October Recap

Already November…wow!! Well October came and went, at it was filled with a lot of wonderful activities. During the month, I took a bike trip to another city, participated in the school’s track and field day, and hosted a Halloween party.

The bike trip was on a school vacation day. Me, Kevin, Michelle, and Michael took a bike trip to Tai Johng, which is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from our school. It ended up being quite a journey. We set out at 8 am, and ended up at our destination, a Chilli’s restaurant, at about 2:30. We stopped several times along the way to rest and re-hydrate, but we also got lost a couple of times and had a exhausting journey through the hills. In the end we were beat, and decided to take the train back instead of attempting to bike back.

Every year, the school hosts a track field day. During this day students compete as classes in various individual and relay races, and also events like the high jump, tire roll, and three legged race. It is always great to be able to see my students outside of the classroom and especially when I have the chance to cheer them as they compete.

During field day, the teacher’s also have the chance to compete. This year I ran in the 4X100 meter relay, representing the English office. I also ran in the 1500 meter race, tire roll, and the large group teacher’s relay. My team got 3rd in the 4X100, 3rd in the tire race, and I got second in the 1500. My favorite races were the tire roll and the large group teacher relay. For the large group relay, we had 30 teachers, and each one ran 100 meters. We competed against some of the Junior 2 (8th grade) classes, and ended up winning the race. It was really enjoyable to be able to be on the large group team and cheer on many of my fellow co-workers.

Finally, the end of October brought Halloween and the Hanson Manor Halloween Party. Kevin, Michael, and I all live in the Hanson Manor and we hosted an evening of events for Halloween. We had two parties for the night. The first one was a kids party, which lasted from 6:30-8:30 pm. We invited families from school and church, and had activities such as “pin the nose on the Jack-O-Lantern”, decorating Halloween cookies, and went trick-or-treating. I think the kids enjoyed trick-or-treating the most, as they went to the houses of teachers who live at school, and filled up their bags with candy. To end the evening we watched “The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown”, which is a classic show for Halloween.

Check out the following link to pictures from the children’s party:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mattwasmund/HansonHalloween

Beginning at 9:00 we hosted a party for adults. We invited friends from school, church, and Friday Night Bible Study. There were a ton of snacks and drinks, and most people wore costumes. We gave away 2 prizes for best costumes, one to an American and one to a Taiwanese. After a summer of Harry Potter reading, I decided to dress as a character from the book: the highly controversial Severus Snape. All in all it was a great night of fun.