Hiking and Lions, Tigers, and Bears oh my!

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The second week of classes went well. I’m starting to get to know my students more and more. Tuesday I went with another teachers’ club hiking. We went on a trail that is about a five minute drive from the school. I think the students had fun! Wednesday night I went for a bike ride to downtown (although it is not the actual downtown, it is the closest downtown to us on the outskirts of the city). I found a small night market and went in a couple clothing and shoe stores. I bought a pair of sandals; my first purchase (other than essentials) since coming to Taiwan. Yesterday I went on a hike up the mountains with three other teachers. It was quite the workout, but totally worth it. The hardest part was that the majority of the trail was a log path where the logs were about 6 inches to a foot apart. Some of this log path was like climbing a latter because it was so steep. There are about five different trails in the area that we went, so I will definitely be back there to try a couple different routes. The view from the top of the mountain was absolutely amazing. While on the hike we saw a brownish, greenish, and grayish colored snake that was pretty thick; although I did not see how long it was. We also think we heard a monkey, but we are not positive. Saturday night I went along with the students to a movie at Top City mall. We watched Monsters University; it was in English with Chinese subtitles. Then today we took the students to the Taipei Zoo! It was super hot, but a lot of fun.

More photos as promised!

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My first week of classes!

The students arrived on Monday afternoon. I got to meet my three advisees at dinner. Every school day my advisees and i will sit together for lunch and any time I eat dinner on campus (yes I did just say lunch and dinner instead of dinner and supper, shocker I know!). I have three great eleventh grade boys who are all from Taiwan. Two of my advisees I have in class and the other one is on my volleyball team. All day Tuesday was placement testing for the students so that we could see their English and mathematics abilities. Summer school is focused on getting students’ reading, writing, and speaking English skills to the next level. This means that in my math classes I will be focusing a lot on vocabulary. Wednesday we started actual classes. Everyday breakfast is from 7:30-8:30. This is optional for me, but I will probably be taking advantage to save some money. Classes start at 8:30 and each class is 50 minutes. My first class is a double period of Algebra 2; meaning I have the same students for two classes in a row, basically a block class. This will help me get through way more material since summer school is only for four weeks. I have seven students in Algebra 2 and they are a mixture of eleventh and twelfth graders. Then we have assembly from 10:20-10:50 where announcements are made, students can present projects, poetry, music, etc. after this I have my prep period. Then from 11:40-12 students are assigned a classroom to clean. I have three students that come to my classroom and they will clean whatever I tell them to. Next we have lunch from 12-1 where teachers sit with their advisees. After lunch I have another double period of Geometry where I only have two students in my class. This is very different than teaching a larger class; basically it is very little lecture and a lot of individual tutoring. From 2:45-3:15 I have one student in my reading circle (she is from Japan). In this class we are reading Armstrong’s “sounder” and basically it is to practice reading, speaking, and comprehension. Then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I coach volleyball from 3:30-5:30. As of right now I only have 8 kids but I’m trying to recruit more. The first day of practice it rained, but the kids wanted to stay outside and play! I had so much fun on Wednesday so I’m excited to coach and I think I might try to coach during the regular school year as well. Dinner is at 6 but this is optional for me to go to. I will also be teaching two SAT prep math classes on Saturday mornings; however I have not had these classes yet. On Wednesday in both of my math classes I talked about the syllabus and expectations and then I did a name art project where the students reflected their name over eight lines of symmetry (this project is thanks to my student teaching cooperating teacher)! The students seemed to enjoy it. Today I actually got into the math content. I have definitely enjoyed all of my classes so far. Tonight I went on a scooter ride with a couple friends to a sushi restaurant (and no I did not drive the scooter yet, just rode on the backed one. Traffic here is crazy). The sushi came on a conveyor belt and you could take whatever sushi you wanted. It was 30 NT for a small plate which is equivalent to one dollar, so dinner only cost me $3. Pretty cheap for devious food (I tried sea weed, crab, and salmon sushi). After dinner we went to a couple stores and then got milk tea to go. Milk tea is a cold drink that reminds me a little of iced coffee and it is very popular here. I definitely will be ordering it again! I have not taken many photos this week, but I will add some of my classroom to this blog post soon!

Mmmm…Milk tea!

Typhoon and a night downtown!

The typhoon hit Friday night and into Saturday. The wind and rain was so strong, but I ventured over to school in the afternoon to get some work done. Our tennis court fence was blown over and there was also a tree down out the view of my shower room. Other than that, there did not seem to be too much damage in the area. We had more training today and time to work in our classrooms. Tonight the school took us out to dinner downtown at an incredibly fancy restaurant where we had a large assortment of food. I tried sashimi (raw fish which I did not care for), snail (good taste but very chewy), jellyfish (I thought this was really good), and an assortment of other foods. For dessert we had pineapple, watermelon, guava, and some sort of chocolate dish. The waitress kept bringing out more food and more food; I basically thought all of it was tasty. My philosophy to eating here is I’ll try everything once. Tomorrow the students arrive, but actual classes do not start until Wednesday. I am excited to meet them and finally start teaching.

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I made it!

My apartment building. Mine is the pink apartment on the second floor.

Bus ride to Taichung!

I made it safely to Taiwan on Thursday morning around 2am (1pm on Wednesday central time). It was a 12.5 hour flight from Minneapolis to Japan with an hour layover, then another 3.5 hour flight to Taipei, and finally a 2 hour bus ride to Taichung. I have a studio apartment to myself on the second floor of a building called the rainbow houses. The apartment was already furnished and even had some food and flowers in it for when I arrived. It is about a ten minute walk to school from my apartment and it has a nice view of the mountains. I will post more pictures of it later. Once I brought my luggage up to my room I went straight to bed. We started training for summer school the next morning at 9:30am. I got to see more of the school and check out my classroom. Everything seems very nice. That night I went for a bike ride with some of the other teachers to see more of the city. The traffic is pretty crazy here. There are tons of people on scooters that weave around the cars and tend to not follow the stop lights. The next day morning (Friday) I went for a run near the base of the mountains. I will have to start bringing my camera places because I have hardly taken any pictures yet. We had more training again today starting at 9:30 and then in the afternoon we went to Carrefour so that we could get some essentials for our apartments. This is basically the Taiwanese version of a Walmart. It has been very hot and humid here and tonight a typhoon is supposed to hit the northern part of Taiwan, meaning that we will be getting a lot of strong winds and heavy rain in Taichung. The summer school students were supposed to arrive on Sunday afternoon with classes starting on Monday, but due to the Typhoon we are postponing their arrival to Monday afternoon (many of the students will be coming from Taipei which will be hit pretty hard with the Typhoon). Even as I am typing this, I can hear that the winds are picking up. I’ll update this soon with news of how the typhoon goes.

A New Journey!

This is all i need for the year: 2 suitcases, a duffle bag, and a back pack

Ahhh…I leave for Taiwan tomorrow!!! My bags are packed, I just got a haircut, and I think I’m all set. I am very excited for this wonderful opportunity and I will try to post on here often. The plane ride will take about sixteen hours to get to Taiwan with a one hour layover in Japan. I have a good playlist and book ready for the flight! Packing for an entire year was easier than I thought. The hardest part was deciding which piano books to take along! At first I thought my bags were going to be fairly light, unfortunately that that didn’t last long. Alright that’s all for now, I’ll post more once I get there!