Have you ever eaten stinky tofu?

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I still haven't tried stinky tofu yet. In one of my classes tonight we were talking about places we had been or things we had done.

The kids asked me if I had eaten stinky tofu yet. I turned up my nose and made a gagging noise. It was pretty funny. They tried to tell me that it tastes soooo good, but I just couldn't believe them.

Much of our conversation revolved around eating hamburgers and the fact that French fries are, in fact, American food not French. I sort of feel like I didn't teach those kids anything tonight, but at the same time, we had an actual conversation that wasn't formatted out. That's probably a first for all of us.

Last night there was a wine and cheese party at the Romantic Paris Mansion. It is not a love hotel, I promise. It's actually an apartment complex where a few of the other teachers just moved in. I love their apartment. It's just big enough and so adorable!

They actually have an extra room right now since Megan got the internship in Washington, D.C. and won't be moving in with them after all. I'm sort of hoping that I may be the lucky person to take over that room. It would mean not saving as much money, but given how cheap it is and that I would only be sharing with two people instead of twenty, it's totally worth it.

Not a lot else has happened in the past couple of days. There have been some disturbances in the dorm: People being loud in the middle of the night because they're really messed up; People being too messed up to know what is going on around them; People still not cleaning up their messes in the kitchen and then not realizing it was even their mess to begin with the next day because they were so messed up...

I'm beginning to see a trend.

Not to judge, but I feel like I'm still in my early college years. Apparently, it's fairly normal to drink way more than you can handle. The substance abuse around here rivals that backstage of a Jimi Hendrix concert.

I'm not a fan.

It's odd considering many people will joke about how they're probably alcoholics. Unfortunately, joking is not the same as admitting you have a problem.

I think I actually drink way less here. Not just in quantity but also in how often. The funny thing about that is I have more free time. Maybe I have just finally found something better to do with my time than to drink away the hours.

Which season do you like best?

Today was relatively uneventful. I had originally planned to wake up; make poached eggs, bacon and toast; and do some leisurely reading. Instead I had a really bad headache and ended up sleeping halfway through the afternoon trying to get rid of it in time for class.

Success.

I borrowed another teacher's scooter since she was teaching here today and I drove super fast to Dar-Nan. I subbed my first class. They're yellow book and still trying to feel my out. Most of them were super respectful and smart. They just need to dial up the fun factor. We'll see how next week goes when I see them again.

I was really pumped for my second class which was my regular red book class that is huge. We have 23 kids in that class and 3 were out on vacation today. We played a lot and I was being super goofy when I was explaining vocabulary words. I love being goofy with kids.

All my boys are starting to warm up to me more in that class too, so we're able to goof off just enough. This one kid, Kevin, is really smart and I think his English is probably at a higher level. Our QA today was, "What is your favorite season? Why?"

Kevin: "I don't like any seasons because there is not fun."
Me: "Kevin, I don't mind that you want to be obstinate, but you're going to do it using proper English. Write 'I don't like any of the seasons because they are not fun.'"

He seemed pretty shocked that I didn't make him change it to the standard, "I like ____ best because ______." (i.e. I like Spring best because there are lots of flowers.)

I honestly hate that we teach these kids so much formatted speech. The QAs are called "Free-talk Questions," but they're everything but "free."

After I got home I satisfied my craving for some amazing pasta. I found cheese ravioli at Carrefour and bought some pasta sauce and made up some quick pasta just as if I were at home. I miss that!

I can't wait 'til it starts to cool off a little. Then I'm going to be all over that kitchen cooking and baking in my free time. It's going to rock everyone else's world!

Why is learning Chinese so hard!

Anyone have any suggestions for getting yourself on a good sleeping schedule? I was exhausted after swimming and hanging out with everyone yesterday and I still stayed up until almost 2:30 a.m.

My body refuses to be put to bed.

Today, BoBo was mad that I didn't bring my homework and Martin (my classmate) just plain didn't do his. So she retaliated with a whole lot more homework!

I have to write a lot of things in both pinyin and Chinese characters. It's a good thing though. We've gotten to the point where we have just enough vocabulary that it's easy to forget some things.

BoBo always says things in Chinese and then we have to tell her what it is in English. I honestly do better when I have to think about it in English and then translate it to Chinese. Of course, this probably isn't great for my conversation skills.

I like the setting with BoBo though. It's nice because it's really informal. She makes me want to learn, but she doesn't make me feel like an idiot when I say something wrong or I don't remember something.

I did a lot of reading today and I'm excited about that. I feel pretty productive — Chinese, reading and laundry all in one day!

