Honestly, this class just isn't my favorite one. Don't get me wrong, the kids are fine. It just doesn't have as much energy as a lot of my other ones because the CT has more of a military style. I'm not knocking the CT, because it does have a very disciplined effect, but I will say it does cause me to have less "favorite" moments. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this class actually happens after class. Somehow, a few of the girls in this class have established a routine where they follow me down to my desk and "help" me grade homework while they wait to be picked up. It makes my homework grading go a lot slower, but it's great anyway. In essence, as I grade, they guess how many points should be taken off for each question based on how much I've crossed out, etc. Then, they total it all up for me and tell me the final grade. They've really gotten impressively good at it, especially Sheila. At the very least, it's a nice bonding activity and at the most it helps both their math and language skills. I've actually seen Sheila improve a lot in class since we began doing this, wether it's related or not.
So far, my "fav's" having been that great, but there will be some really good ones in the later classes. At least in my opinion. Jump will definitely have a lot!
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Favorites of Teaching : SA9
Ok, so as I was thinking about all of my favorites of teaching, I realized two things: I have a LOT of favorites and they are most easily organized by classes. So, I'm going to do a series of posts, focusing on one of my classes at a time. Let me first give you some background. Most of my classes I only teach once a week, for two hours at a time. The kids usually come for another two hour class on a different day, with a CT (Chinese Teacher). The exceptions are Jump, which I teach both days and Honors, where there's only the two hour class I teach and one CT hour right before it. TMI, I know. But, this is for my own records. Here's the schedule:
Mondays:
- Early class = SA9 (kids are 10 or 11)
- Late class = KC8 (kids are 7 - 9)
Tuesdays:
- Early class = KC1 (kids are 5 - 10)
- Late class = Jump (kids are 3 - 7)
Wednesdays:
- Early class = KC5 (kids are 7 or 8)
- Late class = None
Thursdays:
- Early class = None
- Late class = Honors (12 - 15)
Fridays:
- Early class = SA13 (11 - 13)
- Late class = Jump (3 - 7)
Saturdays:
- Random, but mostly Society Class (9 - 11)
Today I'm going to tell you my favorite things about teaching my SA9 class. They're great! I love this class! Probably my favorite student is this girl named Peggy. She's skinny and leggy and a total tomboy with attitude and for some reason we connect really well. She sits in the back next to her "friend" Sean, who's a really sweet boy. They are reeeeally good friends and everyone always does the, "Peggy and Sean, sitting in a tree" type jokes about them. The great thing about Peggy is that even though she's hoooorrible at writing and not that great at speaking either, she isn't afraid to try. She talks more than most of my students and is always trying to explain something. She's really creative and funny too, which is something I've come to really appreciate since most of my students are scared to death to speak in class. Honestly, I don't care how bad the students' grammar is, if they will just try to muscle through it and express themselves in English I am overjoyed. The class really has a lot of great kids, but I'll just mention two others.
One of them is Ray. He is, by far, the best student in the class. He is super studious and smart. He always knows the answer and pays attention and is the type of student every teacher wants. He's not full of himself or anything though. He's really good at helping the other students and is patient if I have to take longer than he needs to explain things to the rest. He's also super chubby, with big glasses, which is just endearing.
Finally, there's Henry. My goodness. Henry is a handful. I'm positive the poor kid has ADD and luckily I'm pretty patient with high energy kids. Honestly, I find them endearing (most of the time). Maybe they just remind me of my brother :) . Anyway, all the rest of the kids sit in these long desks that fit two or three (think old fashioned schoolroom), but Henry gets his own desk right at the front. Right under my feet, it feels like. I put three stars on the board at the beginning of class, just for him, and erase one each time he gets out of hand. It works pretty well and I don't stress about him. It's kind of a game between us. He knows I like him, but he also knows he's a pill and we give each other knowing looks to this effect. Some of his favorite things to do are stand up and jump around, yell whatever we are reading instead of just saying it, sing "baby, baby, baby, ooooh baby" over and over or, like last class, say, "Teacher, you are so handsome" over and over and over to me throughout the class. Amazingly, he really is a favorite though.
The last time I taught this class, I noticed one of the girls, Lilyan, staring hard at my eyes with a really confused facial expression. I asked her why and she just pointed to my face and said, "stick?" I naturally assumed she meant, "are your eyelashes stick ons?" and answered with a matter of fact, "nope." She didn't believe me, so we got the CT to translate and, sure enough, that really is what she meant. This is just one example of the strangeness of normal day-to-day communication here. There have been several instances when someone has said something in Chinese, but I've been able to understand what they were saying just by context and body language and it totally throws them off.
