28 October 2013

Halloween Week in Taiwan

Day One of Halloween has gone pretty good so far! We had our classes at Ching Si and I had a lot of fun with all of them. I decided not to wear a costume but now I am wishing I did. They all had a lot of fun talking about Halloween. At the end of each lesson, I showed them a bunch of pictures that have "ghosts" in them. The last picture is of a forest and tells you to focus on the middle of the picture, and then a very scary face pops out. Rick said I shouldn't show it to the kids but they LOVED it. A lot of people believe in ghosts in Taiwan so they were sooo into the ghost stories I told and 100% focused on the picture when it happened. Everyone screamed. It was amazing. Happy Halloween! I'm also getting to know my students better and better every week. There are these two girls who come to see me throughout the day. Today, they told me who they have a crush on in the class. Soooooooooooo cute. They like the meanest boy though, I tried to tell them they should like the nice boys. The one girl said to me, "But because he is mean, he is more handsome!" Ughhhhhhhhh. I feel sorry for her later on in life haha. 

Today, I have a demo in one of my kindergarten classes. I'm always so nervous for these days but so far, they have gone pretty well. I'm really worried about this one though because we rushed it. Since next week I will be on vacation, we pushed the demo backward one week instead of forward. We shall see how it goes!


Last night, Rick and I got into the Halloween spirit by finishing watching the latest season of True Blood. Also, we made cut out pumpkins to play a game in our upcoming classes. Starting tomorrow, we get to dress up in our classes for Halloween. I'll post a picture of me, Rick, and Atlas in our costumes when we get all dressed up.


Day Two: We headed off to Costco with Rick's coteacher Julian to grab some candy for our kids. Planned some games, dressed up and we were off. Where we work, we are expected to have regular class for one hour and then a Halloween party in the second hour. The students are allowed to trick or treat to the other classes if they want, or we can do Halloween related activities. My class wanted to trick or treat so off we went. The kids have to sing a song and then, the kids in that class give them candy. The song is kind of dumb and having to sing it really ruins it for the older students who are still torn between participating and not caring. My coteacher was genuinely shocked when I told her we don't actually sing that song when we go trick-or-treating in Canada, that we just say, "trick or treat." 

Anyway, the students had fun. We taught them some Halloween words and played a couple games. They got some candy and a lot of them gave me some candy. I'm actually really excited for the next day of my Halloween week. My first class is so adorable, my second class has a test so I get to relax, and my third class is a lot of fun too.



Me and Atlas as matching minions

Day Three of Halloween was my longest. Three classes. One of my favourite classes in the afternoon with one of my favourite coteachers. The kids were adorable, my coteacher's costume was fabulous, and they got a shit ton of candy. It was a great time. My second class was an older class but we have so much fun. 

Unfortunately, it was a test day for them. Since I am going on vacation for the next two weeks (and so is my coteacher actually), we had to have the test during Halloween week. Since they were older, they didn't really mind and they all enjoyed the candy I gave them after they finished the test.

My last class was a bit older but not too old to have a Halloween party. We played games, listened to music, had some Halloween fun.



 Is it bad to have favourites? Oh well, I do. These are them. 
Our crazy boys.

Day Four was my final day of Halloween, and it was actually Halloween. On this day, I have one younger class who were totally excited and another class who are too cool for school. Regardless, I had SO MUCH fun with my first class. They were all totally in the Halloween spirit. It was amazing. So much fun.

Getting pretty hyper before the party started. We're required to do half a class of actual work and then we are allowed to have a party, they were pretty excited for the party.

Ruby is one of my best kids in this class. So helpful, always so excited and so dang smart. She is the one shooting her arms out and looking like its her birthday,

Bob (with his tongue out) made his own costume and was so worried it wouldn't be good enough! Me and my coteacher took lots of pictures to try and show him how great it was!


Singing their little hearts out. "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don't, I don't care, I can see your underwear!"

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

25 October 2013

BOO

It is almost Halloween and I am getting pretty excited to dress up and do fun stuff with my classes! Lucky for Rick, my parents brought him his Thor costume. I was originally planning on being Minnie Mouse but I have recently decided to change my costume. I am going to be a minion from Despicable Me! I am so excited and I can't wait to see my costume when everything comes together. Since I already bought the Minnie Mouse ears, I am going to bring them into my classes for any student who forgets to bring a costume.

The past few days I have been trying to think of inexpensive, but still fun, ideas for the classroom during Halloween. At the elementary school, it will be easy because I am just going to make a Powerpoint about Halloween with a bunch of games in between the information. But at Gloria, it will be a little more difficult. Especially considering this isn't the first Halloween a lot of my students have had so impressing them on Halloween will likely not happen. Some of my older kids aren't really that interested in Halloween so we will just have a party and do some Halloween themed games. I'll post all about my Halloween week as it is happening. 

