January 23- The End of Midterm Week

We are finishing up midterm week here at ICA. It's a very stressful week full of deadlines, grading, proctoring, and more grading. Pretty sure I speak for every teacher here when I say the end of midterm week cannot come fast enough.

Even though we're exhausted, Aaron and I have still found time to spend with one another. Yes, instead of cuddling under a blanket, we're buried in papers to grade and instead of holding each other's hands, we're holding red pens, but nevertheless, we are together. We recently purchased Friends in iTunes so we have been watching those episodes while getting things done. We've also had many laughs that weren't related to the TV show :)

We also got to spend time with our friends on Wednesday night and had a 'grading party'! Grading in groups always makes it more bearable (even if not as much gets done- it's worth it). We had tea and dumplings and watched The Princess Bride and Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. We got to know each other better than we already do and it was so much fun!

Another piece of exciting news- all the girls in our wedding party have received their gifts and have all agreed to be a part of our special day! And the presents Aaron ordered for his guys have shipped so they will be getting those very shortly :)

Tomorrow will be the first Saturday this year when neither of us have anything going on. This means we get to sleep in!! What's that like? We'll find out tomorrow!

I'm already looking forward to next week. The start of a new term is always exciting. In term 3 we will be reading the Odyssey and starting our research unit in Language Arts.

But mostly I'm looking forward for this weekend to spend quality time with my fiancé <3

Updates and Stuffs

So I haven't written a blog post all year and had the urge to do it today to update what's been going on in Taiwan since being back.

When I got back to Taiwan, Aaron and I moved in together. I love living with my best friend. He's always there when I need him and knows exactly what I need on any given day (whether it's a movie night in, a glass on wine, a hug, you name it).

Our second year of teaching started off as any other; a whirlwind. Unfortunately it seems like that whirlwind hasn't stopped (or even slowed down) yet. It's definitely easier than last year, that's for sure. Last year I really struggled with classroom management but this year it's easy because I'm basically doing the exact opposite of what I did last year. On that note, it's also extremely helpful to have administrators who are very in-tuned with the students and have been holding those students accountable from the start of the year. 

I'm teaching all ninth grade this year and I love it! I love 9th grade Literature and have been expanding a lot on activities and projects. The students are so much more engaged and, I like to think, they're learning more than my 9th graders did last year because of this.

After two months of solid teaching, we finally had a break! Aaron and I went to the beautiful city of Hong Kong with the Perezs and had a wonderful time! They had been to the city before so they knew where to go for the short amount of time we had on vacation. We ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp (I haven't been to a BGS since going to Universal Studios in 2009) at the Peak and even got to spend a day at Disneyland! It was Aaron's first time in a Disney theme park and, let's just say, we're definitely going to go to another Disney theme park again.

Then we had to go back to work and had another two months of solid teaching before another break. During those two months, we read Romeo and Juliet, wrote countless papers and got a lot done.

For Christmas Break, we went to Malaysia. Aaron and I went last year for Christmas and loved it. We said if we were to go back, we would bring our friends so the Perezs and Rymans joined us! We took the red-eye flight to Langkawi (always a treat), got to our hotel and were able to relax before going out to dinner.

Little did I know that Aaron would FREAKING PROPOSE!!!!!!

That's right. We got engaged.

IN MALAYSIA!

ON A BEACH!!

We spent sunset overlooking the beach and surrounding islands celebrating our engagement which was amazing! 

Everything about it was perfect.

After that, the rain came. And it rained, and rained, and rained. But that didn't stop us! 

We went to the alligator farm and fed some babies and hung out with the mamas.

There was also a giant lizard that ran on the path in front of us and made me almost crap my pants.

We went on the catamaran with Rampant Sailing again on Christmas Eve, which was wonderful, OF COURSE! Even in the drizzle we still had a blast and spent the day on a catamaran.

We also went zip-lining on Christmas Day. It wasn't hard at all and I definitely didn't hit my head.

We also went into a bat cave.

 There is a hell.

By some miracle, I survived.

The last day of vacation we didn't have any rain so we went to the beach! We stayed completely sober the whole time and definitely didn't have a hangover for the flight back to Taichung the next day.

Overall, Malaysia was wonderful, of course.

Did I mention that we got engaged??

 Then, we came back to Taichung, moved into a bigger apartment and have been working ever since!

Semester one is wrapping up with midterm exams next week.

OH! And Jacques is potty trained outside now YAY!!!!!

Here's a video of him being super ferocious and scary. Look out.

To my coworkers,

To my coworkers,

Almost one year ago, I was getting ready to go to the UNI job fair in Iowa and I was scared. I was scared to be making the 6½ hour drive through the Midwestern winter by myself, to arrive at the hotel and have the reservation missing, to be under-qualified for the jobs that I was going to be applying and, hopefully, interviewing for but not receive any offers, and finally coming home without an offer to live abroad.

