A work of art

I consider my flashcards to be a work of art. These were some of the ones I was the proudest of, I made them for my Grade 1 Afterschool class. We learned the poem:

1,2,3,4,5
Once I caught a fish alive
6,7,8,9,10
Then I let him go again

Why did you let him go?
Because he bit my finger so!

Cultural Difference

So I think I mentioned that International Travel Fair that we all went to last week. It was one of the worst 'crowd-experiences' of my life. SO many people, and everyone is pushing and squeezing. Excessive intrusion into my personal space bubble! Anyway, this was the one picture I took before I panicked and pushed my way to the door.

Eva Airlines is one of Taiwan airlines, and they have a special "Hello Kitty" plane. All the flight attendents wear the outfits, and you too can have your picture taken in one of the chairs.

Work Day

Yes. So, I am behind in my novel. Like 15,000 words behind. That's bad - but not unconquerable. This is when my discipline kicks in. So far, I've written for two hours this morning. If I write 6 more hours today, I can finish my whole book! We'll see. All that to say, please don't expect anything from me for the next 3 days. Oh, and sorry, but I'm not putting the rest of my novel online for awhile. It's just gotten so bad, I'm too embarrassed to put it on right now. Right now, I'm trying to connect the dots and make it a book, but until that happens, I can't stand to have it floating around cyberspace.

Christmas in Taipei

See my christmas tree? Only took me like 3 hours to craft last weekend.

I'm excited about Christmas in Taipei. We're going to do a gift exchange, and the four of us booked a hotel suite to stay over Christmas eve. We're going to bring all our presents, and our little tree, and on Christmas morning get coffee and celebrate. It's going to be quite a bit more festive than last year.

Except that I can't have this, or anything remotely close to it. Only in Canada. )=

Is it the weekend yet?

This is one of my housemates. She's a very hard worker, so when she's at home in the evening, she's usually working on something. This week, we saw her settle in to work, and a few minutes later we saw her like this - wiped out over her work. It's been a long week for quite a few of us.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We just had the most interesting dinner with our principal and her adult son, our company boss, and the six of us teachers. I use the word interesting to be polite. Actually, we walked up the one floor from her house to hours, sat down, and vented for half an hour! It will certainly be a thanksgiving to remember.

Yet I have so many things to be thankful for. But for today, I am most thankful for my incredible students. Every class I had today was full of kids that I just love and who inspire me. Every time I think about leaving them, I feel like crying. This is my second year teaching most of them, so I feel like I know them and care so much about them. They're wonderful and I'm so thankful I get to see them every day.

Share the road.

Chalk this uo to 'things you don't see everyday.' I was walking to the bank, and was stopped in my tracks by these two little guys happily riding their bikes in circles. No one even gave them a second look, they just walked right around them. I stopped to take a picture! (=

Home away from home

It's winter. It's chilly and it's wet. Starbucks is my world. (=

"All the sweet serenity of books"

Isn't this is a cute shot? The library is rearranging, and the librarian has all the books piled on the floor. There really can't be any order to it.

But it doesn't stop the students. This was two of my students before our grade 5 Advanced English class, I grabbed my camera and took the shot just before the bell rang and everyone ran to their desks.

Library

Christmas is here again...

Yippee, my Christmas Spirit has officially arrived. It started with my steal of a deal on that Cranberry sweater from Lands End. And for the month of October, monogramming was free. Now, I have fulfilled one of my great dreams in life, to have a sweater monogrammed with my initals. Isn't it Christmassy?

Then Ikea put out their Christmas decorations, and I loaded up. Then Starbucks announced yesterday that 'Christmas is here!' I agreed with a Cremee Brulee latte, a Christmas 'Joy' mug and a bag of decaf Christmas blend. Now, today's goal is to pack up my summer clothes, bring out my sweaters, and decorate my room for Christmas.

And it's a good thing my Christmas Spirit arrived because I've got to get some Christmas creativity to write those two scripts, too!

Happy Friday

I made it to Friday! This week, more so than most, I felt like I was just gritting my teeth and holding on all week. But, now I can breathe. Actually, I have a reward, Harry Potter premieres tonight in Taiwan, so I got tickets to the first showing. Geeky, yet the anticipation is half the fun.

This is Andy, one of the only grade 1 students who come to English corner to read books. Andy told me this week that he and his brother are going to Harry Potter, and I could conspiratorially lean over and whisper "Me too!" It was fun.

