Field Trips, April Fools, and Holidays!

Hi y'all!
Hope you have had a lovely weekend like I have! We have had two holidays this week in Taiwan, Children's Day and Tomb Sweeping Day.  As a result, I had Friday off, and had a staycation in my own city.

Now, Children's Day was great for me for two reasons:

• my preschoolers were well behaved all week because at the end of the week they would be getting toys (but only if they were good…or so we told them…)
• my 5th graders were not allowed to have homework this week (from their elementary school) so they were very happy!

Tomb Sweeping Day is more of a ceremonial holiday- most people go to their ancestral homes (parents/grandparents house, depending on your age) and spend time with their families.

I spent time with my Starbucks family!
(Not pictured: the four other expats also spending time with their Starbucks. We're a sad lot.)

 Of course, we also had a little holiday in America this week, called April Fool's Day.  While this is celebrated in Taiwan, it's celebrated very badly. April fool's jokes for them include yelling at their teacher, shoving people's faces into dirt…
But my 5th graders had clearly never been pranked by their teacher before. I decided to do my own celebration and gave my students an old Spanish quiz rather than an English quiz this week.  To my complete surprise, they did not suspect a thing..but were very frustrated:

Look how properly he is sitting!

Sample student exclamations:

• "the word house is not in here?"
• "teacher, it should be i-n, not e-n"
• "What? what?"
• "Teacher, it's sooo hard"
• "What is this?"

Of course, after I handed their quizzes back to them, they were devastated by their results.  But when I explained the joke, we had a nice laugh (especially when they realized that meant they didn't have a quiz that day!!) It was a fun chance for me to share some more amusing American culture with my students, and they really enjoyed it in the end!

On actually April Fool's Day, I actually spent the day going on a field trip with my adorable preschoolers.  We went to a farm, and of course, adorableness ensued:

We fed some cows milk! 

Saw some adorable (but smelly) baby pigs!

Rode trains (oh no…we have an odd number of students….guess I have to go too!)

The bus ride back with Teacher Mia encouraging our students to please, please nap!

Other than that, I (FINALLY) went to Fengjia night market, Taichung's night market.  I personally think it's better than Taipei's…enough that we were there from 7 pm to midnight!

It was super fun, and I'm sorry I don't have more photos of my awesome new things (I got a skirt, a cardigan, a pair of shoes, and headphones, and this food… for $30 USD)

This is the woman making my fantastic Thai lemon cheese baked potato!

Did Sandy buy a plant??

Did I? No! It's actually Ice Cream!!! 

That's it for this week! I hope to blog next week post my half-marathon (if they ever mail me my registration packet) with lots of half marathon round 2 stories (also known as the much hillier half marathon in 85 degree weather I may or may not finish) and baby shower pictures from my friend Yasmin's shower! Until then, happy exploring in your own towns- playing tourist and catching up on sleep is surprisingly fun!