Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Why is it so cold?

Well, it looked like we were working our way into summer and what would eventually be amazing waterfall/beach weather.

Apparently not though.



It is the coldest it has been since I've been in Taiwan. When I was driving to work earlier it was raining and 9ºC.

It's supposed to get down to 6ºC tonight and be like that in the morning and the maybe get up to about 13ºC. And it's supposed to keep raining.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate cold and rainy at the same time.

I can handle cold. I can handle rainy. But cold and rainy is just asking to get sick — especially when you drive a scooter.

I wore a sweater, a heavy pea coat and my rain jacket and rain pants today and I was still cold.

I really like my outside class at the junior high school. My students are 14 or 15 so they're old enough to have meaningful conversations with and their English is actually pretty good.

We were talking about teen pregnancy, abortions and shotgun weddings today (among other things).

Their views were interesting. There is definitely a cultural difference especially considering I'm from the Bible belt.

When I asked the kids what they would do if they got pregnant now, all of them said they would get an abortion. And when I asked if them if their parents would force them into a shotgun wedding if they decided to keep the baby that also said no.

Of course most of them also said that if they had opted to keep the child they'd be kicked out of their parents' house in a heartbeat.

I guess in some families in America these things are true, but I definitely feel like the fact that the kids unanimously said they wouldn't want to carry the baby to term was a little surprising.

Either way, it was an illuminating conversation with some smart kids. I'm glad that I'm able to have challenging conversation with them.

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