Stray Kittens, New Classes, and Storytellings

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Hello everyone! I hope the day (or possibly night?) is treating you well!

Phew, many things have sporadically happend this past week, it's just so hard to even remember all of them! First, my roommate Kelli and I decided to adopt a little stray kitten...and I'm not kidding with the word little! It was only 3 weeks old! The poor thing kept wondering into the shoe/coat/umbrella/scooter helmet/just-everything room at the Nan Men campus, crying for food, warmth, and love. Oh, and to top it off, we had been experiancing torrential down pours at this point that hadn't been letting up for 48 hours. So of course my sappy heart went out to this little kitten! Prior to taking it home, we found that other teachers had tried the same thing, but wound up bringing it back because it wouldn't eat. When asked if they tried a baby bottle and warm milk, we found this was the one solution they had not tried. So on our way back home, Kelli and I stopped at the Carrefour and found the perfect feeding bottle...we also found it had fleas....yucky...but we still couldn't put it out on the street because it had fleas! How awful would that be?! So (we named it Nan Men) came to live with us for a little bit in our bathtub, in his own spur-of-the-moment kitty bed. We grabbed many towels and made a nice warm bed in a crate that I had grabbed from FamilyMart (like 7-11). He slept like a rock. He even ate enough to sleep for a full 12 hours straight! Kelli told me 2 days later that she knew of a student in her class that had said her parents are allowing her to adopt the kitty, so we dropped Nan Men off at school again. Unfortunately, we found out this student's mother was all for it, but her dad was not (yeah yeah, typical, rational fathers...) So Nan Men is now being taken care of by the caretaker at Nan Men, and luckily, he is eating solid baby kitten food now. We also think the mother cat is running around and comes back from time to time to check on her baby. Either way, Nan Men was our cute, flea-infested, adorable pet for a time....so now I can say we owned a "Crazy Taiwanese Cat" while living in Taiwan for a year...

While all this kitty business was happening, I found out Thursday morning, 10 minutes before class was supposed to start with the fourth graders, that I would be transferring to another school starting Monday (today). It was a little caotic. So the newly arrived teacher that flew in this past Wednesday was to be taking my classes, fourth grade and the Graduates class, for the remainder of the summer. Later on in the afternoon, I found that I was being transferred from Nan Men to the Gongyi (pronounced "gong-ee") campus and teaching 2nd grade. Luckily, the grade that I took over is the class I would be taking over in September, so truthfully, it's just a month earlier...So you can imagine the craziness of the week so far! Between having to get everything prepared for the new teacher to take over Monday, I also had to prepare the Grads Class, the 4th grade class, and make sure everything was set for the 2nd grade class for Monday. *Phew* Well, everything went splendid today and I absolutely love love love my 2nd grade class at Gongyi. Truthfully, it is much easier than any class at Nan Men as I have only 5 students this week...can't beat that!

This coming Saturday I have to do story telling at the Cultural Center in Taichung. Once a year, a teacher is required to sign up to read at the cultural center. We get paid 1200 NT (New Taiwan Dollar), or about 35 USD, per hour of story telling. It's a way to bring the community in Taichung together; essentially, all ages are welcome, from babies to adults, to listen to a story chosen a month in advance by a teacher at Cornel. What a typical "Story Hour" looks like is: read a "big book" (a big book is generally used in a Kindergarten class, it's a very large story book so everyone in class can read and follow through the story with pictures), do an activity, and possibly read another big book if there's time.....pretty easy stuff...basically, we teachers become an entertainer for an hour. I'll definetely let you know how it goes though!

Well, I think that's it for now, I have to start prepping for tomorrow, so I at least look like I know what I'm doing!

Lots of love to you all! Miss you much! Many more updates to come!

MB

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Photos

Stray Kitten
Kelli and I with the stray kitten from Nan Men, unfortunately, we could not keep it... :(