Assignment

Alright, I have a little assignment for this weekend. My supervisor very sweetly asked me if I would help with the junior high Christmas programme and I am quite happy to. I really enjoyed everything I did with both performances last Christmas, and as you remember - those two performances were more 'Christmas' to me than anything else.

Well, this year, I have a bigger job. She wants me to write the script. She gave me a script they used two years ago as a reference, and a list of the 6 Christmas songs the choir has prepared. My job? Write a script, using one or two foreign teachers and a bunch of grade 7s. Make it from the shepherd's point of view and include Mary and Joesph. The shepherd's can be somewhat, but not too funny. Total length: 1 hour.

I feel a bit like it's reinventing the wheel. So many churches all around the world do a Christmas concert every year, surely someone's thought of doing it from the shepherd's point of view before?!

I guess I'm wondering if anyone out there remembers ever going to any sort of play or concert that you think might help me. If so, I'd appreciate the name. There are so many Christmas scripts online, but I haven't find a very good site to sort through them.

That's my weekend chore. Oh, and I almost forgot, the other thing I need to do is re-write my Grade 7 girls' Midsummer's Night Dream script to make it about giving a gift to nature. Can you imagine!? Shakespeare would be quite surprised to see his play cut down to a 10 minute skit about being kind to the earth, performed by 12 year old girls in Taipei.

Mariachi

Can I just say that if I had the oppurtunity to meet whoever made up that awful "Mariachi - Mariachoo" I would be tempted to seriously hurt him or hurt. Kathleen said she thinks the song comes from Slovenia or something, so they're safe.

Do you know the song I'm talking about? It's all over the radio here. It was catchy the first two times I heard it. Then it just got really annoying and it's always stuck in my head.

They also have the song in the Chicken Little movie previews here, so all of my students like the song. Here's the worst case scenario:

I had grade 1 afterschool class, which is definatley the lowest point of my week. I have no energy or patience and I'm faced with a class of tired, psycho munckins. Yikes. So, one kid, Simon, is impishly cute, and quite smart, but he almost completely ignores me. He doesn't ever just fall in line with the other kids. So in class, on Tuesday, I was so tired, and whenever I looked at Simon he would sing "Mariachi!!" and give me a cute little smile. Cute the first time, not the thirtieth time! He would not stop. All the other kids had like 20 stars under their name, and Simon had none (he doesn't really care about stars). All he would ever say was "Mariachi." Oh, my goodness, I thought I would flip. I didn't. I found out that he liked to hand out paper, and so I gave him the job of handing out all my papers.


All that to say, in every single one of my classes this week, kids are singing "Mariachi, Mariachoo" and I'm ready to scream!

On a side note, I put up three more chapters of my story, but the font's screwed up again. I don't have time to fix it now, although I will put it on my to-do list this weekend. You might just want to wait until I fix it to read it, or you can just look at it like a code you have to decipher. (=

Flat Stanley goes to the movies

Kathleen took these pictures for her Flat Stanley project. This one is "Flat Jose" from Texas. And he's in front of Warner Villiage, the big movie theatre, where I will be watching Harry Potter this weekend!

Taipei 101

Flat Stanley in front of a cloudy Taipei 101.

Plastic food

This is Flat Stanley, in front of the very interesting plastic food. It's a nice idea, you can walk around the food court and see real representations of what food you can order. But on the other hand, it still seems a little creepy and weird.

Bad Writing Wins!

This quote came in my week 3 email from Nanowrimo. It was just what I needed to hear. See, last night I was treating myself to an entire Alice Munro short story, and getting so utterly depressed at her massive talent and my ugly wreck of a novel. But then I thought, if Alice Munro was 23 and she tried to write a 50,000 word novel in a month while working full time with three extra jobs and everything else, her book would be crap too. I don't think I quite believe it, but it's what I need to get me to keep writing when I feel like it's too silly.

"Abandon the quest for pretty sentences. Beautiful language is small-stakes writing. We're doing something epic here. We're aiming for completion. We're shooting for the dramatic arc, for the roar of the crowd, for the ticker-tape raining down on us in slow motion as we type our final sentence, run one last word count, and then close the book on a truly triumphant month. This is big. This is very big. And it's yours for the taking. But to get there, you need to give yourself permission to make messes. To write ungainly sentences and create absolutely atrocious dialogue. I know it hurts to leave ugly prose in your book. But you can polish everything to perfection next month."

Writing Genius

Well that nice lady at the bakery was certainly the inspiration I needed. At the end of our little "I write books" conversation, she squeezed my arm and said "Jiyo!" which means something like "Keep Going!" (When I did spinning classes, right at the end when we all felt like just taking it easy, the instructor would yell "Jiyo! Jiyo!")

