I'm a Teacher!......

Today, October 1st 2008, I am finally a teacher. I was extremely nervous for my first two classes scheduled today. Last night I had a nasty bout of insomnia and I couldn't fall asleep until 6a.m. I even wandered to 7-11 at 4a.m. hoping they would have Nyquil or some form of sleep aid, but apparently the 7-11s here in Taiwan have everything but medicine. I finally managed to fall asleep and I slept until a 2pm meeting with my school's director who helped me go over my lesson plans for my adult class.
I am beginning to sense how easy the adult classes are compared to children's classes. I prepared lesson plans for both a children's class and an adult's class and the children's class took a lot longer to prepare for. After my 2pm meeting I went home and took a 30 minute nap, had some food, and waited around until 6pm when I went back to school and spent an hour preparing for the children's class that I had at 7pm. At this point I was still very exhausted from not sleeping well, but I was still full of energy from being so nervous about finally teaching.
The children's class went alright, they were very little kids, probably around 7 and 8 years old. We played a lot of games and I was told to make a lesson plan based off of 1 page in the textbook. So I did, and then halfway through class my teacher's assistant informed me I was also supposed to make a lesson plan for the previous page as review. Needless to say, I am getting mixed information on how and what to teach in children's classes. So with the help of the TA I improvised and added more games as review, and while I didn't do as good of a job as I hoped, I don't think it went so bad for my first teaching experience.
The kids themselves were full of energy, a lot more energy than I could ever possess. They love to play games, so creating games that involve English is an excellent way to get them to learn the language. We played a few different games, such as one where I split the class (9 students) into two teams and then gave each student on a team a number 1 through 5. Then I would say an English word and call a number, and both the kids from each team with that number would have to run to the board, write the word, and sit back down and repeat it loudly before their opponent did so. The kids get very into it, and generally their teammates will run to the board with them and they will all shout to each other on how to spell the word. It's great because they end up teaching each other which reinforces what they are learning. The kids did get a bit rowdy though and because I was only a substitute for the real teacher I didn't know exactly how to discipline them. Luckily the TA was there and she knew exactly what to do. Overall the class went well and I did much better than I thought I would.
Afterwards I had to teach an adult class. I was only teaching this class for 30 minutes (they stayed after their previous class to join my 30 minute trial class). The lesson plans for adults at my school are all very well thought out and documented, so it's very easy to figure out exactly what to do each class. This class involved a lot of interaction between me and the students, and I had the students do some "mingling" where they are given questions and they walk around and talk to other students in English and ask them questions that pertain to the material. This is great because it gets all of the students talking in English and thinking about how to form sentences as well as gives them an opportunity to use the vocabulary and figure out new vocabulary. My director sat in on this class and gave me great feedback, and now I am pretty confident for my real adult class that I start tomorrow. It runs for 8 weeks and is 4 hours a week, so hopefully they enjoy my classes and learn some English from them.
Yesterday Carolyn and I left the Honeydew Fashion Hotel and got ourselves an apartment. We actually found the apartment two days ago, but we were having trouble with our bank accounts. Apparently both of our ATMs have a maximum daily withdrawal amount on them of $500. So we couldn't get enough money out for the deposit and rent, and food and other things that we needed, so we had to wait a day until we could get more money out. It was frustrating but it's understandable because if someone steals my ATM card I would rather have them only be able to withdraw that $500 maximum instead of more.
Our apartment is in a fancy high-rise on the main drag in Taichung. We live in an area called "Little Europe" apparently because it is where all the westerners live. It is in a great location with lots of good restaurants, shopping, and grocery stores. And we are only an 8 minute walk from our work, which will be very convenient when it is raining, and we wont have to get a scooter or bicycle. It is a studio apartment, but it is large with a decent sized bed, a nice western bathroom, a desk and armoire, a half kitchen (sink and pantry, but no stove), a living room area with 2 love seats and a table, and it has a small deck (we have a great 11th floor view of downtown) with a washing machine on it. I am very satisfied with the apartment. We only pay about $350 U.S. Dollars a month for it, which is actually kind of a lot for Taichung. The reason why it is overpriced is because we are in a great area. I am fine paying a bit more to be in a nicer area with a very clean apartment. And I justify it by telling myself that our 2 bedroom apartment in Chicago was $1175 a month, so comparatively this is a steal.
There is also a cool night market down the street from our place that we visited last night with some coworkers/friends. There was some crazy food there, but I stuck with the more conservative fried chicken kabobs and I tried some spicy squid as well. Carolyn went even more conservative with beef fried rice. Some other teachers we were with though ate various food such as chicken anus, duck's blood gelatin, and deep fried ritz cracker sandwiches filled with mystery substance. I had a pretty fun time and I look forward to going more often and trying some of the other food that I found to look appetizing. No chicken anus for me though.