My first two weeks @ the YuLin Junior High School

2/10/2012: After a short sleep @ Lilly's dormitory, we went to the 7-11 (a convenience store that you find at every corner of a street in Taiwan - it's always open and they sell almost everything) to have breakfast with the director of the school. We (Lilly, the director and me) had a discussion about what I needed to do at the school etc. Actually I had more the feeling that I was watching a Chinese soap without English subtitles, waiting for the commercial break to come that was slightly intelligible...

First I thought I would have a class or two that I needed to teach many different courses during 6 weeks, but  at the end of the Soap or maybe after watching it two times, I understood that I would have to teach three different sessions to 25 different classes of the 7th and 8th grade (in total 800 students) during those 6 weeks! 

This included the following: 

1. The chocolate mignonettes that I brought to Taiwan to give to my "2 classes" NOW needed to be divided each into..16 pieces. 

2. I needed to teach 1 course 25 TIMES, uhu, like over and over again!

3. I could not really bond with my students since I had 800 of them?

The positive thing about it is that I only needed to prepare 3 sessions :)...

At first sight, it all seemed a bit overwhelming but as I started to prepare my first lesson and teached my first classes, it showed that more variation could be brought in the same presentation than thought ... (this is where creativity began to bubble).

At the school I was warmly welcomed with 148 Chinese cups of tea and a lot of fruits and pinapple cake (very popular in Taiwan and not so bad at all If you try one from a good brand!). John and I visited office after office to meet each time 15 new employees with Chinese names and maybe two of them with an English one too. Since I am a person who cannot even remember names in her own language, my nightmare was a-wai-ting! Luckily John had the great idea to call all the men without an English name 'John n°x' and all the women with no English name 'Mary n°x' which would totally work out because to differentiate John 7 from John 16 and John 24 was certainly a no-brainer. (John and Mary is something very funny in Taiwan, John n°1, the only person that I call John, my director, tried to explain why but failed. So I googled it and apparently the names come from a really old movie that I did not know).

The students (age between 12 and 15 years old) are so so lovely. They always say hello, goodbye, wave at me everytime they see me. I love them already! After my sessions, it is always picture time! They all try to struggle their way to the middle where I am standing just to get close to me! By the way, they call me 'teacher' = so cute!

Before I really start my session, they have the opportunity to ask me anything they want (most of the time, they prepared their questions very carefully..). The most popular of them are "Do you have a husband?" or "Do you have a boyfriend?" or "Can I have your phone number? (the boys..12 years old :) ) or "Do you have FB?" (the girls).

Everyday I go with a smile to school and I return back home with an even bigger smile...What more do you need in life?

Big Kiss to my Belgian family and friends. X 

Next: the weekend with John's family and friends!

 ~ <3 ~