To finish off with this class, in the end, I just love that we have a good time together, that we laugh a lot and that we seem to have a real respect and enjoyment of each other. There are times when I have to crack down hard and lay down the law, but a little bit seems to go a long way with them. That's SA9!
Mondays:
- Early class = SA9 (kids are 10 or 11)
- Late class = KC8 (kids are 7 - 9)
Tuesdays:
- Early class = KC1 (kids are 5 - 10)
- Late class = Jump (kids are 3 - 7)
Wednesdays:
- Early class = KC5 (kids are 7 or 8)
- Late class = None
Thursdays:
- Early class = None
- Late class = Honors (12 - 15)
Fridays:
- Early class = SA13 (11 - 13)
- Late class = Jump (3 - 7)
Saturdays:
- Random, but mostly Society Class (9 - 11)
Today I'm going to tell you my favorite things about teaching my SA9 class. They're great! I love this class! Probably my favorite student is this girl named Peggy. She's skinny and leggy and a total tomboy with attitude and for some reason we connect really well. She sits in the back next to her "friend" Sean, who's a really sweet boy. They are reeeeally good friends and everyone always does the, "Peggy and Sean, sitting in a tree" type jokes about them. The great thing about Peggy is that even though she's hoooorrible at writing and not that great at speaking either, she isn't afraid to try. She talks more than most of my students and is always trying to explain something. She's really creative and funny too, which is something I've come to really appreciate since most of my students are scared to death to speak in class. Honestly, I don't care how bad the students' grammar is, if they will just try to muscle through it and express themselves in English I am overjoyed. The class really has a lot of great kids, but I'll just mention two others.
One of them is Ray. He is, by far, the best student in the class. He is super studious and smart. He always knows the answer and pays attention and is the type of student every teacher wants. He's not full of himself or anything though. He's really good at helping the other students and is patient if I have to take longer than he needs to explain things to the rest. He's also super chubby, with big glasses, which is just endearing.
Finally, there's Henry. My goodness. Henry is a handful. I'm positive the poor kid has ADD and luckily I'm pretty patient with high energy kids. Honestly, I find them endearing (most of the time). Maybe they just remind me of my brother :) . Anyway, all the rest of the kids sit in these long desks that fit two or three (think old fashioned schoolroom), but Henry gets his own desk right at the front. Right under my feet, it feels like. I put three stars on the board at the beginning of class, just for him, and erase one each time he gets out of hand. It works pretty well and I don't stress about him. It's kind of a game between us. He knows I like him, but he also knows he's a pill and we give each other knowing looks to this effect. Some of his favorite things to do are stand up and jump around, yell whatever we are reading instead of just saying it, sing "baby, baby, baby, ooooh baby" over and over or, like last class, say, "Teacher, you are so handsome" over and over and over to me throughout the class. Amazingly, he really is a favorite though.
The last time I taught this class, I noticed one of the girls, Lilyan, staring hard at my eyes with a really confused facial expression. I asked her why and she just pointed to my face and said, "stick?" I naturally assumed she meant, "are your eyelashes stick ons?" and answered with a matter of fact, "nope." She didn't believe me, so we got the CT to translate and, sure enough, that really is what she meant. This is just one example of the strangeness of normal day-to-day communication here. There have been several instances when someone has said something in Chinese, but I've been able to understand what they were saying just by context and body language and it totally throws them off.
To finish off with this class, in the end, I just love that we have a good time together, that we laugh a lot and that we seem to have a real respect and enjoyment of each other. There are times when I have to crack down hard and lay down the law, but a little bit seems to go a long way with them. That's SA9!
Least Favorites of Teaching
I've been thinking for a while that it might be nice to do a "Least Favorites of Teaching" and "Favorites of Teaching" pair of posts. Teaching is obviously something I think about a lot and I definitely end up having a lot of "thoughts" about it. I thought I would start with the least favorites so that I could end on the favorites. Also, this list is specific to teaching in my specific situation right now, a.k.a. in Taiwan, for Hess, with my specific classes, at my specific branch, etc. Here goes!
- Kids who were already painfully behind when you took over the class, so much so that it seems impossible to catch them up and they're just confused and behind every class.
- The completely miserly nature of our Branch Manager. This is an entire section of my complaints, so:
* She doesn't want to buy paper, so we have to scrounge around and beg paper off the secretaries even though the lesson plan requires that we use paper.
