Goings Ons...

Well! It's been a REALLY LONG TIME since I've "blogged"! I'm SO SORRY! Somehow other things just always seem more important to do than blogging. :) Most of you are on my Facebook so hopefully can stay somewhat "caught up" through there...
Anyhoo I have a few extra minutes here so thought I would write a few words. WOW! I've been in Taiwan almost six months now! It's so hard for me to believe how much my life has changed in six months! Taiwan is really feeling like home to me now. (especially since the weather has turned REALLY COLD the past few days and I actually have to dress like I did in Alaska when I go outside! HAH! but NO SNOW! yay!! :) Especially starting in December, the days starting going by so so so fast! Something to do every day! I practiced with the Bumblebees every spare time period I could to get them ready for the Christmas program on Dec. 13 and they did a wonderful job! Hopefully you Facebookers got to see the videos I posted. They are so cute but they leave me so exhausted sometimes. Too much energy for old Sharon! Speaking of old Sharon, I turned 27 on the 12th of this month and I did have a really nice birthday. I had really wanted to go on a nice date for my birthday and eat a big fat steak because I love steak and havn't had one since I got here ( really expensive, and most people don't eat steak). But, Jimmy and I both agreed to take parts in the Christmas drama for the Banner English Christmas program on the 20th and they scheduled rehearsals all the days around my birthday! Also we agreed to take part in the caroling group that went to night market and sang while we handed out fliers for our Christmas program, which was also scheduled ON my birthday! Soo...so much for my nice date! All the other days either I or Jimmy worked late. But I did get to have a nice little party, and Jimmy went out and special ordered a big fat New York steak for me (well done!) and it was SOOOOO GOOOODD! I was so happy. He did well. What a great boyfriend. :)
And got to hang out with all my other friends here as well, and played some Cranium and Dutch Blitz. So it was a good day.
So I was "Worker 1" in an office scene in the Christmas drama at church and we had our program last night...lot of rehearsal but it was fun and everyone did a great job. We had about 500 people come to the program, so it was a nice turnout. Especially considering there was a political rally held right across the church in an empty parking lot, and they were REALLY REALLY LOUD but inside the church hall where we had the program you couldn't hear them at all! But if you stepped ouside you got blasted. But it was kind of cool because a lot of the people attending the political rally came to the church to ask to use our bathrooms and then they saw all the "goings on" and asked about it and a few of them stayed to watch US instead of the politicians! hahahaha...
So now the countdown to Christmas begins. I do have to work on Christmas...*sigh* but having a nice breakfast with a few other missionaries here, then I have Christmas fun, gift exchanges, etc. planned for both my classes on Friday. I'm sad to have to "work" on Christmas day, but I think it will be a good day for my students, especially since most of them don't celebrate Christmas at home. And we're free to tell the Christmas story at my school so it will be more like a reallly long sunday school class than a "real teaching" day.
What else, what else. Buying and wrapping 18 + 10 little Christmas presents for my two classes...finding gifts for co-teachers and friends...figuring out what to do for people back home...yeah. Christmas is pretty much busy everywhere in the world! :)
Yeah. It's cold in my room. No heaters here so when it's cold, it's just cold everywhere. But that's ok, it won't last long.
New Things I Like in Taiwan:
Pepper Soybeans, my new favorite snack.
Seaweed rice cakes, my other new favorite snack.
Tea eggs, my other new favorite snack. Eggs boiled in tea. so good!
I saw salmon flavored Doritoes in the 7-11 the other day. ew...but, they might be ok I haven't actually tried them. I'm afraid.
Putting eggs in everything. Make soup, drop an egg in it. (really good!) Make ramen noodles, drop an egg in it. Cook a pancake, drop an egg on it. Cook rice, drop an egg on it. Actually, eggs DO make everything better! Why did I never try this in the States?
Needless to say, I've been eating a lot of eggs.
PEACH green tea. oooohh yum.
Bubble jackets. I bought my first bubble jacket today. I have a nice jacket I brought with me, but everyone here wears down or polyester filled bubble jackets (the really warm ones that make you look very plump), so I felt like in order to "blend in" I should get a bubble jacket. It's red. It has fur on its hood. I wanted a black one but Jimmy felt like I had too much black in my wardrobe (incidentally he's right and I've been told this many times by many people!) so I got a red one during which while I wore it tonight I got 7 compliments on it. So Jimmy might be onto something with the whole colored clothes thing. hahahahaha... anyway it's really warm on the scooter so blending on or not, I like it.
My laptop lost it's E key. to hit E now I have to press the little plastic Thing inside the real E Key. So sad.
Ok. I have to go to bed. I'm going buggy contact eyed. I post most of my pictures on FAcebook so if you don't have FAcbook or need to add me just send an email or comment to this post.
Miss and love everybody! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! :)
~Sharon~

WOW how time flies...

Me and my friend Annie with our super cool Peace signs...

This Korean song called the "Sorry Sorry Song" is very popular here lately especially with the kids. So on this worksheet, this kid apparently can sing it (hard to do since it's in Korean)

And this kid cannot swim, and apparently will get eaten by fish as well.

this one is my favorite. Look at his "panic drops" coming from his head that he cannot swim. oh no! I'm drowning!

Me! at my desk at school.

Jimmy and I at the science museum.

Whew! I haven't posted on my blog in a REALLY long time! Sorry all you followers, I've been caught up in the "Taiwanese busy-ness"! People here in Taiwan are always so busy, and I think it's rubbed off on me. I have ten free minutes now to blog so blog I shall!

Over the last couple of months, so many adventures! Living in Taiwan is such a happy place for me and I'm so glad God sent me here, for many many reasons.

