Meet my new kitten, Gracy. She is sooooo adorable. I bought her on Monday after school. I have been looking around for cats for a while, there are many on the streets, but they have all seemed quite mean. Then I started to look at pet stores since we do not have an animal shelter in Chiayi (that I know of). Some places wanted over $500 for cats! Then I found her at a small little shop with only one other cat. The woman wanted about $300 but I bargined her down to about $200 and got her to thow in the kennel and litter box. She was expensive, but worth it, she is healthy and the cutest kitten I have ever seen. She is really playful and very curious. For how curious she is, she never gets into any trouble. My only problem with her is that she likes to cuddle really close to my face at night. It is cute for a while but if she wakes up, she will start biting my ear. For the past few nights she has endend up sleeping in her cage for part of the night. I don't think she likes this very much but I let her roam free in the apartment during the day to make up for it. I already looked into taking cats back to the United States and it seems pretty easy. You basically just need to prove that they have been checked by a vet, no less than a month before you go. They also need to have had a rabies shot. That should be no problem, she is going for a check up next week. I am looking forward to her company and watching her grow up! I will keep you all updated.

August 18

Cathy left today and I spent the entire day cleaning and organizing the apartment. I was sad to see her go. She has been a great friend and I will miss all of her wonderful stories. At the same time though, I was really excited to make the apartment my own. I went to a little shop down the street and bought placemats for the table, a rug, and some other decorations. Cathy left quite a bit behind so I only needed to make a few minor touches. At first I wanted to completely rearrange everything, so that it would feel like a new apartment, but the place is small and it turns out that things were in the best possible places. So I spent an entire two hours vacuuming and moving furniture around only to place everything back exactly where it was. At least I know the apartment is dust free and I kind of liked it the way it was anyways.

My biggest project was creating a kitchen for myself. The apartment is only a one room studio with an enclosed balcony that is supposed to serve as a kitchen. Well this “kitchen” consists of a sink, shelf of dried food, gas tank for hot water, and a single gas burner. The brick floor is stained and cracking so badly that Cathy covered it with a purple yoga mat. Cathy never cooked so the gas burner was buried under a pile of dusty pots and pans on the floor. I moved some things around and found a nice place for it on a tiny metal cart. I also washed the pots and pans for future use. It felt good to know I had a place to cook for myself. I don’t see myself doing too much real cooking since food is typically less expensive to buy already made from street venders or even most restaurants and the apartment is also equipped with a microwave. But there is something about having a gas burner that makes the place feel more like a home.

After I finished all of my cleaning and organizing, I took the scooter for a drive and found a Blockbuster. Yes, that’s right, an actual Blockbuster in Chiayi, Taiwan. All they needed was my address, telephone number, and passport to give me a membership card. The card looked just like the one I had at home except that the writing on the back is in Chinese. I left Blockbuster as a new member, with an American new release film, hoping that the girl was right when she said it was in English and Chinese. On the way home I stopped by a plant shop and bought a beautiful purple orchid. It is now sitting on my coffee table and my apartment is finally complete.

Call me crazy but I am officially riding a scooter in Taiwan. My roommate, Cathy, who is leaving in two weeks is going to sell hers to me, so yesterday I decided to take if for a spin. Everyone drives a scooter here; it is a necessity of life. They are cheap and take only a little gas. It is the best mode of transportation…that is, if you are not afraid of dying. See the catch is that driving here is CRAZY.

The best way to describe it is like a video game. You never know what will pop up in front of you, a person, a car door, another scooter, a dog…Cathy has not driven it further than to the school but I have been riding a bicycle around town, so I have gotten pretty comfortable with the roads. A few days ago Cathy and another teacher took me across the street to show me how to get it started, which is the hardest part. Her scooter is a little old so the ignition is not so great and if you don’t wrap the key chain around the mirror, the key will fall out and fall off and the scooter will keep going. The first time I started it I nearly ran into a fence. But once I got the hang of it and got going, I realized it was quite easy. I drove around in a few circles and felt pretty comfortable, so yesterday when I had some free time I decided to take it out for a while.

You have to be extremely observant when driving, but the rules are pretty universal, only scooters get away with a little more. Scooters are expected to go first through the intersections so when the other side turns yellow and all the cars are stopped, you should already be going. Also, if you are turning through and intersection, you never just get in the left had lane. Scooters are supposed to be in the right and you make a box turn through the intersection, just like you would if you were on a bicycle.

Overall, it has been a very liberating experience. In the past few days of driving I have been all over the town. It is so great to go off exploring and not have to ride a bike or wait for a taxi. Today I rode to a Japanese restaurant and met a 26 year old girl named Evelyn who was eating with her family. When she realized I was alone, she invited me to eat with them. They ordered a ton of food. In Asia, when you eat as a group, one person will order a selection of food for the table and you just take what you want and put it on a small plate, one piece at a time. I tried some salmon sushi, cooked salmon, cooked beef, miso soup, fried shrimp, salad, hand rolls, and tofu. The restaurant also has a free ice-cream bar where I had a scoop of mint chocolate chip and a scoop of chocolate chip.

At the end, it was beginning to rain and I was getting on my scooter Evelyn ran into the store and bought me a tiny rain coat. We exchanged phone numbers and she offered to take me to a night market next weekend. So I officially made my first friend in Chiayi.

Really nice apartment building (not mine)


Today will be my third day teaching at Noble. It is really going well. This week I am teaching kindergarten in the mornings and elementary in the afternoons. The needed an elementary sub for this week. It is really a nice mix. My “kindergarten” students are actually only preschool age. Most are 3 years old, some are only 2, and a few are 4. They are sooooo cute though.

These past few days have been a struggle because a few of the students are new and two of them cry for their mom’s the entire day. I am lucky because I have a Taiwanese teacher in the classroom to deal with that sort of thing. When the kids come to me crying, I am no help because I usually can’t understand what they are crying for (most of the time it is there mom, and I can understand that, but they want someone who will listen to their entire plea). One little boy, Chris, who is especially smart and especially attached to his mom went on a hunger strike yesterday. She stayed in the class for about an hour in the morning and after she left he began to scream and kick. When he stopped crying he told us that he would not eat until his mom comes to get him. He even threw up the only bite of lunch he ate.

Aside from all the crying, I have a pretty good class. Most of them do not know any English. It was a struggle just to get them to sit down in a circle for a lesson. When they were finally seated and I said good morning to each of them, the looked at me with blank faces. The Taiwanese teacher told them to say good morning back to me in Chinese and I went around with cookies. This sure did the trick. Out of the 13 students, about 9 said good morning the first time. Two said it the second time around when they realized that the others were getting a treat and the last two managed a wave. Yesterday morning, which was only the second day, everyone but the last two said good morning to me as soon as I said it to them.

This week we are working on the ABC’s, numbers 1-10, and a few songs. I am also reading them a pop up story about animals and colors. It is really simple, for example: “Yellow Lion, Pink, Pig, etc.” Perfect for their level and they love seeing the animals pop up. They are very receptive and are learning so quickly that I think it will be very rewarding to teach this age. They are complete blank slates, almost all the English they learn will be from me. That is so neat to think about.

The elementary students are also a lot of fun. But they already know so much! I am subbing for a class of 6 year olds and all of them can read already! And I am not talking about a story they have practiced. I gave them a word search yesterday, with words like tricycle, wagon, etc. and they read it perfectly. I was impressed. We are working on long vowel sounds all this week and they pretty much have it down after only two days. I will have to find other things for them to do.

Yesterday we went to the gym with another class and played a few games. I taught them a game from camp, called Dead Ant, and they loved it! I am sure we will have to play again soon.