Is that a hippo?

I drove so much today my hand turned black from the exhaust on the throttle.

To Dar-Chu. To the ARC office in Taoyuan. To the dorm. To the scooter shop. To the apartment. To some government office out by Dar-Nan. To the apartment again. Back to Dar-Chu. Back home again.

Ugh.

I'm so exhausted, but I got so much done today.

I subbed one of Tess' classes for the last time. During the second-half of class my supervisor watched us. It's kind of weird to have them watch a sub.

She said it was because some of those kids will be in a class with me and David on Mondays after their summer class is over. They're last week of summer class is next week. That means I'll finally have a full Monday schedule.

Now if I could just get my own Wednesday classes I would be happy. I'm still pulling for one of Megan's little kid classes. They still don't have a new teacher yet.

Cross your fingers 'cause I love those kids.

After my morning class I went straight to pick up my ARC. I am officially a legal immigrant. That sounds so weird. But now I can enter and exit Taiwan as I please — for the next year at least.

Then I went to the dorm to find Megan and she and I went on a mission to put her scooter in my name. First we stopped by the scooter shop to see if they could do it instead of us going all the way to some government office.

The guy started to do some stuff but eventually he decided that he can't change the title for us and he sent some other guy to show us how to get to the government office.

It's funny to me how people here are just so willing to help you all the time.

This guy drove us all the way out to Dar-Nan and stayed with us at this office telling us when to do what (well, telling Megan in Chinese) and he didn't ask for anything in return. He spent at good hour or so with us.

It was really chaotic too. We got to this office and they took our ARCs. They started putting in information and then asked this guy to drive the scooter (I guess it was an "inspection"). Then after some other lady went over to another building and back, they realized there was a ticket that had never been paid and started talking about that.

Then they had another guy drive the scooter and had us walk over to the other building (which turned out to be a real government building with "take a number" and signs with directions all over them). I was told to sign a piece of paper so I did.

Note: I could have been told to sign away my first-born child and I wouldn't have known the difference.

After standing there for another five minutes and nothing happening, they took us back to the first building where we sat for another 10 minutes before they finally asked us for cash and handed me my new title.

Hooray I'm officially a scooter owner!

So many government offices in one day is a bad idea though.

After all that driving around in the blazing sun and not eating from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. I was exhausted.

But, alas, my day was no where near finished.

Luckily, although I had a headache, I was able to ignore it and have fun in my classes tonight. I played a gesture game in one of my classes tonight and somehow ended up getting all my kids to dance around like monkeys and hippos.

Moments like those are why I love this job.

I'm only half-way through the week and so much has happened already!

Now for a fun night hanging out with Megan. She leaves tomorrow for Meiguo. :(