I've become pretty comfortable and confident at JacksonFive and am loving my students. They're still a challenge at times when they won't listen or obey, but overall they're fun loving and joyful and so so cute. We've been practicing for our Christmas program in a few weeks and our songs are "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" and "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" HAHA I know, opposites! I was supposed to choose a happy upbeat sort of song on my kids's language level, and then a slower more meaningful song, and this is what I came up with. Anyway, I have four kids speaking in between songs to make a nice transition. "presents are nice!" "but what is Christmas REALLY all about?" "I know! It's Jesus's birthday!" "Let's tell Jesus Happy Birthday!" etc. So cute.

Most of you followers know by now that my previously referred to "friend Jimmy" in other blog posts is now my "boyfriend Jimmy". He is Taiwanese and being in a cross cultural dating relationship has definitely been teaching me another level of Taiwanese culture! It's a new learning experience, but a good one. I wish I had time to write more but I have to rush off to take a shower before work. So I will post a few recent pictures, and then off I will go! Tonight we're decorating our apartment for Christmas, so I'm kind of excited about that. Christmas is absoluately my favorite time of year, and this is my first Christmas in Taiwan (although I DO have to work on Christmas Day (sad!) but I knew about that before I came so I've been ready to deal with it), but I expect it will be a great Christmas.

Adventures in...Everything!

Here is a Sun Cake that they sell around here during Moon Festival, which was last week. These cakes are sooooo good. They're flaky on the outside and sweet creamy on the inside. ooooohhh......







Here are Jimmy and I in the night market trying on ridiculously large sunglasses. oops, Jimmy's face got cut in half...












Here I am with my fake airbrushed tatoo of a butterfly. It's gone now. They only last a few days, but it's kind of fun while it lasts. My students were pretty impressed. "oooh teacher so beautiful" "ohhh teacher so cool". :)

















Here I am at the museum of Natural Science, in a fake rainforest. Didn't take many pictures there..mostly we watched a documentary about sardines and played with some sciency things, and went to the fake rainforest.








My Bumblebee class on field trip day.












Left to right, this is Minnie, Louise, Jeannie, Cherry, and Sophia.













Some of my girls holding up a traditional spear Thing on our field trip.

















Some of my boys holding up the same traditional spear Thing. The boys had more fun with this than the girls.

















Left to right: Rowling, Minnie, Kyle, Bobby, Ernie, and Mason.
This chicken was made entirely out of old advertisements from newspapers. Talk about reusing....
















This very large chair is made out of 66 smaller regular sized chairs. Pretty impressive. All my Bumblebees wanted to sit on it, but we weren't allowed. Bummer.

Wow...I've been slacking off in the blogging department, I see! It's been a while since my last blog post. Let's see if I can remember what has happened between then and now...

Well, my Bumblebees did go on a fun field trip to this place known in our school as the "Furniture Recycling Place". They renovate old furniture to sell again, and since we just finished a theme on recycling, reducing, and reusing in our classroom, it was an appropriate field trip. I've posted the pictures above. There were also a lot of displays of things they made there out of old "stuff". It was pretty cool.

My Bumblebees are doing quite nicely in our class, although we are now having some behaviour problems like students who do not like to listen while I am giving lessons and things of that nature. We're working on it.

The weather here is getting colder! I knew it would, but it's still very sad to me to feel it happening. Okay, not really "cold" by Alaskan standards I know, but still, when it's chilly and you have to ride a scooter it's a little uncomfortable. Hot days, cool nights. I'm told it will get worse soon. :(

Hm...what new things have I got to blog out that I saw over the past two or so weeks....well, I've experience my very first culture frustration. My scooter has been having many problems with not starting and although I have finally figured out how to kick start it on my own, it still takes longer and a lot more effort than just starting the way it is supposed to. It makes me upset. So we've taken it to the scooter shop twice now and both times they keep it for a few days and then tell me there's nothing wrong. And then it still won't start. So I'm frustrated because obviously, there is something wrong. So my roomate Stephanie tells me that when the scooter shop tells me there's nothing wrong with my scooter, what they really mean is "we know there's a problem but we can't find what it is" and to "save face" (saving face is a really big concept in the Taiwanese culture), they just tell me there's no problem at all. And they don't really check everything that might be wrong. They pick one thing that might be causing the problem, check that, and if that's ok they say there's nothing wrong. AGH! So sometimes you have to go back and back and back again to finally have them figure it out. So frustrating. So I'm just kick starting it every day until I find a new scooter shop hopefully who wants to check everything.

I've started a Growth class at Banner church, every Saturday afternoon. It's a follow up to the E1 retreat I went to a month or so ago (I think I blogged about that). Studying deeper into the Word, and how to grow in your Christian life. So I'm excited about that. It's a lot of take home work though. But that's okay.

I'm slowly but surely learning Chinese. It's a really tough language. *sigh* someday...

Okay, I think I'm fading. I will try to be more diligent about posting on my blog, but I'm getting busier and busier...(no surpise!)..

Thanks so much for all your prayers! :) Zai jian!

