When "famous" Iowans come to town...

---

people go WHACK and it's all about competition! This past week Judy Jeffery (Iowa Dept. of Education Director) came to visit Paul and I and meet with the MOE people, with the discussion of possibly having an exchange program for Taiwan teachers to come to Iowa. I don't know if they will be teaching English or Chinese, I think Chinese would be more beneficial, beacause we really have NO ONE to teach that language, and with the ever expansion of the Asian headed over to North America, it would be something to highly consider. My co-teacher and I joined Paul and his teachers and pricipal in Taipei on Thursday to greet Judy and listen to her presentation on Educational System in Iowa-i learned some things I hadn't know before, so it was beneficial...and hello I got outta class and got to go for a plane ride. haha....Though with having Judy visit this last week my school was so WHACK about me presenting the perfect lesson-OK AHHHHHH-in teaching- there is NO perfect lesson-no matter how many times you can rehearse-i think that is the fun of my occupation-the randomness of it all is the thrill!!! Anyways, so I had this awesome lesson planned about Emotions, using some vocabulary from prevision lessons to incorporate into the new vocabulary and sentence patterns. It was so funny when my kids would have to act out the conversational piece, using props for babies, and having some of the boys be girls, carrying around purses. I don't know if they had ever been exposed to anything like it before, but they did laugh, and I think learned something too. They also had a competition to see who could complete the sentences fastest based upon the provided picture cards-that got a little heated-they are so competitive over here-it drives me nuts-i didnt want to do it-but since the MOE (ministry of educaiton in taiwan) was coming to watch this lesson as well, my principal and director were insistant on having some sort of competition. Speaking of competetion, after my co-teacher and I hearing about Paul's school and what they were doing to welcome Judy on Friday to their school, and reporting back tot eh princiapl and director, the competition was on. Everyone at school went crazy, with trying to find a "great dance skit" "a great taiwanese welcom"...it was interesting to see how impressive they wanted to be (i will say that they did quite a good job-with having a day to pull something together-the kids did awesome with their performances) When Judy arrived at my school in the afternoon, she was greeted with a taiwanese song and tap dance, and two kids playing musical instruments, she even had her own escorts around the building describing the scenery!!! She then entered my english classroom- i hadn't been nervous until she stepped foot into that door, though once we got rolling it all went away. everything just coasted and fell into place! (i think i had the help of a special person up above smiling down on me) But we put on an awesome lesson and the kids did great...many many laughter throughout the audience. Afterwards, we were joined by Paul and his people from school and went downtown for dinner at the 86 story building. The food was alright, too much fish...way too much seafood....pretty much I left with an empty stomach, but a mind boggling thought as to why in a high class room, were people singing and dancing to the KTV (even me) Its so strange to see people just bust out in song while eatingm, but its so natural over here, it was quite funny!!!
It was so nice to see familiar faces-TWO DAYS IN A ROW! but with a busy week comes a busy weekend, one where we had to work on saturday-yes thats right....i had my frist saturday school class-it wasnt that bad-guess thats the price to pay for hving an extra day off for holiday.....it pays off in the end when I got to go to HOT POT with my friends and google over a man who speaks no English--but is so cute

---