In with the new, out with the old!

Well, it's official! The year is at it's end! Whereas I was previously accustomed for 17 years to waking on this day by the sound of distant booms and bombels (fireworks), and strings of popping crackers in the streets of Suriname, here I instead woke to the sound of... Samson loudly chewing on his bowl of Whiskas, and more distantly the sound of eery Asian music blaring from the temple up the road.
In fact, I believe I haven't heard a single bombel yet on this fine New Year's Eve day. What a shame! Traditionally, in Suriname, at noon on today (which, as of the time of this writing, today is actually yesterday over there, but whatever), most of the businesses in town would hang a pagara (a long string of firecrackers) through the streets of the downtown business districts, and there would be full on street parties, music, drinking, etc. Crowds of people would flock to watch the firecrackers crackle and pop their way through the streets to wave goodbye to the old year. I remember most distinctly the feeling of pushing through the crowds to avoid the nasty smoke that resulted, while trying to keep up with my Dad, who devotedly filmed every single pagara in town. When the smoke died down and the crowds thinned out and there was nothing left for Dad to film, we would go around the piles of red paper and burned out pagaras on the sidewalks and look for firecrackers that survived (hadn't exploded yet) and collected them for our own fireworks collection to display later that evening.
Then on New Year's Eve, the sky would be full of colorful fireworks displays in all shapes and sizes, while we piddled around in our driveway with whatever our own small collection of fireworks happened to be for the year. It was always a most looked forward to event, and one I haven't participated in for several years. I always remember the feeling of anticipation leading up to New Year's Eve as a child, and I haven't felt that in a long time!
Here in Taiwan, businesses will usually do some small fireworks displays shortly leading up to midnight, with bigger ones right at midnight. The last couple of years, we had parties at our house and then we all went up to the roof of our building (13 stories up) to watch at midnight. This year, we're going to TGI Fridays for dinner, then driving our scooters out to a local mountain with a view to overlook the city and wait for the fireworks. Law generally prohibits the locals from doing their own fireworks, although small ones are sold at local stores and rarely shot off in front of houses. It's strange to me, that, since most of the fireworks in Suriname were imported from China and sold by Chinese businessemen. Prior to moving to Taiwan, I thought the New Year's Eve fireworks craze would be rather similar to Suriname, given the Chinese fascination with the bombs. I guess I was wrong.
Well, Christmas has come and gone, and it was a very nice one here for us. We had a small gathering of close friends on Chrismas Eve and exchanged gifts for each other after a nice dinner and a reading of the Christmas Story by candlelight followed by prayers of thanks. My wonderful and very observant boyfriend gave me a Kindle 3G touch, which I'd been mentioned here and there for months I wanted, and happened to be the gift on top of my high pile of gifts for the night, therefore the first one I opened and set a very great tone for the gift giving! It was completely unexpected and a very happy surprise. I was actually going to order one for myself with several Amazon gift cards I had received, which can now be used for books! Most of the gifts I gave were homemade pieces of art, since I took the semester off and am waiting to go back to school, I had lots of free time and I do enjoy arts and crafts and the like. But I think everything was well received. I'm actually rather proud of a few of them that I think were particularly well done.
On Christmas Day, our church small group had a breakfast/caroling/gift exchange in the morning, and in the evening we hosted a larger dinner for our more extended missionary friends and family. I also got to Skype with mom and dad for the first time, and even though they could see me and I couldn't see them, it was still great to call home for Christmas. Yay for technology!
So then, there goes another year! Why do they seem to go so fast? This year started off not great for me, but I learned a few very important lessons, then things picked up when I unexpectedly got to visit my family and be at David's wedding in July.
And for next year? So far my plan is to return to Chinese study in March, full time for one more semester, then part time as I hope to re-sign a contract for more hours with Jackson for the following school year. Aaron and I plan to visit his mother on Cape Cod in July during our break. And that's as far as I've got planned at this point! I've always thought 2012 would be a great year, simply because my birthday will fall on 12/12/12 and that's just awesome. So we'll see if I was right.
Um.... ok. I can't think of anything more that would be of interest to blog about. I've been flying through books since I got my Kindle, and this afternoon presents a fine opportunity to finish another book.
So, happy 2012! And I hope you all get to see some fireworks this evening. :D

