Happy Mother's Day

Last Saturday was one of those rare ocassions when all thirteen of us teachers were together. So what brought all of us together. It turns out to be the children celebrating their mothers and probably their fathers too. Although the real father's day in Taiwan is not until baba, August Eighth, baba also happens to means father. I thought that was a pretty cool fact and became a little envious that America can't pick their days according to the same thought process. But anyways we can move back to the children and mothers for that matter.

This is Jenny and her mother. We played a game where the moms pinned all of the clothes on the children and then the children got to shake them off. One of my students, Tony, put two clothes pins on his ears and had quite an experience trying to shake them off. Unfortunately I didn't get around to posting the video so you can just imagine it.

Speaking of shaking. Check out the way these kids are shaking it. The Chinese teachers taught the kids a bunch of songs to dance to. The kids had a great time as you can tell. Yvonne especially was in heaven dancing.

The other kids enjoyed it just as much but you couldn't always tell. For those of you interested in knowing. Yvonne is in the front, Sky, Oscar and then Brandon behind Sky's left shoulder. But the children didn't spend the entire time dancing. Oscar, Eric and Tony made some time to play scissors, paper, stone which is the Taiwanese version of rock, paper, scissors. (Don't know why I felt the need to tell you that but I'm sure you could have figured that out for yourself.)

As an unnessacary sidenote Oscar is one of my favorite kids in morning kindergartner. He is small enough to be carried and he still enjoys it. Tony is one of my main trials I have been granted while being a teacher here. He is growing on me, but he is the class that he is in. My KBR class now has ten kids in it, whereas when I started there were seven kids. It is getting difficult to keep track of so many kids. Eric is on the far right and I don't know much about him because he is in Laura's class. But Oscar is still one of my favorites.

I would do just about anything for the kid, including attempting to blow up a balloon for him. Apparently though the balloon got the best of me. I had to work really hard to pump the air into the balloon but then someone was kind enough to tell me to bite the nossle and then blow. Oscar kind of gave me a funny look and then his mom told him to clap his hands. It ended up working and he got to play with the balloon.

But the fun and games didn't end with blowing up the balloons. We got to pull each other around on these giant palm fronds. I was handed a palm frond and told to get moving. This is Carrie, when of the secretaires at the Old School, whom all of the kids are scared of.

But I couldn't let the opportunity pass me up. I had to get on and enjoy the ride as well. It wasn't the most comfortable ride but since I had Sara to pull me around I risked getting my shorts dirty. Which in fact they did, but nothing a good wash didn't take out.

The day ended as a success. Peggy was still willing to pose with Joseph and I at the end of the day and even though it looks like she is going to sock us in the chin she ended up going easy on us. The only thing that could have made it better was seeing my own mom and having the chance to dance for her. Maybe next year I'll be teaching kindergarten in the states and I'll get to perform for her. Until then I'll just have to be content dancing for the kindergarteners.