And so yesterday afternoon and evening I spent over three hours writing and got over 6,000 words finished. So I'm back on schedule. I hadn't realized it, but last week when I was getting stressed out over all the change, I wasn't writing at all, so I had a lot of catching up to do.

Fun and exciting

I had such an interesting morning.

Body Combat made me laugh out loud - actually the instructor did. They are trying to train this guy to be a Body Combat instructor. I've gone to a few of his other classes, and he's a fine teacher. There's just no way he's cut out to be a Body Combat instructor. He's half my size, literally, and has the build of a dancer. He's very effeminate, and was indeed, wearing eye make-up to class. I could never tell which punch he was doing, it wasn't fighting, it was like he was creating a modern dance. I tried not to laugh too hard.

And then on my walk home I stopped at the french bakery for a cibatta. The cute sales lady in the black and white striped shirt and the beret (they don't seem worried about the cliche!) was very friendly. She noticed my little "I write books" Nanowrimo pin on my backpack and she was so excited. "You write books. Wow? What kind?" So on so forth. I tried to explain to her that I do write books, but that it's not quite what she was thinking. They're not good books!

Which leads me to my last exciting point. I just checked my email, and I have a very lengthy email from a lady in England. She had just moved to Charlbury and was searching blogs for "Charlbury." She came up with my last year's novel, Plucking Blackberries, because it was all in Charlbury. I'm not sure how much she read, but it seemed like a lot, because she made mention of a lot of different parts! Imagine that. It was just such a sweet email, and it's so surprising to me that people actually stop to read my writing.

Sunday's are writing days, so I should be able to finish up to chapter 10 today and maybe put it online. But don't hold your breath.

Introverts and Church don't mix

Umm, I found this link on Bobbie's Emerging Sideways blog, and thought it looked interesting.

I filled out the survey and found it quite enlighting. Everything I don't like about the church might really come down to the fact that I'm an introvert and most churches are designed by and for extroverts. Hmmm.

Take the Survey!

Too much change = bad thing

I can't believe how much has changed in the last week. We were all just going merrily along, loving working at Fu-Hsing, working hard, getting ready for Christmas.

Then, Kathleen we get the call from "the boss" and "the company." It affects Kathleen and means changes to my plan too. Then on Thursday we see a new foreigner at work.Dorcas introduces her as "the new teacher" and we all start to panic if we are "the old teacher." Actually, the person who was fired did have one week's notice. One weeks! To finish your work, pack up and move out of the apartment! And so, we had no inkling until Thursay, and then now, Saturday, one of our housemates is moving out, and a new one is moving in. TOO MUCH CHANGE. It's also stressful for me, because I feel the akward tension more than most.

So, after rethinking my long term life plan last month, this month I'm re-thinking my short term life plan. I've decided I like having a life plan, it helps me not to stress out about the future. But I've changed my life plans so many times, I guess what the plan in doesn't matter so much as the fact that I have a plan.

I wish I could tell you all my plan, but that would be tipping my hand. All in good time.

Rememberance Day

It's remembrance day. We three Canadians made little poppies out of construction paper to wear. We also put a sign on our office door: "Today is Remembrance Day. Tell a Miss Nickle what that means and get free candy!" No one took us up on it, and we had a lot of candy. Alas.

The only classes we have on Fridays are grade 1 classes, and it was indeed a challenge explaining remembrance day to them. For my weakest class, I ended up just saying that it was a day when everyone wears flowers and we remember peope who die. They understood that.

Up with Joy

here's to opening and upward...
and to yourself and up with joy and up with laughing.
e.e. cummings

I'm in the most wonderful place right now, where the future is open and the possibilities are endless. I can't really go into details, nothing's finalized. But I'll tell you everything when I can.

It doesn't at all effect my plans for next year. I'm still definitely applying to the Care Internship in London. That, I think, is my first choice, because it would be a good way to figure out if I really wanted to do relief and development before commiting to a Master's Programme. My other application is going to be to Acadia, for the BEd programme. Which I'll definitely get in to (they accept 250 students and the minimum GPA is 2.67. It's not being cocky to be sure that I'll get in!) and will happily attend starting in September, if I don't get into the Care program.

But from now until September, there is a world of possibility.

My new lamp

So, I've been very good about not buying things this fall, I don't need them and I won't have room to take them home. But when I saw this in the store, half price, I had to buy it.

