Teacher's Day

Thursday September 27 2012

Sleeeeeepy. Sleeeeeeeepy. Sleeeeeeepy! Wo mei you jingli (I don’t have energy)! Slept terribly. End of story.

University class was quite educational because the teacher, from a student’s request, taught us how to order drinks in Chinese. I recognize the material from when my classmates were teaching me some weeks ago when ordering bubble tea. At that time, I vaguely understood what they said but I couldn’t remember all of it. Now, seeing it on paper in pinyin, everything clicks together and it stays in my memory. So now I can order drinks no problem whatsoever. Tis a good thing indeed!

For lunch, if not all, at least half of the exchange students went to have lunch at a local restaurant near the university. At first it was just four of us. Then it turned into ten of us. Then twelve. Then twenty-five plus students! And know that this was in a small restaurant so it became quite crowded very quickly. I’m sure we slightly stressed out the owner with our sheer numbers but at least they got some good business. ;) As a recommendation from a fellow peep, I ordered fried rice. I’m glad I did. Not only was it a good deal, value-wise but also it was quite satisfying since its large volume somewhat settled my grumbling tum-tum. I can’t remember if I got the beef or pork fried rice, but regardless it was delicious. I could’ve gone for seconds!

Deciding to take it easy and not rush to school in order to make it in time for the school’s nap, I strolled for awhile with Brittany (Australia), Eric (Sweden) and Hazel (Denmark). Brittany later had to get ready for her Rotary meeting so we bid each other farewell and the rest of us went to grab some coffee. Much to my dismay, we went to ‘Artco de Café.’ * sigh * I didn’t look. I swear I didn’t. But remember how last time I sat at the table farthest way from ‘it?’ Well due to the lack of seats, we had to sit at the table closest to it. WHY?! XD Ah, it was a good laugh. At the café, I had a ‘fun’ (sarcasm) time trying to sort out my order. I wanted a piece of Hazelnut Chocolate Cake that looked scrumptious. Unfortunately, the café misunderstood my Chinese ordering (lack of) skills and charged me for both a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. Not wanting to pay that much, I had to explain the misunderstanding. But it was all good as they refunded my money. I still felt terrible for the mix up. The cake made it better because its mouth-watering chocolaty-ness accompanied with a slight nutty crunch just melted me to happiness. I am so going back there another time to have another piece. That stuff was heavenly!

Afterwards, Eric and I headed off to Tatung in a feisty downpour of rain, sharing my umbrella. We tried our best to fight off the water but both of us still got wet, predominately on our backs. Nothing life threatening of course. :P The rain would be extremely sporadic and just fall down in sheets but soon after let up and then went back to pouring, etc. It’s probably from the typhoon. The humidity following the rain made me think of Texas. XD

The first class we attended of the day was Math. According to my classmate, the teacher gave us half the class for free time. Confirming this was true, I gave in and just put my head on the desk. Inwardly I absolutely do not want to ever sleep at school, but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity for some shut-eye when the teacher wasn’t lecturing or anything. It always shocks me how many students go to sleep in class but most teachers don’t do anything about it.

Once the day’s classes ended, all of the high school travelled to the auditorium on the ninth floor for the Teacher’s Day celebration. Just as a note, our classroom is on the first floor. As a class, we walked up all nine sets of stairs to get to the auditorium. Doing this when you are dead tired is not exactly an easy task. XD But entering the doors I perked up a bit because I recognized the song they were playing on the speakers. Not only did I recognize it, but I was temporarily obsessed with it at one point, loving the music and the dance. The song was in Korean, titled “You know me” by Tasty. Wo xi huan! (I like!) When the teachers had their entrance/introductions, one of the songs they played was “Gangnam Style” by Psy. All the students went crazy, dancing and singing along to the intriguingly, internationally popular song.

The performances of the celebration were mainly karaoke with some teachers and students dancing in a huge group. It gave me more evidence that karaoke is way more popular than dancing in Taipei because singing was about 90% of the acts. The exchange students were a part of that percentage as our bit was a song we created, dedicated to thanking the teachers. Sorry, I don’t have a video or anything but here’s a basic description.

We walk on stage, holding our country’s flag in our hands. I was a bit of an exception since I didn’t have a big flag of my country like the other students. They all had flags the length of their arm-span when I just have an American flag that’s barely a foot long. It was itsy-bitsy in comparison. To make up for this, I carried a big Taiwanese flag with my little American flag in my hand. The song, as far as I know, went alright. I couldn’t hear any of our voices at all, only the guitar (Erik) and piano (Rike). So hopefully we were heard and even better, hopefully people could understand a bit of what we said. The song was written in English with each of our countries way of saying “Thank you,” ending in the Chinese “Xie xie ni men!” When we sang our small bit in Mandarin, the crowd went wild. My guess is, we said our Mandarin bit about four or five times, so that means the crowd exploded four or five times. :P

Overall, I would say our performance was successful as the audience seemed to enjoy it. I hope at least our message of thanks was understood by the teachers since it is originally for just them. ;) As a part of Teacher’s Day, the students make a class card for their homeroom teacher. The exchange students made a card for our respective homeroom teachers, the principal, the lady in charge of us and another lady that is like second-in-command of us. We worked hard on creating all of them and I believe it showed, as all the respective recipients seemed to really love the cards. As a side project, I made small cards for every teacher, just to say thank you in general. Since I didn’t see most of them today, I’ll give the cards to them next week during each of their classes. It’ll be late but at least they’ll get the card in the end, which is what matters, right? ^_^

Exchange students plus Redy picture love! The chica in the middle is the second-in-command lady (whom I’ve mentioned before in another post) named Redy. She is the one who looks after us so tenderly and helps us with any questions or problems. Without her, we wouldn’t have survived! She is amazing and deserves a million Teacher’s Days! We all really do love and appreciate her.

At the end of the day, we were all so pooped. Once in my bedroom, I immediately went to sleep.

Yeah I realize my tenses are getting jumbled between present and past tense. My grammar, English friends are probably wanting to struggle me right now. Sorry guys. :P I try to write all my posts the day-of but when things go askew and I can’t, I attempt to write the posts in the same format but it doesn’t always work out. Get my drift?

Actually I don’t know if that made sense but I’m too tired to figure it out. And with that, I bid you a good night! ^_^