Ready for my vacation paradise

I leave tomorrow for my 2 week trip and it's been pretty rough these past couple of days. A lot has to do with the fact that I have a lot of grading and prepping to do. I have so many classes to grade and so I have to get everything done before I leave. I'm so tired but it's good to keep my mind off from my trip but I'm definitely ready to leave. I just teach tomorrow morning and my flight leaves tomorrow evening.

Here is my trip's agenda/itinerary:

I will stay in Hong Kong for 3 days with my roommate. We are meeting up with my friend who is flying from America. We three will then go to Macao. Then my roommate is going back to Taipei while my friend and I will go to Thailand. We are staying in Bangkok for a couple of days then flying to Phuket. We will take a ferry to Krabi island and stay there for a couple of days. Then we will go back to Phuket and stay one night. Then we will fly from Phuket to Taipei. My friend and I will then go to Taroko Gorge in Taiwan for one night. She will stay in Taiwan for a couple of days and then go back to Hong Kong/America.

We've been planning this trip since Oct. and today I finally finalized everything since I got our train tickets and our cab driver to take us to Taroko Gorge in Taiwan. It's been pretty crazy to get everything booked but it's so worth it! I'm VERY EXCITED!

My friend leaves Taiwan June 16th so I will be able to blog until then. I'm signing off and will write again in 3 weeks :D

-Chihchat

"Is Teacher Daniel coming back?"

This morning my coworker and I had a mini-American Idol party. They showed the live finale this morning in Taipei and yes, we got up early (the show started at 8am). It was a great performance and I'm happy that Scotty won although Lauren is a great singer. We got pretty obsessed this season and my coworker goes, "Now I have nothing to look forward to" lol

I've been blogging what my students say right after I tell them that I'm leaving to go back to America because 1) it's surprising what they say and 2) their reaction makes me a little anxious. Everyone reacts differently and although I've only been teaching for 11 months, I've made good relationships with most of my students and I will be definitely sad leaving them. Now to them is a completely different story.

My crazy, young old Mon. night class now switched to Thurs. nights have been getting better. I finally am at peace with them and maybe it has more to do with the fact that I'm leaving. Anyway I told them tonight that I was going on vacation and they wanted to know who the sub was going to be.

Then I told them that I'm leaving and the boys in the class (they're only 7 students in my class) asked about Teacher Daniel who was the teacher that I replaced when I came to the school. They thought he was coming back and I said no he's in America. The girls were sad though so at least someone cared (sniff sniff) lol

When I was signing their bye-bye books, one of the students asked again about Teacher Daniel. I told him again he's in America and he wanted to know what he was doing. I told him he wanted to be a lawyer but Cody didn't understand what "lawyer" meant. (Mind you, he's only 8 years old). Then he asked if he was coming back and I said "No, he's in America and he's not coming back because he's done at this school." Cody all of a sudden asks with surprise, "Is Teacher Daniel DIED?" (Yes, bad grammar) lol He confused "done" with "die/dead". I quickly said no but it was really funny to see his expression. Oh little kids. Oh well..I'm glad they will be okay when I'm gone :)

-Chihchat

"I'm so ANGRY!"

I've really started to like my K8 class tonight more and more. They were really naughty and slow before and a lot of them are still like that but they are getting better. I told them tonight that I will be gone and that I will be leaving to go back to America. One of my students who is known to be super talkative and be "different" yelled "Oh I'm so ANGRY!". He jumped out of his seat too lol It's been pretty crazy this week but only because I will be gone for 2 weeks and I need to prep and grade a lot.

Definitely counting down..only 3 more days left!

-Chihchat

"Teacher Lilly, we died"

This week I've been telling my students that I'm leaving for vacation for a couple of weeks. Not only that but that I'm leaving at the end of June for America. Tonight I taught my second favorite class and I really like them. They are super smart and they are just really polie kids, well for the most part. One of the students is pretty crazy, Wawa. Wawa is the Chinese name for "doll." But she doesn't really act like a doll perse because she's very talkative but she's not too bad.

Anyway I first told them I was leaving for vacation. They were like okay see you soon. But then I told them that I'm actually leaving for America. Then they were like okay. I then said but I won't come back. They were really quiet and all of a sudden Wawa said, "No! Teacher Lilly we died!" lol I was like aww it's going to be okay but a lot of them were sad.

It's crazy how I'm leaving Taipei just a couple of weeks after I come back from my trip. Time goes by way too quickly!

-Chihchat

Last booking

I only have a couple of days left until my vacation. I leave for 2 weeks and I wanted to get all my booking done so the plane tickets wouldn't be as expensive and I can just get everything finalized. I'm staying at my friend's house in Cali and finally I got the dates set. I booked my ticket tonight and I'm leaving Los Angeles July 18th and arriving at Omaha in the afternoon. I leave Taipei on July 14th, land in Los Angeles on the 14th. I'm going to stay in LA for a couple of days to revisit my old high school and to see Stefano Langone live in concert. I haven't been having too much sleep lately since I've been super excited about everything.

In less than 2 months I will be back home in Iowa!! I can't believe it!

-Chihchat

Natural selection

This morning I went to choose my glamour pictures to put in my book and cd. Last week I decided to take glamour pictures and with the phots my pics are organized in a book, complied on a cd, and I will get one poster of one of my shots. I first looked at all of the pictures and they turned out surprisingly well! I figured it would be okay but I thought I wouldn't like a lot of them. Then I deleted the ones that I really didn't like and I thought I would have enough since I could only choose 30. I had 4 outfits to choose from and I still had 80 pictures left!

I had no idea it would be this hard. I then kept deleting and then finally choosing pictures from different outfits and deleting ones that looked similar. Ironically, I really like the pictures from the natural pose I was forced to take. I had 4 outfits and there were 4 different themes. The one theme that I really didn't want to do was a natural shot where I'm wearing simple makeup and wearing not so much clothing to make myself look "sexy." I'm still covering everything but for my outfit I wore a big button up white shirt. Surprisingly the pictures turned out nice and they weren't so bad as I thought.

It took me an hour to choose only 30 pictures but I'm really excited to see the end result. Since I'm going on vacation, I have to wait until I come back to see the setup of my pictures in my book and then 4 days later I will get everything. It's a long process but it's worth it :)

-Chihchat

End of the World?

I'm known as a scaredy cat and although nothing happened on May 13th which a Taiwanese "scientist" claimed that Taiwan would have a huge earthquake right smack in the middle of Taiwan, I wasn't that nervous about today. I read many articles about "judgment day" and I wasn't really scared. I worked all day though and of course we're one day ahead of the U.S. but nothing has happened. It's crazy how so many people have claimed that the world is going to end. I guess this is prepping me up for 2012 so I won't be scared on the day..although I think I will stay at my house on New Year's Eve lol

-Chihchat