Nancy's Last Day of Teaching

For Nancy's last day of teaching, she decided that it would be a good idea to get only 4 hours of sleep. Well, it's not like she really thought that it would be a good idea, but she did choose to go sing karaoke at 1:30 am. But it's not like she went alone. Nope, I was right there beside her. Nancy really wanted to sing karaoke in Taiwan before leaving and we were supposed to go with some University students, but I guess they were too scared to really hang out with us, so Ronald said that he would take us (remember? Ronald is our friend that owns the juice stand). I thought that he was joking, but after I ditched Nancy so that I could get into bed, the phone rings and Nancy is telling me that we can either go sing karaoke that night or tomorrow (meaning today). I decided that it would be okay to go at 1:30am this morning instead of Saturday morning because Saturday we're going to Taipei, and even though our train isn't until the evening, I don't want to be staying out all night because we will be staying up Saturday night for sure. I had a massive headache so I figured that I would just pop an Excedrin. That way I could get rid of the headache and had a boost of energy to keep me awake.

Go figure that the one night that Nancy and I decided to go gallivanting at 1:30 am is the same night that the 5 year olds are spending the night at the preschool and so Yuling is sleeping/on guard in her office. We tried to be so quiet, but she heard us anyways. We were already out the gate, but Yuling came out and Nancy waved to her as we left. Um, it was pretty much hilarious. I'm 20 years old, almost 21, and I'm sneaking out of my house. We go to the juice stand and freaking Ronald isn't even done closing yet. I started off way not excited to be going because it was so late and it's kind of lame that only 3 of us are going. So, for him not to be ready did not better my mood at all. We have to wait for a half hour for him to close. Oh yeah, I was not happy. We finally make it over there and as we're crossing the street I realize that it's Thursday morning and I started to highly doubt that too many people would be singing karaoke, so that made me less thrilled about our plans. But wait, it gets better. It turns out that Thursday at 2:30am is a very popular time to sing and so the whole place was full and we couldn't even go.

After racking our brains to figure out something to do that would make it worth sneaking out of our house at 1:30am worth it we finally decided to go play pool. They have these buildings filled with computers that are open all day and night where some pretty sad people spend their life playing computer games. In the back of that sad sad place, there were two pool tables. Um, strike like 33 against this night! We played for less then an hour and I was not enjoying myself. I kept on looking at my clock and realizing that this entertainment was not the hastle of me being out so late when I have to teach 3, 4, and 5 year olds starting at 9am, and I could hardly breathe because the smell of cigarette smoke was terrible. Nancy can have fun in any situation, but I was super bitter about the night and so I had pretty much no fun at all. There were times where I would laugh at something funny, but most of the night I was just thinking about how I should have been sleeping.

Luckily when we came back home Yuling didn't hear us, or she just decided not to come out front and check on us, so we were able to get upstairs without the embarrassment of getting caught sneaking back in.

The lack of sleep didn't really affect me for my lessons, they were as good or bad as they were going to be regardless of how much sleep I got. I was able to use my sock puppet, Marvin the Manatee, today when I was teaching about underwater sea animals. Marvin went over the best with the 5 years olds. They were pretty impressed with themselves that they were able to figure out that it wasn't really my friend, but that it was something put on my arm, but at the end of the lesson Big David said, "Marvin, you are so cute." Marvin went over and gave Big David a kiss on the cheek to say thank you and the whole class said, "So cute, so cute, Marvin, I think you are so cute." They all wanted a kiss from the sock puppet, it was adorable. The 3 year olds were the funniest though, a couple of them realized that it was a puppet and not real and so for the rest of the class, they were watching to make sure that it really was my lips moving and not Marvin's.

At lunch time I went to Yuling's office and had her help me finish translating the itinerary for the trip. Unfortunately, there wasn't a time schedule and so I still don't know when to meet the group (well, I know when to meet them in the airport, but not for the rest of the trip), but I'm really really going to Thailand this week.

After school I tutored, then I cleaned, then I dinked around on the internet, I couldn't do a Chinese lesson because the DVD didn't work, but I got some scripture reading in. But mostly I was cleaning, oh, and a little packing.

I think that Nancy and I are planning to go out tonight, but just to go and get some of the famous dumplings one more time before she leaves, I don't think we'll do anything much more then that.

And this is going to be my last blog for a while. I go to Taipei tomorrow, spend the night there, then I'm in Thailand for 5 days, and then I'm in Taipei for 4 days. Wow, yeah, it'll be fun trying to catch up on that time when I get back :o)

Tzu Chi Thursday

This morning I went running with Nancy and then left her to get breakfast on her own because I have fruit and milk at home that I have to use up before leaving for a week and two days.

Classes went okay today. Nothing super special or note worthy, just good. But just wait until Friday July 4th. I now have 2 packages of stuff for that lesson so watch out, it's going to be hot!

At lunch break we went to Tzu Chi College. It was different then the other times because they had a professor from another university come and teach us a little bit about Chinese calligraphy. It was fun because we got to practice and learned the form and everything. You have to keep your shoulder relaxed while your arm is parallel to the desk. Your wrist needs to be vertical while your fingers need to make a goose. The funniest thing about the positions was that they really expected you to be able to relax your shoulder while your arm was in such a weird position. Mine didn't turn out horribly, but I didn't grab any of them so I don't have any proof. I guess that's kind of good, because it would just turn into clutter.

My afternoon lesson was on hula-hoops and there's not much information that you can share about hula-hoops, so there was a lot of time to explain and play different games using hula-hoops. Unfortunately the school only owns 4 hula-hoops and there are more then 20 kids in each afternoon class. Eh, it worked out though.

After school I wanted to have Yuling help me translate more of my itinerary for the trip, but she was talking to a parent and I didn't want to interrupt so I spent a half hour on the playground playing with the kids before I had to go tutor.

I had to hurry after tutoring because we were meeting with a group of students from Hualien University for dinner. Luckily the girl that Nancy tutors from 8-9pm called to cancel right before we left, so we didn't just have to eat and run. We went to a place where they have hot pots (I'm not sure if that's what it translates to in English or if the Chinese name sounds like "hot pot"). I got a sea food one and it was okay, but it's not as good as Kaylene makes it out to be. I'd seen Nancy and Kaylene eat the shrimp before, but I haven't ordered anything yet that had the whole shrimp in it, so today when there was one in my soup, I was sacred about how to eat it in front of everyone. I turned to Nancy and asked her what to do and everyone saw me holding it with my chopsticks and said, "Oh, you don't know how to eat it? Do it like this, take off the head, and the legs, and peel this (the skin) off." I did it, but felt stupid as I struggled. It was a good shrimp, but maybe not worth the effort. I guess I'll just have to practice more and it won't be any effort at all :o)

After dinner they took us downtown to show us around. Eric was so cute. He would try to stop and point things out to us, but since Nancy and I have been down town so much, we would finish his thought and he'd be so impressed. He told us that he felt like he wasn't useful because we already knew what everything was. I guess he thought that he was supposed to be our tour guide or something. All we really wanted was some friends to eat dinner with. After everyone left Nancy and I stayed down town to do a little shopping. We each bought 2 shirts and then decided it was time that we took Ronald's scooter back to him.

We filled up Ronald's tank with gas and then went to our night market. Ronald was super busy and so we had to sit and wait. I had a headache that kept getting worse and worse so I told Nancy she could stay but I had to go. That didn't work, I ended up staying. But, Ronald was acting like a butt and so at 10pm I told Nancy we should leave. She reminded me that we still hadn't gotten an answer to a question we'd asked and so I stayed. But, by the time it was 11pm and he still hadn't answered and my head was still throbbing, I finally did just leave. And seeing as it's 11:45pm now and she's still not back, I'm really glad that I left her there.

I really meant to take pictures with the University students tonight, but I forgot to whip out my camera. So, sorry that there are no pictures for this post :o(

Errands, Errands, and More Errands

My internet wasn't working last night, so I wrote my blog but couldn't post it until now.

