Life Starts Now...: Here We GO!

Tomorrow is the BIG day, the first day of school, and also the very first day of my teaching career here in Taiwan. Excited? Yes. Nervous? Yes. Tired? Most definitely. As tired as I am, I still have some final preparations to do, so this will be a shorter blog.

I have spent the last past couple of days at school with my co-teacher, meeting the staff, cleaning out the classroom, setting up, and preparing our lessons. Long days...but I bet tomorrow will feel even longer. Today is considered a school-wide Prep Day, so all staff and all students are required to show up to help organize everything and clean up the school. Yes, the students do all the labor here, isn't that just brilliant?

After what felt like an eternal wait, I finally got my schedule for my classes today. So in summary, I will be teaching 3rd to 6th grades, a total of 4 days per week (with Wednesday being Mobile English Village, more on that later), and around 4-5 classes per day. I have a total of 20 different classes to teach per week, with an average of 30 students per class. Thankfully, I won't be on my own, since I will always have a local co-teacher in the classroom, to help out with the lesson and translate when necessary.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, our school treated all the staff to a ginormous feast today at a very fancy traditional restaurant, which specialized in using red dates as the key ingredient in many of their food. And once again, there were SO MUCH food! They kept coming and coming until it just felt shameful to be indulged in such abundance of food. We had 8 people at each table, yet there were over 12 dishes total. Every time there was a pause and I thought we were finished, they brought out MORE dishes! Amazing...

Anyway, need to get back to preparing for my first day of teaching. Here are some more pictures around my school for you all to enjoy.

Let me introduce to you: Tongluo Elementary 銅鑼國小