Fire Chickens!

Since Thanksgiving is coming up, we devoted part of our class time this week to special Thanksgiving activities. Also, since Fulbright wanted photos of us co-teaching, I happen to have photo documentation of these activities for your enjoyment (photos by Jeffrey, the YMPS academic dean)!

First there was some 'splainin to do, being as Taiwanese children don't know much about Thanksgiving:



Me: "And what do Americans like to eat on Thanksgiving?" (hint hint, look at the giant picture behind me)
Students: "Chicken!"
Me: "No, but close..."
Students: "Huoji!"
Me: "Yes! How do you say that in English?"
The funny thing about turkey in Chinese is that the Chinese word for turkey, huoji, literally means "fire-chicken." There was always some smart kid in my class who knew the word "turkey," but I kind of prefer the literal translation myself.

Then we made hand turkeys! I showed them a paper one that I had made first, and then I demonstrated my hand turkey technique up on the board. Despite the fact that I had JUST shown them an actual completed hand turkey that I made, they were totally amazed when the hand-thing I was making on the board turned out to be a turkey. One class even applauded!



Then it was time for the kids to make their own hand turkeys. I was quite surprised by how meticulous they were about it! I mean, it took me about 5 seconds to trace my hand satisfactorily, but the students were very careful, and would erase and redo it if they thought their hand didn't look good enough.

Peter and Melody beginning their hand turkeys:

Side note: the boy on the left, Peter, has always been kind of a space cadet during class, and never seemed to understand what was going on. Then two weeks ago, he started coming to class wearing glasses. I asked him about it yesterday, and it turned out he is kind of blind without them. What was he doing before, I'd like to know! Perhaps these things are related in some way?




A lot of the kids were taking their time so much that they didn't quite finish their turkeys in class, which is a shame, because then I could have shown you the alien turkey or the turkey with mushrooms for wings. One girl came to visit our classroom after school, and examining my example turkey more carefully, asked Patty if in fact she hadn't been supposed to make all of the fingers into heads!

Although some kids made really crazy things, a lot of them modeled their turkeys pretty closely after my example turkey. Each student had to write "I am thankful for ____" above their hand turkey, and some of them just copied mine verbatim, which was silly because mine said "I am thankful for my students." One girl was just confused about what "students" meant, and after talking to her a little bit I helped her change it to say "I am thankful for my classmates." My other student Goofy (yes, that's his name, although he spells it "Gofy") was just being silly, and when I pointed out that he didn't have students, he changed it to this:

Thanks, Goofy.

A lot of the turkeys turned out pretty special, for various reasons:

Sometimes you just forget some of those middle letters.


It's a little hard to see, but if you look at the middle of the turkey, you will notice that this particular turkey is actually celebrating "Manksgiving," a lesser-known, more testosterone-fueled November holiday.


I think this is actually a pretty cool turkey, despite the excellent spelling of Thanksgiving.


My student Michael asked Patty how to say "grandmother" in English so he could make this sweet little guy. Michael is very small and super adorable!


Lightning turkey!


Extra-colorful turkey!


Extra-perfect suckup turkey! Haha, just kidding, Amy.

Mmmm all this turkey is making me tired. I'll leave you with a shot of my beloved Patty:

All these turkey shenanigans can be so perplexing! Must be time for a nap.

Assorted Pictures

Some things that I wrote about before but didn't provide pictures of, plus some other random little things.

Baiyang Waterfall Trail in Taroko Gorge National Park:


Taking pictures in a photo booth with Maya and Taiwanese teenagers:




My fierce pirate Halloween costume! The best part was that the students kept asking me if my anchor tattoo was real. Actually I drew it myself with a sparkly blue gel pen, but close enough:

(it's an attractive face I'm making, I know)

Christmas started in early November at the coffee shop near my school:


My school courtyard on a nice day:


Giving a talk on American campus culture with super translator Eric! I am so official:


And just for fun...my student Sandy (center) came in one day wearing a striped shirt, striped pants, and striped socks, and I just had to take a picture:

And there's soooo much more cuteness where that came from...I love my students!

