Road trips, new family, and saving turtles.

Well! I've been Stateside for about four days now, and here is a list of Ten things I am adjusting to:
1.) dry air! I feel like a prune, like my skin is in constant wrinkle mode! My parents are noticing the same thing, so's I suppose this is a Thing you have to deal with when you come from a tropical climate.
2.) not having to throw away toilet paper! I still find myself looking for the garbage can and then thinking - - waiiiitt a minute----
3.) not having to take off your shoes when you enter a house! although I still do. Force of habit.
4.) NO TEA!! no tea no tea no tea...augh!!
5.) I can READ EVERYTHING! Instead of walking confidently through the store because I know exactly where my stuff is (like at the Carrefour), I find myself standing for looonnng periods of time in the Wal Mart just staring at stuff because... I can read all of it! It's daunting!
6.) I can eavesdrop! I can communicate what I want! I can find what I need!It's a wonderous thing to be in a Land where everybody speaks your language!
7.) no high buildings! beautiful sprawled out houses and YARDS! TREES! oh boy!
8.) my hair is well-behaved! This is due partly to the lack of humidity and partly to the fact that I am not hopping on my scooter right after drying my hair. I'm not used to well-behaved hair. I almost don't know what to do with it!
9.) caaannndddyyyy.... *drool*
10.) comfortable beds! everywhere! I've stayed so far in a hotel, a friend's house, my parent's unit at the missionary home they stay in, and here at my brother's in-law's house. Four different beds. All comfortable. None of this Taiwanese bedrock-style (HAHAHAHA bedrock!!) beds. HAHAHA... bedrock..

That's it. :)
OH! I saved a turtle today. We almost squisht him with our car, were it not for my cry of "NOOOO! TURTLE IN THE ROAD!!!" he would have been all cracked up. I saved him and put him by a pond. I feel like I did my good deed for the day.
It's been great to catch up with family and meet new fambly people, as in my brother's fiance's family. North Carolina is a beauutiful state! Really beautiful. Like, I'm blown away by some of these country houses (estates?) that look just like they came straight from a magazine cover.
The food's been amazing, I've been sleeping well, and just counting down the hours until the wedding on Saturday.
I haven't seen my brother David yet, as he has to work today about four hours away so will drive in tonight. My other brother Ryan is supposed to arrive at some point (he's a free spirit. who knows when he'll show up?). This will be the first time in 6 years or so my entire family (parents + all kids) will be together in one place. My mom's sister, my aunt Susan, will drive in tomorrow morning, and I'm so excited to see her again! I haven't seen this particular aunt in... maybe...17 years? craziness.
I will also get to see an old family member, my parent's missionary co-worker, Aunt Millie, who recently retired to the States. I haven't seen her in years, and don't know when I'll see her again. So even though not a lot of our family is coming, this really is a special few days for us.

However, by the time I'm heading back to Taiwan, I think I'll be ready. Special though it is to be here, grateful as my heart is to be with my family, and fun as it is to reverse cultures and be in the US for a few days, my home for now really is in Taiwan.

I will be working on thank-you's for each individual who made it possible for me to be here! But until I get them all out, if you're reading this and you were part of helping me to be with my family for this wedding, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! This is an absolutely amazing gift and I'm still rather in awe of the fact that I'm HERE! I'm praying for heaps and heaps of blessings from God in all of you who helped me to get here. :)

Until next time (who knows when that will be?)! Zai jian!!

I see white people!

People here are so white! They all kind of look the same. And everybody's speaking English! and I have to pause a moment before saying "thank you" so I don't say "xie xie" instead. Oh, reverse culture shock, how fun are you!

I arrive in LA last night, after a long bumpy flight (with really good airplane food, I might add!), during which I managed to get about an hour of fitful sleep, so by the time I landed I was so wiped out. I stumbled through customs and sat down and thunk for a few minutes. I hadn't booked a hotel beforehand because I figured I would bum it in the airport. But I had not anticipated feeling quite so tired and droopy, and the only thing I wanted in the world was a bed to sleep in. So I sighed a great sigh, called a few hotels in the area, and took the cheapest room I could find.
Turned out to be so way worth it! I slept soooooooooooooooooooooooooo well last night (morning for me), woke up feeling great, took a shower, ate a muffin, turned on the Tv to the easy listening channel, drank my coffee, wrote in my journal, read my Bible, and now I'm bloggering while listening to classical music. I can't tell you how glad I am to relax by myself before I dive into the second half of my travel adventure to Florida to meet my family.
AND to beat all that, I think a Chinese family or couple is also staying at this hotel, because I heard people speaking Chinese outside my room this morning. It was like a little piece of home. :D
After I check out, I'll head to the airport to explore for a few hours before my flight leaves this evening to Seattle. In Seattle, I'll meet with some great friends, crash at their house, then fly into Orlando to meet my parents on Monday night.
Entering the immigration line after landing LA, I was asked by some airport official if I was a US citizen or visitor. I seriously almost went into the visitor's line before I realized that I hold a US passport and that makes me a citizen. At the immigration counter, after looking at my passport, the guy asked me where I was born, and I told him, and he proceeded to ask all the usual questions I get about Suriname. Then he asked where I came from and I told him Taiwan. Then he asked all about why I was in the US. He had already stamped my stuff, so it wasn't like he was asking for security issues. He was just interested. It then occured to me that I am kind of complicated. *sigh*
In any case, I suppose I won't have time to blog again until I'm with my family, so I hope I can post some photos by then. Thanks so much, everybody, for your support and prayers! I'm so excited to finally be on my way! :D My heart is full of smiles.
Zai jian!

