Thomas. He looks so serious, but I think it’s really just squintiness from the bright, warm, sun.
Possibly more than any other kid in the class, Peggy loves to have her picture taken. She’s got the same reaction to the camera that cats in comic strip (Garfield, Get Fuzzy) have to the sound for a can opener - somehow, she knows there’s a camera out and comes running, no matter what she was doing before.
Lola, Ivan, and Finian on the alligator teeter-totter. If you only ever saw these pictures, you might even think this is something that happens more than once every 3 or 4 weeks!
Elin with a rare smile. I think it’s my favorite picture from today? She doesn’t usually like to have her picture taken, but today, while she was playing, she didn’t seem to mind to much.
Oh, and one last thing - another video from yesterday. This one was shot during the afternoon, when official learning time is over and kids are playing while they wait to go home. There are kids from all three classes in the room, but the featured players are all mine.
(Mom, take the time to watch - there’s a minor tribute around the 50-second mark!)
So, it’s new and fast and shiny, but it’s also eminently unfamiliar. Once I get things down, yes, they’re easier, but until then? Uh…..all my experience with the pc is pretty much useless. Even googling “new mac” didn’t help much. I found some sites that list common mac newbie mistakes, but didn’t really tell how to avoid making those mistakes - the lists were more for the experienced to giggle and point (in a discreet, hipster sort of way, of course), I guess.
I’m trying to upload some pictures (well, succeeding now, after a tech support call to my sister), and I might make another post tonight (tomorrow, really, for me), or I might just save it for tomorrow evening’s post. Time will tell.
I’m finally starting to get better, yay! I’m pretty tired still, and I wear out in no time flat, but I’m feeling less actually *sick*, and that’s nice. So for those of you who were thinking it, you weren’t alone, and the thought crossed my mind once as well, but no, I don’t have ebola.
Oh, my! What have we here? Is it a shiny new MacBook?
Why, yes it is. I’m typing on a pretty, clean, white, and fastMacBook. I got the middle option - not the cheapest one, not the on that comes in black, but the one that does have a dvd burner and 120GB hard drive. Woo!
Anyway, not going to stay and chat long, since I have to go see what my new toy can do!
I know I’ve mentioned Evelyn in my posts before, so I thought I’d give you all out there in blogland a face to go with the name. Evelyn is one the secretaries at our branch, and holy moly, has she been a lifesaver more times than I can count. She’s out go-to girl when we need help finding all sorts of things, and while her English may not be as good as some of the teachers’, it’s easily waaaaay better than our limited Chinese.1
This pictures isn’t the best, but it’s all I’ve got. We (she and I, but not Seth) may be headed out to Taoyuan tomorrow for some shabu shabu and shopping - fun girl trip, whee!
We begin Chinese lessons on Tuesday, though, assuming we can get there and back before we have to start class at 4:30. We’re looking at pretty long communte to get there - fingers crossed we can squeeze out the trip in the time we have available! [↩]
You know the phrase worried sick? Well, I guess I am pretty much officially dealing with a cold, but I think I’m changing the phrase. I’m worried tired. All day worrying (worthlessly, I might add, since what exactly can I do to help, whee I can’t speak the language) about Seth, plus working, plus squeezing in a few things I was supposed to have done anyway but forgot about in the hustle and bustle of sick Seth, oh, and also running over to bushiban to give an oral test means I’m beat. Seth is doing better (although I’m planning to make sure he milks the recovery period as long as possible), and even though I’m tired, I’m doing okay. Yay for okay, right?
Oh, and my little sister is a Master (at least, I think that’s what her Facebook status is saying)! She gets extra letters behind her name on here resume, now, plus woo! she can sing good! Yay for Lindsay!
