Scaring kids

This picture is great for many reasons. How great are those two older people completely asleep while they are with their grandchild. Good thing I was on that train to watch over the kid. More importantly, this picture represents/reminds me of all the children I made cry while in Taiwan. I am up to four as of today, but I'm sure there will be at least one more. While on the train this kid was smiling happily, playing with his grandpa. Then he caught a glimpse of me and froze. His grandpa was smiling at me and I just smiled at the little guy who then proceeded to frantically grab his grandfather, tear up, stand up, and turn around. He stood like this for the rest of the trip. His grandpa looked at me with apologetic eyes and tried to get the kid to turn around, but with no avail. I just tried not to laugh hysterically. I'm really glad I did not make my usual crazy face which is what I usually do when I see the cute little asian kids-Who knew this American face of mine would scare so many?? I'm hoping my confidence isn't lowered too much by this. Usually parents and kids love when the Americans will talk to them and they push their kids over to us so they can use their English. But, there are those who have never seen one (American) so we are a bit too scary for them. Oh, the joys of being a minority.

Oh my gosh.

I know I haven't written a blog post in a long time, but I have just been dealing with some stuff, so we will leave it at that. Also, I lost my camera. lame.

So, I seriously never thought this would happen to me. Take that back...I've never in a million years even had this thought cross my mind.

I walked down to my kindergarten class, which is in the afternoon, today. I LOVE these kids. So I see my student Peter, age 4, walk into the school and he is wearing a red shirt. His face and arms are the exact color of his shirt. I freak out inside and the secretary sees him too. His head, face, arms, stomach, chest, and back are burning hot. The secretary talks to him and finds out his grandma gave him wine. It seriously looked like he was going to die. He also smelled nasty- alcohol nasty. He said he didn't want it, but his gma just told him to drink it. Oh gosh. Here in Taiwan, most grandparents live with their children. They watch their grandchildren during the day and take care of them. The cultural gap in grandparent to child to grandchild seems a lot larger than in America. The grandparents speak Taiwanese, the parents Chinese, and the kids English (or are at least learning it much more). I think the grandma gives him a little wine before he goes to bed. I know, way weird but maybe it is like giving your kid cough medicine to sleep (I think I've heard of that somewhere?). Both are bad, but people still do them. Sad. So, the secretary holds up her fingers and asks how many fingers she is holding up. He knows so we figure he isn't too drunk and that is about all we can do.

So the kid peed four times within 1 hour and a 1/2. Every time I asked a question he would just look at me for like 20 seconds and then answer. He asked to draw the high speed train on the board so I sad okay to see if he could do it. He walks up and drew two wheels and then just stood there and said, 'I forgot.' I told him to stand up (he was sitting on the floor) and he lost his balance and hit his head on the chair (not too hard). So I took him outside to the secretary where we continued the sobriety tests. poor little guy. He was only light red by the end of class so that was good. He totally knew he was acting strange and at the end of class he said, 'I came to school today and act a little crazy, teacher.' Yes, you did Peter....not your fault though.

haha. Here is Peter - don't you love that you cannot even tell he has eyeballs...