Happenings..and such...

Me and Jimmy's hamster, Dumpling..who I now realize is quite tiny in this picture. Oops. Also this picture shows nicely the new red-ish color of my hair. oops, in my eyes too I see. Continue reading for the full story. :)

Here is Jimmy's other hamster, Pudding, who we think is pregnant. Augh! As above, continue reading for the full story. :)

Pudding in all her Dwarf Hamster fatness.

This is me at the science museum. When I look at this picture I can see a word bubble in front of the T-Rex's mouth: "I know she's here..I can smell her...but I can't find her.."

This is without a doubt the largest Chupa Chup I have ever seen. Or actually the largest any lollipop I have ever seen. Taiwan markets some unnaturally large items.

For example, these unnaturally large Carrots.

Hello my blog-reading friends...I apologize for being the slacker that I am in this blogging department..somehow there are always so many other things that "need" to be done instead!!

But, as I am now waiting for Season 15 of the Amazing Race to download on my iTunes, I have a little bit of extra time to blog. Yay! :)

So, let's see..what's been happening over here on the small sweet-potatoe shaped island of Taiwan...

My friends Mandy and Jacob Moore had a baby girl, Moriah, two weeks ago! She's a cutie patootie. Jimmy and I went to visit them in the hospital and I was rather appalled at the abundance of (rather immodest) breastfeeding posters lining the hallway of the obstetrics ward. I was later told that Taiwanese women are for some reason very reluctant to breastfeed so the hospitals and clinics are trying very hard to promote it. It was still disturbing. I was also told that Taiwan has the lowest birth rate in the world! (or close to it) so the government "rewards" Taiwanese couples who have babies by giving them 30,000 NTD (about $1,000 USD) at the time of the birth. That's cool. Unfortunately, Mandy and Jacob didn't get it because they are American.

So, about a week after Moriah was born, Jimmy and I went to a different, smaller night market that I'd never been to before. We're walking, drinking our teas, and chatting..then all of a sudden Jimmy stops and says, " I want a mouse." What??! So I look over his shoulder and sure enough, there is a hamster and mouse Lady with a stand full of cages and mice and hamsters tumbling all about. Well, they were cute enough. So we spent the next hour choosing the cutest most friendly what we thought was a "mouse", buying a cage, food, bedding, etc. and then we named her "Dumpling". and Jimmy took her home, all proud. It was very cute. But I thought Dumpling looked decidedly un-mouselike, especially the absense of a real tail was my clue. So I looked online and said..ooh..this is not a mouse! This is a Dwarf Hamster (secretly, I was happier it was a hamster). Jimmy didn't care what it was as long as it was cute and fun. So two days later, Jimmy decides Dumpling is lonely and we go back to the night market to get a friend. We ask for a female and the Mouse Lady inspects several hamsters and hands us a small, floofy, bright eyed female who we bought and named Pudding. Pudding and Dumpling fought a little bit and first and then became friends. But a couple of days ago, Jimmy says to me.."Um, Pudding looks a little bit different now. She got all fat". I hadn't seen them in a few days, so I was like''right, how fat could she be", but whoa! She had doubled in size in about three days! She was also trying to dig holes, building little nests, and being really mean to Dumpling and bit Jimmy when he put his hand in the cage. So we looked online and sure enough, these are all symtoms of a pregnant, about to deliver within a week, hamster. Augh. Jimmy separated the hamsters and we'll see what happens. I think it's funny, but then, they don't live at my house and I don't have to take care of them. Jimmy's a little disturbed at the thought of baby hamsters. Hahaha...I'll keep you updated! :)

So, I was noticing that I had a few gray hairs on the top of my head and it disturbed me. So I decided to get my hair colored. Nothing really new or exciting, just my normal bi-annual, darker richer brown coloring thing that I do. So Jimmy took me to his salon that he goes to and they colored my hair. I showed a picture of what I wanted, picked out a hair swatch, explained in detail to Jimmy to translate, and then...but...did I get a nice, darker, richer brown? oh no..that would be too easy..I got a nice bright red! oh yeah, it's red. You can kind of see it in one of my first pictures above. It's not so bright except in the sun. Augh. I don't want red hair. But, everyone who's seen it says they think it looks good, actually. Whether it's the truth or they are all trying to make me feel better..I don't know. oh well. At least it's not like, green.

But, the salon, was cool. They had Tv's on the wall behind every station so you could surf local channels while you got your hair done. And they gave us tea and cookies. Almost made up for the red. Almost.

So my Bumblebees are doing quite well. We visited the science museum a few weeks ago, and saw a display of tiny houses and model villages to show different lifestyles around Taiwan. On our way through the display we had to walk over this plastic bridge thing, and underneath the see-through plastic bridge, the whole floor was a video screen showing flowing water like a river. So it felt like we were "walking on water", right. So my Bumblebees all started murmuring, "ohhh..like Jesus! Teacher! I'm Jesus! Look look! I'm Jesus!" It was so cute.

Then last Friday I taught them about the armor of God. It was really fun. They were all excited about it. But what made my day was one little girl named Jeannie. I had explained all the pieces of "armor" and I taught about the "sword of the Spirit" is the Bible, and helps us to fight Satan's lies with the truth, etc. So she comes up to me during break and says "Teacher, after class, I don't want to play in the backyard" (after class time the kids are dismissed to play in the backyard while waiting for parent pickups). So I was like, "oh, why not?" and she says, "I want to stay in the library (rather, front area of school with bookshelves), and read the Bible" and I wanted to hug her, it was so cute. Things like that make being a teacher so worth all the tiredness and planning.

Two nights ago, my room became a battleground. I don't know where they all came from, but there were about a million mosquitoes in here. (ok...exaggeration..but really, that's what it felt like). Before I went to bed, I saw two great Fat ones sitting on the ceiling so I stood on my bed and squisht them with a magazine. Hah. Felt all proud of myself for de-mosquitoizing my room. About 30 minutes after I turned out the light..."zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" in my ear..so irritating. So I turned on the light and hunted it down and squisht it with the same magazine on the wall. Ok, lights out...an hour later..zzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ... anyway, until 7:30 am I squisht a total of 7 mosquites. My night was alternately..trying to sleep..hearing a zzzzZZZZZ..hunting a mosquitoe..making the kill...trying to sleep..it was awful. Got about two hours of sleep in the morning and drank coffee and Coke all day. Arugh. So I went to Carrefour and bought a plug in skeeter Killer that sprays bug killer at random intervals through the room and that helped a lot last night and tonight too. Death to mosquitoes!! At least, I thought in my early morning tiredness that awful night...at least, it's not cockroaches. Amen to that.

On that note, this is a long blog, my hand is tired, my E key is annoying, and my Amazing Race download is nearly done. So I will bid you "Zai jian" (goodbye) until my next blog post (whenever that will be.... :)