we meet again

Do they make ethernet extension cables? I need one. Sitting at this baby desk is brutal.
Today, like all days I suppose, was a mix of victories and challenges.

Victories:
-I slept through the night again! I think I've gotten into the sleeping groove.
-I successfully followed Alan's directions from yesterday and got to and from Dar Chu school with no problem this afternoon all by myself. At one point, the bus went off the route it went last time and I didn't know where the heck I was, but it worked out. I asked this flamboyantly gay Taiwanese dude for help and he wasn't very helpful though he did speak pretty good English. They don't know the names of landmarks in English, so me asking where Mango and SKII were wasn't working. They also have this store named Net that's a good landmark. It's the Taiwanese version of Gap. I'm pretty sure they're owned by Gap. The logo is in the same font but it's green. I want to check it out tomorrow.
-My first class went pretty well. The kids were obviously bored at points, but keeping them engaged for 2 hours is a challenge that I have to master one step at a time. I learned most of their names in the first class I had tonight. They were pretty fun. They're a yellow book class so they're pretty proficient and they could understand me most of the time even though I wasn't talking like a robot. At our school, they want you to speak like a robot and enunciate everything and put lots of space between words, which does make sense, but I think if they can understand me when I'm talking more normally, it'll be better for them.
-I think I've folded into the social network here. Alan and Natalie and Josh and Martyn invited me to go to dinner with them at this Japanese restaurant where they make the food in front of you kind of like at ..what are any of those called.. well, you know. I had lamb, rice, cabbage, bean sprouts and tea. Everyone else finished all of theirs and I ate about half. I haven't mastered chopsticks yet. We talked about making dinner out a weekly thing which would be lovely. I really like the people at the dorm. They're really helpful and friendly and just nice people.

Challenges:
-I guess there was only one main failure and it was the second class I taught. When I walked in to the room, I noticed that a lot of kids from my previous class were sitting there. Turns out that they need some extra help so they go to two of the same level classes that are at different points in the book. I wasn't expecting that, and I had overlapped a lot of my lesson so I had to redo about half of my second lesson in the 10 minutes I had between classes. 4 hours is a long time for those kids to hang out with me. Teaching requires a lot of creativity and patience and flexibility. I was exhausted by the end of it. We played modified hang man, red light green light, and random other games. I taught them when to use 'were' and when to use 'was'. You use was for singular nouns and were for plural nouns and the word 'you'. I think they got that down by the end of the lesson but it's hard to tell when they're answering in unison.

Other than that, it rained really hard here for like 5 minutes but that's all the evidence of the monsoon I've seen. Apparently we can get some serious rain during this season. Taipei is getting rain every day this week so I guess we will too. I'll get to use my new umbrella and rain jacket so I'm excited for now.
I think that's all I have for today.