Chinglish

Chinglish-  written or spoken English said in a Chinese way, kind of a lost in translation type of thing.

It's a problem and I have it.

Over the course of the past year of teaching English somehow, I also picked up on some of these phrases/habits. I sincerely hope some of my grammatically correct English rubbed off on the students as well, one can hope anyway.

Chinglish is something that I heard on a daily basis during my year in Taiwan. Mostly, it just made me smile. Here are a few examples of phrases I have heard in my classroom:

I don't can

I very like you

He have hit me

Everyone is mad at my

I very color is green

I write done

You said what teacher?

I want

Give me

 the excessive use of "so"

I only wish I had actually recorded every funny Chinglish phrase that I heard in my year of teaching. 

If any of you English teachers read this and can add to this list, please do. It would make me immensely happy. Also, please no judging my English when I get back to the states. 

A Traveler's Perspective

I have always wanted to travel and each time I have been given the opportunity to do so it has made the travel bug inside of me grow stronger.  So I feel pretty darn lucky to have been able to go to so many different countries(thank you to living in Taiwan that brought more countries into my sphere of traveling). I don't know where life is going to take me next and who knows if I will have the chance to travel much in my future. I hope these experiences are just the beginning for me, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Okay, so the initial motivation behind writing this post was to describe the awesomeness of flying in Asia, well that, and I am stuck in an airport on a layover so what else am I going to do?

In the past year I have flown more than I have in my whole life. That being said my experience flying within the United States has been fairly limited so the comparison may be biased but there you go.

For starters, flights that are only 2 hours long serve you full meals, meals people, not dinky little bags of peanuts that you basically have to beg for. Meals included in the flight, no extra charge and they are pretty  good too. Second, in flight entertainment is FREE. Seriously, I don't think I have been on a short flight within the United States that had free in flight entertainment. Lastly, you see cool things like this when you walk into the airport.

Basically, you should just book your flight right now. 

A Work in Progress

After viewing some of my favorite blogs  I have been inspired to give my blog a face lift. I will admit that I am pretty particular about making it look "just right", so it will take longer than it probably should.
And as I am not the most computer competent person it might take even longer....so it will be a work in progress.
 If the few of you that actually read this blog have any suggestions or comments I would love to hear from you.

My Baking Addiction

I guess if I have to have an addiction, baking is the way to go right?
I have always liked to bake, but at home it was an occasional, when I had something I really wanted to bake, or when I wanted to try a new recipe type of thing. In all honesty it didn't happen that often. Since I came to Taiwan I have gone a little baking crazy.
I am super lucky because I actually have an oven. This is a rarity in Taiwan. No one has ovens here, except for toaster ovens. I have taken advantage of this fact and since November I have been baking my own bread. Yes, you read that right, for the past 6 months I have not bought bread. I have made my own(except one time, but the bread I bought was stolen shortly after the purchase, but that is a different story).  A roommate recommended a recipe she had tried before and I really liked it and that was it, I was hooked. Not only does it taste fantastic but it also prevents me from eating too much because it takes quite up a nice chunk of my time each time I bake it.
My baking addiction does not stop at bread. I have also made pizza, rolls and of course cupcakes! I may have had a cupcake addiction before, a happy side effect of my dear baking friend Jacque. I have made cupcakes at least 5 times since moving here. Most recently I made snickers peanut butter brownies, caramel popcorn, peanut butter oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies. Now I am going to brag a little bit because everything that I have made I had to make from scratch. No cake mixes available here. I did it all on my own, which is something I have never done before. It has been fun to experiment with new recipes and finding ones that I really like and ones that are okay but that aren't on my list to make again.
Here are some pictures of some of my food adventure this semester.

Recently

Recently I have been rocking this look:

Cute, right?

For the past few weeks I have been fighting a cough. I ran out of my wonderful American medicine and so I have just been trying to wait it out... unsuccessfully. Unfortunately for me, colds don't so much love you going to bed late at night. This week it finally caught up with me and it hit me full force and added a head cold on top of the cough. I donned this mask partly to protect my students from my sick germs but also because by putting drops of eucalyptus oil on the mask it was honestly the best solution to my "not being able to breathe through my nose" problem. 

Thankfully, I am feeling much better this weekend and besides a small sniffle I am almost feeling back to normal.

It's Been a While

Okay, so it's been more than just a little while. To be fair though, it feels like it wasn't that long ago that I posted. Looking back it is hard to believe that I wrote during the last month of last semester. What?! Seriously? Where has the time gone?
I know that I haven't been that diligent with keeping up with the blog posts, but let me assure you that these past 8 months have been some of the best of my life. I truly love it here and I have had some amazing experiences.
I have a goal to get back into blogging and I even have a couple of planned blog posts to hopefully help make up for the past three months I have spent off the grid. Here's hoping that I stick with it.

My Kids

I only have three more weeks left of teaching this semester. 

Three weeks!

What?!!!! Where did the last five months go?

I am both extremely excited for the end of the semester and sad at the same time. 

I desperately need a break from my classes and I got to hand pick my classes for next semester so I am pretty stoked about that, but I am also going to cry my eyes out because I won't be teaching all of them next semester. Yes, some of my students have been extremely hard to deal with, but I love them. 

All of them.

These kids are amazing. I could never do what they do. They basically spend all day at various different schools. For me, elementary school was done when the bell rang to let me out of class. For them it is almost never ending. My first graders come straight from school and are with me until 4:00 then they go to their Chinese teacher to do their homework. Most of the kids don't go home until after 7 or 8 at night. 

I wish I could express to you how much I have come to love these kids. 

They are the reason I am here, and they are the reason that I am staying.

For some reason all of my older students don't like having their pictures taken but I am going to make them take at least one picture before the semester ends. As for my KE class, they love having their pictures taken. So take a look, and see why I love my job!

Caleb and Gabriel, My twins:)

Jana and Aison

Wesley, Eliza, Lara, and Jaelyn

Arvin, Ivan and Terry

Alia and Nicole

My youngest group all under 2 years old.

Terry, Ivan, Wade, Gigi, Alia, Alen, Cherry, Gabriel, Caleb and Arvin