October!

Welcome to October, my how the days fly by.
I know I will jinx myself by saying this, but my class schedule was fairly close to perfect this week.  No early starts, 3 early finish days, and mostly brilliant students.  There are definitely some classes that frustrate me more than others at this point, particularly the classes that won't stop speaking Chinese as soon as the TA leaves the room (in my buxiban (another word for Cram school, which is the type of specialty school I work in) we have a fairly strict "no Chinese in the classroom" policy to encourage immersion learning).
This week one of my favorite classes to teach was my private lesson with two teenagers who are relatively advanced in English.  The nice thing about teaching private students is that they can help you select what topic they want to learn about, so this week my privates agreed to a lesson about psychology (which is actually a unit in their student book, so it wasn't completely random, however I still can't get over how perfect of a topic is is for me considering it was one of my majors).  It gave me a chance to use what I know outside the book and get genuinely excited about a lesson!
I went on several adventures this week, the first of which was to a waterfall on Tuesday (before class).  Sounds like a simple little photo-opportunity, right?! Let me assure you, it wasn't, but it was still a fun time.  For starters, the path to get to the water wasn't so much a path, as an incredibly steep hill, and the path along the water to the waterfall was so grown-over that it wasn't even an option for walking.  As a result, our path to get to the waterfall involved climbing over and under boulders IN A RIVER for 20 minutes.  We all walked away with battle-wound scratches from the experience (but luckily none of us fell in the water).
Most of the weeknights, while exciting to me, leave little to be reported.  My friends and I had mini-adventures like going to the Homei and Changhua night markets, playing our weekly pool games, shopping (my first encounter with Caves bookstore and Carrefour), and ever-enjoyable trip to Flamingos (one of the most "Western" food experiences in town).
This weekend I finally got to visit Lukang, the city I have been dying to visit since I got here.  It was a wonderful day trip!  Among the historic streets, beautiful temples, and shopping districts are two artist's whose work I have heard about for months: a famous lantern painter and a famous fan painter, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to purchase a piece of work from each of them.  I bought a beautiful scenic painted Chinese fan, and a personalized Chinese lantern which says "Make your dreams come true, step by step".

The owner and artist of a beautiful hand-painted fan shop.

One of the most famous lantern stores in Taiwan, with the artist who personalized my lantern.

Taiwan fact of the week: in Taiwan it is the year 101.  The Minguo calendar, which is used in Taiwan originated in mainland China in 1912 (the year of the founding of the Republic of China (Taiwan)) but its use was discontinued in China in 1949 with the founding of the People's Republic of China (mainland China).  Like the Gregorian calendar, the year changes on January 1st, so, for this upcoming New Year I will be "watching the ball drop" into the year 102 while my friends and family back home will be celebrating the start of 2013.