Mass Update: I'm so sorry

So so so sorry I'm been MIA. This last week I was floored with the flu - with full list of symptoms as fever, nausea, achiness, dizziness, headache, body ache, neck pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and extreme fatigue. It was horrible :(. Not only was suffering from the flu, I lost a week of teaching with my students. I lost a lot weight too, and on Tuesday early morning I went to the hospital. I've never been to a hospital in a foreign country before. That was kind of interesting, but a little alarming. I realized they don't use gloves....lol. But they gave me an IV drip.

I'm feeling better right now, meaning all of my symptoms are gone (except diarrhea...lol), but I'm still really tired. Last Saturday, July 17th, I slept in until noon, ate lunch, slept until 4pm, drank some water, watched Friends from Chinese pirated sites, ate dinner, and am now planning to go to bed again lol.

Being sick in a foreign country sucks - it's made me a little homesick :(. But people here are really nice - the program staff have been super-supportive, they've been feeding me, and since there are a lot of medical students and doctors here volunteering with us, I've gotten a lot of good medical advice :D.

But sickness aside, in reference to last week, it was AMAZING!

I love my students so much. At first they were super-shy, but now they're opening up, maybe a little too much. They are actually rather difficult to discipline. Because I love my kids too much, let me tell you about all of them:

DORA- her English isn't that great. She looks a lot like Jennifer Tran at UCSD, for those of know her. She's kind of quiet and shy, but she smiles a lot.

WENDY- super, super quiet and serious. She hardly opens her mouth, but sometimes I catch her smiling and having fun, and then she looks at me, and becomes serious again. Her English isn't that great, but I hope she can open up to me as this goes on.

LIZ- I love Liz!!!! She's smiles all the time! She seems like the typical 15-year old Taiwanese girl. She loves Elmo (she draws Elmo all over the place, including my get-well card), she is obsessed with Justin Bieber (I caught her mouthing the lyrics to "One Time" one time), and she wraps her hair up in a towel like Princess Leia, who I tried to explain to her, but she didn't really get it. She works super hard!!! (which I love the most), copies down every new word she learns, laughs a lot, but when I explain vocabulary or grammar, she has this confused look on her face (I ask her, "do you have any questions?" in Chinese, but she always says no...). Anyways, I love Liz!!!!!!!!

KELLY- Kelly is UBER-CRAZY. Like UBER-status. She's very sarcastic, and has a crazy sense of humor. She's the life of the party for the girls. She can sometimes be mean to other students, especially a little boy named Yo-Yo, but she's so funny. Her English is pretty advanced.

ADAM- Very laid-back, intelligent, but kind of lazy. He really likes the NBA (he tried talking to me about the merits of Andrew Bynum, but it was fail for me. Xinwei could have carried a better conversation with this guy). His English is really good. He always smiles!!! :D He really likes The Fray and Daniel Powter, and was impressed when I said I liked "Look After You" too. I like him!

RUBY- SO FUNNY, but not in an intentional way like Kelly. She's kind of a thug - she always wears basketball shorts and tennis shoes, chills with the big guys in the class, BUT she's this TINY little Asian girl with a pony tail with glasses and big teeth. She's adorable. She has a heart of gold - she always is trying to help me with class logistics, makes fun of me sometimes, and always says "You win! ___ wins!" She's very competitive. I love her.

KEVIN - This huge guy that looks like a 25-year old, but has a heart of gold. I catch him trying to use English out of class, which is super-impressive. Recently, he's been really lazy and kind of having a bad attitude :(, but hopefully he shapes up. His English is very basic, but what counts is he tries (or at least he used to). He reminds me of a bear, but like a happy, friendly bear.

BOB - A pretty nice guy, but kind of lazy. He's really good friends with Kevin, but not as friendly with me. I think he's sort of a bad influence on Kevin a little bit, but whatevs. Still friendly.

JANE- A very smiley girl. She's inseparable with some of the girls, and is super-quiet. Out of nowhere though, she was like, really loud, "BRIAN, DO YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND?" I thought her English was really basic, so I was kind of shocked. But yeah, she smiles a lot, and laughs with the other girls, like Kelly.

JULIE - Very smart, but doesn't practice enough English-speaking. I can speak English at native-speed with her (normally in class, I talk SUPER-SLOWLY and VERY ENUNCIATED), and she understands (which is quite the feat), but she never really takes the initiative to speak English on her own with me. She helps a lot of her friends by translating. She smiles a lot.

