We are not so different, you and me

Wedding! I got to go to a Taiwanese wedding thanks to the generosity of my coordinator here in Taizhong.  One of her elementary school friends got married, and she invited me and another ETA to go to the wedding.  Since weddings in Taiwan are not necessarily based on religious practices, they typically have a small "wedding" where they dress up with close family and friends and go sign their official government paperwork.  Then they have a "reception" of sorts later on (not necessarily that day... the reception we attended was 3 weeks after they were officially married).  The reception is more like a presentation of the couple to everyone they invited. 

In Taiwan, it's customary to get really elaborate, fancy photos done of you as a couple before the wedding (there are stores for this EVERYWHERE).  We're talking several meetings before the actual photo shoot and it is just that... a photo shoot. With elaborate dresses/costumes, sometimes destination sets, and really amazing quality photography.  It's not pictures you have taken before/after the ceremony or before the reception... these are done before you get married.  And that way they can all be on display at your reception wedding. But wedding photos in Taiwan are the best opportunity to wear the most ridiculous, poofy, and elaborate dresses that almost every young girl has fantasized about since childhood. They even do the same thing in a non-wedding manner and call them "glamor shots".... hmmm.... this might be in my future.... (see some examples in below pictures in the background).

It's also customary for the bride to change dresses 3 times at the wedding.  Her dresses were beautiful although one of them reminded me of a prom dress.  All of them were Western style dresses, the first being a ball gown style wedding dress (see in pictures below). 

But the wedding/reception itself... it was family style sit down? Is that even a style? In typical Asian style they brought the dishes to our big round table (there were many round tables that everyone was assigned a seat at) and we all shared from the dishes at our table.  There were lots of "what is that?" type dishes, but the dessert was good :D (there was no wedding cake that I could tell...)

It was very much a Disney show for a wedding than what westerners think of as a wedding reception (with dancing and cake cutting ceremony, etc).  There was a movie of their marriage ceremony and their love for each other, a light show before the food was brought out, dry ice smoking for when the bridal party came out (and the food too for that matter... Taiwanese love their food), really epic music that we might play in an action/dramatic scene of a movie (maybe not so much a wedding), and even a platform that came from the ceiling bringing out the bride when she presented her second dress.  The bride was the princess who everyone wanted a photo with and who gave out small favors to the children.... and adults for that matter....

Another Taiwanese custom... the bride and groom do not eat at their own wedding reception.  They go around to EVERY table and thank everyone for coming and do toasts.  And then take more pictures with guests.  According to my coordinator, the wedding we attended was quite elaborate and expensive for a typical wedding, so I'm curious to hear stories from any other weddings that my fellow ETAs go to. 

Thoughts on teaching continued....

These kids are doing what my friends and I did in elementary school as kids. It's kinda freaky actually. I first noticed it when the boys started doing the thing where they put their hands under their armpit and pumped their arm so it makes a farting/popping sound. My co-teacher was weirded out and even more surprised when I told her that boys my age did that back in the day. Yes, I feel I can now officially use "back in the day."

The next happened the other day when a girl called me over to show me something. She then proceeded to do that "heart beat?" thing where you connect your sleeves together in the front, bring one arm inside the main body of your sweatshirt, and proceed to pump your fist up through your shirt through the circle that your sleeves make with your body. I was stunned. I hadn't taught her that, so it blew me away that something I used to do 10+ years ago is still around, and in Taiwan no less. 

Other quick observations.... The 6th graders want to grow up too fast and be super hip/cool (see below).  Girls still team up against the boys... And win \^-^/. Kids still like to hide from other kids so they can't find them and then jump out and scare them (this happened with kids trying to scare me and girls wanting to scare the boys). And food is still the easiest way to take a lesson from ok to fabulous. 

Happy Halloween!

Happy (belated) Halloween!

Seeing as Halloween is not a holiday commonly celebrated in Asia, my school had me do a Halloween lesson with my students.  When lesson planning, I didn't want to just teach them grammar/vocab.  I wanted them to experience what an elementary student in America might in the process of celebrating Halloween.  However, it was a little unfeasible for me to get all the students to come to school in their costumes and for us all to have a big Halloween party in class.  And since it's not a major holiday in Taiwan, many of the kids might not know how Halloween works or what happens on Halloween (aka a candy truck arrives at your house).

