monsoon wedding

Today was a blur. What happens in the morning is that no one is awake until about 10 at the earliest, but mostly 11 or after because I guess they stay up late. People usually make dinner at like 10 or 11pm. Anyway I've been going to bed around 1 and waking up at 6 or 7, so then I have a whole block of time to kill before anyone wakes up, so I've mostly been talking to mom and people from home since it's early evening there.
This morning we had another workshop with Bill. All of us were teaching WOW classes which is like the third level up so they should be pretty proficient, but they're teenagers so they don't want to participate. It took my WOW class half an hour to play a game that my red book class (8 yr olds) did in 15 minutes because they aren't self conscious about things. Anyway Bill gave us a lot of pointers on games we can play with kids that age and showed us how to teach a lesson. They have lots of material to cover so it's easier to teach them. The little kids have a lot of free time so it's up to you to supplement with learning games.
This is Jerry sitting in our workshop. He has interesting fashion sense.
Jerry and I went to 7-11 to get lunch before the workshop. 7-11 meals are pretty good. You pick one out, pay for it, and the cashier microwaves it for you and hands it to you while it's steaming hot. Today I had dumplings which were probably the best things I've eaten in Taiwan so far. Actually, I took a picture of them.

So thennn tonight I successfully got myself to Dar Chu again which was fabulous. As I was waiting for the bus (for half an hour) this old woman was sitting like 6 feet away from me a little further down the sidewalk and she kept staring at me. It was awkward. And this old man was walking in circles around the park where the bus picks me up and he did six laps in the time it took me to wait for the bus. But I eventually got there. I met some nice Filipino girls who told me how much the bus cost. They wanted to talk a lot and it was fun. I also bumped into this guy and his wife, I'm assuming, who own a pizza place in downtown called Phoebe's. Apparently people from the dorm have been there because they were mentioning it tonight. When you see another white person on the street in Taoyuan, you pretty much talk to them no matter what.

Anyway my classes went well. I don't remember what happened in the first one other than that my co-teacher was really awesome. In the second, they didn't thing anything I did was fun or cool. Most of it was them speaking in Chinese and laughing and me not knowing what was going on. Better luck next time I guess. It wasn't that bad but I'd like it to get better next week.

When it was time to leave, Josh offered to take me home on his scooter. When we walked outside, it was pouring down rain. He let me wear his rain poncho and we scootered home in a torrential downpour. It was exciting and really scary. Scooters just feel precarious to me in general and then to add in wet roads and buckets of rain coming down doesn't make me feel too warm and fuzzy. But we made it. He was soaking wet when we got home. See below.



When I got home, there were a bunch of people in the common area so we all chatted and then I came down and saw that gram and spanky were on Skype for the first time so I talked to them for a while. It's pretty funny talking to them over computers since they've been internetless for such a long time. I'm delighted that I was the reason they finally gave in. It's going to be awesome/ it was awesome to talk to them in person with video. That will make it much easier to stay here longer.

Anyway I'm exhausted and I'm going to go to sleep. :)