Graduation went alright. Harry found me and gave me a letter that he had written. He told me that he loved the butterfly stickers that he'd put on it.

During the program Frances made all of the teachers stand on the stage, and Anne ran up and gave me the huge bouquet of roses. I cried a pinch. Emily gave me the teddy bear and flower and the bag of apples. Then afterwards, Anne's parents came and talked to me for a long time. They told me that Eric went home and cried in the bathroom, "But I love Miss Amy." They handed me a gift bag and thanked me over and over. They told me they were sad that I was leaving, but that they'd be in the U.S. next year. They want to go to Yellowstone, and I offered to take them there. I hope they do come, I would love to help them out and hang out with the family. The card that they gave me brought on the waterworks again, it's the sweetest thing ever. They wrote about how they're sad that they didn't get a chance to take me around Taiwan, so they took a lot of time picking out a book that had a lot of scenic pictures of Taiwan for me. So incredibly thoughtful.

Anne and William showing off their Graduation presents from Miss Amy.

Anne's sporting one of the hats I crocheted for her. I ended up making one for each of my students. I'll forever kick myself for not getting pictures of them all, they looked so dang cute.

Rosenna and Miss Amy

KBRb

Rosenna's my little crazy. She loves to run around and play and pretend she's an animal.

Kelly and Miss Amy
KBRb

I tutored Kelly too. She and Anne and I would play the entire time, I loved it. Kelly has the raddest style, I wish that I could find all of her clothes in my size. She's sassy and hilarious. After we were done eating our snacks I would prompt the kids to ask their neighbor, "Do I have something on my face? Do I have something in my teeth ... ?" and one day Kelly slapped her mini-oreo cookies to her cheeks, and guiltlessly asked me, "Do I have something on my face?" I laughed til I cried.

Angela and Miss Amy
KBRb

Genius child Angela. She's Harrison's older sister. She is so generous, she and Harrison were constantly drawing me pictures, giving me cards, even for Mother's Day... I could hang out with her all day long.

Johnson and Miss Amy

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Big sigh, my little hellian Johnson. He can be so affectionate when he's not kneeing the other children in the stomach ...

William and Miss Amy
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He has the craziest, most contagious, laugh. He'll start giggling, roll his eyes, and toss his head back and laugh and laugh. His hair is super fluffy so it bounces back and forth.

Anne and Miss Amy

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I've been tutoring sweetheart Anne. She's Eric's older sister. They have a younger brother who doesn't have an English name so they both refer to him as "our little baby." She too saw me after class and ran and jumped in my arms.

Katie and Miss Amy

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Katie gave me a gorgeous little teapot. I lamely lied to her the next day and told her that I had used it. She's the tiniest little thing.

Emily and Miss Amy
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She got teary-eyed at the end of class, so then I did too. I saw her later in the hall, and she dropped her backpack and came running and jumped into my arms.

Me and my KBRa buddies.

Left to right starting with the top boys:
Kenneth and Harry
Eric, Sami, Miss Amy, Harrison, Angel

I bought giraffe frames for all of my kids and put individual pictures of me and them in there. I also gave them a copy of this picture, I cringed inside because it's not the greatest, but we had to get them developed quick so we could put everything together. "Harry is sleeping," was their reaction.

Harry and Miss Amy

KBRa

I had to tickle him to get him to crack a smile. He gave me lots of adorable notes the last week. "My favorite teather is Miss Amy," and "Miss Amy I love you!" It really said teather, he rocks.

Angel and Miss Amy
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I'm so glad that this picture is decent, I feel like the majority of the pictures that I have of Angel are goofy. She's gorgeous and bright and incredibly creative.

Harrison and Miss Amy

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(Angel's behind Harrison, and I love that it makes it look like Harrison has a side pony tail.) He gets so excited to talk and laugh. He pulls these random grumpy faces. I caught a picture of him doing it once, and I showed him that he was being grumpy, and we had a good laugh about it.

Sami and Miss Amy

KBRa

The last day of class was yesterday, and at the end I was practically bearing my testimony. I got cryry voice and kneeled down and begged the kids to give me a hug before they ran off to eat lunch. Sami shoved her head into me, and the other kids said, "Sami have cry!" She started sobbing, so we sobbed together as we clung to each other. It was a mess. She started dry-heaving she was crying so hard. I was a disaster.