Adventures with Very Small Pineapples, Broken Cameras, and Chickens with Scooter Helmets

Well! That's quite a title, eh? I suppose it's time to blog for the week and give everyone an update on what's going on here in Taiwan. Last week my classes all went fairly well, I think. My Bumblebees are showing a marked improvement in their behaviour and even my boss Jackson commented on how well-behaved they were when he did his class observation last week. Last Monday Jackson sat in on a class of mine for the first time and I was so nervous I didn't eat all day, but it went pretty good and he only had good comments for me. The rest of the week was pretty normal, as weeks go. Just teaching, grocery shopping, hanging out with roomates.
This weekend was a lot of fun, though. I slept in until 11:30 Saturday morning which was REALLY nice! then went out to lunch with all my roomates and we talked for a few hours. Then I had dinner and went to the night market with my friend Jimmy and we did all kinds of interesting things. We got these fake airbrushed tatooes (really cheap!) that are super cool and are supposed to last for about ten days, depending on how well you scrub in the shower. I got a butterfly on my arm. Then we bought these teeny tiny pineapple plants in little glass jars with rocks (really, they don't even have roots, they're just pineapple tops and you're supposed to water them like once a week and they grow teeny tiny pineapples! I saw them! So cute!) Then we went to a place where they had all these put-coins-in-and-move-the-grabbing-arm-to-pick-up-a-toy things like you see at the entryway of supermarkets in the US. So Jimmy spent a bunch of coins trying to grab this little round stuffed baby chicken with a big pink scooter helmet and were about to give up when I said "Let me try" on the last coin and I got it! (kind of on accident, I thought I was way off). So now I own a little chicken with a scooter helmet. I would post a picture of all this stuff, but...I kind of broke my camera... :(
Yes, the brand new one! Jimmy and I were taking pictures at the mango ice shop and it kind of got knocked out of his hand and fell on the table in such a way that the lens (that was extended because the camera was on), got knocked on one side and got stuck that way. So the lens wouldn't detract the way it normally does when you turn the camera off. The camera kept telling me "turn off and on again" when I hit the "on" button. Grrr...so today we went to the Sony repair shop here in town and they said something to the tune of "oh, hm...we've never seen this happen to a camera before" and that they need to replace the whole casing and it was going to cost me about $2500 NT (about $75 USD) arghhhh.... so it got mailed off to Taipei today to get repaired. So irritated at myself. *sigh*
Well, then we went to a used bookstore where Jimmy looked for textbooks for his classes (graduate school) and I looked for a Chinese-English dictionary. Which I found, but an old kind of dirty copy so I'm going to keep looking for a nicer newer one. They had a lot of English books and magazines there, which was nice and kept us busy for a long time.
Then today I went to church in the morning and a bunch of us went to eat Thai food for lunch (which was really good). Then to the Sony repair shop, Starbucks, English service, and cell group back at my house. So it was a good weekend, except for the broken camera Thing. :(
Next weekend I have tentative plans to hike a mountain called Big Snow with my roomate Katie Jo and possible a few other people. The weekend after that I'm going hiking with another group, my Taiwanese friend Annie from cell group invited me to go with. That's around Moon Festival time, so there should be barbecues and celebrations going on all over in a couple of weeks. Tomorow night I will go with Jimmy for my first hot pot in Taiwan (apparently hot pot is a very popular food thing in Taiwan, but I'm not really sure what it is. I guess I will find out tomorrow and blog about it next time) and then to a very much larger bookstore to find a Chinese English dictionary. I'll be speaking Chinese before you know it! And Wednesday I'm doing a bike ride up some mountain with Katie Jo and our other friend Josh who's really into biking. So I'm getting busier these days. it's kind of nice to keep busy and have plans instead of coming home to sit by myself like and watch TV like I did all the time in Alaska. :)
Yah, so perhaps by the time I blog next week I will have my camera and all my pictures back, and also have more new pictures of the Big Snow hike. Yay! Thanks again for all your prayers, everybody, they're always much appreciated especially since traffic here is so hairy and although I am getting better at scootering, things happen unexpectedly all the time and I'm so glad for God's protection.
Okay, zai jian! Until next time!

Adventures in Exploring

I only took a few pictures on Saturday, but here they are. This is me with a funky Indian statue outside a little Indian shop we went to on art street.

Here's a (whoa darker than I thought here on Blogspot) picture of Jimmy and a malformed, very large, one-armed stuffed Giraffe. We didn't know why it had only one arm (all the Giraffes on the shelf only had one arm) but it was worthy of a picture.

A store sign I also deemed picture-worthy on art street. If this rings true, I guess I'm in trouble. :)

Jimmy and one of the cats in the Orange Cat restaraunt (see below). Obviously, the restaraunt wasn't named for this particular feline.

Well, my weekend was pretty good. I went exploring around town on scooter with my friend Jimmy. We ate lunch at a little Mexican restaraunt across town (surprise to me because I was under the impression there were no Mexican restaraunts in Taiwan)(well, I guess there is a Taco Bell in Taipei). Then we went to a movie and walked around a mall. Then we went to this street he called "international street" or "art street" because it had little shops from different countries like India. It was a really cute area. We stopped in this little restaraunt called the "Orange Cat" that was well known for having a bunch of cats roaming around the restaraunt that you could pet or play with. It was kind of strange and probably highly unsanitary, but since I haven't had a pet in so long it was nice to play with a bunch of large fat friendly fuzzy cats. Then we went to a night market where we got sweet potatoe fries and jie pye and then we hung out at a tea shop and then to another mall and a stationary store where we read all the greeting cards then back home to hang out. I've been so busy with work and starting to learn Chinese and all the general figuring out all the new stuff that it was nice to just have a whole day to explore and have someone fun who knows Taichung take me to fun places and just get to talk.

Sunday was pretty standard as Sundays around here go - church in the morning, out to lunch with friends, clean up around the house, to the English service, then after the night English service our cell group meets. It was a great weekend.

