Things I wish I had blogged about

Phil and I are looking at the next few weeks and realize that the year is really coming to an end. We are ready to go home but there are some things that we will always remember, but I won't post about that for now. I will just post on some blogs that we wish we had blogged about but never got around to it.

National Concert Hall
My student is a talented violinist and won a competition to play at the National Concert Hall located at the Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall with other musicians. Unfortunately, her concert was on Wednesday at 7:30. Because of this, we could not go. Several other staff were going but we could not go because we would have school at 8:00 the next morning. (Taipei is around 3-4 hours from where we are currently at and the concert would have gotten out at 9:30 getting us home around 2:00. I don't do well without sleep) Tuesday evening, I realized that we could possibly take all of our students and go and see her perform. (And Jeremy said yes) So we put together a field trip (last minute) and went. Because we took all of the students, we did not have class until later in the day (Yeah) and I got to see my student perform in the National Concert Hall! If you click here, you can see some pictures of what this place looks like.

Reading Chinese
Phil and I have gotten pretty good at speaking Chinese (Only if you want to order something from the drink stand or why we are where we are. We have those down.) and can recognize a few words in Chinese. This is a good skill and is very helpful, for well, communicating with people we interact with every day. One thing you notice as you drive around, though, is that all of the signs have the "English" version of the Chinese written on them. Even though they have the English and it is helpful, you also notice the multiple ways to spell the same word. For example:

中: Means middle, center

Ways to pronounce it in Taiwan (What you see on the signs in Taiwan):
jhong, jong, jeung, jung, jhung, jheung, chong, cong, ceung, cung, chung, cheung, zhong, zong, zeung, zung, zhung, zheung

We have pretty much seen all of those. Many times a city will have the same road spelled 3 or 4 different ways within a few blocks of each other. (If you don't know the previous fact, it can get REALLY confusing.)

The reason why there are so many versions of the same word is that in China they use the Pinyin, but in Taiwan, they use pinyin along with 2 or 3 other differences. If you want to know about the romanization of Chinese in Taiwan, go here.

Banquet

In my opinion, I believe that the banquet my school put on 2 weeks ago was way better than any other banquet I have ever attended. They actually had great entertainment which is a must (Our students presented!) and they also had great food! (Before I show you the pictures, many times in Taiwan, you see a mixture of styles in places considered fancy or posh. It makes for some amazing pictures.) Here are some pictures from our banquet:

The entrance to the place. What you don't see is that the road in front of this can only fit 1 1/2 cars on it. The bus couldn't make it all the way.

The place was called the castle or something like that. Here are pictures of the prince and princess. Amazing!

The theme was masquerade and the sisters ended up making a lot of masques for everyone to wear, including our trusty leader.

Moriah and Joseph. She ended up making her dress. It looked amazing.

Some decorations on the landing up to the second floor. As I said, they mix styles here.

Where we ate looked similar to this.

Outside heading to the talent show!

Megan.

Daphne works in our office and is amazing. My students actually loaned me the dress and the mask, meaning I didn't have to spend much money for the clothes. Very nice of them.

I would have put a great picture of both of us up, but this was one of the better ones...

Phil made his own mask.

Phil and me at the end. We had a great time, but are exhausted. And we have school tomorrow morning.

Phil's Birthday

Besides making apple pies for Phil for his birthday, I also got our students to surprise him at his photo club meeting which took place the night before his birthday. Through a lot of work, we pulled off one of the best surprises in a long time. Something that you need to know: The students make fun of Phil for a certain statement that he always uses. You will know what that statement is in a moment. The following is the slide show the students prepared. Phil had asked them to find a portrait photographer that they liked and as opposed to actually finding one, they surprised him instead. Here is the result. Enjoy!

(I am not really adept at putting a slide show on this site. These are just the pictures. The slide show started out with 2 slides, one that read "Portraits" and another that read "Breath of Life Photography" These 2 slides were there to make Phil think that this was an actual slide show. The rest of the pictures are what came after these 2 slides which are not shown. Also, read the slides using the question and exclamation marks. It makes more sense.)

Thanksgiving

If anyone knows my family, they know that we invite a lot of people for Thanksgiving, whether we know them or not. At least that is the way we have celebrated it in the past. This coming Thursday, our school is fixing Thanksgiving for our school. We currently have 2o students in the high school, 22 students in the elementary school and 15 - 20 teachers / staff. Yes, if you got 60, you have added correctly. We are cooking for 60 people, even if some of them can only eat for a half person. Phil and I are on the list for baking 5 pies along with green bean casserole along with juice. The biggest problem is trying to figure out the baking situation. Currently we have 2 ovens that we can definitely use and perhaps a few others that belong to faculty on campus... Phil and I are cooking our pies tomorrow evening so we won't be fighting with the turkeys for space.

We are at least lucky enough that many of the people who are eating our Thanksgiving meal have never actually had Thanksgiving...

Bonding in Chinese

We were told 2 days ago that the main high school at Taiwan Adventist College known as Taiwan Adventist Academy was having some bonding time with their teachers and they wanted Taiwan Adventist International School (US) to join. This meant that we woke up really early and were doing calisthenics at 8:15 this morning. After that we divided into 2 teams, A and B. The first game we played is a combination of Tag and paper, rocks scissors, except we had Bear, fish and mosquito. Each team chose which to pick and whoever lost would have to run and not get caught. After this game, we played a game where everyone lined up and attached themselves to a person in front of them. At the front is a hen who is protecting her chicks (Us) from an eagle. We had to run around, but it was a lot of fun. Some other games we played was line up on a log and no one could put their feet on the ground. Because of this, we had to "trust" everyone. We also did the fall and be caught by our team.

Overall the day was a lot of fun, but we still have a lot to do to begin the new year. It was somewhat confusing because nearly everything was in chinese except what was translated to us, which did not happen all the time. It was fun being with the other teachers though. I am certain that the description of the games we played makes very little sense, but it is time for dinner.

Schedules

I have been working on the schools schedule for the past 3 days. It has been difficult because we have 4 different tracks of students. There are the group of students who are taking all american high school classes, the group taking most american high school classes except math, an 8th grade class and a group of students who need to do some ESL before they begin their classes. I sort of got the schedules done today. I will be teaching a math class (I have no idea what the students need so I have to wait until they arrive to plan), a biology class, a chemistry class and an 8th grade science class. I am worried about the biology and chemistry lab because I am not exactly trained in these subjects. I am excited about the chemistry, but the biology has me worried. Please pray the students don't hurt themselves.