Update

So, at the moment I don't have good access to internet so I'm writing this in Notepad and then I'll copy and paste into my blog later. But I at least wanted to get an update started.

I arrived in Taiwan Monday night (Monday morning for most of you in the states). Angela, an exchange student my parents hosted last year, met me at the airport with her family. Which was nice because there was only one person there from the school and I don't know how much English he spoke. So after a 13 hour flight it was nice to have Angela there because she could translate better and faster than I could mime with the school person.

For the first few nights I stayed with Lucy, a Chinese teacher who works at Uncle Sam. she lives with her boyfriend and two cats. She is extremely friendly and sweet even though she doesn't think she speaks English well.

On Tuesday, I met with Amy, one of the workers at the school and we went and met Gretchen, the other new foreign teacher. She got here last week. We looked at two apartments. One was furnished with a couch, tv, bed, and had a kitchen with a sink, fridge, and one burner, plus a washing machine. The other apartment really didn't have anything, just a bed. The first was 13,000NT and the second was 12,000NT
and that's not including utilities, which rounds out to $380 and $350. This was a higher rent than I was expecting and much different from what Mitch, the supervisor from Reach To Teach, told me in emails. Later on I was chatting with Gretchen and she told me that most of the apartments in this area are luxury apartments and that's why they're higher priced. Because school is starting, or at least getting into the fall semester, all the studio/dorm-like apartments are taken, and those run around 6,000-8,000NT ($170-$235). Gretchen and I talked more since we pretty much spent the day together and decided to be roommates. She was already staying in an apartment like the ones I had looked at, but it had two beds in it already.
It's furnished with a couch, coffee table, washing machine, queen bed, twin bed, kitchen space, bathroom with shower and tub and lots of built in storage, all for 13,000NT, which will be about $190 a month for each of us! We are both happy with that because I'm trying to save as much as I can through this and she doesn't have a lot of money because she just finished teaching a year in Bejing with a church group. She has internet set up but we have to figure out if we can get it for two computers, so far that is 399NT per month ($12). Not sure of prices for electricity or water. If we ever do decide to get cable that runs about 500NT ($15) a month I think which comes with numerous Chinese channels of news, sports, cartoons, shopping networks and other ones I still don't know :P including HBO, Starz, and a few other movie channels usually in English.

After apartment searching, Gretchen and I had to take the MRT (subway) to a hospital to have a health check for our health insurance/card. It was a long process involving waiting two hours till 2pm for the doctor to be in (lots of time for us to get to know each other :P), then dealing with a bit of a language barrier to get papers filled out, then they checked eye sight, blood pressure, and took blood. They ended up taking my blood pressure twice (I think I was nervous!) and she didn't have to hard of a time finding a vein which made me pretty happy because usually (in America at least) they have a hard time finding my veins because they roll and hide. Next I had to go see a doctor and he checked my eyes, ears, heartbeat, that normal stuff and after that I had to have a chest x-ray. It was weird because you can tell they move people in and out quickly. You change clothes go down the hall, stand in front of the machine he snaps once or twice and you're done - NEXT! It was pretty simple over all.

Wednesday, today and tomorrow is training at Uncle Sam American School (USAS). Wednesday and today we had to be there before 9am and from 9-noon we observed classes of other foreign teachers, at noon we had lunch from the kitchen which usully consists of a bowl that you put rice in and then there's 4-6 trays of food you put on top of the rice. The teachers eat outside the kitchen but the kids get food brought to them in their rooms. In the afternoon we'd have some videos to watch and meetings with Amy or Fiona, to talk about staff stuff, teaching stuff and any questions. I have my own desk in the office and there's four computers, only two of which have internet, but they also have a shared drive with papers, grades, and such. Two or three months ago they installed wireless, so I think I might be putting this laptop to good use! I think the school is 3 floors, I have only been to the second so far. The kitchen, some classrooms and a small auditorium type room are in the basement. The main floor has the entrance, reception area in front of the offices, some meeting rooms and more classrooms I think. Right past the entrance is a little area full of small cabinets for shoes....yes you wear slippers in the whole building!

The second floor is where the classes I observed where at and I think the third floor has older students and a room for mini-workshops for the teachers, which we have every Thursday, and there's staff meetings every Tuesday.

Now to try to explain the "grades" and my schedule:
They have semesters: fall, spring, and summer. Right now they're in Summer but Monday, when I start, it's the Fall semester. In the fall grades are labeled: T1, T3, K1, K3, K5 and G grades. T is for Toddler, K for Kindergarden and G for Grade school.
In the spring it's: T2, T4, K2, K4, K6 and G grades. It's kind of like they move up a level.
I've tried to break down the grades, but it's based on the knowledge of the child and age I think. Toddlers are mainly 2-3 year olds and kindergardners are 4-6 year olds. This is who I'll be teaching!! Every day I get more and more excited. I've already gotten a few hugs :D

Now for my schedule:
9:00 - 9:40 K1 - Road to Reading, don't know yet what this is :P
9:40 - 10:00 K1 - Snack and Hygiene, I take them to the bathroom and while they snack I teach them some hygine thing weekly
10:00 - 10:40 K1 - Super Tot1, this is some sort of English/phonics class
10:50 - 11:20 K3 - Math, this subject is very fixed with syllabus and lesson plans for you to follow
11:30 - 12:00 T3 - Circle Time, I think I just spend time with them and review colors, numbers, or games
12:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 Meetings or monitoring duties sometimes, or lesson plan time
2:00 - 2:40 K3 - Art or EQ, EQ is a new class - Emotional Quotient to help them learn their emotions and how to control them
2:50 - 3:20 T3 and T1 - PE or Music
3:30 - 4:00 T3 and T1 - Art, Art is one of the classes that does not have lesson plans layed out for you unlike everything else, including PE, you just come up with things for them to do.

Gretchens schedule is different as she has older kids and she has some evening classes, while I'm done by 4pm everyday, but 12 hours a month I have to go to Joy Learning school and teach. Still not quite sure how that goes, I've asked once and got some information. I think everyone is really busy right now because of the new semester which includes new students and then throwing me and Gretchen in there they are reorganizing some classes to make them smaller so we'll see how things go on Monday :D

Tonight, Gretchen and I decided to go grocery shopping. Since she's been here for a week she knew her way a little more and we walked to a busier area of Sanxia, probably only a 5-10 min walk. I wrote down what I bought and how much, just to show what prices are like. I don't have individual prices since my reciept is in Chinese but I have the total, I'm still kinda surprised by it.
1/2 jar of peanut butter, 1/2 jar strawberry jelly, 1/2 loaf of white bread, 20 wire hangers, Dove candy bar, 1 liter of Sprite, 2 jars yougurt (strawberry and apple), 2 cans pinapple, 1 instant noodle cup, 1 sm box candy strawberry sticks, 1 bag frozen dumplings, 1 bottle Head and Shoulders shampoo
And the grand total = 615NT, about $18. Now I don't go shopping very often in the US, I make Mom do it :P but that seems cheap to me. Now I did seem to get
smaller sizes of things, but still, I'm pretty happy with the shopping.

That's about it for now. Hopefully I can get this posted tomorrow while I'm at work. I'm going to use the internet for arts and craft ideas for toddlers,
I have a few ideas, but I wanted to find more....any suggestions let me know :D

Bye Bye