There's a lot of cuteness in my life

I've been making more of an effort recently to get up and get to school early so I have some buffer time to prepare before my classes start. One pleasant side effect of this was that I discovered that there's a school dance competition that takes place first period (not all year long, just recently). The day I happened upon it was the day that all of the 2nd grade classes were competing against each other. Each class had its own little dance, and all of the students had costumes that they apparently had made themselves out of household materials. Behold:

Garbage bag skirts decorated with stickers! Little white hats that are really just upside-down paper bowls! Giant plastic blue bow ties! Socks with faces drawn on them worn on the hands! To me, this class easily took the cake in the costume department.

This class was less coordinated in their dress...the girls in the first row have leis, the boys in the second row have cowboy hats with flowers on them, and the children in the back rows have large cardboard fish strapped to their foreheads. The first two rows also have garbage-bag loincloths (blue for boys and pink for girls, of course). Also note that some kids in the back row have brooms, which they danced with during the performance. You can't say they aren't resourceful!

Also in the performance vein, this past Tuesday my Little Angels class was scheduled to perform a song in English on the morning TV show that is broadcast to the whole school. We voted in class to sing "Boss of Me," the Malcom in the Middle theme song, and I made some posters for them to hold up during the instrumental break in the song. We held a quick extra practice session the day before the performance, and things were good. On the day of the performance, the kids were really nervous, and they couldn't get our music to work until the very very last minute before we went on! Despite their anxiety, the kids did a really great job, and the gal who taped the performance said she would get me a copy...we'll see if that really happens.

I had kind of forgotten the possibility that the kids might be nervous about performing, because at this point in my life, I've been in enough performances that I don't really get nervous about being in front of an audience. That's why I said yes when AIT (the American Institute in Taiwan) asked me to give a talk on American Campus Culture at the American Shelf, a special section of the Baoju Library. I didn't exactly know what I was supposed to do, but I've had pretty good luck with agreeing to do things where I don't exactly know what I'm doing (how do you think I ended up teaching English in Taiwan?) and then sort of figuring it out as I go along. They told me to send my talking points to the translator beforehand so he could prepare, which was good because it ensured that I actually prepared my talk before the last minute. The talk was on Wednesday, and it was an interesting time. I don't mind public speaking, but I've never had a translator before...it's kind of weird, because the audience doesn't react to what you're saying at the same time as you actually say it. Except the one guy with really good English who laughed riotously at anything that was vaguely funny. I loved that guy. Eric the translator was really sweet, too...he made everything I said sound so much better (and, you know, so much more Chinese). The best part was when I was talking about eating on campus and I mentioned the concept of the "freshman 15." For their reference, I said that 15 pounds was about 6 or 7 kg. When Eric translated, this turned into "6.8 kilograms." He was not kidding about preparing himself beforehand. A number of other times, I noticed that things from my notes that I had forgotten to actually say made their way into the Chinese translation. Eric, you are the man. At the end, we had a Q & A session, and they gave me oranges. It was a good time.

One of the reasons that I haven't posted much recently is that a lot of things haven't been that exciting...in school I spent the better part of the past 2 weeks doing English Village stuff, which was a little bit lame. First I had to teach my students a dialogue about a hotel, and the next week I had to go pretend to be the hotel receptionist and act out the dialogue with them. The only good part was the fact that they had to perform the dialogue in groups of 4, which gave me a little room to mess around with them. Example:

Me: "What kind of room would you like?"
4 students, in unison: "A double, please."
Me: "But you have four people! A double is only for two!"

A lot of students were boggled by this deviation from the dialogue, but some of them gave me some good, inventive answers. Many changed their request to 2 doubles, some told me "it's okay, we are so small" or "he will sleep on the floor," but my absolute favorite was the kid who told me he wanted "a fourple." Not quite, kid, but points for effort. And for cuteness!

