Cloud Seeding

Good evening.

The kids are headed to bed.  We have a really energetic bunch of kids this week.  

I don't have much else to say.

Mostly, I just wanted to put up these pictures.

Oh yeah!  Also, it has been raining a ton over the last several days.  In one 8 hour period, we could get as much rainfall as Walla Walla will typically get over its rainiest three months combined.  Thankfully, its referred to as acid rain.  If the kids get in it, it is guaranteed that their hair will fall out soon thereafter.  So we have to keep all of our outdoor activities indoors.  

The interesting thing about this rain, is that it is borderline artificial.  The reservoir that provides the population 8 million Taipei residents hydrated was getting low.  The rain was coming, but the government decided to step up the amount of rain that would fall from the clouds by 'seeding' them.  Basically, a plane flew above the clouds and inserted them with a chemical or something that caused ALL of the rain to fall FAST, HERE!  I think most of it would have typically flown out to the Pacific, but this kept as much of the rainfall within the country as possible.

I think.

I dunno, I'm obviously no scientist.  If you know more about cloud seeding than that, correct me.

But you don't have to.  That could be embarrassing to me.  But do it, because I kinda wanna know more about it.

Thanks.

Dressed for unicycle success.

We played Rebecca Black's Friday song for them on...Friday.

Preparing for an afternoon of football.

No big deal...

But, I'm obviously awesome.

Schoolio, Yo!

It was a good weekend. 

And now, it has been followed up by a good week.  We have students at XingFu (our school, duh!) finally!  Real, live, mostly good with a few bad, energetic fifth graders.  They're getting in bed now, hopefully as tiredly as we are.  

We checked out the final product of the campus on Sunday when we arrived for the week.  It is looking really good, but not functioning completely like it should.  The last pictures below are an example of how cool they make this place look.  The ceiling lights up at night and it feels like you are in a planetarium rather than a dormitory.  

The beds, however, are a total clustercuss! It takes about ten minutes to make one bed because somehow something easy was made complicated.  Once the bed is complete, it is much too hot to sleep in because with all the money they invested in this building they didn't manage to put in air-conditioning.  That also contributed to me sleeping only three hours Sunday night.  It is VERY warm in our room, and no matter how naked I am, it doesn't keep me cool.  Plus, I need a minimal of a sheet over my body to prevent bug bites (I got one anyway).  The school light also shines right directly straight into our room, and I struggle sleeping with merely the power light from my computer exposed.  Additionally, in order to keep any sort of coolness in our room, we must leave the windows open.  This exposes us to barking dogs, cicadas, crickets, frogs and the sound of jets flying into the neighboring airport.  We pleasanted the situation last night by adding a fan to our room which helps keep it cool and less stale while muffling the sounds of the night.

Monday morning found much of the plumbing nonfunctional and the electricity insufficient for our projectors and expensive smartboards.  Somehow they think of everything while forgetting about everything.  It was fixed by class time and the classes all went borderline smoothly along with everything else.  It is really fun teaching these kids.  Most of them are really happy and are enthusiastic to participate.  The food here is great as well.  We were concerned that we would have to go to town to get food that we could be happy with, but the caterers are doing great things for us.

Anyway, Taiwan has eighty new football players.  Some of these kids managed to be blessed with the athlete genes that I 68% lack.  The rest of them are worse off than I am.  It is fun to teach them how to throw and catch a football.

Tomorrow's Wednesday, and we'll be half done with the week when we wake up in the morning.  This is not a bad way to make money.

Made it out to Paris during my weekend off.

Finally a cafeteria full of kids!

The dorm ceilings are incredible.

This lights up when the lights are off and some black lights are turned on.

AWESOME!

Sandwiches

Obviously, we heard about Osama.  I don't want to really talk about that here, but it was funny that all yesterday evening one of our team leaders pranced around Taipei shouting, "We got him!" and "God bless America!"

Today, I've been off.  So I went into town and got a haircut.  The lady wanted to give me Asia spikes--or so she indicated with her fingers in my hair.  I told her that I wanted to leave it flat.  That cost about $11.00.  Later in the day, I went to the dentist office to get my teeth cleaned, that cost me $5.00.

I bought all the materials I needed today to make a sandwich.  It cost about $7.00.  For exactly half that, I could have gone and gotten a bigger, more delicious sandwich at the local Subway, which is nearer than the grocery store and I wouldn't have had to wait through the rough prep time.

Anyway, this was the week that our school was supposed to be opened for kids.  The new building, however, didn't pass inspection.  It looked almost ready, so I don't know what the hiccup was.  All I know is that we are expecting kids next week.  I won't be counting on it, though.

Oh, and since my computer died I took it to an Apple reseller to see if they could move stuff (especially my class PowerPoints) onto Ryan's computer from my harddrive.  No luck though.  It's all gone according to that guy.  Therefore, I've spent several hours this week remaking all my class PowerPoints.

Since last I wrote:

Went to the beach.

Went on the city's biggest ferris wheel (not quite as impressive as the London Eye, but better than Vienna's ferris wheel).

Purchased tickets to The Philippines and Thailand.

Did the Maokong gondola.

Got my new card key for the apartment (only took a month and a half).

Questions?

Baby octopus sushi.  Better than adult octopus because of a lack of big suction cups.

Not sure I like the end result, so I'm not showing it.

Our School

This is the view out the front of the school...fake trees still under constructin.

Kind of the front of the school, our staff coffee house is in the center.

My classroom, with the smart board.  Might be pretty cool. 

Our facilities.  The pool will not be opened.

More of the school building.

More of my classroom.  This is really a pretty classy room.

Our office.  It really is pretty nice, too.

Our sleeping quarters with a nice view.

Our pretty cool cafeteria with English phrases on that wall. 

Our school is really green.  We have a windmill and in the background you can see our soolar-powered water heaters.

The dorm, with a mural.

My homemade pasta from last night.

My computer died yesterday.  I bought a new one.

We eat funny eggs.

We see pretty places.

We go to fun amusement parks.

Boys buy nagintas.

Funny things happen.

Still doing things.

Life's going on here.  And life is going well.  I can kinda unicycle now.
The school building process is slow, but still happening.  We have a start date of May 2 regardless of whether or not the building is open.  I'll have this first week off, and I'll probably hang around here and relax and stuff for the week.
Really, nothing very new is going on.  We hang out with people.  We do things with people.  It rained hard on Sunday.  We play games on weekends.  We go to places.
Ryan made a few great videos the first few weeks, if you haven't seen them.  You can find them on my Facebook page.  Watch them.  They're more informative than what I am writing.
Oh, I'm probably gonna go to China in September and work there for the year after this project is done.  That's kinda borderline confirmed-ish now.
And we got paid yesterday.  Though it wasn't as high as I expected because about $150 goes to health insurance each month.  That seems steep.  But, hey!  I'm safe now.  Maybe.  I should do plastic surgery while on this deal.  What would make me look better?  A nose-job?
Anyway, tonight is pasta night.  The ravioli is delicious.  That's what I am looking forward to after work today.
Thanks for reading.  I know that was boring.  I'll strive to make life more exciting.  Probably.
Maybe I'll find some pictures to add...