One of these things is not like the others...

Thankfully, the teachers from last semester did our lesson plans for us for our first week of teaching. It can be overwhelming to get to Taiwan, get accustomed/trained to teach, do all your lesson plans before the first day of school, and keep your sanity. So today, I was following the plans for my 2nd graders, and my students had to write five sentences about their teacher.

I asked my kids, "What color are my eyes?" I was standing in front of one of my students, Wesley (who I also taught two years ago), and he got this shocked, wide-eyed look and shouted, "Green! Miss Whitney, you're a monster!!" I guess the only time they see green eyes is on monsters. :)

Another student wrote, "Miss Whitney has yellow hair." :) Another wrote, "Miss Whitney has brown hair." Closer!

We were talking about my eyes, and Wesley was like, "Miss Whitney, Taiwan eyes have two colors and America eyes have three!" I asked him what he meant. "Taiwan eyes have white and black. America eyes have three - white, green, and black!"

(He was basically trying to say that on Taiwanese people, there's no noticeable difference in color between the pupil and the iris, while with many Americans, there is.)

It's interesting to live in a place where everyone has such similar features. Everyone has the same color eyes (they say they're black), everyone has prettymuch the same color hair, etc. So if you're "not like the others," you really stick out. And people stare. When I came to Taiwan for the first time, I remember thinking, "This must be kinda like how it feels to be famous." Some kids will just stand there and stare at you. They've never seen the likes of you before, and they're not quite sure what to think.

(One of the sentences Wesley wrote about me was, "Miss Whitney was my last mester mester mester teacher." He was trying to say that I was his teacher three semesters ago. Adorable. As you can see, although they can say a lot, they don't always know how to say it. We have our work cut out for us in helping them improve their English. A couple of the kids' sentences were, "I think Miss Whitney is very nice" and "Miss Whitney is very pretty." Melt my heart. I love these kids. I love my life here in Taiwan. Love it, love it, love it. So glad to be back!)