Oh gracious, I spent all day running around. And I have a sun burn on the tops of my arms to prove it. My day off was super busy. Ronald came running with us this morning. And then Nancy came back to shower and I cleaned. This was a more intensive cleaning then my other Wednesdays. I moved all of my furniture (okay, so there are only 4 things, but I moved them all) and swept my entire room. So, even though I do find cockroaches in my room, I know that there is no nest and I know that they don't live in my room, they only visit late at night (oh wait, that's not as comforting to me as it was supposed to be). After my room I cleaned the bathroom, and then I cleaned my shoes. The cute yellow ones I bought in Taipei got super dirty on Friday when I was walking around in the rain so I scrubbed them clean. They don't look like new, but they look a whole lot better.

After cleaning it was time to do my run around errands. I first went down stairs to talk to Yuling about my train ticket back to Hualien after I get back from Thailand. I get back Friday the 27th and there is a ward Temple trip on Saturday the 28th. I thought that I would just stay one night in Taipei so that I could go explore Friday afternoon, go to the temple Saturday morning, and then explore Taipei some more Saturday afternoon and come home on Saturday night. Well, when I was talking to Yuling about it, I was off on my dates and so I told her that I needed to come back Saturday the 29th. Then she told me that Natalie was coming in on the 30th. We decided that I should just stay two nights and ride the train back with her. Good plan, right? Yeah, except that there is no Saturday the 29th, it's Saturday the 28th. So I'm actually staying 3 nights in Taipei by myself. Eh... it'll be fun. I mean, I will just be getting back from being on a trip to Thailand by myself, so I should be able to handle Taipei, which is a place I have already done some exploring in. But still, I was not planning on staying that long- ooops. It will be good to have the two hour train ride to get to know Natalie though.

So after squaring away train ticket plans I went upstairs to open the package that was waiting for my on Yuling's desk. Nancy is making fun of me. She's been here 6 months and hasn't gotten a single package. I've been here for 2 months and I've gotten 4 packages. Why's she making fun of me, it just means that I'm more loved. Just Kidding!!! :o) But I really don't expect any more. It is way too expensive for people to send me things, and although I greatly appreciate it, I don't want people wasting money on me. But letters are still good, if anyone still feels the need to send something off to me. It was nice getting a package, but it wasn't what I expected.

After opening the package, it really was time to give myself the run around. I went to the other side of town first to go to the cheese cake store. Nancy decided that she was going to get mini cheese cakes for some of the tutoring families who took her out to lunch/dinner all the time as a little thank you/good bye gift. But, the store doesn't always have the things that she wants and it's not always open when we have time to go. So, since I could go any time today I volunteered to go and pick her up some boxes of cheese cake. There were too many to fit into my basket, so before doing the other errands, I had to drop these off at home. Then I went to the store to buy toilet paper and bleach (all of my white shirts are stained and so I'm soaking them in bleach water to see if that helps at all). Next stop was to the bakery for a loaf of bread. Unfortunately they did not have wheat bread so I had to go with white, but it was good because instead of paying 35 NT$, I only had to pay 28 NT$. It must have been yesterday's bread or something, but that's fine by me. Right down the street from the bakery is a fried rice shop that Nancy wanted for lunch. And so I bought us some lunch and went back home. I still had 30 minutes before class was over and so I figured that I could make it to the train station and back in about that amount of time if I hurried. Boy did I hurry. I booked it all the way to the train station, waited in line, and made it back only 4 minutes after class had ended. If the line had been shorter or if I hadn't hit every light, I would have made it back early. And, I've got to tell you, that a half hour time limit to go to the train station, buy tickets, and get back is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, when I came back I felt the effects of stressing out and pushing myself hard in the intense heat. I had a headache by the time I got back.

The reason that I had picked up lunch for Nancy and I and the reason for my rushing was because Nancy and I had decided to go find a swimming hole we'd heard about and since the lunch break isn't very long we had to be right out. Luke heard us talking about swimming and so he asked if he and Kaylene could come. We left before them because they hadn't planned on being right out like we had, but I guess they seriously booked it and they caught up to us at the river as we were trying to find the path to take us up further. The water felt amazing, but the swimming didn't turn out to be all that great because as we were walking up the river the cops saw us and told us to stop. We knew that you technically need a permit to go beyond a certain part of the river, but we were told that if you sneak past, it's okay. The cop was up on a balcony and wasn't going to come and get us so we kept walking. Well, Luke turned around to go and talk to him while Kaylene, Nancy, and I kept on going up. Luke never showed up and so after being in the water for a little while we tried to go back. But, we a cop saw us and waved us over. He told us that our friend had gone higher up. We didn't believe him so he told us to get into his car and he would drive us back to the front of the trail (where we were allowed to be). We didn't want to go with him, and he thought that it was because we were scared and so he showed us his hat and told us he was "Taiwanese cop" (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that his English was very limited). Um duh you're a cop. If you weren't we wouldn't even have come over. So we went with him and it turns out that Luke really had gone up farther in an attempt to shake the cops off his trail. So we didn't swim very long and we got picked up by the cops. The cop was pretty nice and just told us that next time we needed to get a permit and then there would be no problem.

Once we got back from swimming, I put in a load of laundry and did one session of a Chinese language DVD.

Right before school ended I went down to fill up our water bottle and Yuling told me that she had the Thailand itinerary printed out and when I have time she could help me translate it. We didn't get very far in the translation before I had to tutor, but at least I know that I have the itinerary and I have until Friday to have Yuling help me figure it out. I still can't believe that I'm going to Thailand on Sunday! Crazy!

After tutoring I tried to go get fried chicken for dinner for Nancy and me, but it was closed so I ended up coming back and fixing fried rice with an egg. As I ate I booked three nights in a hostel in Taipei. It's a different place then the one that Nancy stayed at before (which is the same one we're staying in this weekend) so I hope it's still a good one and that I'll be able to find it.

After booking the rooms I started blogging. After half an hour or so Dar-sen opens the door and says, "Hello." Dang shoot, I totally forgot that I tutored him tonight. I had to put the blog on hold really quick and then cleared off a spot for him to study. It worked out okay because he was actually a couple of minutes early so by time I logged off the computer and he sat down, it was 8 o'clock which is right on time.

So that was my day. I've just been going and going. I hope that I'm able to just crash tonight and get such a good night sleep, but I really doubt that it's going to happen.

SICK!

I'm trying to blog right now, but my mind is on the cockroach that is hiding somewhere in my room. Nancy and I got home, I sat down on my computer, then looked up and saw a cockroach on my door. I freaked out and Nancy came in. I thought she was going to kill it, but she's more scared then me. She chased it under my wardrobe. We moved it, but it won't come out. We shined a light, but it won't come out. We turned on the hair dryer and blew air at it, but it won't come out. We stuck a big stick under there, but it won't come out. I know you're thinking that it's not there anymore, but we didn't see it run anywhere else. Sick! I wish I knew where it was. I have to go to sleep soon but I'll be going to sleep knowing that there's a cockroach in my room.

Anyway....my day..... I went running, but because Nancy and I only got 4 plus hours of sleep, we were both really sore this morning. Once I started running I felt better, but Nancy still hurt (don't worry, I hurt again whenever I stopped running). For breakfast I was felt like stopping off at the breakfast place on the way home and ordering a thick crepe with an egg. One time we went there and pointed to a picture and that's what we got, so I thought that I could just point to the same picture. I did point to the same picture, but I actually got what was in the picture this time. It was a lot of food, and I'm sure that it was really good, but because it took so long to make, I just had to scarf it down without really tasting it. Not tasting it is a real shame because I'm never going to get it again. It turns out that what I ordered was $ 80 NT. To put things in perspective, the most I usually spend on breakfast is $40NT and that includes a drink, I most definitely did not get a drink this morning. And, to further put it into perspective, I usually think that $70NT for dinner is pricey (since we just go to a night market, of course if we ever ate at a restaurant it'd be more).

My middle lesson was pretty rockin'. I taught about bubbles and then the kids did bubble art where I mixed paint, water, and dish soap together, gave the kids straws, let them blow bubbles and then they pressed a paper against the bubbles to pop them and leave a mark. The kids all blew too hard and so at the end they all had spreckles of color on their faces (and it was all over the tables) but because it was mostly soap anyways, it wasn't hard to get off. The other funny thing about the lesson was that the 3 years olds were able to do it perfectly, the 4 years olds were next and they struggled with it, and by the time the 5 years olds came in, only three of them could even get a bubble mark on their paper. I must have done the perfect mixture in the first class and not done as well for the others. Oooops... sorry 5 years olds.