I'm starting to feel relatively comfortable with what little Chinese I know too. I took a cab to school and I talked to the cab driver enough to explain where I wanted to go and then we talked about how I'm an English teacher. He asked me some pretty simple questions and switched back and forth from Chinese to English to help me out a little because my vocabulary it still limited and his English vocabulary is pretty limited too.

It was funny though. He said something to me that I didn't understand. I just smiled at him, shrugged my shoulders and said "Ting bu dong." He laughed and told me that I am pretty.

In my class I played a new QA game today. It's basically a drinking game but instead of drinking when you lose the student has to ask a question. It's actually amazing how many drinking games you see turned into QA games.

My co-teacher was REALLY bad at the game though and kept losing. It was pretty hilarious and made for a fun beginning of class.


This is what my hands always look like after class. We have dry-erase boards and even though I use the eraser, it is inevitable that I come out with my hands covered in residue. This is actually a pretty good day, hah.

Am I really lazy?

I was originally planning to go to Taipei to take tons of pictures like a true tourist. Instead, Im going swimming.

A few of the other teachers just moved out of the dorm into a really nice apartment that has a pool. They invited all of us over to soak up the sun. Unfortunately, the sun isn't really showing itself today. It's quite cloudy, but it's still hot and the pool works just the same.

I decided on the day of leisure instead mostly because I woke up so late.

After almost seven hours of teaching yesterday, I was so tired, but I just couldn't go to sleep last night until my usual time — around 2:30 a.m. I'm going to have to get some sleeping pills or something.

My Wow (11-15-year-olds) classes were great yesterday. We had a lot of fun. I've decided that my co-teachers are awesome. The class is a mix of us teaching and the kids working together in groups or something. During this little bit of downtime, the teachers and I are getting to know each other and they've been giving me suggestions of things to do, or eat, to really make the most out of my Taiwanese experience.

I've had an interesting couple of run-ins with the administration the past few days.

Friday morning I went downstairs to print out stuff for my news camp and the head co-teacher came up and introduced herself to me. Once I told her my name she said "Oh I've heard about you, Anita told me you're really good with the older kids."

Apparently at some point she was told that I'm good at getting the kids to talk in English instead of Chinese and then I basically connect well with them. I talked to some other teachers about this and they said that means my co-teachers when I was subbing were probably telling the head office this.

I guess that's a good thing?

Then I saw Anita yesterday before my new News Camp (yep, I have a second one now). She said she's giving me a class to sub on Friday and she really wants me to focus on it. Apparently if things go well, they're going to make it a permanent class for me.

Hoorat for permanent classes, but suck for the situation. Anita said that the parents in the class don't like their current teacher, something about him not being warm enough? She insinuated that the parents basically don't like that it's a guy. She certainly didn't come out and say it, but I thought that was a weird thing.

Anyway, I'm torn. Do I really want a class that already has a history of parents who complain a lot? No offense to parents out there, but some of them just complain too much about things we can't always control.

The other big detail about this class is that it's a late-yellow book class. Remember those obstinate-aged children I talked about before? The ones who don't talk and hate the world?

Hmmm, we'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll really like my games.

What would you do?

I know I'm pretty young, but I've had quite a few different types of jobs in the eight years that I've been working to earn my own stuff. Teaching is by far one of the hardest.

There are a million things that go into it. It seems so easy when you watch but the moment you step up in the front of that classroom you are instantly praying for the forgiveness of all your former teachers.

Don't get me wrong, it's a ton of fun. It is just so draining. It takes everything out of you to get through these classes, but it's the little things that make it completely worth it.

I had a particularly chatty class yesterday. They were a lot of fun. I love when my classes will actually talk to me. It makes my life a little easier. I mean, the point is that they learn to speak English right?


Two of the boys made up this classroom version of basketball. This does not mean it is safer to play in the classroom, just that they incorporate the chairs and such things.



The rest of us just sat around and watched them as they wiggled across the classroom on the chairs and tried to throw the "dice" into the "baskets" behind each other.

Since they were so chatty, I decided it would be a good idea to test their ability to construct sentences. The idea in this game is that each side picks letters for the other team. Then the kids have to make up sentences that have at least one word that begins with each letter.

The kids are evil (just like we all were at their age) so of course they picked "ZNQW" and "BCSX." I told them they could use words that had "Z" or "X" in them instead of beginning with them because even I can only think of a few words off hand.


Their sentences don't always make the most sense, but you can see they're at least trying and they get the concept.

I kind of love this game.

As far today, I had my News Camp for the second time. It was equally as boring and I'm considering turning it into an entirely games class. We did have a little fun. I gave them a headline: "Earthquake shakes Taiwan" and they had to tell me what questions they would ask if it were a story they were covering.