Then I got to the job fair and sat in the orientation for Ivy Collegiate Academy, a small school on the island of Taiwan. I was surrounded by laughter and smiling faces; these were people who were my age and all hired that weekend to work at this school. My interview wasn’t until the afternoon, but I knew I wanted to fight for the job and teach with these people.

A couple hours later, it was all over. I was able to say I had a job offer. I wasn’t coming home empty-handed and it was a feeling unlike any other. I knew where I was going in a matter of five months.

One day, a couple months later, I came home from student teaching and had a request on Facebook to join a group: Taiwan-a-get-to-know-ya. My first thought was, “Killer name!” Then, looking through the members of the group, I saw faces I had sat with in the orientation at the job fair. These were the people I was going to be working with.

I remember calling my parents and telling them about the group. I’m pretty sure my dad was more excited for me to be a part of a group of people with the same dreams and passions as mine than he was about me actually getting the job abroad.

Nevertheless, I dove in and introduced myself. I’m pretty sure I read that post ten times to make sure I didn’t seem dumb before posting it on the wall of the group. I began adding my comments to the streams of posts that had been on the page for weeks and the members of the group commented back almost immediately with responses and “likes.”

I had been a member of a group of teachers during my time in college. The English education group at UWSP was my family away from home. We supported each other, helped each other, and understood each other. But the feeling that it was going to end, at least in the physical sense of seeing each other regularly, was unnerving. Those people had been my rocks, my support system, during the hardest semesters of college and we were all going to go our separate ways and begin our lives. Needless to say, knowing I was slowly becoming a part of a group of teachers all going to the same place physically and in the same direction with our lives was comforting.

Moving to Taiwan has taught me a lot but I have to give credit where credit is due. I wouldn’t have learned as much if I had never met each of you.

Thank you for teaching me how to communicate with other people. Everyone has their own style of communication and, as teachers, it’s important to remember to adapt and change the conversation style for each person.

Thank you for teaching me patience and understanding in and out of the classroom. I’m still working on this one.

Thank you for teaching me that I don’t need to have my priorities all figured out right now at this point of my life. I’m only twenty three years old. I know what is important to me today, but those things weren’t important to me last year and some of them may not be important to me next year. And that’s okay.

Thank you for teaching me how to be a better, more well rounded teacher.  Just because I’m teaching young people doesn’t mean I have to stop learning. To be the best teacher I can be, I need to be able to take criticism, admit to being wrong and making mistakes, and I need to know when to ask for help. Doing these things aren’t signs of weakness, they’re signs of strength. Thank you for helping me through my first semester of teaching.

Most importantly, thank you for treating me like family. It’s very hard for me to be so far away from home, but over the past few months, the distance doesn’t seem as far because I’ve come to know all of you so much better. You’re there for me when I need a laugh, a smile, a hug, an ear, a drink, some advice, a hike, a stupid movie, a ticket on Candy Crush, and so many more things that family members give to others.

So, here’s to the next six months in Taiwan! If they’re anything like the last six months, they’re going to be wonderful.

It's a New Year!

We're in the middle of midterm week here at ICA! For the last couple of weeks, the teachers have been preparing for this week, spending hours creating tests and review guides and review activities and whatnot. It's been pretty busy and stressful due to recent events, but everyone got here and it's going well!

Now that midterm week is upon us, everyone is very busy. The school day's schedule is completely different than normal, and we're not complaining. The first test starts an hour after the normal school day so that means we get at least another 30 minutes of sleep! The first test starts at 9am and goes until 11am. The students have free time to be outside or study for their afternoon test which is taken from 1-3pm. The office assigned us proctoring duty, so each teacher is proctoring four to five tests this week. We aren't proctoring one of our own tests so we can be available while the students are taking our test to answer questions.

Basically we stare at the wall, or the students, or some posters, or the ceiling for two hours. The school structures it as close to an SAT test session as possible, which means the students aren't allowed to speak once they get into the classroom and the proctors aren't allowed to do anything except watch the students and monitor their tests.

Overall, it's not that bad. It's a lot of time with my own thoughts, which is okay. It gives me time to think about how I want to format my classes for next semester, plans for the weekend, my parents' visit, or even just see how much of the Les Miserables soundtrack I can get through from memory ("Little Fall of Rain").

Tomorrow, the students will take their foreign language tests and language arts tests so by 3pm tomorrow I will have 16 new tests to grade. Because of that, I finished grading my 23 literature tests today that were taken on Monday. I'm going over to coworkers' apartment tomorrow night to have a grading "party" for tomorrow's midterms. It's all very exciting.

