Digression of a Singer

In no way do I consider myself a professional singer, but I have come to enjoy it. But I have found that living in Taiwan has been compromising my abilities. I use to enjoy learning difficult pieces in choirs but now I find myself harmonizing to such songs as "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain" and "It's Raining, It's Pouring." I have gotton much better at the whole harmonizing thing and I find myself singing these songs wherever I go, even on picnics with eight other adults. But it entertains me nonetheless. When I moved to Taiwan the song which continually ran through my head was one by Michael Buble. Now I ride my bike down the street singing "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain." I'm just grateful that it isn't the ABC's. At least the people here in Taiwan don't really understand what we are singing about when I am riding my bike so I still have a little dignity left.

Not only has the song selection greatly been diminished but the venue is not quite as exciting as it was before. I once performed in the Assembly Hall in Salt Lake and my parents were there to tell me I did a good job.

However, now I get to perform with three of my friends in more of a concert venue. Joseph, Laura and I perform the main vocals and then the children attempt to echo the words we are spraying from our mouths. All in all I would have to admit that I prefer the performances in the gym room during kindergarten though. It is much more exciting, it doesn't matter if I mess up because the kids aren't really listening and couldn't tell me I sound terrible because they don't know enough words to hurt me yet. They also don't quite have the ability to laugh at me when I act like an idiot, which happens nearly everyday. In fact I was singing and dancing in morning kindergarten and one of the Taiwanese Secretaries joined in. Her coworkers peeked in the window and started laughing at her. At that point I remembered that I probably look like a dork but I'm doing it for the children so somehow that makes it okay.

My activities between performances have also greatly changed. Before moving to Taiwan I was given an awesome dressing room to change and relax in. We had ten minutes inbetween performances with nothing to do but sit and stare at a camera.

Now I find myself getting stared at inbetween performances. Dream, our youngest kindergartener only likes to participate during the last few minutes of my activities and spend the rest of the time either running room the gym floor or staring at me. I'm sure she is thinking "This guy is nuts, why are all the other kids listening to him?" She gets away with a lot, probably because she is only two years old, but if you looked like this too you could probably get away with anything. Maybe she is really internalizing my lessons though and pondering upon there truer, deeper meaning. Somehow I don't really believe that but she doesn't yet know enough English to her me her thoughts yet. She's probably thinking about how excited she is to go to Mr. Joseph's class in only five minutes.

But I do have a few adoring fans here in kindergarten. Sometimes a few kids inspired to come up and give me hugs. It's like they're saying, "Yes, you are crazy and your performances aren't what they use to be but we don't care. Just keep coming back everyday and we'll still love you." Sometimes the kids will just walk up to me thinking that and other times someone must knock them to the ground before they feel inspired to walk up to me and hug me. I believe this picture happened out of free will.

Even though the songs are much easier to learn and the audience is much smaller, I perfer the kindergarten crowd to paying adults. They pay you with real love not empty words. So if you are still interested to hearing exactly where it is that I digressed from, watch the clip below. It's long, I don't plan on watching it again, but you might get a kick out of it.

So the real video I was planning on downloading took an hour and a half and I still had nothing had I decided to stop and upload the preceeding video instead. Not me really singing but attempting to dance and sing to a more exciting song.

More Than Just Nine Friends

Recently, meaning about one or even one and a half months ago, I was sitting in the lounge in our apartment and I made a comment about having only nine friends. I believe that my exact words were something along the lines of how easy my life is here in Taiwan and that I have nine friends and I don't have to worry about making anymore. Well, that was a lie and I should have just kept my mouth shut, but I'm a guy and I make mistakes. I do have more friends than that and today I would like to spotlight one of them, my own cousin Juli Housholder. Well she is really my second cousin but nonetheless she is still one of the coolest people that I know.

We haven't always been friends. If I remember the story correctly we both thought that one another's families were weird and I am sure there was truth to both sides. But then one night Juli's family invited us over for New Year's Eve and we played Monopoly and then found out we weren't quite that different. We got along and even hung out once in a while. During the past few years she has been suffering from cancer but that hasn't stopped her from changing lives. She always has a smile on her face and she never complains, if only I could be as awesome as she is.

I just wanted to say that she's awesome even though it has nothing to do with my adventures in Taiwan. Juli if you ever happen to read this know that you're awesome and a great example. Hopefully we will never have to make another countdown chain for chemo treatments anymore. Hope that you had a great birthday and I'll talk to you in a few months.

Challenges of Learning the ABC's

I must start off this blog by admitting that I have been sitting on my bed for the last hour trying to get motivated to find a picture and write a blog about it, but it hasn't happened so I decided to upload some videos instead. Today in KBR I decided that we could break the class up into teams and have a race to find out which team could organize the alphabet the fastest. One of the groups consisting of William, Ray, Jellen and Jasper were a little bit more excited about the prospect of the competition and beat the other team quite quickly. I thought it would be exciting to see the dynamics of the teams for yourself though. I think it presents their personality in a much better light than I ever could.

