It’s Mid-Week And Friday Is A Long Way Off

The inside of the elevator of the Lakeshore Master. They uncovered it finally this week and it looks amazing. Reflexions everywhere! A nice Taiwanese girl asked me why I was taking pictures and I happily explained. I took about 124 photos. Out of those, I kept and uploaded 47. Taken on the 9th of January 2007 with a Nikon D200 and a 18-35mm Nikkor lens. Part of the Lakeshore Elevator Series. 

It seemed like this week, I woke up everyday expecting it to be Friday. We are very busy these days, from working fulltime at school and working part time as tutors. I am busy 4 days a week. Next week, it will only be 4 days a week, but 4 days in row. Hold on, it’s exam week, so I am tutoring two less days than before.

My wife was laughing at me one morning, because I had problems getting out of my pajamas, and I was hopping around a lot in order to maintain my balance. I have also just wrapped up all the course matter that the kids need to know for next week and have started reviewing over the past few days.

I finished all of my marking and also had a demo this morning at the Kindergarten. I had at least 6 parents watch my full hour of teaching of the little ones. It wasn’t a problem and in the end, I managed to get some applause from some moms, which was a welcome surprise.

I have also marked the homeworks of the kids who have already finished it and put in the marks into my excel sheet. I am somewhat concerned that we will be skipping a whole unit in our curriculum. Since the lessons are scaffolded, it seems that next semester will be harder for a lot of kids, especially since they are also reorganizing all of the classes.

We are getting an extra week off, but I will be teaching and tutoring during that week. During winter break, some parents want more classes for their kids, so I will have 1 class twice a week for 2 hours each time. I have also managed to make sure that my language classes for adults are all on Monday nights.

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Even if I only tutored 90 minutes yesterday, It took me until 10 PM before I could relax, since I had to drive my wife to her class at 6:15PM and then go to my student at 7:10 PM before coming back at 9:20PM and leaving again to pick up the wife at 9:55PM.

I find that the only way I can relax is when I have nothing or no one to see later on. Until then, I am always thinking about it and thinking about the time. I am always punctual, and I time my scooter rides well to make sure that I always arrive a few minutes in advance.

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Today, it was so warm that I took off most of my layers, except my t-shirt. It was over 20°C, which is surprising because the days before it was well below 10°C. We had already gotten some new gear from Net to warm us up. I was still missing some sweatshirts and pullovers. I decided to stop after dropping off my wife at 6:30PM.

At Net, the only size that fits me is XL, because I am about 6 feet tall (180cm). I browsed for a few minutes and then picked up a few pullovers. But I wasn’t really happy with them. I picked up another scarf and then saw that they had polars on sale, and a lot of polars! When you bought two, you got 30% off. So that is about 1100NTD for 2. Not bad. I got two of those and another sweater jacket. I have decided to stop wearing shirts to work. They are too uncomfortable and the ones that are comfortable, the more expensive ones, will break if worn each day. I still need some new pants and some new t-shirts. I only brought 8 Diesel jeans, and I am getting sick of wearing them day in day out. Out of those 8, there are only 4 that I can really wear, because of comfort. One of them is scratched up because of an accident. I need to get some corduroy cargo pants. I saw some in Taipei, and will get them soon. I am also in need of t-shirts. I didn’t bring enough with me and I will need some new ones.

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One of the kids has been driving me crazy this week. They know that they can only talk about classwork when they are doing classwork in small groups, and it upsets me when they repeatedly ignore my requests. I am strict in my class and I work under the “three strikes and you are out” rules. I give a warning. Then it’s punishment one, like changing teams or seats. Then if it persists, the kid has to stand up and face the wall for a few minutes. After that, I send him to see the principal.

Contrary to some Chinese teachers, I do not allow any talking or horsing around in my class while I am teaching. I do not use a speaker system either. Thankfully, since I have 2 grade four classes, one of them is always better behaved than the other, though they alternate.

I finally got a kid to stop shouting all of the time. The kid always shouts instead of talking at a normal volume and it took a lot of time for him to completely stop. He has, finally and is talking at a normal volume.

A lot of kids are sick. I had 6 kids missing in my class of 30 yesterday because of the flu. I have heard that Asia is bracing itself for another bird flu epidemic.

The school is organizing a charity drive. The kids have already collected 30000NTD in 2 days! All the funds go to an orphanage in Hsinchu.

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I want to get Gears Of War for Xbox360, but I have a US console and I am unsure if the games here will work in it. Probably not, from my research. I have read though that some retailers sell US version games, so I will be looking for those.

I fell asleep yesterday night whilst watching Stormbreaker. I have gotten a lot of movies for kids, and this one isn’t that bad. The cinematography is really nifty.