It's a vase holding a candle, with peachy / pink beads, hung on a stand. It was half price, and it makes me very, very happy. Every night when I sit down in my comfy Ikea chair to write, I light the candle beside me and feel oh so peaceful.

Progress!

Yippee! I got back on track for my Nanowrimo novel today, and hit the 10,000 word mark. This week has been so busy, my room was a mess, and sadly it was my turn to clean the apartment. So I got up early this morning, and cleaned the living room and kitchen, then my room, had a shower, wrote for two hours, and took a nap. Quite productive.

Also, my kids are doing a great job with their stories too. I set 3 levels of goals for them: 1,000; 2,500; 5,000. This Satuday I had them all count how much they had written so far and try to select their goal. I was so proud, I had 3 boys and 4 girls decide to go all the way to 5,000. They are so energetic and creative. I'm inspired by them. The rest pretty much went for the other two goals, and I had a few slackers who decided on 250 words. I made charts for us to put stars on our goals and color in the bars as we achieved them. And I'm putting together the website of our classes writing soon. Also, I should have the first few chapters of my novel on tonight.

Taken after dinner on the outdoor paio of the local Indian restuarant.

We found ice!

Our house can be split into two categories: the cold weather people from Canada and Wisconsin, and the hot weather ones from Arizona and California. We cold weather people were thrilled to find the new ice skating rink in the brand new Taipei Municipal Dome. It was about $10 Can. to rent skates (only men's styles were available - felt like rollarblades) and skate for two hours. We didn't last the full two hours, but we had a lot of fun and plan on going back.

A little slice of Canada in Taipei

Thoreau quote

Jeanine Payer: Featured Artist at the Giving Tree Gallery: "'If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success.' - Thoreau"

Pre-Pumpkin-Fiasco

Here's a group shot of us,
Haiwaiian clown (?), the phantom, scary old woman, butterfly, pumpkin and witch.

We're standing in just a small part of the wonderfully decorated English Corner. We don't have to do anything - mother's from the Parent's Association came in and did EVERYTHING. I suppose that's one of the real perks of private schools.

Also, notice the board behind us to the right - Kathy made that. It's called "A Colour of His Own" and it's our grade 1 students worksheets drawn from the Eric Caryle book. Kathy was very creative putting it all together - that's a pink spotted chameleon sitting on a pink spotted mushroom.

English Corner for Halloween

That's Kathy reading the story in another part of the English corner. This crowd of children is only part of the total group. Don't worry - she had a microphone.

Halloween Costumes

Kathy was a butterfly for halloween, she looked very nice.

I had a bit of a fiasco over my costume. I had decided to be a pumpkin, since I had bright orange fleece pants (heh- they were on sale!). So I bought an orange fleece pullover to match, and borrowed Amber's bright green baseball cap. I cut out brown Jack O'Lantern features and taped them on my back. It wasn't magnificant, but it was okay.

So, I showed up at work, ready to go. Everyone complimented my outfit, although someone thought I was Bob the Builder's helper. Anyway. Everything was fine until my co-teacher came into the office. She proceeded to pull out her costume. You may have guessed, a deluxe, inflatable pumpkin. She put it on, and pumped in the air. On pumpkin costume scales, I was about a 2 and she was a ten. Oddly enough, none of the Taiwanese teachers seemed to notice the problem. All my housemates felt compassionate, and Steph offered me the use of her skeleton mask.

And that is how my 2005 Halloween costume ended up being an orange skeleton.

Halloween English Corner

Kathy reading the story of Winnie the Witch in our English Corner, during story time. Our usual weekly attendence hovers around 5, but on our Halloween special day we had closer to 200. Free candy really draws them in.

The trip home

Watch out for the freaks sitting in the back of the bus!

My first blogskin

Bryce and Cami: Your Own Adventure
Did you look at my website for my novel? I designed it myself, my first such blog design. That's pretty labor intensive work, and if I had more time, there's a lot of things I'd like to fix. But now that I've done one, I'll know how to do one quicker next time. This one is visually busy and textured. Kathy is going to commission me to make her blog in December, which will be more zen simplicity with a frangipani, or swings.

Oh, and I don't really like that picture of the girls on there. They don't look like Bryce and Cami to me, better to leave it to the imagination. When I get a chance, I'll change it to something more abstract.

So, I stayed up and started my novel. Good thing, because todays a busy day with Grade 5's (sigh) and Grade 1 after school (double sigh). Then we have tickets to the Estonian Concert Choir this evening. Full day!