And then today came. Monday...aghhh..the great weekend Killer... and my very first class period is the one Jackson decided to sit in on for "observation" for the first time in my class. It was really crummy. I haven't heard my feedback yet but I was acutely aware the entire time that my boss was sitting in the back making notes on all the things I could be doing better. We're supposed to have our "meeting" about that tomorrow, so we'll see. Also I didn't feel very good today in the first place and this morning I was so nervous about Jackson visiting my class that I didn't eat anything until tonight.

On a brighter note, though, my friend Jimmy had gotten in a scooter accident last week (doesn't sound like a brighter note yet, does it?) and his scooter was all banged up and he thought it wasn't going to be fixed for another week and it would cost him around $10,000 NT (about $300USD) so he was really bummered out about that and also his work schedule that was getting overloaded and he was afraid to talk to his boss about it, but tonight the Scooter People told him his scooter was fixed and it would only cost him $500 NT (about $15 USD) and his boss approached him to tell him they were combining two of his classes and his hours would be less after all. This was so cool because he was hanging out with my roomates and I tonight talking about it and it turned out we had each of us prayed at different times throughout today for those specific things to be worked out for him and bang! it happened! It's really encouraging to see God answer prayer so quickly and in such an obvious way. So even though Monday started crummy, it ended on a happy note.

I have a really long day tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed. Wan an!

Okay, here's me in my bedroom playing with my new camera! Ni Hao!

Here's a photo that's also on my Facebook - a new Monopoly-ish sort of game the real name of which I do not know, but we call it "Uncle Wang" because the little blue guy on skiis there on the board is apparently named "Uncle Wang". You buy countries instead of Boardwalk or Park Place, etc. It's a good way to learn the Chinese names of some countries.

Here's another Facebook double-post of me and my roomates from left to right - me, Stephanie, Katie-Jo, and Amanda. We're celebrating 9-09-09 at 9:09 pm (or close to it anyway). I discovered ocean spray cranberry juice in 24 oz bottles at the 7-11 for about 50 cents and drink maybe two a day. I should be super healthy.

Another Facebook double post of me and Katie-Jo. The flash went off right in my face. We're about the same age and both like to hike and do kind of the same stuff, so it's fun to get to know her. She speaks really good Chinese.

Here we are at the night market with our Watermelon Juices. This is funny, because Jimmy, our Taiwanese friend in between me and Katie Jo, taught me how to say "watermelon juice" in Chinese - Shi Guo Jir (I don't really know pinyin either so that translation could be completely off, sorry!) so I practiced and then trotted off to successfuly order my own watermelon juice. Then when I came back to the group, Colin , Jimmy's roomate there on the far right was getting taught by Jimmy how to say "watermelon juice" and then he trotted off to order his "shi guo jir". Then when he got back to the group, another friend with us, Roger (who is taking this picture) was getting taught how to say "shi guo jir" and he trotted off to get some. Then Katie Jo decided she wanted some. Then Jimmy went. One. at. a. time. The Watermelon Juice lady probably thought we were nuts.

Here's me and Katie Jo at the Cash Box on her birthday I think. Cash Box is a KTV place (read: Karaoke TV). I didn't realize until looking at this picture just now that I had stuck my face in the guy body. Oh well.

Ah, here we go: classroom pictures! Here is a Monster my little Bobby made with bottle caps dipped in paint.

Here are some remnants of our Butterfly Theme: handprint butterflies! I am especially fond of the crooked Googly eyes.

Supposedly this project was to demonstrate the symmetry of a butterfly's wings. You paint half of the thing then fold it and smoosh down and it's suppose to end up symmetrical. Yeah, well the paint we used dried too fast to transfer to the other half and we ended up with many very non-symmetrical butterflies. Oh well. Live and learn. Read: won't be doing this project ever again.

Here's one of our Ant projects that flutters about in the wind from the fan every day. You can see my students are quite creative. They really love to draw and color and make stuff. This bodes well for me as their teacher, as I too am fond of these things.

Also from our Ant theme, learning about ant communities and behaviour, each student drew their own version of an "ant home" underground ant nest with chambers, each with a tunnel leading out of each corner of the paper so they could get tacked up to make one giant "ant nest" this worked quite nicely, I think.

Here is "My Domain". This is where I stand and teach for 3-5 hours every weekday. Notice all the fruit posters on the sliding glass door. Those were our only real wall decorations when I started teaching in this classroom. We now have lots more. Yay!

Here are some of my Bumblebee boys on break playing a game of "Paper, Scissors, Stone". This is a very popular game here and is also a basis for many other hand games. Also, it's a GREAT way to keep things fair in class. If there's ever a quibble about something being fair, we "paper, scissors, stone" it and whoever wins gets to do whatever it is or whatever. "Paper, scissors, stone" is like the law to kids around here. I love it.

Here is my class from the door. The kids are on a break so they're allowed to play games like Uno or read books or whatever on the mat.

My classroom from the door. It's a pretty good sized classroom, lots of wall space for our crafts.

Here is the downstairs "computer lab" area, and meeting area. That's my co-worker Karen, another foreign teacher doing some kind of prep at the table. There on the back wall there are four corkboards with pictures of each of the four foreign teachers and some basic information for the parents (where we're from, our experience, etc.) Mine is the pink on the left.

Here is my (very messy today) desk.

Here is the teacher's area facing the front of the school. It's little messy.

Here is my favorite tea drink: "duo duo lu cha" which is yogurt green tea, which I order "ban tang" or half-sugar and it comes out just right (still plenty sweet) and with ice. oooh it's so gooood... and I have gone to this one tea shop around the corner from my school so often that all I have to do now is pull up and they know what I want. Notice the sealed plastic "lid" which is the most clever thing ever. Scooter-proof!

