring class. These are the ones I really like because they’re pretty well behaved, they appreciate my corny ways of teaching, and they are pretty well motivated.

I went with Kaylene to dinner after tutoring. We rode to a cart where you pick what you want and they’ll fry it. I wanted some popcorn chicken things and sweet potato fries. When he was putting it in the box to fry it for me, it didn’t look like it was that much, but when I got home, it most definitely filled me. But, it was a little more expensive then I wanted, considering the fact that I’m way low on cash. I got did get to try speaking Chinese a little more tonight though because Nancy wasn’t with me and Kaylene doesn’t try (she usually has Luke with her to talk anyways), so that was pretty good. This morning Nancy taught me to say “I also want” so when I ordered the chicken I said “Wo Yoa” and pointed to the chicken and then I said “Wo hai yao” and pointed to the fries. Then, I told him I wanted one order, “yi ge” (one of) and Kaylene didn’t want the hot spicy so I told him “bu yoa” (don’t want) and of course at the end I said “xie xie, bye-bye” (thank you, good bye). So that was fun. When I don’t have the crutch, I am able to get my point across. Even though, with enough pointing, I’m pretty sure Kaylene would have been able to get the same thing done in English, but I like to try. I just hope they appreciate the effort.

I just got done tutoring Dar-sen. Okay, spelled that way, it’s a little weird, but I’m trying to think of a way that I could spell it differently so that it’s be okay to name my future son that. I really like the name (okay, confession, it kind of just makes me think of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice). But, this boy is a genius, and I think I wrote this last time, but he only works so slowly because he has a story to share for everything we do. Plus, the writing activities he has to do gives him a sentence like “Sally had a difficult decision to make after school” and then he has to come up with what the decision was, how to solve it, and why it was hard. So, it does take some thinking time to figure out what you want to write about.
I hope that my next day off is better then today, it was so lame. I feel so unaccomplished- and hot!