barbie museums and african vacays

I'm going to Africa!!!


*cue Shakira music*

I'm visiting my friend Katie, who is volunteering in Tamale, Ghana in the Peace Corps. My stay will be a total of 2 and a half weeks in late July / early August and I will also be staying a few nights in Hong Kong.


In the process of purchasing said ticket, of course something had to go wrong. I tried to book my ticket through Cheapoair.com. I learned a valuable lesson: don't book anything from any company with the word "cheapo" in the name. Très sketch. I might have to cancel my credit card and reissue it and also have some Cheapoair worker from India inviting me to go visit him. Why do I have so many problems with India?
Moral of the story, don't book anything from Cheapoair.com or onetravel.com, they're a scam.


In other news, today I took my kids on a field trip to a Barbie museum.


Yup.


A Barbie museum.


It was actually pretty boring. I expected a museum of Barbies from the 50s and 60s up until now. In reality, it's just a bunch of new-ish Barbies with clothing sewn by members of the community. It's kind of a cool idea, but nonetheless, boring. Everything was in Chinese, so I had to amuse myself by creating names for the Barbies such as "Jungle whore Barbie" and "Drunken frat boy Ken."

I don't actually know any of these people. I found it on google. Sorry. Actually, this isn't even the same Barbie museum I went to - apparently there are more than one of these things in Taiwan?! 


The road trip back consisted in me teaching my kiddos important life lessons, like how to properly engage in a thumb war and how to count to three in Spanish.


In other news, according to an e-mail I just got, I will be soon getting a lot of money! Right there in my junk mail folder was an e-mail from Ghadaffi's son saying he'd like to give me 20.5 million dollars in off shore account funds from Libya. All I have to do is give him my credit card information, and BAM! Instant millionaire! Thanks, Saif! If you need a flight from Libya, let me tell you about this great deal I heard about from Cheapoair.com...

how my students learn the word "shit" from my school

This is probably too early to announce to the world, but whatever; I'm unofficially staying another year in Taiwan. I was offered to teach double kindergarten classes after I complete my contract and I won't have to work at the buxiban (cram school) anymore. This means more hours, but more consistent hours - I'll be working closer to a 9-5 job (9-4 Tues/Thurs, 9-7 MWF, and NO SATURDAYS!). I haven't signed anything yet, which is why I say "unofficial"; you never know what could happen in the next few months. 

The past weekend, I took another scooter road trip with Victoria. This time we decided to head to Wulai, located south of Taipei. It's famous for a waterfall, as seen below.

A bit underwhelming, no? Or perhaps just whelming. Definitely not overwhelming.

After feeling whelmed, we saw a gondola that went above the waterfall and thought, why not take it? So we did, and I was expecting a pretty lookout, maybe a coffee stand or something up on top of the waterfall. Instead we found....

...An archery range. Really? ARCHERY? What?

Oh, and then an ostrich came storming by us. It's just so normal.

Then I shot at stuff. Again, what normal people do on top of waterfalls in Asia.

There were some hiking paths with very inviting signs on their entrances.

Here are some more [normal] pictures of Wulai:

view from the top

In conclusion of this blog post, I give to you the following: a poster that is placed outside both schools I work at and throughout the city of LuZhou. I think it provides for great English language learning through new vocabulary!

"teacher robin! you are bum-bum SO BIG!"

You know those moments they talk about when teachers realize the absolute beauty in their work because they've educated a child, taught them an invaluable life lesson, touched the life of a child and given meaning to both the student's life and your own?


Well, I didn't have one of those moments today. 


I did, however, have this moment today:
"Teacher Robin! You are bum-bum SO BIG!"
Translated from 4-year-old-who-is-just-learning-English: "Girrrl, your ass is HUGE!"

Thanks, Henry. SEE IF I LET YOU PICK OUT THE STORY TIME BOOK EVER AGAIN.




Also, blogspot.com tells me where my traffic comes from. Apparently if you google search Celine Dion Drinking Games I am the fourth popular website and if you google image search Dolphins Doing Math I am the second popular image. 


Google associates my blog with the phrases "Celion Dion drinking games" and "Dolphins doing math"? Only two words can describe this. 
FUCK. YES.