I bought a new camera! I braved my way to the Nova (a conglomeration of electronics vendors - Dad, you would have a ball there) and bought a brand-new 10.1 mp Sony Cyber-Shot, a cuter, smaller, much newer version of my broken clunker of a 5 mp Sony Cyber-Shot. It's red. I'm happy. And I think I got a pretty good deal. So, with that, I present the above photos I took yesterday in my classroom. And also a few other places.

Whew, it took a long time to upload and type all that. I'm not great with the layout of pictures, so sorry if it's a little confusing to follow.

I have to go to bed now. I'll try to type more stuff this weekend. And hopefully there will be more pictures posted more often now that I have a working camera. Yay!

Zai jian!!

Adventures in Blogging

As you see, I have updated my blog (thanks Corrie and cutestblogontheblock.com)! I figured it was high time for a change. I'm not sure about the font though, I'm thinking perhaps it might be too hard to read? Leave me some feedback.
Well I had a whole bunch of things to blog about tonight, but then I got kind of caught up in changing my background and now it's almost 2am and I think I'd better go to bed.

List of Happy Things that have Happened This Week:
1.) My students all capitilized the first letter of their sentences and put periods at the end of all their sentences today. This is a great breakthrough, made possible only by the wonderful JacksonFive point (coupon) system, whereby they purchase cool Things with the coupons they earn in class. They earned five coupons each (kind of a lot) by remembering to capitilize and period their sentences today, but only if every single student remembered to do it to all their sentences, otherwise nobody got any coupons. They rocked. I'm so proud.
2.) I started meeting with my Chinese tutor today and learning the Chinese phonics (whoa, so hard).
3.) Went to the E1 weekend at Banner church (kind of the membership class, where they explain the vision of the church and go over things like how much God loves us and presenting the gospel (mostly for brand new beleivers, but a requirement for anybody wishing to become a member). Good stuff. Banner church has a great vision and has experienced tremendous growth over the past few years. They are planning to one day send thousands of missionaries into China and Chinese communities worldwide.
4.) Bought bamboo - happy!
5.) I'm really tired.
6.) Goodnight!
7.) (Don't forget to comment on my new font - yay or nay!)

Adventures with Taxis, KTV, Night Market, and Ghost Month

Whew, what a title! Time marches on...
Last week I had my first (real) KTV experience (karaoke). I thought I would be more fun and sing and really get into it like I did in my Oak Cottage days (Julie remembers) but actually I didn't want to sing at all! Your group rents a KTV room with a big screen and a Karaoke machine and you punch in your songs, and they have English songs that are mostly oldies and 70's songs, and then they have these really tacky background videos that play during the songs as it highlights the words for you on the screen. Mostly the videos are of pretty 80's women in funky clothes wandering aimlessly (but beautifully lost-looking) through forests or along roads or beaches or something. That part is pretty entertaining. It's kind of loud though, and the microphone kind of makes your voice echo and bounce around the room and I wasn't so excited about that part. But it was a new experience and therefore fun. And it's funny to watch other people belt out songs like "Yellow Submarine" and "Funkytown".
This month is Ghost Month here in Taiwan, and I don't know all the reasons for Ghost Month but I do know it involves housholds and businesses burning a LOT MORE paper money in barrels and at temples than usual. Paper money, I don't know the reason for that either, but they offer it to their..ancestors maybe? by burning it at temples. Anyway, our apartment building had their paper money burning day on Sunday and a big tent was set up in our courtyard where the tenants could go burn incense, and two big barrels were set up outside our back fence by the 7-11 where they could burn paper money. I made the big mistake of taking out the trash that afternoon and the trash recycle bins are right next to where they had the burn barrells with the paper money and I ended up with paper money ash all over me. It was yucky. The air has been more smoggy than usual because of all the paper money burning but we've had some nice rains thankfully that washed most of it away. Yuk.
So the other day my scooter wouldn't start (it's temperamental and sometimes the humidity or if I run it too hard the day before then it decides to not start to get me back, and I don't know how to kick start it yet, apparently there's always a way to kick start your scooter when it decides to not start the Real Way but I can't do it yet) so I was running late so I took a taxi (there is a stand right around our corner, yay for Convinience!) and it's cheap to take one here (about $3 USD to get to my school) so I took one. When I got in the cab and told the driver where to go (in Chinese even!) we started off, then he turned to me and said "JESUS-UH!" (again, there's the "uh" at the end of all English words) and I was like "OH! I KNOW JESUS!" but he didn't really speak English, he could just say "Jesus-uh good!" and pointed to a cross hanging from his rearview mirror where the trinkets and temple baubles usually hang. So I thumbs upped him and wished desperately in my head that I could speak Chinese. It was a fun interaction for the day though.
Speaking of learning Chinese, I finally found a Chinese tutor! Two hours every Friday morning. Not a lot of time, but better than nothing. I know about 50 Chinese words now, not including nubmers and how to count.
Oh and speaking of things around the corner from our house, there's a Jie Pie Guy! (I totally don't think I spelled jie pie right in PinYin but that's how I see it in my head) Jie Pie (prounounced jee-pye) is like little pieces of fried chicken goodness in a little paper bag and you spear them with really long toothpick Things to eat them. Usually you buy it from a night market stand, but there's a stand right by the taxi station next to our house! HURRAY! The Jie Pie Guy also sells sweet potato fries and they are SO GOOD! Such an exciting discovery.
Speaking of food, here are some new foods I have tried lately:
red bean tea - not so excited about that one.
stir fried cabbage (which normally I like) in a lunchbox, but with little freeze-dried (plumped up in the dish though) shrimpies, with their heads and tails and eyeballs and all still intact. It was really creepy. It's like..ooh my favorite cabbage..UGH what's this ugly Thing in it?!?! I didn't eat it.
mango shaved ice - SO GOOD! OH my goodness! shaved ice with milk, then topped with this sweetend mango mixture with huge chunks of mango all over. it was WONDERFUL!
sweet potato frieds of course, and jie pie
watermelon juice! a number one favorite now. they basically take chunks of watermelon (including the rind!) and grind them up in a blender, mixed with some milk, strain out the chunks and seeds, and that's it! it's SO GOOD!
Okay, speaking of food, I went to the night market again the other night and I don't think I've blogged about night markets yet. I love the night market. I'm going to try when I finish typing this blog to upload my night market pictures but I've been having SO MUCH trouble with my stupid camera and last time I tried it wouldn't work, so sorry if I post this without any pictures. The night market is mostly clothes and trinkety jewelry and various shiny baubles and fun Things, and food stalls! The best is the food, but also I like to go read the clothes. The sayings they put on clothes here are SO FUNNY to me. I really want to take pictures but I think it would be kind of rude. English is apparently cool on clothes so even if it doesn't make the slightest sense but has English letters, it goes. Most things are simple misspellings like "Carifornia" but somethings don't make ANY sense: " Good vibe go always in the neighborhood!" or some such strangeness. "Beauty is the world round goes". I mean you kind of know mostly what they are trying to say. I did see a shirt that had just letters all over it running together : alkdnlksndklnlin. Eh, what? Oh but this one was so cute: "Love is when you meet someone who's heart sings the same tune as yours" or something like that. Also reminds me that our DVD player on the blue screen says "DVD Playper". that's funny to me.
Okay, here is a list of things I'm glad I brought to Taiwan with me:
McCormick's original Chili mix (the small seasoning packets) I love Chili and I am almost out of the ones I brought with me so if some wonderful person wants to send me a care package full of these I would be So Happy!)
Jersey Knit Sheets - every night, so thankful I brought these!
Sunblock - they only sell teeny wheeny bottles here and it's all some kind of whitening formula. Yeah, if I used a whitening formula, I would go invisible.

