June 30th!

Hello friends and family,

This is my personal blog I'm going to use for the next seven weeks when I go to Taiwan!

The basics:

Through a program called English Through Academics, Athletics, and Arts Abroad (ETA4) (check out: eta4.org), I'm teaching intermediate English to Taiwanese rural kids aged 13-17. Combining traditional English teaching points (like vocab and grammar), we're going to use arts and athletics to supplement and enhance their English learning.

I'm going to teach in rural parts of Taiwan near a city called Taitung (台东 - for simplified readers out there).

I'm super-excited! I hope I can come learning a lot about myself and my students too.
But also extremely nervous. I've never taught English before, and I hope I can accomplish...something. I hope my students can come away knowing a lot more about English and America/American culture (Lady GAGA and Justin Bieber anyone!? LOL!!!!!!).

I think it hasn't hit me yet - the length that I'm going to be away from home. I'm trying to let it "hit me" (weird?) by thinking about it a lot more, but for some reason it's not coming. Anyways -

Some random thoughts:
-I really really really hope my students can understand me, and that they learn a lot.
-The more I learn about Taiwan, the more amazing it and its people sound (minus the killer heat and humidity).
-My flight itinerary: 12-hour flight to South Korea (shout out to my ho Minnie Low), a seven-hour layover there (5am-12pm), fly to an airport in Taipei, wait there a while, fly to my final destination - Taitung University). Roughly a 24-hour period of travel.
-I need to buy a frisbeeeeeee. I want to teach my kids how to play ultimate frisbeeeeeee.

Hokay, I think that's it. Find me on skype (my email on skype is ba.nuyen@gmail.com).

Yeeeee!

ps. Random fact: Taiwan has more temples per person than any other country in the world.

Viva Taiwan!

pps. I'll post pictures. Please stay in contact - through skype, email, facebook, anything. If you have access to this blog, know that I MISS YOU!!!!