I start tutoring English!

One day, I received an email from a girl and she was contacting me because she wanted a tutor to help her with her conversational English; she was going to have an interview that week and she needed a tutor right away. Luckily, I was free that week and so I responded to her and we met up the next day. She was a very nice person and I was very surprised at how good her English was. I felt like she didn't even need my help. However, we talked about her interview and I helped her out with some grammar and sentence structures. While helping her out, I was improving my English as well. I'm pretty satisfied with being a tutor and I look forward to helping her and learning along with her.

National Taichung Museum of Fine Arts

So on a Sunday, November 30, 2013, my housemate and I decided to go to the Taichung Museum of Fine Arts since we haven't been there yet. We took bus 23 there and got there in about half an hour. The entrance to the art museum is gorgeous. It is a very large area with green grass. I'll attach a picture so you can see what I'm talking about.

I am not an artist, but the layout of the museum was really nice. Once I got inside the museum, it was very big and spacious. The directions of how to get through the different exhibitions were a bit complicated, but I love just walking and wondering around. I have to admit that a lot of the art in that museum was a bit weird and it was hard for me to understand what was going on. However, I do appreciate art a lot and I admire artists. 

Thanksgiving with my students!

So for Thanksgiving at school, I had my 4th grade students do turkey feathers and we put them all together on a bigger turkey. As for my 5th graders, they just did basic paper strips and wrote what they were thankful for and then we put them all together in chains. Here is what it looks like:

Banner Church

Hi there, it has been the longest time ever, I know. I have not made it a priority to blog and it has been like 3 months since I have done it so I am finally going to update you all on what I have been up to! First off, one thing I want to mention is that I have never been to church before since my family is not religious. However, one of my friends is a Christian and she goes to church on Sundays so I decided that I want to go with her and check it out. So on November 24th, we went to a church near YiZhong Street called Banner Church. This church is one of the biggest churches in Taiwan. We went to a smaller branch of this church since the main church is not as convenient for us to get to. I went with my housemate and my friend. The experience was interesting. There was a lot of singing, which I love other than the fact that it was in Chinese so I couldn't really sing along. I was expecting to meet some younger people at the church, but there were mainly older people. There was a nice lady who could speak really good English so once the speaker started, she helped translate for me the whole time. At the end of the session, we were asked to attend a protest in Taipei, but since we were already a bit uncomfortable by then, we decided to leave. The experience itself was nice, but I don't think I want to go back since I am not Christian so I feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes when there are some things that I don't believe in. My friend told me that this church compared to the ones in the states was a bit more forceful, but I wouldn't know since I have never been to any. However, I'm still glad I went.

Sea of Flowers in Xinshe

Hi there! So this past Saturday, November 23, I went to an annual flower exhibition in Xinshe, Taichung. Every year, for 5 weekends, this beautiful flower exhibition is open to the public to let people experience and appreciate the beauty of agriculture. At this place there is a variety of flowers from lavender to orchids. There was also an exhibition of Chinese medicine herbs which was very interesting. Every year, there is at least one million visitors to this flower exhibition. I am very glad that I went.


I went with my housemate, Carolyn, and my advisor, Iris. We had to catch a local bus to a station where we took a free shuttle up to Xinshe. To my surprise, the weather that day was extremely hot and there was no shade so it was a very sunny and hot day. After walking around the exhibitions for about an hour, we went to eat at the food court where I had noodles, fish ball soup, and a piece of chicken. After lunch, we we headed back home which took us about an hour and a half total.

For more pictures, go to my facebook :) 

https://www.facebook.com/nou.vang.90/media_set?set=a.575453205876427.1073741857.100002352595158&type=1

Thanksgiving Dinner/Weekend in Taipei

So on November 15th, Fulbright Taiwan had all the ETAs go to Taipei for a Thanksgiving dinner. That day was a friday so we had to take that day off of school and go early to Taipei. Whenever we go to Taipei, we always take the High Speed Rail, which gets us to Taipei is about 45-50 minutes compared to a regular train which takes around 2 hours and 15 minutes. It's really nice that Fulbright pays for our transportation since a HSR ticket is pretty expensive in Taiwanese dollars (NT 700-NT750 one way) which is around 25 US dollars. Once we got to Taipei, we had to take the MRT(Taipei's subway lines) to Danshui and that took about 35 minutes. From Danshui we took a bus to Tamkung University and had lunch there. Here we had the most expensive lunch box I have had so far in Taiwan (NT280).

We then had two speakers who came to talk to us. The first one talked to us about the quality of Taiwan's education. She was kind of advertising how great it is to attend a university in Taiwan and wants us to consider doing our graduate studies in Taiwan after our ETA year. The second speaker talked about Taiwan and US relations and about how Taiwan is in between two big powers: the US and China. The talk was interesting, but a lot of it was very political so it was sometimes hard to follow. After this, we left to go to our dinner which was an hour bus ride. 

Our dinner was held in a fancy hotel ballroom. We had full on turkey, ham, and mashed potatoes. The dinner was very good and it was nice to celebrate Thanksgiving :) 

After our dinner, we were free to go to our hotel rooms, which were located in a different hotel. We took the MRT back to Just Sleep Hotel. This hotel is so nice and comfortable. I literally am excited every time we get the chance to sleep in this hotel because its beds are soooo comfortable that I don't want to get up the next morning. They provide you with everything you need from toothbrush to indoor slippers. Here's a picture of what the room looks like. The room is very plain, but it's so nice. I had the room all to myself since my roommate for that night did not sleep in that room :D

The view from my window :)

That night, I went to sleep early because the next day was going to be a long adventure day as well. 

The next morning, I had to wake up at 7 to get ready to go on an adventure to the east coast, Juifeng. I, along with 5 other ETAs took the train and then a bus to Bitou first where we hiked a beautiful stair hike trail. It was so breath-taking even though it was sprinkling the whole time. 

After Bitou, we went to Juifeng, an old traditional Japanese style street filled with snacks and cute little stores. 

Juifeng was so crowded that it was very hard to explore with ease. However, after an hour or so, we were all cold and tired so we decided to go back to catch a bus. We finally caught a bus which took us back to the train station where we took the train back to Taipei and from Taipei we took the HSR back to Taichung and the from there we took a free shuttle to Fengjia University where we then took the bus which took us home. The journey we had was very worth it, but we were all so tired at the end of the day. I will be back to visit Taipei at least two more times this year so I hope to have more adventures next time. Thank you for reading :)

Light Meets Shadow - 3D Light Show

So today I'm going to blog about a small event that I went to this past Saturday. Since I was sick, I didn't go out during the day, but then I decided that I need to go out and get some "fresh" air. I went to grab dinner with one of my friends, Esther, and then we walked over to the Taichung Prefecture Hall and Budokan Martial Arts Hall where the light show was. The show was smaller than what we thought, but it was overall a very pretty and interesting show. It was short but I enjoyed it. Also, that night, I bought a Passion Fruit tea with Fiber Jelly from Mr. Wish for the first time. I am looking forward to try more fruit tea from Mr. Wish since they have a pretty large variety of fruit teas :)