That's it! Such a short list! Most everything else is readily available here for similar or less money than in the US. But there are a couple of things I would like to find that I don't even know if they have here: that Mahatma's yellow rice they sell in the US grocery stores in small skinny packages - I haven't seen yellow rice here at all and I love it (ooh that could also go in a care package along with the chili mix!) and Cover Girl makeup. :( Oh well!

Okay, well this turned into a monstrously long post, so I'll try to upload my pictures now and then go to bed. Wan an! (good night!)
well, i'm pretty sure my camera is permanently unfixably broken now and I'm sad because I had a couple of really good night market pictures on that stupid memory stick. *sigh* no more pictures for this blog for a while! :(

Adventures with Doom - Death to Cockroaches!

So, I recall a much earlier post on this blog, before I even left for Taiwan, about how I read that there were so many cockroaches on the island. I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving to have not seen any cockroaches until this week they are abounding! I think they are getting up through the drains. It is 2:30 in the morning here and I am still online (on a Friday night so it's ok!) and my roomate Katie Jo just knocked on my door to inform me there was a Large Monster Cockroach in the bathroom and she needed moral support to Kill It. So I left her in charge of keeping an eye on The Monster while I went into the kitchen to get the spray can of Doom from on top of the fridge. Whilst I was journeying toward the kitchen a sudden movement at the end of the hall caught my eye and behold! 'twas another Cockroach! A much smaller one than the Monster in the bathroom though. So I sailed through the air jumping practically to the door of the kitchen from the end of the hall (which, is quite a ways actually) to fetch the can of Doom. As I stepped into the kitchen, a grisly pair of brown antennae caught my eye from under the corner of the fridge and who might they belong to but Bathroom Monster Cockroach's kitchen cousin, Slightly Smaller but still just as Ugly Cockroach. So I waltzed into the living room avoiding small Hallway Cockroach and stood on the sofa whilst I pondered how to obtain the Doom without jeapordizing my feet. It occured to me that Katie Jo was still bravely manning the Bathroom although high pitched sqeaks from her direction made me suddenly realize how close my bedroom door is to the bathroom door (very close) and how Imperitive it was that I fetch the Doom as quickly as possible. So I gathered up my late-night courage and bounded to the Kitchen and made it back with the Doom safely in my possession. Katie Jo courageously squirted Bathroom Monster Cockroach with all her might and it died a horriblely grisly Death in the hallway after doing the Poisoned Cockroach Dance (which is a most dangerous dance, as you never know where they might end up). I squirted Small Hallway Cockroach with all MY might (which late at night with three cockroaches in the house, is a lot of Might, probably more Might than this very small cockroach needed to die) and it died a sad death under a red storage Tub in the dining room and I will sort that out tomorrow. Katie Jo braved the Kitchen to find Ugly Cockroach and she kilt it with the Doom next to the sink and so now we have to re-do all the dishes tomorrow, a task which is well worth it to know there is one less cockroach in the world. And now I am so awake and it's quarter to three in the morning.
So tomorrow I will find drain covers for our bathtub as I think that is where they are coming in.
Ughck. Doom is not good for the human either and uughckk I can smell it. Actually I don't even think they call it Doom here, it's another brand. But I call them all Doom.
Um...so I just re-read this post and it's kind of funny. This is what happens when you are up too late. I'd probably should try to go to sleep but now I will be wondering if there are any in my room.
argghck.
Oh. and I did eat those Strawberry & Peanut butter M&M's. The outer layer is chocolate, then a layer of strawberry and then inside it is p-nut butter filling. It's like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with choclate and on a smaller scale. I approve.