Real Birth Days

Baby, it's cold outside! And speaking of babies, I got to see a brand new one this morning. Brand new, like minutes old. So congratulations again to my friends Mandy and Jacob Moore, and their new little guy, Abraham. (sounds so old and wise, right?)
That's a Real Birth Day.
Today is also my birthday. Not as real, not as special. The older I get, the less great birthdays are. Over the last couple of years, they've actually been kind of sad days. I'm not sure why. And today, while it should be great because there's a new baby around and stuff, I'm sitting here at home alone for the afternoon, kind of have plans to go out for ice cream later tonight with friends, just like we always do, feeling kind of like I want it to be a special day but it's just not. I'm grateful for the birthday wishes from my friends who know it's my birthday, but I kind of wish it was over. I just want to not be in this weird state of "it's supposed to be a special day, I guess? I don't feel special? I should be excited? Why am I not?"
What are you supposed to feel like on your birthday? When I was a kid, I always got really excited because the people in my life made a big deal about it being my birthday. I think I found out pretty quickly that after you leave home, your birthday isn't such a big deal anymore. Really, it's only parents who think your birthday is a big deal. So slowly it set in, that birthdays aren't that exciting after all.
Only the Real Ones. Like the Being Born Day Ones. Those really are special. All sadness aside, I'm proud to share a birthday with my little newborn friend, Abe.

stuff

Today, I accomplished... absolutely... nothing. Nothing! I woke up with a headache, ate some food, watched a tv show, and went back to sleep in an effort to rid myself of said headache. It didn't work, and now I am ten minutes into waiting for my excedrin to work whilst I complain to my blogging world about my headache.
Isn't life great?
Ok, on brighter notes.
Last Saturday a group of friends from my church went to a.. thanksgiving? ... christmas?.. something holiday-ish program thing at a home for the elderly that a guy from somebody's cell group works at. A group of about six of us had been practicing this song/dance routine thing for like two months, and we finally performed it for the old folks. I think probably half of them could actually see us, and of those, maybe five of them liked it. I just watched the video on Facebook, and we definitely were better than I thought we were! Later when my friend Jacob gave a message and invitation to know Jesus, maybe eight or nine old folks wanted to be prayed for. So all in all, it was a very long, somewhat awkward afternoon, but with grand results for those seven or eight old folk.
Also, it's finally December! I have decided to make most of my Christmas presents myself this year, in an effort to save monies. I think they will all turn out rather well, however, making myself get to work to finish them before christmas eve will be a tricky thing. Today, for example, I had planned to finish two projects that are in the works. Did I lift a finger to finish anything? Nope.
Also, my birthday is a week from today. This means... well, not much! I actually haven't got a plan of any sort for my Real birth day, the 12th, except to probably finish some christmas projects. One of my roommates, Beth, also shares the 12th with me as her birthday, and our other mutual friend Mandy is having her c-section on the morning of the 12th as well to have her baby boy. So I think Beth is planning something or other for her birthday, but I have not a plan for me. I think a few days after my birthday some friends and I will go to a steakhouse for dinner instead.
Every year, I find, birthdays are less and less exciting, especially when so much else is going on and other people share the same birthday and are more excited to celebrate theirs. I think birthdays are something more special for kids than grown ups. I'm happy just to go eat some steak.
So far in the works this next coupla months are: a birthday/bridal shower for a friend this weekend; JacksonFive christmas program on Sunday (which I get to watch this year and not be involved in! yay!); Beth/Me/Baby Moore birthday stuff maybe; strawberry picking next weekend in Mioli; Christmas programs at the church; Christmas eve/Day; roomate Amy's birthday; New Years; friend's wedding in Kenting in the beginning of January; Chinese New Year trip planned back to Hualien and Taroko Gorge.
I'll keep you posted.
Bye!

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! :)

New Beginnings!

Samson loves me. I can tell.

This is the only way he will sit with me.

I started school this week! It's pretty basic stuff for me, since I'm starting at the beginner's level. But it's nice to practice correct pronounciation. My class is very international. There are 13 students in my class, and only two of us are Americans. There are two students from the Phillipines, and students from France, Finland, Panama, Burkina Faso, Mexico, Korea, and Japan. So far, so good! Not too busy with homework yet, but I expect that will come soon. I've also started a new teaching job tutoring two businessmen in Business English. This is also a very new experience for me, and rather daunting as well as I have never taught adults before. But, the good news from that is, the pay I will save from this tutoring job after three months will be exactly enough to pay for the next three month semester of school. Yeah! I've only met with them twice, and so far it's going pretty well.