On the subject of cuteness...as you may recall, earlier this semester I taught the English Angels to do Y.M.C.A. My dad had been digitizing some of our old home videos, and he found a video of me doing Y.M.C.A. at a wedding when I'm about 7 years old, so he sent it to me. I took it into school on Thursday and showed the Little Angels, and they couldn't believe that the small fuzzy blonde person was me. There was a lot of "Teacher, so cute!" and "Teacher, that is YOU???" Many students also wanted to know about the little boy running across the screen, and were amazed when I explained that it was my little brother, who is now thiiiiis tall, and has a beard! Experience small Rebekah and Luke for yourself:


In other news, today I managed to buy a pair of pants that, in spite of being Taiwanese, still manage to a) actually fit me and b) not have a single rhinestone on them!!! I know, I couldn't believe it either.

Taiwanese Wedding, featuring Principal Dragon!

A while ago, all of the Fulbrights got invited to the wedding of the son of the principal at San Min, the school where our main office is and where I work at English Village. I agreed to go, but I had kind of forgotten about it until this morning when Billy asked me if I was going to the wedding. I took a peek at my invitation and realized it was today! Ha. Good thing I didn't have anything else to do!

So this evening around dinnertime, six of us got mildly fancied up and went to Principal Lin's son's wedding. This is very different from going to a Western wedding. For one thing, wedding dress is less formal here. Suits and fancy dresses are not necessary. Also, usually if you attend a wedding in America, you are presumably a friend or relative of the bride or groom. The only encounter I had ever had with either of these parties before was the one time during orientation when we were leaving San Min and we ran into them taking some wedding pictures outside of the school. For another thing, in Taiwan the wedding pictures don't happen on the wedding day...the bride and groom spend lots of time before the wedding getting dressed up in all kinds of fancy outfits and taking lots and lots of pictures in different settings. Also, there is no gift registration to help you pick out some nice kitchen implements for the happy couple, because in Taiwan you just give them money in a nice red envelope. Not too complex, except you have to be careful about the amount you give to make sure that it is lucky. Even numbers are good, but you don't want a number including "4" because 4 in Chinese sounds like death. We gave $1200, which various Taiwanese people assured me is an appropriately lucky amount.

The event that we went today didn't include a ceremony, nor was there any dancing or anything. There were some speeches and a slideshow, but mainly there was eating. It took place in a giant hall full of tables, and you pretty much stay at your table the whole time. At some point, the bridal party comes around to all the tables and toasts everybody. They appeared to be using cranberry juice, which was probably wise given the number of tables.

The meal was 12ish courses, and featured a lot of things that I didn't know exactly what they were or how to eat them. I snagged a thing that looked kind of like a sweet potato chip, only to be informed by Shana as I bit into it that it was made of compressed fish roe. Let's be honest: it was gross. I was relieved when the desserty courses came, because they had far less questionable contents. Although there was the fruit soup that had weird white things in it (a kind of seaweed or fungi, I would guess) that supposedly would make me beautiful, as I was informed by the helpful man sitting next to me.

Dinner was a bit of an awkward time in general, especially because our table had six Americans and 2 Taiwanese couples who seemed fairly averse to talking to us. The Taiwanese couples didn't even really talk to each other. It was only the one guy who talked to us at all. So that was awkward, but the awkward highlight of the evening was when the principal of my school came over to our table.

