Nerds

Posted on May 10, 2009 by Tina

I made John, my favorite student, cry the other day.

It was English Activity Day for the fifth graders, and his team didn’t make the required points to participate, so they had to write me a paper first. He hastily wrote one according to my prompt, and expected me to accept it. The paper didn’t make sense, so I told him I wasn’t going to take it. I told him to write another one, and if he had questions on how to do it, I would explain it to him. He just sat there, clutching his book, with tears running down his face. I knew they were tears of frustration because he is not the best student in class and has trouble with comprehension at times, but the fact that he didn’t try nor asked me to explain made me feel unsympathetic. I felt terrible that he was upset, but at the same time, determined that he would learn something out of this be it learning how to write a decent paper or how to ask questions when lost, whether he liked it or not.

On another note, I totally saw Star Trek last night, and it was fricking amazing. Sylar made an amazing Spock. I even understood the whole alternate reality, black holes, time travel, etc. I am totally a nerd, but now I kinda want to watch some Star Trek episodes just to see what happened. I even think Star Trek may be better than Star Wars. Eek!

To Parents

Posted on May 10, 2009 by Tina

Happy Mother’s Day!

Sometimes mothers can drive you crazy, but in the end, they’re still your mother. I miss mine a lot, especially when I was sick. I remember, one night at the hospital after the fourth and fifth day and the doctors couldn’t give me a straight answer about what was wrong with me, they just kept poking me with needles and throwing big words in Chinese at me, I broke down and wished that my mommy was here.

I miss my daddy very much too. I still call him Daddy.

Hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day on this beautiful day!

Those Naggers

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Tina

I put my fifth grade class into 2-person teams to do a group poster project. After about ten minutes, above the classroom commotion, I hear John yell out, ” AH! I don’t like girls!” (Note: his partner is Melody, a girl.)

“What’s going on, John?”

“Girls! They always CHIK, CHIK, CHIK!” (His way of expressing that girls nag. Apparently, Melody had been reprimanding him to use a ruler to make the lines straighter.)

I couldn’t help but laugh, “One day, John, when you find a girlfriend, then you will know.”

“No! I find girl not like this.”

“But I think all girls are like that.”

“I have trust. There will be some. And she will always listen me.”

Boys sure get those crazy ideas sometimes, don’t they? And it starts at such a young age.

First Weekend Out

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Tina

I spent my weekend, post-hospital-stay, eating at Din Tai Fung (official websites here for Taiwan and for the US), playing Cranium Turbo with my coworkers late into the night, and then swimming at the Grand Hotel.

Din Tai Fung is sooo good, and they are famous for their xialongbaos (aka dumplings). We went on a Saturday night, and the line was ridiculous. I’ve never seen that kind of crowd at a restaurant before (and I’ve seen lines for food), but the wait was only 30-40 minutes, and we were seated at a table before we knew it. Totally worth the wait.

Cranium Turbo was fantastic. I’ve missed board games hardcore since I’ve been here. So far, we own Scrabble and Blokus, so when a coworker was having Cranium night, I had to get in on that. When would I ever get the opportunity to try to make a deviled egg out of purple play-doh?

Michael’s family owns a membership to the club at the Grand Hotel, so the swimming pool will be open to us all summer long. I definitely got some sun this Sunday, and I plan on keeping it up. Nothing can be better than lounging by the pool on a warm, breezy, lazy Sunday afternoon underneath some palm trees. Well, maybe a piña colada with a cute little umbrella in it would top it off. It is BYOB anywhere in Taipei anyways, right?

This is the giant pool at the hotel that we lounged and tanned by. (Pictures were taken awhile back.)