I stayed up pretty late last night though, so I woke up really late today! I looked at my clock and saw it was 11:30 and almost freaked out. I had two hours to get ready and get to school and I had no idea when the bus would come or how long it would take!
I'm so proud of myself though. I knew exactly when to get off the bus. I didn't get lost at all and I had plenty of time to get some dumplings before class.
I observed three classes today. I realized that I hadn't watched any female foreign teachers until my first class today. The kids were pretty good at English and it was a pretty low-key class. There was one little boy in particular who was going crazy! He wanted to answer every question. It was really funny.
Then I watched a kindy class and there were TONS of parents watching the class too so Josh didn't make me teach the last 10 minutes because that would have been SO stressful. I did teach a little bit in the last kindy class though.
I had a two-hour break between Josh's kindy classes though, so I went and familiarized myself with the area. I was at Chen-Kung School which is kind of downtown and a nicer area as far as I can tell. There are tons of shops and markets around there
I had a supreme pizza for dinner and it was really weird because it had PEAS on it. Who puts PEAS on pizza?!?!
I bought a new wallet for $100NT (~$3 USD) and then I walked down to this park that's right down the street from the school.
It's right next to Taoyuan Elementary School. There were a lot of older people there and they all stared at me as I walked around. A few said "Hello" and waved.
There is a temple at or near every park it seems and I think they are so pretty although I'm not sure exactly what they're supposed to represent or if they belong to a particular religion. There are quite a few major religions in the area.
I sat down and watched some construction workers building an addition to a temple that's at the park and this guy walking by stopped and starting talking to me. He asked if I was a high school teacher and I explained that I teach English mostly to little kids. Then he asked me a couple of other questions. After that he said he wanted to be my boyfriend and that he wanted to kiss me good-bye. Luckily he didn't actually try so I just laughed it off and went back to trying to learn Chinese.
Another guy saw me reading my little Chinese language map that Flannery gave me and he asked if I could speak Chinese. I told him not really and then he didn't really say anything else. He just sort of sat near me for awhile until I left. As I left, I saw him get up and start to walk around again.
It's so funny to me because as far as I'm concerned, I don't think foreigners are really that much of a novelty here. I see them EVERYWHERE! But all of the natives just stare every time they see a foreigner, especially people like me and Megan because we have blonde hair and blue eyes so we stick out from a mile away.
Oh well, apparently getting stared at is one of those things you get used to and just learn to accept.
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