To explain: I can't remember if I've said much about him before, but the principal of my school is a CRAZYPANTS. His English name is Dragon (he picked it himself!), and he is generally incoherent in English and not much better in Chinese. Even the other teachers at my school acknowledge that his Chinese isn't very clear. He came over to our table while one of the Taiwanese guys was gone, and *borrowed* his wine glass to toast all of us. Seeing our confusion at his original mixed-up toast, he clarified with "happy! nice!" and a thumbs-up. There were a couple of these toasts in a short period of time. Then he poured all of the wine left at our table into Dr. Phil's glass and made him drink. With our table out of wine, he disappeared momentarily and then reappeared with another bottle of wine, apparently snagged from a different table. More toasts all around. Did I mention that Dragon is looking pretty pink at this point? I ask him if the bride is a teacher at Yang Ming, because I thought I had heard someone say that. He said no, it's the groom who is a teacher at Yang Ming. Then he says that I can be the bride of Yang Ming. I'm a little confused by this. He clarifies, and it turns out that he means he thinks I will be the next person from Yang Ming to get married. Oooooookay. Then he goes on about my boyfriend, mispronouncing his name so thoroughly that I would never have known he was trying to say Gered if someone else didn't guess it. He reminds me that Gered is tall and slim, and pantomimes this. I'm doing the smile-and-nod thing here. It is basically a necessity in any conversation with my principal. He toasts me with a ganbei(lit. "dry cup"), which means I have to finish my glass of wine. Fortunately there isn't much in it. Then, he inexplicably asks me if I want to marry a Taiwanese man. Not the next question I would have expected. I tell him I wasn't planning on it. He asks me when I'm leaving Taiwan, and when I say June, he tells me that I should stay here, because I can get all the men. Super. With a lot more thumbs-up action, Dragon tells Dr. Phil that I am very good and that the students and the teachers all like me. "The boy teachers like you," he says to me, by way of clarification. He's still sitting in the other man's seat...why hasn't the other guy come back yet? Dragon has been at our table for a while at this point and everybody is feeling very awkward. To be honest, I am kind of enjoying myself, because it is a hilarious kind of awkward. There are some more toasts, and Dragon attempts to bond with Dr. Phil a little bit. Dr. Phil looks completely overwhelmed.

Several times during this extensive and sometimes painfully awkward conversation, it looks like Dragon is about to leave, but each time it turns out to be a false hope. Finally he comes over to me to put the final touches on what has been a long and hilarious conversation. He tells me once again how great I am, and how the other teachers all like me, and I assure him that I like them a lot as well. He tells me that the students all think I am the most beautiful, and does a little impression of them for my benefit. Another great part of this is that when he talks about me in Chinese, he gets my Chinese name wrong every time, calling me Bei li ka instead of Li bei ka. I feel that since he knows that my English name is Rebekah, it shouldn't be too hard to keep my Chinese name in order. Apparently this is untrue.

Finally, after a couple glasses of wine and an amazing amount of awkward, Dragon departed from our table, and the night was henceforth quite uneventful. The End.

Black Person Toothpaste

Observation 1: Taiwanese people like white skin. The whiter, the prettier; that is our philosophy here.
Observation 2: While they care a lot about their skin color, Taiwanese people don't seem to be nearly as invested in having straight, white teeth, as far as I can tell by looking at them.

True fact that, given these observations, strikes me as slightly unusual: The most ubiquitous brand of toothpaste around these parts is Heiren Yagao, which translates as "black person toothpaste." Literally. (Although the English brand name on the box is "Darlie." You can't fool me!)

Upon further inquiry, I learned that there is a stereotype among Taiwanese people that black people have very white teeth. I guess it's not that unreasonable, if you consider it relative to skin tone.

For your own examination, a box of Black Person Toothpaste:

How about that guy on the left? Does he or does he not remind you of the stereotypical vaudevillian blackface look? It's enough to make me feel a little bit weird.

For the record, other than the cultural preference for pale skin, I've never heard anything from a Taiwanese person to suggest that they actually harbor any kind of serious negative opinions about black people. Also, I have to confess that I myself own a tube of Black Person Toothpaste...I was in urgent need of toothpaste, and it was the only kind they had at 7-11 in the big tube. Plus it guarantees whiter teeth in 14 days! But still, Taiwan. Maybe we should class it up a little bit here and drop the racial stereotypes.

