Last Day to Work in the Classroom Before "They" Arrive...

I got as much done as I could today as far as decorating and organizing my classroom goes. Oy. It's not really as done as I'd like it to be, but actually, only myself and one other teacher have even been at the school to work on them (there's five of us). So, I guess I should feel accomplished. I doubt I'll be able to do any work in the classroom on Monday, and school starts Tuesday. Well, here goes!

I wanted ya'll to see what I've been working on all week, so here are some shots of my classroom! ** Please note... all the paper on the walls was done by me, there were no borders available so I hand cut ALL of the borders for the room.. everything was hand made... **



This is the front of my classroom!



I cannot tell you how hard it was to make that color wheel.. it was.. difficult.



I spent about $15 on those three white cubes on the counter for my TA Eva, she had no space for her own things so I thought it would be nice to have some personal organization, she was so happy she gave me a hug. :oP



My class rules. You can't really read them, but they're pretty much like "be respectful and always speak in English". My boss said that the font was too small, but I have limited wall space and I didn't want a whole wall of rules that the kindergarteners can't even read, right? Meh.



Classroom door.



Days of the week! I did the same on the other side of the whiteboard with the months of the year. The school doesn't have an actual calendar for me to do 'calendar time' with the kindergarteners, how are they supposed to understand a year or a month or a week if they can't see it? I REALLY don't want to make a whole calendar every month... Something I'm working on.

Also, I just wanted to throw in some fun pics from the past couple of weeks.



Athen and I (she'll be back in Boston in September)



Kevin and I



Milkshake, woohoo!



Eww! And he told me I should give it a hug!



David, Me, Kevin, and Kevin's Girlfriend Christine at the huge IMAX theater to see Transformers.

Okay, till next time!
-Tiff

An Easy Going Day

Nothing like sitting around and drinking coffee and tea.

I met up with my friend Isaac today, who I haven't seen since he stayed with me for a week in Boston. He took me out to a fancy tea house called "Rose House" and we got tea and a light lunch while we sat around catching up and talking about English Teaching. He works at a cram school and works with kids, so he had some pointers for me. After that we went shopping at a "Everything is 39 Taiwan Dollars" store and I got some cheap stuff, it was cute.



Isaac at the Rose House.



I got Maple Tea and Isaac got Rose Tea.

Then I met up with David in Jing Mei, and he took me back to Shih Hsin University, where I spent my first four months in Taiwan. It was a total blast from the past but it was so cool. We went to "Mint" for dinner, a little shanty restaurant that serves 'Italian' food (i.e. spaghetti), which was my favorite place to eat dinner when I was here last time. Then around 8:00pmish we drove up Mao Kong on his scooter, a nearby mountain that has a pretty hot view of Taipei. The air was a little hazy unfortunately, but it was a good temperature so we sat out overlooking the city at a little coffee stand for a couple of hours and chatted. Best caramel macchiato I've ever had on a mountain, I must admit. It was wicked fun driving up and down a steep angle on the back of a scooter, particularly with all of the twists and turns and not knowing what's around the corner. Sometimes I was literally sliding forward in my seat on the way back downhill, I had to press my heels into the foot hold on the scooter to keep from pushing David off the seat in front of me.


Classic David.


His Hazelnut Latte, my Caramel Macchiato, and our coffee cake!


I'm off to school tomorrow, probably my last chance to really work on decorating my classroom before I start school on Tuesday. Monday is our teacher orientation day. Here goes nothing, right? And how am I supposed to make from scratch a calendar for the kids to do calendar time in the morning? Well, that's my big project for tomorrow. Oy vey.

Ciao!
Tiff

You think I walk slow? (Tara's Theme)

You know, there are instrumentals entitled "Nadia's Theme" or some other random girl's name that gets her own song dedicated to her. Well, Tara C., this one's for you.

Taiwanese people walk so..... SLOW! It is ridiculous. I guess I forgot this detail last time I was here. But it's stupidly hard to get anywhere, especially the sidewalks, when everyone in front of you and to the side of you is doing the "Taiwanese Twaddle". Plus the sidewalks are awful anyhow. But it's either walk really slow with the crowd or walk in the road and get run over by a speeding scooter, which always seems to have the right of way.

If you've lived in Boston for any period of time, you know that pedestrians own. We walk where and when we please. But in Taiwan, you wait for the walk sign. You jump out of the way of scooters that come out of nowhere. You decide if you REALLY need to cross the street, or if it is merely a want in which case you have to prioritize your need to be across the street or be dead. Kind of like a choose your own ending book, or something.

I may be exaggerating a little bit, but you get the idea.

