We had a visitor...

at the school today.  Whitney, Libby and I were in the middle of our closing group for Morning Kindergarten, where we sing songs to finish up the morning.  It was "5 Little Monkeys" when Amy, one of the secretaries, came into the room.  The kids were running around crazy to escape the grasp of the crocodile.  I thought that we were being too loud.  Usually the secretaries only come in to fix a behavior problem.  Amy was speaking broken English and motioning up.  I thought she meant that she could hear us from upstairs.  Then she said, "No English teachers," while motioning up.  Whitney started to leave the room, and that seemed like what Amy wanted us to do.  We all left and went up to our apartment on the fourth floor.  All of the teachers were sent away from our classrooms.  We gathered in the hallway to express our confusion.  We came up with all kinds of crazy stories about what could be going on.  Should we hide?  Are we going to finish our classes? 

We later found out that a government official stopped by to check that the school was running according to code.  Apparently, the Kindergarteners are supposed to have their classes at the "old school."  So, when the guy came, he could not see us teaching them here.  They took the kids upstairs and sent us away.  It was all so dramatic.  If the government official found out that the kindergarteners were having classes at the "new school" then Berhan would be fined.  As soon as he left, the day went back to normal. 

This is where I work.

This is near the front door of the school.  Random.

Email Buddies

For all of you who get the emails of my blog, you may have noticed that you can't watch the videos.  You need to actually go to my blog. 

Click here:  http://meg-yancey.blogspot.com/

And scroll down.

Week Two Videos

Meet Frankie

Close up of Frankie

The Jungle of Taiwan

Riding back down the mountain.  I was probably going 30 mph.  I decided to put the camera away when my bike started wobbling. 

Week one Videos

This is for all of you who don't go on facebook that much.  You may notice that I am not a film expert.  I can live with that.

This is the first full day I was in Fengyuan.

In the mountains

Laundry Room

My Room

Morning Market

Bridge

Longest bike tunnel in Taiwan!

Don't go towards the light.  You may think you hear bees buzzing, but that is my lovely bike.

What a pretty Taiwan sunset!

Entrance to "Zen Park"

Koi Pond.  I started filming and some lady came up behind me and tried to sell me fish food.  That's who you hear in the background.  I didn't realize she was there at first.

Beetles!  Kids love these, and have them as pets.

Thank you, come again!

Going home

After the fireside, we took the 2-3 hour bus ride back to Taichung, where our English branch is located.  According to our branch president, the bus stop right next to our church supposedly had buses running till 11:50pm.  We got back to the church at around 11:35pm.  As we were all standing at the bus stop, a taxi drove up and the driver was trying to talk to us in Chinese.  None of us speak Chinese, so we had no idea what he was saying.  Then our knight in shining armour showed up astride his scooter.  Kevyn, a guy from our branch came to the rescue.  We asked him to translate for us.  Of course the taxi driver was trying to drum up some business, but at the same time, he was trying to tell us that the buses weren't running that late at night.  It was the train that stopped running at 11:50pm.  The train station was about a 20 minute walk from where we were and we weren't sure that we remembered how to get there.  If we walked, we probably wouldn't have gotten there in time anyway.  There were seven of us, so four of the others got in a taxi and drove.  Luckily, only a couple minutes later did another taxi show up.  We arrived at the train station with 5 minutes to spare.  After buying our train tickets to Fengyuan, we stood around like lost tourists.  On three differnent occasions, different train station workers came up to us to inspect our tickets.  Two of them said that we were on the right platform.  Or at least that's what we think he said.  The third informed us that we bought the wrong ticket.  During the day, you can buy a "local" train ticket, but at night after a certain time, you are supposed to get the "express" train ticket.  We were not about to buy another ticket, so we wandered away from him.  He lost interest anyhow, and left us alone.  The train that was supposed to leave at 11:50, didn't show up until 12:25am.  I have learned to recognize these characters: 豐原 (Fengyuan).  We didn't get home until 1:00am.  What a long day!  I have never been so happy to climb six flights of stairs.  It was necessary to get to my rock hard bed.  Oh bliss.

Waiting for the train.

Really tired.

Erin is looking for the train.

No train.

Still tired.

President Uchtdorf Fireside

After church, we took a bus to Taipei to see President Uchtdorf speak. It was an amazing experience.  I love that you can go almost anywhere in the world and still participate in the gospel.  No matter where you go, the church is the same.  People are welcoming and eager for you to become a part of their lives.  We were among 6,000 LDS Taiwanese people in attendance. The Spirit was so strong.  President Uchtdorf's talk was good, but my favorite part of the meeting was the closing hymn.  We sang "I am a child of God."  Normally I don't enjoy that hymn as much as some others.  The other teachers and I sang in English and the Taiwanese people sang in Chinese, but there was a common spirit.  The unity and power of the Spirit felt so good.

Frankie and our Amazing Adventure!

I was really bored.  We talked about going swimming, but none of the talk was turning into action.  I walked into the girl's bathroom to you know... and a creepy critter came running towards my feet.  I screamed and hopped my way out of the bathroom.  Not because I was scared, mind you.  Just startled. 

As I was walking back to my bedroom, I came up with a brilliant idea.  I found a jar in the kitchen and headed back towards the bathroom.  That little bugger would be mine.  It took several tries, with it running and flying and climbing away, but with my mad skills I caught it and called him Frankie.

Allison got a bright idea that we should witness the circle of life.  Off we went, up into the jungle of Taiwan in search of Frances, an orb spider.  Frances is not just any orb spider.  She is the size of your hand.  To our dismay, she had relocated. 

There were plenty of others who were eager to help us.  We hiked around and found all the spiders we could.  Frankie was in tow, not knowing his fate.  We decided on a very special black and yellow orb spider. 

All of us readied ourselves to watch the big show.  Devin twisted open the lid and dramatically tossed Frankie toward the 5 foot web. 

He was caught!  The spider quickly advanced toward Frankie.  Panicked, Frankie squirmed and flapped his wings.  The sticky web was no match for him.  Frankie was free to live another day. No discovery channel show for us.  Barbaric, I know. 

Pathetic as it is, this was the highlight of our day.  We ended the day with delicious bing-shas.