Yesterday was parent teacher conference day. I spent eight hours sitting at a table in the cafeteria and talked to mostly my middle school parents. I only have nine of them so it made for a pretty dull day. Lee had 41 parents come by his table.

One of the other teachers calls conference day the love fest. Parents are, without exception, grateful for the work that we do with their kids and not one of mine made any excuses for their children if they weren't doing well. The teachers I talked to all agreed that the question you get from the parents is, "What can I do to help?" The high school parents are less likely to come to conference day - the older the student the more they are responsible for their own education, maybe? If this were Lee's blog he may have more to say about some of the high schoolers and their lack of commitment to his classes. Maybe I should have him do a guest column.

Today Lee is spending the day with the 6th grade volleyball teams (boys and girls) at their tournaments in Taichung. It's 5:45 and he just walked out the door. He's hoping to be back by 8:30 tonight. It's not exactly how he'd like to be spending his Saturday but the coaching commitment here is a far cry from his days at Westminster. The volleyball season ran about 10 weeks, practiced twice a week for a little over an hour a day and Lee only went to one of their games since the various coaches take turns running practice and going to games.

He has now fulfilled his after school commitment at KAS, although he can always volunteer for more as the year moves along. We are required to do something with the students after school (once a week, 3-4:30) one of the quarters. I'm putting mine off until the last quarter and plan to offer weaving to the upper elementary kids. I already run a middle school weaving club, so I should be ready to face the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders by springtime. Hopefully I will have convinced the school to buy some looms by then. The middle school students helped me build this one and it's working okay.

Anybody who knows what a loom is supposed to look like, go ahead and laugh. Personally, I'm quite proud of it and made an even better second one.

Today marked the first of a series of coffee house type performances by the high school students. After school the kids set up the amps and mic on the patio outside the cafeteria on the edge of the playground.

It's hard to see so let me paint you a picture. Imagine a sizable courtyard that contains some large banyan and palm trees, a small stage, two basketball and two volleyball courts, a play scape for the elementary kids, and the first grade garden. On one side of this is the cafeteria where the high schoolers have set up their music while on the playground there are scores of little kids running around and a couple dozen parents sitting and chatting and ignoring their children. Then toss in marginally inappropriate lyrics and karaoke and you've Cadenza, after school entertainment, Taiwan style.

Here's a cool little video made by a company called Free Mai. It shows a few places we've been to - Kenting and Cijin, plus we've been to Pingtung and Sandimen but not to the places in the video. Taiwan is a really beautiful place to live (despite the shipwrecked tanker on the beach).

In case you're ever visiting Asia and you'd like to know about toilets here is your tutorial:

If the toilet stall is marked like this:

Then behind the door you will find a "western style" toilet, like this:

If the toilet stall is marked like this:

Then behind the door you will find a squat toilet, like this:

Everybody has their own preference for which toilet they prefer and there are pros and cons for both. Just remember to carry tissues with you because you will no doubt find bathrooms without toilet paper. Also, when using a squat toilet the toilet paper goes into the trash can, not down the toilet.

And one last thing. If you find a big red button next to the toilet it is probably not the flush button. Instead, it's probably an alarm to call for help if you fall and can't get up. I will not be telling you how I know this....

Today was a couple of firsts.

We had our first yoga class this afternoon. It was fabulous. It makes for a long day - about 13 hours from the time we left this morning til we got back from yoga - but it's well worth it. The instructor is a young woman from New Zealand (I think) and all the students are teachers at KAS. I don't think I've been as relaxed as I was at the end of class since I've arrived in Taiwan. We'll be going twice a week.

The other first was parent-teacher conferences. Friday is the scheduled conference day (no classes that day) but I needed to talk to a couple of parents early. The parents were very appreciative of the time and effort the whole school puts into their child's education but I'm not used to having an interpreter.  It's tricky figuring out the nuances of communication. I felt like the conferences went well I just need to learn the logistics of who to look at, the parent or the interpreter, and the proper protocol with business cards.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful niece Cady!

(It may not be the 20th yet where you are but it is here. Not too early to celebrate!)

Another weekend, another adventure.

This morning was bright and sunny and the flowers in our park were all abloom.

It was a good day to head down into the subway and explore a new part of the city. The subway system is new, clean and very convenient. There are only two lines, one running north-south, the other east-west. At the station where the two lines cross there is a beautiful glass ceiling called the Dome of Light. It's pretty impressive.

We were heading down to the harbor to visit the former British Consulate building. It was built in 1865 and is the oldest western-style building in the city. It hasn't been used by the British for over 100 years and it fell into disrepair until 1986 when the Kaohsiung government renovated the grounds and buildings. It's now one of the big tourist attractions in the city.

At the end of the subway line we found a sidewalk cafe of sorts and fortified ourselves with a light lunch.

Not sure what we ate. Something with egg, a dumpling kind of thing, an odd waldorf salad sandwich, milk tea. It was enough to give us energy to wend our way through the streets in search of our destination.

We made a wrong turn and took this tunnel...

...and found ourselves at National Sun Yat-sen University. It was a beautiful campus but not where we wanted to be, so we came back through the tunnel and found this lovely little sign:

So up the walkway we went. The consulate is at the top of a small knoll overlooking the entrance of the harbor. I'm pretty sure it's located on the prettiest plot of land in the entire city. Here's the building:

Here's the view towards the city:

And the view in the opposite direction towards the ocean:

We walked down to the beach just out of sight around the corner of this view. The university's sports fields are right at the shore but the beach itself was pretty deserted.

I think the Taiwanese feel that once the calendar says summer is over you just don't go to the beach. All the tourists were back at the consulate, although they parked the buses by the beach.

You see these buses all around the city. They are full of mainland Chinese taking in the sites. The bus pulls up, out they come, they take some pictures, browse the gift shop, march back on the bus and go off to the next stop. I hope to never find myself on one of those tours.

Instead of the bus we used our feet to find our way back to the subway, stopping at our favorite mango ice shop on the way and stumbling upon a field full of kite flyers next to the subway stop.

It was marvelous day. And we still had time after getting home to head out to the produce market, but that's another story.