today is the one year anniversiary of the last school year i spent in the ihouse. i cant believe that was one year ago!!! really blows my mind. i sat today for awhile, thinking of all the things that i crammed into the last year! countless nights dancing until they threw us out, student teaching, a trip to new york and washington dc, graduating university, working, dressing up as various eastern european flower salesladies/arabian sheikhs (always with flags stuck in our heads) and terrorising the ihouse, spending every monday night glued to the tv watching heroes, being an ifellow...it was a crazy year. a year. felt like a long time. a year. i will be in taiwan for one more year! still feels like a long time. i hope i can cram as much good stuff into this year as i did into the last one. having been a student my entire life and now, being a teacher, i measure my life from august to august: in terms of the school year! wonder what adventure i will be starting next august...
today also marks the anniversiary of being in taiwan for 6 weeks! if you had told me last august, when i was sitting at the table checking in the new students and crying buckets because i missed the old ones, that in a year's time i would have been sitting in taiwan, i would have laaaaaaaaughed my head off. and then i would have said 'only someone crazy would haul off to a country they know nothing about and cant speak the language.' and then i would laugh again. BUT! life is funny and we often end up in places we dont ever expect that we will. i dont know why anything i do ever suprises me; i have discovered by now that yes, i am crazy, actually. and i have been sitting in a country i know nothing about for 6 weeks, and i am still struggling with the language. even though culture shock, homesickness, and that 'what am i even doing here?!' feeling is a moment to moment battle, these have been the hardest and best six weeks ever.
i can eat (live or dead) octopus with the best of them, i speak chinese in public, i dont even mind the smell anymore, i am used to living alone, i think in celcius and taiwan dollars, i dont mind the humidity as much as i used to (i still do!!! just not as much), i am used to being stared at, i can write my own name in chinese, i am used to watching american cartoons in chinese, i no longer think that hello kitty is obnoxious (hey, shes kind of cute!), tofu doesn't bother me anymore, and i even have bangs now. when i look back on the six weeks, they seem like 600 in some ways, and like only 6 seconds in others. im excited to see what the rest of the year has in store for me. even though 'one year' sounds like a really scary figure...its also exciting. i have no idea what taiwan has waiting for me! ;)
i had an amazing day at work today. we played 'fruit salad' (my personal favourite game ever) in the elementary school...wicked fun! its the game where there is a chair for all but one person, so when you rush to sit down, someone is left out. i played with the kids today and they were going mad over the idea that i would be the last one standing (which i found just as amusing as they did). by the end of the game, i was sweating buckets and laughing my head off and having a really good time! i really really really really really REALLY R-E-A-L-L-Y love my job. alot alot. im very lucky :)
horton hears a who is on!
in taiwan, they always dub over cartoons in chinese.
im watching horton hears a who in chinese.
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