Chinese New Year

Well, here it is. We've officially put in three weeks of work and now we get to take some well needed holidays. okay. so I'm not sure if they're really well needed - but everyone in Taiwan takes holidays for Chinese New Year - and with no students to teach - we're out of a job for 9 days. We've planned a trip to the East Coast of the Island. We've booked a room in a town called Hualien and plan to take day trips to the Taroko Gorge during the days. The East side of the island is supposed to be absolutely beautiful and breathtaking. We're taking the train - a 7 hour ride from where we are and we leave later this morning at 5:00AM. It's currently 3:02AM - so we'll get about an hours sleep. The problem with this is that we've been told the train is likely to be very full as everyone will be travelling for the holidays. So we may have to stand. After one hours sleep and standing on a train for 7 hours - I hope we make it without too much grumpiness. I've never been on a train before so I'm kind of excited about that. We were thinking of taking the bus but were told that we might hit the traffic jams and the trip could take us hours and hours and hours. So the train it is.
We've been told that there will be huge crowds of people......basically a tiny island of 23 million people are going to be on holidays at the exact same time. I'm sure when we return we'll have tons of stories and pictures to share.
So - Happy New Year!
Michelle

A big Happy Birthday to two of our friends & family. Jen & Elly hope you have a wonderful birthday weekend!!! Party for us!! As Michelle said, we're all packed, and will be taking off shortly. I can't wait!!!

I got a brand new class this this week! They have never been taught Enlgish..at all..before. So it's a new begining for them and myself. The alphabet, A = ah, B= buh, C= ckuh, etc.. However, with all the books, casettes, and older siblings learning English, they actually pick it up pretty fast. Todays sentence was "I am a boy" & "I am a girl", then we advnaced quickly to the alphabet song!! Music & charades are great teaching tools.

So school was good this week. We signed our contracts, and are quite satisfied!
It'll be a good year. From the conversations on msn and e-mail, it sounds as though we will be having some friends and family coming to visit us this year..this makes us very excited!!

Well take care everyone!!
Jeff