Jangmi

Typhoon Jangmi, the fourth typhoon to hit Taiwan this year, recently passed. I just wanted to let everyone know I am ok. Since Chiayi is protected by the mountains, I normally do not have to worry about the effects of typhoons. The wind was very strong according to some reports up to 140 mph. I stayed inside most of the night waiting out the storm watching movies and reading.  I guess the power went out for an hour during the night, but I didn’t notice anything of that sort. This morning I took pictures around campus. There wasn’t much destruction: a few branches down and one gazebo was destroyed. All in all the most powerful typhoon of the year wasn’t so bad. We did have a day off school though. That was a plus. 

Students Playing Matchmaker?

For my E6 class, this unit we are learning about amazing people. One of the persons we are learning about is Sarah Chang, a world famous classical violinist. She is pretty amazing indeed!

Anyways, during one of my classes I had students think up questions that they would like to ask Sarah Chang. They had the usual where was she born, what does she do when she's not doing a concert. All these questions were easy to answer or at least find information on the internet to answer them. One question however was quite difficult to find. I searched and searched but could not find the answer.

The question was, "Is Sarah Chang married?" Like I said I searched hard for the answer but could not find it. So I went to her official website. I found a way to contact her and sent Sarah Chang a message explaining that I was a teacher and the reason for my question.

Later in the day I received an email from her which said:

Hello!
You're very sweet, thank you for your email.
No, I'm not married! Too young, too busy, too immature, take your pick.....
Thanks again.
Sarah

 

With the running joke of me having a Korean wife, I thought this was just another layer to add to that joke.

Asian Snowball Fighting

I recently went to Korea as part of the CELA trip before the beginning of the school year. While you may think that the most memorable thing for me would have been the shopping. If you thought that you thought wrong. I loathe shopping. We happened to do a lot of it during this trip. I was however to not participate in shopping and was able to be a NSB (Nonsmoking buddy) to the fellow guys on that were part of our travel group.

Being an NSB was not the most memorable event either. This honor would have to fall to snowball fighting with a bunch of Korean kids in Tae Kwon Do. Going on a trip to Korea, I would not have thought that this would even happen. However, we went sledding at a place I saw on the Travel Channel a couple years ago. It was an indoor place that made fake snow. It was fun to watch the skiers and snowboarders. And even more fun to get into a snowball fight.

It started out that the kids were throwing snowballs at each other. A stray one wandered our way and soon Heidi and I were part of a massive snowball fight. We also taught the kids and some of the assistant teachers from CELA the proper way to make a snowball. They didn't know how to pack it so it wouldn't break up when thrown. I think that this is a very valuable skill to know even in Asia.