So I’m still sick, believe it or not. I felt okay on Saturday and Sunday, but Monday evening I started feeling badly again, and Tuesday morning I ever-so-slightly blacked out in my kindy class. I’ve been to the doctor acouple of times since then, and I’m having myriad undiagnosable symptoms. Well, diagnosable, but as in “It’s a virus, we don’t know what, but it’s attacking your cappilarries, causing them to bleed slightly, which is why you have that rash, and your intestines, also causing them to bleed which is why you have (a rather unpleasant bleeding, we’ll leave it at that.)” It magically wraps up all of my other symptoms, like the wildly fluctuating temperature, cold sweats (which just resumed about 15 seconds ago, incidentally) fatigue, miscellaneous gastrointestinal maladies, loss of appetite, (though that’s back in full force tonight for the first time all week, much to the chagrin of my aforementioned defective gastrointestinal system) dizziness, and whatever else, I don’t feel like thinking about it anymore. So, long story slightly less long, I’m pretty sick, but a bag of saline fluid in the arm has made me feel a bit better and regain my appetite, hopefully I’ll be up to more than 15 minutes at a time out of bed soon. Otherwise we’ll be broke
So to summarize, sorry if I haven’t responded to you lately on email/facebook/AIM/Skype/whatever, I just haven’t been on them. And with that, I bid you good day, I’m going back to bed.
Today was one of my long days, and it was a little different today as my schedule got shifted around to try to cover some of Seth’s classes. I worked the same number of hours, but the classes weren’t all mine, so, yeah.
Seth is still sick, although he thinks maybe he’s getting better. I don’t know, though - I’ll believe it when I see him eating food and getting up and out of bed (for anything other than trips to the doctor, that is). He’s going to the doctor again tomorrow morning, and that visit is supposed to be to review anything that came of the lab tests of his, ahem, specimen. Heh. Seth had to poo in a cup. Poop is funny, pooping in a cup is funnier (well, and crazy-worrying for me, but I’ll concentrate on the funny. See? La la la, no worrying here, no sir!).
Anyway, all this not worrying has me exausted (wait, I may have already mentioned that), so I’m going to lay down, put on some mindless tv, and go to sleep.
I was just looking at my sister’s pictures on Facebook. She went to Greece a few years ago, and it looks just fabulous. <sigh> I want to go to Greece. Or Italy. Or Spain. Or France. Or Costa Rica. Or Argentina. Or Russia. Truly, of all the places I ever dreamed of going, Taiwan was never on the list. Asia, really, as a whole, was never on the list. Don’t get me wrong - I’m glad I’m here (well, health concerns notwithstanding) - but it’s just weird to think I’m here, of all places. Life is funny, I guess.
Seth finally made it to the hospital this afternoon. The doctor is conviced it’s more than a cold, but it doesn’t seem to be fumigationpoisioning, and other than that, he has no real idea what’s wrong with Seth. So, the doctor gave him some antibiotics, some anti-nausea pills to counteract the nausea the antibiotics will induce, and 6 tylenols. Yeah, six. To last for three days, as Seth’s been told to return on Friday at 8:00am. Uh, yeah, I think he might be supplementing that supply with our own.
So, I told our manager at the kindy (where we teach kindy in the morning and older kids in the afternoon in the treehouse and Clubhouse classes, not bushiban classes) that Seth’d definitly be out Friday morning and probably tomorrow, too, as he’s pretty weak and worn out from whatever it is that’s sending him running to the bathroom almost hourly. So, nodding as if she understood, she then asks “So, in the afternoon, he can come?” For crying out loud! I had just finished telling her that the’ hospital doctor didn’t know what was wrong with him, that he has to go back, and I didn’t think he was up for teaching tomorrow. Uh, no, I don’t think he’ll be able to teach in the afternoon. He’s sick. Please notice this and file it away for immediate reference.
You know what’s funny? He’s supposed to “teach” an open house at the kindy Saturday morning and she hasn’t said anything to either of us. Even he does make it, he’ll look craptastically hung-over. Do you suppose that’ll bring in all the paying parents? I can’t imagine it will. Of course, that might just be a winning situation for us, though - neither of us really wants more students at kindy just now. Less would be better. Maybe he’ll muster the bare minimum of strength on Saturday, after all!
