What an incredible incredible past 9 days. Just a warning: this is going to be a lengthy post. I apologize for the lack of update. First of all, thank you so much to all of you who wished me a happy birthday. It was a great day, even if it was a little strange being so far away from home. I certainly celebrated in style, and everyone was so amazing when it came to planning! On the actual day, my house mates surprised me with presents and flowers. The party was followed by a trip to the hospital for our health checks which are required for our scooter license (more about the scootering in a later post, I promise. This one is going to be long as it is). The check consisted of taking our height and weight, making sure we weren't colorblind/blind in general, and testing our hearing. Easiest health check ever. We were a little surprised that's all there was to it.

That's all there was?

After the hospital, it was back to the Center for some more training, but the afternoon was spent visiting two other schools, going swimming in a cold spring, and visiting the Traditional Arts Center. There was a dinner planned with all the Local English Teachers and with Dr. Wu, the guy who basically makes this all happen. Dinners with Dr. Wu are always extensive (think multiple, multiple courses) and amazing. This was no exception. THEN... Kelly (a staff member who takes care of us like no other) brought out a cake and other ETAs carried out flowers and presents (flowers from the family- Thanks again, guys!) and gifts from various LETs. It was a fabulous day.

Posing with people dressed up as characters from a Asian drama/puppet show.

Since we didn't really get to celebrate just on our own, on Friday, the rest of the ETAs surprised me by taking me to a vegetarian restaurant (they said we were going to McDonalds... I was none the wiser), and then throwing an AWESOME dance party. What a way to celebrate 22.

Taipei 101. Really tall.

On Saturday (after not much sleep Friday night) we headed into Taipei. The plan was to go to this tap festival performance that night then head to Keelung to see this big parade for Ghost Month. The tap was amazing- I have never seen anyone move that fast. Finding a German bar in the basement of a department store afterwards was pretty wild too...

German Taiwanese Bar-maid?

Security fence in Taipei- yes, that's broken glass on the top of the wall.

Sunday we headed to the parade, and met up with the other 3 Fulbrighters who had forgone the tap for hiking. To get from the train station to where the actual parade was, Anita (another staff member) had some of her friends take us there ON MOTORCYCLES. No lie. We visited a temple all decorated for the occasion (again, see below). Since we had to be at training bright and early Monday morning, many of us decided to skip the actual parade and take an earlier train home.

Monday was the judgment day. After 3 weeks of getting to know the LETs, we had one more chance to basically sell ourselves (give a 5 minute power point presentation on why we we would be good to work with), they "sold" their schools, and we did a "speed dating" session- basically we talked to each teacher for 5 minutes, asked them questions, and let them ask us questions. After, we had 20 minutes to list our top 6 LETs, why we would work well with them, and why we would be good at their school. The LETs did the same for the ETAs. The whole process was very intense and stressful, but I realized that these teachers had been getting to know me for the past 3 weeks- they probably had a pretty good idea about me.

Tuesday morning we arrived to sealed envelopes with our placements. I was put at Jhong-Sing Elementary school, with LETs Anne and Roxanna. I'm so so so excited. It's a small school, but still in the city, a staff of about 25, two classes (except for 2nd grade) per grade, about 15-20 students per class. I went and visited on Tuesday and fell in love with it. The classroom is incredible and the school is beautiful. The only issue was that I had to move from Luodong to Yilan, which I did today (still in the process of unpacking...), but if that's the worst that can happen, it's not bad at all.

Anyway, the first day of school is tomorrow and I'm getting picked up at 7:30 since I don't have a scooter (I swear, more on that later!), so I should attempt to get sleep so I can go back to being "Teacher Katie" again!
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