The team above was handpicked by Tony, who is on the far left. Other team members include Melody, Bairt and Michael. I had to cheat in order to allow both teams to win and I think that they enjoyed the competition. It was nice to not have to participate and get to watch them attempt to work as a team. Although after I had made sure that each team won I raced them. Of course I lost because ESL kids are so much better at the English language than I am. I suppose I never understood the joys of losing until I started teaching KBR and got to see how excited they were to win.

It turns out that the best part of Friday's class really was the game. I had planned an activity to bake sugar cookies and I wanted the kids to help mix all of the ingredients together. Turns out that is not the world's best idea. They ran around screaming the entire class period and then every time we had to add a new ingredient all of the kids would yell at me telling me it was their turn to add or mix. All in all it was a disaster but I guess I am allowed a bad day every now and again. At least I get to sleep in tomorrow.

A Week in KBR

So a person might begin to wonder exactly what it is that I do all day during my KBR class. On a normal day we start the day off correcting homework. I try to play music that I think they might enjoy but they just tell me it's yucky. So after a little while of correcting homework I want to pull my hair out and then I regain my mental capacities and begin with the hard-core learning. We are currently on the second set of consanants: R,N,G,P,H. We have been working on them for about a week now and I think that we will be moving on soon. We practice making the sounds and writing, not drawing as they like to say, the letters. Here we have Bairt working hard on his letters. Probably the best student in the class.

After we have practiced the letters for a little while we read a story, or rather I tell them a story from a book with lots of pictures. It is suppose to build their language skill. By this time we have been in class for about one hour and we really need a break and this is where the real fun begins. On Monday I only had six of my eight students because Melody, my one girl, was in Korea and William was sick. While on our break the subject of girls came up. The boys began teasing each other about who they liked and I was surprised that most of the boys confessed their true love. I suppose that I was quite surprised that they would all admit as to who it was they are crushing on but I guess girls are still cool. I think this picture was taken immediately prior to our uplifting discussion about girls. I tried to get the guys to pick a girl for me to like but they were thoroughly disinterested.

I also discovered a great game last week that I played on Friday and left me quite entertained. Joseph had taught kindergarten in the morning in my classroom and had forgotten to erase the board. I erased almost everything except a man's head he had drawn and then I got an idea. I could ask the children what it is they wanted me to draw for them. I drew a circle body, candy bar legs, spider arms, horns and an elephant nose. Then he needed a way to get around so he acquired a scooter with a pet dinosaur. The story could go on and I suppose if you are truly interested you can inquire but if not just enjoy my interpretation of their ideas.

However, class today is what truly inspired me to blog. The first hour was simple enough but then break got a little interesting. Ray found a book that he enjoys looking at and can almost read all of the words, or has them memorized. You can see Ray below with the book that started all the action.

He came up to me today and decided to sit on my lap. Then Jasper came over and wanted to sit down and because I have two knees it was no problem. Well pretty soon four kids wanted on and I decided I needed a picture. One of my students offered to take the picture but I declined and asked him to get a secretary to take the picture. Sometimes I forget that these are just little kids and they just need a little lovin' every once in a while.

After our break we practiced reading letters and making the proper sounds. They did surprisingly well so I was pleased. Then we got to go outside and put bugs and other random things into our bug catchers. It started off kind of boring at the beginning, just finding snails and the occasional dead bug.

But then the grand daddy appeared. I am told by my students that it was not Michael that discovered the artifact but some other boy. We discovered a rat skull that had been there so long that the body had wasted away. Of course everyone had to touch the skeleton and hold it. I refused to do so, probably because I was afraid that I'd acquire rabies. After we finished our search for random items around the yard I made Michael throw the skull over the fence so that no one would be tempted to play with it.

We also had to wash our hands with mounds of soap. The activity turned out pretty well. It was followed up by our counting tokens (when they speak English we give them tokens to incourage them to speak) and handing out stickers ( I bribe my kids to behave by giving or taking stars away based upon made up criteria). We ended class and I raced to the post office to mail a letter home.

McDonald's

Prior to moving to the wonderful country of Taiwan I was one of the many Americans who told himself that he would never choose to eat at a McDonald's. Something about the meat that I thought tasted like cardboard or the fact that McDonald's and Wal-Mart are trying to take over the world. But things change when you move to a foreign country and all of your ice cream options either contain too much water or the closest Cold Stone's happen to be 2.5 hours away by bus. So McDonald's has become the cool place to be whenever us Berhaners happen to drop by.

The question now becomes what is it that we do at McDonald's? Pretty much everything. I celebrated my 25th birthday there complete with a cake provided by my roommate Joseph and a present from the girls. It wasn't until tonight though that I noticed the sign on the front door that said no pictures and no outside food. Oh well.

Another favorite thing to do is talk about our lives back home. Sometimes the details can get a little gushy but what can you do? I would love to expound upon what it is we are discussing in this picture, but I know I'd get hung out to dry.

