I Moved to Taiwan!

I did it: I moved to Taiwan. This is something that I have been working toward for about a year and now that I am finally here I honestly couldn't be more happy with my decision. I've been in country for about three and a half week now and already I have enough stories to write a novel. I've been so busy with work and finding the rhythm of life here that it took me until today to finally get this blog going. So much has happened that it's difficult to know where to even start. I guess the most logical beginning point would be the place where I spend most of my time and the entire purpose that I'm here: work.

This is Joshua and he's one of Kim's Basic Reading students. When we first arrived we had a few days where we observed the previous teachers during their classes so that we had a simple understanding of how the class structures functioned. During this time, Josh and I grew extremely attached to a rotation of children and Joshua is in that rotation. These kids all graduated and moved up into Kim's class so Josh and I don't ever truly get to teach them in a classroom setting but we know them all pretty well and in between classes we play with them frequently. Joshua is a sweetheart and during the summer he spends an exceptional amount of time at our school so I always make an effort to go say things to him and be silly when I can.

Joshua is in this photo as well and he's joined by Ian, another one of Kim's kids. (Kim and Josh are the two hotties on the far right.)

 

And this is Jill. She is one of the students that is in my 2A class that meets every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evening. 

All of the students in that class are about 8/9 years old, from what I can gather. Some are a little older and some a little younger but that's the mean age.

I'll just lay out what I do: I'm an English teacher. I work 40 hours a week though I'm pretty much at the school all day when i'm there. I work a lot but I love my job. I was an ESL teacher for the last year before I moved out to Taiwan so I know that it's something that I enjoy. I also lived in China for a semester a few years back and I taught English then as well so this is familiar territory for me. Being "Teacher Katelin" once again is comfortable and it's strange how quickly I've transitioned back into my role as instructor once again.

The students I teach span in age from 2 to 13 years old, so the language proficiency of the students ranges greatly. Some are able to carry out an entire conversation while others are still learning their colors and numbers.