More Elementary Photos

My favorite shot

This was my favorite 'ballerina' shot. It was after the performance, and one of my classes were arranged on the steps for a class photo. Fortunately, Rosalyn noticed just in time that Yuko's skirt was up and she quickly helped her adjust it.

row of sweeties

Happy Faces

Nutcracker Soliders

Ballerinas

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all! We're just about done here, but most of you are only starting. Just to rub it in - right now it's sunny and 22C! But enjoy your snow. (=

The play's the thing

Here's the problem. For this week, I have Elementary and Junior High Christmas practices every day. For example, tommorrow is three hours of elementary in the morning, and a two hour junior high in the afternoon. There will be no rest before Christmas! So given that, blogging is not going to factor high on my to-do list. Instead, you may expect serial installments of my Christmas play, scene by scene. My Christmas gift to you [note: sarcasm]. Please remember that it was writen for an audience of about 1000 grade 6 - 9 students, most of whom are not quite competent in English. It's simple, and Kathleen likes to point out that I used every Christmas cliche in the book. But, I figure that it's not cliched if none of the students have seen Chrismas plays, right?!

Oh, and Kathleen is "Suzy" the oldest shepherd, AMber (another foreign teacher) is Angel #1, and I am playing the "Rich Person." THey wanted some foreign faces among the grade 7 actors. We have 4 more practices and then the performance, here's hoping it's good! It's a lot of pressure, but fun, too.

Guest Post: Kathleen

As you know, my method for introducing "Travel" to grade five students is Flat Stanley. He's been featured on Carole's blog before: I like to show our flat visitors a good time in Taipei. It also works the other way, though. My kids were thrilled this week to get their Stanleys back from visiting Canada (hosted by Mom and Dad). I have some pretty skeptical kids, though, and they were convinced I just photo-shopped their Stanleys in front of a picture of the CN Tower. But, my final proof was a picture of Dad holding them by our apartment in Thornhill. All the kids Ohh-ed and Aww-ed and one brave boy asked "How old is he?" I answered, expecting their 10 year old brains to think of him as old. But they all gasped and looked shocked! One boy yelled out- "But... my Dad is 63!"

Grumpy day

Sorry I didn't post this weekend, I've been busy finishing grading, finishing up Nanowrimo (with very expensive prizes) with my students, and trying to plan my Chinese New Year Vacation.

Today it's Monday, and I'm throughly grumpy. Entirely out of sorts. Partially because I have less than two weeks to get my part of the Christmas show together and partially because of gifts.

Let me rant for a moment. I spent all the last two weeks doing my Christmas shopping, for my students, my co-teachers, my housemates, and my secret Santa. I had so much fun buying it all, and wrapping everything. Gifts ARE my love language. Now, I recognize that this is not true for others, and do not expect reciprocation to equal degree.

HOWEVER~ if you are in a foreign country for Christmas and you live and work and spent 95% of your life with 5 other women, you get them SOMETHING for Christmas. I do not care if you take a piece of printer paper, and draw a Christmas tree with markers. But you have to do something, or else I feel very rejected and unloved; which leads to a very grumpy Monday.

The three people this is directed towards don't read my blog, and the rest of you have no complusion to get me a present, I just needed a rant. Deep, calming breaths.

Odd juxtaposition

One of my grade 6 girls is sending thie card to her pen pal. It made me laugh. Nothing says Merry Christmas more than a Halloween card! It surprises me more that she even chose it, she should know the difference between Halloween and Christmas!

Other than this one, I find almost all of the Christmas cards in Taiwan completely adorable. I sent out some of them to you, in fact. I think I might go buy more to stock up for future years, there are just that many cute designs. Coming to a mailbox near you shortly. If you want to get a cute card from Taiwan and you don't think you're on my Christmas list, you can post or email me your address and I'll send you one. Even if I don't know you - it's less than a dollar for the card and the stamp together! Share the Taiwan Christmas joy. You can even request one with an odd cartoon, or improper grammar or a card / christmas tree ornament. Seriously. Post or email, I'll do it.

November Chair

Thank goodness I bought that Ikea Chair for Claire's visit last summer, it certainly came in handy during the month of November! This was one of my last days of writing, so I made Kathy take a picture of my writing pose, to remember Nanowrimo in Taiwan.