The real reason I find myself attending McDonald's at least once a week is for the ice cream. As many of you know I love ice cream and probably eat too much of it. I believe that the ice cream actually tastes a bit normal, well better than the average ice cream available. I have also discovered the joy of peanut butter in ice cream and have managed to introduce it in most of the diet of my fellow teachers. It might not be the prettiest sight to see but it sure tastes great.

The food we don't continue to come back for includes the chicken wings complete with bone and all as well as the chicken burgers with a rice bun instead of the normal bread bun as found in most American McDonald's. Taiwan also seems to have a strange obsession with sesame seeds on bread products. I won't pretend to understand but I don't always enjoy it.

No visit to the McDonald's would be complete without a trip to the garbage can. For some reason I imagined that because McDonald's was well, McDonald's, they wouldn't have to recycle like everywhere else in Taiwan. But that was not to be so. We are required to seperate our trash prior to throwing it away. Gratefully we don't have to wash it first but the first time we went to throw our stuff away we had to pull trash out of cups and unwrap the hamburger wrapper. So next time you attend McDonald's don't think of corporate America, think of us foreigners living it up on soft serve ice cream sundaes.

Especially For Youth

During this past week I found out that I will working as an EFY counselor for a few weeks when I return home from Taiwan. So what exactly does this entail? I will be a counselor over a group of eight to twelve young men between the ages of 14-15 or 16-18. I basically give devotionals every night and then I hang out with them everyday. It is nice to be cool for a week. The group below was one of my favorites, Thou Shalt Medidate. We were the smallest group at the session but we won the award for the most spirit and unity.

Although most of the kids attending EFY are excited to be there it is not always true. One of my kids pictured below wasn't interested in being there at all but after the first day his attitude got a lot better. It turned out that although he didn't always obey every rule he progressed and he ended up being one of my favorite kids to work with.

Another given at EFY is that the kids will attempt to set you up with any girl counselor they find attractive. During my last week of EFY they decided that I needed to hook up with one of my co-conselors. I attempted to ask her out but in the end it never happened. Maybe this year I'll get lucky and met the girl that I'm suppose to marry. One can only hope.

During EFY every counselor hopes that he can avoid seeing the health counselors too often but with me it was never to be so. During the first week the boy pictured below jumped down a small set of stairs and ended up landing wrong on the bottom steps. He ended up braking a part of his ankle and we had to take him to the hospital.

The next week one of my boys came up from behind one of my girls and pushed her locked knees. Usually people just buckle over but she ended up dislocating her knee and we sent her to the doctor too. Also that week I had one of my kids get a headache bad enough that he had to skip out on some events. The finally injury happened my third week when one of my boys was playing around and was going to hit another guys shoulder but instead hit his nose. Still don't know that it was really an accident but we let him get away with it. The last two week of EFY were uneventful in that regard. Hopefully this year I will be able to avoid all injuries, but that remains unforseen at this time.

228 Peace Memorial Day

In Taiwan there tends to be a lot of holidays which I don't quite understand but I still love them anyways. On Thursday we had Peace Memorial Day. It was a welcome relief and a much needed day off. Although we did have the pleasure of catching a train at 7:30 in the morning which I wasn't real excited about but at least we got started on our day early. Mary really enjoyed her trip on the train, as she had a little extra time to catch up on her reading of love poems. We finally got to Taipei about 10 and got the day started.

We first went to the 228 park which included the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial as well as a few temple and a grand enterance as seen below.

Not only did we get to see the memorial but the best part of the park and really the day turned out to be the concert rehersal which we saw while wandering around the park. The concert was being directed by a man from Hungary and the orchestra was joined by a thousand-voice choir. It was really awesome and relaxing to just stand and listen to the music. I think that all of us would have liked to stay for the concert but it would not be until 7:30 that evening. I did think it was strange that there were no security guards to monitor the people watching what was going on. But seeing as Taiwan doesn't allow guns in the country it might not be such a large problem after all.

This is Chiang Kai-Shek surrounded by kites. I don't know why the kites are important but Fong Chuei means kite in Taiwanese and wind blows in mandrain. It symbolizes freedom and democracy as the poster told us. I am unsure of whether or not the jack-o-lantern is always there but it did strike me as a little strange. But then again we went into a clothing store and heard Christmas music playing.

Following our visit to the park we went out for Korean food for Katie's birthday and it was pretty good. Joseph and I did a little exploring prior to being seated and found the second story ready for service but with the lights turned off. Turns out that the pictures we took better represents what the restaurant then the pictures of us eating. We cooked all of our food on these B-B-Q's and then wrapped our food in leaves, not sure what kind but at least they were edible.

After the Korean restaurant the main attraction included going to Cold Stone and getting a mint ice cream bowl with brownies and caramel. After which Jessica, Joseph and I wandered off by ourselves and explored a park, went window shopping and when to an Italian restaurant and French pastry shop. The pastries had no hint of the normal Taiwanese flavor, which we were extremely grateful for. Initially we had planned on saving some for the train ride home, but after one bite we were done for.

All told it was a relaxing day and we were grateful to catch the 9:10 train home instead of catching an 11 o'clock train.