Miss Amy and Eric
KBRa
Eric's mom told me that when he went home after the last day of class he cried and cried in the bathroom, "But I love Miss Amy." He's so incredibly affectionate. These kids are my everything.

Miss Amy and Kenneth

KBRa

My little buddy Kenneth is the one who struggles with throwing up. He's so sensitive and silly. These last couple of weeks he's started laughing like Ernie on Sesame Street. He cracks me up.

The kindergartners' dress rehearsal for graduation. The Incredibles that I recognize are: Koala, King, Belinda, Jenny, (Or is it Penny? They look so much alike.) and Larson.

Me and Kindergartner Teresa. (Elizabeth's Tiffany's little sister.)

She has the biggest goose-egg I've ever seen in my life. Broke my heart when I saw it. She's relatively new to the program, as in a couple of weeks, and hasn't picked up very much English yet. When I asked her what happened she acted everything out for me, the gist is that she fell down and bonked her head. I adore her.

There's been a hello kitty frenzy here at Berhan, I made fun of the teachers who got into it ... then I lamely got sucked in and managed to collect all of the pins in a week. I relied completely on the generosity of my students, they really came through.


Ben's the Hello Kitty Master, he curses my pins.

Darling Thurm.
(Word on the street is that one of his kids took out his camera and was taking a picture, and Thurm told him to put it away, but the kid got a picture first, then printed it off and gave it to the head teacher.)

Andrea and her superstar Chinese boyfriend Ren Xian Qi.

Chili's in Taichung: Ben, me, and sweetheart Andrea. I think this was my first visit, first fatty burger since I'd arrived in Taiwan. We went back for dessert after we saw Match Point. The poor scooties were probably overwhelmed.

The Brothers Heiner: Thurman and Ben
I just barely cut Thurm's hair, so now it's shorter. Ben had just barely shaved off his mountain-man beard before we came to Sanyi to help out the Chinese school.

Sanyi: Me and Ben riding Mr. Robot Koala. (He really moved.)

Harrison pounding out a beat on his dad's back in Sanyi on our little field trip.

Mikey's BDay celebration at Ease Your Life. We downed some chocolate fondu and Mike got a little randy.

Murder in the dark Berhan style.

Katie, Janey, Amy, Jana, Ben, Jen

Me and Laurelin the motorcycle wreck survivors. The yellowish jazz is the devil iodine. *Notice I don't have any iodine on my bumba, I wasn't too keen on displaying my undies in front of everyone at the hospital ... how ironic that now everyone in the whole world has a chance to get a peek.

Playing with Andrea's friends in Kaoshiung. The kids led the way as we crawled through an old prison.

The beach in Kending that made me forget it was my birthday until 4:00 P.M. We hung out under the palms stretched out on our lounge chairs, read our books, got sunburnt, drank our smoothies ...

Sail Rock in Kending. Lonely Planet said that people often jumped off of the jut ... Andrea and I had big plans of doing this until we tried to make our way over, it was too hard, and the ocean was pretty rough. Maybe next time?

As Andrea and I ventured out on our scooter in Kending we caught sight of a few boys playing bball, so we jumped off and asked if we could join. They were super rad, this boy was hilarious, check out his two thumbs. We ended up playing with them for almost three hours.

KBRb: Easter Activity Bunny Hop Blowout:
Top: 1/2 o' Johnson, Rosenna, Kelly, Katie, William, Anne, 1/2 o' Angela

Bottom: Kelly, Katie, William, Anne, Angela, 1/2 o' Emily

Papa Bateman and his sidekick Fallout Boy.

Vincent (white speedo) showed us this rad spot to jump off of the rock into the river. With the help of some families' cheering Vincent, Ben (leopard speedo), Thurman, and I jumped / dove / flipped into the river.

Taipei 101's Top Nerds: Andrea and Amy

We were a little bit mopey so I decided to spice things up a titch with a flirty umbrella dance; Jen got into it with me.
Chinese New Year: 2 / 28 Peace Park
Jen, Kathryn, Mufasa

I thought that Old Man Rivers was going to get creamed by the traffic as he shuffled across the street in Taipei. I had to strangle the urge to hug him, he was darling.