Advent

Kathleen freaked out this morning because she realized that it was already December 4th and she didn't have an advent calendar. I tried to convince her it wasn't the end of the world. But it also reminded me that I had been looking forward to seeing the one that Susan from Visual Voice made.

I just checked out the last three days and was not disappointed! I think it's a fabulous way to celebrate advent. I especially liked day 2, because I was just worrying about that very thing today. I'm trying to get up my nerve to go through with all these 'follow my dreams' decisions that I'm not entirely sure will fly. Actually, tommorrow is the big day to make the announcement to my boss. Eeks. I needed that encouragement that I shouldn't feel bad about making those decisions. Courage, Carole, courage!

Anyway, I put a link to the Advent Calendar up at the top of the sidebar, if you want to follow advent that way.

It's a tree, a fairy and a throne

My Second unit for my grade 7 classes was about A Midsummer Night's Dream. Frankly, I think Shakespeare will be so much more enjoyable for them later in life if they have a fun and creative introduction to him now. We read an adapted version, made quarotos about all the characters, and then put on the play as a class. Finally, we're watching a little bit of the movie. The whole thing has been so much fun for me and for my students. It makes me pretty sure that I'll enjoy teaching other forms of literature as well. I'm sad that the unit is over!

This is one of my Grade 7 boys classes performance of a Midsummer Night's Dream. Obviously not on par with the girls class, but that's a bit like comparing apples and oranges. The boys tried hard, although no one quite had their lines learned, and costumes were a bit lacking. Still funny though.

Take a Bow

This was our cast for the Grade 7 girls' class' performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. They did an absolutely incredible job, I was proud of the actors and of all the girls in the class who put the whole thing together.

A donkey

In our play, Lysander turns into the donkey. A bit of a change from the original, but when it's gets shortened to 4 pages, some characters have to combine. The whole storyline with Bottom the Weaver and the players was cut out.

HAPPY DECEMBER!

I win! I'm done my novel. I haven't formatted it yet, so I'm not sure how many pages it is. but it's definitely over 50,000 words. And it didn't turn out so bad in the end, I went back and added more chapters during the 'junior high years.' Next step is to format it and print it out and make a book like last year. Of course I think that's not really going to happen in December. We're starting lunchtime Christmas performance practices today!

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!

Joys of Teaching Shakespeare

I think I love teaching Shakespeare even more than I love teaching writing! Well, at least the comedies - I'm not planning on digging into Richard III anytime soon.

So my Midsummer Night's Dream unit with the Grade 7s is incredibly fun for me and for them. Our class this morning just flew by, we were laughing so much. Now it does really help that we're doing a rewritten version of the play, only 4 pages long and greatly simplified. But you still get the wonderful characters and humour. Last night I gathered up everyones Halloween leftover and put together a props bag, so that each character has it's distinctive feather mask, or tiara or hat. Then, when we start acting out the play, it will be easier to follow who are the girls and guys (since it's single gender classes). I have to stress the all-male Shakespearean actor troupe thing alot with my boys classes! Anyway, I'll try to take a picture when we get to the final performance stage.

14 hours to go! I'm not sure if I can stay up to midnight this year, I'm stuck in my sleep rut and I don't want to mess with it. We'll see how excited I feel. Everything's ready. I spent at least 12 hours this weekend redoing the website for my novel. You may or may not have noticed that it's different from the picture I posted Saturday. You'll have to check it out!

My Nanowrimo 2005 Novel Website

Here it is:

The home for my 2005 Nanowrimo Novel:

Your Own Adventure
*working title*

Soon to come, our writing club website. I'm still checking into the legalities, because some of my students are 12. That may be a problem. We'll see. But everything's set to go for my novel. Can you guess what my two main character's names are?

Final Check-List

I feel like it's Christmas Eve! I can hardly keep the smile off my face, I'm so excited about nanowrimo. Everything's coming together:

* Laptop computer
* new coffee filters, and illy ground coffee
* mondo mug
* small spiral bound notebook (with a small cartoon child in a bag of apples on the front)
* new pens, violet and hunter green
* comfy ikea lounge chair with cozy fleece blanket
* a working title (Your Own Adventure)
* Novel website, coming later this evening!