* She doesn't want to spend money to fix the AC units, so either we shuffle around with our entire class to find a classroom with a working AC unit, we deal with an AC unit that is literally hurling out chunks of ice at us throughout class or we deal with no AC and kids constantly imploring us with, "Teacher - hot!" (hand waving at face) .
* Just yesterday I took my Jump class, which is full of kids 3 - 7 years olds, to the bathroom and discovered from my Chinese Teacher that we are no longer being provided with bathroom tissue. The kids have to either bring it from home or....do without. My poor kids had to do without yesterday - gross!
- The business nature of a buxiban (afterschool school, which is where I work). Also an entire section:
* Pleasing the parent is king, even if it means complying with policies that are actually bad for the children.
* Everyone has to get a good grade on everything, even if they couldn't have done worse, otherwise they won't want to come back.
* Three year olds are allowed in "Jump" even though it's not at all age appropriate, which makes life difficult for everyone involved - but hey! More students = more money!
* If a child is doing poorly or acting up in class you aren't supposed to tell the parent because then they might not want to come back.
* If a kid isn't doing his homework, there is nothing you can do about it.
- Any time spent out of the class is not paid, including homework / test grading, lesson planning and even orientations that require us to take a train to another city, spend our entire day sitting in a classroom and sometimes even miss a class that we WOULD have gotten paid for.
- Many times I have to completely ad lib major things in front of large amount of people, which can be quite stressful!
- It gets a bit wearing to hear, "Teacher Sheri! Teacher Sheri!" and "Teacher! Teacher! Me! Me!" etc. from 15 kids for 4 hours straight.
- This is a big one : I get really sick of trying to teach things (that are sometimes quite complicated) to a group of kids who don't speak the same language as me. It gets really exhausting to have to be in that mindset so much.
- As a side negative to the last one, my usage of "big" words, or even "medium" words in any conversation has markedly diminished after having to speak like this, "You (points to kid), eye (points to eye), here (points to me, to indicate "pay attention")" for a major part of my day. Grad school, here I come!
- Having ridiculous songs in my head aaaaaall day to the point where Tom and I pretty much speak in song.
- Often working Saturdays
- Kids who don't succeed - this can just be heartbreaking
- Having to correct the same grammar mistakes over and over and over ("They are monkeys." Not, "It is monkeys.")
- Teaching a few kids is great, teaching a lot of kids is not. Imagine teaching a primary (even Sunbeams) class with 15 kids who don't speak English.
- Kids who refuse to participate.
- Corporal punishment is still an acceptable way of disciplining here and is seen most often with the kindy kids. The kindy CTs (Chinese Teachers) are just brutal and will berate a kid (or worse) for the tiniest of infractions. It drives me nuts. I was doing just fine with this class all day while you got paid for sitting around and the only time you choose to participate is when you manhandle a kid just for not staying strictly in the line? Really? I love most of the CTs, but kindy CTs aren't my favorite.
- Ironically, on the other hand, Taiwanese parents and teachers often baby their children so much that if the kid gets a tiny cut on his/her finger the child gets fawned over, sent to the nurse and the parent gets called. Forgive the story, but, this kid in my jump class was the worst. He was this chubby little nerdy kid with big glasses. He was very sweet, but his mom was the most pronounced "helicopter" parent I've ever seen. She would warn me weekly about not doing "dangerous" activities in class because her son has glasses and he might fall and break them and hurt his eyes. The term "dangerous" referred to basically anything that required standing up. This is a two hour class with mostly 3, 4 and 5 year olds who sit on the floor (not even at desks). You really want me to try to keep them sitting for 2 hours? One day we decided to play a "game" where the kids hold hands and slowly walk in a circle singing the ABC song. Dangerous, I know. One of the three year olds had been sitting down because she was sick. She suddenly decided she wanted to play and ran headfirst into the circle of kids (as 3 year olds do). In the process, she knocked said boy down and fell down herself. She got right back up and continued bouncing around as if nothing had happened. The other kid (who fell on his BUM) started crying hysterically and his mother (who waited outside the classroom all class long, each class) rushed in and swooped him out of class. They were never to be seen again. Sweet kid, but good riddance!
Well, I know there's more, but I'll cap it there! I realized as I was writing this that it's a hugely negative post. Maybe I shouldn't post it, but instead I'll just say that honestly, I like teaching! For all the negatives there are a whole bunch of positives too. I'll just make sure I get the "positive" post posted soon. And, honestly, most of these negatives also have a funny side to them, so I hope you enjoyed how ridiculous my job can be sometimes. Also, sorry for the lack of pictures recently. After getting all caught up, pictures-wise, I have a lot of pent up thoughts. Also, I have pictures that could have gone along with this post, but I'm not allowed to share them.
