Saturday, March 28, 2009

My Cute Kids

You may have wondered why it has taken me such a long time to post pictures of my students. Well, the answer to this question is that they are so cute and adorable that I don't know if my blogging about them could do them justice to show off their unique personalities. I think pirate day finally gave me the courage to try to see if I could accurately get some good pictures. They still aren't the best, but here is a little bit about my students.


If you know me then you would know that of course I would have a pirate unit. Putting everything together to look for our buried treasure was a major success. My students from left to right are Koala, Kelly, Stephani, Eric, and Derek. Aren't they cute? They weren't too happy about taking this picture because they wanted to "find Misses Jaimie's Treasure and not take pictures" as Derek told me.


This is Stephani, the queen of Chinglish phrases. Example:

Me - "Stephani, stop chewing on your hair"
Stephani - "Don't have!"
Me - "What don't you have Stephani?"
Stephani - "Don't have chew on hair"
Me - "Say I didn't chew on my hair, and yes you did I saw you and your hair is wet."
Stephani - (In her whiniest voice possible) "Don't have!"

Something along these lines of Chinglish happens on a daily bases with her. It's quite funny actually.


This is a picture of Koala and Kelly getting ready to eat some ice cream. Koala is the most Taiwanese student that I have. He is pretty stubborn about certain rules and customs. For example, if we run he won't let us sit down afterwords because according to him "heart goes so fast that if we sit down, it will not be good for we." Also, he will not let us drink cold water when it is cold. It is another thing that will not be good for us.


Derek is sooooooooo cute. He talks so fast and doesn't have to think at all about what he is going to say, he just says whatever he is thinking. Usually the things that he thinks about are things like "how to make a joke that will get us out of doing our classwork." Each day, he does something so odd and silly that I honestly do bust up laughing. Example - yesterday he was able to somehow take my shoe off of my foot as he was turning in his homework. It caught me so off guard that instead of being mad, I started laughing along with the rest of the class. He really does make each day exciting.


Kelly is probably the best student in the world. She does what she is supposed to do, is always on time, sets up the tables and chairs, answers all of the questions right, is nice to everybody. She is the perfect product of what Asian culture tries to make out of their students. When you think about how strict and rigid Asian schools would be, you are right, they are that bad. Kelly is one little girl that can handle it and seems to enjoy the structure.


Last, but certainly not least, my toothless Eric. This kid is such a trouble maker, but is honestly the smartest in the class. Unfortunately Taiwanese culture is upset at his bad behavior (they are always watching) and instead of helping him so that he could skip a level to have a more challenging course, he gets punished often (thank goodness not while in my class, but in his other classes at Berhan).

And this folks, is my Basic Reading class. I love these kids and am growing pretty attached to them. I really do like teaching.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Blogging like a blogger again

Some of you may be wondering where I have been as I haven't blogged for a while. Well, don't worry I'm still alive and the scooter has not killed me yet. I have started doing something that I thought I would never do - scrapbooking. Its a good feeling to print off pictures and then put them away and not have piles and piles lying around! Anyway, on Saturday I went to Lugang (an ancient city) with some friends and here are a couple of pictures.



I really liked the high red brick walls and how everything felt like a maze when we walked through the street. I was told that the reason for this is because the city is close to a harbor and there were problems with pirates coming so they built the big walls for protection. How exciting it must have been to live in the time of pirates.

Here I am with my two roommates Derek and Dane. They were posing like that on purpose - unknown to me.


This is a picture that my student drew of me after I told them that they needed to write their fixed sentences 5 times. I thought it was mostly funny because he spelled my name wrong. Although this picture may suggest that I have a poor relation with my students, we were actually laughing about this. Don't worry - I am surviving. I think.