Of high tech bathrooms and tiny cities

Last night I wrote a blog post from the Tokyo airport, but couldn't log on to the internets to post it. So this is a posting for yesterday. I left Taichung at about 3 pm on the HSR (high speed rail), after staying up literally all night the night before watching a movie and hanging out with my super amazing friends. :)
I'm still pretty proud of my little self for navigating the train/MRT system in Taipei enough to get to the Sungshan airport in time to check in. I've taken the MRT system several times before, and it's still a mystery to me how I manage to get to the right places with all those people and confusing signage.
I really hate flying. I view it as one of those things you just have to do to get to all the good things in life. :) But I have to say, the one thing I do really enjoy about flying in an airplane is the descent into the airports. There's just something so magical to me about flying low over tiny little houses and neighborhoods and cities, and I just can't help but wonder about all the people living and working and going about their days or nights inside those tiny buildings, and driving places in those tiny cars. The descent into Tokyo was at night, so it was full of flashing neon lights and high rise buildings, but nonetheless fascinating to me.
What I really wanted to blog about Tokyo was the bathrooms. I know that's strange. I've never posted a blog about a bathroom before, as I usually don't find bathrooms very interesting. I'd heard that Japanese people take their bathroom comfort seriously, but I didn't expect to experience it firsthand in my tiny corner of the Tokyo airport. I posted a few photos below to illustrate: (and yes, I did feel kind of dumb snapping photos in a bathroom stall, but I was so impressed at first I was kind of scared to actually use the thing, so I stood there and wondered at it for kind of a long time):



All the stalls were like this one. At first I thought I was in the handicapped stall with all the specially call for help buttons, but upon closer inspection, they were all like this and the buttons are not to call for help.

The buttons are to activate the water squirting cleaning things in the toilet. I wanted to take a closer picture of the great chinglish (japanglish?) interpretations of the instructions, but they were a little crude in a way and also my cell phone camera isn't that great.

*ahem* I did play with the buttons but not while I was actually using the toilet. I just wanted to see what it did. It does, indeed, squirt warm water into the air. It's weird.

I was also blown away by the hand dryers. (HAHAHAH I made a funny!) They are about 1000 x as intense as a normal puny hand dryer in your average bathroom. These Japanese people, they know cleanliness.

And that, my friends, is what I had to report from Tokyo. That, and Japanese is a really cute sounding language. :)

Of Summer Fun and Friends

I *heart* summer! For the last few weeks, I've had the greatest time hanging out and exploring Taiwan with great people.
Jaime, the blond on the left, is my roommate.
Aaron, the guy on the right, is the new Dolphin teacher. They both came three weeks ago to work for JacksonFive.








We went to Taichung Harbor and saw all manners of strange sea creatures for sale. I didn't take pictures of them. Just of us. :) We also ate lunch at the harbor, which was a fun ordeal that involved Jaime and I watching a cute puppy while Aaron bravely ordered our lunch through a lot of hand gestures and saying things like "no soup! no soup!"

Kenting!!

People who wear huge sunglasses are super cool.

The waves were awful. I tried to brave them, and got slammed all over the place and ended up with a head full of salt water, decided it wasn't fun to do that, so I wandered around and took a few pictures instead.

It was kind of rainy while we were there, but beautiful nonetheless.

This is most of our group in Kenting - left to right: Jacob (our ITPS team leader in Taiwan and friend; me; Aaron; Jaime; and Anna, Jacob's cousin visiting from California).

Mandy, Jacob's wife, was there but not in this photo.

This is a missionary retreat center that visiting missionaries and teachers can rent while on visit to Kenting. They also do retreats and conferences and stuff here. It reminds me so much of other missionary homes I've stayed in, makes me so happy. The guy's wife who runs the place cooks all the meals, and they are AMAZING. Now I'm hungry.

