Hey! I'm going to try and make this a short update, because I figure if I write several short updates, then updates will actually happen. But if I try to write one long update it will never actually happen, and if it does, then nobod will actually read it.

I slept through my alarm this morning. The school van picks me up at 8:00. At 8:04 Bekah knocked on the door...ahhh! But by 8:07 I was dressed, had all my teaching stuff together and was getting in the van. Wow! Thank you Life Focus!

There are a million new kids here at the dorm. We've got two Taipie kids who speak English almost as good as we do...it's really strange to talk to easily to them. It's also strange, because now we can't say anything we want around the dorm kids. Last semester, if you used big words and said it fast, then you didn't have to worry about any of the kids understanding you. But Jimmy and Jerry can understand an amazing amount.

There's a new 7th grader named Riddick. He's taken a real liking to me and we like hanging out together. Saturday we went and got lunch together: that was really fun. One really cool thing was that we walked all the way to the lunch place and back talking Chinese! I also saw one of my old Small Kinmen students and carried on quite a catching-up conversaton with her, all in Chinese!

There's a little girl by the name of Peggy in 7th grade who's new here at the dorm. She looks like a 4th grader. She's very short and still has that round, baby-fat look. And she's a hoot. The other night she was with us in the living room and started to examine (sp?) the strange features of the Amarican's. First she stared at the back of Lucas's neck, noting the difference in hair color between his head and his neck. Then she measured the noses of everybody in the room: eye to bridge, bridge to tip, tip to face, all with her right index finger. Then she measured her own nose and compared. Then she just stared. She would stare directly at your face, then at your profile. Then she would compare what she just saw to somebody else in the room. All the while she hardly said a word: she simply made simple exlamitory (sp?) noises. Talk about a hoot! We were all just cracking up watching her.

The twins are gone! They said they would be back this semester, but apparently something changed over the summer and they now are living in Taiwan. Dude, I miss those kids!

Man, speaking of missing, I seriously miss Jr. high. Everytime I come back from school and see the Jr. high kids (many of them my old students) I feel like screaming crying at the same time. It's not that elem. is all that bad. But I just can't get into it. I've got lots of cool students, but it's just not like Jr. high. Jr. high you can actually get to know the students and be friends. But what can you do with 3rd graders that you see only once a week? On top of that I feel like I never understand what's going on in the classroom. I've only got two out of six teachers that can actually speak decent English. 10 out of the 20 classes I hardly do any teaching at all (very strange after teaching 45 minutes almost every class last semester).

Sure, I know it's better for my Chinese. None of the kids can even begin to talk to me in English. But I just really, really miss Jr. high.

Ok, in spite of that, things are generally going very good. Awesome, in fact. My monday night class for Sr. high students is going very good. Tonight I told them a story and had them translate it and we also did charades. Then we went to easy way and got stuff to drink. I've got a new class on Wednesday nights that's all students who used to be mine in Jr. high. Most of them are from Small Kinmen. That class is such a hoot! They're english level is a lot higher than my monday night class, so there's a lot more stuff I can do with them.

I'm working on characters a lot. I've got almost 100 characters that I can both read and write now. I like going to La Caffe and sitting in there for an hour or so and working on characters. Garry, the owner, speaks a little English and is always willing to help me if I have a question. He and his wife are both really cool.

There's a couple new forigners on the island. One is taking Tim Nall's place at the college and another lady and her husband are teaching at one of the Jr. highs. I figured it up and I think we still have about 14 forigners on the island total. Not that many. Which is very cool.

Ok, I'm going to get off now. Plan on hearing about our moon festival sometime soon. Drunken proffesions of love, moon cakes coming out of the ears, b-b-q with the dorm kids...all sorts of cool stories.

Love you guys! Bye!