SORA - I LOVE SORA SO MUCH! She's this dorky girl with square black glasses, she loves Linkin Park, she dresses in baggy clothes, looks totally emo, but she always shouts in this high-pitched, super-cute, squeaky voice. Her English is really good, but she's a little shy. She always yells out at me, "noooo!" because I pick on her a lot to answer my English questions. She's adorable :D.

JENNY - very androgynous. She wears purple contacts, has a red-hair-dyed mullet, and sometimes has attitude problems. But she's totally the cool kid. SHE KNOWS HOW TO BREAK DANCE, AND SHE PLAYS GUITAR SUPER-WELL, AND SHE LOVES LADY GAGA. lol. She kind of has attitude problems when we do class activities, but I find that she still does them; her English I think is better than she thinks. She makes fun of me a lot lol.

JENNIFER - This very tall, sweet-hearted; she's one of my two star students. Her English is above and beyond - and she works super-hard. :D <3

JUDY - This super-cute, adorable little girl with the biggest eyes I've seen (seriously, like an anime character). She and Jennifer are my two star students, not only with the best English, but one of the best work ethics too. I can never catch Judy without her dictionary right next to her, diligent taking notes of any words I say that she doesn't know. She's really sensitive and innocent - she-super sweet-hearted. For example, she started sobbing when I asked her if she was OK when she bumped her head during a game; she sobbed even harder when I told her she didn't have to do that day's homework if her head hurt. She later told me she was overwhelmed by my "nicencess." Lol. She's adorbs. <3

YO-YO- An 11-yeard old chubby know-it-all - sort of annoying and awkward, with the rest of the class kind of hating on him. He kind of reminds me of myself when I was young...lol. His English is advanced. He's really chubby lol :D. But he's really nice. One time for a homework assignment, he wrote that I was his "hero." hmmm....maybe he misunderstand "hero." lol....

AN - A very dark aboriginal girl from Orchid Island. She was only in my class for two weeks, when she was BFF with Liz. She smiles so much, it made my heart break. She really likes the Shaggy's song "It wasn't me." I'm really sad she left :(.

JEFF - Really close friends with An; also from Orchid Island. Kind of has an attitude problem, but his English is pretty good. He wasn't as friendly as An, but he's nice.

MICHAEL - This adorable, crazy 11-year old placed into my class level by mistake, but had to stay because he "loved me too much." It was weird lol. His English is terrible, and his work ethic isn't that great, but he really likes my class. He's SUPER CARING towards me, like genuinely probably the student that cares about me the most, and very polite, but I notice sometimes he causes trouble with other students. I have yet to figure out this crazy kid lol.

FANNY - This funny little chubby girl. She doesn't have too many friends in this class because she's younger. She's kind of quiet and awkward, but every once in a while I catch a precious laugh from her about something that I do.

THOMAS - A James Lintern look-alike. Just moved into my class this week - so far, he's really quiet. But he has a hair-flip just like James Lintern (just in case any of you know about Lintern).

Those are my kids!!!!!! I like them a lot, even though recently they've been causing me some discipline pains, lol.

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My team is really fun and crazy. The past week when I was sick, I really missed them, but now them I'm back, it's crazy times again. Jeanette and I co-teach our combined classes together, and I feel like we've gotten closer. Jocelyn NON-STOP makes fun of me, calls me "girl," but she's crazy loud and I call her out on it lol. Akemi laughs wayyyy too much LOL! and has a habit of interrupting people lol. Joanne is kind of quiet, but I feel like I've gotten to know her more than others because of random conversations we have. Agnes - major pain in the a** LOL. JK. She's "apparently" a threat to my masculinity because she's more "man" than I am. sigh.... anyways, she makes me laugh non-stop. Kim is our chosen Mom away from home - she keeps calling us her "cats," because we're hard to "herd."

ps. I lag a lot in Taiwan. I guess the same as in the US...or Guatemala....lol.

I'm starting to get sick of the food :(. I miss American food!!!!

This past weekend, I went paragliding!!!! It was really scary at first, but then once I took off, it was so calming, and the scenery stunning. But before that, it was endless morbid sarcasm LOL. Paragliding was a lot of fun.

Anyways, miss you all!!!! <3 <3 Please, please - random updates from anything, anywhere, anytime is appreciated. I will try to blog more consistently now :D.

pps. For our English camp closing ceremony, we're planning to start a secret "I gotta feeling" flash mob with our kids. Youtube "Oprah flash mob," and you'll see ;).

LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU ALL

<3 :(