Birthdays

There happened to be about 5 billion birthday celebrations in October and actually November too! Here are some pics and comments on a few of them!


On October 22nd we celebrated my roommate Katrina's 25th birthday, or her 'quarter life crisis' as she fondly called it :) About 25 of us went to a really good Italian restaurant on a Wednesday night. Afterwards we went next store to the local sketchy bar/club where every Wednesday from 10pm - 12am is SALSA NIGHT!! It was a blast.


On Oct 24 we celebrated Augusto's birthday ...
latino style!
Saturday November 8th we celebrated Andrea, Laura, Ramiro and Damian's birthdays at a Mexican Restaurant in Jhong li. We had great food, drink and music the whole night! It was also a special occasion because my roommates and I were all together for the first time in awhile (Katrina, Patrick and I) :)

New edition to my family!

Some of you might know that I recently welcomed a new edition to my family! Isn't she a beaut!


Panda, Brad and Patrick, master bike people, graciously agreed to help me pick her out and bring her home safely :)


I got a great price for her due to us unknowingly bargaining ... it mostly had to do with Panda and Patrick talking about the bike in English thinking that they couldn't understand, when they did and then drove down the price :)


Since I bought her oh so long ago (I'd say at the end of September-ish) ... I have an exciting update ... I still drive her to and from school and a bit on the weekend. We've developed a strong bond! :)

Wednesdays

I'm sure I have never really explained my school schedule. It's pretty cool. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Fridays are block scheduling. The students take eight classes, so we see them twice a week for class. One of our distinctive features is Wednesday. We have Choice period (8 - 9:15 am) where students choose what they want to study, plan the whole class themselves and also plan how they will be measured on how well they reach their goals of the class. We then have Academic Time (9:30 - 11:40am) where teachers can sign up to have a class for more time. For example, in Language Arts 8 we are doing a Spoken Word poetry project. We sign up to have the class on a Wed too (on top of regularly scheduled class time) so that we have more time for the project. Then, after lunch we have Activity Period. The past three months we have been alternating community service and wellness activities (like rock climbing, swimming ...). I've been involved with the Animal Shelter community service project.



Every other week I go with some Institute II students (9th and 10th graders) to an animal shelter about 20 minutes away from school. The first time was absolutely chaotic and wonderful. We walked into a loud and smelly room full of caged dogs and were told to grab one and spend the next three hours walking them around (there is a beautiful beach close by). So we did :)
It was a really hot day and after a bit the puppies (and humans) got tired and decided to take a break.

Art Opening in Taipei

Wow, it's been awhile since I have updated my blog! So ... fasten your seat belt, get ready for all the awesome updates!
September 19th a bunch of my colleagues and I went to an Art Opening in Taipei. One of the parents at school gave us tickets to go and be apart of it. The exhibit was at the National Museum of History, which is absolutely exquisite (see picture above!). The opening was magnificent, there were many people, lots of free food and drink and entertainment. The entertainment was culturally a bit confusing for us because the full band played songs ranging from 'Memories' to crazy disco. But hey, it was nice to get to soak it all in with my colleagues.

The artist of the new exhibit was Chu Teh-Chun, a well-known contemporary Chinese artist who did much of his training in France. The exhibit was called, "88 Retrospective." Guess how old he is?!? I really enjoyed his work, especially the colors.

Typhoon during Moon Festival!

This past weekend I experienced two new things ... a typhoon and Moon Festival. The typhoon hit Taipei (in the north) and the eastern coast pretty hard. Hsinchu is on the northwestern coast and was still affected. I decided to participate in Moon Festival festivities (which included a bbq) and so I defied the weather announcers and went to Taipei with a friend, Mick, who is a very skilled driver and knew the roads well. Mick is Taiwanese and ... he lived in Argentina for 6 years (and the US too) so he speaks great Spanish and English!

