Finally, BACK!

It's been about a week since my last blog! I wanted to write so badly but I was loaded with work plus Dad hogs the computer :P

(1) After learning to drive for so many years and after finally getting my license in October, I drove. By that, I mean I drove in TAIWAN where traffic lights are viewed as "optional". My brother was pretty brave to sleep most of the way because I drove all the way home, from the bottom of the mountain to the top. It was pretty scary and I barely breathed the whole time but I did. I think my dad might be just a bit jealous :P (there's something wrong w/ his eyes so he can only ride motorcycles).

(2) The drinking age in Taiwan is the same as the driving age: 18 (but you can't vote until you are 20). I'll be 21 around Valentine's Day and I only had my first cocktail less than a week ago! Not that I approve of drinking but it was a treat from the restaurant...
I do remember trying to get somebody's attention many years ago and he ended up giving me his beer to make me shut up. I took a sip to get his approval...thinking back right now, that was just silly. Why do they sell beers to middle school students in Taiwan anyways?!



(3) Ron, my beloved terrible brother, got me addicted to Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" song. The hand belongs to Ron and the next two pics of the outside of the Taiwanese version of the album "Fearless".




(4) I saw the cutest Valentine chocolate at a Japanese supermarket (in Taiwan of course).



(5) I have English classes TOMORROW, I'm really looking forward to it. Every time I'm there, there's a moment when I want to cry and/or runaway but for some reasons I really want to do something for them.
Lately I've been having a dilema:
The teaching thing was originally something my father and the doctor came to decisions BEFORE consulting me so I still have no idea whether or not I'll be paid or how much if I do but I've been splurging on the gifts. I don't want to seem cheap but I am saving for college; I'm aiming for tuition exemption but I'll have living expenses to take care of and I get minimum wage for my job at the NPO.

NOTEBOOKS WERE ON SALE

(6) I saved the best for the last:
I might get to go to Korea one more time after all!
It's for work because our NPO buy clothes from dealers and sell them for charity (all the profit goes to single moms, victims of domestic violence, classes for poor kids like the ones I teach, etc.). No one at work speaks Korean but negotiations can be made in English. My best friend, Jasmine, will be visiting her relatives in Korea this December so I'm really hoping we could meet up...even if it's only for an hour ><
I miss you, Jazzy!

The Meaning of Beauty

Some people like this but it was just taken at a good angel, making my face smaller than it is in real life.


Now, why can't this be called beauty? It's still me, but upside down at a different angle. And this time it's the real me 0_o"



Last year my preacher's wife invited me over to her house for dinner after not seeing me for many years (I went to that church for a while in middle school but went back to the U.S. after graduation). I remember how I tried very hard to hold in my breath so my stomach would look smaller. I gained quite a lot of weight during high school but did not grow on inch. The first thing she told me when she saw me was, "My, you've gotten prettier!" I answered her what almost every Chinese would answer, "No,no, really I'm not."
"Nonsense!" she said, "When people call you pretty, you say thank you. Don't disagree."

I haven't been very comfortable in my own skin for nearly a decade now. Back in first grade I fell asleep one day chewing gum and the next day my mother found the gum stuck in my hair. The barber most have thought it reasonable to give me a boy hair cut when he saw the power ranger figure in my hands. Since that day on no girls would hang out with me in school anymore. All my friends were boys and I didn't mind. I'd spend every recess wrestling with boys or picking on girls. When I went back to the U.S. I was still very boyish and I rather talk with the boys about Mortal Combat then waste time with the girls. And I hated pink. The first time I started caring about what my face looked like was when I got picked on in seventh grade in Taiwan. I was made fun of for my grades, weight and looks (I was still boyish at that time). I worked hard to bring up my grades and lost a few pounds and was no longer picked on in eighth grade anymore but I kept trying to changing to change my face. I started plugging my eyebrows (which, naturally is like Rock Lee's) at age 12 and used makeup to look like a panda at age 13. I also grew bangs, hoping my face would look smaller.

Freshman year of high school, I was back in the U.S. again and woke up every morning at 4:50 to decorate my face. I stopped wearing heavy makeup in sophomore year because I got lazy and people accepted me that way. Now I'm back in Taiwan again. Despite having the same skin tone and same dark hair with the people here, I don't look the same. My eyes are naturally bigger than a lot of Chinese but unfortunately, so is my face. Why is having a big face such a TABOO in Taiwan? OR in Asia as a whole? There was a street dubbed "Plastic Surgery Street" when I visited Korea (and tempted me for the whole duration of the trip). A Korean American woman I met there even advised me get a new nose and shave off some of my facial bones. My mother jokes that I should marry a blind man. What ever happened to beauty not being skin deep? Back in the Tang Dynasty women tried to fatten themselves to look pretty and now girls are starving themselves. What is wrong with this society? Sometimes I feel bad and really want to fit in, but other times I feel silly trying to change how others feel about me! :p

I guess I'm still happier walking in "hand me downs" from my 180cm little brother and piling my hair up in a bun. It saves more time for ZZZs!

