Yesterday was a really long day for me. I had to get up early for the OMF prayer meeting. It's a good 30-minute walk away, which usually wakes me up. Except I got there early yesterday and ended up wanting doze the whole time. It was good, however. I really enjoy it, for some reason. It's nice to sing hymns out of a text-only songbook with people who know what they're doing. The prayer time is cool, because I actually have an idea of what each person does and how they do it. And... well, I mean, it's prayer, so I guess that is cool too. XD I was never good at group prayers, but I'm "getting better," if there's such a phraseology. By this, I mean that I am learning to enjoy it and getting better at saying what I want to say, and not feeling like everyone's mentally grading/critiquing me while I talk. (You know people do that... don't lie) I'm trying to avoid saying "Lord" and "just" over-much. You also know people do that all the time in public prayers... it drives me insane. ^_^ Unfortunately, half the time I don't know what ELSE to say. They're like the "um" and "ah" of religious talk.
After the prayer meeting, I dashed off to the main station area to buy metallic tape and origami paper for our Thanksgiving story and craft. I had a bowl of wanton for lunch... current addiction. They're small wafers of dough squares with a dab of pork in the middle, then boiled in water for a few minutes and topped with green onions or sesame oil or fried onion crumbles. All yummy. ^_^ Not a big meal, but flavorful. I'm distracted... gettting back to the topic, ahem.
I was in charge of telling the Thanksgiving story, and was honestly kind of worried about it. I haven't really thought back to that chunk of American history in a while XD and was even more iffy about saying it correctly in Chinese. You'll be proud to know that I prepped by writing out a basic outline the night before! I looked up various teaching units on Thanksgiving online, and was reminded once again why I detest teaching. Eww, teaching preparations. Unit studies. Coloring. Crafts. Glitter crafts. Anyways.
The kids had an especially naughty day yesterday, I think. A bunch of them showed up late. But after all the kids trickled in at some point, I looked around and realized that they were all there! This is a rarity (and actually, something I had yet to experience before yesterday) since they all like running off after school and buying snacks instead of showing up on time at 1:30 like they should. Needless to say, the story kind of went over badly. I taped a rectangle on the floor for them to stand in together to pretend they were "on the Mayflower." OK, so some people decided to be sharks and other people said they would rather die than get on the ship. XD Great times. I'm very glad for CI experience... bad kids and negative responses to story time really don't faze me. The craft time was also tiring. We stuck tree branches in floral foam and decorated them with paper things. I did not know that origami was such a useful teaching tool... I had timed competitions with the kids over making paper cranes and puffy stars, taught them how to make frogs and flowers, and then had a blast of nostalgia when one of the little boys made ninja stars. Nice!
Toward the end of the afternoon, we had a power struggle with our smallest/naughtiest boy. He has huge, gorgeous eyes, olive skin, and the most defiant little personality ever. He also smells awful, poor thing, kinda like he goes to sleep in dirty clothes and air-dries his sweat on him. ^_^ Anyway, he usually runs in and out, screams, etc. He knocked over a bunch of chairs and I told him he couldn't go home until he did. (I'm not cruel; it was a perfectly reasonable thing to request) Well, he self-imposed "time out" and stood there for a good 25 minutes without moving while we finished our teachers' discussion of the day and planned for the next sessions. One of the other small third-graders, Bing-Chuan, was surprisingly good yesterday afternoon. I think he had so much fun making the craft (for once) that he didn't want to go home, and instead hung around with us for a while. Poor thing, he said he didn't want to go home because there wasn't anyone there to play with him. :| Anyway, he got really curious about why the other little boy was standing there. Once I told him that he needed to pick up the chair before he was allowed to go home, he got kinda quiet for a bit. Then I was really surprised to see him go over and talk to the kid and encourage him to pick up the seat. (This was after a few minutes of making faces at him, lol) Awww, cute. It kinda made my day... which was good, 'cuz it was really draining up until that point. :|
It took me a long time to get home, and then my uncle took me out for dinner as soon as we got back. We went to a buffet-style place to meet up with my aunt. ...Now I'm hungry. I went home, took a quick nap, and then met up with Cindy to go to Brown Sugar (swanky bar) and then Room 18 (club). I've never been out in Taiwan before, but I keep hearing about it, so I was really excited. I wish Austin had prettier places like Brown Sugar. Well, I guess it does, but we never go to them. ;p It was salsa night at Brown Sugar, so I've decided I need dance lessons if I keep traveling like this. It's quite embarrassing to always be like, "I'm terrible at dancing... no, I'm not being self-deprecating, just honest." Lol. Room 18 was a blast and I had a great time.
Cindy and I had some good bonding time... very nice!
This morning saw me fighting to pry open my eyelids! I went to go see my babies for the afternoon. Halfway through feeding 'em, I got called away to help some of the workers translate something for this Finnish couple who came over to help. Um, okay, Europeans are so gorgeous in a very down-to-earth kind of way. :\ The girl had butt-length braided brown hair and the most stunning aqua eyes ever in a tanned face. I wanted to stare. :D Anyways, I did a lot in three hours: Change a round of diapers (including a poopy - it's been a while, yugh), sang Happy Birthday to the one-month-old while burping her (producing some impressive farts... yeek!), feed a coupla toddlers, cuddle some, try to soothe some who bawled when I quit holding them :\, taught one to play peek-a-boo, high-fived with another, and talked a lot of nonsense. I also mopped down the play area twice, did a load of laundry, folded another load, and realized that I'm still really, really glad I'm not a mother yet. There's so little glory in it. ;P You mothers deserve a lot of praise. And by a lot, I mean I can totally understand how Hail Marys came about.
Now I'm back at Mr. Brown. I finished BV in record time. Uploaded pics from last night. Kicking myself a little bit for neither bringing out money nor the things I meant to mail, because I'm RIGHT NEXT to the places I need to go to run errands. Am "celebrating" Thanksgiving alone in a very low-key manner. Mostly, I miss roast birds.
I like my life right now... thanks for being a part of that. :) I'm thankful for you. I have good friends. <3
No comments:
Post a Comment