Canon Rebel T1i

I am the proud owner of a new camera! I remember two years ago, this July I was in Washington just receiving my new camera (replacing the one I left in Michigan). This time I have a wonderful companion to drive around with. We spent some time with it last night and this morning we drove up to the temple on the hill outside of Fengyuan. From there we compared zooms, practiced with the polarizing filter, and saw the clearest view we've had of Taichung. Great fun!

Below are some pictures I've taken in the first two days of use.

On my old camera:



On my new camera:



At Careforr...anyone want manly fashion socks?



The picture I took:



Cropped on the computer:



Me! Notice the depth of field!



Serious Portrait of a book



From the temple, the city is a mix of Fengyuan and Taichung:



A Muller's Barbet, taken from a distance and cropped on the computer. A sufficient tool for bird identification I would say!



Nothing spectacular yet, but much much improvement over the previous. Just learning how to change lenses quickly, adjust aperture, etc. Hopefully Egypt will be recorded nicely!!

The rain held and the day continued nicely. I had a farewell lunch with people from my school, and it was a great time. Good-ish western style food and great company. I will really miss some of the chinese teachers, and I've a great relationship with the NSTs. It will be sad to say goodbye next Saturday.

Chinese class was great. I love our teacher...she's so sweet and patient and interesting. Asks us about the world cup and what school is like in America.

Class was fine, although I had to sub for a teacher who called in sick and got stuck grading an upper level test instead of lower level homework.

My camera is not here yet because the customs office keeps saying I have to pay duty on it because it's sent from America so maybe tomorrow I can finally figure it out!

What a Beautiful Morning!

It's been raining for at least five days. On Saturday and Sunday we had a soccer tournament that was visited by regular spritzings. On Sunday, during the final, the sky opened and torrential downpour made the game a bit more interesting. Adorned in garbage bags, we all watched from the side as some good friends of ours won the tournament.

After the game, the official awards presentation was done with everyone huddled around. When it came time to award the MVP trophy for the tournament, we were surprised and excited to see that the refs had voted Josh as MVP! He is an amazing player, with lots of commitment. He took A LOT of hits this weekend, but he's a brick and I love to watch him play.

I played for a Tubbies team 2...full of old guys who threw a team together for the tournament. It was more to my speed and an overall great time. I got some high compliments and played a lot more than I have before. Ouch!

Performance day on Monday went fine. Three parents for five kids, so it was a small audience.

The rain stopped last night long enough for some coworkers and I to go to a barbecue place. Two taiwanese friends, two NSTs, plus me. We had fun practicing Chinese and English, eating barbecue (until I started feeling sick), and relaxing. It's nice to be friends outside of school.

My new camera will come today! I hope to have new pictures up soon!

AND, the rain is gone for now! Predicted to last until Tuesday, it's at least giving us a little respite before the next downpour. The sun is shining on the mountains I see from my window. I can't wait to take pictures pictures pictures.




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My kids did so well today! They are great little animals in the Tortoise and the Hare. Our branch director came to watch today, and she had a great time. She thought it was really interesting, the kids were adorable, danced well, and were very smart. I'm very proud of them...almost disappointed I won't keep teaching them next year.



I designed a book for my higher level students to write their book report in. I only teach half of the level, and then there will be some subs and a new teacher, but I found myself mapping out the whole course in my head. I realized I wasn't going to teach it all only after I got home and was telling Josh about the book.

It's always awkward to teach 14 year olds-class time can be really quiet-but sometimes they really surprise me. They had to brainstorm for a persuasive essay last week...the topic was school uniforms. One student who is fairly quiet (and an avid Bon Jovi fan) thought of some really convincing and original reasons not to wear them. I forget sometimes that they are trying to communicate in a second language, and maybe don't give them enough time to think about their arguments. But they seemed to do quite well anyway, and I'm excited to see the final results when I collect them tomorrow.

It's 11:28 on Friday night and I've just stopped work-related things so I should go be a real person or something. I've been on a National Geographic kick and have gone through 2 and a half magazines cover to cover in the last 6 days. I'm also going to try to study up on the Egyptian gods and pharohs :0).

0ne Month

...from yesterday Josh and I will get back to PA.

Things are winding down at work. My students took their last unit quiz yesterday, and take their final big test tomorrow. On Monday we're putting on a play for our parents. Then on Wednesday we'll have a party and play games.

For my other classes, there aren't any major happenings. Last week I gave most oral tests, which meant little class preparation. This week I was lucky to have two lessons where we don't collect homework. Two full weeks of school left. I need to write a lot of final reports before I leave, because some classes will end the week or two after I go. I volunteered to write them early so the students have some NST feedback. The last week of school I don't teach my 3-days a week class, so I will be subbing a couple of classes for another teacher.

Mostly work is going well. I have been staying a lot to make props, etc, so I get to chat with some of the teachers more. It will actually be sad to leave them.

