the first day!

taiwan weather report for july 20, 2009: HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT and humid.

i have to say that walking into a classroom full of 8 year olds is infinitely more terrifying than walking into a classroom full of 10th graders. i taught my first lesson today. even though it was a 90 minute lesson, it felt like 10! it flew by and it was soooo fun! i really love it! its night and day compared to teaching high school of course, and im in a completely different culture now as well, so of course it was different. the students are sooooooo cute! they call me "teeecha." very different than hearing "miss toms! miss toms!" every 5 seconds! they are the sweetest things. i really love my job! its very different than the kind of teaching i did in the states, but i love them both. i can really see myself doing this for the next year and loving it! i love the school and the cirriculum and the people who work there. jhubei is a cool city. its going to be a good year =)

got up this morning to the sound of the "ice cream truck." i must take a minute to explain that this sound is not, in fact, and ice cream truck. its a trash truck! the first time i heard it, i thought, oh cool! taiwan has an ice cream truck too! and then i heard everyone in my apartment run outside really quickly so i went to see what kind of ice cream this must be to incite such excitement. everyone had huge trash bags...full of trash. the trash trucks here play ice cream truck music! i was so suprised/embarrased. there i was standing in a crowd of happy taiwanese people all throwing their trash in this huge truck playing happy music and i was just standing there watching them...no trash to throw. haha, i love this place.

its so nice to live right by a 7-11. its always open! and it has EVERYTHING including my latest addiction, pocari sweat. sounds nasty, i know, but its kind of like gatorade. its sooooo good and its only $25nt! less than 1usd! so cheapppppppppp! i cant even believe it. for lunch, i ate some kind of raisin bread stuff...not really sure what it was but it was good. =) there is a park right across from my apartment that i love to go to. i love to watch the kids there! they are SO CUTE!!! i love listening to them shout at each other in chinese and laugh and play basketball! its weird though. everywhere i go in taiwan, people stare at me. i understand that i am a foreigner, but they are NOT afraid to let me know it! its never rude, just funny. i actually find it very amusing. its weird to get so much attention. i am still trying to remember that i am the foreigner. =) very hard to get used to.

i was up half the night because i discovered the most wonderful american thing since ive been in taiwan: channel 67 on my tv! I CAN WATCH CSI:NY!!!!!!!! =) =) =) =) this makes me infinitely happy. i was so happy that i sat on my tiny tiny asian couch and cried tears of joy. i also cried tears of joy last night because i was eating oreos. oreos and csi:ny in taiwan...does it really get any better?