Recently in Sharon-World,... part 2, Birthday and Holiday Fun!

Oh boy! 'Tis the season to be eating! We kicked off the holiday/party-after-party-after-party season with a baby shower last weekend for our friend Mandy who is having her second baby, a boy, on Dec. 12th, a day when only people of Awesomeness are born. Like me, for example.
The baby after the day shower.... oops. The day after the baby shower, I mean, was Aaron's birthday! So last Sunday, we had another party, smaller, with lots o'food. Seriously lots o'food. Aaron wanted breakfasts for dinner, so my roomate Amy cooked more than complete breakfast and I prepared dessert for an army, which we didn't have any room for after the breakfast. This party involved a fair amount of groaning over how full we were and also lots of shuffling. and Nertz. This is basically a card game equivalent of Blitz for American people who don't have real Blitz cards. This is what I've decided.
So, the day after Aaron's Birthday Breakfast Bash, which I unfortunately don't have any good photos of, we had Cakesgiving! Because we didn't eat birthday cake or any of the Amazing Dessert I had prepared due to our breakfast fullness, we decided to just celebrate again the next evening. So we had German Chocolate Cake, lots o'ice cream, Oreas, Cookie dough, Reese's, M&M's, chocolate sauce, and brownies to put in the ice cream, just like Coldstone. And A&W root beer, which I'd special ordered through a burger place here because they don't sell it anywhere else. And we created a new holiday: Cakesgiving. The 21st of November every year to come.
A few days later was Real Thanksgiving Day, and we had a late dinner with a few friends at our house. We had all the Real Thanksgiving Foods, including a turkey breast that we got from Costco. I was rather proud of my little self for cooking most of the foods while everyone else was at work. I even made a green bean casserole with fresh green beans and onions I fried myself.

Costco was out of pumkin pie on Real Thanksgiving Day, but we got an apple. This was also acceptable.












This is my slow cooker stuffing I made from scratch. Pooh to stove top! I tore up three different kinds of breads and it was the best. It doesn't look the Best in the photo, but I guarantee it was. If you want to try, the recipe was the top rated Slow Cooker Stuffing recipe on allrecipes.com.







A few days later was Day to Decorate the House for Christmas Day!! This is what the house looked like after we dug out all the boxed Christmas happiness.
Aaron is waiting for all the Decorating to begin, and also for the cookies to be done. He's reading 'Christmas around the World', a kids book about international Christmas traditions that features Alaska with a tradition I'd never heard of in the five years I lived there. Hm...





Our table exploded with Christmas Happiness. Look at the roses Aaron left on my scooter after church yesterday. Isn't he the best?

Also, aren't my cookies the best?

I promise I don't have a need for approval.












We decorated stockings, thanks to my roomate Jaime who is a very artsy craftsy-ish sort of person.

This was a new decorating trick we tried this year and I like it a lot.

Samson also has one. I will give him hairball prevention chewy treats. He will love me more, I'm sure, after he gets those for Christmas.

I took this photo in mid-day, which probably wasn't the best time to take a warm and fuzzy Christmas tree photo. Oh well. It's better than no photo...

And Samson really enjoys the Christmas Tree Table Stand, as it has ample room for him to "hide" under and it gets quite warm in there from the sun.

He's probably under there right now.

Well, this afternoon I walked downstairs to the 7-11 to get a coffee, about 4:00, and the sun was shining warmly in the sky, a slight breeze was blowing, it was nice and warm but not insanely hot. There were grandmas and toddlers playing in the courtyard, and people having nice looking conversations in the coffee shop across the street. 7-11's here all have a nice coffee corner called City Cafe, which makes pretty decent and well-priced coffee. I like the French Brulee Caramel Latte.

And so as I was walking back with my Latte, I was just so content with where I lived and what was going on in my life. I have such a great place to live here, a homey community, enough Chinese to feel fairly competent at most daily exchanges, I love my job, I have a boyfriend who adores me, friends who are fun and supportive, a comfortable church family, and lots of opportunities for adventure and exploration. This week in church pastor preached about the importance of giving thanks, (as I'm sure all churches in the world did this week... ), anyway, it occured to me that I really have a billion things to be grateful for. God's given me far more than I asked for, or deserved, and I'm thankful beyond words to be where I am right now.

This week in small group I led the Bible Study part, and I gave everyone a homework to think about a person they are extremely grateful for and express it to them somehow. So I want to thank my mom, as I know she checks my blog every day! for being my biggest fan and for her
daily prayers for me. I attribute my safety on the roads and many of my blessings to God's answering of her prayers. Also I know she did a great job of raising me to walk on God's right path, and even though I might have given her a hard time about things in worse points of my life (like high school), I'm glad she stuck to her guns and I think I turned out pretty good because of her. So thanks mom! You're the best! :D

Well, it's time for dinner so I'm going to walk down to Dumpling Guy and get some fried curry potstickers.

What a great food week!