Giving Up The King of Pop for Adoption

Time sure has passed by real fast. It's been over a year since I left the U.S., a year and a month plus eight days to be exact. Not going to lie, it has been a pretty rough year. I've moved back and forth between the U.S. and Taiwan for so many times throughout the 20 years of my life but it always takes time to get used to my new life but this time I haven't got used to life even after living here for over a year. It's probably because I'm not a kid anymore and this time I actually have to worry about my future.






Earlier this year the family dog gave birth to eight border collies and I helped deliver a few of them myself. I fed each of them with a tiny bottle and cried as each got sent away or sold. By the end of July, the "only boy" was the sole puppy left in the house and he was named after Michael Jackson. My family thought (and still thinks) I spend too much time on him but how do I explain to them how much of a support Michael has been to me during this terrible year? After a whole day of "real life" zombie walking, all it takes is a friendly lick on the face to relieve you from all the anxiousness. But time has finally come for me to give him away. Grandma is getting older each minute and the frequency of her accidents (tripping down the stairs or breaking her arms) keep increasing; It's finally time to realize that no matter how much we love the dogs (Michael and his parents), we have to move closer to the hospitals and that would mean giving up a big house and giving up the dogs.




It's going to break my heart (and my brother & sister's) when it's time to give up the dogs. I really hope Michael and his daddy, Ian Ian, can find a good family. We've read so many articles about "dog factories" that just want to breed dogs and border collies are pretty expensive in Taiwan so it's really scary finding a new family for the dogs. And though not everyone, you have to admit that a LOT of Chinese treat their dogs like furniture, throwing them out when they move or get bored. Did you know that most Chinese would throw away a new born puppy if it has four white paws? A lot of the people believe that a dog with white paws would bring bad luck, I've never heard anything so silly! So we've put up English posters hoping to find American families but no news so far. If you know any dog lovers who lives in Taiwan or even better, you ARE, please leave a comment!


MICHAEL AND IAN IAN AT PLAY:

Teaching English in Tai'nan and Buying a Mean Bun for the Dog at the Convenient Store

So I started teaching English in Tai'nan on November 10, 2009 and I have two classes every Tuesday afternoon/ evening. How should I begin to explain my feelings toward the students? Before I accepted the job, I truly did not want to deal children. Yes, that's plural. I think teaching one children is fine, I've taught a very sweet little boy Chinese when I still in high school but teaching "kid*PLURAL" is totally different. When I finally accepted the job, I faced a VERY big problem, a giant obstacle! Mr. Li, who is the "manager" of the cram school does not like me. I can't be 100% sure on why but I'm sure I have not purposely done anything personal to him EVER and I have taken my mother's advice to treat him with utter respect despite the fact he kept purposely canceling my first few classes AND he lied to me about the conditions of the classes. Nevertheless, I started my first class on November 10th and had even more students on November 17th. This is how it went:

Nov.10 :
I was prepared for TWO classes with NO experience in English, EVER.
What did I get on the first day? ALL THE STUDENTS HAVE BEEN TAUGHT AT THAT CRAM SCHOOL BY ANOTHER TEACHER, AND SOME HAVE GONE THERE FOR TWO YEARS ALREADY!
OK, but I already knew that Mr. Li is a liar so why was I even surprised?
Nine students showed up in the first class (two will never show up again). One sixth grade girl decide that she would sew instead of listen to me and another sixth grade boy decided to not let me talk by asking me questions every 30 seconds. Was I discouraged? Yes, honestly, yes! At least one little boy worked really hard because I promised to give a present to the person who answered the most question. After an hour and a half, class ended and I felt worse than crying. Like, I didn't have tears but the situation made me feel so bad I didn't know what to do. But how could I loose just like that on my very first day?! I immediately made adjustments to what I did for the first class and put on a confident face again (not that I was truly confident on the inside). 30 minutes later 16 out of 29 students from my second class showed up. Unlike the first class, this class was only an hour long instead of an hour and a half. There was about six that wanted to experiment on "what would drive the teacher nuts" but I felt I did a lot better this time. Class ended real soon and Dr. Tien (the nice person who started the cram school that taught poor children for FREE) came to pick me up. He asked me a how the classes went and when I open my mouth no voice came out!

