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.

你好嗎？我很好！

As you can see, my Chinese classes are progressing slowly. :D We're getting into character memorization now, which is definitely the hardest part for me of the Chinese learning process. So far I've amassed a total of about 60 characters, but this is only to read them (without the aid of phonics, which I've become fairly fluent at reading with the help of). Of those, I can write from memory perhaps twenty characters? This really isn't a lot, considering at the end of your first year of study at Feng Chia, the goal is to know about 3,000. Waaaah!
Chinese is a funnily literal language. They stick words together to make phrases that mean other words, for example the word for "electricity" and "brain" together make the word computer (literally "electric brain"). Same with elevator: "Electric ladder". etc. This makes it easy to memorize vocabulary in some ways.
So, I've come to the midterm point in the semester, which means I'm half done with the 001 level course! Yay! As of today, I plan to continue into the next semester which starts in December. I say as of today, because I am yet unsure of the situation at JacksonFive with Teacher Karen possibly needing a whole lot more time off for medical leave, and if this indeed becomes the case and I have to sub for her again, I will choose to postpone the second semester of Chinese school. I will otherwise risk failing the semester for lack of sufficient time to study, since the 101 classes are significantly more difficult than the one I'm in now, in which case I fail I will lose a bunch of my hard-earned tuition money, or I will risk severe burnout from both studies and teaching, and I'm already slightly burned out on teaching from the time I've already spent subbing and teaching the last couple of years. So we'll see how the year continues. I'm taking it one day at a time. Which is why I said, as of today, my plan is to continue my studies.
I've already found it quite a bit easier to do many things I do on a daily basis, like ordering tea or food, or filling up with gas, or even making "small talk" in the courtyard. So that's nice!
Let's see, what else can I fit into this most uninteresting blog post? Well, today I went grocery shopping. I say grocery shopping, when I really just mean shopping because I bought no actual groceries. Nothing to eat. I did buy a large cheap-o tub of Chinese hair conditioner because I needed some, I am on a budget which I must make myself stick to, and because it smelled nice. So off and on throughout my evening, I have been thinking about the cheap tub of conditioner in my bathroom and wondering if it will make my hair nice and if I will find out that all these years I've been wasting money on overpriced hair conditioner when I could have been stocking up on the cheap-o $2USD tubs of Chinese formula. This is what I think about when my mind wanders. It's very boring. I will keep you posted.
I also bought three humongolous giantuarous bottles of contact lens storing solution, only to find out I already had two, when I'd thought I was out. So I can now supply contact solution to a small village of African contact lens wearers.
I also bought us a new food garbage bucket, as the old one, when I finally took out the food garbage last week, was.... extremely yucky, to say the least, and it scart me a lot. So I bought a new and improved one that I have high hopes for.
It's really sad when the only thing you can think to blog about is high hopes for a food garbage bucket. I must need to go to bed.
So, I will leave you at this, my blog readers. I hope you are all doing very well, and having more success with your grocery shopping than I did, and that you have all found great deals on your hair conditioners and that your food garbage buckets are faring better than ours did.
Zai jian! :D

Happy 100th!

100th? Who do I know who's turning 100? heh, heh. Figure that one out.
In any case, in honor of this 100th birthday, I have today off of classes and work, and thus I have a bit of spare time to blog. Aren't you lucky!?
In case you were wondering whether or not I have fallen off the edge of the earth, I haven't. I'm right here, busier than ever. My Chinese classses are plugging along, and I'm enjoying them immensly. It's always fun to discover that you've been pronouncing basic words incorrectly for two years. :) We are just now starting to memorize characters, which is the part I was both looking forward to the most and dreading because it means everything will be harder. I know a total of about ten Chinese characters, and the memorization of characters to me is the hardest part of learning the language. *sigh*
In addition, one of the full-time JacksonFive teachers with two afternoon classes took ill a few weeks ago with a kidney problem. She was laid up in the hospital until last week when they sent her home and ordered her on bed rest for another two weeks. This left me to sub her classes, however, after a week of teaching both her full-time afternoon classes as well as attending my own Chinese classes in the morning, as well as tutoring twice a week, trying to still see my friends, and staying up really late to finish my homeworks, I was so exhausted I broke down and Jackson offered to help out with taking one of the afternoon classes, leaving me only to sub one. That helped a lot. But I'm very ready for Karen to be all better and come back to work. :) I also started teaching my own little night class last week, the Whales. There are only six students thus far, and they are all very peaceful, sweet little things, which makes them a fun, easy class to teach. I hope they stay that way.
Since last blogging, I've attended two weddings, one of which I was part of. The first was my Taiwanese co-teacher from last year, Jamie's, wedding. She is now Aaron's co-teacher since he took over teaching my Dolphin class, so we both were invited to her wedding, which was very traditional and a highly interesting cultural experience for me. I will get my hands on some photos and post another blog at some point with more interesting tidbits about traditional weddings in Taiwan.
The other wedding was a couple of days ago, and my good friend Annie married her husband Michael, an American. It was a really cute wedding, I was a bridesmaid, and about all I remember of the ceremony was trying really hard to not fall over on my beautiful, sparkly, four inch heels.
Also, photos later. Sorry. I am not in a photo uploading mood right now.
Hm. I took a pause to wonder if Hot Burger, my favorite hamburger joint up the road, is open because of the 100th birthday holiday. Hm. I kind of want a hamburger.
Well, I can't think of anyhthing really interesting to add to this post. Mostly just to inform you of why I haven't done a very good job of bloggering lately. I hope all is well with you, and I will be back soon. :)
Zai jian!