Stay in tuned for the good side of teaching! I've actually already started it and it's making me smile!
- Kids who were already painfully behind when you took over the class, so much so that it seems impossible to catch them up and they're just confused and behind every class.
- The completely miserly nature of our Branch Manager. This is an entire section of my complaints, so:
* She doesn't want to buy paper, so we have to scrounge around and beg paper off the secretaries even though the lesson plan requires that we use paper.
* She doesn't want to spend money to fix the AC units, so either we shuffle around with our entire class to find a classroom with a working AC unit, we deal with an AC unit that is literally hurling out chunks of ice at us throughout class or we deal with no AC and kids constantly imploring us with, "Teacher - hot!" (hand waving at face) .
* Just yesterday I took my Jump class, which is full of kids 3 - 7 years olds, to the bathroom and discovered from my Chinese Teacher that we are no longer being provided with bathroom tissue. The kids have to either bring it from home or....do without. My poor kids had to do without yesterday - gross!
- The business nature of a buxiban (afterschool school, which is where I work). Also an entire section:
* Pleasing the parent is king, even if it means complying with policies that are actually bad for the children.
* Everyone has to get a good grade on everything, even if they couldn't have done worse, otherwise they won't want to come back.
* Three year olds are allowed in "Jump" even though it's not at all age appropriate, which makes life difficult for everyone involved - but hey! More students = more money!
* If a child is doing poorly or acting up in class you aren't supposed to tell the parent because then they might not want to come back.
* If a kid isn't doing his homework, there is nothing you can do about it.
- Any time spent out of the class is not paid, including homework / test grading, lesson planning and even orientations that require us to take a train to another city, spend our entire day sitting in a classroom and sometimes even miss a class that we WOULD have gotten paid for.
- Many times I have to completely ad lib major things in front of large amount of people, which can be quite stressful!
- It gets a bit wearing to hear, "Teacher Sheri! Teacher Sheri!" and "Teacher! Teacher! Me! Me!" etc. from 15 kids for 4 hours straight.
- This is a big one : I get really sick of trying to teach things (that are sometimes quite complicated) to a group of kids who don't speak the same language as me. It gets really exhausting to have to be in that mindset so much.
- As a side negative to the last one, my usage of "big" words, or even "medium" words in any conversation has markedly diminished after having to speak like this, "You (points to kid), eye (points to eye), here (points to me, to indicate "pay attention")" for a major part of my day. Grad school, here I come!
- Having ridiculous songs in my head aaaaaall day to the point where Tom and I pretty much speak in song.
- Often working Saturdays
- Kids who don't succeed - this can just be heartbreaking
- Having to correct the same grammar mistakes over and over and over ("They are monkeys." Not, "It is monkeys.")
- Teaching a few kids is great, teaching a lot of kids is not. Imagine teaching a primary (even Sunbeams) class with 15 kids who don't speak English.
- Kids who refuse to participate.
- Corporal punishment is still an acceptable way of disciplining here and is seen most often with the kindy kids. The kindy CTs (Chinese Teachers) are just brutal and will berate a kid (or worse) for the tiniest of infractions. It drives me nuts. I was doing just fine with this class all day while you got paid for sitting around and the only time you choose to participate is when you manhandle a kid just for not staying strictly in the line? Really? I love most of the CTs, but kindy CTs aren't my favorite.
- Ironically, on the other hand, Taiwanese parents and teachers often baby their children so much that if the kid gets a tiny cut on his/her finger the child gets fawned over, sent to the nurse and the parent gets called. Forgive the story, but, this kid in my jump class was the worst. He was this chubby little nerdy kid with big glasses. He was very sweet, but his mom was the most pronounced "helicopter" parent I've ever seen. She would warn me weekly about not doing "dangerous" activities in class because her son has glasses and he might fall and break them and hurt his eyes. The term "dangerous" referred to basically anything that required standing up. This is a two hour class with mostly 3, 4 and 5 year olds who sit on the floor (not even at desks). You really want me to try to keep them sitting for 2 hours? One day we decided to play a "game" where the kids hold hands and slowly walk in a circle singing the ABC song. Dangerous, I know. One of the three year olds had been sitting down because she was sick. She suddenly decided she wanted to play and ran headfirst into the circle of kids (as 3 year olds do). In the process, she knocked said boy down and fell down herself. She got right back up and continued bouncing around as if nothing had happened. The other kid (who fell on his BUM) started crying hysterically and his mother (who waited outside the classroom all class long, each class) rushed in and swooped him out of class. They were never to be seen again. Sweet kid, but good riddance!
