Pay Day

Today was the last day of my 2nd English camp. They even paid me in cash. Yeah! The other school needs my ARC (resident card) for tax purposes. I should have that in the next month. I need to wire some money home to pay off my airplane ticket, but I haven’t been paid so I was going to have to keep some of it. Now I can send more home. More good news.

This morning it rained from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. And that is only when I know it did for sure because I was awake. May have rained in the night. My assistant said a typhoon passed by the island. As I walked to the school, I felt grateful I didn’t have to do a 30-minute scooter ride in such rain.

This morning I came into the office to do some last minute preparations, and my mom was on IM. I love technology! (Napoleon Dynamite) It really was great to get instant responses. Usually I send an e-mail in the afternoon/evening and then a day later I get the e-mail with responses and answers.

Here in Taiwan, they always call the teachers “teacher.” That is one Chinese word I definitely know! Here’s how you might spell it phonetically: lou-shu. Man, it’s hard to do that! I don’t know if you’ll get the right tone. Anyway, today I remembered a student from my student teaching experience that would call me teacher. I always got after him for it. I told him I had a name and he should use it. Funny the culture differences.

I made a quick trip to the store this afternoon (and my arm is sore to prove it). I picked up some water and I found some chocolate cookies. Cool! They are okay. Better than the fried cookies. And I picked up some bread. I got home and realized I was excited to have a peanut butter sandwich, and it had only been a day or two since my last one. Ha ha. Guess I do like peanut butter. The girl before me loved it. Oh, you can’t open an umbrella with just one hand. Especially if the hand you are using has the strap around the wrist. I know, I tried. I walked out of the store and was juggling to keep my bag and water and umbrella in my hands/arms while opening the umbrella. It was interesting but I succeeded.

One last tidbit for this post. Laundry is air dried here in Taiwan. Not a big deal. But, I have to juggle my laundry times with those of my roommate. We only have so many hangars! I thought of this because I need to do laundry and she did some yesterday. Hopefully it will be dry by tonight so I can do mine.

Forgetting something after you’ve just locked your door and called the elevator is so annoying! Not only do you have to unlock the door and maybe lose the elevator, you also have to take your shoes off so you can run like 5 steps to the bedroom and grab whatever you forgot. I’ve done it too many times. And yet I always do a little mental check before I leave my room. I guess it’s not checking out too well.

Click here to read a newspaper article about the typhoon that brushed us today.
My class. Not the best time to take a photo since they are concentrating on filling out a survey and have their heads bent. Alas.
I had 18 students this week. But 3 didn't make it today. Maybe the rain kept them at home.
The man standing is my assistant. His English name is Morning Chen. That is what I heard him say but I wasn't sure until today. He gave me his business card. Said he wants to take me to get food again. (Did I mention that we had Western food yesterday? Chicken and ceasar salad. It was nice.)

And here are my art skills. Ha ha. The students were drawing Halloween costumes today and I was sitting at a desk so I picked up my pen and started drawing. It isn't too bad.