So, new stuff this week. I'm still getting used to getting up at 6:30 in the morning, but it's also nice to have the entire day to do stuff.

Well, I'm off! Three day weekend because of Moon Festival. Yah! :)

Take me out to the ball game!

Hello! I like soccer. I'm all about watching the World Cup every four years when it rolls around. However, I have several friends here who are similarly interested in baseball. So for his birthday last night, we went to a local baseball game to celebrate our friend Michael's birthday. I don't remember anything about the game itself. Um. There were players. And lights! But I remembered to bring my camera! Yay! So here are a few photos for your viewing enjoyment.

Lookin' cute on the bleachers.

"Oh, there goes the ball...." "Really..." "We promise..."

Bunny ears for Sharon!

We played hand games to pass the time. You can see how fast I am going because my hand is super lightening blurred.

Shaaron!

We R cute. So that was my first experience with a baseball game in Taiwan.

The End.

One day at a time!

Hello friends and other folkses! It seems it has been a while since last I updated here. My apologies once again! I really haven't got any excuse, since most of my days here are filled with .... nothing! This will change soon, however, the last month of not working or really having any commitments has left me in a lazy state of mind, and then that brings a load of guilt for not having accomplished anything of importance with my time.
What do I spend my time doing? Welll... I've been practicing my guitar a lot, which I suppose is productive in some sense. I've been cleaning more than usual, although not as much as I could be. I've gone on walks, although not long ones, since the heat and humidity dampens my enthusiasm for walks within ten minutes of being outside. I've browsed numerous stationary stores, done some drawings, watching a bunch of movies, cooked more than usual, done a little bit of babysitting, tried not to spend too much money, and today after I clean the bathroom I think I will try my hand at a painting.
This is all in the daytime while my roomates and friends are at work. In the evenings, I mostly hang out with my friends if I don't have a church meeting. BUT this week I will register for my classes at Feng Chia (my university which I will probably refer to a lot in future posts), and classes start a week from today. I'm excited, although a little nervous since I'm not sure what to expect.
The news is telling tales of a typhoon called Nanmadol that is supposed to have made it's stormy way to the south of Taiwan and work its way upwards and west into China. We've had some drizzle here and there, but nothing like the "Torrential Rainfall" that we were warned of. While this well and good for the businesses and safety of the city, I think all the teachers are a little sad that we may not get a typhoon day after all. We had no typhoon days last year either. We'll see.
OH! As soon as I wrote that it started to rain harder outside. Well! Words indeed have power!
My friend Amy and I were asked to be bridesmaids in our friend Annie's wedding. I believe I have mentioned Annie at some point on my blog in the past. Annie has been a part of my cell group since I came to Taiwan, and when Amy came last year, she started working at Annie's English school. So we both know her very well, and were pleasantly surprised and very honored to be asked to be bridesmaids! Annie (who is Taiwanese but speaks fluent English) and her fiance Michael (who is from the US), will get married in October, and their wedding will not be the usual traditional Taiwanese wedding. They will have the ceremony and reception Western style, at Banner church.
Last Saturday, Annie invited us to go with her and Michael and Annie's mom to help choose the wedding dresses! She chose two - a traditional white one for the ceremony, and a beautiful fluffy red one for the reception. What a fun day that was! Annie tried on a bunch of different styles of dresses and showed them to us and we gave her our thoughts. Amy and I are pretty excited for the wedding, to say the least.
This is definitely the year of weddings and romance. :) Annie and Michael are the fourth wedding in Taiwan I've been invited to this summer, and on top of that, I got to travel to my brother's wedding. And another couple friends of ours are getting married in the beach town of Kending in February next year. Fun! side note - many couples here are getting married this year in particular because this is Taiwan's 100th anniversary year. October 10th is the independence day holiday for this country, so this year's 10/10 celebration is the 100th year of independence, making it a huge holiday and a very "lucky" year for weddings, etc.
Well, I can't think of anything else interesting to add to this, so I'll leave it for now. Thanks for reading and tune in next time! :D

lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer..