We went and had a bbq at Mick's friend's house which is on the middle of a mountain that sounds like 'yummy' (I think it's like Yangming?!?). Apparently the mountain is pretty famous ... has lots of rich people living on it. We had the bbq on the 4th floor of Singer's house ... it was open and the typhoon was going on right in front of us!!
The food was SOOOOO delicious. I ate so much I seriously thought I was going to burst. Here is some squid ... I had never seen it be grilled before ... and so I preceded to flip out when the tentacles starting moving (which apparently is just them contracting ...).
Here I am eating the squid. Man, I'm getting hungry just looking at the picture! Singer is in light blue ... he lives at the house with his wife, his parents, his sister and her boyfriend.
Singer's mom reads palms. She was amazing. She knew a lot of stuff about me just through examining my palm!! And she couldn't have known it before because we couldn't really talk due to the language barrier. Mick kindly translated the reading for me. It was really interesting because it was done with a Taiwanese spin ... she kept quoting Confucius and her suggestions had to do with upholding traditional Taiwanese values like 'saving face' and the importance of being part of a community, not too independent. I learned too that if someone reads your hand it is important to give them something in exchange, no matter how much or how little. This concept exists in Ecuador too ... the give and take.
So, yes, the car did break down. Too much water got in the engine. This is Mick sucking out the water with the straws! Well, here he's just posing for the picture, but he really did suck out the water and spit it on the ground! Kinda gross, but it got the job done! We were able to get back to Hsinchu just fine :)

Professional Development vs What I REALLY am doing

I just realized that in my Professional Development entry I had said that I would be teaching Spanish 2, Spanish 3, ESL/Language Arts 11/12 and co-teaching ESL/Science 7. As it turns out, I am not doing any of that!! I am teaching a combined Spanish 2 and 3, and co-teaching ESL/Language Arts 7 and 8 with Mr. Laffin and ESL/Language Arts 9 with Ms. Galland!! It's amazing to me how important it is to stay flexible and go with the flow, and also how hard it can be when you are trying to plan and prepare! I am now starting to get in the swing of things. On top of class hours I am a 9th grade adviser (Patrick and I are their go-to people if they need anything), co-leader of the ESL department and trying to deal with our language related issues at school, and the CARE facilitator (basically the one to set up meetings about the well-being of students in order to come up and implement a plan of action).

We have our first Open House Wednesday, September 17th for parents to see what their students are doing at school. I'm nervous and excited to get to meet the parents!! Will keep everyone posted as to how it goes :)

Camp Taiwan

Hi everyone! Here are some pictures from my latest adventure to Camp Taiwan with HIS (Hsinchu International School ... the high school where I teach!). We got the opportunity to spend three days and two nights at Camp Taiwan, which is located a bit north of Taipei. Camp Taiwan is in the mountains and has a strong team building focus through environmentally friendly activities (like exploring nature by going on hikes, rock climbing, zip-line, giant swing, cooperative games, stream exploration, learning about Taiwanese aboriginals ...).

We left for Camp Taiwan Wednesday, September 10th early in the morning. A little about how HIS is structured ... we divide the students into three different Institutes, each made up of two grades. So, Institute I is grades 7 and 8, Institute II is grades 9 and 10 and Institute III is grades 11 and 12. The teachers are all divided into advisories by grade. Patrick (my roommate and also one of the Math teachers) and I are the advisors for grade 9. We basically are the ones responsible for the overall well-being ... checking in with them to see how they are doing in all aspects of their lives. There are 11 students and really, they are great kids. Here are four of our students on the bus getting ready to head to camp.

Since I am an advisor for grade 9, I am part of Institute II. This year Institute II got to explore and learn about Taiwanese aboriginal culture. This was a really unique opportunity because we got to learn about it from people who are not only part of an aboriginal tribe, but also practice and teach about their aboriginal traditions. Here we learned how to sew and make headdresses and bracelets.

After participating in the sewing activity we got the chance to sit and reflect on what we learned. We each got a packet with more information about different aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. We got to put in perspective how long it took us to just decorate the headdresses and bracelets, versus having to make and gather everything from scratch, as is done in some aboriginal tribes (like making the clay beads, gathering shells, weaving and dying the fabric ... etc).

We learned an aboriginal dance. We had a lot of fun learning it. It was danced in a giant circle and at one point we all cross arms and do a step motion in sync with each other that takes us around the room. We performed the dance for Institutes I and III the last night we were there.

We played Aboriginal Olympics! Here students were trying to spear the ball of fabric with tall bamboo poles. The story goes that long ago this was how marriage was decided. A woman would through up a 'ball' (which in the olden days was actually the head of an enemy, she through it up by the hair) and which ever man would spear it with their bamboo pole would win her hand in marriage. After playing this game for about a half hour, most of our students where getting married at least 6 times!!!