What I've been up to...

So, you may have noticed that my blogging has increasingly decreased this past month. The last month of teaching was packed full of all sorts of things but mainly just dancing. Let me explain...

Every other year at Berhan, Halloween and Christmas trade off as the big holiday of Fall semester. Last year it was Christmas. As a result, my boss was trying to come up with something fun and different we could do this year, but have it not take a lot of effort. Hmm...what could we possibly do?

Perhaps, a school wide dance? Perfect!

You may be thinking, so what? Every school has dances, right?

Nope. Not even close. At least here in Taiwan. Due to academics being the main focus at school, kids have little time for social interactions. They start school around 7:30 am and some don't even return home until 10 pm. Yeah. Pretty crazy, huh?

As a result, most Taiwanese enter adulthood totally awkward with the opposite sex. Even more awkward than your typical American. My boss, in his quest (and a mighty good one) to expose our students to all kinds of good, positive experiences decided that we have a Christmas dance, and teach all of our students the waltz. I thought it was fabulous.

Each day for about 10 minutes, we would practice in our classrooms. Then every Thursday or Friday we would go upstairs to "the big room" and show our boss our progress. At first my students moaned and groaned--especially my fifth graders. But as the weeks went by and the dance grew closer, I could tell that they were secretly excited.

The nights of the big dances (we had two because not all students have classes on the same day) were the Thursday and Friday before the last week of class.

My boss really wanted to teach the students manners, and especially treat boys to treat girls with respect. Their way of getting around girls feeling left out is by putting all the girls' names in a basket and having the boys draw. It ended up being pretty funny. I danced with my student Simon (the girls were lacking), and we decided to make a game of it. We tried to see how many people we could poke from our class (a class joke of sorts). I think it made it less tedious for poor Simon. 

Overall, I think it was a success, and I hope it's a tradition they will continue each year.