Week 43: Crunch Time

Welcome to a week when everything's due. This week, I had a Chinese exam, a schoolwide art project, gifts for my sixth graders, and a dumpling night to prep for. Since the grant period's wrapping up, I also had a soirée, a sunset farewell ceremony, and a folk dance performance to attend (oh my!).

On Monday, I had my usual classes, and I got to teach first grade for the first time in a month. Classes went well enough, then I had dinner with another Little K ETA. Unfortunately, I had to go to class for a pre-exam review session, but I liked catching up with the other ETA, especially since I feel like I hadn't seen her as much lately.

Tuesday was more of my usual classes minus one of my third grade classes, which was almost entirely absent due to the flu. I got some of my other students to sign the collage, then I bought keychains to decorate for my sixth graders after class.

My last sixth grade class ever ended up being on Wednesday (which I wasn't told until probably 2/3 of the way through the class). I let them play a review Blooket, which they loved, then went to Jincheng Junior High to watch their spelling bee competition in the afternoon. While neither of the Jhuo Huan teams made it to the second round, the majority of schools didn't seem to make it. The ones that did included some teams from Jhong Jheng Elementary, Hupu Elementary, Jinding Elementary, Jinsha Elementary, and even one from Shang Chi Elementary.

The spelling bee format was a little intimidating. The remaining teams competed four teams at a time, and they each had to ask questions in English such as, "is it a verb?" or "do you see it at school?" before being told the word and given six seconds to write it on a whiteboard. It was a little stressful to watch, and probably even more stressful to participate in.

That evening, we had our Chinese exams. Thanks to the power of Quizlet, I think mine wasn't terrible, especially since it wasn't a huge stressor compared to everything else still due that week.

Photo credits for Photo 1 (BeReal) to Marie Neubrander, 2023.

On Thursday, I had to pull the entire school art piece together. I also finally received the student and staff graduation photos. Looked pretty good. That morning, I taught my classes, then spent the rest of the day working on the collage. Lots of drawing, coloring, cutting, printing, etc. I liked the final product, though! I even spent an extra hour at school to get it together.

That evening was our dumpling night. I went to Jinning and helped another ETA set up, then we had our first dumpling night! There weren't quite enough dumpling wrappers (and perhaps too many greens), but it was still a good time. We watched Camp Rock 2 and everything.

Friday was the second-to-last EV day of the year. It was a little too hot in there, but we made it through the day. At the very least, the kids were full of energy and had a good time. Then, I headed home to help set up that evening's soirée. As expected of a soirée, everyone turned up that evening looking pretty dapper, and there were paper roses, prom photos, charcuterie boards, and more. We had paper plate awards for everyone, first funny, then serious. Mine were "Most Likely to Break a Bone Finger Hearting Too Hard" and "Most Likely to Bring Everyone Back Together for a Big Reunion (Hopefully Soon)".

We had a couple other games after that, including our favorite, Shake and Pop. I wasn't feeling well for a bit in the middle, so I went downstairs, but I came back later and took some fun photos with everyone. Notable photos included a self-timer photo that took a million tries, me being carried by another Hong House ETA, and one of everyone looking serious during an awkward prom photo.

I'm going to miss the Hong House parties so, so bad. Where else am I going to have a night of drinking, well-planned group activities, and personal questions and a group of twelve to eighteen people willing to participate? I know we still have a couple more parties left to plan for the year, but it's still crazy to me how few we have left. From sock wrestling and fashion shows to dreidel drinking games and blindfolded mazes, we've done it all.

The next day was miserably wet. Rainy season's starting here, and for those of us without cars (i.e. the entire cohort), it's been tough. It was okay for a bit, but around lunch time, it started pouring rain. Super fun.

After being trapped in Starbucks for a while, my partner and I went directly to An Tong Ferry Terminal for our cohort's sunset farewell. There was a little tent set up with balloons, flowers, and more, but due to the pouring rain, everything was slick with orange mud, and everyone was damp. I went for a little walk to stare out at the sea, but the gloomy gray waters weren't particularly inspiring.

Fortunately, the rain let up towards the end of the celebration. From the overlook and the beach, we could see the sunset peeking through the clouds a little. Afterwards, everyone went to our last Fulbright dinner, including our coordinators and our co-teachers from EV. The latter surprised us with little boards covered in notes written by students from last semester. They were adorable! Mine included notes that said, "Thank you teachers!" and "I like Teacher Lauren because she is 溫柔 (gentle)".

Afterwards, I worked on my keychains for my sixth graders while some other ETAs played Bananagrams. It was a pretty nice evening just vibing to music with other people. Hopefully, the sixth graders like their gifts. The majority of them are into either Blackpink or the Golden State Warriors (or the Lakers), so I cut out and taped little photos of them to the keychains.

Photo credits for Photo 2 to Angela Nguyen, 2023.

On Sunday, I had my first and only dance performance with my community college class. I spent most of the day on Little K rehearsing with the other dance class members. While I was getting ready, I also saw a bunch of my students getting ready for their own performances. They seemed a little surprised to see me, which I understand—it's not every day you see your English teacher in full Mongolian dress.

As nervous as I was beforehand, I thought the performance went fine. I also enjoyed seeing my kindergarteners and the school dance troupe perform. The dance troupe did their Mongolian and Xinjiang style dances, as usual, and the kindergarteners did an energetic, (unintentionally) semi-freestyle dance.

Later, I went to re chao with the other ETAs for dinner. After we finished eating, we noticed a rainbow outside and decided to watch the sunset from an oceanside park in Jincheng. A couple other ETAs and I took photos of it, then we went to the ferry terminal to meet up with some other ETAs and continue to watch the sunset. We also tried to see if Xiamen was holding its regular light show, but alas, there was none.

I'm gonna miss Kinmen and its sunsets. As with the past several weeks, I've been in my bag (and also in denial) about the end of the grant period. It doesn't feel real that we've been here for almost eleven months, and also that everything is gonna come to an end soon. Even when I was at the sunset farewell, I don't think I registered that that'd be the final official Fulbright event.

More recently, I also feel like part of me is getting homesick. I miss my friends and family back home, and I miss the area where I grew up. I also miss not seeing enormous spiders (it's spider season here, which is perhaps not an ideal period of time for an arachnophobe). As comforting as it is to know I'll be home in about a month, I also know I'm gonna be terribly bored and lonely too. I guess the grass does always look greener from the other side.

This week, as I was scrambling to get everything done, I was also feeling sentimental about my sixth graders graduating. They're one of the sweetest classes I teach, and they're always playful and curious. Some of my sixth graders like to play catch or draw on the board with me, while others like to tell me about Blackpink. One of them likes to call me "Teacher Ren Ren" instead of "Teacher Lauren", which is sweet. I hope they do well at Lieyu Junior High (烈嶼國中) next year; it sounds like it'll be much tougher than Jhuo Huan.

Until next week!

Writer's Note: This post was originally written on Friday, June 16th, 2023.