In other news, the headmaster approached me about adding a contemporary dance class into the curriculum here at ICA and he wants me to teach the class! Schedule-wise, it will replace the ESL class I've been teaching but it's very exciting because it's the first of its kind here at ICA. He says he will offer it to 9th graders and up but we'll see how many students sign up for it and if it will even fit into their schedules. I've been doing a lot of research about dance curriculum trying to understand as much about its structure and delivery as I can. I'm going to add goals relating to the dance class' curriculum into my PDP so I will be getting plenty of feedback on its progress from the administration, which I'm very excited about, too.

In 16 days, I'm going to be on vacation AGAIN! This time, I'm going to Bali with some wonderful coworkers! It's going to be a week of relaxing in the sun, getting nice and tan and plenty of sleep. My goal is to finish my book, which I read a lot of in Malaysia so that shouldn't be a problem in Bali!

Current countdown numbers:
16 days until Bali
80 days until mom and dad touchdown in Taipei
136 days until graduation!

I can't believe it's already January.

Thanksgiving from Taiwan

Living at an international school has its advantages. For example, tonight we had a live football game and we had Thanksgiving dinner! We still had to teach today and will have to teach tomorrow, but all of the students had to get dressed up in their nice uniforms, there were tablecloths on the tables, catered food... mmm it was delicious.

And the bar was set pretty high. My family knows how to do Thanksgiving dinner- two turkeys (one oven-cooked, one deep-fried), two kinds of mashed potatoes, two kinds of stuffing, two kinds of gravy, cranberry relish, seven-layer salad, applesauce-jello... I'm forgetting something.

So when I heard we would be having Taiwan's version of Thanksgiving dinner, I died a little inside.

But it was actually pretty great. Especially the pumpkin pie. I had two slices. My students were disgusted. The idea of having sweet pumpkin anything grosses them out because they're used to having hot pumpkin soup. So when they see a cold piece of pumpkin, they think it's going to be nasty. Their faces were really funny when I made them try the food instead of playing with it and shoving it front of the person sitting next to them. They were good sports about it though. I told one that it was in fact a delicious dessert with lots of sugar so it's sweet! His response was, "Well I'd hope so!"

While we were eating dinner, I asked each of them to share what they are thankful for. I went first to give them an example.

"I am thankful for my family for supporting me and loving me every day. I'm thankful for my  new friends here in Taiwan and my friends back at home. And I am thankful for my students who teach me patience and many other things every day. I am very happy you are my students."

Then it was their turn.

"I'm thankful for my cat, my dog, and my fish."

"I'm thankful for my parents for giving me a good education."

"I'm thankful for my friends because we always have a fun time and for my teachers for teaching me and putting up with me!"

"I'm thankful for my family and my brother and my teachers and my friends, Tony and Beckham and Jay and William and Adam and Jeffrey and Kevin... they are my brothers."

It was so sweet! I made the rest of the boys say thank you because what Isaac said was so nice.

It was a very lovely evening filled with football, good food, amazing conversations with students, and laughter. So much laughter.

I thought today was going to be a lot harder than it turned out to be. I miss my family dearly but this experience, and being able to share a wonderful family tradition with young people, is exactly what I needed.

I am thankful for so many things in my life. I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world to have such a wonderful support group back at home.

I'm thankful for my family: mom, dad, and E. I love you so much and miss you more and more every day but I know that if things were even a little different, I wouldn't be here. Thank you for always supporting me even though it means I'm 7,000 miles away during the holidays.

I'm thankful for my friends in the States. I don't know what I'd do without your support from afar. Thank you for making this experience so much more meaningful with your kind words.

I'm thankful for my friends here in Taiwan. As this week proves, when it rains, it pours. Not only is the professional support wonderful, but the friendships we have formed on top of that are each amazing in their own way. No matter what is thrown our way, we will be there for each other and that's how it should be. It's much harder to get by in a school when you're an island. I'm learning something new every day. In your own way, you are each helping me become a better teacher, a better friend, and a better person. I still have a lot to learn, but I know that being here working with all of you is helping me become the person I'm supposed to be.

Finally, I'm thankful for my students. It's because of them that I love it here so much. They push my buttons and make me want to scream, but through those times they are teaching me patience and understanding and empathy. Those are skills that are not taught in college education classes or even during student teaching. Those are skills that are learned when you are in your own classroom with your own students overcoming your own challenges on a daily basis. When I'm having a bad day, they can tell and they try to make me feel better. They ask me about my family all the time and remember everything I tell them (one student remembered that today is my dad's birthday and started singing "Happy Birthday" at the top of his lungs! I had to stop him though because he was in fact yelling the song. I think he wanted my dad to hear him in 'Merica.)

Basically I love it here. What's new, right?

