Day 11 - Thursday July 2, 2009: Pizza Pizza

Woke up at 8am and did laundry. Day off of running.

Conversation class went better today than yesterday. We played a few rounds of hangman to warm up and introduce the topic of 'restaurants.' Then I had everyone come up to the board and write down all the words they could think of that have to do with eating out - they mostly wrote types of food, but I added my own word to the list and taught them alamode...very important to know! They all seemed shocked to hear that not all restaurants have soup and that we have more than noodle and vegetable soup. After that they wrote stories using those words. Each student had to write 3 sentences and then fold the paper over the first two for the next student to add on. They seemed to like it, but next time I will allow more time for it since there were a lot of grammatical errors.

For lunch the four of us got a "large" pepperoni pizza from Dominos. I think I can speak for Geoff/CKE and myself when I say it rocked our world. (Not good in terms of pizza, but good in terms of food available in Taiwan) We also had Lay's Potato Chips and Juice.

After lunch we had our second Chinese class. We learned how to say "I am American" and "that is their computer." We had a hard time pronouncing some of the tones and had to repeat a lot which after 2 hours of that and being tired and thirsty we were getting a little loopy. I laughed so hard I cried at trying to sound out words and saying "gooey" and repeating things over and over. It was funny, but you kind of had to be there.

After this we all had one-on-ones with MBA students who wanted to play basketball. We played 4 on 4 and a few rounds of lightning. Then we found out that the students CKE, Geoff, and Danika were assigned to were taking them to a night market, but because my student wasn't part of the MBA program I had to stay behind. I was disappointed. When I met with Bella, from 7-9 we met and talked in the classroom for a little while, but then she took me "downtown" for Pearl Milk Tea, and "Pink Flower" (she didn't think this was the correct English name, but kept calling it that anyway). The tea was GROSS, the liquid wasn't that bad, but then there was rice powder rolled up into balls at the bottom that you would suck up through a giant straw. Ick. The tea, however, didn't even compare with the Pink Flower thingy - it was like a dessert soup with a watery chocolate base and tofu-like chunks. I tried to eat enough to be polite, but only about ate down about 1/4 of an inch in the bowl.

We are all wondering how long we can use the excuses, "I just ate," "I am full," and "your portions are just too big."

Everyone else got back just a little after I did (like 9:30). CKE showed me his new pirated copy of Transformers 2, which didn't work, and 2 little toys he won in a shooting game. We all discussed the days happenings and made some jokes - like how listening to our Chinese teacher is like listening to the teacher off of Charlie Brown.