Well, I know there's more, but I'll cap it there! I realized as I was writing this that it's a hugely negative post. Maybe I shouldn't post it, but instead I'll just say that honestly, I like teaching! For all the negatives there are a whole bunch of positives too. I'll just make sure I get the "positive" post posted soon. And, honestly, most of these negatives also have a funny side to them, so I hope you enjoyed how ridiculous my job can be sometimes. Also, sorry for the lack of pictures recently. After getting all caught up, pictures-wise, I have a lot of pent up thoughts. Also, I have pictures that could have gone along with this post, but I'm not allowed to share them.
Stay in tuned for the good side of teaching! I've actually already started it and it's making me smile!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Joy of a College Campus
I just finished watching, "The Blindside" on TV. I've seen it a couple times before, but man I love that movie. Always gets me. And I feel extremely lucky that it was on, because we get only a handful of English channels and most of the movies that come on are ridiculously obscure, like "Mortal Combat II" or something. No lie, that one's been on at least four times.
Anyway, onto the purpose of the post. I wanted to make a post all about how I feel about going to graduate school. To start off, I will just say that there are few things in life that I have ever been more excited about. The first reason is that I am really passionate about the field and have worked really really hard to try to get into a good school where I can learn all about it. I went through an entire 500 page GRE textbook, VERY thoroughly, two times before I took the GRE, because that's how bad I wanted to get in. I read articles about education related issues all the time and Tom and I are always having nerdy little discussions about related stuff. I totally hesitate to bear all of that on my blog, but hey, I'm a nerd and I'm proud of it!
The second reason I'm super excited to go is that I just plain love being a student. I always have, but I think this might be the peak of that love. When I left BYU I was ready to be done with school, at least for a while. I wasn't feeling real passionate about my major and I just wanted to move onto something else. The last summer I was there, though, I had a bit of a transformation. I'd done horribly the past couple semesters before and just really wanted to get out of the funk. It's hard to describe quite what happened, but those two summer terms I got better grades than any other semester before. My last term I got a 4.0. It didn't matter what the class was, I chose to be interested in it and I worked HARD. I didn't have internet at my apartment, so I'd stay on campus until I was done with everything, and often until I was ahead as well. There was one class, in particular, that I remember working my butt off for. It was an astronomy class and science has never been a strong point of mine. I attended every lecture, took notes and did all the assignments ahead of time. Most of the grade, however, was based on tests. The teacher would give us a big thick packet of questions to fill out before the test, which was our homework, but the packet and the test were quite different, so you really had to thoroughly understand the material. Luckily, there were a few TAs with office hours. I went into EVERY office hour and grilled those poor TAs the entire time. I was usually with the TAs about 15 hours a week. And this, from a girl who very rarely made any contact with professors or TAs beforehand. I STILL only got a "B" in that class, but it didn't matter to me because I knew it was my best. I could not have worked harder and it felt really good. It's like I finally got the hang of school, right as I was graduating.
Ever since then, I've had this huge urge to get back into school and to repeat the performance of those last couple of terms. I'm excited to work really really hard and be disciplined in my studies, as strange as that sounds. I'm excited to spend hours in various study locations reading (and taking notes on) thousands of pages of scholarly articles. I'm excited to spend hours perfecting my essays even when it's hard. I'm excited to talk to my teachers if I'm having a hard time and all kinds of other strange things. Because, you know what? In the end it feels really good. Those last couple of terms at BYU I actually looked forward to going to the library to study. I convinced myself that it was fun! And I am SO ready to do it all again at Penn - this time with a discipline I'm actually passionate about.
Finally, I'm excited about all the resources that come with a good university. I'm talking about fascinating guest lectures, performances and displays of all kinds, always having something to be involved in, gym facilities to use (right across the street from my building), parks and green spaces, great food, etc. etc. I feel like as interesting and valuable of an experience as Taiwan has been, I'm really missing out of resources here! I haven't had the opportunity to check out an English book from a library in 9 months!
University of Pennsylvania, HERE I COME!
Anyway, onto the purpose of the post. I wanted to make a post all about how I feel about going to graduate school. To start off, I will just say that there are few things in life that I have ever been more excited about. The first reason is that I am really passionate about the field and have worked really really hard to try to get into a good school where I can learn all about it. I went through an entire 500 page GRE textbook, VERY thoroughly, two times before I took the GRE, because that's how bad I wanted to get in. I read articles about education related issues all the time and Tom and I are always having nerdy little discussions about related stuff. I totally hesitate to bear all of that on my blog, but hey, I'm a nerd and I'm proud of it!
