10.11.2006 The walking gods video (repost with story)

I posted the video awhile back but forgot that I'd typed up the story related to it. So here it is again:



Kelly (from Tainan) came up for a visit to Taipei the second to last weekend in April. Wu fen pu was on the list of places to go. Wu fen pu is 100s or 1000s of outdoor and partly indoor clothing stores. Really cheap, really fun stuff. One-of-a-kind stuff.

After a long day of gallivanting about we decided to stop for a beer on the patio of a Hilife convenience store before tackling the monster that is wu fen pu.

While we were sitting there we heard an explosion of fire crackers around the corner. We peaked around to see what all the chaos was and saw a big procession marching by. More fireworks were put down on the road directly in front of us. Me, taking after the crazy man who was my father, leaned over the railing as far as I could to get some video of the firecrackers, drummers and the gods.

Meanwhile, Han being the doting Taiwanese boyfriend that he is was trying to cover my ears while leaning back as far as possible away from the smoke and exploding firecrackers and shielding his own ears with his shoulders.

I asked Han why all this? He said it must be someone's birthday. Me, being the ditz (sanba) that I am said "They do this for peoples' birthdays?????" no sooner had it come out of my mouth than I realized "Oh, you mean for a god's birthday".

He just smiled and said "yea".

Labels: I'm a ditz, taiwan, Taiwan day trips, Video, Wu fen pu

Moon Festival BBQ for Two (video)

Labels: relationships, taipei, taiwan, Video

10.05.2006 From the mouths of babes.... fire safety

I primarly teach pre-school kids now with no previous English exposure but one class per day I teach our K2 class (4 year olds). One of the classes I have to teach is "Manners/Safety". So this week I decided to talk about fire safety.

I have one little guy in the class who everyone loves but who is extremely slow. He definitely has some learning disabilities but he's still really happy in class. He's learning how to write and when he writes his name he actually writes it completely mirrored. Like backwards, with all the letters backwards. Questions he's asked every day like "What's the weather like today?" will take him a few minutes to answer "uhhhh ummmm uhhhhh". He's just who he is, and we love him.

On Wednesday I was introducing the fire safety topic and quizzing the kids to find out what they knew about fire safety. So I threw the question out to the group: "What should we do if there's a fire at school?". Not even 10 seconds later my slow little guy shouted out "Stay at home!"

I literally fell off my chair laughing. I had to give him a high five so he knew he said something that was "good" funny... although I'm still not sure he got why it was funny :)

Labels: ESL teaching, taiwan