Thrown into the deep end but still treading water...

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"  - Matthew 6: 25-27

This is what I kept repeating to myself all of last week...

Apparently most teachers start with slow schedules, maybe teaching 10 to 15 hours their first week.  You would not guess it from James and my stories.  This will only be my experience as James has promised to blog his own. 

I taught 22 hours last week.  Mind you, the 22 hours does not include lesson planning, breaks between classes, etc.  I covered all of the classes for a teacher who has been at the school for 4 or 5 years who has left on holiday to visit home.  

After a peaceful weekend of scooter shopping, church, Sunday lunch at an awesomely cheap college dining hall with new church friends, and catching up on sleep from our crazy week in Taipei, I felt ready to work.  I showed up when the school opened at noon, 2 hours before my first class started.  I sat down to lesson plan.  The 2 hours were disappearing rapidly and I had 3 classes to plan.  Every teacher and TA that walked in the room wanted to say hello and ask about my weekend.  I wanted everyone either ignore me or help me.  There was no time for chit-chat people!

Note:  At Shane English School, we are given exactly what to teach for each lesson of each class.  We have the 5 million different books used in each class (seriously I was so confused by all the different books for all the different levels and the 2 to 4 different books used within each class).  The flashcards are already created.  You just have to find them in the huge mess of binders in the teacher's room.  So, basically our job as teachers is to decide how to teach what needs to be taught for the day.  What approach do we take?  What games do we incorporate?  How do we make learning English fun after the students have been in school all day long?  We also have a Taiwanese TA in the classroom.  The TA does most of the grading.  She explains things like the homework to the students in Chinese either before of after the English teacher does his/her lesson.  

I walked up the 2 flights of stairs to my classroom with a lesson plan in hand.  I realized my heart was racing and not from the walk up the stairs.  I was about to enter my first class and had no idea what to expect!  What were the kids like?  What age were they going to be?  How would they react to me?  

Well, the class went ok.  They seemed pretty bored at times, but at least I got through what I needed to and no one misbehaved.  I learned one important lesson though: I can't just start talking to explain anything from what a word means, a grammar concept, or the rules of a game.  The whole classroom stops and stares at me with a blank, almost frightened expression.  It's like being in a classroom in America and the teacher starts explaining directions in Chinese!

The second class went MUCH better.  The students were lively and fun!  They seemed to like anything I had planned.  I was receiving so much joy watching them play the games and understanding the English I had just taught.  

I survived the third class.  They were so lazy with no energy.  Ohh well.  I did not let it bother me.  

At the end of the night, I realized that the day had been so busy I forgot about being hungry, thirsty, tired, using the bathroom, etc.  It was pretty intense having all these little eyes on you.  I had just directed classrooms for 5.5 hours.  The students do what I tell them to do - sometimes enthusiastically and other times not, but they did it.  Weird!

Afterwards, my manager sat down with me to talk about the day.  She was happy I was not crying.  Apparently, one of the male teachers had cried at the end of his first day.  One of the other male teachers in the room at that time said he waited until he got home to cry.  I still giggle about that.  I did not cry when I got home but James and I had a lot to talk about!

On Tuesday, I had a required morning training at our school.  If you get a bunch of teachers together that work until 9pm, they are not lively at 10am.  I now understand this one!  Lesson planning went much better.  I only had 2 classes.  I planned much faster and more organized.  I even had time to grab a sweet potato from Family Mart next door.  To my surprise, the class I was dreading went ok.  The students are around 13 to 14 years old.  There is one guy in the class that is quite a bit larger than me named Jimmy.  I got some "you are lame-o" looks but they seemed to enjoy my games.  I left the school that evening elated from the day!

By the way, everyone in Taiwan has an English name that they go by.  It makes it MUCH easier to memorize student's names.  

On Wednesday, I had the same 3 classes again as on Monday.  They went much better!  I am amazed at how happy it makes me to see the students having fun speaking English.  Jimmy even said hello to me!  I guess he was much more intimidating to me than I to him.  The TAs complimented me for how much better I did compared to Monday.  I was feeling pretty good about things.  

Another by the way, I have sooooooooo much respect for teachers that must make up every lesson from scratch.  It's a no wonder it is hard to have good teachers (which I have a few in my family and a few friends who are incredible).  With all the time you have to spend lesson planning and preparing, it would be much easier just to teach straight from the book.

Thursday started off awesome.  James I went exploring in the hills.  We went to a lake James had found earlier in the week heading towards the mountains.  We found a bridge a trail around the lake.  The lake looked so blue and perfect.  I really wanted to jump in it and swim around!  We made some new friends with 2 locals who were taking some pictures.  They took a few pictures of us.  As they were riding off on their scooters, one of them frantically hopped off his scooter and starting shaking a tree branch in the woods.  He had these 2 monster bugs called rhinoceros beetles!!!!!  He wanted to show them to us.  He spoke very limited English but I think we all bonded that morning :) 

View near the lake

Trail to go fishing on the lake

Runner's World shot on the bridge

Picture taken by new friends

Rhino Beetles (male and female) held by our new friend

Good thing the start to my day rocked.  My classes that were the same ones on Tuesday went terrible.  There was no energy in the class.  I could not take the lame-o, bored looks much longer.  Jimmy was removed from that class and taken to another class due to a personal scheduling conflict.  Another teacher told me that there is often an alpha student of the class that controls the mood each day.  I think he was my alpha student and the teenagers felt lost without him.  I could barely hold back the tears by the end of the class.  I was fighting so hard.  I managed to get out without crying.  When I went back to the teacher's room, the TAs gave me my schedule for next week.  I have 27 hours of classes!!!!  What?!!!  They start "summer camp classes" next week and added to my schedule.  I am also taking over a few classes of the teacher I am replacing.  I can't wait for the other teacher to return on July 22nd.  That day can not come soon enough. I felt so overwhelmed.  I talked to my mom on skype that night.  It added some relief.  She said there is no way to motivate teenagers :)  You can always count on mom to make you feel better even from 8,000 miles away!