The second reason I'm super excited to go is that I just plain love being a student. I always have, but I think this might be the peak of that love. When I left BYU I was ready to be done with school, at least for a while. I wasn't feeling real passionate about my major and I just wanted to move onto something else. The last summer I was there, though, I had a bit of a transformation. I'd done horribly the past couple semesters before and just really wanted to get out of the funk. It's hard to describe quite what happened, but those two summer terms I got better grades than any other semester before. My last term I got a 4.0. It didn't matter what the class was, I chose to be interested in it and I worked HARD. I didn't have internet at my apartment, so I'd stay on campus until I was done with everything, and often until I was ahead as well. There was one class, in particular, that I remember working my butt off for. It was an astronomy class and science has never been a strong point of mine. I attended every lecture, took notes and did all the assignments ahead of time. Most of the grade, however, was based on tests. The teacher would give us a big thick packet of questions to fill out before the test, which was our homework, but the packet and the test were quite different, so you really had to thoroughly understand the material. Luckily, there were a few TAs with office hours. I went into EVERY office hour and grilled those poor TAs the entire time. I was usually with the TAs about 15 hours a week. And this, from a girl who very rarely made any contact with professors or TAs beforehand. I STILL only got a "B" in that class, but it didn't matter to me because I knew it was my best. I could not have worked harder and it felt really good. It's like I finally got the hang of school, right as I was graduating.
Ever since then, I've had this huge urge to get back into school and to repeat the performance of those last couple of terms. I'm excited to work really really hard and be disciplined in my studies, as strange as that sounds. I'm excited to spend hours in various study locations reading (and taking notes on) thousands of pages of scholarly articles. I'm excited to spend hours perfecting my essays even when it's hard. I'm excited to talk to my teachers if I'm having a hard time and all kinds of other strange things. Because, you know what? In the end it feels really good. Those last couple of terms at BYU I actually looked forward to going to the library to study. I convinced myself that it was fun! And I am SO ready to do it all again at Penn - this time with a discipline I'm actually passionate about.
Finally, I'm excited about all the resources that come with a good university. I'm talking about fascinating guest lectures, performances and displays of all kinds, always having something to be involved in, gym facilities to use (right across the street from my building), parks and green spaces, great food, etc. etc. I feel like as interesting and valuable of an experience as Taiwan has been, I'm really missing out of resources here! I haven't had the opportunity to check out an English book from a library in 9 months!
University of Pennsylvania, HERE I COME!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
AND THE WINNER IS.................
April 15th has finally arrived (and passed) and we have finally made the final decision about which school to attend! It was a looooooong, miserable decision process, but the rejection & acceptance emails have been sent and it's official.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
THE
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
WINNER
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
IS
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNYSLVANIA!!!!!
WOOHOO!!!
Is anyone surprised? I don't think it was the obvious choice. It sure wasn't obvious to us! In fact, if you had asked me at the beginning, I would have put UCLA & Vanderbilt as both being more likely choices, but it the end, Penn it is. Here's how it went down.
Basically, we had decided on UCLA pretty strongly at first. It was going to be the cheapest, by quite a bit, I love the program, it has a great campus, I was SUPER excited about living in LA, the weather is obviously a plus, I was excited about being close to family and friends, it was a one year program, and the list goes on and on and on.
However, things quickly fell apart. It's quite a long story, so I'll spare you the details. Though, if you're curious, feel free to ask. Basically, they handled my application atrociously and pretty much left us no choice but to reject them. We haven't looked back.
As for Vandy, we had the opposite experience. They were so warm and helpful and an absolute pleasure to correspond with. I LOVE their program & feel like I'm missing out on something big by saying no to their offer. I can tell that they're a school that really cares about their students and really gives their all to get them where they want to go. The campus is also fantastic (which I'm a big sucker for) and the Ed. building is particularly so. In the end though, we're quite worried about Tom's job prospects in Nashville. He's looked around quite a bit and it just doesn't look good. Maybe one day I can get a PHD there.
That leaves us with Penn! After reading about UCLA and Vandy, it might seem as if we don't want to go to Penn. That's not true at all. What made this decision so tough (especially after UCLA was out) is that our options seemed so good it was hard to say no to any of them. Penn's major disadvantage is that it will be more expensive, all things considered. Well, that and the cold. It's advantages, however, are many.
