late nights, early mornings

On Friday I taught at the third school, Yu Dong Jr. High, which is good in that instead of two large classes, I have one smaller class for the whole two hours! I'm so excited about that opportunity. The class was fun, but the students are at a pretty low level, it will be interesting to see how i can adapt LTE for them, but they have good attitudes for the most part. I think it will be a lot of fun! One of my big teaching difficulties right now is figuring out how best to work with the classroom teacher/translator. I'm not used to having a translator, and am actually wondering if it's a hindrance in many ways since I don't have to try hard to teach at their level, and they don't even have to listen to me, they can just listen for the translation! Also the teachers have the tendency to take over at certain points, or translate things that wouldn't necessarily need to be translated, like if i say "draw," mime it, and point to a picture of it, it probably doesn't need to be translated! I want the students to associate it with the action instead of just turning their brains off until they hear it in Chinese.

Yes I did go on a glasses adventure last night, and chose 2 pairs of cool glasses, but I only bought one.. maybe in a few months I'll buy another! They are much cheaper than at home! I should have them in a week or two. I'm really sleepy today b/c we got back from Hualien around 11:30 and then I was up for a couple of hours doing final preparations for our English Club. We were supposed to get up at 5 to meet with the church people to pray (once a month they go up on a mountain to pray for the area) but we got up and decided it was more important to be coherent for our English Club. Still, we were at the church by 7:30 to set up (and had a few more communication difficulties, since there is a bible study in the room we were supposed to be using right before so we couldn't do a run through/make sure our technology was working until almost before it was supposed to start!). It did go pretty well though, we had more than 20 students again! 22 I think. We got some of their email addresses, so maybe we'll be able to correspond a bit.
We're helping lead worship again tomorrow, which promises to be fun and exciting... at least we get to sing half of it in English this time.... I wonder who our translator will be?

Can you believe I've had over 500 visitors to this site?? I can't... though half of them are probably my own haha that's ok. Thanks to all my faithful readers! I love you! I'm glad some of you are taking the time to read, even if i'm not taking the time to email you :S (sorry)

OH and the best news of all.... I GOT TO HOLD A PUPPY TODAY!!!!!!!!! They are probably still a little young to be holding them, but hey everyone else was! Jeff and Sherly have had a change of heart and are going to keep 1!! I'm so excited! THEY ARE SOOOOO CUTE! ok... i'm done