Nacho party

Today I had a luncheon with my relatives since it was a celebration of my cousin already getting married. We had a nice 10-12 course meal and there were a lot of food. Then later this afternoon my coworker held a nacho party. Basically we all just ate nachos lol It was delicious since there were a lot of toppings and there was a lot food and leftovers. Above are some of the pictures of the food. The second picture doesn't do its justice since most of the food was put away by this point on the table. We ate, watched TV/movies, and played card games/mahjong. I rarely eat cheese since it's expensive to get and not that many people eat it here in Taiwan. The last picture is of me with the huge bag of cheese that my coworker bought. I missed eating it a lot and it was great to eat cheese again haha

-Chihchat

It is difficult to...

I taught all day today and today was even busier since I subbed an hour for my coworker since he's on vacation. I taught 8 hours, 5 classes, and I'm surprisingly not SUPER tired. It was a busy day as I taught all different levels of English (beginner, intermediate, advanced). A lot of things happened including one of my students peed herself in my classroom. The funniest and miraculously thing was getting my JK10 class to actually talk!

It was a perfect opportunity to play this game where it made everyone talk. Basically it was called last person standing and I would ask questions and you would have to repeat it, word for word. If you didn't repeat the answer correctly, you would have to continue standing and the last person standing has to do a punishment. It got down to the last 4 people and it was funny because we were playing it so many times lol I would make the questions harder like "Is it difficult to go hiking on Big Bear Mountain?" I try to make them super hard so no one could answer it quickly. It was really funny though although this girl lost 3x but she wouldn't do the punishment. She would have had to do the chicken dance and I told her I would do it with her but she didn't want to. So that was the only problem, other wise I've never seen my students talk so fast in my life and wanting to participate lol

I wish it could be like that all the time!

-Chihchat

30 word sentence

I love challenging my favorite A11 class since they have been studying English for around 8 years, they are older, mature, and they want to be there (I think lol). For our voc. review game, I had them roll the dice and if you roll #1, you have to make a sentence with at least 3 words. #2 is 6, #3 is 9, #4 is 12, #5 is 15, and yes, #6 is 18 words. Everyone was freaking out but we played the game and usually they would roll a #1,#2, or #3. Two people rolled #6 and yes, I made them write a 18 word sentence using the voc.

Anyway so the word was funky and one of my students wrote a 30 word sentence. It was awesome and I was surprised but yet not surprised that she wrote the sentence. I thought it was great and I wish it was on a piece of paper but they were writing on the board and it was soon erased. I'm such a teacher nerd but it just makes my day when the students do awesome things like that. I don't know if I could write a Chinese sentence using 18 characters. AND my half-day class was behaved and played the rev. voc. game without complaining. They did have their final Chinese exams though but I was in shock! lol

Wow...today is the 7th month mark of being in Taiwan. I totally forgot today was exactly 7 months. I'm so used to everything now. I'm adjusted and for the most part assimilated to Taipei that time is going by too fast. Honestly, I feel like I'm in a movie and just going through all the motions. I'm doing all these things but it feels like a dream since I'm doing so many things in such a short amount of time. The months are a blur and I can't even imagine how I acted or was like the first week I was in Taipei. I've changed a lot but so far it's been for the best. I've changed my eating habits (stopped drinking pop and chips), am more frugal, and I always have to recycle now. I started exercising more and now take a regular exercise class. I also meet with my coworker one hour a week to practice my Chinese. I've done so many things these past couple of months, I'm excited for what the next month will bring for me :)

-Chihchat

Gamed out

I subbed for my coworker today and his class is full of young kids learning the very basics of English and I had to prepare them for their final. The class was 2 1/2 hours long and basically it was just games, games, and more games. I was tiring them out since we kept playing game after game after game. I don't know what I'm going to do next week since I'm subbing 2 more times for this class and since they will be done with the final, it's just more review and basically more games lol They are cute though!

