Wow, what a busy week! I haven't had a chance to post! I'll try to give a quick run down of how things went so we can remember when we look back.
We had Saturday off, that was when we had had the massive ice cream/shaved ice. Sunday it was right back to training and we went through one of the curriculums for the older kids. We had to prepare this for our final assessed demo on Monday morning. I was exhausted by Sunday night. Renalda, "Yorkshire" Dan and I sat in our room and prepared our lesson plans.
By 12 I was finished typing mine up and I ran down to the...guess what...7 eleven, to print my lesson plans out!! You can do ANYTHING at a 7 Eleven here!
Just a quick aside, so far we have seen 3 different convenience store brands, 7 Eleven, Family Mart and OK Mart. Taiwan has the most convenience stores per capita in the world. There is something ridiculous like 1 convenience store for every 1500 people here, which is insane. In Taipei, there is literally one on every corner.
Anyway, so I printed my lesson plans after midnight at the 7 Eleven across the street, showered and went to bed, I was exhausted, and starting to feel a little bit of a cold creeping up on me again. Renalda, bless her, stayed up for another hour and a half prepping her lessons and doing other stuff. I woke up in the morning and all the relevant pages in the books I needed to use were marked with sticky notes!
We had had to prepare for 2 lessons, for Monday and were to teach only half a lesson as a demo. I think everyone was quite nervous to get the older curriculum, Renalda and I certainly were. We got to work early and this time got a good heads-up on what sections we needed to teach for our demo. I "lucked out" as the Americans say. You would think this meant I got bad luck, but apparently it means my luck was good, I got the younger kids lesson. Renalda on the other hand got the exact section she didn't want to get and was not very happy about it.
We were both pretty nervous, I think Renalda more than me. She put on a brave face, stole my notes for that section 😉 and delivered a good lesson. I hit all my steps and was quite happy with my delivery. Most importantly it was over and we weren't fired ☺. They "treated" us to pizza, I groaned. We have been eating the "local" food 100% of the time and have been loving it. Almost everything is served with rice, which I generally have a little bit of, but it's easy to avoid wheat and carbs in general. The lunches so far had been "lunch boxes" which included some rice, some vegetables and some meat. Pizza however gives you no option to avoid anything. Both Renalda and I had the first stomach aches since we had arrived in Taiwan after eating Western food...oh the irony.
The rest of Monday and the whole of Tuesday we went through the final curriculums and generally just got early nights. Yesterday (Wednesday), we went through all the policy and contract related things and generally wrapped up the training. We signed contracts with our branches and had a bit of a cocktail party and then it was time for us to pack our bags before going to KTV. KTV is basically a karaoke club and the tradition for Hess NST graduation is to go out to KTV and sing.
Put westerners in front of a mike after a couple of drinks and things go pear shaped! It was pretty funny and I also had a few beers and ended up with a hoarse voice singing cheesy songs as loudly as possible. We managed to get ourselves home before 12 for our early morning and the train ride south to DaJia, where our branch is.
Interestingly the branch management has decided that we should be at the same branch. We had originally thought they would put us at different branches so that we can take leave together. They seem to think that won't be a problem anymore, so we will just have to apply for our leave well in advance.
I'm nervous and excited about the imminent learning curve. I think because we are at the same branch we will have preschool kids, which I thought we may not have had, but we chose the contract option which included them. I'm really looking forward to getting going and learning some new skills. I have no doubt that it will be a lot of hard work, but I'm also sure that this will most likely be one of the most rewarding things I've done yet.
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