Sunday Storm and So Much More

Typhoon season has officially started. It has rained every day this week. It usually starts raining pretty hard around 2 in the afternoon and then continues to rain on and off for the rest of the evening. Today it actually started raining around 9am. I love the rain! The sound, the smell, I love it all. I'll admit that the rain here is a little more than I'm used to, okay, a lot more than I am used to but it's great. The majority of the rains comes while I am inside teaching so I am still able to get out and about without getting too wet after I finish teaching for the day.

This past week was my first full week of teaching and I was looking forward to the weekend but unfortunately I ended up spending most of my time working on my lesson plans for this week, then I was also asked to teach the relief society lesson for Sunday. Sigh, so it wasn't the fun filled weekend I was hoping for. It was ridiculous and stressful, but luckily there were a few things during the week and on Sunday that made up for it:

Gnome roommates

Teaching Relief Society(I actually do love teaching)

New calling in the branch, I am now the 2nd counselor in the Relief Society presidency

Afternoon rainstorm
 Cooking dinner with the roommates

Watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

 FHE with the Listons

Coconut Mango Rice (Yes, rice can be a dessert!)

 Not too bad for a crazy weekend. Stay tuned for news from my next weekend.....
Temple trip to Taipei! 

I love my life.

Giant Buddha

It's been a while since I last posted and it is definitely time for an update. Two Sundays ago I had the chance to visit Chnaghua, which is about an hour south of where I live, but since we decided to go right  after church it only took about 30 minutes. Why go to Changhua? To see the Giant Buddha of course! I was told this is one of the largest Buddhas is Asia. It was huge, like you can walk inside of it three stories huge.  Inside there were diorama displays of events in the life of Buddha. I love learning about different religions so it was really interesting to read about it, thankfully it was in English.

What I didn't realize before going is that it wasn't just the giant Buddha that I would get to see,there was also a Confucianism temple, a koi pond with the fattest fish I have ever seen, and a great overlook of the city among many other things. The grounds of the temple were beautiful. The architecture was incredible, it's so different than European and American architecture. I love it! It was definitely worth the trip. Take a look.

Entrance

 Statues like this lined the path all the way up.

 L to R: Sara, Me, Kendra, Kaylee, Kylie, Veronica, and Sara

Thoroughly Exhausted

Thoroughly exhausted, perfectly describes how I feel right now.

I can't complain though, I love my teaching schedule. I don't start too early, I don't work late and I don't work on Saturday mornings. I like the classes that I teach too, although they will definitely be challenging at times. I teach emergent kindergarten (ages 2-5), first grade, and third grade. Emergent kindergarten is pretty tough because some of the kids have NEVER spoken English before, this is their first experience (no pressure). The kids are absolutely adorable! The hard part is coming up with activities and vocabulary that is both useful and age appropriate. It's a lot harder than you would think and it is super repetitive. I think I probably said "roll the ball" at least 50 times in a 15 minute period.

My first grade class is fantastic. I have 5 students in the class and I work with them on reading, writing, spelling, and speaking. They are all well behaved and they all work hard, though towards the end they sometimes have a hard time paying attention and I have one girl who is completely lost when it comes to spelling. It's harder than I thought it would be; letters, sounds, spelling, inflection, everything is different from what they have grown up with.

My last class is a 3rd grade class. It is pretty much the same deal as my 1st grade class. We work on all the same things just at a different level. I have 9 students in this class, 8 boys and one girl. They are a handful, but I was warned before hand so I went into my first day being as firm as I could be. I think it helped but with 8 boys you never know what is going to happen. Luckily I only have this class 3 times a week.

I honestly forgot how hard teaching is. Working with kids, especially younger kids, really takes it out of you. Working with kids who are learning English as a second language is even harder.

The most important part is to make sure they get every opportunity to use English, and that is what I will be working on for the next 6 months:)

A Week in Feng Yuan

It's hard to believe that I've already been in Feng Yuan for over a week, and at the same time I can't believe that it's only been a week. I feel so comfortable here. The school I'm working for, Berhan Language Institute, is amazing and the staff is so helpful, I love the girls that I am living and working with, the Taiwanese people here are so nice, the food is amazing, and I'm having so much fun exploring the city.

It's been a busy week! There has been a lot of paper work, culture training, and preparation for teaching. I had to fill out an application for a work permit and as a part of getting a work permit I was also required to get blood drawn, get x-rays taken and have a physical examination at the local hospital. The hospital was quite the experience. It actually wasn't bad, just different. Haha and the looks that we got were priceless! Tourism isn't too big here so seeing 10 foreigners walk into a hospital is definitely not a normal occurence. 

We got a lot of stares.

Even though I've been busy with training I've also had plenty of time to explore and see some fun sights in the city. We went to a couple of parks and a Taoist temple. It was really pretty and there were tons of lanterns. It was really interesting to see another way that people worship. It's a little hard to relate when they have so many gods that they worship. They pray and leave offerings to each one for different purposes, they even have gods for specific that watch over specific neighborhoods. 

 The school provided each of the teachers with their own bike so I have been able to ride around the city and explore and to the store to buy groceries. I'm surprised at how comfortable I feel riding a bike around in the city, especially with how much traffic there is here, but drivers are considerate and as long as I don't hesitate and I'm careful I feel safe.

Here are a few highlights from the past week and some interesting facts about FengYuan:  

Scooters are everywhere and pretty much park wherever they can find space. There are a lot of cars as well and it goes the same for them, you park anywhere you can find. 

Traffic laws are kind of optional, or at least not followed or enforced like they are in the United States. So you have to be careful and aggressive. On the upside though road rage is non existent. Cars know you are there and they drive around you if you are in their way.

 There are no sidewalks so even if you walk some where you are on the street.

Being a foreigner means that you will get stared at. They do it openly and don't try to hide it and because there are so many of us together we get stared at even more.

Garbage trucks pick up the garbage every day and they play music just like our ice cream trucks do. Weird.

Mattresses here are not soft. I sleep on a mattress that feels more like a box spring, surprising though I've been sleeping really well.

 Attending the morning market. It was fun to see some foods that I recognized and a lot that I didn't. There was also some pretty crazy stuff, mostly fish, but they also had frogs! 

 I went on a bike ride with a couple of the girls which ended with a small jungle hike. There were so many bugs, but luckily no spiders. Although, we did meet a guy named Spiderman. Hahaha at first we thought he was kidding but nope, that's the English name he picked for himself. How fantastic is that? Kids here choose their own English names so they can get pretty creative.
 Finding a cockroach in our fridge. I have no idea how it got inside the fridge especially considering they deep cleaned our whole floor before we moved in. It was so gross. Luckily we've got some tough girls in our group who got up the courage to kill that beast and smash the crap out of it. 

The night market in Taichung. So crowded and so many things to buy, see and smell. We ended up going to a novelty restaurant for dinner. Apparently this is something very Taiwanese and it made me laugh my head off.  The restaurant was called the Modern Toilet. All of your food is served in dishes that look like toilets or bathtubs and your drinks come in urinals shaped glasses. Then to top it all off your table is a glass covered sink and your chairs are toilets. It was absolutely ridiculous and hilarious. The food was surprisingly pretty good. The sides they give you are usually pretty weird but I at least tried everything. 

 Attending the English branch in Taichung.The branch president asked all of us teachers to get up and introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies since it was fast and testimony meeting. It was a great opportunity and I think that I'm going to like it.