December 2011
17 posts
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Silence is Golden
Highlander is a woman of few words. I believe like most immortals she makes her words few and therefore precious.
What she hasn’t spent the past few decades doing is perfecting her driving ability to better match how proud she is of her car. I’ve seen her move a parking cone only to proceed to run over it thirty seconds later.
One day she was sitting down and I was trying to get her...
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Pronunciation for the Rest of V S
Taiwan Mama and I shared a small moment before class as we often do. Usually I’ll find a new way to say how much I don’t like walking up four flights of stairs. “If I keep doing that It won’t be long until I start losing some weight.”
She then asks me my meaning and I just say fourth floor classes are always hard to get to. She’ll usually responds,...
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A Christmas Secret
My knife wielding student shared a secret with me.
“Teacher, teacher, I have a secret.” He gestured for me to come a little lower.
“What is it?”
“Merry Christmas is also my birthday. Don’t tell anyone.”
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Joy Oh Joy (To the World) - My Christmas Letter to...
Friends and Family, wherever you may be,
Last year I spent Christmas in Chengdu, China. If I remember right, I was one of two American guests there. People came from Pakistan, Ireland, the Philippines, Australia and Gambia to share in Christmas. We drank a Chinese rice liquor that translates just to white liquor. We played mahjong. We ate a Christmas ham, along with the perennial Chinese...
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The Perfect Curtain
Someone high up above, as high as Joy Headquarters, has been listening to my prayers because next week my school will be attending a workshop on how to communicate effectively. I overheard that we would have this workshop from Curtains.
I asked her, “We have a workshop this month. What’s it about?”
“How to communicate, technically, professionally, things like...
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Vote for you favourite Taiwan blogs in the Taiwan... →
riceagain:
To my knowledge the only blog Taiwan blog on tumblr entered is the excellent Letters From Taiwan blog.. Get in there and vote for LFT now!
Actually, I’m on there too, right here. I do agree with you though, Letters from Taiwan is a great blog and I’ve been voting for him too.
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How to Ensure Your Classmates Dislike You
Last weekend was the TLI Christmas Party. TLI is the school where I study Chinese. The school is pretty big into training missionaries so of course they had to have a Christmas party and they invited the students.
We played a game where they placed hats on our head that listed parts of the face on them.
The guy pointing at his head had “hair” written on his hat. He asked,...
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The Great Joy Hoax, or 3 Conversations I...
I have been studying Chinese for about 5 months now. I’m by no means fluent, but I can do most of the things I need to do in a day with the Chinese I currently possess, like buy Wang Steaks. I also understand the conversations my students are having when they think I’m not listening. What I’m learning is kids are weird. Here are three examples (roughly translated)
Who Does...
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The Wade Kaardal School of Games
Unstoppable was stumped trying to come up with an activity to help her teach a certain Grammar pattern.
She turned to me and said, “I can’t think of game for this lesson. I wish I could come up with games like you do.”
“The other day, I forgot to come up with a game in time for class. The only things in the classroom were a beach ball and a hula hoop…We played...
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2011 Best Taiwan Blog Awards
Friends, Readers,
This December voting for the Best Taiwan Blog Awards will be held. The Best Taiwan Blog Awards are awarded to blogs about Taiwan that are written in English. They are held every year and awarded to the blog that receives the most votes from the public in various categories. Everyone can vote and you can read more about the awards at the link above.
So, I need your help. Anyone...
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Let's Just Forget This Ever Happened
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have seen this recent tweet - Teacher, this isn’t a sundae. Ok, it’s a McFlurry but I hate how teaching you English has made me a McDonalds brand ambassador #joyengrish
What you may not have known is that one of my school’s lessons is to take our kids to McDonald’s and have them order food in English. This week was one of my...
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Are you Hungry?
The same student I mentioned last week held her fist up to me and asked, “Do you want to eat my fist?”
In classic American fashion I raised one fist and said, “Oh I see you are hungry, well here I have tangbao(soup dumpling),” I raise my other fist, “and baozi(meatball and gravy in a steamed bun).”
She was ready for this mustering up her English, “Yeah...
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Are you a book?
It’s only sometimes that I let my students get to me. More often then not, I know they really can’t help themselves or don’t really know any better. In fact I make myself remember that to avoid time in a mental hospital.
I have one student, who despite being rather far along in the “Joy Assembly Line of English!(TM),” still has problems with things like pronouns and...