Last night I told one class that I was leaving. I started teaching this class the week I got here, so it's been about 11 months. One of the students also participated in a speech competition that I helped her with a lot. Her reaction was adorably sweet when she realized that I was going home...she got a little flustered and started writing furiously on her new books. After class, I told her I would miss her. At first she didn't understand til I fake cried and then she said "oh. yes." There are some students like that who make your job easier.

Put put put

Three weeks from today I'll be in Egypt...and I've started to tell my classes.

Today my scooter shut off voluntarily at 6 different points on my drive to work. I found out that it's too old to sell, so I'm out 7000NT...about 230 US. On the same day that I just spent WAY too much on a camera...

And the Seasons, they go Round and Round

There's too much to do before I leave!!

Plan Egypt, study econ/stat, get in shape, make friends, drink tea, spend more time with friends, work I guess, take with people at IU, and enjoy my last three weeks in Taiwan. Three weeks from this coming Sunday, Josh and I will be on a plane to Egypt. We'll be back in the states on Wednesday the 18th, and I'll be at my parents house until Saturday morning the 21st. Oh boy!

Today Jamie left for America...and for a brief minute it was extraordinarily quiet.

Then, I met Josh for a quick lunch, rushed off to Chinese class, from which I rushed to school to prepare for a graduation. Today, a class I have been teaching for 10 months graduated from our program. It was very tiring (which means I can't imagine how tiring it was for the Chinese teacher who did most of the work). Honestly, it's a little unfair that my name gets put on everything first and I get to speak first at the performance and I get to hand out the awards...this teacher has been teaching these students much longer than I, and she worked so hard for the performance day. I think our company wants to emphasize that these students have a foreign teacher...

It was great having Jamie here. She has made it a point to visit me in both Seattle and Taiwan (and Pittsburgh), and we always have a good time. We tried to show her as much as we could of Taiwan, which might have been a bit overwhelming. I know that I have chilled out a lot about traveling since I first moved here, but I still worried too much about every detail. This is something I hope to fix before we leave for Egypt in THREE AND A HALF WEEKS.

Yikes! So much life to live here before then.

Adventures with Jamie

Met Jamie in Taipei nearly two weeks ago. We spent the morning wandering around the city, and returned to Fengyuan by early afternoon. Last weekend, Jamie, Josh and I flew to Kinmen, a Taiwanese island 6000 meters off the coast of China. We spent a long weekend driving around and around the island, looking at old and active military sites, observing birds, going to museums, and eating Taiwanese food. For Sunday, we took a ferry to Little Kinmen, borrowed bikes from the park service and rode 18 km around the island.

Kinmen is an interesting place to us for many reasons. It was the main site of the Chinese civil war in 1949, so there are many remnants of that. These include a man who makes knives out of the propaganda shells that the communists launched onto Kinmen. 280 bird species. Museums depicting several famous battles. Wetlands. Beaches unwalkable..."Danger! Mines!"

Josh totally geeked out. He had so much fun trying to figure out exactly where everything happened, what it looked like, what the modern military was doing, seeing Mainland China off the coast, driving endlessly down small roads to see what was there... :0)

There were incredible birds. I identified bee eaters, hoopies, magpies, oriental magpie robins, mynas, intermediate egrets, black crowned night herons, a gray heron, and many others.

Jamie was very brave and tried some traditional Taiwanese soup, which she dutifully ate a bit of before being totally grossed out by the liver, tiny shelled shrimp, and strong fish oil taste. We were so proud. and politely declined a taste.

During the week we have been hanging out, eating food, going shopping.

This past weekend the three of us took a train down to Chaiyi where we rented scooters and drove into the high mountains. We stayed in Alishan Village, at 2200 meters. It was a very cold drive after sunset. We then got up at 5 the next morning to drive to Yushan National Park. It was gloriously clear in the morning, so we had spectacular views, including Yushan (Jade Mountain), the tallest in Taiwan. By 10 dense fog had moved in, so we did a bit more hiking, but without the same views. Saw laughing thrushes and a nutcracker. Good exercise. The fog also encouraged us to head down the mountain before it got too cold. The drive was very chilly, but we didn't get rained on until we were farther down and it was a bit warmer. When we got back to Chaiyi, the sun was shining and it was hot. It's amazing how different mountain climates are!

We bought tickets but there weren't any seats available, so we sat on the floor for the hour and half ride home.

Went to bed at 10, got up at 2. We watched the world cup final (by that I mean Jamie and Josh watched with our friends and I slept on the couch).

Now it is Monday morning, Jamie's last full day here. She's packaging some things to send to friends and I am relaxing after a week of very very little sleep.

It's been a good visit, and really interesting to watch her go through the same observations and culture shock that I did when I first got here. I guess more on that as I pack up and leave in the next month.