At lunch time we went out with Ronald. I don't know how this ended up happening, but apparently one of the times Nancy went to get juice on her own her and Ronald decided that we should all go out to lunch before Nancy leaves. He got his Dad's car and took us downtown to a restaurant. He said that he'd never been there but that he'd wanted to go. The menus were all in Chinese so we told Ronald to order something and we'd eat it. Wow, whatever he ordered came with a lot of food. There was obviously a small bowl of rice, then there was a fancy bowl with two kinds of raw fish. I couldn't tell you what it was, I just know that is was pink, it was chewy, it was cold, and it was most definitely raw. On another serving dish was a spicy dish with some other kind of fish and vegetables. Then there was a plate of more fish and vegetables in a different sauce. There was a small plate of pig skin (it's really rubbery) and a small plate of pig leg (just a bunch of fat to chew on). Oh yeah, there was also a bowl of ice with chunks of slippery white fish in it. This fish was also raw and it was so hard to pick up with plastic chopsticks that they had to bring us wooden ones so that we could get a better grip. (But it's not just Nancy and I that had difficulties, it really was hard and even Ronald used wooden chopsticks.) Then there was soup that had crunchy, yet chewy, chunks of white fish. Don't worry, there was dessert too. They brought out a small bowl of some type of fish pudding-ish stuff (it looked like apple sauce, but darker). I tried it and passed it on, I was not going to eat it. I took one bite of the soup and chose not to eat it, but that was because I was full and didn't want to waste filling my stomach with something that wasn't good. The fish dessert I chose not to eat because it was gross. But for dessert they also had a small bowl of regular pudding that was Mmmmm, so good. Dang shoot, I totally forgot to mention that the drink they gave us was a vegetable and fish drink. Believe it or not, the drink was pretty good, pretty sweet, and not salty. I was pretty proud of myself for exploring that lunch, and it turned out to be pretty good. Oh yeah, I guess that I should mention that the restaurant was all about the sun fish and so I think that most of the fish we had was some part of the sun fish? Maybe?

I taught about soccer in my afternoon class, and so for the last 15 minutes the kids played soccer. Even though I didn't play with them or anything, that lesson made me so tired. I had to be the referee, and I had to wrangle all the kids into playing, and I was so beat by the end.

Nancy and I tried to go shopping again tonight after our tutoring was done, but the market we went to was closing most of their shops. Nancy found a shirt, but I didn't find anything at all. Then we went to the juice stand to talk to Ronald. We had to, he paid for lunch, it's not like we could just not go and say hi to him. I usually try to go into the back and help out somehow, but he always freaks out and won't let me do anything. Today he was so busy that he asked me if I would help him cut the watermelon. So Nancy finally got a taste of what it feels like to be board at the juice stand and I got to keep myself entertained by cutting watermelon. Apparently I'm not that good at it, but I cut two large watermelons and I did much better on the second then I did the first, so if he keeps on letting me help out, I'll be a pro watermelon cutter by time I come home. Ronald said he'd give me a free juice if I helped him out, so when I finished he gave Nancy and I both a watermelon juice that he had made for someone else who never came back to pick it up. I teased him and said, "wait, I do all the work and Nancy gets a free juice?" Yeah, pretty much, that's how it worked :o) At 10:20pm I told Nancy it was time to go because we never leave there at a decent hour and it's starting to take its affect on our bodies (remember that we were sore this morning?). But on the way home we stopped by the fruit stand because we're out of fresh fruit at home. Nancy's boyfriend there gave us a small bag of orange watermelon for free. He handed it to us, told us it was good, and then made sure that we lived in the same house (please note the he speaks NO English and so he communicated in short Chinese phrases and hand gestures) so that he only had to give us one bag to share. That was nice. We had just gotten free watermelon juice and then took a short trip down the road and got free watermelon. The watermelon's in the fridge, but I hope it's as good as he told us it was :o)

Yeah, so then we left and got home pretty early, but then because we had the roach fiasco, that sucked up a little bit of time. I acually took pictures today, but I'll have to post them later because I'm tired and also, most of them are on Nancy's camera.

This is Ronald, he doesn't smile because his eyes will disappear.

This is Nancy and I on a bridge outside the restraunt.

Nancy has the picture of all the food and has yet to give it to me.

Midnight-Thirty

Thanks for the blog title Dana! That's what time it is right now, and that's why this blog won't be very long- I hope I hope I hope!

So today I got up early so I could do a faster run by myself so that I could get back and all ready for class an hour early. It's Monday here, but it's Sunday back home and so it's Father's Day and I wanted to wish my daddy a happy daddy's day. I got all ready and called home with an hour and twenty minutes before I had to be at class. Kim answered and I said "Ni hoa" she knew immediately that it was me and said "Oh, Dad's not even going to be home today." Don't worry, he did come home and I did get to wish him a happy father's day. The funny thing is that last time I called (for mother's day) the call didn't even last a whole hour and I talked to more people. Today Dad was there, but Dana wasn't and I didn't talk to Josh or Ben, and yet the call took the whole hour twenty. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely glad it lasted, but I think it's funny that it lasted longer. I don't know, maybe they miss me or something.

To try to save time, I'll just let you know that my lessons weren't any good today, so it's a great thing that Aunt Leslie's package came today so I can start planning an awesome 4th of July lesson and a lesson on mardi gras. Thanks for the package :o)

At lunch break Nancy and I went shopping, but the stores we found were not too interesting and we didn't find much to buy. Pretty much the only thing we got was a cheapy-cheapy toy for Nancy's brother. One of Nancy's tutories showed her this ball that turns into a creature when it lands on a card, and she swears that it's the coolest thing.

We didn't go out to dinner until 8:30pm ("ba dian ban"- the spelling could be off, but Nancy's occupied and I can't ask her how to spell it) because we went out with a girl from the branch. We just went to the night market but because Ling is Chinese, she knows what's good and helped us try new things. It's a good thing she did because the stuff she introduced us to were things that we never would have tried because they don't look appetizing, but they were way good and pretty cheap. We had a burrito type-ish thing with pork, peanut dust, vegetables, and chili sauce. Then we tried a sausage put into a bun of sticky rice filled with a whole bunch of I don't know what. Lastly we had some "traditional Chinese dessert" that was brown sugar juice/sauce with tofu-ish chunks floating in it with peanut, and then the other one had stark balls in it. That wasn't terrible, but it's never going to be my first choice of desserts, or my first choice ever.

We of course went to the juice stand after Ling had to leave (she lives in the dorms temporarily and has a 10:30pm curfew- sad!). The little girl who talked to us on Friday came back and we talked to her and played hula-hoop some more. When I looked up at the clock and noticed that it was midnight, I knew it was way past time to go so I grabbed Nancy and we got out.

And then, when we got home, the kitchen door had been left wide open and so I was teasing Nancy about being careful when she went to get a drink of water because there was going to be a swarm of cockroaches in there. Well, there wasn't a swarm, but she yelled for me because there was a large one on the table. I brought in a shoe and killed it (well, it was still twitching, but I smashed it pretty well, so I'm positive it's not getting out of the garbage). Then I had to clean it up while Nancy did all the dishes so that there wouldn't be food out to attract more cockroaches. Yeah, if it's cockroach season, we've got to be a lot better at cleaning up. Yuck!

Weekend

We got back before too late last night, but I didn't feel like blogging, so instead of writing a Saturday and a Sunday blog, I'm writing a weekend blog. It's not like that hasn't happened before.

Saturday. Saturday morning was preschool graduation. The ceremony was on Saturday, but there is still one week of class left. The date of the ceremony just had to be changed because Yuling's due date is next week and so she couldn't be hastling with graduation if she was delivering a child. The little kids were soooooooooo cute!!!!!!!! We never did a dress rehearsal, so I had no idea how adorable the animal costumes would be. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera down stairs with me, so I don't have pictures, but hopefully I can get some from Yuling tomorrow. The skits went well, the 5 years olds were given their certificates, and refreshments were good. Graduation started at 10am and was scheduled to end at noon. After helping clean up and everything, Nancy and I were back upstairs a little after 1pm.