Recently, in Sharon-World.... part 1

It's about time for an update from Sharon-World! Let's see...
Last week was full of final exams - four, to be exact. Two oral exams, and two written ones. Whee....
Last Friday was my last day of classes, for a while. I've decided to take a semester's break to be available to sub at Jackson5, since the probability of my co-worker needing surgery in a couple of months is high. The decision was based on my desire to maintain my sanity.
It was surprisingly sad to say goodbye to my classmates, since I'd seen them every morning for three months, I'd gotten rather used to them. We went to Burger King for lunch after our exam on Friday (where I used a coupon and got some kind of barbecue burger that was not tasty and came with a fried chicken drumstick... Asian Burger King is strange) , and walking back onto the Feng Chia campus, I was feeling kind of bummed that they were all moving up and I had decided to wait until March to move into the next class level. For the next month, at least, I'll busy myself with holiday things and Chinese New Year. Hopefully I can fit in some study time and take an advancement test in March so I can catch up with my classmates.
Here are some photos:


I only know their Chinese names, which I can't type in characters. I think it's probably more interesting to list their nationanities rather than names.
Left to right: Girl from Indonesia, Me, Teacher from Taiwan, Girl from Italy, Guy from the States, Girl from Japan, Girl from Burkina Faso, Man from the States, Mr. and Mrs. from the Phillipines, and Boy from Panama (who looks angry and also is fun to listen to him speak Chinese with his very thick Spanish accent).
How's that for international?

Everyone except Girl from Indonesia and Girl from Japan spoke English. However, Couple from the Phillipines also spoke Tagalog as well as Indonesian, so they could speak to Girl from Indonesia. Nobody could speak to Girl from Japan except in our limited Chinese.


At Burger King. Same people as in the previous photo, except way in the back across from me is Boy from Panama's girlfriend who is half from Panama and half from Taiwan. She's in another class but went to lunch with us.







Me and Girl from Burkina Faso, who took all these photos and emailed them to us. Her English name, I think, is Martinique. She also speaks French. She makes me look incredibly white. And sleepy. Although I suspect the sleepy look is because I woke up at 5 am that morning to study for the final exam we all had just finished.

So in our class, people spoke English, Japanese, Indonesian, French, Spanish, Italian, and Tagalog. And we were all learning Chinese. Crazy!


So, in any case, it was a great three month experience, and I greatly look forward to getting back into classes in March. My Chinese has defintely improved leaps and bounds over what it was before I started classes, and I also have learned about 120 Characters, reading and writing. That's no puny achievement! I still need to somehow actively look for opportunities to practice my Chinese, however, since it's so easy to get by with English here I find myself just reverting to speaking to the Taiwanese locals in English because they understand me.
Umm. Ok. More posts to come, on holiday happiness. Goodbye to classes, hello Holidays!!

I just want a boiled Egg?

I learned an important lesson this week: Don't judge Taiwan based on its egg packaging. Now, there are many, many things I believe Taiwan does far better than other places I have lived in. To name a few: tea (tea in general and everything to do with tea is done the best here); the high convienience and numerous locations of 7-11's; nobody cares if you take Coldstone ice cream into the movie theaters (the days of hiding huge Popcorn Factory bags under coats and claiming pregnancy are no more!); etc. Taiwanese culture is efficient, convinient, hard-working, and smart. However, whilst they focused their efforts on things like Acer and HTC, and tea, they apparently forgot how to package eggs properly.

This is a normal, quiet, unassuming package of eggs that I bought at the 7-11. All the eggs look like this. They come in packs of ten and cost roughly the equivalent of $1 US.

Upon first inspection, as one is typically focused on checking whether or not the eggs are cracked prior to purchase, it is very easy to overlook the fact that they are encased in a nearly impenatrable shell of Plastic. With a capital P.

Here are the same eggs, opened. Allow me to further demonstrate the trouble with this sort of packaging. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Closer inspection of an unopened pack of eggs reveals a tightly sealed rim around the perimeter of the package. The seal is made sturdy with some sort of industrial strength Egg Package Glue and in case that wasn't enough to keep it closed for eternity, there is a healthy supply of staples along the rim as well.

After several minutes of strategizing, one finally attempts to crack the Mother of All Seals on this egg package. What little excitment is gained by the initial entry into the package is quickly exchanged for a gasp of dismay over the crack of breaking Plastic as the corner of the package collapses onto itself causing there to be a broken fractured hole into one side of the package, leaving the rest tightly sealed shut.

Filled with grim determination, one begins a second attempt, filled with much grunting and gnashing of the teeth, finally met with success as the Plastic pops up all around the rim of the eggs! Wiping my forehead in relief, I survey the damage. Are these ten eggs really so precious they must encase them in such armor? Was my desire for a boiled egg worth the scratches on my fingers? How am I going to keep this container closed in my fridge when it's so mangled around the edges?

Thanks, Taiwan, for Acer, HTC, Asus, and outstanding tea. But you can have your eggs.

Phew.