And perhaps the most exciting news. Yesterday, I noticed that nanowrimo has a new "Young Writers Program" designed for classrooms. And I had a sudden inspiration - do nanowrimo with my Writing Club! Four Saturday classes is a total of 8 hours. That's lots of time to write a story. Of course, the goal isn't going to be 50,000 words. They are 13 year olds with English as a second language.

So this morning in Saturday class, I introduced the idea. I felt like a used-car salesman trying to sell a clunker. None of the kids were quite as enthusiastic as I, but some of them seemed moderatly excited. I made new levels for them, 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000 words. I think that even if they just work on Saturdays in class, they should be able to hit 1,000 words. And the fact that we're all doing it together should be motivation.

So, stay tuned, I'll put the website up when I finish, hopefully later tonight.

Also, one last chance. Anyone out there up to the challenge and want some fun and excitment to brighten up November? I highly recommend it. And I want some friends to put on my Nanowrimo friends list. Let me know if you're going to try.

Useful Stuff

I've been having fun with my lessons this week, because I'm teaching the grades 6 and 7s about Shakespeare's quatros, and we've been making our own quatros, ie matchbooks.

They are loving it, and I just think it's funny that the one class from university that came the most in handy was that two week January class about book making. I use information I learned there all the time. Too bad Huntington got rid of J-term, I thought it was the most valuable part of the year. Well, I gave them my opinion!

Reconsidering the Life Plan

So a few weeks ago I checked for my final grade for my summer school classes. Before the page loaded, I mentioned to Kathy that if I couldn't get an A in that Gender and Development class I worked so hard in, I would have to seriously re-consider my life plan. The page loaded, and I had another A-. Three A-s! Not bad, but not good enough to get me one of those 15 spots. I mean, I suppose there's an itsy bitsy chance, but unlikely.

So I started re-considering. And do you know what I concluded? I think maybe I want to be a teacher. Like, a teacher in Canada kind of teacher. This may not seem like such a strech, considering my current occupation, but it came as quite a shock to me. It was never even remotely considering during my "what should I do with my life" decision making process in my senior year of college. I was always happy in my status as English major, never to be a teacher. But now, things are starting to look different.

I talked to my best friend from college and she thinks its a good idea. She wasn't as surprised at the option as I was, I guess its one of those things other people can see and you can't.

The more I let myself explore the option, the better it looked for a number of reasons. First, it fits the lifestyle I eventually want. I don't want to live in New York city and work at the UN. I do want to have a little country house near Halifax. There are no relief& development jobs in Nova Scotia, but an English teacher fits. Also, I'm a super-structured person. I love the idea of teaching year after year, perfecting my lesson plans and working within a structured schedule. The job is relatively secure, with good benefits, early retirement, etc. It not exactly lucrative, but I have no desire to be rich.

Finally, I just love teaching, I love going to work everyday. I love my students and I love sharing my love of Shakespeare and writing with them. I do realize that I have quite the wonderful set-up here, and teaching the advanced eager-beaver taiwanese teens is quite a different situation from trying to motivate low-level or badly behaved Canadian teens. However, its just so rewarding to make even a little difference, to be an influence. And I just love English, the literature, the language, the writing. I love learning. I would go be a student for the rest of my life if I could, maybe being a teacher is the second best thing!

So, right now I'm looking at teacher education programs. Unlike trying to get one of the 15 spots at Dalhouise, my prospects are pretty much guaranteed to get in. I'm thinking of going to school in Nova Scotia, because it would make it easier to get certified. My four choices are: Acadia, St. Francis Xavier, Mount St. Vincent, or Cape Breton. Anyone have any suggestions? Changing my life plan in two weeks makes me nervous, so I'd love any "go for it" or "are you sure?" I'd hate to get to the end of my life and feel like I didn't take a risk and reach my potential. But I'd also hate to feel like I tried to make a career that seemed important and monumental, when all I really wanted was a simple little life. PLease feel free to respond here or on the family site.

Cheap Lunch!