We had planned on trying a new place out for dinner Friday night, but then Nancy realized that she would rather eat free dinner with her tutories and so we decided to go to that restaurant for lunch. We knew about the place because on Tuesday when we went to the movies with Adam and Alicia's family, they ate dinner while Nancy and I sat. Everything they ordered looked so good so we thought that we would go back and just order two things, not knowing what they were, and we would have a good chance of eating a good meal. But, when we went, they handed us a menu in English and the ones we chose didn't look as good as the ones from the other night. It was still good though, so I'd go back. The best part about it was that the noodles were thick, homemade noodles. We saw them roll out the dough and cut the noodles, so we know that we were getting some really fresh food.

After lunch we went back and hung out at the house for a while. We had plans to go find a trail that leads to a waterfall that Adam used to go to when he lived here before. Unfortunately yesterday was a rainy day and so we had to go home and make different plans. This was Nancy's last Saturday in Hualien, but because there's not too much to do in this city, we decided just to go and see another movie. We saw "What Happens in Vegas" which is an okay movie, but it's so dull compared to our other weekends. I felt bad that that was how we spent Nancy's last Saturday.

Well, that wasn't how we ended the day. We went to the fruit stand because Nancy wanted to buy a juice to stick in the fridge so she could have juice for breakfast before church. A little girl came up to us and started talking to us in Chinese. I was more interested in talking to the little girl then talking to Ronald and so I tried to parrot what the little girl said and then she would try to parrot English words that I said. Apparently the little girl is one of the daughters of an owner of a nearby food place at the market. Ronald said that she always just wanders around the market talking to any and everyone. Nancy finally became interested in talking to the girl too and so we talked with the girl and played with a hula-hoop for at least 2 hours. Finally I decided it was time to leave and go home. It was 11:30pm and I figured that was a good enough time to head back (actually, it was past time, but the girl wouldn't let us go and Nancy never thinks it's time to go).

Sunday. It's been a good Sunday so far (it's only 2pm). We woke up and went to church. We had some good lessons on personal revelation and on forgiveness/feeling the Holy Ghost. Yuling gave a talk in sacrament meeting, and so did a white guy who is apparently a high councilman. Because it's Nancy's last Sunday in the Ji-An Branch, I would have thought she would have talked to more people or talked to the ones she did for longer, but we didn't stay after any longer then we normally do.

Last night we went to the store to get something for Sunday dinner and we decided to try to make curry. Not that it'll be hard, because we bought it in a box that has everything in it and we just have to heat it up. We'll see how good it is. I hope it tastes good, but I am a little weary of curry in a box.

I think the most of the rest of my day will be spent studying: studying the scriptures and studying Chinese. Since I don't have to do my lesson planning or evaluations, I have the time. Yay for pre-preparation!

I've got pro scooter status

The title of the blog will be explained later. So the day started with a run and some breakfast. Nancy and I decided to try a new place for breakfast and stopped off at one that we always see Tzu Chi college students at. We always scope out the places with lots of people because it means that that place is good. Unfortunately, a place with lots of people in it also means that it's hard to order, get your food, and pay. So we had to wait a while and it ended up being way more expensive then I wanted to pay for it. I pointed to a picture of a breakfast sandwich, not knowing what it was, but when I got it it was on flaky bread, it had lettuce, sprouts, and an egg. I could have sworn that the picture had meat in it, but whatever. It tasted good, just not stellar, and not worth what I paid for it.

I taught about tools in my morning class and that went well because we had a toy tool set, and the kids had fun learning about the tools. Even Teacher Jane liked my lesson (I saw her smiling and laughing when I was being silly with the kids). For the second class we practiced graduation, and we combined the afternoon classes to do one big rehearsal of the whole program.

After school I had tutoring from right after school to 6:20pm. The boy that I tutor for an hour on Friday's wanted to move his time up buy an hour. So, it means that right after school I'm pretty busy, but my Friday night is allowed to start sooner. Well, not really, seeing as Nancy doesn't finish tutoring until 9:30pm and I always wait for her to start my Friday nights. After tutoring I worked on evaluations and finished those up so I don't have to do them on Sunday. I also read my scriptures a little, tidy-ed up my room slightly, and borrowed Nancy's learning Chinese DVD so that I could practice some Chinese phrases. In the time I had to kill from 6:20-9:30, I also fell asleep. I'm not sure how long I slept, because I don't know what time I fell asleep. But, when Nancy came home I woke up and got ready because we were headed out to go bowling.

We were planning on having a really fun, really long night because graduation didn't start until 10am on Saturday, so we could come home late and sleep in with out a problem. Unfortunately one game of bowling when you only have 2 people doesn't last long. When we had finished up and we were putting our shoes back on, we met a white guy from Wyoming. He was visiting his girlfriend during summer break or something. We talked with him for just a little bit, but then we left. We had finished bowling at 10:30pm. Not exactly what I'd call an all-nighter!

I decided that we should go to the juice stand and ask Ronald if we could take his scooter and drive around. It worked. I asked if we could take his scooter and he said okay. Then he asked where we would go. We told him that we didn't know where to go, but we'd find somewhere and we'd be back before 2:30 am (when he closes up and would need his scooter back). I had to ride the scooter back to our house and grab a helmet for Nancy, but then we were off on an adventure. (This is where the title of the blog comes in, I'm super good at driving a scooter with all the practice I get from stealing other people's scooters.) I even got to practice some Chinese when we went riding. We pulled up to these guys and in English asked where they were going and if we could come. They said, "no, no." We happened to be turning the same way as them and they got scared and sped away. That was fine until we came to a red light and they were waiting too. They turned around and were worried that we were trying to follow them and so I told him "wo bu yao ni" ("I don't want you"). After I told him that I didn't want him, the light turned green and he sped away (almost knocking his friend off the back), but then stopped and waited for us. We just drove past them and laughed.

I wanted to see where Hualien University was and since it's a little farther away then is pleasant on a bike, I decided to use the scooter to go there. Yeah, it's not very exciting, but we had no where else to go. After that, we had no destination and so we just followed different roads and pulled off where we thought something interesting would be (there wasn't anything really interesting). We drove past a McDonald's and decided to get a little snack and so we locked our helmets in the storage area under the seat. Well, when we came back from eating, the seat wouldn't open. We struggled for a while and then I decided that we should drive down to another street. For one reason, the people at McDonald's had already seen us look stupid enough, it was time to move. And also, I was hoping that riding it for a tiny bit would jostle something around so that the latch would open. So we drove down two streets and pulled off under a street lamp. Still no luck. Nancy thought we should ask someone for help and so we rode up to some boys on the street. Nancy asked if they could help and motioned to open the seat. The boy reaches over, turns the key, opens the seat, and turns away all in like 5 seconds. It was so embarrassing. I have no idea what it was that he did differently, but even if we had to look like morons, I am glad that the seat got opened.

It was Nancy's turn to drive and she didn't do too much exploring. We did decided to take one road that we'd never gone down before, but it ended up connecting to really close to home and so we decided to just take the scooter back to Ronald. We started talking to Ronald once we got back and somehow we decided that Ronald should go get another scooter and all three of us would drive out to Chishingtan (the beach we went to with the other boys whose scooters we drove). Well actually, the plan was that he would get his Dad's car, but he couldn't find the keys so we had to take two scooters. We drove out to the beach and watched the waves. By the time we got out there, it was after 3am. By the time I looked at my watch again, it was around 4am. Ronald said something about the sun coming up and I figured that since sunrise was probably close to 4:30am and we might as well wait until then and watch the sunrise. We did wait until 4:30, but the sun didn't rise over the water, I'm pretty sure that it rises closer to the mountains and so we saw everything get lighter, but there were no fancy colors or anything. Oh well. After the disappointing non-sunrise, we headed back. We got back in around 5am. It was funny because Luke and Kaylene are going to the west side of Taiwan this weekend with Tzu Chi and to catch the train they needed to meet someone at the university around 5:40am. So, the time that Nancy and I were coming home was the same time that Luke and Kaylene were leaving to go to Tzu Chi. Luke asked if it was a long night and I just smiled and told him "yes." Nancy and I went straight to bed because graduation was at 10am, which means in order to get ready I'd have to wake up at 9am, which was only 4 hours from the time I got home.

And that's why this post is a little late, because I decided that after getting home at 5am, the best thing to do was just go to bed.