I just happened to have answers (some were real details from an earthquake earlier this week and some were made up just to get the idea) and then I made them each write a quick little news brief.

I'm thinking this might be the way to go for the demonstration we have to do in four weeks for their parents.

I think the big problem with this class is that one of the kids doesn't want to be there and his sister flat out doesn't understand me. She didn't even understand when I told the class to bring a news article.

I tried to tell the school director, but it seems he doesn't understand either.

This is ultimately the problem of working at a for-profit school. It's not about what is in the kids' best interests. If it were, this girl wouldn't be in a higher level class when she doesn't belong there.

Any suggestions for what I should do: A) to have more fun with middle school kids and the news and B) to incorporate a girl who hardly speaks any English compared to the other kids?

I am almost to the point that I have to just ignore them and work with the other kids. Unfortunately, I am not afforded the time to work solely with these two kids.

Who's that girl?

You know that alone-in-a-crowd feeling?

Well, I've decided that I kind of like it, which is good because it's pretty easy to find here. Or so I thought.


I went to the Taoyuan Night Market last night after work. There are a million booths set up nightly all down a couple of streets. The booths are filled with clothes, watches, cheap jewelry, bootleg DVDs, food and games.


I went with the intent of exploring, taking pictures, checking out some of the Chinglish shirts and grabbing a late dinner.

I didn't really get to do much of that.

It turns out half of the people in the dorm had a similar plan. I can't say I blame them. There is a ton of great food to be found. It's kind of hard not to see the other teachers in the dorm. Although there are a ton of teachers from America, Canada and England in this city, we're still incredibly outnumbered and therefore stick out in a crowd. I saw at least six other people last night.

So much for my night exploring alone.

I have absolute nothing against any of them. On the contrary, I actually like them very much. They're good people and a lot of fun to hang out with. I just wasn't in the mood to hang out with anyone.

I am honestly better at being a tourist when I'm alone. I know that sounds unsafe or at the very least antisocial, but I like to just go and take pictures and ask questions.

I guess it's the journalist in me. If I'm with someone else, I feel like we're kind of trying to make sure the other gets to do what they wanted to do. Inevitably I don't because I wanted to be alone.

I know I should have just said so, but I know they mean well. The past few days have been a little nervewracking and I made the mistake of letting a few people know that. In other people's worlds, this means you have to be surrounded at all times. In mine, it means I need time to think and just let things happen.

It's funny because I went to bed last night thinking about two things: the idea that I needed to get lost in a crowd and the realization that that's nearly impossible here.

It's a perplexing situation.

I know very few people here and there are crowds galore. But given the cirumstances, I kind of stick out in a crowd. I even have kids whose classes I've subbed coming up to me because they recognize me after seeing me once.

"Teacher! Teacher!"

The other is that I would give anything not to be noticed right now. I think it's funny how most people go through their lives wanting to be noticed.

They want to feel special for something. Of course, I'm sure that starts with your parents telling you when you're little that you're special. Everyone is special. We all want to be the best at something or even the worst at something if it will get us noticed.

And, now that I can't help but be noticed, I don't really care.

What is Obama's last name?

Yep, my co-teacher yesterday asked me what Obama's last name is. The class had learned a QA during her solo-class with them that asked "Who is the president of _________." We always fill in the ROC and the USA.

I informed her, and all of my kids, that he is President Barack Obama and that "Obama" is in fact his last name. That whole first name/last name thing really screws people up sometimes.

My classes went pretty well yesterday. I actually kind of like teaching at Dar-Nan. It's a simpler school, but that's OK. I like that, as far as my regular classes though, I have a pretty good spread. I'm at two schools that are in areas with less money than most and then I'm at two schools where most of the kids' parents are kind of loaded compared to the average.

Actually, I'm at either Dar-Nan or Dar-Chu four out of six days this week.

Also, it's fun to just walk around out there. There is a little market right down the street from both Dar-Nan and Dar-Chu. I love to just walk around and look at everything. I can't wait until the day when I can actually stop and talk to the people who have stands at the market. Then I can really learn more about what's going on there.

Maybe I'll take some pictures out at the market at Dar-Chu today.

I think I have a few more ideas for my news camp. Also Anita asked me if I would like to take another news camp that might be opening up on Saturdays. That will really fill up my Saturday schedule, but that's OK. I need the money, not to mention it sucks having that big four-hour gap in the middle of my day.

I think if they put it during that time then I'll say yes. I don't want it to be after my 6 p.m. class though. That would make for a super long and annoying day.

Plan for today: Yoga, lesson plans, Dar-Chu to sub two of Megan's classes since she's in Thailand (and I'm obviously super jealous), then making up some materials for that news camp so that hopefully this Friday goes better.