Here are almost all my Bumblebees in one of the "medicinal" square pools. There was one older dude in there already and he is on the left in the red cap - look how annoyed he is that 18 little yellow headed kids have invaded his Bubble.

They had this cool ... slidey Thing...I can't tell which student this is but I think they're having fun.

Here are some of my girls having some swimming fun. From left to right, Rowling, Louise, and Ivy.

Here is the pool (kind of dark, sorry) you can kind of see the little walls where people hang onto while the adjustable squirty-jets massage them.

This is little fuzzy-headed Eathen, he is very tiny and under this yellow swim cap he has such all this sticking-up fuzzy hair. He is so cute. He is my "secret favorite". :)

More splashing kids.

Splashing, happy kids.

Strawberry and Peanut Butter (together, mind you) M&M's. Go figure. I actually haven't tried these yet. They are still in my bag.

Ohhh... let's see...I'm trying to remember what has happened since the last time I blogged..I'm sorry my blogging fans, but I have been too caught up in the day to day life that it is easier to post a one-liner on Facebook than it is to sit down and write a real blog!

Classes are going okay, but I am still learning how to handle discipline issues, especially with my evening junior-high aged class. Apparently, teachers are not so cool when you are in junior high and I get a lot of eye-rolling and sneaking of notes in class. Also the culture here requires that children are in school all day from about 8 am to 9 pm and then they have to go home and do homework and have to go to school on Saturday too, so I kind of don't blame them for being tired and restless in their night classes.

We are now in a unit about Butterflies in my afternoon Bumblebee class, and so now our classroom is fully decorated with ants and butterfly crafts adorning every possible corner and hanging from all over the ceiling. I must take a picture sometime soon to post.

Last Thursday we went to the swimming pool (see above photos). The pool here is way cool because they have not only a regular sized swimming pool, but also a shallower section for kids, and a whirlpool section, and a squirty-jets section, and then little spa sections that have "medicine" herb stuff in them to "heal" things and make your skin "whiter" (whitening is a big thing here in Taiwan - nobody wants a tan, they all want to be whiter. "Teacher your skin so white!" is actually a huge compliment although I ruefully crinkle my nose when they say it to me). Also just to observe all the people wearing those ridiculously nerdy swim caps is just a funny sight.

I am getting faster on my scooter now and I haven't had any close calls yet. I am loving the scooter freedom! The other day I accidentally left my keys in the ignition when I parked at the school and then I was freaking out because I couldn't find my keys and I thought I may have locked them in the seat (storage section) of the scooter, but I noticed my helmet had been put on my seat instead of in the basket where I left it, so when I picked up my helmet, my keys were there! Apparently some do-gooder had taken my keys out of the ignition and "hidden" them under my helmet so nobody would steal my scooter! Yay, thank you Jesus.

I don't know if anybody has been following the disaster typhoon Morakot left in it's wake in the southern part of Taiwan, but if not do a google search for "typhoon Morakot Taiwan" and read about it. There is still a great deal of work to be done to restore homes and businesses to order and help people who have lost everything in those towns and villages to get back on their feet. Our church is sending teams every weekday to do clean up work, until this weekend when the military took over. Then we found out yesterday that the military now needs volunteers to help with the clean-up. I would go except my work schedule is kind of non-flexible. :( But please if you remember, pray for those people. So many people lost absolutely everything, and there was even an entire village wiped out and buried by a mudslide. Thankfully Taichung is pretty protected by mountains on all sides, so we are usually ok in natural disasters, but not everybody was so safe.

So far, outside of classes I've been hanging out with my roommates, eating out with friends, helping other friends move and clean their new apartments, watching re-runs of 'Friends' (aahh it followed me here! :), night market shopping, etc. etc. Fun times to be had by all.

Well, I haven't got anything else truly interesting to blog about. So perhaps by the next time I "blog" I will have more interesting things to talk about. :)

Adventures in Scooting

I finally have a scooter! Yay! It's a little 50cc that I can drive legally with my international license, it's cherry red, and it has a basket! I also got my health card and my Visa debit card in the mail yesterday. So now I'm all set! :)
Scooting is way better than riding a bike. It's much faster, for one thing, and sooo much cooler (both the hip kind of cool and the wind/breeze in your face kind of cool). Traffic here is so funny to me. Instead of watching the traffic light, the people stopped at a red light will watch the little countdown walking guy at the crosswalk, because it counts down to when the opposing light will turn red. So when the digital crosswalk guy begins running and then says "stop walking", the traffic stopped at the red light will go even if the light is still red, because it is going to turn green in a few seconds. So far I haven't seen any accidents due to this but I'm sure they have them. I still wait for the light to turn all the way green. I saw a guy today carrying about 10 huge bags of leafy green vegetables on his little scooter, very cleverly perched all of them. It's amazing what people manage to fit on their scooters.

My afternoon class, the Bumblebees, we've been doing a summer theme unit on Ants. Today we made models of the Ant Family with silicone clay. Silicone clay is awesome. I don't even think it's on the market. I think my school has some because one of the kid's parents works at some hi-tech place that does stuff with silicone and he invented it. Silicone clay doesn't dry out, stick to things, or get hands dirty. It's cool.
The kids had a lot of fun with that.
Also today we practiced writing sentences again. The Bumblebees are learning to write for the first time this year, so their sentence skills aren't so great. But this one little guy, Hank, was so funny - the kids all got this worksheet that had half of a picture of a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end, and they were supposed to finish drawing the other half of the picture and then write a sentence about the picture. Most kids finished drawing the rainbow, maybe a flower or two, or another pot of gold. Some kids drew people. Most kids wrote sentences like "I can see a rainbow" or "Look at the beautiful rainbow". But one little boy, finished drawing the other half of the rainbow, and then underneath the rainbow he drew two obviously dead-looking monsters. Then he wrote this very short sentence: "Two monsters die."
I laughed so hard. Then I gave him a star. (they get stars when they complete their worksheets) Kudos for creativity.
They had another worksheet where they had to do the same thing, finish this picture and write a sentence. The picture was one-half of a hot-air balloon floating over a river. Most kids wrote stuff like "I can see a balloon" or "Look at the beautiful balloon" (sensing a theme here?) but this kid drew a person in the balloon, holding a fishing pole that went all the way down to the river, and wrote "I am fishing from the balloon". He got a really big star. That's my kind of kid!