Surprise, Surprise

It was a day full of surprises. The day started off right at midnight. I was still up because I couldn’t fall asleep. I thought that I was over that, seeing as I’ve been sleeping pretty well the past two weeks. This was different though, I couldn’t go to sleep because every inch of my itched. It was driving me freaking crazy. I finally heard my watch beep that it was 1am (it beeps every hour, it’s not like I set it for 1 am) and I got up to see if running cold water over my wrist would help it stop hurting. If it had, I think I would have taken a cold shower. But, unfortunately it didn’t help, so I went back into my room, sat down on my bed and had no idea what to do with myself. While I was sitting on my bed, I happened to look up and notice a large cockroach on the wall by my door. Nancy was still up and on the computer and so when I made a funny noise she asked what was up. She told me to use the fly swatter and kill it. Problem…the fly swatter is in the hallway and I was in my room. The only way to the hallway would be to walk right by the roach. Nancy asked if I needed help, but when she went to grab the fly swatter I heard, “Oh crap, there’s one out here too.” I grabbed a shoe and finally worked up the nerve to squish it- by nerve, I mean I screamed when I actually hit it. Nancy was having troubles killing hers because hers was a runner. I finally had to go in and kill it for her. Luckily she cleaned it up, I accidentally spread it’s innards on the wall and floor.

The second surprise of the day was much better. At the beginning of my afternoon class, Teacher Steffanie brought in a package. Why Yuling didn’t keep it in her office until after school I don’t know, but I got a package from Grandma Petronaci. Unfortunately I had to wait an hour and a half to open it because I still had to teach class, but I guess that it made it that much more exciting when I could open it. It had some crafts and little toys, stickers, and some candy for the kids. The crafts are on my wall right now until I figure out what lesson to use them in or who to give them too. They are super cute zoo animals, which is really funny. The lesson theme for this week was animals and so getting the package on the last day of the theme was slightly ironic. But I taught about zebras, kangaroos, and koalas and out of the animals she sent there was only a zebra. So I could have used that one, but it’s not like she had sent all three, four days late. Not that it was late or anything, it came at all, and for that I am very grateful. (That is not a push for everyone to send me a package, don’t worry. They’re expensive to ship over so I don’t really expect them.)

As for the rest of my day…. I went running and had an egg crepe with ham in it for breakfast, that was good.

Oh yeah, I was super slick in my lesson planning last week. I decided to do a morning lesson on cameras so that I could get pictures of my students. So, my lesson pretty much rocked today- not because it was a fabulous lesson, but because I sneakily got pictures of my kids. Hee hee, go me!

For the second class, we just practiced for graduation. It’s on Saturday and I’m starting to really wonder how well it’s going to go. The 5 years olds will rock it, the 4 years olds have it mostly, and the 3 years olds are great some days and totally off on others. Let’s hope Saturday is an on day!

We went to Tzu Chi again today (I also remembered to take a picture of our outfits) and learned about the traditional tea ceremony and about the art of flower arrangements. Apparently Director Tsai wants Kaylene and me to do a performance/demonstration of the tea ceremony and flower arrangements on July 5th. Uh, okay. Since Nancy will be gone, I don’t have plans (not that I wasn’t planning on making some plans) so that seems like a pretty okay way to spend my Saturday (believe it or not, that’s not a sarcastic comment).

In the afternoon class I taught about koalas and that was cool because I just showed them a bunch of pictures that I’d taken at the San Diego Zoo. It was a nice trip down memory lane for me, and they got a look at some new pictures, not the same old books with the same old pictures (although, I don’t think anyone had taught them a lesson on koala’s before because they seemed pretty impressed by my lesson).

Yeah, so after class I opened the package, and then went to tutor. When class ended I went to the night market with Nancy because we were meeting Adam for dinner. Adam brought a group of people from National Hualian University. They were from the English department, so it was nice that they spoke to us in English (unlike the students at Tzu Chi). It was really fun, and they were way nice. They kind of invited us to a graduation party tomorrow, but I think they did it a little jokingly, not thinking that we’d actually want to go, but Nancy and I are like… party? dancing? where and when? Dang shoot! I guess we missed out on that experience. That’s okay, we still have bowling to look forward to tomorrow.

And that was my day… I’m pretty happy with it.

These are the 5 years olds:

These are the 4 years olds:

These are the 3 years olds:

This is Kristy, the preschooler I tutor:

What Happened Wednesday

So my day off wasn’t as busy as I thought it was going to be, but I still didn’t have a chance to go anywhere fun, new, and exciting.

I woke up and went for a run. I tried to push the pace with Nancy. The goal was to do a run where we went 5 minutes at Nancy’s pace and then 2 minutes at my pace. Well, that didn’t work so well. I tried to pick it up just a little for the 2 minutes, but Nancy is a one speed type of girl. But, that’s okay. I only have 2 more weeks of running with her, so I’m not going to leave her behind, I’m going to enjoy her company for as long as I can.

After the run we went to the steamed bun place, but instead of getting tsai poa (stuffed with vegetables), I got pao tza (stuffed with meat). I think I like the vegetable one better, but this one was pretty good too.

I cleaned a little bit once we were done with breakfast. Then I showered and went downstairs to work on putting the music together for graduation. I’m pretty sure that Teacher Michelle has all of the 5 years old music under control, but the music for the 3 and 4 years old presentation was on four different CDs. It was hilarious. Off of one CD, I downloaded “Barbie Girl,” “I Like to Move It,” “Who Let the Dogs Out,” “Macarana,” and “Yellow Submarine.” The words are in English, but they’re sung by Chinese people, and so they don’t sound the same. It makes me laugh.

Then I went to run some errands. I had to go to the train station to pick up tickets to Taipei, then I went downtown to the department store to buy a headset so that I can get skype and call home once Nancy leaves. Next I went to a grocery store to buy peanut butter and then to a bakery for a loaf of bread so that I could have lunch today (I don’t get the school lunch because I don’t work today).

Then I came home and did some lesson planning and worked on getting the craft ready for tomorrow’s lesson. I finished that and had nothing else I had to get done, but there wasn’t enough time to go anywhere so I ended up doing some more cleaning. Yes, when I’m board, I clean. But don’t worry, I also clean when things need to be, I don’t only wait until I’m board.

I read a little but and got a tiny nap (it was more like a rest) in before tutoring, and then I tutored and went out to get a beef crepe for dinner. I wanted dumplings from downtown, but Kaylene didn’t feel like going that far. And, since I didn’t have a strong preference for what to eat, I just went where she went. It was good, so I’m okay with it.

I’m waiting for my next tutoring kid to come and when I’m done with him (at 9pm) Nancy and I will go to the fruit stand. I really need some fruit around this place. I hate that fruit is so expensive, but I can’t really live without it. And it’s not like fruit is expensive compared to the rest of the food in Taiwan (which it is), but it’s even expensive comparing it to US prices. Lame! But it’s not going to stop me, I’m still going to buy it, eat it, and buy some more.

Narnia

I just got back from watching the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. Apparently all this month, movies are half price. So we went to see a movie for 100 NT$ instead of 200 NT$ (so we saw it for $3 instead of $6). We went with Adam (the teacher from last semester) Alicia and her two kids (Alicia is from Hualien University and is who Adam is staying with right now) and Peggy (a friend of Adam's from the university). It was a really good movie, but it's funny because I experienced my first bout of home sickness when walking out. Luckily it didn't last too long because Adam, Nancy, and I started talking. While the movie was playing, I forgot that I was in Taiwan and so when the movie ended and I was thrown out in to a Chinese speaking world, I was a little bit saddened. The funniest part about the whole thing is that I've already been to the movie theater once and I didn't feel home sick after that, it was just today. Well, it had to come at some point, right?

Before the movie Nancy and I went to dinner. Nancy's friend from church had taken her to this one restaurant for lunch where they serve steamed pork. We went there so that I could try something new. It was pretty good, I really liked it and although I'm sure it's not healthy for you, at least it wasn't fried!

Before dinner was tutoring, which went okay. And before that was class. The afternoon class really enjoyed seeing if they could jump as far as a kangaroo (a kangaroo can jump 25 feet, so none of them even came close- but most of them could jump as far as a grasshopper, 3 feet). The five year olds did a much better job at practicing for graduation today. I didn't feel the need to slap any kids around today, so that's a definite improvement from yesterday. (Don't worry, I would never actually slap a kid around, but I do feel like doing it some times.) And my morning class went well considering my internet wasn't working and I couldn't get into the school's library because Yuling was doing something in there this morning.