Hola!
August is half over, and I feel rather unproductive of late. I am not working these days, and my Chinese classes don't start until the beginning of September. So I'm pretty much just hanging around, working on my guitar skills (haha!), cleaning up and organizing stuff accumulated from the last two years, and spending time building relationships with people. I suppose all that is kind of productive, especially the last one!
Two of my roomates have been bitten by the painting bug and decided to beautify their rooms by painting the walls a beautiful shade of eggshell. Or buttercream. Or...white. Whatever. So our apartment has had furniture all over the place, and a lovely scent of paint fumes has permeated every corner of the house. But the results are great, and their rooms look amazingly improved! All the walls in our apartment are dingy to say the least, and most are covered with sticky stuff from years of Things being hung on the walls, etc. My solution, as a lazy person by nature, is to simply cover up the dinginess and stickiness with other stuff to make the walls more dingy and sticky in the future. My roomates, both being fixer uppers by nature and wanting to make the world a better place, put the hard work into a more permanent solution. I'm proud of them! They worked really hard.
Every year in February, the public schools here give a three week "winter vacation" break. One week of this is also usually Chinese New Year holiday break which we foreign teachers get off. Since I'll be a student and only teaching a few hours in evenings, I will also get the three week vacation. Why am I telling you all this now, in August? Banner church is planning a Winter Camp for university students, and it will be an all English outreach camp. This is a big difference from the bilingual camps we helped with the last couple of years. This time, us foreigners from the Banner English zone will be running the camp. AAAUGH! I was put in charge (er, rather, volunteered) to head up the games committee. I have a few general ideas, but I need to put a lot of work into specifics. We went to scount out the facility last week, it's a nice college campus at a Presbyterian bible college about an hours drive outside Taichung, in Hsinchu (which incidentally is where all the "made in Taiwan" computers, like Acer, factories are). We also have a small groups committee, a drama committee, a promotion and advertising committee, and a worship/music committee. The Banner pastors will do the messages. This is a huge project. I, as well as all my teammates, would really appreciate your prayers! We need to not only get our stuff planned out, but also recruit people to help us at the camp. AAUGH! It's only August, but we're feeling some pressure.
Soooooo, that's that. Life is good. Life is great, actually! Although I have way too much down time, I know that will change once school starts, so I am trying to enjoy my time off for now. Transition, new possibilities, and fun! I like August! :)
Until next time!

Samson, did you miss me?

I'm back! I've uploaded some of my photos for your viewing enjoyment. Or something like that.

This is my mother and I at John's Pass boardwalk somewhere in St. Petersburg, FL.








My dad's brother and his family came to visit us the day I got there. They live fairly close to where my parents are staying in St. Pete. My aunt is an outstanding cook and brought us the best food from home I've had in a looooooooooooong time.

Here's my family lookin' all cute in Marion, NC. This was taken in a series of really funny, but not so amazing shots of our family after the wedding rehearsal. I figured this one was the best of the bunch.

Pre-wedding fun. That's my brother Ryan to the left, and David on the right. David's the one who got married.

I told them to make faces and this is what they came up with.

David watching Megan walk down the aisle.

Dad did the second part of the ceremony.

Aren't they adorable? I think so.
Mr. and Mrs. David Smit!

That's my Aunt Susan, my mom's sister, on the left, and my Aunt Millie, my parents co-worker from Suriname, on my right. I hadn't seen either of these aunts in many, many years....

SO there you have it! I hope I get a copy of the photographer's photos at some point. Well, I arrived back in Taiwan a couple of days ago, Saturday morning, after a wildly turbulent flight from Tokyo. Somehow I managed to sleep a record 7 hours in the airplane on the way to Tokyo from LA, so when I got to Taichung, I was feeling pretty good for such a long trip! I didn't sleep much Saturday night, but last night when I went to bed, I slept for hooouuurrsss like a rock.

I'm extremely thankful I got to go see my family, but I'm also very very happy to be back home. I missed my tea, my cat, my bed, and my friends. Although Samson has gotten significantly more vocal since I've been gone. He is now staring out the balcony window at the heavily downpouring rain, thunder, and lightening, and I can only imagine what is going through his fluffly little head. "Hm... my plan to take over the world has again been thwarted! When will victory be mine!?" He doesn't know I'm on to him.

