4th of July Eve

Okay, you guys are going to think that I'm a slacker, not posting yesterday. But, I promise that I wrote yesterday's blog AND did the Thailand entry last night, but my internet was acting up.

Today went well. Natalie's bike is fixed and so we were able to ride our bikes to the trail and run on it. Seeing as Natalie is having a VERY rough time adjusting, I decided not to point out the giant spider that we ran under. I don't know when it'll be safe enough to let her know how big the spiders get, but I know that her third day is not the time to do it. We went to breakfast, but she just grabbed a sandwich with ham, egg, and cucumber. She's really not that adventurous or willing to dive into the food so I'm trying to be very careful of where I take her.

My lessons went well today. I taught about shoes for half an hour, and the amazing part is, the kids were attentive the WHOLE time. Who knew shoes were all that exciting? My middle lesson was on the "everyday activity" of going to the movies. That one was sweet because I taught about buying a ticket and buying a snack and then for the last 10 minutes of class we watched the beginning of Alice in Wonderland. Ha ha, I hadn't initially planned on letting them watch a movie, but I had time to kill, and it was completely relevant.

For lunch, it was off to Tzu Chi. Luke, Kaylene, and I went. I figured that Natalie probably shouldn't be thrown into any more new things just yet (she agreed, it's not like I just cut her off, don't worry). The group is smaller now and much more social. Kaylene says that after her and Luke took a trip with them to Taichung, they've really opened up. There is an English camp on Saturday, and Luke, Kaylene, and I are all going to help out and so today was a practice day for that. Luke gets to teach a class on calligraphy, Kaylene gets to teach a class on flower arrangements, and somehow I got stuck teaching about recycling. Alone. LAME!!!! Plus, I have to memorize a script for the recycling and a script for some other thing I'm helping out with. Oh, don't worry about it- I got the two scripts today around noon time, I teach all day tomorrow, but I'm supposed to have the scripts memorized by Saturday morning. Yeah, thanks for the advanced notice. (Note the sarcasm there, I know it doesn't come across as well in typing, but trust me, it's there!)

My afternoon class was about pineapples. The craft we made was paper flower leis. The connection there is that Hawaii is the number one producer of pineapples, Hawaii is also famous for hula dancers and leis. During the second rotation of that class, I was telling the kids that Hawaii makes the most pineapples in the world. Teacher Stephanie decides to chime in with how Hawaii really isn't the world's largest producer, Taiwan is. Uhhhhh..... really?! She told me that twice, and I think the second time she was just letting me know that the pineapples in Taiwan are from Taiwan and not from Hawaii. Okay, so she misunderstood what I was saying a little bit. But now I wonder if what she told me about Taiwan and mangoes in my yesterday's lesson was right or not. Oh well.

After school I brought down my supplies and I decorated the classroom for tomorrow. I spent a lot of time hanging up all decorations I received in packages and I'm scared that somehow it's going to get destroyed before class even starts tomorrow. My whole day is planned around the 4th of July, so it better last! I'm pretty excited, even though I haven't fully solidified what I'm going to teach. But when do I ever really solidify it anyway?

I was finally able to show Natalie the grocery store and bakery today. After that we headed out to our night market for some juice and then to the down town night market for dumplings and then to the beach to eat it all. Awww I was in desperate need of the peacefulness of the beach.

On the way back I had to stop at 3 fruit stands to find a small watermelon. My last lesson tomorrow is on watermelon (a very typical summer/4th of July treat) and I'm going to talk about how it's my mom's tradition to cut the watermelon into a basket. Um, the watermelons around here are huge and the small watermelons are the yellow ones, but it's not their season yet. Luckily one stand did have a couple small ones and I was able to get it and bring it back in my little bike basket. Unfortunately, because it's not the season, the watermelon I bought wasn't very good and as soon as I stuck the knife in, it split where ever it wanted. So, my basket is not as pretty as Mommy makes it, but if I turn it just right so that one particular spot is facing forward, you can't really tell that it's cracked.

And after cutting the watermelon I checked my e-mail and Yuling (pseudo mom from Thailand) had finally sent me the pictures. She did it through her kodak order and there were 560 pictures. I didn't even make it through all them and I don't know how to save them for myself. As soon as I figure it out, you can see them too. But until then, I'm sorry, you're just going to have to keep on waiting.