When It Rains, It Pours

With so many major events occurring this past week I felt like it was time to blog again. This blog starts on the week of the 17th (Sunday). From Sunday the 17th until I tell you otherwise...there was continuous rain.

Monday I taught story time again--the latest tale for the first and second graders is Harry the Dirty Dog. It required a little bit of creative word swapping. Words like "coal chute" aren't exactly on the need to know vocabulary list. I decided to do something I hadn't done before and I brought my lunch back to the office to eat. I spent the afternoon working on a Halloween crossword puzzle for the 4th grade.

Tuesday, instead of co-teaching fifth grade, I got to go to Zhong Shan's kindergarten for story time. We taught Go Away, Big Green Monster to the students. We were in the 4 year old kindergarten class, and the 5 year old kindergarten class. "Kindergarten" in Taiwan refers more to Pre-school, Pre-K, and Kindergarten as we would think of them in the US. Every kindergarten class has 2 teachers that are always there. With Yvonne and I there for story time...we had 4. The first thing that struck me was how tiny and adorable they are. The second thing that struck me was that they seemed really well behaved when we were there. They were also very smart. It's amazing to see how much difference a year can make in students so young, I could definitely see how much more the 5 year old class knew than the 4 year old class, but even with the 4 year old class, not all the words I introduced were alien to all the students. In the 5 year old class, as I presented the colors, they almost all seemed to already know the English names for them, and some of them knew the adjectives we covered--long, short, wavy, straight, big, little. I thoroughly enjoyed Tuesday. I decided to bring my lunch back to the office again...apparently it was thought a little funny that I decided to eat noodles two days in a row. Seems a litte strange to me to find that funny when rice seems to be on the menu everyday here.

Wednesday was awesome. Wednesdays are half days for all the students in Taiwan. I co-taught 4th grade with Yvonne and we introduced Halloween vocabulary. This particular Wednesday was one I've been looking forward to for a while--bowling! Some weeks ago, Yvonne had asked if I wanted to participate in a bowling competition with the faculty. I love to bowl(not that I'm particularly good at it...). I was all for it. When I got back from lunch on Wednesday, it was time to go. 10 teachers from Zhong Shan (including me) went to the bowling alley. The colleague who drove me as a daughter in kindergarten. He said that she came home from school the day before talking about the English teachers that came to her classroom. That was fantastic to hear--yes, she probably won't remember it in 2 years, but she remmebers it now, and it makes me feel good. At the bowling alley I found out that it wasn't just a little bowling competition between the teachers of Zhong Shan, this was a yearly bowling competition between 8 schools (there were a total of 15 teams from 8 schools). We were the first there and I felt a little bit worried--what if I did a terrible job and brought down the school's score?

It was really great to get to interact with the teachers outside the office. I feel like I know them a little bit more now, even if I don't know their names still. Yvonne and Richard weren't there to translate for us, but between a little English, a little Chinese, and hand gestures, we cobbled together conversation. I knew Grace, one of the second grade homeroom teachers, and Shi Pei the student teacher who has the desk next to mine. Beyond that, there were familiar faces that I still haven't put names to, but I'm working on it. Luck must have been with me, or god stepped down to say, "I don't want you to embarass yourself too badly in front of your colleagues." I broke 100 for the first time in I don't know how long--I scored 101, the second best score on my team. Our team did not come in last place! We tied for 12th. The other team from my school did a fantastic job--they placed 4th of 15! They made it into the second round of the tournament and we stayed to cheer them on. They ended up in 5th place in the second round, only a few points off from a trophy. Still, we felt like we had done really well, and a great time was had by all. The teacher who had driven me to the bowling alley offered to drive me home--I was grateful--it was still pouring out.

I got back from Chinese class at Fo Guang that night to find out that English Village for Thursday had been canceled. Apparently though a school had signed up to come, none of the homeroom teachers in the school had signed up to come--so close to midterms, they were unwilling to give up the class time. We were emailed assignments to complete at home. With the pouring rain, it seemed like a blessing that this mix up had occured. It also gave me time to stay up and talk to Sarah and my dad on the phone for a lot later than I normally would have, which was really fantastic with such gloomy weather.

Waking up on Thursday, the rain was even worse. I shuddered a little at the thought of walking 2 miles to English Village in it and was glad that I had been able to sleep in and stay home. Glad is an understatement--I would have been soaked to the bone if I'd gone out that morning. By 2:30 in the afternoon, school was canceled for the entire county. In my part of Yilan city it didn't seem excessively terrible...Carolyn and I walked to Carrefour for groceries in the afternoon (we took a taxi back and had to wait and exceedingly long time for it). Walking to Carrefour--we were in water up to our ankles more than once, and my pants were soaked through with the rain. I really need to remember to pick up rain pants one of these days. At any rate, we had enough groceries to hunker down for the weekend and we made an amazing dinner that night--steak (with a good dry rub) and garlic mashed potatoes. Oreos for desert. We even sat at a table like civilized people instead of eating in our rooms on our beds.

Friday it was still raining but not nearly what it had been on Thursday. Thursday night, the Taiwanese news stations announced that school was canceled for Friday due to the flooding. When they cancel school it's a county wide thing--if they cancel it for one school, they cancel it for all the schools in the county. Su Ao, just south of Luodong, was one of the worst hit places. Cars were stranded, houses filled the entire first floor with water. There was a story of water at the train station. A week's flooding by Typhoon Megi was more than this county had figured on. Typhoon Megi was passing south of Taiwan and I personally hadn't thought we'd feel any impact. With 1000 km radius...we sure as heck did. This was the worst flooding in Yilan County for 100 years I've been told. All the same, in Yilan City, the water was draining and I met friends at the new Japanese curry restaurant at Luna Plaza without incident. I've come to the conclusion that while the few times I tried Indian curry it was too strong for me...Japanese curry is just right!

Saturday astounded us all. On Saturday, it dawned, for the first time in about a week. I woke up to the sunlight streaming in my window (about 11 AM). This was the first time in days I could see any sky. The sky was blue with some white clouds and the sunlight poured in by the bucketful. I met up with Jill for lunch--it was the first time my bicycle had left the apartment in a week. I'm not much of an outdoors person, as anyone who knows me will attest, but being out in that windy, bright, sunny, perfect fall day was too good to resist. After lunch, I rode my bicycle around Yilan for over 2 hours, keeping off the busy roads and just exploring. Never in my life have I ridden a bicycle for that long, or for the sure pleasure of it (though my body complained the next day). I met up with friends at the Luodong night market that night (train, not bicycle--not quite up to that trek yet). It felt so good to be out.

Sunday morning I was up early for the first time since Wednesday. I joined an exploration of Hualian's jade markets. There was a DIY Jade place, where you pick your stone, which is already roughly cut--a leaf, Taiwan, a heart, etc. and you grind it down and polish it, and then pick the necklace you want for it. I picked a stone shaped like Taiwan. I will admit--I did not grind the stone down myself. I liked one of the finished stones coloring better than the unfinished Taiwan stones so I told them I wanted that one. After the DIY Jade place, we went to lunch and a large Jade market. We had some of Hualian's specialty treats before heading home for the day.

Now it's Monday and for the present, the weather seems to be holding, bright and sunny with blue skies.