WEll, Kathleen and I were walking up a new street, trying to find a certain store (which we never found). Instead, we saw a restaurant called Ecco, which had Pizza*Pasta*Cafe on the side. We were hungry, the menu looked good, and we could tell it was brand new because it had tons of flowers outside. (In Taiwan, when someone opens a new business, everyone sends them flower arrangements for good luck, which are then displayed outside for a week or so of grand opening).

Well, once inside, we were handed two little tickets. We sat down, and our waiter came over to explain. It was their grand opening day and everyone's whole meal was 1 NT dollar (like 5 cents). So Kathleen and I had salad, garlic bread, pasta and pizza, drinks and dessert for the equivalant of a dime. Now thats a deal!

October in Taipei

I heard that October is supposed to be the best month for weather in Taipei. I think I might consider it the only non-horrible month. It was stiflingly hot up until the end of September, and pretty soon it will get drizzily and chilly. But for October, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, there's always a breeze, and the temperature stays between 24-27 in the daytime with no sight of rain. It made me wonder if a month of absolutely perfect weather makes up for 11 months of damp cold, massive rain, or unbearable heat. I don't think so, but that's not going to stop me from enjoying every last minute of October!

Guest Post by Kathleen

So Carole asked me to update her blog with one of my daily "Ohhh, how cute!" stories. I am constantly amazed at how much the kids notice and how much they admire their teachers. Julia, a very bright grade one student, came up to me this morning holding a pink plastic folder. She showed it to me like it was something special, so I "ooed and ahhed" appropriately. I asked a few questions to try to find out why she was showing it to me ("Is it new?" and "Where did you get it?") Julia fliped it over and proudly exclaimed "It's like yours!" You see, every class I bring flashcards in a plastic envelope with a button-tie closure. She had bought the same style folder... just to be like me!

Flamenco!

Last weekend we went to see a production of Carmen by the Spanish National Ballet. It was an enormous auditorium over by Taipei 101, and it was completely sold out, with good reason.

The flamenco dancing was fantastic, without too much "stomping." And the most surprising part was that all the music was live as well, with the Spanish band and opera singers. It was a lovely evening, so far our entertainment season has been way above expectations.

Clear Dancers

A more literal picture, I balanced my camera on the railing.

Watching

Kathy's flash free shot of me watching the dancers.

Taipei 101

This is the view of Taipei 101 on a lovely dusky evening. Taken five minutes after the next picture.

Taipei 101

Isn't that a stunning sky?! I didn't do any edits, this is exactly what it looked like one night at about 6 pm, and exactly what my camera took. I love pink sunsets.

Grading Purgatory

Alas, as the foreign teacher who has been at Fu-Hsing the longest, you would think I would be smarter than this. I am up to my ears in pen pal letters, interviews, and notebooks, and have more grading to do than I ever have. Yesterday and today are half days at school, which is usually cause for vacation, but instead I spent 8 hours sitting on the couch grading penpal letters yesterday and I will be doing the same today with notebooks. Alas. Well, at least I know that the pen pal letters mean something to the kids and it's better than just another test.

A Hotel School

This is something that one of Kathy's grade 9 boys wrote in answer to the assignment to design an ideal hotel. This is exactly as written, and I think it's cute!

If I could make the best hotel ever, it would be like a big school. I would make the bedroom be like a sleeping teacher and make it soft and worn. I'll make the food like the student's food, but I would put a lot of delicious food inside it. And I also would make a lot of toys and put them in a specil room let the children could play inside.

Happy Double Ten Day!

We have the day off work today because it's Taiwan's national day: Double Ten Day. This picture is from the ceremony at the school on Friday. It was quite the show.

So today is a day for relaxing, and waving a flag if you're Taiwanese and eating turkey and being thankful if you're Canadian.

So happy Double Ten Day and Happy Thanksgiving, and what the heck, Happy Columbus Day, too!

Double Ten Day

Some of my grade 6 boys in their very cute boy scout uniforms. They are holding the symbol for double ten day, because the cross is a ten, and two next to each other is double ten, October 10th, get it?

Sun Yat Sen?

I like the lines of this picture. More pictres of good old Chaing Kai Shek, or Sun Yat Sen?