These next couple of months will be ones of transition for me into a new schedule of classes and teaching. I'm so excited, but at the same time, it makes me nervous to start new, unfamiliar things. And it's scary to have such a significantly lower income than I'm used to. So far, I'm doing well, thanks to help from family and friends. I'm constantly amazed at the way God takes care of me. He's never let me down yet, and I don't expect He will.

I'm going to go forage for food now, so I wish you all a happy week! Zai jian!

Sitting around...

So, the last couple of times I posted, I included in the title "Road trips", and then proceeded to write nothing about any road trips. I suppose I just assumed everybody would know about the 10 + hour drive from St. Petersburg, Florida, where my parents are staying right now, to Marion North Carolina, where my brother got married. Oops. =) And now I will continue typing this post, without mentioning road trips again. I'm the best blog - ger ever! :D
I've spent more time sitting around on this trip than I think I ever have! I sat around on four different flights on the way over here, I sat around for hours on end in various airports waiting for those flights, I sat around in the car for a two hour drive from Orlando where I flew in to St. Pete, I sat around on the 10 hour drive to Marion, I sat around on the 10 hour drive back from Marion, I sat around on the 2 hour drive back to Orlando, I'm sitting around right now for 12 hours in LAX, and I'll be sitting around some more on my flight back to Taiwan! I'm not complaining, because I actually love sitting around, as long as I'm properly entertained by something like Youtube, a magazine, music, or Strongbad emails. However, once I return home, I figure I'll have to start walking or running or something to even out all this sitting around.
I have made a discovery!! Last week, I was doing some research while pondering what to do with my little self for my 14 hour layover to day in LAX. I have read on many a website review that LAX is one of the worst international airports. I personally have no real complaints about it so far, but I did check a bag on this trip and it is quite heavy, so I didn't want to putter around a large airport full of strangers with a huge heavy suitcase and a really heavy backpack. (why do I collect such heavy things? perhaps things I like are just naturally heavy? I have no other theories on this. ) Anyway, while I was doing my Googling, I found that LAX has a lounge open to the public for a fee, called the reLAX lounge. So upon arriving at the airport this morning, I found the Big Red Monster (as I affectionally dubbed my suitcase), and trucked it over to the lounge. I paid the fee, and I've been sitting here ever since, in the airconditioned, sunlit, clean, quiet, uncrowded reLAX lounge, properly entertaining myself with all the things in the aforementioned paragraph. To me, it's worth the fee, especially since I think I saved money checking my suitcase on the way over here. I figure by the time I go to check in, I'll have been in this one seat (minus the times I got up to get a snack or whatever else), for about 10 hours. Aiyo!
One would think with all this grand time and good internets on my hands, I would upload a few photos. But the hard drive with all the photos is buried in the bottom of the Big Red Monster. So, I'm sorry, but I'm not opening that. Photos will come later.
I've run out of interesting things to post. So, I think I will pursue other entertainment now. Thanks everybody who's been praying for me and this trip, all has gone exceptionally well thus far, as exceptionally well as an itinerary such as mine can go, and I'm honestly looking forward to being back home!
OH! I had real Mexican food last night! My last night in the US! T'was lovely, and made the trip completely complete. I had the largest chimichanga known to mankind. I wish there were chimichangas in this lounge. That would make it more perfect.
Zai jian!! :)

cute weddings, road trips, and overweight suitcases!

Well, my brother is officially married and I officially have my first sister! (in-law!). Megan is as sweet as can be and the wedding was about as cute as a I imagine a wedding could ever be. Photos soon to come, but right now my stuff is all packed up so the photo uploading will have to wait until both I and my stuff are safely back home in Taiwan.
I leave tomorrow to make my long journey back to the beautiful island I call home. Although my time back in the US has been short, I'm so glad I've been able to come! I've met people I haven't seen in years, had a lot of down time to just think my thoughts, and picked up a few things that aren't at all available in Taiwan.
Once back, I still have a month of "vacation" before I start taking my classes at Feng Chia university. I'll be doing a little tutoring, but otherwise just taking the opportunity to relax, get some things in order, and have some good fun that is funny!
This post is just to touch base a little and let you all know photos are on the way! Yay! I'm ready to get this trip over with! Long flights and layovers, cold planes and heavy baggage, here I come! Bring it on! :)

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!