This is a picture of the wonderful weaving creations that my middle school students are making. So far they have been really enthusiastic about the process. The yarn comes all the way from Connecticut where my lovely friend Nicki bought it and sent it to me. Thank you again, Nicki!

When I discovered that I was expected to offer a club once a week I figured weaving would be a nice diversion from English and social studies, right? Unfortunately my boxes, including my (limited) yarn supply, are still waiting to be shipped.

(Have I mentioned that before? The sameness of my shipment is like the sameness of the weather. They claim they now have all my paperwork and they're just waiting for the next boat that's heading to Taiwan. Kaohsiung has a huge shipping facility - the 6th largest in the world. You'd think there would be a lot of ships heading this way. Any day now, any day...)

Working with tweens and young teens has been a lot more fun than I thought it would be. That's not exactly what I mean, actually. I didn't think it wouldn't be fun. I didn't really think about it at all, I guess. I think I was so focused on the whole moving to Taiwan part that I didn't think so much about the teaching. I didn't get a whole lot of information beforehand about the job so there wasn't much to plan or focus on anyway.

For anyone thinking about following in our footsteps, let me just tell you that the learning curve can be really steep when you take on your first overseas teaching position. It has been for both me and Lee and every single faculty member I've talked to has stories to tell about their first job. We didn't uproot our whole lives because we thought this would be easy. Staying where you are is always easier than making a change, especially a change this big. But all this work and frustration and exhaustion makes you feel very much alive. And the amazing things we've done and seen and the wonderful people we've met more than make up for the turmoil.

It will be interesting when I reread this post in a few months if I'll still feel the same way. We'll see.