Another aspect of Halloween where we work is Trick of Treating. My older kids refuse to do it, they don't even want the younger kids to come to our class to trick or treat. But the younger students really love it. I would love to go trick or treating, even now. Who can say no to free candy? Rick and I bought a bunch of candy in bulk from Costco because we need candy for our own classes, AND for whomever comes to trick or treat. But we're getting worried we don't have enough. We decided that after Tuesday we will see how much we have and decide then to get more or not.

We are just putting the finishing touches on Thailand. We have all but one of our hostels/hotels booked. We splurged a little at one point on the trip but it was easy to justify considering staying at our hostel in Bangkok is costing $5/night. Once we get all of our places to stay finalized, I will start looking into booking trains/planes/ferries to get around the island. I can't believe how close it is. We are both getting so excited for our vacation. ONLY NINE DAYS TO GO!!

18 October 2013

The End is Near

So our boss emailed us back and our last day of work is January 26th. I will be booking my flight home in the next week or so and then we can all start the official countdown. The second I told my mother, she started counting the days. 

I don't think I mentioned it on the blog yet but Rick is not coming back to Canada at the same time as me. He wants to stay in Taiwan for a few more weeks to do some more travelling around the island. After that, he is planning on going to Sri Lanka, then Vietnam and possibly Cambodia. I still don't believe he will actually go through with this travelling alone thing but only time will tell. If anything, I really hope he does go to Sri Lanka. One of our very good friend's (Tarisha) is from there and her father had told us before we came to Taiwan that if we wanted to go to Sri Lanka, all we would have to do was book our flight and the rest would be taken care of. So Rick is taking him up on that offer. I really don't have any interest in doing any more travel than we already have done/will do. Plus if you take into consideration my debt from school, along with the fact that I will be making more school debt when I come home, I can't justify travelling any longer. I also just really wanna get home.

I think I have found a friend to watch Atlas while we are in Thailand. He said yes but on the condition that his roommate is okay with it. His roommate has allergies and was concerned about Atlas staying there for two weeks so we are doing a dry run this Sunday. Let's hope it goes well or off to the kennel for my baby!

This Sunday, we are headed to Taipei so it worked out well that Kyle wanted to watch Atlas for us. Rick is participating in a research study, he will be getting an fMRI procedure done. They will be watching how his brain reacts when he is shown English words in comparison to someone who is a non-Native speaker. Originally, we were both supposed to do the study. But when they called to confirm, they mentioned if there is a history of epilepsy that you cannot do the procedure. While I didn't have epilepsy, I told them about my seizure disorder. They then said I couldn't do the study because the procedure has the ability to cause a seizure. So I will go to support Rick and watch him get poked and prodded. Before the study, we are going to eat some nice Greek food and cupcakes. I am pretty excited. 

I leave you with pictures of the cutest dog in the world...

My own personal minion

He really needed a haircut!

14 October 2013

Day Four HK: Exploring during Typhoon Usagi

On our fourth day, Typhoon Usagi had hit Hong Kong... in the form of rain and wind. We decided since we will probably never be in Hong Kong again, we started our day in the rain! We had visited the Goldfish Market once already but it was late and a lot of the stalls were closed so we wanted to check it out when it was in full swing.

We spent over an hour just walking the streets of the Goldfish Market and checking out all the cool fish. They had so many different kinds of exotic fish there and for not that expensive. While there, Rick and I decided that we want to have a salt-water fish tank in our future house. Some of the tanks were just so pretty. We'll worry about the cost of these fish tanks later.


These fish were really cool! They all had these little spikes for fighting but the fish store had put foam blocks on them so they couldn't fight each other. The result was fish that couldn't swim, they could only float

Next we went to the Bird Market. It was super rainy at this point so there weren't a lot of birds out but we were able to see a couple cool things. Rick really enjoyed the crickets that were in bags for the birds to eat. We were really sad about the rain while we were there because a lot of the birds that would normally be out were inside.


Rick enjoying the birds that were out

Rain rain go away

By this point, we were hungry so we went into our guidebook for a restaurant recommendation. We found one for a great soup restaurant so we headed that way. This time, we weren't disappointed with the food. The prices were reasonable and the soups we ordered were really good. Score one for Hong Kong.

Happy to eat some good food!

Next we went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art. When we first planned our Hong Kong trip, we didn't want to go to any museums but we changed our minds due to the rain. The Museum of Art was really cool. We weren't allowed to take pictures of most things but the things we were allowed to take pictures of, we definitely did.


