Tuesday

It's Tuesday, September 9. It's been exactly 1 month and 2 days since we came back to Taiwan and it feels like it's been forever.

I've been taking Chinese classes ever since my placement test that I wrote about in an earlier post. I take the classes along with my students. I was placed in the equivalent of Grades 4 - 6 in Chinese Schools. I chose to go the easier route and take Grade 4. I think the kids get a kick out of it. They're pretty funny - they applaud and cheer every time I say something or if I do well in an assignment.

The teacher is a friend, but she gives me grades just as brutally as she does for the kids. Thankfully I don't have to get participation grades - it's nice to be able to opt out of parts of the class! It's also nice that these grades don't really count for me. I'm definitely not acing the class!

We also started our lady's Bible study last night. It's one of the Beth Moore ones, called "Living Beyond Yourself." She is one terrific speaker and I love how she cites the Bible so often. I've been so exhausted though that I'm not sure how I'll last doing these studies - we're watching the video part of the study every other week, and last night was a video night and I almost fell asleep at 8:30pm. What'll I do when I actually have to actively participate?!

Not much else is happening. School is school. I'm coaching volleyball, Kris is running his sports program for the elementary school. We're going on a staff retreat to Kenting in two weekends, where the schedule looks like this: Play, eat, play, sleep, eat, play, go home. I love retreats like that! It looks like after this weekend, we'll rarely be in Kaohsiung on the weekends - Kenting, then Taichung, then Fall Break which we'll probably spend up in Taipei. Nothing to complain about except that we'd love to have some visitors soon... (hint, hint!)