I'm now going to share with you my Halloween lesson plan because I was quite proud of it (if you don't want to read it, skip to next paragraph)....
Opening: Watch the clip of the song "This is Halloween" from A Nightmare Before Christmas (I thought this clip/song set the tone for Halloween really nicely being both a little spooky and a little silly... not to mention it had pretty much every "Halloween" related concept in the book).
Trick or Treat Skit! My co-teacher and I did a skit where I sneaked out the back classroom door and knocked on the front classroom door so the kids couldn't see me (I was also wearing Minnie Mouse ears with a pumpkin bag for candy).  She opened the door and I jumped out at them and yelled "Trick-or-Treat" (they got increasingly more surprised the younger they got).  I then got some candy from my co-teacher and "left" aka snuck back around to the back-door and scared/tried to scare them again.
Halloween Vocab: We talked a little bit about Trick-or-Treating and I let a few kids try trick-or-treating (and they got to keep their candy... as you can guess after the first brave volunteer soul went, EVERYBODY wanted to try). We also talked about dressing up in costumes, and using that, I introduced "Halloween vocab" using pictures of costumes of the vocab so they could see what it meant to dress up on Halloween.
Fun stuff: Then we did an activity to see how well they remembered the words (1st: Vocab freeze game... act like what I call out and the team that freezes when they hear "freeze" the best gets a point), 2nd Grade: Draw a line from vocab word to picture and color to your heart's desire.... 3rd Grade: Unscramble vocab word, draw a line from word to pic, and color to your heart's desire.... 4th Grade: Vocab crossword puzzle with LOTS of assistance from teachers.... 5th Grade: Vocab crossword puzzle with some teacher assistance) (side note: 6th grade did not get to do Halloween lesson because they had an extra lesson to get in before the big test so there was no time)
Then we did arts and crafts!
1st: Color a mask
2nd: Color a pumpkin face and put a stem on your pumpkin
3rd: Learn "Trick-or-Treat smell my feet" song (they were very excited to learn the "or I'll pull down your underwear" verse for the first time)
4th: Color Ghost face on piece of paper to make hanging gosts
5th: Make origami bats with fake gem-stone eyes (they could pick red or silver... some got creative and did one of each)

Origami Bats and Unique-Faced Pumpkins designed by 5th grade and 2nd grade respectively

Ghosts with faces designed by 4th Grade

The scariest pumpkin faces you've ever seen...

Looking back,  (I won't lie) it caused me a lot of stress to put these classes together and I constantly was overwhelmed with all that I had to finish prepping.  I had approximately 60 orange circles to cut out, 70 black squares to cut out, 3 worksheets to design, 15 ghost tubes to attack toilet paper to, 60 ghost tubes to attack string to, 2 sets of power-points to make, and 90 masks to cut out the eyes from and actually cut out.... and assemble string to so they could wear them.  But it was so worth it.

I LOVE these kids. I never thought I would love a job this much.  Truly, every hour I spent prepping for the classes was worth it.  The kids seemed to have a lot of fun, some got really into it, and I think it was great for them to have a break from the textbook stuff.  And of course, they all loved the fact that you just say "trick-or-treat" and you get candy on Halloween.  Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and it was really sad for me not to be in the States to celebrate it this year. And like I said, I wanted these kids to have a day like a student would in America, or at least as close as they could get.  Honestly, maybe I did go a bit overboard, but I had an epiphany as to why it was so important for me to do it.....

Handing out candy after hearing the magic words of "Trick-or-Treat"... (I was an Angry Bird for Halloween!)

Scared Face (or at least we were trying...)

Teacher Angry Bird posing with student, student's Angry Bird pencil case, and (on the right) one of the cutest 1st Graders

"Angry Face" with 2nd graders... Alan (to my right) is a champ

It's all because of you Mom and Dad.  Thank you for giving me the best childhood a kid could ask for.  I never wanted for anything and every holiday was something I started counting down to at least 2 months in advance.  I remember doing so many crafts at school and having them be apart of our family decorations for years (some even still are).  At school, we had so many beautiful parties that my mom helped to put together full of games and WAY more sugar than should be allowed in one elementary school classroom.  Thank you mom for busting your butt to make sure I had a stellar costume and I was all bundled up underneath before going out trick-or-treating.  Thank you dad for taking me to every single house I could go to in the space of 2 hours or so and pulling the wagon up and down the hills for when my Halloween bucket got too heavy to carry and needed to be emptied.  And thank you both for making me throw away at least half my candy every year.  These kids should be thanking you because I know what drove me to go as far as I could for these kids were the amazing memories I had of my Halloween days (and holidays in general) from all that you did for me.  So even if they don't look back at this memory as "oh I love Halloween because we get to do blah blah blah," I hope they look back and at least look at it as a beautiful, fun memory from English class or school in general. 

So in case I forgot to tell you once I matured a bit.... Thank you for all the amazing Halloweens over the years.  I'm doing my best to pay it forward.  I love you guys!