Rick enjoying the view

Bok bok bok

Ever since inside of a rabbit?

They have a cool section at the museum where you are supposed to be a pioneer. You're asked a series of questions and at the end, you tally your score to find out what kind of personality you have. Rick was "Romantic" and I was "Sensible." ... Who would've thought? Now it is clear who has the brains of this operation :)


Sensible, clearly!

Romantic!

After the museum, it was back onto the Star Ferry because I was very worried about the typhoon. If the typhoon gets to a certain level, Hong Kong shuts down the MTR and we would have no way back to our hostel. So back to Hong Kong Island and we stopped by the Bank of China Tower on the way. They have an observation deck there that is free. But, by the time we got there, it was closed due to the holiday. And the men there told us the typhoon was now at a Level 8! This meant they could now close the public transportation with no notice whatsoever. We booked it back to the MTR and made it back to our hostel safely!


Storm signal 8!!!

Preparing for the typhoon!

Once we had internet again, I checked the status of our flight. It was supposed to leave the next day at 9AM but it had been cancelled. We spent all night on the phone with Expedia (worst customer service ever, I will never book with them again) trying to get some answers. Originally we called the airline and they said because we booked with Expedia, they couldn't help us. The man I first spoke to told me that he didn't think a flight would be available until WEDNESDAY. As this was Sunday night, I was freaking out. Finally, we called Expedia again in the morning and they told me to just go to the airport. Thanks for all the help. 


We were put on hold... a lot..

We made it back to Taiwan but we had to miss our classes. I felt really bad for my co-teachers but there was nothing else we could do.


Happy to finally be on a plane!

And that ended our vacation in Hong Kong! Next vacation: Thailand!

13 October 2013

Day Three HK: Big Buddha, Hiking, Times Square, IFC Mall

We were every excited for day three in Hong Kong, we were headed to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha! First we had a long trip on the MTR then it was a gondola up to the Big Buddha. However, when we got there, we found out the gondola was closed because of the holiday. So we debated going to do something else because we had heard so much about how great the gondola ride is. However, since the next day was supposed to rain, we decided to stick it out and take the bus. Waiting in a long, hot line for an hour sucked but once we got up there, who could complain?

Cable cars closed :(

Trying to have fun on the bus
First views of the Buddha

Stretching after the very long and very uncomfortable bus ride

The walk up to the Big Buddha was definitely tiring but worth it. I should've counted the stairs now that I am thinking about it. We took a few pictures along the way and being up there was amazing. We paid for a tour and some free ice cream and water. And it is a good thing we got the free ice cream and water because the tour was nothing special. But it only cost $2 CAD so it was worth it for the water and ice cream. Before we went to the Big Buddha, we were under the impression that it was built a very, very long time ago. But when we were there, we learned this wasn't the case. Construction on it began in 1990 which kind of changed our opinion on it. Even though it is supposed to be this spiritual place, it felt very touristy. Regardless, it was beautiful and I would recommend going there to anyone who is visiting Hong Kong.

Getting ready for all the steps


Stopping to take a break and some pictures

Selfie

Sacreligious

The descent



After descending from the Big Buddha, we decided to go for a hike. It was called the Wisdom Trail and we wanted to try to get to the Peak. When I told Rick I wanted to do this, he was a little shocked and I couldn't understand why. Until I saw how far away the Peak was. But I tried!!! Until I saw what I thought was a snake and a warning for dengue fever, and I was out of there. But while we were hiking, we saw some really great views and had a good time.

OH NO! No drying of linen!

Wisdom Trail

I was very confident at first that we would get there!

... Snake?

Hiker extraordinaire

Super excited

Dengue fever warning.. bye bye hike!


We took the bus back to the MTR station and decided to go to the Happy Valley Racecourse. We were both super excited to see the horse races but when we got there, we found out they didn't have races on Saturdays, we were sad but decided to make the best of it. We went to Times Square which was in the same area. It was a really cool district of Hong Kong, a lot was going on. There were a lot of street performers.

It was closed so I pretended to be a jockey!

Times Square

Times Square

Times Square

Then we decided to go back to Lan Kwai Fong for a couple drinks. We made it for Happy Hour and saved some money on our drinks. Then we had seen an article online about going to the top of the IFC Mall for drinks there. There is a super expensive bar at the top but we read online about bringing our own drinks there. It had an amazing view without the expensive cost of drinks. 

Top of IFC Mall

Top of IFC Mall

Walking back to the hostel

Our third day in HK was a lot of fun and we prepared ourselves for the typhoon that was supposed to come during our last full day.