Obamarama!

So of course this week in my classes we had to have a little American Culture Time and talk about the American election, with occasionally hilarious results. Here is a typical dialogue from my Tuesday classes:

Me: Does anybody know what's happening in America today?
Students:..................(someone says something in Chinese about picking a new President)
Me: Riiiiight, a presidential election! Who knows who the President of Taiwan is?
S: Ma Ying-jeou!
Me: Okay, and who is the President of America?
S: OBAMA!!!!
Me: Ummmm who is the President of America RIGHT NOW?
S: ...............................
(finally someone yells "Bu shi!" which is an excellently silly Chineseification if I do say so myself)
Me: Right, George Bush. And who are the two men who want to be President?
S: OBAMA!! OBAMA OBAMA!!!
Me: Okay, right, Obama is one; who is the other one?
S: ..............................
(finally I get a little "Mai ken," which is apparently what they call McCain)
S: OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA!!!!!

The moral of the story is that Taiwanese elementary schoolers are totally in the tank for Obama. As far as I can tell, this is primarily because his name is easy and fun to say. Can't argue with that! In general, I was impressed by the amount that my kids knew about American politics. Take a class of average American 5th graders and see if any of them know who the candidates for President or Prime Minister or anything are in any other country. I know that Taiwan is little and America is big and important, but still. Good job, Taiwanese kids, is what I say. I asked them what they knew about the candidates and this is what they could tell me:
-McCain is old
-he has white hair
-Obama is black
-Obama is handsome (this comment surprised me because everybody in Asia knows white skin is prettier)
-Obama is "old," "young," or "so-so," depending on who you ask

In my smartie band class today, I tried to explain that at 47, Obama is quite young for a U.S. President, and one little kid piped up in protest, "but Teacher, I am ten!" I guess he has a point. Also it was really cute.

Probably my most Obama-riffic student is my girl Tina. Tina is tall and very friendly and wears all pink all the time. I have her for two classes a week, and every time she sees me she comes up and stands like 6 inches away and tells me, "hello, teacher!" followed by whatever sentence she has been practicing to say to me. Our last unit was on feelings, and on Tuesday Tina came up to me at the beginning of class and told me, "Teacher, I feel great and excited." Tina's English isn't that good, but out of all of my students she is one of the most motivated to speak English. This seems to spring from the fact that Tina is crazy about me. Tina is also crazy in general. She hadn't heard of Obama before Tuesday, but when she heard his name she just couldn't let go of it. A brief transcript of our conversation:
Tina: OBAMA! OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA!
Me: Yes, Tina, his name is Obama.
Tina: Obama is Obama and Obama. (her exact words)
Me: Right...hey Tina, what day is today? (our current unit is about days of the week)
Tina: OBAMA!
Me: Umm...well maybe tomorrow will be Obama day (because of course election night in America was on Wednesday in Taiwan).
Tina: OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA!!!!!
Me: Never mind.

Needless to say, Tina was sufficiently delighted to give me the answer when I asked her this morning who won the election (although a classmate had to translate the question for her).

As for me, it's been kind of interesting to experience a U.S. election from abroad. I didn't have class Wednesday morning, so I was able to keep track of the election results as they were coming in, but it was just me, waking up early on my morning off to drowsily watch CNN in my pajamas. It took the calling of Ohio for Obama to really wake me up, and by the time I was showered and dressed, California was coming in for real and it was all over, officially. It was so hard to believe that after the seemingly endless months of campaigning, the moment had finally come, and it was over, just like that. Very little pomp or ceremony around here...nobody was running out to celebrate in the streets. Nobody was even there to high five. So with my own little self, I spoke my thoughts to the television and did a little democracy dance around the living room. Later, I talked to Luke on Skype and we watched McCain's concession speech together from opposite sides of the world. It was cool.

