So we were supposed to have orientation this morning at 7:15 this morning. But my body decided that it would do anything to not hear the alarm I set for 6:40, even to the point of waking me up an hour early just to turn it off. So I lay there wide awake, wondering if anyone else was up. I got dressed and headed downstairs to find out. No one was in the lobby, so I played the piano to pass the time. Slowly the conference center woke up. A lady came and unlocked the gift shop, setting up a display next to the door when she was finished, others who live here were going off to work. Orientation started when Tina, Maria and Boba came downstairs. Spent about an hour sitting and talking in the lobby. After that we had breakfast.
Maria and I are the only TESOL students for this semester. We found this rather amusing. After breakfast we headed up to a small conference room across the hall from the staff office. Our teacher is Audra King, an extremely awesome teacher. She taught so well, that I thought only 20 minutes had gone by, Maria thought it was 5 minutes. Turns out it was almost two hours! We had a small break then and continued out class until 12:25 PM. From there, we headed back to the cafeteria and had lunch. There was a break of about an hour and 45 minutes in between that and the next class, so I went to the gift shop and got myself a Snickers and a Reese’s, then headed back up to the classroom to study.
When I entered the room, Audra was preparing the next lesson. We talked about her and the teaching she did in Taiwan. When class started and Maria came in, we share the candy to eat. There is nothing like candy to pep up a classroom! After class was dinner. We had chili dogs, except they weren’t dogs. They were nacho chips.
It was really boring after that. There was virtually nothing to do while waiting for the Taiwanese students to get here. Typically, VOICE and TESOL students have curfew at nine, but for that night, TESOL students got to stay up ‘till one to greet the VOICE students from Taiwan. I tried my hardest to stay up and study (Or should I say “Study?”) I fell asleep at maybe one twenty, one twenty five? Next thing I recall is James Tsay -my roommate- saying “Hello?” near me. I shook myself awake and greeted him.
He told me he wasn’t tired yet and pulled out his laptop and got on Facebook. I asked him to teach me Mandarin, so he proceeded to tell me how to say “what is this”, “knife” and “Good morning”. We stayed up all night talking about Taipei 101, the World Trade Centre and other famous buildings around the globe. Next thing we know, it was morning! Only half of the kids came on the airplane from LAX airport, the other half are still in Los Angeles, waiting for the next flight tomorrow. I wonder when my next roommate, Kai will get in.
-John Metzger