Nov. 17:
Before class I had already studied the teaching plan my English teaching teacher taught me and worked several hours on tailoring them for these children and making more games. After the boredom they showed in the first class I knew I had to include more games into the lessons.
4:30PM~6:00PM, first class enters, this time I only have 7 students left and I'm VERY please to say, it went so much better this time. I reviewed what we learned last class and everyone was brain dead but when I told them that we are reviewing so that when they play the "AIRPLANE" game later, they would be able to answer my questions and earn points. They immediately started paying extra attention and even took notes!!!!!!! I'm so happy I could cry! I decided to go slow with the children because they all grew up in a somewhat disadvantaged environment and instead of forcing them to have immediate progress, I wanted them to build confidence in themselves first. Sally, who sewed last class, actually spoke LOUDER than a fly this time and she even WON the game. I LOVE how that class went!!! <3
6:30PM~7:30PM, 23 students showed up and I ran out of seats. After I pulled in an extra table, it was virtually impossible for me to walk. I seriously wanted to cry when I saw TWO new sixth grade boys; they JOINED the group of boys that wanted to see how much they could push till the teacher goes crazy. Last week the group was smaller and the number of students in the class was smaller too but this week they wanted to eat the young teacher alive!!!!!
There was a moment that was like in the movies when suddenly the whole world around you is quiet; Everyone is moving, everyone is talking or yelling at you but you don't hear a thing. The world goes black and white, everything is in slow motion and you just want to runaway and hide from them. My migraine came back again and I just wanted to cry......a second later I was back on earth. I told myself that I couldn't loose, I was here to help, NOT to become another person that needed help. Plus, if I gave up, it would've been just what Mr. Li wanted. So, NO! I needed to fight back SMART! OK, there's not a lot of smart in me but I had to figure out a way to win the students' respect and hearts!!!!
I told them to take notes, the better the note the more points I would give out. This was news for some of the students that were worse in English, it was a way to earn points even though their English weren't good! In the end only TWO students didn't take notes. Even the group of mean boys took notes. One of them paid extra extra close attention to me and he just happened to be able to answer most of my questions that day. He ended up getting the most points that day and when I let him choose a prize, he couldn't believe in himself. He kept telling me that he was not worthy of winning the prize and that a lot of others were better than him in English. After all the other students left he was still telling me that he felt it was unfair for him to get a prize (but he did take it and told me that he wanted to give it to his girlfriend). I told him that the amount of English he knew didn't matter, what mattered was the effort he put in. I think nobody has ever told him that, I don't think any teacher has said anything nice to him before because when I told him that he went quiet for a moment, like he was a little bit shocked! And said, "So that's how things work out, huh?" He was last to leave and even said "goodbye, teacher" (in Chinese of course). But I was so so so so so happy that day. Even though I wanted to cry at the beginning of the class, even though I still had 22 more students' respect to earn, I wanted to cry out of happiness. I am crying right now. I'm so happy. I'm going to work very hard to make sure this kid learns his English and builds confidence in himself.

OK, so that was the end of my update on English teaching, I hope I have more happy stories to write next time! Now, a little bit about my life.
(1) Still working on applications, I want to apply for Hong Kong Baptist University and a few more others, PUH-LEEZ pray for me!
(2) And I need prayers for the relationship between me and God.
(3) Dr. Tien has been helping me loose weight by ELECTRIFYING ME! He uses acupuncture by sticking 4 needles in my feet, 4 in my hands and 4 on my stomach. And simply add electricity to the needles! BZZZ~
I had to be electrified for 20 minutes each time and I've done it twice this week. And I think he kinda had the feeling that it's very hard for me to loose weight so he turned the electricity on pretty high! Guess what? On my way home from Tainan to Taichung, I kept wondering why my pants were a little bit loose. And then my dense brain finally remembered the electrified acupuncture needles! AH!!!
I lost 2 point 2 pounds which is 1 kilogram :)
But now I really have to eat less and watch what I eat. Dr. Tien says he rarely has unsuccessful patients on weight loss and fears I ruin his record...:'( I gotta work HARD!!!!

Yesterday afternoon (Wednesday) after getting back to Taichung I went to a convenient store to pick up books for my dad and I saw this ugly dog (looks likes my brother's dog) standing in front of the automatic door. I was surprised the sensor could sense something this close to the ground and the door opened. I felt sorry for the ugly dog since a lot of Taiwanese treat their pets like furniture, throwing them out on the streets when they get tired of them so I paid for a meat bun so I could feed him. Right after I paid for the meat bun, a customer took the dog away. Turns out the dog wasn't a street dog. LOL. I paid NT$18 (which is roughly 1/5 of an hour's wage) and he had an owner. Well, I'm glad he has a home and doesn't have to go hungry, but I'm on a diet and shouldn't be having snacks...
so for the rest of the day at work, I fought the temptation to eat the meat bun with meat STICKING out of the bun............................
It was a horrible afternoon! LOL. The pork bun kept calling my name for the whole afternoon but I managed to take it home and give it to my dog.

Well, that's it :)
I'll write another note after my next English class =D
OH, and I'm sorry to say, once again I have no pictures to upload because I've been so...uh, [depressed, stressed, got sick from my sister who sleeps in the same room with me, tired from fighting temptations from meat buns calling my name, dressed down], causing me to only take pictures of objects or my dog. LOL
I'll put one up if I loose weight successfully after more electrifications :D