Full disclosure: I voted for Obama. I think he's an intelligent and respectable guy, with generally good priorities, and the kind of leader that the country needs right now. He channeled a little FDR in his victory speech, and I think he's got more where that came from. But I have to say, McCain's concession speech was all kinds of classy. I was totally impressed. I think he'll be a lot better off just being John McCain than he was when he was trying to please all the different factions of the Republican Party. And that's about as much politics as this blog can handle...over and out!

My Legs Have Become Suddenly More Delicious

I'm starting to think that my legs must have become suddenly more delicious recently, because all of a sudden the number of bug bites I've been getting has increased exponentially. There was one time when I looked down and noticed that I had acquired seven new bug bites on my left shin since the last time I had checked. Presumably it is my most delicious region.

My life has been very busy in recent days, hence the lack of blogging. Last Saturday in particular was pretty crazy...in the morning I went with Maya and some Taiwanese high schoolers who she met another time to see an Indian movie about field hockey. It was very long and pretty awesome, enough to make me a little nostalgic about India despite the fact that my actual Indian experience was not so favorable most of the time. Also there was lots of girl power, and who can't get behind that? Anyway, after 2+ hours of movie, we went and got some lunch, and afterwards pondered what to do. The answer was, obviously, go take silly pictures in those silly Asian photo booths. After giving my face-making muscles a full workout, I grooved on over to the Kaohsiung Arena to attend an unspecified "athletic event" that the Kaohsiung Bureau of Education had given us tickets to. It turned out to be an opening ceremony for the Taiwan National Games, which seems to be a bit of a mini version of the World Games (which Kaohsiung is hosting in July), which are sort of a silly, more obscure version of the Olympics. The World Games have these silly little mascots (reminiscent of the Olympic Friendlies) that for some reason put in quite an appearance at the National Games ceremony. My guess is that Kaohsiung has invested a lot of money in the World Games mascots, so they wanted to get plenty of use out of them? Nobody in Taiwan really seems to be that interested (or even aware of) the National Games, so I'm sure nobody would notice if they just borrowed the World Games mascots a little bit, right?

So the ceremony featured, among other things: bleachers and bleachers of elementary schoolers who had been trained to wave pom poms and flags in different patterns (they did the wave a lot), a band that played some classical Chinese music and, inexplicably, a medley of American cartoon theme songs (Looney Tunes, the Simpsons, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, lots of other things I can't think of), cheerleaders, and a truly amazing dance performance by a huge horde of the World Games bubble-people mascots. Please appreciate (and note that the background music is "Hi Ho" from Snow White):



The dance move where they all fall down is by far my favorite part. This is why I love Asia.

Towards the end of the ceremony there were fewer dancing bubble-people and more processions of athletes and speeches in Chinese, so it got kind of lame. But afterwards things were fun again, because we went to Teresa's restaurant for dinner and salsa dancing! Teresa owns a (kind of) Spanish restaurant that we went to one other time...we were surprised to meet a native Spanish speaker in Kaohsiung, so it was only a little bit surprising when Gered started taking Spanish classes and she turned out to be the teacher. Apparently she also teaches flamenco. It seems that Teresa is a one-woman crusade to bring Spanish culture to Kaohsiung.

Anyway, we were taught salsa by a guy named Diego, who was very nice and seemed to know what he was doing, except he definitely had his own rhythm that was not at the same speed as the music, so trying to dance to the music and trying to follow Diego were kind of conflicting purposes. We had a good time learning some salsa moves, although later in the night the party sort of degenerated into whatever kind of dancing you felt like doing, which was fun too.

