Holiday Fun With My Students

One of the advantages of having classes with just 5 or 6 kids is it allows me to work with them on fun things outside of the curriculum. I usually have 10 or 15 minutes of class each day to have silly fun. I have used that time recently making fun holiday art. The kids love the Christmas season even though it's not an official holiday here.

Hope, the newly appointed school director, is awesome. She has done a terrific job of decorating the office and making it a warmer, more friendly atmosphere. She was happy to hear that I was getting my kids to help decorate. She came up with the idea of making a Christmas case with all of the kids creations. She is great. Her efforts are inspiring to everyone in the office, I really enjoy working for her.

I had a few of my classes color a variety of Christmas-related pictures and make some personalized reindeer. The reindeer were particularly fun because they had to trace their feet and hands to make the shapes.

This is the case. It's located in the main hall for everyone to see. The kids are proud of their work.

A close-up of some of the excellent work. It's fun to let them create stuff like this. The life of a student here in Taiwan is for too rigid. It leaves very little room for creativity. The reindeer head is a cut-out of their shoe, and the ears are the tracing of their hands...I think they are cute. Notice the picture on the left, "Merry Christamas"...lol.

My kindergarten class pointing out their artwork. Little Monica in the front is adorable. The two boys are brothers who recently returned from living in the U.S. for a few years. Their English is excellent. Not sure why they are in this class but I enjoy teaching them.

Some of the kids from my conversation-based class. These kids work really hard. I challenge them every class and they have done really well. Sophia, in the front, is pointing to her Thanksgiving picture. I decided to include the turkey pages because not all of them had completed the Christmas artwork.

The office tree. It's not extravagant, but Hope does really well with limited stuff to work with.

Christmas Dinner

Carrie and John's apartment was the scene for Christmas dinner last Saturday night. The dinner was awesome, we ate like kings. It was fun to hang with Carrie, John, Scott and a handful of other good friends. A big thank you to John and Carrie for hosting the shindig.



For more details on the evening, check out Jo's site at Joanna Rees Photography and Carrie's site at My Several Worlds.

Sogo Christmas Decorations

I snapped a few shots of the main entrance of a Sogo department store on my way home from work the other day. Sogo is the biggest chain of department stores in Taiwan. The merchandise is way over-priced. It's difficult to justify buying stuff there when you can go down the street to a night market and buy a perfectly acceptable rip-off of the same stuff.

This is one of a few stores I have seen go all-out with their Christmas decorations. They chose a Disney Christmas theme.

Taipei Main Christmas Tree

Last weekend, Catherine & I made a return trip to Yingge. We wanted to pick up the pottery that we made a few weeks back, and do a little shopping while we were there. It's a nice little town with fun shops. I will take some photos of our pottery creations and will post them soon, I promise.
We took the train to Yingge. Near the ticketing area in Taipei Main Station they put up a lovely tree for the holidays. I think they did a reasonably good job of decorating it, save the advertising placards. The square white pieces on the tree are ads for various local businesses.