Moon Cakes and Scooter

Today at Cing-Shan, we taught about the Moon Festival--which was fun, considering that, until I began prepping for the lesson, I knew next to nothing about it.

But I do now! After pulling together an easy-to-read version of the legend behind the holiday from an amalgamation of what the curriculum said, what my co-teacher Patty put on the worksheet for the kids, and what I found online, I got to school and found out that I would just be reading the worksheet, after all. Which was a VERY good thing, considering that, even with me just reading the shorter version which was written on the worksheet, it turns out that the vast majority of the kids didn't understand it, and needed Patty's translation to figure it out.

And man, our first class on Thursdays--insanity. They are approximately 75% boys, and 6th grade boys that deserve the reputation. Featured prominently in their midst is Jack, the first and most persistent kid hitting on me last week, who is threatening to put a very black mark on one of my favorite names. I'm going to have to work hard to keep it clean, though, in a class full of screaming preteens.

Our lesson today was pretty great, though--we just taught the vocabulary (standards of the festival like "moon" and "moon cake," plus the names of the characters--"Hou yi," "Chang O," and "Wu Kang," which I thought was funny because I had trouble pronouncing them, since they're definitely Chinese, not English!), then went through the worksheet, then just let the kids eat pomelos and moon cakes. So that was fun. :)

And then, after school, I went out and picked up my scooter! Which was fun in its own right, taking the MRT with thousands of high school students and then withdrawing $28,000NT from the ATM amidst hordes of people so I could go pay for my scooter (and have some money on hand for later). So tomorrow, I attempt driving to school solo. A bit worried based on Google's directions, which have me bizarrely weaving from scooter lane to car lane and back again, but I think if I follow common sense, and street signs, I should be okay. And then tomorrow afternoon, it's off to Taipei for the weekend!

So here's my beautiful scooter, and I'm off: