Winner!

I'm a winner! With every purchase I have made over the past year I have received a receipt which made me eligible for the country's receipt lottery, and every two months I check my receipts and throw them all in the recycling because they are all losers, but not this month! This month I am the proud owner of two winning receipts, awarding me with a total of 400NTD.  Now, before you go thinking that is an exceptional amount of money, I'll tell you that it converts to just shy of $14 US, but it is free money, so I'll take it!
I really enjoyed my work week this week,particularly because I have been enjoying my side-project of preparing students for next weekend's speech contest.  For the past few months, all of the schools have been helping some of their best students to write and rehearse English speeches, and teaching them how to naturally integrate cadence, intonation, and gesture to their performances.  I am proud to say that my school has prepared 7 students for the competition (last year we sent only 2 students, which shows we are increasing the number of competent and confident speakers), 4 of which came from my classes, so I'm feeling pretty proud of my 'babies' right now.  I spent a few days this week holding 'mock competitions' with the students, where they had to perform their speech in front of their fellow contestants, the school manager, and myself as their judges.  The students are all doing very well (much better than I would have done at their age, I would have been too shy to consider speaking alone in front of a crowd like that).  We have one more week of rehearsals, then their big day will be on Saturday, so with them all luck!
Most of my weekend was very laid-back and relaxing, which I find is increasingly something I need in a weekend.  Most of Saturday was spent either lounging around in my apartment, or lounging around on my scooter in Lukang.  I took a leisurely ride to the ancient street in Lukang to do some souvenir shopping.  In as much detail as I can provide (without spoiling any possible surprises for the souvenir recipients), all I can really say is that I observed merchandise that was being displayed by various vendors, and when I saw items which I enjoyed, I exchanged money with the shop-clerks in order to take them home (quite an eventful day, I know).  
Today we took a minor scooter trip to Taiping (which is near Taichung).  This is an area I have been to several times before, because this is one of the nicest (and closest) areas to find waterfalls.  The first time I went to these waterfalls everyone in the group go injured because the path was steep, slippery, and all-around unsafe, the second time I went we found an area down stream but we couldn't see any waterfalls from there, but today, we drove maybe 2 minutes further than I had ever gone before, and managed to drive right up to a waterfall. There were some great pools for swimming in, some good climbing rocks, and beautiful scenery all around us.

A waterfall in the Taiping District of Taichung