Speaking of Winners...

As you may recall, my most recent post referred to my winning streak, but now I would like to share news about some other winners.  Yesterday was the Shane speech contest, where students from schools around the country gathered in Kaohsiung to compete.  Contestants were judged on accuracy of speech (in terms of how well it followed their submitted scripts), fluency (and articulation of words), physicality (gestures and facial reactions), and pronunciation (including natural cadence).  Each Contestant competed against other speakers in their same grade in public school (rather than those who were their same level in the Shane system).  Of the seven contestants my school sent into the competition, four of them took 3rd place in their respective age groups.  I'm a very proud coach right now!
In other news, my singing tendencies are rubbing off on my students.  Well, that may be because I have trained them to do so, but 'shhh'.  For a while now we have been teaching the CEI07 and CEI12 classes the song 'Under the Sea' from 'The Little Mermaid', and this week they had performances every day.  Most of the performances were outside of the school for the parents, but on Tuesday we took them on an outing to McDonald's where we sang for the customers (and showed off our English skills when ordering food).

I made a little poster for our performance, and if I'm being honest, I'm pretty proud of it!  I drew and painted each of the animals.

Back in Wisconsin I was fond of Quiz Night at one of the local bars.  For a while I attended the quiz every week, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that tradition.  This week, we recreated this past time in our own take on a 'pub quiz', except rather than a pub, it was hosted in a house.  Each member of the group wrote their own 10-question round for the quiz based on one of their areas of interest (no surprise, my category was 'theater/musicals', and they were quizmaster for that round.  Three teams of four competed for bragging rights and a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne, but I am sad to announce, my team did not win these rights, as we came in 2nd place (losing by only 1 point).  On an interesting side-note about pub quizzes, have you ever realized how terribly boring the concept sounds when you try to explain it through a language barrier?  When describing the quiz to our Taiwanese friends we explained that we 'took a test for fun', and really, who does that?
On a cultural note, this week I explored the Taiwanese take on one of the great American past times: baseball.  For most of my childhood I was not a sports fan, but my five years in Wisconsin gave me a not only a knowledge about baseball, but also a love of attending games, which meant that when I was invited to attend a Taiwanese baseball game I jumped on the opportunity.  Saturday evening I attended a game in the Taichung stadium between the Lions and the Elephants.  While the team I went to cheer on (the Brother Elephants) may have lost by a depressing margin (0-5), it was still an enjoyable experience, and I got to learn some fun Chinese cheers.

These are 'cheersticks' - which are occasionally seen in American sporting events, but carried by almost everyone at a Taiwanese baseball game.

The professional baseball teams in Taiwan compete in the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL).  The league currently has 4 teams: The Brother Elephants (Taipei), the Lamingo Monkeys (Taoyuan), the EDA Rhinos (Kaohsiung), and the 7-11 Lions (Tainan).  The CPBL has been operating since 1989, and has been the only professional league in Taiwan since 2003.  A baseball season in Taiwan spans from March-October, and concludes with play-offs which last until early November.  The winning team from the CPBL goes on to represent Taiwan in the Asia Series against China, Japan, South Korea, and Australia (and from there, it appears the title is most often taken Japan).

It's not a baseball game without some form of hot dog, right?