It's never a good sign when the most creative thing I can think of for a blog post title is just a summary of the posts' parts. So we'll see what happens here.
This morning, I got up and put on a white shirt, khaki shorts, black shoes, brown hat, turquoise scarf (worn as a belt), wooden sword, and black eye patch. This will, I realized, be my costume de rigueur for the next week.
Why, you ask? Well, it's simple. I am an elementary school teacher. More specifically, I am an American English elementary school teacher living in Taiwan, and I teach 19 classes a week, with no repeats, at two different schools. And next Monday is Halloween. Therefore, from now until the actual holiday rolls around next Monday, I'm a pirate!
You know, just in case the kids at Hanmin had gotten used to a foreigner walking around, I thought I'd give them something new to gawk at. (Pictures forthcoming, but I seem to have forgotten my camera at school.)
This morning, Maggie and my first fifth grade class of the week (incidentally, I always feel bad for the first class--they are essentially a test group with whom to work out any kinks of the lesson plan) had a lot of fun, learning "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat," making paper jack-o-lanterns, hearing the story of "The Headless Horseman" (abridged and in dual language to make it comprehensible), and then got to go trick or treat at the Principal's office! And here's the test of whether you read my parentheticals: I'm glad the first class of the day was the one picked for this honor.
So after a day of adorableness (lots of kids dressed up, by which I mean donned a witch hat or vampire cape or glittery mask--the costumes of choice here, apparently), I headed home. More on Halloween-y stuff later--but as I already said, this will be my week, so I've got plenty of time to extrapolate.
Tonight I went to my first Zumba class! Because, you know, there's nothing to make getting in shape easier than a fast-beat dance you've never learned that is being taught, when it's being taught at all, in Chinese. But it was fun, in a grueling, sweat-and-exhaustion inducing way! I definitely want to go back on a regular basis; maybe learn the basics so I'm no longer the awkward foreigner flailing about in some sort of misguided attempt to follow the instructor.
What made matters worse was that the other gym employees decided to come watch us, and bring people who happened to be touring the gym at the time. This didn't just happen once, either--I counted at least three separate instances when I looked over and suddenly saw Phoebe, or Cody, or Jackie, or some other Fitness Factory guru, laughing behind the glass at us, either alone or with strangers in street clothes in tow. Oh, and did I mention that I happened to be right next to said glass? Just go ahead and combine my dislike of being watched while I work out, my insecurities about my dance abilities, and my COMPLETE NEWBIE status together, and you get a real pleasant cocktail of stress.
Seriously, though, Zumba was a good idea, and I'll be back. I can already tell I'm going to be sore all over, including muscles I never think to work on the machines when I work out on my own, which is great. And of course it's a phenomenal cardio workout with great music and moves which may actually help improve my dancing at some point? We'll just have to hope and pray on that one. (And hope and pray that the new class schedule next week will still work--they change it all around every month!)
There's no real way to tie together Halloween and Zumba. Unless you imagine me dancing to Latin music in my pirate costume, which is just not a pretty picture.
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