My cohort will be small (only about 20 or so). There are already lots of classes I'm very excited to take. I'm getting pretty excited about the city itself. The area around the campus, where we plan to live, is mostly tree lined streets with quaint Victorian houses. The campus is quite beautiful, though more compact & with less grand grassy fields that the other two. Tom's brother & brother's family are moving to Philly in July, because he is doing a postdoc at Penn. It's an ivy - which, honestly, is just a bizarre thought. But that will help with my career in the future, hopefully. In the end, though, possibly the aspect I am most excited about is the internship component. Here's how the program is set up, you do one academic year at Penn, then you do an internship (generally in a developing country) for 6 to 10 weeks during the summer. Then, you graduate! More info on the internship is here. But, I've been really wanting to do something like that for a while.
Anyway, this post is already a lot longer than I intended for it to be. Unfortunately, I have a lot more to say, so it is to be continued, tomorrow. Sorry for being so longwinded. Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Sinhua Botanical Garden
For a while now we've known about some hiking trails not too far away in a suburb of Tainan, called Xinhua (or Sinhua). On Saturday, we finally decided it was time to go check them out.
The drive was quite nice and it was great to feel like we were out of the city a big. Clean air is a beautiful thing. The hiking area itself ended up being quite nice as well! It was a bit scary at first, because right at the beginning of the trail, amidst all this beautiful landscaping and otherwise extremely charming area was a nice big sign that said, "Caution! Poisonous snakes! Poisonous wasps! Poisonous centipedes!" As a result, we were quite cautious on the trail. Even though we tried to make lots of noise, we still came across a snake or two.
The other scary part was the HUGE spiders. Taiwan has these spiders that are the side of your hand. Their legs are as thick as twigs and they have massive webs. They are also VERY plentiful on trails like this. You could see them literally any time you looked off the side of the trail. Luckily none of them had constructed webs over the trail or we would have just marched right back.
I HATE SPIDERS
That said, the hike was otherwise fabulous. There weren't many people, the views were gorgeous, the foliage was varied and the weather was pretty decent.
 |
| The sound of the shutter when Tom took this photo scared them and they jumped, ran into each other and fell off. |
 |
| Tom took this one - gotta give credit. |
 |
| At the end of the trail, there was a visitor's center, with this guy chillin' outside. |
 |
| Biggest tree-born fruit on the planet. |
As we were walking back to the scooter we decided to check out the lake. We found these hammocks there and decided to take a siesta there. We pulled out our books are read for quite a while.
 |
And that was that! I wish every Saturday was like this one, but this Saturday I teach from 10 - 12, then have a work meeting from 1 - 3. Boo.
On a happy note, I think I am officially caught up!!!!
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Cool Alleyway & Bookshop
I just thought I'd share a picture of a cool alleyway and bookshop/cafe we came across the other day.
Tainan has a LOT of small alleyways, but usually they're not quite this small.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Little Okinawa
Just last weekend (yes, I'm getting that caught up) we had a long weekend. Monday was Children's Day and Tuesday was Tomb Sweeping Day, so our friend Heather came down from Hsinchu on Sunday night and on Monday we took a day trip to an island off the coast of Kaohsiung called (in English), "Little Okinawa." We took a train to Kaohsiung, bus to a port south of Kaohsiung, then ferry to the island.
We rented two scooters, had lunch at a pretty tasty restaurant, then set off around the island. The island is similar to Green Island, in the sense that it's very green and has pretty blue water. But, Green island is a bit bigger, possibly has less people, definitely had less tourists, had more of a mountainous landscape and had better, more unspoiled beaches. So, basically, we definitely enjoyed the trip and are not complaining, but would still choose Green Island any day.
After scooting around a good amount of the island, we decided it would be nice to go snorkeling. We found a snorkeling shop, rented the gear and set off to go. We had quite a bit of trouble finding the spot we were supposed to do it at, especially since the spot had no other snorkelers and a "No Swimming" sign. It was definitely not your normal snorkeling experience.
Picture this. You have a little, rocky beach, with a bunch of fully clothes Taiwanese tourists (generally, Taiwanese people really don't like water or the sun). Then, there's this big floating dock made out of blue and white, hollow, plastic squares fastened together to make one big square. To get to the dock, you have to walk down a long, thin, path that is also made of the of those same hollow squares. The path is only loosely anchored to the sand so that whenever a wave comes it goes up and down right along with the wave. The big square at the end is where you're supposed to launch into the water for snorkeling. The snorkeling, itself, only ended up being so so. There weren't that many fish and they weren't terribly cool. But Heather and I LOVED the wave path. It was so fun! We could have spent all day laughing hysterically while trying not to fall down on that thing.
Also, I found out something new I didn't know about Tom. He is terribly afraid of being swept away to sea because of an experience he had when he was a kid on vacation in Mexico. He was very brave when we went snorkeling.