I actually did wake up this morning and go for a run. It was a hot one this morning, but it did feel good to be out and moving. There was no point in skipping the run yesterday- I was already up, I should have just gone out.

I'm feeling better. I still have a runny nose and my ears are clogged, but it's much better then yesterday. I haven't sneezed nearly as much and my nose isn't as runny. None the less, I did get back from the movies semi late and should end and go to bed. Good night!

Ha Ha

I posted the blog about Green Island and then went back and uploaded my pictures and re posted it. All in one sitting, right (actually the same sitting as now, I just haven't moved for a while). Any who, by the time I had re posted the blog with pictures, my mom had already commented. Nice to know that she is so on top of my blog :o)

Okay, so today is Monday and it did not go so well. I am still sick. I didn't go running this morning. I figured that one, I got enough exercise yesterday (which is my normal day off) that it was okay if I missed and two, I'm sick and need all the rest I can get. Unfortunately sleeping in didn't work super well. I woke up because the sun was up, it was hot, my body is used to waking up at 6am, and everyone else was so freaking noisy.

Practice for graduation did not go well today. I don't recommend giving kids the weekend off when you are scrunched for time to rehearse. I wasn't planning on rehearsing tomorrow but Yuling looked at my lesson plan and told me to just do my science lesson next week and to rehearse with the tomorrow. Okay, less planning for next week works for me!

Lunch time was spent sweltering in our little tin oven. And my afternoon class about zebras wasn't as exciting as I had planned it to be. Oh well. It happens some times.

I was so tired at lunch that I was dreading having to tutor until 6:30pm. And I dreaded it for good reason, I don't have the easy kids on Monday. So I was pretty agitated for the session, but by the end I had brightened up. Poor kids, too bad I didn't brighten up sooner.

I had Nancy pick me up a juice on her way back from tutoring, so luckily I didn't have to go out after tutoring. I hung up my laundry, drank my juice, and I've been blogging ever since. Good thing the recap is almost done and I can go to sleep.

Green Island

Oh gracious. We didn't get home too late last night, but I had had it and I went almost straight to bed. I woke up with a sore throat Saturday morning, so I knew I was getting sick, but I hoped that it wouldn't happen.

The trip as a whole was good, but I've got to say that the owner of the bed and breakfast was terrible. There was so much about the trip that could have been better. And then, I would start to see the benefit to the things that were going wrong, and then something else would come along. So, there was a constant struggle between satisfaction and dissatisfaction on my trip.

Nancy and I actually woke up on time and made it to the train in plenty of time. At the train station, we were met by a lady who drove us to the boat dock and bought us a ticket and showed us where to wait. On the boat I started to get a headache. A little because of the boat and a little because I was sick (remember the sore throat?).

Once we got to Green Island and got off the boat, we were walking around trying to figure out who was supposed to meet us. Um.... nobody had come. One of the guys who owned a scooter rental finally called the bed and breakfast for us and the owner came and picked us up. He took us straight to get bikes. First mistake- no one met us at the dock. Second mistake, we were most definitely supposed to get scooters! Then we went to the bed and breakfast where the owner gave us the tickets for the things we were going to do: we were going snorkeling at 2:00 pm, we could go to the hot springs, we could go to the deer reserve, and he gave us our breakfast ticket. Huh?! Yeah, that's right, apparently it qualifies as a bed and breakfast if both things are included in the price because we had to go to a different restaurant to eat breakfast. Alright, so we were there around 10am, and we weren't snorkeling until 2pm, so we decided to hop on our bikes and explore the island a little. We went off in one direction and stopped to look at the beach a little bit. We kept riding and came to a hill which was hard for Nancy to get up, but we made it and kept driving along the coast. We hit another little hill, and at the top of that there was a pull off. I pulled off and decided to hop the wall and climb out on the lava to get a better look at the lava. I'm not sure if that would be frowned upon or not, but I didn't break anything off and I didn't even explore that far or for that long. Shortly after that we turned around and headed back to get some lunch.

We found a breakfast shop that was still open and I got a tarro roll and a rice dumpling. We also stopped off

and had some ice cream served out of a giant shell. Luke and Kaylene had told us about that. They had seen it, but didn't have a chance to stop and try it, but we did :o) After lunch we went back to the B&B to change and meet the guy for snorkeling. I now know why everyone is so surprised to hear the Nancy and I do things with just the two of us. We saw a bunch of groups of friends who were vacationing on Green Island, and I'm pretty sure that no group of friends had less then 8 people. There was one group of friends that went snorkeling with us, but that means that there were 10 or so of us out there. We put on wet suits and the other people put on live vests as well. The guide had the people hold onto a leash of flotation devices while we were out there too. The water was so warm and so clear. The only bad thing was that it was so salty that every time I tried to dive down to check out the rocks and coral and stuff, and wouldn't make it too far before I was pushed back to the surface. A lot of the fish I had already seen before because they are the same ones they have in Hawaii. There were new ones too though. And, I loved snorkeling in Hawaii, so it's not like I didn't love this too. The guide had brought a bag of moldy bread to feed to the fish. In Hawaii, that's very frowned upon and now I know why. The fish weren't scared of us at all. In fact, when they came up to eat, I would reach my hand out, and I touched a few of them. It felt weird and I felt bad for touching them so I stopped trying.

After snorkeling we went exploring in the opposite direction then we did before lunch. We stopped at the visitor's center and picked up a map. We found our way to the light house and wound our way around the coast where we saw different ports that people used as swimming holes, we found the old prison that is now the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park. (We found it that day, but didn't learn that that was what it actually was until the next day when we went back and a nice couple explained it to us.) We also went exploring on a path that passed through a cemetery and led to a cave, but the cave was tiny and not very exciting.

We headed back because it was getting close to dinner time. On the way back we stopped off at a BBQ place. This place was awesome. You had to pay 250 NT$ (so around $7) but it was unlimited food. You took a bowl into a room with three refrigerators and you picked out raw meat. Then, you took it back to your table and there was a mini fire pit in the middle of your table and so you cooked your own food right there. The down side of that was that since the fire pit was in the middle of your table, it meant that under the table was pretty hot and occasional ashes would fall. Some landed on my foot and I still have a burn mark. We stayed there for a while because it was good food, they were playing relatively good music, and we had nothing better to do. I don't know what half of the stuff I tried was, so I can't be too proud of trying new stuff. Except, I did try pigs blood with rice. It was REALLY sticky, but didn't have much flavor. If I hadn't known what it was, I would have kept eating it. But, because I knew that it was pig's blood, I felt uncomfortable eating it and stopped. I can say that I've tried it though, and if I had to again for some reason, I know that I could because it really wasn't bad.

By the time we got back from dinner, it was pretty dark, but it was only 7pm. We had no idea what there was to do at night and so we decided to walk around to all of the tourist shops. We did a little bit of souvenir shopping and then went back and went to bed a little before 10pm. We were willing to go to bed before too late because we were getting up at 4am so that we could go to the hot springs and watch the sunrise while there. Because the guy hadn't gotten us scooters (oh yeah, we went back down later with our licences and told him in Chinese that we could drive scooters but he told us no) he told us that he would drive us where we needed to go. We told him we wanted to see the sunrise in the hot springs at 4:30am. Guess what? He didn't wake up. I was so upset. I told Nancy that he wasn't showing up and that we had to get a move on it because it looks like we were going to have to spend all day biking the whole island. It was pretty watching the sun slowly light up the island, but there were two things I was really looking forward to about this trip: one, getting to drive a scooter and two, watching the sunrise in the hot springs. Well suck! Both of those did not happen. However, we were able to get there way sooner then I had thought. We left the B&B at 4:45am and got to the hot springs at 5:05am. We had missed the sunrise by no more then 20 minutes. Urg!!!! If I would have known that, I would have just gotten up and left at 4 and not waited for Mr. I own a business and can't keep my promises who didn't show up anyway. But, the sun was still low and hiding behind clouds, so it was beautiful, just not as beautiful as I'm sure it was 20 minutes before hand. We stayed there for half an hour or so, but had more to see and only bikes to see it on so we made a move. Once we left the hot springs we saw the owner of the B&B. He asked some girl if she spoke English and she told us that he wanted us to put our bikes in his car and he would take us back. Well, his car wasn't big enough to put the bikes in so he asked us if we were going to bike back the way we'd come. I pointed in the other direction telling him that we were headed around the island.