Friday was the longest day yet.  I was at the school from noon to 9:20 pm.  I thought I was supposed to work less hours in Taiwan than my corporate America jobs?!  The day flew by.  My classes went well.  One of my classes that was new for me had much younger students.  They were probably 6 to 8 years old.  Explaining games is a challenge with the limited English they know!  All they really wanted me to do was throw a ball at them to pick the next student to speak English.  A bit odd but it worked.  None of my games worked so we kept resorting back to the ball game.  This class could be difficult later.  There are 2 TAs.  There are 20 students and only 5 of them are girls.  I have been told the boys are quite naughty but they are at least cute, too.  I finished the day with a Private Tutoring class.  The 17 year old girl speaks a lot of English and I really enjoyed the class.  In fact, we ran over the designated hour because we were chatting so much.  Typical girls! 

All of the experienced teachers keep telling us after a month or so, lesson planning becomes much easier and faster.  You learn the students in each class and know what they like and don't like.  I hope that month comes fast for me....  Of course my schedule will change again in 3 weeks after the teacher returns from vacation.  Then, it will change again at the end of August when school is back in session and there are no more summer classes and another teacher at my school leaves/is replaced....  Hopefully, it will be become easier and more second-nature soon!

This week James and I have seen a big turn in our regular schedules.  As most of you know we are typically early to bed and early to rise.  Well, not any more.  Every night we managed to get in the bed later.  It was so hard to wake up each morning.  7 am felt way too early.  9 am felt much better!  We aren't eating dinner until 10 pm so we aren't going asleep until midnight.  We would love to figure out a way to get in the bed earlier so we can wake up earlier to beat the horrendous summer heat but we have not found a solution yet...

The much needed weekend has been awesome.  We finally got into those mountains we have been looking at from our apartment window!!!  We rode a bus to Lion's Head Mountain on Saturday morning.  We hiked up the mountain into the jungle...well...kind of a jungle.  There are an endless amount of Buddhist temples on the hike.  Some are actually built into the mountains.  They all have a great view!  I wouldn't mind worshiping with a view like that!  

We are amazed by the never ending amount of food everywhere here.  We did not bother to bring any food with us for the day.  We bought mini-bananas at the top of a mountain for the same price we can get them at the market down the street from our apartment.  The food is not more expensive when there is a captive audience (with the one exception we have found at Kenting beach).  We held out for lunch to eat at the largest of the Buddhist temples.  We ate a Buddhist lunch and were served by monks!  The food was the same as what we have been eating everyday - brown rice, veggies and tofu.  We weren't sure how to pay because they did not ask for any money.  James tried to give them money and they accepted it.  We think it may have been by donation only....or perhaps we weren't even supposed to eat there...haha.  It was a very cool experience!  

Hiking up the path

View from the top

Massive spider.  Neither of us willing to stick a hand in the picture for the size comparison. 

Buddhist monk garden

Our new favorite lunch spot on a hike at the temple

Possibly the largest worm on earth.  Gross!

Hiking around the top

We're just so cute :)

Temple built into the mountain

View from the temple...we're taking baby steps to get into those big mountains.

Another temple in the green!

Always more stairs on these hikes...

The elephant ear plant (the the right) has some huge leaves. 

The seven star tree 

As soon as got on the bus to head home after a long day of exploring, we passed out!  We were so exhausted!!!!!!!

The luxury bus to Lion's Head Mountain.  1.5 hours each way, $3 USD roundtrip.  We watched a Bruce Lee movie while riding. 

We spent Sunday (today) doing a run at 18 peaks, church, lunch at the ridiculously cheap dining hall, blogging and .........lesson planning is yet to come.  I have to get ahead for next week.  I am a bit nervous.  But God takes care of the birds, so I should not worry about tomorrow.  That is my new motto with teaching and life in general.  I can't always be thinking to the classes for the next day.  I just need to do what I need to do today.  But, in this case I need to get ready for classes tomorrow because I won't have time at school to plan because James and I start Chinese lessons in the morning.  Finally!!!!!!  We need to know some Chinese very very very very badly.  I don't know how we have survived this long here. 

Lunch at the college dining hall - less than $2 and includes all you can eat brown rice, soup and tea.  James and I spent the meal discussing why it is significantly cheaper to eat out in Taiwan compared to cooking yourself.  We never came up with a firm answer.  By the way, I left here today more full than I've been since arriving in Taiwan I think!

I do have one fear of learning Chinese.  We have already starting speaking a somewhat broken English to everyone here except each other.  Between having to speak clearly, slowly, loudly and limited simple words in class and speaking to Taiwanese people with limited English skills, we are now speaking funny to native English speakers!  I've noticed that native English speakers that have lived here a while and know some Chinese seem to talk a bit funny themselves.  

Last thing, I want to give props to Buckhead Church.  Wow...how could any pastor speak to you directly as Andy Stanley, one of the best public speakers in America, or how could the music ever compare to basically attending a concert every week?  Although I like going to church here, it always makes me homesick for Buckhead Church and all the wonderful friends we had/still have there.  However, I am grateful that we have found a supportive group on the other side of the world. 

Random pictures - Here are some great pictures from our apartment rooftop on a clear day taken by photographer James.