Summer Stuff

Some other fun things I've been up to recently:

Pictures from a photo scavenger hunt we did at a summer camp in Yilan. Can you guess our team's name?The first word is "The."

I was in Taipei after that for 1.5 weeks, which I already blogged about. Great fun.

Then I spent a week teaching at the girls' school. They have two classes that specialize in dance, and don't normally take my English conversation class. They were a fun group, but definitely had a lower English level. To whoever decided dancers don't need to learn English: it doesn't make sense. I told them that if they're

serious about being professional performers in the future, language skills will be essential. If they ever make it to the international level, or get to do performances overseas, they'll certainly need and use English.
In keeping with what I already knew they were interested in, I had the students make up dances to English songs, which they performed here on the last day. I might post a couple of videos later. One of the groups danced with umbrellas, and it was hilarious! Mostly because they hadn't thought ahead to using automatic umbrellas, so they had some difficulty opening and closing them in sync. They still had fun though!

Last weekend I had a couple of inauspicious days.... first of all, I went to Taipei overnight and left my scooter keys in my scooter, which then caused me to freak out as I was getting ready to come back because I couldn't find my keys anywhere. It's a miracle my scooter wasn't stolen, though I guess it was parked at the church! It was really funny though, because in one of the English language newspapers here, they publish the "lunar prophecy" of the day telling you which endeavors you should or shouldn't undertake and the one for Sunday said

It's a good day for:
Nothing
It's a bad day for:
Everything

It cracked me up! But I should have taken heed, because later I proceeded to fall down and scratch up my legs, get a sunburn, and spend almost a hundred dollars on unexpected scooter repairs! I'm fine now, but I guess my planets weren't aligned right, or SOMETHING!

Finally, I had a housewarming party last night! It was great to show off my new apartment, which I've found can hold a lot of people! At one point there were 23 people over! I did get in trouble with management for being too noisy though :S I assured them I wouldn't be having parties like that on a regular basis.
It was really cool to see all the connections between the people I know here. I even had some students from 4 years ago show up!
I also got a chance to do a little cooking. Here is a marble cake I baked, and an extremely popular crab artichoke dip, which I wasn't sure would turn out well or go over well. The hummus, on the other hand, was barely touched. I think I should have labeled it! Anyways, if you're ever in Yilan, I welcome you to come stay at my place!