There have been four earthquakes (so far) today in Taiwan, all measuring between 5 and 6 plus. They've been felt all over the island but I only felt the most recent one. Sitting on the couch I started feeling like my concussion symptoms were coming back - the room was moving and I was feeling dizzy. Is it better that it was an earthquake instead? The telltale sign that it was an earthquake and not my concussion was that the light over the dining room table was swaying. Feeling an earthquake isn't scary for me (so far) but I'm not sure I'll ever get used to them.

Today was the first day to teach in the new building at KAS and it was nice to finally have students in the building. It's been two years of construction and all that entails so it was good to be done with the hoopla and get down to the business of teaching. I spent three days last week getting my room ready but I think I need to teach for awhile to see how to best use the classroom space.

This is the view of the room from my desk, looking towards my roommate Natasha's desk. She's a relatively recent KAS grad and teaches Chinese to the non-natives and works with ELL when her schedule allows. I think we're the only teachers that share a room but that's okay. We get along great and it's nice to have some someone to bounce ideas off of.

This is the courtyard outside my classroom door. I'm in the middle and high school section of the building and most of the classrooms look out onto this area. One of my 6th graders said it looked like a jail and I can see what he means, although it's much more beautiful than a jail. At the moment we've been told that we can't hang anything on the walls so it looks very black, white and gray but I think that will change as we settle in.

Here's the view from my balcony, looking across to where my old classroom is. Over the summer the old building gets torn down and they'll start building the new swimming pool, gym and cafeteria. There will also be new soccer fields, basketball courts and playgrounds. Until that's done there won't be much space for sports or general running around but I guess we'll make due.