We visited the "Museum of Marine Biology" in Kenting, which is fancy words for "big ol' aquarium".

Jaime and I hanging out on Art Street. We discovered a cute little..um..some sort of restaraunt.. I don't know what kind of food it was, like vegetarian pasta stuff, but it was pretty great. Just like us.

Animals make me happy. Scooters make me happy. So this pictures makes me double happy.

Samson has claimed this chair as his own.










So... three weeks into summer already! I've been having way too much fun for my own good. And this Saturday.... I get to fly back to the States! I haven't been to the US in over two years, and I haven't seen my family all together with both my brothers in about 6 years! My amazing awsesome super wonderful friends in Alaska, and my mighty amazing super wonderful God worked together to pool airline miles and money to get me tickets to Florida to meet my parents and drive up to my brother David's wedding in North Carolina.

It's still pretty overwhelming that this worked out for me. It's a little surreal. So this week I'm trying to figure out what to pack and how to take a bus to the airport in Taipei and all those little things that come along with travelling.

Well, as far as summer projects go, I've been kind of practicing the guitar, but no work has been done on the website or any other stuff I wanted to do. But it's ok. I think there will be time for all that in August. :)

It's raining pretty hard. And I'm inside my living room bloggering and listening to Josh Groban. The only thing that would make right now even better is a cup of tea. I think I'll go work on that.

Next time I post, I'll probably be in the US or back in Taiwan with lots to tell about my trip to David's wedding! Stay tuned.....

Zai jian!

Samson, samson, let down your hair..oh wait. You don't have any!

After being advised many times by my Taiwanese friends that I am cruel to allow Samson to keep his fluffy hair during the terrifically hot days of summer, I finally caved in. Samson had been panting a lot. So I thought... I'll give it a try.





I'm glad they left him a bit of dignity at the end of his tail.



He's stopped panting, so I suppose it worked.

last days of a Taiwan teacher..part 1 - Dolphins!

Whoa. Last days of a Taiwan teacher sounds kind of like... I'm dying or something. Actually, June 30th was my last day at JacksonFive, at least in the afternoon classes. So here's my day..
Two of my cute Dolphins pose Taiwan-style with the peace sign and everything.





They made cards for me last week and bombarded me with them at the beginning of our second class. It's a skill to pluck 18 franticly waving cards from the air whilst battling to stand upright amongst 18 small children all trying to get their arms around your waist.


But I did it somehow.

We played a game for prizes. They got to draw their prizes after the game. I just love these two photos because the looks on little Gary and Shawn's faces are so funny to me. The guy in the green holding the box is the new Dolphin teacher, Aaron. He helped me take most of these photos. Obviously, not these particular two, since he's in them..

During break time (which went well into Real Class Time), we posed for some happy snaps.

OH! Louie! My little Louie was my special little guy. I always made him blush by saying "oh Loouuiiee! I loooveee you!!" but I know he liked it. :)

Class photos

Sillies...

Making hearts! (well. Two of the boys in the back are actually making triangles. On purpose.)

I got tackled after the class photos. I knocked poor Edward on the head with my teeth. However, he's none the worse for the wear.

More photos to follow of the Bumblebees...

Oh, in other newsy news, Lady Gaga was here in concert not two hours ago. Here, as in Taichung, at the amphitheater park right across from Banner church. I did not attend. I sat here and uploaded photos. This, I thought, was a more worthy way to spend my time than attending a free Lady Gaga concert with 24,000 other people at an amphitheater designed for 8000.
If, however, Josh Groban had been in concert tonight, I would have not only fought my way to the front of the amphitheater, I would actively be hunting him down at his private after party right now to proclaim my undying love for him.

Whew. Good thing it wasn't Josh Groban. Or these photos might never have made it onto my blog. :)

last days of a teacher in Taiwan, part 2 - Bumblebee

Here I am, five minutes later in the Bumblebee classroom for my last day with them. This card is from Ernie, but upon seeing it uploaded upside-down and I have no idea how to rotate it in Blogger, I think I won't upload the other cards. It says something to the effect of "you are a pretty and gently teacher. I hope you can everyday was happy." aw. Ernie also gave me my favorite chocolates. Ernie is awesome.

Our last day in Bumblebee class was book choosing day, where they went in turns to pick books from the ones they read during our reading program this year to keep and take home.

Sillies...


I let them doodle all over the whiteboard. For once. They're actually never allowed to do this.

But I'm glad I let them.

We're cute.








We're still cute!

And still cuter!

Goodbye, Bumblebees! Thanks for a great two years! :)