Sunday, July 19, 2009

Am I really lazy?

I was originally planning to go to Taipei to take tons of pictures like a true tourist. Instead, Im going swimming.

A few of the other teachers just moved out of the dorm into a really nice apartment that has a pool. They invited all of us over to soak up the sun. Unfortunately, the sun isn't really showing itself today. It's quite cloudy, but it's still hot and the pool works just the same.

I decided on the day of leisure instead mostly because I woke up so late.

After almost seven hours of teaching yesterday, I was so tired, but I just couldn't go to sleep last night until my usual time — around 2:30 a.m. I'm going to have to get some sleeping pills or something.

My Wow (11-15-year-olds) classes were great yesterday. We had a lot of fun. I've decided that my co-teachers are awesome. The class is a mix of us teaching and the kids working together in groups or something. During this little bit of downtime, the teachers and I are getting to know each other and they've been giving me suggestions of things to do, or eat, to really make the most out of my Taiwanese experience.

I've had an interesting couple of run-ins with the administration the past few days.

Friday morning I went downstairs to print out stuff for my news camp and the head co-teacher came up and introduced herself to me. Once I told her my name she said "Oh I've heard about you, Anita told me you're really good with the older kids."

Apparently at some point she was told that I'm good at getting the kids to talk in English instead of Chinese and then I basically connect well with them. I talked to some other teachers about this and they said that means my co-teachers when I was subbing were probably telling the head office this.

I guess that's a good thing?

Then I saw Anita yesterday before my new News Camp (yep, I have a second one now). She said she's giving me a class to sub on Friday and she really wants me to focus on it. Apparently if things go well, they're going to make it a permanent class for me.

Hoorat for permanent classes, but suck for the situation. Anita said that the parents in the class don't like their current teacher, something about him not being warm enough? She insinuated that the parents basically don't like that it's a guy. She certainly didn't come out and say it, but I thought that was a weird thing.

Anyway, I'm torn. Do I really want a class that already has a history of parents who complain a lot? No offense to parents out there, but some of them just complain too much about things we can't always control.

The other big detail about this class is that it's a late-yellow book class. Remember those obstinate-aged children I talked about before? The ones who don't talk and hate the world?

Hmmm, we'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll really like my games.

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