so today at work i'm teaching opposites. the lesson is going fine: day/night, skinny/fat, girl/boy...everyone seems to be catching on. so before i move on to the next concept, just to make sure everyone understands, i ask for questions. 'yes teecha! me! i have!' 'ok xxxxx, what is your question?' 'teeeeeeeeeeecha, what's the opposite of octopus?' >.< i had no idea how to answer that question, needless to say. a few minutes later, i looked over at this same student and he was holding his pencil case to his ear pretending that it was a phone. no one had prompted him to do it, he was sitting in the corner by himself, and i think i was the only one who saw him. i was confused because no one had even said anything about phones? i was still trying to settle the earlier octopus dispute. he was talking in chinese a mile a minute, hand gestures and all. i was laughing so hard that i spilled water all over the place.
i love love my job, i couldn't imagine doing anything else right now...but there is one tiny thing that seriously makes me want to quit right now and go drown myself in the taiwan strait: this is the metal pencil case. pencil cases are a huge deal in taiwan; no self-respecting elementary school student would be caught dead without one. however, there is one particulary sinister breed of the pencil case: the metal one, affectionately known to me as death metal. these things get all rusty and disgusting, the kids have been known to use them as weapons, and the noise they make when they hit the ground from the height of the desk is like nails down a chalkboard to me. for some reason, my classroom is really echo-y to begin with, but when that metal case full of pencils hits the ground at breakneck speeds, i swear it takes a few minutes off my life. in order to remedy this problem and prevent myself from having a stroke, i made a new rule today and in true elementary school teacher fashion, marched myself right upstairs, pulled out the crayons, and drew the rule on paper to hang up in my classroom: PENCIL CASES ON THE FLOOR! tomorrow is the first day implementing the rule; let's hope tomorrow night is the first night i don't have nightmares about classrooms-full of taiwanese children throwing their pencil cases to the floor.
today i had my level one class sitting on the floor in a circle reading a book (with 7 pages...) called 'the haircut.' (so different than last year when i was teaching ancient greek literature, victorian plays and novels with pages that measured in the hundreds...) we were all sitting and reading, and it was going well. i turn to ask a student (let's call him L) a question about the reading. katie: 'L, does kipper want to get a haircut?' L: 'its 4:00!' katie: >.< again, i was speechless. i really had to idea how to reply, so i just went for my old standby: uproarious laughter.
since october is the month of halloween, things have been nuts at work to get the school decorated. we have cut out about 2034803248 pumpkins, ghosts and witches to hang everywhere and our school has enough decorations to rival any place in america, and here we are in the middle of taiwan. as soon as i can get my act together and remember to take some photos of it, i will post them. its so cute...complete with our smashed witch on the front window!!! ^^
ps 新竹 has a reputation for being windy, but i am sure that 竹北市 is the windiest place on earth. but the weather has gotten nice otherwise. i actually kind of want to go outside sometimes. who'd have ever thought that i could go outside in taiwan and not melt.
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