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