That was also the night that Gered lost his wallet at 1 am...he dropped it in the cab that we took home. Fortunately he had just taken his money out to pay the cab driver, but it still had important cards in it, so I asked the nice cashier man in 7-11 who to call, and he was like oh there is a number where they broadcast messages to the taxis; I can give it to you so you can call. Then he took a look at my face and was like aaaactually I will just call them for you, okay? Except then they didn't pick up, so he gave me the number to call the police, and I actually called them myself (phone conversations in Chinese are lots harder than face-to-face ones, so I felt pretty good about doing this successfully), and in a little bit a bunch of cops came to talk to us. First two cops came on motorcycles, then a car, then some more motorcycles. It was a big ol' party. At one point some other foreigners saw us talking to the cops and came to ask if we needed help. Sweet of them. In the end, we successfully reported the lost wallet, but it hasn't turned up in the week since, so I think it was a lost cause. Although today I saw the same cashier at 7-11 and he asked me about it very concernedly. So nice!

Tuesday was a big emotional rollercoaster at school. My first couple of classes were pretty good, but then I had English Angels after lunch, and they were just awful. Nobody was listening, very few kids seemed like they were taking our activity seriously, and everything was loud and disrespectful and generally derailed. I was trying to deal with it for a while, but towards the end of class it got to be too much. I gave an angry little speech about how they became English Angels voluntarily and if you don't want to participate properly then DON'T COME and then everybody had to put their head down on their desk and be quiet for the remainder of class. Which is what the kids who aren't in English Angels have to do during nap time, so I didn't feel too bad about it. I was still really angry when class was over, but when I went to teach my afternoon classes I made a big effort to not act angry, because I didn't want to take it out on them. I felt better pretty soon, but I was feeling a little apprehensive, because I had scheduled an extra-help class for the last period.

Since our midterms were last week, I had analyzed the midterm grades for all of my classes and broken them down by score. Out of my 310 kids, 19 failed their midterm, so those 19 were assigned to come in last period for extra help. Now, I had done an extra help thing the week before, and that worked really well, but these kids were the ones at the absolute bottom of the barrel, so I was concerned that they were going to be the ones who just didn't care or something. I also thought that they might feel humiliated or resentful at being sent to what was essentially a remedial English class. Thankfully I was wrong on both counts.

One of my boys showed up way early to our extra help session and just sort of wandered around the classroom. I asked Patty if he was embarrassed to be at extra help and she said no, he was really excited to come. This made me feel better, and when the other students arrived they seemed to feel the same way. Of course, they stared at me with total incomprehension when I said just about anything to them in English, but we can work on that. I was planning to try to squeeze in as much of the first two chapters' material as I could, but it turned out that first we needed to work on pronouncing our English names. A lot of students didn't understand the question, "what's your name?" and when I asked in Chinese they couldn't always remember it. Some of these students were ones that I had assigned names to earlier, but my names were kind of difficult for them. Students often get their English names from cram school, so the students without English names are usually the ones who don't go to cram school and consequently, the ones who are kind of behind.

Apologies to my cousins: I had to rename Natalie and Nathan. Natalie couldn't remember her name (too many syllables!), and Nathan couldn't pronounce his. I ended up renaming him Mason because that's how he pronounced Nathan, and Mason is a valid name, so why not? I would rather have the kids have names that they feel comfortable saying, because then they won't be as afraid to speak (I hope!). In any case, I think the kids kind of treasure having names that their teacher gave them personally. I wonder if they'll still remember their names on Monday. Even if they don't, I generally call my students by name if I can, so if they can't remember their name now they ought to after I call them by it a zillion times.

My little boy who cried during Jeopardy came to extra help! He's a shy little guy, but I have a lot of affection for him. I named him Josh.

On my way home on Tuesday, I thought about the wide range of abilities that I deal with at school. It's interesting to me that the most advanced students are the ones who are the biggest pain for me to work with, whereas I kind of love working with the kids who are incredibly behind. This surprises me a bit, because as a student I was always in the former group, so I might have expected to like those students better. This next week I'm starting another session of extra help, and I'm really excited about that, whereas in English Angels I have to start teaching them how to talk about the school. I am so enthused.