This past weekend I was busy hanging out with Alan's family in Taoyuan, which was really nice. They were so kind. I spent the night Saturday, it was his cousin Ted's birthday, so we went to "White Wood House Bakery" which is a pretty famous dessert brand in Taiwan. Because Alan's cousin Daisy knows someone there, me and three of the kids in the family got a private cake decorating class along with a free cookie baking class. I'm so proud of how my cake came out. :o) Crystal, you'd be proud! They gave us a heart shaped cake with the overall frosting on it already, but then we got to hand make the roses and leaves and also throw on some 'berries' and frost around the bottom. The sugar cookies were a little less intense, we just used cookie cutters and iced them how we liked.



This is my cake! Notice the flowers, and the purple icing on the bottom, oh yeah, I'm good (with a little.. a lot.. of help from the baker..).

We walked out of that place with bags and bags of discounted cookies and sweets, and also on the way out, the manager friend gave Ted a big birthday cake for free to take home. Awesome!



We ate hot pot for dinner that night! This is most of the family: Tommy, Jenny, Ted's Sister, Ted, and Alice.

The next day we went to Daisy's business's "Family Day". We left the house at 6:30am, got on a bus at the plant, and drove for an hour and a half down the windiest road .. ever. I just feel lucky that I didn't get car sick. But the hardest part was that Daisy (who is the only one who speaks English) wasn't with us. She met us there. So I had no idea what was going on, where we were going, or how long before we would be off of this forsaken twisting dirt road leading us deeper into the jungle (I use the term "jungle" loosely.. it was more like a big forest but it felt like a hot, humid, gigantuan buggy jungle). I later found out that the place was in Hsinchu County, in a town called "Guan Xi". We spent the day barbecuing and hanging out outside. There was quite an interesting 'water park' if you will, for the kids to swim in too. I would also like to note that they were blasting American music from the mid 90's all day too, including one of the Jock Jams CDs and Ricky Martin. Props for the Bon Jovi songs though. Thumbs down for "walking in a winter wonderland". Seriously? Someone should tell them.



Ted and Alice barbecuing!

This week I'm working on my classroom, trying to get the walls all decorated and get my lesson plans figured out. Apparently most of my kids actually don't speak English, so it should be interesting. I have 8 of them, and they are four years old. Yikes. Wish me luck...

I'll try to blog more often, so that they won't be this epically long. I'm starting to finally get settled so I really have no excuse!

-Tiff



Me, David, Kay, Lorenzo, and Macaroni during my first weekend in Taipei, at the "Friend's Hotel".



Awesome sign at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Ladies, leave your hot pants in America.

One week down, and I'm still alive!

Greetings from Taipei, Taiwan!

I would have posted sooner, but my internet has been somewhat.. well, shoddy. The hotel I stayed at didn't have wireless, only cable, and that is broken on my computer. Then I moved into my apartment, and it doesn't have wireless, only cable. But, last night, David helped me find a USB adapter that I can plug the cable into.. and voila! I totally have internet now! :oD

So! So much has happened. I won't be able to tell you everything in one fell swoop, but I'll just give you a quick overview of what has happened...

Friday, August 7th
Arrive at the airport in the middle of Typhoon Morakot, luckily no problems with the flight landing (hooray!). The wind was blowing pretty hard and the rain was crazy, but Taipei was not hit as hard as southern Taiwan. Met up with David and Kevin, got dropped off at my (pretty nice) hotel, and got my first meal in Taiwan: Ju Pie Dan Bing (Pork Egg Pancake.. so good, I promise). I spent the day hanging out and napping, as everything was closed from the typhoon anyways.

Saturday, August 8th
Had planned on changing money in Taipei, but everything is closed from the typhoon still. David loans me money (thank you David!) to get me through Monday when things open up again. Meet up with Lydia from Jump Start (my school) in the afternoon and she shows me how to get to the school from the MRT (subway, Mass Rapid Transit). It's a pretty nice walk, maybe 15 minutes max. My friends Kay and Lorenzo met up with me at my hotel and we went out for lunch with David at Grandma Nitti's, which has some "western" food. It wasn't too bad. They then helped me get set up with a cell phone! Also spent later that evening calling landlords to set up a time to check out apartments on Sunday with Ted and Daisy, Alan's cousins that live in Taoyuan.

Sunday, August 9th
Daisy and Ted came to my hotel to meet with me and David. They were so kind, and gave me a bag of Taro Cakes and Sun Cakes. Very sweet. We then spent the entire day driving around Taipei to different apartments. I was so exhausted by the time we hit the last place. I saw some pretty nice apartments and some pretty... bad.. apartments. Got my heart set on one, and David called the landlady that night to tell her I wanted it. Score!

