Bringing the Schmidts' and Webers' to Taiwan

A few weeks ago I got this crazy idea in order to show my sixth grades students what life is like for a student living in the USA. Coincidentally, I happen to know two sixth graders that live and go to school in the US. I thought about how cool it would be to involve my cousins, Garrett and Gwyneth, into one of my lessons. Of course, I contacted their parents as soon as I had a some what solid plan, to see if they would be interested. Not to disappoint, they were both very excited to participate!

Each of them created a short five minute video showing what they do on a normal school day. Including what they do to get ready for school, how they get to school, what their school day looks like, how long they are there, and what they enjoy to do after school. This is such a fun experience for my sixth graders here in Taiwan because the student life is so much different from their own. Garrett and Gwyneth put in so much work in order to create top of the line videos, I was looking forward to this day for weeks, and it was finally here!

My sixth grade classes absolutely loved them!! This is such an authentic way of learning, that they will hopefully remember for a very long time. Not all students comprehension level is as high as others, but they were still able to watch and enjoy the pictures while picking up on a few words. After watching the videos and discussing them with the students, I explained how we were going to write thank you notes to Garrett and Gwyneth. With a few prompts, the students were able to write thank you notes to the two telling them what their favorite thing about their day was, what they wished they could do in the US, and more.

I was so excited about this lesson because it stimulated multiple modes of how they are learning English; through watching, listening, comprehension, reading, and even writing. Overall, this lesson was so rich in content, engaging, and super successful. I was so happy that students were interested in watching the videos, and ended up learning quite a bit form them. It is cool to think about students being able to teach other students, very inspiring. Inspiring enough that most of my sixth grade classes want to make videos to send back to Gwyneth, Siena, and Garrett. Most of them put their best work in writing the thank-yous and it was really evident; each student brought contributed weather it was writing, drawing, or directing; they worked together to create something that had little structure for them to fall back on and I am very proud of them.

Below are the two videos that Gwyneth and Siena, and Garrett made. I also included short videos of the students reacting to various parts of the videos and some pictures of them working on their thank you cards!

Supervisor weekend

Saturday
We had a full day on Saturday (4/22). We woke up early and headed to Lambai Island. We took the MRT to then take a bus to get to the fairy, and took a fairy to the island. Here we were supposed to have a snorkeling outing, but a storm had just passed over the island, so the waves were too high to do any snorkeling. Instead we rented scooters and decided to explore the island. We had to rent 8 scooters, there were sixteen of us on our adventures today. It sounds chaotic with so many people, and not really a plan of action anymore, but the whole day went smoothly and everyone was very go with the flow. The first thing we did was grab a bunch of lunch items and snacks from the store and then brought them to the beach where we had a picnic and did some swimming. We had scooters for the entire afternoon and it was great, it is one of our favorite things to here! We made it around to various monumental sports around the island, and even grabbed some snow ice! When we made it back to Kaohsiung, we went to the most famous night market to get some dinner! As we headed back home, it started pouring on us, our ponchos that Joyce gave us came in handy on our walk home! We had a great day, and ready for a good sleep!

Sunday
A more relaxing day (4/23), but still very busy! We left our apartment at 10 am and drove to Tainan again to visit the Guanziling mud hot springs! There is a park near by that has a natural gas production near a small area of water where the fire naturally burns and meets the water. We spent most of the afternoon relaxing in the hot springs, covering our selves in mud, and getting out feet nibbled on my tiny fish. After we cleaned and finished up, we had worked up quite the appetite. We went to a famous chicken restaurant near the hot spring and got served the freshest chicken I think that anyone has ever had. We were warned that it was cooked with its head, feet, and all! I was a bit nervous to have my food be looking at me; but people here actually enjoy to eat that part of the chicken. Lucky, Joyce ordered one without those parts so we did not have to get starred down by our food. It was the most delicious chicken that I have ever eaten. When we got back to Kaohsiung, we went to the Mega mall to do a little shopping and get some ice cream, our favorite thing to do! We went home to rest and get ready for our last week in the classroom, a crazy thought that I do not think any of us have fully realized yet.

Chicken dinner

Rural Day

We spent Friday (4/21) morning teaching at a local rural school, about thirty minutes outside of Kaohsiung. We read aloud a story to a group of fourth graders and sang a song with them. Some of the students put on an amazing performance for us that I have a small video of below. After our large group time with students we went down the the courtyard area and split up to set up our own stations. Each of us teachers had planned a fifteen minute lesson around Mother's Day to teach to four groups of fifth and sixth graders. My station was making a Mother's Day card for students to be able to give to their moms or grandmas by drawing a flower and writing a few English sentences. It was fun to be in a new environment and working with new students all over again.

