1 step forwards 2 steps backwards

Today I had to get up at 7 am to go attend teacher training in Taichung. I thought it was going to be better than the last time 1 because there
was another foreign teacher there and 2 because a lot more of the
booklet was in English unfortunately the booklet was pretty much the
majority of the English there.

After getting up at stupid o'clock to attend this stupid thing I
was totally frustrated and so just tuned out actually I started
drawing and making paper aeroplanes and generally being a bad student
lol towards the end I was playing tetris on my phone :/

Afterwards my boss accused me of not concentrating...which is true and
I just told her it was mostly in Chinese. I know this makes me sound
whingy and whatever but seriously I don't think she gets how freaking
frustrating it is. She asked me why I didn't ask the lecturer
afterwards about the lesson and to be honest I just hadn't thought of
it...well that's the first thing the reason I gave her was that the
class was over 3 hours long and there is no way I could get in 5
minutes anything close to what the lecturer was talking about, my
other reason is that they are teaching freaking english teachers to
teach English I really don't get why it has to be taught in Chinese.

My boss was unhappy which I felt bad for. She made the point that she
pays for the training and we don't have to pay anything so I should
make more of an effort which I guess is a fair point. It's
frustrating though cause I have a feeling if I knew everything that
was being said it would actually help me be a better
teacher....unfortunately for that to happen I'd need a class that
actually spoke English and I don't think that will happen.

I know I should have made more of an effort but seriously you try sitting still for over 3 hours while people yammer on in a language you totally don't know and then see just how willing you are to go and ask questions about the lesson.

I didn't get to talk to the other foreign teacher which was
disappointing, I really wanted to go up and say thank god you are here
now I'm not the only one who has no clue what I'm doing. But I guess
I got shy. Plus the teachers he came with were much better at
explaining things to him than the teachers at my school who basically
didn't help me with jack and then expected me to help them with the
activities when I had no clue what was going on. Please don't get the wrong idea the people I work with are really nice people, they are just reserved I guess. The foreign guy probably would have been confused anyway if I'd gone up to him as I still look like I belong. Maybe that's why everyone just expects me to understand. At least one of the test papers was in English so I answered that the other was in chinese so I wrote my name with a giant capitalised I DON'T READ CHINESE! under it, obnoxious yes but as I said I was frustrated...and cold the room was extremely airconditioned and I only had a tshirt on.

All in all today could have gone better. Still my classes went ok today and Battleship is going down a treat. I went to a store and bought some soft balls and speakers for tomorrows Level 9 class in hopes of turning around from last weeks nightmare class. While I was there I saw the motherload of fireworks. They are all so cheap. I'm going back tomorrow to stock up...it's totally legal here!

This weekend is a big holiday and I have nothing planned. I did get given moon cakes today though which are meant to be well nice so I guess I will be eating cake.

I found more Vitas Lu albums unfortunately the site is in Chinese and the stores are all in Taipei. I can google translate but it doesn't let me sign up or check out when it is translated and amazingly enough I don't read chinese so I can't navigate it without translating it with google...talk about catch 22. I'm still determined to get the cds though. I may have to go bother Brian.

Oh I watched street kings..not really impressed. It actually would have worked as a spoof cop movie ala scream unfortunately it was totally serious...oh well.

The internet has been sketchy lately, hopefully it will be here in the morning.