Tonight after my kickboxing class, my instructor always ask everyone how they are doing. But this time I was with 2 of my coworkers and he was nice and asked if we could speak Chinese. Then he later was guessing who everyone was from and he knew my one coworker was Taiwanese but for my other coworker, he thought she was Taiwanese as well but she's Canadian. He was shocked. Then I go, and where do you think I'm from? He guessed Hong Kong and I told him America and he was really surprised lol I'm surprised though that he thought we were native, although my coworker and I are Asian because of our accents. He wanted to know how we knew each other and we said we were coworkers. He was even more surprised when we said we were English teachers lol Yep, he was pretty cute haha

-Chihchat

Smiles and tears

Today was a pretty high energetic day. My half-day class usually doesn't want to do anything but when you push them, they will actually do the work. It was a bad start though because we were playing this one game and they were just acting up. Then, during the break one, of the students threw their hotpad and it hit another one of my student's in the face. I scolded them and by this time I didn't think I would be able to accomplish this since they were extremely out of control but I miraculously got them to write a haiku. Yes, a Japansese style poem called haiku which is a 5-7-5 syllable poem. I first mentioned this poem a couple of months ago but they rejected it immediately and didn't want to do it. Today I forced them to do it and surprisingly it worked out well. I think it's amazing that these 10 year students can write a Haiku poem in English.

Moving on to my next class, they were super energetic when we were playing a review game. I started to lose faith in some of the students since they weren't understanding the material but they are finally pulling through (mainly because of my new Chinese co-teacher). This class usually never gives me any problems and it makes me happy when they are enthusiastic to play the games.

My last class however started as a mess and later ended up being okay. It was the last day of the level which means they just have to do final corrections on their exam and in the last 20 mins they can have a break and eat whatever they want. Most of the students with the exception of a mere 4 out of 17 didn't do homework corrections. The 4 students started to work on the packet while the others didn't even get a chance to start it. I pulled the 4 students out and asked if they wanted the others to do it for homework and they wanted to but they didn't want everyone else to get mad at them. So I said I will tell them that I am making them do it. I felt it was justified since I just don't think it's fair that they had to suffer and wait for their classmates without getting a nice reward. Then tonight I had to fail one of my students and he started crying. He was mostly crying because he was going to miss his friends in the class but it was still sad to see. He had many chances though to improve so although it's sad to see him be upset, he knew that it was coming and he needed to work harder. I never had to deal with a situation like this and I tried to explain to him that it's not a bad thing, you just need to keep trying and review the lessons.

It's Wed. which is my busy day of teaching and I actually had a great day. Although my students can be super naughty, I learned to embrace it rather than get angry. I used to be frustrated in the past and wonder why they aren't listening to me or why they don't understand the material. Sometimes I wonder why they are even there when they just don't want to do anything and I know the reason is because they are forced by their parents which makes it even sadder to see. As I've been gaining more teaching experience day by day, I've learned that you just have to stick with it and to know that everyday is really a new day. I'm still not a perfect teacher and I know I can easily lose my temper, but I've really built an immunity to misbehavior. I'm not stressed out about it anymore like I used to and Weds. don't make me exhausted by the end of the day. I really learned to just let it go because it will be easily forgotten by the next day and there will always be a tomorrow.

-Chihchat

Lucky Guess

Tonight my second favorite class, K9 is done with their level and next time they will start with a new level. They just had to do their final exam corrections and then we played a couple of games. The first game was hangman and it was a phrase. We were playing for awhile and they were freaking out since the words were long like "earthquake". They were playing for awhile and one of the students really liked playing the game since he was the only that wanted to continue playing it.

We played one more time and I decided to choose the phrase "The Eiffel Tower". They were learning about different countries and what each country is famous for. I wasn't even ready to begin the game when that same student raised their hand and said is it "The Eiffel Tower"? I was in shock! I said yes and everyone started laughing lol It could have been any three words and he chose that phrase. It reminds me of the girl from Wheel of Fortune who guessed the whole phrase by only knowing one letter.

-Chihchat

Awkward encounter

Every Thurs. I go to a kickboxing class and the instructor for the kickboxing class also teaches two other classes on Mon. night. Since I don't have my one-on-one anymore on Mon. night, I have time to go to the two classes. I tried them out, one I already went to with a different instructor. It's the same class where you have the same dance routine and you have to dance so many times. It was tiring and the next class I've went to before. I was pretty tired but also it's because we went over the class time. Next time I will only go to one class instead of two since I don't like doing the one where you just repeat the dance routine.

After class the instructor was asking some people how they were doing and he asked me why I was here and not the kickboxing class. I sort of understood him but just to make sure I wanted him to repeat again and he was surprised since he thought I could understand Chinese. I thought he knew though since he would ask my coworker and I before about the class and I thought he could tell by my accent that I wasn't native. But anyway so then he goes oh and repeated it slowly and I said yeah I will come and he asked me why I was there tonight and I said I had time. He started to laugh since I said I had time but yeah, I don't know if he was laughing because of what I said or because of my accent lol So embarrassing though! I was thinking to my head, stop talking to me, I just want to go home haha

-Chihchat