After the snorkeling, we were trying to find the scuba shop again to drop off the gear, when we happened upon a temple with a cool performance going on. Heather and I are ridiculously curious people, so we just had to stop by, wetsuits and all. At first we just looked on, cautiously, from afar, but as the fabulous Taiwanese are wont to do, we quickly got invited over and provided with seats. Seriously, I can never get over how nice they are. It was a FABULOUS experience.
 |
| We're not quite sure what the boxes were for (maybe for putting the food offerings in later?), but this little girl was pretty cute, using one as a seat. |
 |
| Some of the nice people who invited us over. |
 |
| Doesn't he just looking dashing? And yes, we were all still wearing life jackets as well. |
I think the play was just a rehearsal, but it was SO dramatic. The makeup and costumes were really great and there was a drum beat sounding throughout.
 |
| Food being offered to either the ancestors or the gods - I can never remember. |
This little girl with her dolly was ADORABLE. It was great seeing how she was just as confused and fascinated as we were.
 |
| pig head on a cookie sheet |
After dripping of the gear, we headed back and had another meal at the same place, then shared a bowl of icee. We waited in line to get on the last ferry for over an hour & were worried we wouldn't make it, but we did. By the time we got home, we were tuckered, but it had been a very pleasant day.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Paradox of Choice
So, in case you haven't noticed, we haven't made a decision on which graduate school to attend. Our reasons for not knowing yet are complicated (as always), but I read and then watched two things that really helped me understand a little of how we're feeling right now.
The first one, I came across while browsing a grad school forum I frequent. The post was entitled "Acceptance Depression?" It was amazing how well it described my feelings. Basically, there is so much involved in the choice, and they are all so different. On top of that, I have fallen in love with different aspects of each one. Whenever I start to favor one choice, I am reminded of all the reasons why I love some other choice. I can't help but keep thinking about all the things I'll miss out on by not choosing the other schools. To be clear, I'm not worried about choosing a bad school, only about missing out on all the great things associated with the schools we don't choose. To make matters worse, Tom and I always seem to be favoring different schools. For example, for quite a while I was strongly favoring School A and Tom was favoring School B. Recently, I became a lot more amenable to School B and was beginning to see us there when Tom informs me that now he's feeling School A. On top of that, just today I re-fell in love with School C, which had been out of mind for a while.
The video that helped me find clarity is this one. Tom and I love TED talks, and this one was no exception. They often have so many insights. It not only helped me understand why I feel about this grad school decision, but also why I feel the way I do about even day to day decisions. Hopefully, with my added understanding I can learn to make decisions in a more care free way and be more happy with them. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that will apply to the grad school decision...
The first one, I came across while browsing a grad school forum I frequent. The post was entitled "Acceptance Depression?" It was amazing how well it described my feelings. Basically, there is so much involved in the choice, and they are all so different. On top of that, I have fallen in love with different aspects of each one. Whenever I start to favor one choice, I am reminded of all the reasons why I love some other choice. I can't help but keep thinking about all the things I'll miss out on by not choosing the other schools. To be clear, I'm not worried about choosing a bad school, only about missing out on all the great things associated with the schools we don't choose. To make matters worse, Tom and I always seem to be favoring different schools. For example, for quite a while I was strongly favoring School A and Tom was favoring School B. Recently, I became a lot more amenable to School B and was beginning to see us there when Tom informs me that now he's feeling School A. On top of that, just today I re-fell in love with School C, which had been out of mind for a while.
The video that helped me find clarity is this one. Tom and I love TED talks, and this one was no exception. They often have so many insights. It not only helped me understand why I feel about this grad school decision, but also why I feel the way I do about even day to day decisions. Hopefully, with my added understanding I can learn to make decisions in a more care free way and be more happy with them. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that will apply to the grad school decision...
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Painting
These days, now that we've gotten the hang of planning lessons and now that we're done with applying for graduate schools, we actually have a lot of time on our hands. There also isn't a whole lot to do in Tainan on a day to day basis, so we've been trying to come up with good things to do with our time. A couple weeks ago, we decided to try our hand at painting. So, for FHE we both painted a picture. They aren't terribly impressive, but it was a lot of fun!
This one was mine. It is now on the kitchen wall.
These two are Toms (one from FHE & one from later) :
 |
| This one is in the extra room. The character means "chi." |
 |
| This one is above our bed. The characters mean "mountain people" plus some random gibberish from an ad on the table. |
Any other suggestions for fun things to do that don't cost much money and can be done in Taiwan?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)