She understands Chinese?

Today is probably the most successful Saturday I have had since I've been in Taiwan.

Four months of crappy Saturdays... yuck.

I actually had zero trouble waking up this morning even though I didn't go to bed until 1 a.m. I just jumped right out of bed and had plenty of time to take a shower, make coffee at home and stop to get some dan bing on the way to class.

I know you're probably wondering when the heck I'm going to get tired of dan bing. My current answer to that is "never," but I know that is probably not true. For now, it's the only local breakfast cuisine that I know of meaning my only other option of breakfast on the go is McDonald's.

Well, I suppose I could cook... Ew, 7 a.m. cooking.

We had a movie day in my first class. I went to Blockbuster last night and my brain was swirling with ideas of what movie I should pick for the kids. Obviously it had to be age appropriate; it had to be in English with Chinese subtitles; and it had to be something that would win me points with these kids.

Since our class is so early in the morning, we generally don't have much fun and so I always get this feeling that they kind of hate me.

Turns out, that's not it. Or if it was it's not anymore because the second they figured out that I picked Night at the Museum 2 they were all clapping and super excited.

Cool points for Teacher Jimmie.

I got a little homesick watching the movie though. OK, less "homesick" and more "last summer" sick. The majority of the movie takes place in Washington D.C. at the Federal Archives and in the Smithsonian Museums.

Well, if you don't know already, I had an internship in D.C. last summer and although I never saw myself as a D.C. person, it turns out that I really am.

I fell in love with that city.

Also, I definitely spent the majority of my weekends last summer visiting the Smithsonian Museums — they're free so what else is an intern living on $1000/month supposed to do. I went to the Air and Space Museum on multiple occasions because I just kind of love planes and all things aerospace.

Point is: They would show these awesome panoramic shots of the city or these cool parts of the museums and I just kind of felt really sad all of a sudden.

It seems D.C. still holds a piece of my heart.

That said, this blog is supposed to be about Taiwan where it's still raining. That stupid typhoon — Typhoon Lupit — turned northeast and so we're just getting all of the rain that's on the outer edges of the storm. Granted at least we're not getting the actual typhoon, but I still hate driving in the rain.

I don't care where you are, people drive like idiots in the rain! It's universal and I simply don't understand it. It's like no one has ever seen a raindrop in their lives.

Add in a million scooters, flimsy helmets and worthless rain gear and you've got road rash up to your eyeballs. At least one of other teachers does after getting hit by a car a couple of days ago. I'm just glad she's OK. A few big scrapes be she made it out OK.

So many of the teachers at our school have gotten into accidents since I've been here. It's so scary!

Back to my successful Saturday, the rest of my classes went off without a hitch.

Lately I've been describing Saturdays as a pattern of coffee, crappy class, great class, food, crappy class, great class, food, sleep.

I think I'm finally getting to that point where things really aren't so crappy anymore. I still wouldn't describe them all as "great" but I think I'm starting to get somewhere. Maybe it's my new no-nonsense attitude.

In my third class, the kids generally misbehave. One of the kids kept going "Laoshrrrrrrrrr." (Chinese for teacher.)

Finally I just looked at him and said, "Sam! Say 'teacher' not 'laoshr' or you're gonna get double homework!"

Sam looked at my co-teacher and was like... "Uh, she understands Chinese?"

Then we talked about how I am learning Chinese but still know infinitely less Chinese than they know English. And they asked if I know Spanish and I told them I started learning when I was really young. They decided that it's my background speaking Spanish that makes me speak English so fast.

Maybe I should slow down for these kids, eh?

I also gave a girl double homework because she had her cell phone out in class after me telling her multiple times to put it away. She and the other kids in class kept calling each other so their phones would go off and interrupt class. I already told them last week no cell phones in class.

That's just a general respect thing, but it made me feel like a real teacher not necessarily in a good way though.