Back in Hualien

It’s hard to believe I’ve already been here for almost two weeks and it somehow has managed to not blend together. Ever since the Penghu Island trip, we’ve been more focused on teaching and getting to know the city (Steph and I, that is). It hasn’t cooled down and probably won’t start doing so until November (when it should be beautifully cold in Illinois T_T), but I think my body is starting to get used to it. I thrive in cool-to-cold weather. I would willingly move to coastal Oregon, Washington, or Canada if I could.

I don’t want this blog to be full of me complaining about the weather, so unless I mention otherwise, my lovely readers can assume it’s been another miserable hot and humid day that the Taiwanese with their magical tan bodies can handle but the little Chicago-girl can’t.

Yesterday Steph and I went to find a cell phone store to see if we could activate a phone that my manager (whom I will refer to as “Yu”) gave to us. After some riding around and asking directions in butchered Chinese, we found a cell phone store. Unfortunately, they needed our passport and other photo ID to give us a phone. Call phones must be holy territory or else why would they want to make sure that we were actually Americans? Maybe they would get in trouble if we were actually Canadians posing as Americans.

We saw a huge Buddhist Temple on the way here. All of the temples on Penghu Island were relatively small, but there were a ton of them. Also, 7-Eleven is really popular in Taiwan. They offer obscenely cheap stuff and can be found on every corner. Did I mention I got a pack of twelve batteries for the equivalent of 3 US dollars?

The Night Market is only a couple blocks away from the preschool and is really fun to go to. It’s like a daily carnival; it has games, foot stands, and little restaurants where you can have a sit-down meal. I wonder if a lot of the families that sell the foods can make enough money to live off of by just owning a stand in the night market. Every night it’s PACKED with people. One of my favorite places is a fruit stand where you can get fresh juice made. So far, my favorite flavored juice is apple and kiwi mixed together. And it doesn’t hurt that they have an English menu. Last night I also had a cheese potato (spelled Patata on their sign, haha). It was like a baked potato with corn, cheese, broccoli, cucumber, and pineapple on it. I called it the Super Patata.

So far, our lesson plans for teaching have revolved around colors and shapes with a few body parts and animals thrown in. The 4-6 yr. olds are fairly easy to teach since they pay more attention. The three-year-olds are a bit harder since you have to really simplify your lessons for them to understand and they get distracted easily. This morning we played a bowling game with a colored ball and a stack of cups made into a pyramid. They had a ton of fun with that activity. This afternoon, I hope to teach them a few rhymes (including the Squirrely, Shake Your Bushy Tail Song).