Monday, August 10th
First day of substitute work. Got to Jump Start at 8:30am via free shuttle car from the hotel. This day deserves a whole entry but basically, they handed me a curriculum, showed me the classroom, and said "teach". ....... Yeah, it was a tough day. During my 2 hour lunch break where I was supposed to go to the bank to change money in order to give the landlady the deposit tonight (because the bank wouldn't be open when I got out of work) I had to meet with the school manager, the head of human resources, and the 'senior teacher' at another branch of Jump Start who had made up the curriculum for me. After talking for more than an hour I was able to go to the bank with David who was so kind as to wait for me on his scooter to change money, but they were taking too slow so I had to leave my money and my traveler's checks at the bank, have David drive me back to school, and then he went back to the bank to finish the transaction for me. After school, we got dinner, and he took me to the apartment I wanted to meet with the landlady and sign the contract. Come to find out, she graduated from Shih Hsin University, the school I was an exchange student at and that David graduated from. So I signed the contract (with my English AND Chinese name... haha!) and I got the keys! Yessss.

Tuesday, August 11th
I had to go to the hospital this morning for my 'health check' in order to apply for my ARC (Alien Resident Certificate) and work permit. Basically they checked that I was alive, took some blood, and took a chest X-Ray. Fun. Then I had to go to school to "teach" this class of (unruly) children. Got through the day, amazingly enough. Then David helped me move my two big suitcases to my apartment so that I when I checked out of the hotel the next morning I wouldn't have to worry about my bags.

Wednesday, August 12th
Checked out of the hotel. The hotel put me in a taxi because they didn't have enough cars to get me to work. Made it through the school day (barely). Went "home" to my apartment for the first time, woohoo! Discovered it was actually full of ants.. or "ma yi" in Chinese, I quickly learned. It's been an ongoing battle ever since. That story to be continued. My friend Kay took me to IKEA to buy bed sheets so that I could sleep in my bed. Didn't have enough money for a pillow though. Kay was so kind and put the sheets on her credit card for me to pay her back later, she insisted. Thanks, Kay! Went home that night and crashed hard core. Nevermind feeling weird about being in a new place, I was TIRED man!

Thursday, August 13th
First time going to work in the morning from the apartment. I amazingly enough didn't get lost! Even stopped by Starbucks.

Friday, August 14th
It's been one week! Last day of substitute teaching. Got asked to substitute tutor as well, which earned me about $35 cash which helped a LOT. Went out with friends again, hooray the official weekend!

So that was my week in a really quick nutshell. I'll post some more interesting goings on as they happen... I still have some catching up to do. For those of you who didn't know I was in Taiwan yet (Julie!) I'm sorry it took me so long to get this up.

I miss everyone, take care!
Love,
Tiff

Tomorrow is the day!

Hooray!

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be officially on my way to Taiwan. Here is my itinerary:

Wednesday, August 5th:
2:27pm - Depart Manchester, NH
4:10pm - Arrive Washington, DC
5:25pm - Depart Washington, DC
7:51pm - Arrive Los Angeles, LAX
Thursday, August 6th:
1:40am - Depart LAX
Friday, August 7th
6:25am - Arrive Taipei, Chiang Kai-Shek Airport!

Keep in mind that Taiwan is exactly 12 hours ahead of us, so 6:25am means 6:25pm on Thursday for those on the East Coast still. California is 3 behind. Womp womp. Confused yet? I go back in time to go forward. Talk about back to the future! ha ha! (sorry, I had to)

Big thanks to Rachel, who lent me her big red suitcase for this trip! You're a blessing!!! I bought a $60 "designer" suitcase at Marshalls when I was in Boston (it has four wheels! It spins!), so I have two good suitcases that are packed full to the brim with junk. I actually didn't have a problem with weight, they're both about 5 lbs less than they need to be, it's just the size of the stuff. It's all really crammed in there. I'm not shipping anything over either, in case you were wondering, because I figure it'll be cheaper to just buy stuff over there if I need it. Like sheets or something.

So, I've been tying up loose ends. I had a going away party in Boston two weekends ago, I had a family going away party yesterday, I've packed up all my worldy-but-staying-behind possessions in a storage unit (including everything left at mom and dad's..), and I'm off!

Thank you to everyone who has supported me thus far! I have many friends in Taiwan who are waiting for me to come so that they can take care of me (and relieve me of my American bought goods for them).

Hope ya'll have a fantastic rest of your summer.. here's to new beginnings!

Best,
Tiffany
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Photos from my going away party at Lir in Boston!

L-R: Alan, Mandy, Athena, Caitlin, Julianne, Me

L-R: (in back) Jeremy, Me, Austin, Chris, TJ, Jose (co-workers from Francesca's who came!)