Friday Afternoon:

We took a trip on a bus to Tainan again as a big group. The road trip went fast because we were singing KTV (karaoke) the whole way there, it was great! After we grabbed a bite to eat, at a traditional Chinese style restaurant, we went to 'Chikan Tower' which served as a Dutch castle, Chinese pagoda, and Japanese army hospital under different Taiwanese reign a long time ago. I love visiting all of the historic places with the locals because they are so knowledgeable about them and are able to rely information onto us very easy, making it fun to learn in good company. After this we checked out the famous department store in Tainan that was the very first one ever in Taiwan. It was a special feeling to be able to walk through all of the floors with unique shopping areas within it. The last stop was Confucius temple, which served as the first school in Taiwan years ago when going to school was not available to every student, and was a special opportunity. People go here to make a wish on the wall before the big teacher exam or for luck finding a job. Naturally, with graduation upon us, we had to make a wish in hopes to soon find the perfect job for all of us. It was time to head home on the bus and get cleaned up for dinner!

Friday Evening Host Dinner:
With our professor being in town, it is tradition to have an ISU host dinner that we invite our teachers, principals, directors and the bureau to. It is a way for us Iowa States students and Iowa State in general to thank everyone who has made this experience possible. We went to a pasta/Italian restaurant called Pasadena in Kaohsiung. It was great to be in company of all of the influential people in our lives here and to thank them for everything they have done for us. The only picture I have from this event right now is my meal, hopefully I will have more soon! haha

Teaching Observation

My supervisor, Ann Pierce, landed in Taiwan Tuesday night (4/18)! She observed two of us teachers on Wednesday and the other two on Thursday. I got observed Thursday morning during my sixth and second grade classes! I was a bit nervous, mostly just curious about how my students would perform with someone different in the room watching them. It turned out to go very very well. My lessons, management of the class, instructional strategies, and time management was all carried out perfectly; which is normally next to impossible. I was pleased with the feedback and conversation during my meeting with Ann that followed my lessons. It was fun sharing and discussing my experiences here and how to adapt to coming back home. It is crazy that week seven has come to a close and we only have one more left. Here are some pictures and videos below of short parts of my observed lessons!

 Playing a 'fix the sentence structure' game with my sixth graders during my observation.

Introducing U and V with new vocabulary terms to my second graders.

 Phonics chants with my second graders, such a fun way for them to remember the content!

Post observation lunch with Ann, Ky, Joyce, and Peter (not pictured).

Our visit to the love sing to celebrate and conclude our observations! We may be dysfunctional, and Ky might hate that we make him take girly pictures and bully him occasionally, but we sure do love each other unconditionally!

Kenting National Park weekend

On Saturday morning (4/15) we got on our bus that took us to Kenting National Park. It was about a two and a half hour drive. We arrived around 10 am, and took our bags to the airbnb and then headed to the beach because we had to wait until 3 pm to check in.

Full disclosure, this trip had potential to be one of the best of our time in Taiwan, but personally it was just not my weekend. I was not feeling the greatest on Friday and thought I just needed some sleep. Waking up on Saturday just thought if I took care of myself I would get better, that was not the case. Then Ashley started feeling ill and it was evident that we had eaten something bad or drank some dirty water. We ended up sleeping more of the time and spending a lot of time in the airbnb. The time that we were able to get out of the room, we made the most out of, exploring. On top of this, some events unfolded with my at home life that was one of the most difficult things that I have ever encountered and had to deal with, all while being alone and on the other side of the world.

Although this weekend I was ill and had heartbreaking aspects of my life to overcome... it made me a stronger person, gave me insight, and made me even closer to the friends that I am here with; which I did not think was even possible. This weekend leaves a few bitter-sweet memories in my mind when I reminiscence on our time here, but I still do not think I would have traded it for anything.

  

The view from our airbnb place in Kenting

and us hanging out on the beach Saturday afternoon - lovin' life!

We are ninety percent sure we illegally rented scooters because we have no international licenses, but it's fine, the owners did not seems to care! This was probably one thing that we were the most proud of and had the most fun doing! Ten out of ten, would recommend. 

On the scooters, we were able to tour around the National Park and visit various places with neat views! It was very convenient to have the scooters to get there quickly and be able to see more places.

We were able to visit the very, very tip of Taiwan while staying in Kenting. It is cool to say that we had been around the entire island.

 I love these people; shout out to them for being awesome and becoming a huge part of my life!

Tainan visit to Anping District

Anping District is one of the top 10 small tourist locations in Tainan, Taiwan. We spent the afternoon (4/9) there visiting the salt museum, the tree house, day markets, and eating a lot of food. Here is a few pictures from our day!

Boat tours through a river that has almost been completely covered by tree foliage. 

Visiting the Anping Tree House

Doing our trademarked picture in the Anping Tree House

 The Salt museum. Each person identifies to a specific color of sand based on their date of birth. It then signifies a prominent characteristic of that person.

Homemade pottery stand we ran across in the day markets.


Famous ice cream in Tainan, we love finding new ice cream places.