Tomorrow we're taking a school-wide field trip to some farm place. Fun times to be had by all!

The other night I learned how to play mah-jong. I actually learned more chinese words learning how to play mah-jong than I did my entire first month in Taiwan. I learned how to count to ten, how to say "north, south, east, and west" and then all the other names of the tiles. It's very much like Rummikub, only more Chinese and more complicated. :)

New Things:
1.) The best kung-pau chicken in the world - see pictures on my Facebook because I am having a problem uploading them to my blog for some reason.
2.) How to get gas for your scooter at a gas station - pull up, open the tank, smile real big at the attendent and point up (as in fill it up because I don't know how to say that in Chinese yet), pay the NTD equivalent of about $3 USD, then scoot off! A much simpler and cheaper process than putting gas in my car in Alaska in freezing wind and snow.
3.) Discovery of Funnyions at the Carrefour. "Funnyions" are like onion rings only with no real onion. They're onion flavored rings. Actually Funnyion is the American version and I discovered a chinese version but still a very happy discovery.
4.) The milk ladies at the Carrefour. I was looking for "my" milk there the other day - the bottle with the red lid that means "whole milk" with the famous baseball player guy on the front holding a bottle of the same milk with a cow peeking around it, and whilst I was in the midst of looking, I was bombarded by Taiwanese Milk ladies asking me stuff in chinese and it scared me away and I never did get my Milk. :( I think they were probably asking me if they could help.
5.) The gas guy. Apparently Gas Guy comes once a month to read the gas gauge. I was home in the morning yesterday and he rang the doorbell and I opened the door to Gas Guy, only I didn't know it was Gas Guy because at first he was just Strange Old Chinese Guy I Couldn't Understand. So I kept saying, "No thanks, I don't want any!" but he kept saying "Gas-uh! Gas-uh! (chinese who don't speak English very well add "uh" to the end of their English words) and finally I got it! "Ohhh... GAS!!" so I let him in and he checked the guage and then bowed a lot and left. I can't wait to learn Chinese.

This list had five things the other day but I had problems uploading my pictures so I just saved this blog and posted the pictures to my Facebook. So I will now add a couple of new things to this List:
6.) A Costco card! I got caught at Costco using my roomate's card yesterday and I was so grumpy that they told me I couldn't buy my stuff with her card, but I did the math and figured that even if I only bought two packs of ground beef there per year it would still come out even with the membership fee (ground beef here is REALLY expensive and buying the Australian ground beef in bulk at Costco is the best and cheapest option by far) (also I can get Ghirardelli (spelling?) brownie mix there in bulk) so I figured it was worth it and gave in. Yay me.
7.) Um...can't think of any more right now. Gotta go out and get stuff done. :) More later.

Adventures in Typhoons

This is the canal (kind of a sewage canal but sort of cleaner) tree-lined road I walk up and down all the time. In the typhoon, these trees were bent waaay sideways, the canal was full of rushing water, and branches were all over the road.

Um...this is a bottle of lychee fruit wine I took this picture for Michael (this wine smells really really gross and was a gift to a friend of mine but I thought it was funny to see lychee wine)

Sharon and the Giant Mango. this picture also is on my Facebook so most of you have already seen it.

Sorry still not very many pictures. :(

Whoa! First typhoon day in my first week of teaching! Classes have gone better than expected but I was supposed to take my afternoon class, the Bumblebees, to the park to observe ants on Friday. We took them on a school field trip on Thursday afternoon to this children's library place and they were just bouncing off the walls! It's been raining all week so the kids have been penned up inside. So I wasn't looking forward to riding my bike in the rain (again) to work and coming up with a last-minute lesson plan to replace the park idea because it was raining (again) and the kids would be all hyper, but then all classes got cancelled island-wide to the Typhoon Morakot! hip hip hooray! So I had actually no idea what a typhoon really was. Turns out this particular typhoon was 1.) a looot of wind on Friday but very little rain - but so much wind it blew over tree branches and store signs and stuff. 2.) hardly any rain or wind on Saturday but very overcast and kind of eerie, and 3.) a LOT LOT LOT of rain AND wind today! We don't know what's up with the typhoon.

Great Things Taiwan has that they should have in the States too:

1.) Sealed plastic lids on to-go drinks. This is a GREAT idea! They put your drink in this machine that seals a plastic lid on it, then you stick your straw through the lid and you have a practially spill-proof drink! It rocks.

2.) Umbrella covers in store entry ways. A machine you stick your umbrella in and it puts on a plastic umbrella-shaped bag to keep it from dripping in the store. Genius!

3.) In more remote towns closer to the coast, I'm told the houses build metal pull-down walls around them so when a typhoon or whatever is coming they just have to pull down the metal wall thing (like a thin garage door) instead of spending tons of time taping windows and barring doors. Brilliant!

That's my list so far. I'm sure I'll be adding to it in the days to come.