Mountain climbing and new schools

So I am typing today from a new computer at a new school. No, no exciting problems, it's just the part of the program where we add a new school 2 days a week. My schedule is Monday and Friday at Dongxing elementary school. So far so good, everyone is very nice to me, the school is about the same size as Zhongxing, the food tastes just as bad and the kids find me very interesting. I have done short five minute introductions in 3 classes, but that's it. I'm not sure how I'm going to fit in especially since at this moment most of the class is taught in Chinese. Will they understand a word I say? Will my new co-teacher insist on translating everything or will I not have a roll big enough to make that matter. I'm just pleased that on Friday afternoon I get to hang out with the art club.

Speaking of art clubs we (Annalily, Katherine and I) met with our Yilan University club. After riding my bike Saturday to renshan (a mountain area near my house)and finding a lovely botanical garden and a slightly strange English garden all by myself, it turned out that that was the same place we were going on Sunday with our art group. Oops, no big deal though, the second time we saw monkeys and of course I took pictures like a good old tourist. We had 4 participants and we tried to get everyone to draw some part of this pond. I showed the students my crazy old school camera (have I mentioned that I really want the new Nikon D200?) and then sat down with Annalily and Katherine to draw. No one else did, at least not until they got really bored with waiting for us. Next time we might do some drawing games to loosen them up, or change the club from Art to visiting gardens, since that seems to be the trend. The students are really nice and it's good to be around people who aren't entirely sure what they are doing with their life either. I also met with my host mom for the first time though we have been assigned since October or something like that. It was fun, she speaks good English and doesn't feel the need to steer my life like my other host mom.

My real mom is getting into town today and coming down on Thursday. This means I get to take a day off and that I washed all my towels.