Josie's First Day at Summer Swimming School

 I entered undetected... camera in hand...

 But I got caught.  My coworker's son saw me and reported my presence to Josie.

 They did a nice warm up before getting into the pool.  They sorted them into three groups of ten.
Josie was lucky enough to get our good friend Tiger as her teacher.

 (For those of you of Perimeter times.... Hannah is wearing the pink shirt we know.  Ariel is wearing a new swanky white polo/golf shirt... I like the new shirt style.)

 My coworker's son joined Josie's group after a few minutes.

Yu Kids Island - Celebrating the end of school

 Josie got out of school at 1230 on Thursday.  To celebrate I took the kids to Carrefour in Taichung where they have a play place.  It was nice and quiet.  There was a mother of a two year old.  She put the kid in and tried to leave to go eat something.  The kid freaked out.  The mom told her that she was hungry and wanted to eat.  Seriously, can a two year old comprehend a mother leaving her in a strange (yet wonderful) place for any reason?
That said, my children started interacting with that little girl.  They were playing with the kitchen set.  Josie took a plate and the girl grabbed her arm and bit her.  Everyone freaked out. Josie was a cool cucumber.  Another mother put some cream on it.  I told Josie to go over and tell the little girl's mother that Josie had also done that as a toddler. "Mei-gwan-shi."  Next it was Jevin's turn.  He took a pot.  She bit him too.  The mother was mortified and literally dragged her child out of there.
Both of my kids have bruises from the bites, but I explained to them that little kids don't know how to express their frustrations and end up biting sometimes.  They both accepted it and went on with their playtime.

Josie's Hair

 Josie got great grades on her final report card.  I promised if she did well, she could dye her hair again.  This time we went a little bolder: more colors and not hidden under her natural colour.

Jason's Visit in May (Part 6)

 I just loaded my photos on the computer and realized I missed some of my photos of the last full day at the amusement park.

 Here we have the horrible children's roller-coaster.  I say horrible because it was just so terrible.  Naturally Jason, Jason, Josie and Jevin loved it.  I couldn't believe it was so fast.  I wanted off after the first round.  Everyone was laughing and said, "More! More!"  (Being a Wednesday there were no lineups.)  I said, "No, I want out!"  The operator laughed and we went around a second time.  She finally realized I was serious and let me out and the rest of the gang went around 2 or 3 more times.

 

Ah yes... and who can forget the log ride.  So I went to the store before we left and I bought a bunch of those cheap yellow raincoats.  I put it in the bag... And when Jason x 2 and Josie came out soaking wet, imagine my surprise.  "We forgot...."

 Jason x 2 went on some really freaky rides...

 This is what happens to your kid's face when you let her eat seaweed potato chips.  Yuck.

That Fire Around the Corner... In May

 On this day, I left the house at about 3pm to go to the tax office to file my taxes.  Just 45 minutes later as I was coming back into Huatan I saw smoke.  It was coming in the direction of the kids' school, so I swung by to check it out.  The teachers there told me it was a textile company that was burning.  It was actually rather far away but by the thickness of the smoke I had assumed it was much closer.
Josie's foreign teacher jumped on his motorcycle and went to check it out.
The first photo below is his picture.

 This is what the fire looked like from the kids' school.  We went out for dinner that night.  Three hours later at about 7pm the smoke had doubled in size.

 This is what it looked like from our neighborhood.

 This is what it looked like as we headed out for dinner.

 And this is what it looked like the next morning.

It was big news in our little town.  My student told me that she had seen it on the news that night.  She said it was arson.  Way to bring it all together!  I had just taught the grade eight classes the word so it was a perfect way to use our new vocabulary.

Betel nut Baby

I just thought this was cute.  It is a bitter gourd key chain.  With my one class, their level is so high that when I teased him about having a betel nut baby he was able to tell me what in fact this was.  If you have ever tasted bitter gourd you may question why they would make a key chain of one.

Jason's Visit in May (Part 5)

 We spent his last full day here at Discovery World Amusement Park.

 The S-Car-Go ride was a snail ride.

 In the evening the boys went to Tiger City for a Gold Class movie.  For a little more money one can have a lazy boy chair and waiter service during the movie.  It is a very comfortable experience.