Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, and specifically to my mother (who I will be seeing in a few weeks!)  Did you know that mother's day is not celebrated on the same day world-wide?  Some countries place hold their Mother's Day festivities on the 4th Sunday of Lent (which is traditionally called Mothering Sunday), while others hold their festivities on the 2nd Sunday of May.  Taiwan, like the United States, celebrates Mother's Day today.
I don't mean to undersell the holiday, but Mother's Day has always seemed to be a pretty manageable holiday in the past, it gives me a chance to show my mother how much she means to me, talk to her, give her gifts (when I live in the same state/country/continent as her), but it is a far more complicated holiday when you have 48 other mothers to look out for.  Each of my classes wrote letters home to their mothers during class this week.  When you think of writing on the whole, it never seems quite as difficult as it is when you are teaching it.  For each kid to write a letter home, the teacher must first plan what the children will write (whether that be through planning questions to prompt free-writing, or through writing a poem or something to copy), then get each student to write a rough-draft, then correct each of the rough drafts, then give each student a final draft paper, then correct the final drafts (without writing on them).  Sounds fun? Now try doing that with 6-year-old students who have only been in school for 3 months, it becomes a lot of work.

"This heart is red, this flower is blue, you're my mommy, and I love you" - cards written by my CE02 class

While card writing may not have been my favorite part of the week, I did enjoy leading my CEI05 class in a Mother's Day craft.  I distinctly remember making "stained glass" candle holders as a child, out of tissue paper, glue, and a glass jar, so I decided to let my students have similar memories.  I think the students enjoyed their craft-day, and the candle holders turned out beautifully.

This is CEI05, hard at work on their Mother's Day candles

The highlight of this week would have to be the weekend (which seems to be a usual description of my weeks).  I spent Saturday in the company of more than 100 different foreigners from around the world (though primarily from the UK, the US/Canada, and South Africa), for Tainan's 2nd annual Beach Olympics.    The competition challenged beach-goers' skills in javelin, running, swimming, soccer/football, sack races, tug-of-war, and more, as they represented one of four countries (the 4th one being "team Asia").  My friends and I arrived too late to participate in the games, but we enjoyed an afternoon in the amazingly warm water instead.   

The sunset in Tainan after a day at the Beach Olympics

Today we stayed closer to home, and by that I mean, we went to Taichung for a picnic in the park.  As I feel karma often does in situations like these where we pre-plan the day's activities, it began raining as soon as we arrived at the park, but thankfully we were sheltered as we sat down to lunch there, so it didn't ruin the day.  In fact, the rain simply added an artistic side to all of our photos of the day.  Realizing that our original plan of renting canoes on the lake wasn't a good idea, we revised our plans and visited one of Taichung's religious attractions: the Golden Buddha at the Pao Hueh temple.  Similar to the large Buddha on Mt. Bagua, there are windows along the back of Buddha (as well as his belly button), which indicate that this statue is intended to be entered, however it was closed today.  The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, we went shopping in SOGO, we went bowling in Changhua, and we ate dinner at a Buddhist noodle stand. 

A little rain didn't stop us from visiting Buddha

One of the big topics this week has been the Taiwanese driving test.  The system of obtaining a driver's license in Taiwan is easier than in the US, starting with the fact that there isn't a permit process first.  In Taiwan, to receive your (scooter) driver's license you must take a 40-question computerized test about road signs/regulations, and then show you can drive in a physical test.  The Taiwanese driving physical driving test is a very easy process, the driver must take their scooter around a track and demonstrate the ability to control the scooter at slow speeds by driving in a straight line for about 7 seconds, by turning the scooter in a controlled path, and by following road signs/lights.  The entire test takes about 1 minute.  The hard part is in taking the written test in English (which is a translated version of the Chinese test) so many questions are worded poorly and are hard to understand.   One of the best ones being, *while looking at a picture of a yellow circle* "True or False: Special flashing yellow light" (I still don't know what the question is).  I took the written portion of the driver's test this week, and realized that I had understudied for it.  The wording of many of the questions was more literal that I was expecting (for example: a picture showing a dip in the road does not mean 'bumpy road' (even though it would obviously feel like a bumpy road as you are driving on it), because it would apparently translate to 'dippy road'), so I failed it and will be re-taking it this week after a lot more studying.  Wish me luck!