a few photos to brighten your day...

These are the photos I promised in my previous blog post.
This is the tea I mentioned in my previous blog post. In order to avoid further redundancy in this caption, please read my previous blog post. :)















This is a Tea from the "Giant Tea Place". I use my adjectives appropriately, as you can see from the next photo, which puts the Giant Tea into better perspective.


















I think Jaime has a yogurt green tea and Aaron has a pomegranate black tea.














We found the biggest shirt Ever!

B...P....M....F....

I'm sleepily. I mean, sleepy. Or, sleepily...typing. Since I claim to be an Inglish Teechur, I suppose I ought to use my adverbs correctly.
I'm sleepy because I just work up from my daily afternoon nap. Yes! I get to take daily afternoon naps! I told myself, I said "Self, you must not make this daily afternoon nap thing a habit, or you will be sad when you have to study harder and do Real Things in the afternoons". However, as it stands now, my studying is at a minimum and my class at JacksonFive hasn't started yet. This leaves me with, yes, let me say it again... afternoons free for Naps.
It's almost the end of the second week of classes, and we're just finishing "learning" (I say it like that because all the other students are learning and I am "learning". "Reviewing" is better.) the phonics system that Taiwan uses to learn Mandarin. It's commonly referred to as "b, p, m, f" after the first four sounds of the system. It consists of a total of 37 simple characters (not to be confused with Actual Chinese Characters that make Real Words), that symbolize the various tongue twisting sounds involved in speaking Mandarin. When the b, p, m, f symbols are combined, they form the sounds for the words, thus helping early learners to read Chinese characters, or foreingers to pronounce more accurately, or typing. The computers here also include b,p, m,f symbols on the keyboard for typing in Chinese. So, it's a great thing to learn, but I have already learned it. Thus, I haven't had to study very much yet and I also know all the answers in class.
I have learned correct pronounciation of many words I already knew but was saying in the wrong tones, which is actually saying completely a different word. So for that, I'm grateful I'm starting in the beginner level class.
Not too much else to blog about today. Here is a list of Things I have found interesting lately:
1.) 7-11 started selling new flavors of cartons of tea! I'm sipping on a big carton of passion fruit yogurt green tea. They also started selling Mango Oolong tea. I like Mango, not so much Oolong, but combined it might not be bad.
2.) I discovered the tastiest (also known as "the most MSG laden") fried chicken lunchbox on our block. Within a two blocks of our house, there are at least ten options for lunches that I have thus discovered, all cheap and good and filling. So I'm trying to branch out.
3.) The teas that I have been enjoying at a tea house we affectionately call "The Giant Tea Place", are larger than the average human stomach capacity. See photos to follow.
4.) The huge, cheap clothing store that I like to go to at the Feng Chia night marker (which surrounds Feng Chia university where I go), opens at 11:30 in the morning! which means that when I go home at 12:00 I pass right by it, thus making it very easy for me to buy new clothes and spend money that I shouldn't. ooooo temptation..
5.) Being organized is overrated.

Tomorrow is my roommate Jaime's birthday and so we're going to go to Coldstone late after she gets done teacher her night class, and catch a late showing of the new Asian film "Seediq Bale". And then on Saturday, a Mexican themed party! Let the weekend begin! :)