Happy Birthday pops!

So far, so good

I have definitely changed since moving to Taiwan. I know I've said this before, but I've had time to think about these reasons due to current events, so I'm going to tell you about it.

There are many reasons for this transformation, some good and some bad, but I'm trying to keep my life focused on the positives because those are the things that keep me afloat.

The biggest way I have changed is that I have learned how to not sweat the small stuff. I'm constantly asking myself questions like, "Will I be upset about this in a half an hour?" or "Can I learn from this? How? Okay, now I need to move on."

I'm the kind of person who sweats the small stuff and that has caused a lot of anxiety and stress in the past. I'm a grown up now, with a grown up teaching job- I don't need any more anxiety and stress in my life because my job and my students already pile it on. Any added stress that I allow into my life shouldn't be there so I'm trying very hard to sort through everything in my head constantly.

I owe a lot of this transformation to the people I'm here with. There are a couple people that stand out in my mind who I have gotten very close to. I can talk to these people about the problems that are on my mind and they tell me, "Don't worry about it," and "Okay, yeah, that sucks, but it's not worth you stressing about," or even the always-necessary, "This isn't a real problem, so don't make it into one."

I need these people in my life. I need that external being saying the words that my brain is thinking. I gravitate towards these people because they keep me level and they keep me focused on the future. Whether that future is in an hour or in a month, it doesn't matter, because it's always forward and that's where my attention has to be.

I think that's where everyone's focus should be, but I can't control other people. That blog post is for another day.

Another big lesson I've learned is to not care what other people think. I know, I know- we're all taught this when we go through puberty, lose control of our emotions, and the other eighth grade girls become total bitches.

But moving to a new place can cause you to second-guess the type of person you're coming across as. I think it's pretty safe to say that a few of us held back who we really are when we first got here because we were testing the waters. There's nothing wrong with that; you don't want to show all of your crazy to complete strangers right away. You have to subtly throw your crazy out there once in a while so they can get used to it.

Eventually you just say, "Fuck it. This is me and if you don't like it, tough titties" and dive right in.

Remember how I said that I've gravitated towards people who keep me level and focused on the future? Those are the same people who I'm one hundred percent comfortable being exactly myself around. I'm the type of person who doesn't think before things come out of my mouth (I'm working on it. In school, I'm fine. Outside of school? No dice). And I'm the person who does a stupid dance on my scooter at a red light because the passenger on the back of my scooter mentioned a super catchy commercial that I've had stuck in my head for the last week and a half.

This is a message to anyone in my life, ever: If you have ever seen me do something absolutely moronic or heard me say anything that makes you question my sanity, it means I like you and we are friends. Congratulations and good luck getting rid of me.

Another reason I had to quickly learn to not care what other people thought of me hit me when the school year started. It's hard to explain the feeling you get when you know people are talking about you but they're doing it right in front of you in another language. It's extremely weird. It's sort of uncomfortable at first. Then you learn to brush it off. Because you have to. You don't have a choice. Get over it.

Other things I've learned since moving to Taiwan:
1. How to drive a scooter- this could use some work, but technically I have learned.
2. How to comfortably use chop-sticks.
3. I have picked up the Chinese language pretty quickly in the last month. Because of this, having conversations with crazy ladies in the grocery store parking lot is not a source of stress, it's actually fun and entertaining! Or at least as much fun as liang ge meiguoren can have in that sort of situation. ("I think she was telling us about her grandkids' ages." "Yeah but also something about our eyes." "And was she gesturing 'Facebook'?" "Did you see her hair color? Could that have been natural?" "I just want bubble tea.")
4. Sleep is awesome. I've known this for a while, but I still like saying how awesome sleep actually is.

I'll add more when I think of them. Time for bed.

What's a "tease"?

Today, we were reading some Greek mythology in first hour. In one adaptation of the Cyclopes story, he falls in love with a sea nymph who is, for lack of a better word, a tease.

When trying to describe this concept to my 9th graders, I took a pair of scissors and asked one if she wanted them. As she began reaching to take them from me I said, "Just kidding!" and snatched them away. Everyone laughed.

I did the exact same thing to another student who had been talking a lot all class period. He reached for the scissors and when I snatched them away, he finally understood the concept of not getting something you wanted.

I tried describing that when girls do this, in America we call them a "tease." I said some girls go around saying, "Hi boys, you're very cute." and they flirt with boys but then they say, "You can't have me!"

They got a kick out of it.

For the rest of the class, they would throw "Just kidding," at the end of just about every sentence.

When I assigned homework, one looked at me and asked, "Just kidding?"

At the end of the class period, I stood in the doorway saying goodbye as they left. One student looked at me and said, "Have a good day, Ms. Seeds! Just kidding!"