Wednesday, July 2nd

So, after Sunday's long and wordy post, it's mostly pictures this Wednesday.

Rhiannon came across a step by step drawing book... one of those books that shows you how to draw a picture step by step... I used to LOVE those books as a kid.

They had one in the school library about how to draw monsters that I think never got returned...

I was eventually barred from the school library for un-returned books, but that's an unrelated story...

Rhiannon's been really into this book. She draws the picture bit by bit, then gets out her paints and paints it.

What's really cool is that she signs her name--

R~ 2008

Then she began writing "10" on each one and I asked her why, and she told me that each one is 10 dollars.

Here, 10 dollars is just about the price of a slurpie, about 30 cents, but still... so she got me to buy a few...

And Eli's over there too, doing his Grammar...

He does his grammar the way I used to clean my room. He starts out with the best of intentions, but there's always a comic book nearby... and the comic book wins every time... The problem is, all my speeches about the value of good homework habits leave me being a hypocrite, so...

But his writing keeps improving, his math is really good, and his reading is excellent, so who can complain? Rhiannon's starting to eat up math, too... Eli's been doing a lot of sculpture out of clay and found objects. Mainly robots, dinosaurs and animals.

So, as I think most everyone knows by now, my school and I have decided to part ways come the end of my contract (end of July). I've already begun working for a woman I used to work for years ago, Sophia. She runs a kindergarten here, and while teaching at a kindergarten isn't exactly legal to do here, she's a very reputable person to be working for.

She was actually the first person to visit Gosia in the hospital after Calvin was born. I had no idea about where to buy some things Gosia needed, and Sophia bought them all for us. So, for her, I make an exception.

Kindergarten teaching is 9:30 - 11:30 am, and it's intense. Most kindergartens need a foreign English teacher (the parents pretty much demand it), but often the teacher is the foreigner mascot.
You get 20 - 30 minutes with each class of kids, four classes per day. But at Sophia's school I only teach 2 classes, 2 hours each a week. It's much more sane.

One of the other benefits to teaching kindergartens in learning Chinese! Someone I met when I first got here told me he's learned more Chinese from his kindergarten students than he ever did from classes he took. The teacher is, of course, expected to speak totally in English, and the kids will rote off the answers, but the love talking to you -- and they do that in Chinese.

I've been in "English Only" environments since I've gotten here almost a year ago, so my Chinese has improved very little... Kindergartens are a little more relaxed in that area...
The main thing in kindergartens are to keep the kids happy, keep control of a class, and get them learning a little English. If your in a decent school with good administration, it can be really fun. I've done bad schools, too, and it can be scary...

Plus, I'm tutoring a family of four every Wednesday night. The father wants his children to be comfortable around foreigners when they're older, so we pretty much play cards together for an hour, talk some English... it's a nice gig.

While leaving my current school has been a bit stressful (getting all the ARC paperwork done right so noone has to go on a visa run...), I'm looking forward to working in a more Taiwanese setting. The last two schools we've taught at have been Canadian owned... I kind of miss the adventure teaching side of working here.

We'll see how it works out, but things have been moving decently in the right direction...

OK, this turned into another wordy post! Have a good Wednesday!

Movie under the pictures!