We're now a little ways over the three month point. We're slowly getting to the end of my spin here. Also, apparently today is Teacher's Day in Taiwan. I've received a couple different cards and a bag of chocolates from a couple different students of mine.
So I have a question. Is child labor technically child labor if the children WANT to do the work? There are lots of times when I'm cleaning up after a class and the kids will immediately try to help me clean up and carry everything back to storage. I had a big box of blocks that we used to build houses for when we were reading the Three Little Pigs and at the end of class, I had to store everything away. I would have been happy to do all the work myself, but the children insisted on packing the blocks away and hauling the box back to storage themselves. Where does the willingness to do manual labor disappear after they get a bit older.
Sometimes I realize how many conveniences in America I took for granted. This week, our washing machine AND our shower water heater broke. I'm not experienced with hand-washing my clothes, so I've been putting off doing laundry for a while until the washing machine finally got fixed. As for the shower, I'm sorry, but I refuse to take a cold shower if I can help it. There were a few days at the beginning of this semester when I loved the cold showers, but now that it's getting cooler (finally), hot showers are the only way to go. Jeez, I'm spoiled.
I'm not feeling too good at the moment. It's just a cold, which I probably got from the children. As my sister would say, schools are like petri dishes. I'll give you guys pictures from my trip south of Hualien. A friend of mine took me on his motorcycle. It was my first time riding on a motorcycle. They go really fast and I could feel the power behind it! The scenery was absolutely gorgeous! It's like nothing I've ever seen in America!
We also went to see a move called Seediq Bale, a movie that is famous in Taiwan for showing the story about an aboriginal tribe's rebellion against their Japanese colonial occupiers. At least that's what I got out of it. The language of the movie was in the aboriginal language and Japanese, neither of which I understand. The subtitles were, of course, in Mandarin, so really I didn't understand what was going on at all. But it was pretty to look at, so I was happy.
This is a bouquet of flowers the tutoring student in the dance recital gave to me. I feel like I should have given some to her instead.
One of our kids had a birthday party last week. To celebrate, his mother brought a Spongebob birthday cake to the school. Here, Spongebob is known as Hai Mien Bao Bao and is insanely popular. At least one thing hasn't changed from America.
View from a lookout point over some cliffs.
The lookout point's architecture is Japanese-style, at least that's what I've been told.
This is the beach that we stopped at. The sand here is very dark, almost black when it's wet, but at least this has sand instead of boulders like the shore I usually stop at. Although one good thing I have to say about the boulders is that they don't leave sand in your shoes.
George and I. George is the guy who gave me a ride on his motorcycle. I wanted to see more of Taiwan and he wanted to give a foreigner a tour, so it was a win-win situation.
These are pictures from another rest area/lookout point. A wooden structure had flowers hanging from the roof.
We had lunch over at someone's house on Sunday. This was our feast.
Behold the cleanest dog in Taiwan!
We've been having so many storms that the tides have really gone up. I suspect part of it is because of the typhoon that passed south of us.
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