So that's where it turned out that it was okay that we didn't have scooters because I felt pretty accomplished to know that I biked around a whole island (the tour book says it's 11 miles around). The guy drove off, but he didn't warn us before hand that right ahead of us, there was a giant mountain that we had to get over. And don't even worry about it, the mountain was honestly a mountain and so it went up and up, with no down hill. We rocked it though. We only had to stop and walk our bikes once and it was only for a few feet. After like, I don't know, let's call it a half hour of riding up hill we hit the top and walked a little way to an over look of a beautiful cove. Then we hit some downhill and our trip went a little faster. We stopped and looked at various sites along the way. The road didn't stay downhill for very long, but it never went straight up ever again. We passed the deer reserve around 7am, but it didn't open until 9. There was absolutely nothing around for us to kill 2 hours with and so we decided to keep going and have the owner drive us back there later. We had to go back to the B&B to ask where the breakfast shop was because we had no idea. It turns out that it was in the area Gonggua which was at least a ten minute bike ride back in the direction we had just come from.

I was pretty amazed though, we left the B&B at 4:45 am, and by the time we got back (before going to breakfast) it was before 8 am. We made it around the whole island and stopped to look at stuff (one place we stopped for 30 minutes and others just 10 minutes) and it took us 3 hours. Go us.

On the way home from breakfast Nancy called out. "Hey Brooke, wait.... blah blah fell off." I didn't hear what happened but I look back and she's holding something kind of big. Her pedal had fallen off. Not just the foot part, but the whole arm. She was not happy!!!! I couldn't help but laugh. After everything that had already happen between yesterday and that morning, I just laughed that there was just one more thing on top of it all. We had leave her bike parked outside of some cafe because there was no way she was getting it back (she tried, and trust me, there was no way she was getting it back). Okay, okay. I don't care what you eat in Asia or how much Chinese you speak.... You are NOT Asian until you can pedal someone on the back of your bike. Guess what? I'm ASIAN!!!!!! We were still pretty far away from the B&B and so we decided to see how hard it is to pedal someone who is sitting on the luggage rack of a bike. Everyone does it in Hualien so I figured we could too. I was laughing so hard the whole time we were riding. No one rides bikes on Green Island, they all ride scooters, so we kept on getting passed by packs of scooters. At one point in time I asked Nancy how come these people weren't impressed by us. Right after I said that, another pack of scooterers rode past and they all smiled/laughed and gave us the thumbs up. One scooter even challenged us to a race (he made the motion of reeving his engine).

We made it back to the B&B alright and we handed the owner the pedal and told him the bike was in Gonggua. He grabbed some people who were checking out and tried to use them as translators. They didn't speak a whole lot of English and they kept on saying the same information over and over. At first the guy told Nancy she was going to have to pay for the bike. When we asked him to call Yuling, he changed his story and told us not to worry about the bike. This whole argument/discussion took place at 9am. Our boat didn't leave until 2:30pm. Guess what he told us we could do until our boat came? We could run around the island- like honestly run. Um, yesterday he said that because he didn't get us scooters he would drive us around but now that we don't even have bikes we have to run?!

Urg. I pedaled Nancy to a swimming hole and then I went to go get stuff out of the basket of the bike. Um crud. The bike was most definitely gone. Good thing there was only a crummy old towel and an empty water bottle in the basket. I rode back to the swimming hole and told Nancy. She wasn't too concerned because we had asked to guy to take us to the bike to go and get it and he kept on telling us he would get it later. We swam for a while and then went back to shower up. When we got up to our room the cleaning lady told us we had to get out of the room. We had never been told a checkout time (Yuling told us this morning that she had forgotten to tell us that checkout was at 10am) and so we had no idea that we were supposed to be out. We took super fast showers and then packed up and got out. Unfortunately we had to be back at the B&B at 2pm so that the owner could drive us to the boat dock. I would have just left on our own because the dock wasn't very far, but Nancy reminded me that he probably wouldn't call the lady and have her pick us up from the dock to take us to the train station unless he dropped us off.

Because we had no bike to get us back to the deer reserve (and even if we did, the hill to get us up there was too steep to want to do anyway), I tried to give the guy back the tickets. He wasn't sure what I was saying at first (although it was in Chinese) and I'm pretty sure at first he told us he wouldn't drive us and then he told us he couldn't give us money for them. Duh, but can't he use them for the next group, there's no point in having the tickets and not using them. But I do still have them and I have no where to use them.

So, around 11am we were out of the B&B with nothing to do and 3 hours to do it. The day was so hot and so we bought nice cold juice and sat in the shade of the store for 20 minutes or so, then we sat on a bench that over looked the water for about an hour. We ended up going back to the B&B half an hour early and the owner had me return my bike and then took us to the dock where we waited and waited.

The boat back took an hour. Luckily the lady did meet us there and drove us back to the train station. Unfortunately we had 2 hours to kill at the train station. On our drive I tried to see if there was anything close to the train station that could fill our time, but there most definitely was not. The train ride was 2 hours long and then we biked home, I made soup for dinner and then I went to bed.

I had the worst headache while I was there. It was due in part by: I'm sick, the sun was intense, the owner of the B&B was a...... very unpleasant, unhelpful person.

So, there were ups and downs to all of it. Green Island itself is a beautiful place where there are some amazing sites to see. Staying at the place we did will ruin the trip and cause you to have a terrible attitude (that is if you are a terribly bitter person who tends to think people are out to get you).

Nancy and I traded off who took there camera where, so I only have pictures from the first day of the trip. Sorry.

WHAT?!

I just finished up my 5th week teaching. It is so crazy that time is going by so quickly. Nancy keeps saying how quickly 6 months went by, and now I can see what she means. It doesn't feel like I've been here that long, but 5 1/2 weeks is nothing to snub your nose at.

Okay, the break down of my day- you ready? I (can you fill in the blank?) went running with Nancy this morning. For breakfast we got the egg crepe with an airy fried bread in the middle. It was good, but it's crazy because it didn't taste like the regular egg crepe, the bread changed everything.

Teaching went well. I'm less worried that we only have 3 more classes to practice for graduation because they did really well today. I'm most excited about my afternoon class. Our theme was summer, if you remember, and so I taught a couple facts about ice cream, and then we made some in a tin can. Well... we attempted to make ice cream. I think that instead of half and half cream Yuling bought whipping cream. And, although we passed it back and forth for 10 minutes, it did not solidify at all. But, the kids still enjoyed it- making it and eating it. I made them line up and open up their mouth and then I dumped some of the liquid goodness into their mouth. They got a kick out of it when I accidentally spilled on people.

Lunch wasn't super eventful. Nancy and I talked to Yuling a little bit about our trip to Green Island tomorrow, and we stayed around a little longer in the lunch room talking to Teacher Steffanie. Other then that, we just talked to each other and got ready for our lessons.

After school I had three tutoring sessions and then I went to pick up dinner at our night market. I came back and since I was the only one home I decided to see if anything was on T.V. I turned it on and "When A Stranger Calls" was on. I'm not sure how much I missed, but I caught enough of it to know that I hadn't missed too much by not seeing it. I was a little worried that I would start hearing noises outside since it was a scary movie and I was alone, but apparently I don't scare too easily and I was absolutely fine. And now Luke and Kaylene are back (perfect timing they came up the stairs right after the movie finished) and so I don't have to worry about creepers.

There are no plans for tonight because Nancy and I HAVE to get sleep before our trip to Green Island. Our train's at 6:15 am again, but we'd prefer to take longer then 7 minutes to get ready for this trip :o)

Thursday

Guess what? Ronald actually did show up to go running today- awkward! It was okay though, because on the bike ride over he went Nancy's pace, and then on the run, he wasn't the fastest thing ever, but we went faster on the way out then we usually do, and then I ran back faster then them. Since they had each other to talk to, I didn't feel bad. So, at least I got a better workout because he came :o)

My first lesson of the day was about stretching, and so it felt good to get some stretching in, seeing as I never do that sort of thing. And in the afternoon we rehearsed the plays they will be doing for graduation. They did do better then Monday, but I counted it out with them, and we only have 4 days of class to practice. Yikes! Let's hope this works. Or, if I'm really worried about it, I will just save the other lessons I've already planned and use up other class times, not just the middle class. Yeah, that could work. We'll see.