This past Friday was Halloween and Gered's birthday, and I had intended to spend my Sunday preparing for Halloween and scouting out where to get the intended birthday present (balcony plants!), except then I slept all afternoon instead, hahahahaha. As a result, my Wednesday was INSANE. Fortunately the press conference that had been scheduled for Wednesday morning was canceled, which totally saved my life. The morning was shopping at the flower market, which was actually lots of fun, but right afterwards I had to eat a quick lunch and jaunt off to our Wednesday workshop, after which I went to buy candy and various supplies for our Halloween celebrations at school. I spent a while busing around Kaohsiung in a futile search for face paint...the closest thing I managed was washable gel pens meant for coloring on skin. There was no orange and no black, and they were all sparkly, but it was better than nothing.

During this extended shopping adventure, I managed to have a kind of amazingly disjointed and carb-o-licious dinner. After having found the pens at Toys-R-Us, I was ravenous, but there was no real food in the area, and I was planning to go downtown anyway. It seemed sensible to grab a little snack in the Toys-R-Us area to tide me over, and then get dinner downtown. I ended up in a Mister Donut, where I ordered the only non-sweet thing that didn't involve sketchy unrefrigerated hot dogs: a corn donut. Fried donutty outside, a sort of creamed corn substance inside. It should not surprise you to know that this was invented by the Japanese. Downtown at Urban Spotlight, I ordered a sandwich that looked good in the promotional pictures, only to get it and find that most of its contents were noodles. Corn donut + noodle sandwich (on the whitest bread ever) = accidental overdose of refined carbohydrates. Oh well, life goes on.

I was up super late that night making posters and games and an eyepatch (another thing I failed to find on my quest), but it was nice because I talked to Mom and Luke on Skype while I was making stuff. The next morning I got a nice big dose of caffeine in my system, hailed a cab, and hauled my huge pile of Halloween stuff off to school for the big day.

As you may have guessed by the eyepatch reference, I was a pirate for Halloween. Not the most original costume of all time, but it didn't require many new materials and I am lazy slash cheap. I wore a striped shirt, tied a red scarf around my head, drew an anchor tattoo on my arm, and topped it off with my amazing homemade eyepatch that I made out of a circle of cardboard colored black. The eyepatch string was white elastic that I had colored black with a marker, and consequently it kept leaving black lines on my face throughout the course of the day. Also, wearing an eyepatch full time really messes with your vision, I found out. I accidentally smacked two different kids in the face because they were standing in my blind spot, and my distance perception was all kinds of confused. When I finally removed my eyepatch to draw tattoos for kids at the Little Angels Halloween party, it took a little bit for my vision to feel normal again. Whatever; it was an awesome costume. A lot of kids thought my tattoo was real, which I thought was pretty great considering I had drawn it myself with sparkly gel pen. Also I learned how to say "pirate" in Chinese: haidao! (Sorry there are no pictures of this; Patty took some so I have to get them from her)

Friday was another full day: English Village then meeting Gered for birthday lunch then hustling home to intercept the cleaning lady, a bit of down time, then out for birthday dinner, which was all you can eat hot pot (aka delicious gluttony) followed by eating cake with chopsticks because we ran out of the stupid little forks that come with cakes. It's been a generally gluttonous weekend, because on Saturday I went over to Apt. B to help out with their Halloween party (consisting of various children of co-teachers, host families, etc), which definitely involved cake AND ice cream AND a contest of eating donuts off a string. There was a major sugar crash that afternoon after the kids went home. Also, since Saturday was Katie's birthday, we went out to T.G.I. Friday's for lunch today, so I am once again fighting food coma, stuffed full of chicken and bacon and cheese and fries and ice cream and all foods good and American. Is it bad that food coma automatically reminds me of America? I think unhealthy food and gluttony are just a part of American culture. Think about Thanksgiving and tell me I am wrong. I am so psyched for Thanksgiving with AIT...they have an oven!!! We are going to make pies!!! THIS IS AMAZING.