Celebrating Halloween in Tainan City

I'm exhausted but we had a great Halloween Celebration for the 2nd graders. The day included games, a haunted house, English pop-up Halloween stories, popcorn, cotton candy and other candies. The second graders loved it. I had some of the 6th graders help with the haunted house and they were great!! The student teachers were instrumental in organizing the day and you can see that we were all worn out (we had time for a nap after lunch). Thanks to everyone involved in making this a wonderful celebration for the 2nd graders. **Oh, by the way, I am using fake vampire teeth in the above group photo. :-)

A Sunday parade to a temple

As I was walking down the road on Sunday, I ran into a parade on route to a local temple. It was loud--the horns above make a very high pitched sound--and firecrackers were released as well. As you can see, many colors are used in the design of these religious relics. It was quite a sight.

A Night of Championship Baseball

The Taiwanese are crazy for their baseball and I was lucky enough to go to the Championship game of the Taiwanese Professional Baseball League. The crowd is wild and rowdy throughout the whole game with cheers and flag raising and at one time everyone was given pink balloons to shake in support of the hometeam, the Tainan Lions. Unfortunately, the Lions lost the series 0-4 to the Koahsiung Bears. As you can see we had a lot of fun and two of my students even showed up at the game.

Taiwanese money

Some of you have been curious about the money in Taiwan. For each American Dollar you receive in exchange 32 New Taiwanese (NT) Dollars. The money comes in the following denominations:
1000 NT = $31.25
500 NT = $15. 62
100 NT = $3.13
50 NT = $1.56
10 NT = 31 cents
5 NT = 16 cents
1 NT = 3 cents

A birthday party

Hi all,

One of the student teachers celebrated a birthday on Wednesday and her fellow student teachers threw her a surprise party at school. They are a great bunch of student teachers and add so much to the atmosphere of the school. I have enjoyed getting to know them and working with them. Their program is different than at Franklin College. Each of these students worked towards a major degree such as English or Physical Education. In their 5th year, they do their student teaching. This is similar to the program that we had at Ripon College in Wisconsin where I taught for two years.