We went to Tzu Chi today to volunteer. No, I don't think I'm ever going to actually get a picture of us in those outfits. I don't ever feel the necessity of it because I don't really want proof of the outfits we wear :o) While we were waiting for Director Tsai to pick us up, one of the parents was at the school talking to Yuling, she turned and laughed at us. Sad day. When we got there we watched a news clip about the food crisis that seems to be having a domino effect on many different countries, and then Director Tsai asked us to help the students with the vocabulary of the news report. Ooops. I was watching it, and I thought it was good information and it was pretty interesting, but I thought we were just watching it, I didn't know we were supposed to be taking notes or something. It worked out though, like always- it's not like this is the first time she's put us on the spot.

I'm sad that Nancy and I are going to miss it because we'll be in Green Island, but this Sunday is the Dragon Boat Festival. I heard a little bit about the background of the celebration today because we were eating rice dumplings at lunch. There was a man who wanted to save the country (of Taiwan?) but the king (?) wouldn't let him (or something) and so the man jumped into a river. The people were worried that the man's body would be eaten by the fish (so I wonder if the jump killed him) and so they all took boats out into the river and threw rice dumplings into the water so that the fish would eat the dumplings and not the body. Yeah, sorry, I told you I only heard a little of the story :o) So on Sunday there will be races where guys get into long, elaborate boats and race. I am so excited about Green Island, but I think that this is the only Taiwanese holiday that happens while I'm here, and I won't participate in it. Shucks.

But, part of that story was to lead into what I had for lunch today. It wasn't the greatest I've ever had (although I am way appreciative that they feed us when we go to volunteer, don't get me wrong), but I found out that last time and this time, the soft purple thing I are was eggplant. Huh, go figure, I've had eggplant. But, the rice dumpling that came with lunch was super good. But I guess they only make them around the time of the festival? Or Tzu Chi only eats the around festival time? I hope it's the second one, because I want to find those again, they were scrumptious!

My afternoon lesson was fun because I brought in a picnic basket with food in it so I could teach them what a picnic was and what you need. I was also proud of my craft. Although, that took way too long and the kids were way too wild so my throat got a little sore towards the end, but hey, it happens.

After class I had tutoring and then went with Nancy to pick up some food really quick. We brought it back and ate while she waited for her tutorie to come. And that's been the bulk of my day.

You've got to admit it's gettin' better, gettin' better all the time

My day off went much better today then it has the past two weeks. I was very productive. I got all of my lesson planning for next week done, I cut out papers for the craft I'm doing tomorrow afternoon, I did laundry, and I cleaned a little. Also, around lunch time I went down town to do a little bit of shopping. It turns out that I didn't find anything I wanted. But, I did pick up some cute post cards and so when I got back I decided to write a few letters. Shoot, I probably shouldn't write that because if you don't get one then you'll be sad. But, there were only 4 different kinds of post cards, and I got one of each. Plus, writing takes me forever (honestly, it takes at least an hour for me to blog every day, imagine writing too many letters in one evening) and so I only wrote a couple.

I had tutoring for 20 minutes right after school, then straight from that I had my tutoring class. Then I had a break to go to our night market and eat some nasty dumplings that weren't worth their price, and then I tutored from 8-9. After my last tutoring I took Nancy with me to the bakery, the grocery store, and the fruit stand because I'm teaching about picnics tomorrow afternoon and I decided it would be good if I picked up actual food to put into my picnic basket.

We chatted with the fruit stand boys for a while. We found out that the 33 year old has two kids (6 years old and 2 years old) and that the 27 year old doesn't know English because when he was in school he was a bad boy. And they found out that we don't have boyfriends. Why is it that guys always ask us that question? But we didn't stay too long and we were back by 1o something which is good because we didn't leave here until 9:30. But, it's now most definitely past 11 because we sat outside and talked. But at least when we stay up late and talk here, we're already home and don't have to bike back.

And... that was my day. Productive and fun. Who thought that could ever happen?

Dang shoot- I forgot a story. It looks like I won't be going to bed as early as I'd hoped. So, remember how Ronald was supposed to run with us this morning? Well he didn't. He did come, but it was too late, but when we got back from our run, he was on MSN messager and he had written to Nancy to tell her he was sorry. We got on and were talking to him for a little while. He was so upset that he had broken his promise and he kept saying he didn't know how to say sorry. Oh good, the story isn't as long as I thought. Good night!

Technology Troubles Tuesday

Today was frustrating because the internet wasn't really working. And, when I use the internet to help me plan every lesson, it's not a good thing when it doesn't work. Last night I wanted to come home way before the time we did because I needed to gather pictures of frogs for my morning lesson, but when we got home so late I though, "eh, I'll just do it quickly tomorrow after our run." Well, after our run, the internet wouldn't load and therefore I had to do some pretty fast improvisations. Actually, come to think about it, I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants for all of my lessons today. So for the frog one I just found a Chinese book with a whole bunch of pictures of frogs. Then, for my 10:40 class I was going to look up facts about fruits and vegetables and look at the food pyramid because June is fruit and vegetable month (in America, but hey). Well, the internet still wasn't working so I decided that I was going to pretend like you need 2 servings of fruits and 2 servings of vegetables each day. Then, I had to pretend that one serving of vegetables was equal to one cup of cut vegetables and that one small apple was equivalent to one serving of fruit. I had carrots that I could cut up, but I didn't have an apple. So, 10 of my 40 minute break in between classes was spent trying to get the internet to work, 25 of those minutes were spent riding to two different places to find a freaking apple, 3 minutes were spent cutting the carrot and the apple, and then I had 1 minute to get downstairs and start teaching. But afternoon class was the best. Our theme this week for the afternoon classes is summer. So I wanted to play water balloon games. So, I ended up talking about how to use water to keep yourself cool in the summer for 30 minutes. How I was able to have a 30 minute lesson on water balloons is beyond me, but I was seriously impressed. But, yesterday and today were rainy, and so we had to stay inside and I was not about to start tossing water balloons around inside so I had to improvise and just blow up the water balloons with air and modify the games because the balloons don't fling as well when there's not water in them.

Lunch break wasn't anything exciting. I was able to write yesterday's blog at lunch, but right after the internet stopped working and so I couldn't look up any pictures of little kids playing in sprinklers or anything, so I knew my afternoon lesson was going to suck and there was nothing I could do about it, so I took a nap. It was well deserved too, because I did not get much sleep last night. But I hate naps because I don't want to wake up from them ever. I set my alarm so I would wake up in 40 minutes and be up 30 minutes before class. Nope, I most definitely hit the snooze button until I had slept for an hour and had 10 minutes left before class. Ahhh. It felt so good! I love the sleep button.

I tutored today- oh yeah, thanks for the bribing candy you sent me Dana, it makes tutor sessions easier. And since it's Tuesday, Nancy and I can take as much time as we want for dinner because she doesn't have to be back for late night tutoring sessions. So, we needed to go to the train station to exchange our train tickets so that we can stay on Green Island longer this weekend and then out to eat. But, Nancy's bike broke yesterday- as in the chain fell off. We got the chain back on, but she's scared to ride it anywhere. So we decided that she would walk to the night market while I rode to the train station and then I would meet her at the night market and we'd find something to eat there. So I did, I went to the train station and Nancy actually got a ride to the night market with Yuling's husband, Joseph, who happened to be on his way home when she was heading out.

She thought that sushi sounded good and so I decided to get that. But right as I was paying she decided that she was going to try something else. Again, I was pleasantly surprised with the sushi I got. I tried all different ones tonight, let's see if I can remember. One had a slice of shrimp on top, one had crab, one had tiny yellow fish eggs, I thought one of them was going to be really spicy but it turns out that it wasn't topped with spice it was topped with little pieces of fish jerky, one had black beans on top, and the last one had a slice of some type of fish on top but I don't know what the fish was.

And of course, because we were at the night market we went and talked with Ronald. We didn't stay as long tonight, but it was still way longer then I wanted. Again, it's funny to stay and talk with him, but because he is the only one who is allowed to touch the blenders, he is always busy making juice and I sit there bored, or I start singing preschool songs with Nancy. But I think that somehow we convinced Ronald to come on our run with us tomorrow morning. It's a promise, so I'm positive he's coming. I think all countries other then the U.S. take promises seriously. We'll see how it goes :o)