Here I am!

I'm really sorry I'm so bad at maintaining this blog! I think about updating it often, but... um.. I get otherwise distracted. I have now about half an hour before I have to go to work, and I just downed a large mug of coffee, so I am ready to take action! I don't remember the last post I wrote and I wasn't smart enough to go read it before I clicked on "create new post", so um... oops.
  Well, anyway, most of you know this, but the big newsy news since last time I posted is that *drumroll please*.... I am engaged! Yes, yes. *insert fireworks here* Aaron proposed on August 9th, which was the one year anniversary of our first date. A very obvious day to propose, and thus I figured he wouldn't do it then because he'd want it to be a surprise. So in an ironic way, it WAS a big surprise, because I completely just knew he wouldn't propose on such an obvious day and I was wrong. I told most people already, but the quick version:
  I was sitting at my desk at school marking papers, and a string of students kept coming by my desk to drop off 50 NT coins from Aaron (he knows I like the 50's because they are large and gold colored and they feel heavy like pirate gold so I like to collect them in a jar at home) and he has this game he's played all year where he'll hand a student a 50 coin to go sneakily plop on my desk and they think its all funny and stuff. So anyway, 50's kept coming periodically to my desk and I was like "ha, ha, very funny guys, again.." Then one student (my secret favorite student of all time from my first class, the Bumblebees) came to plop something on my desk that did not sound like a 50 coin. When I saw it was a ring I thought Mason had given me a toy from a gumball machine, but when I turned around to question him I saw Aaron coming to my desk, put two and two together with the day's date, realized it was a real ring, and remember saying 'REALLY! You're doing this HERE?!?!?" And from there I don't remember much else other than saying "ok" when he asked if I would marry him. And then I remember looking up and seeing my boss, Jackson trying to hide behind some books with a camcorder. HAHAHA that was REALLY funny actually.
   So there you have it. We are planning the wedding for summer 2013, most likely in July. We will have a small wedding at Aaron's home on the Cape. More details to follow when I know them! :)
  Other than THAT, things have been going on a usual here. I've chosen this year's Christmas songs for my class, and am trying valiently to not be anxious about how many words they need to memorize in these songs in the next two months. They are so small and really not great at English yet, so I worry they won't be ready in time. But somehow all the classes pull it off every year, so I know we'll do it again too.
  We're off again on the spiral to the holiday season, and I'm wondering what to do for my birthday this year. I say I'm turning 25 again, because that's what I wish! But actually this year is my 30th and it falls on 12/12/12. OH! I ought to do something spectacular. But I suspect I will have mixed feelings about the end of my 20's and the grey hairs on my head will suddenly become a bigger deal than they really are, and I will be grumpy that it is my birthday. But maybe I won't be. The only thing I've decided, is that I want to eat steak. I have made this clear to Aaron and probably a number of other people. But I'm still techinally in my 20's right NOW so I will stop thinking about my birthday and relish the last few days of my youth.  :D
   Um... what else. Aaron and I will start our pre-marital counseling this weekend. I'm making BLT's for dinner tonight. Samson is getting fat. Our toilet is broken. I'm learning how to make excellent coffee and will buy a coffee grinder this week to start using beans instead of cheap-o stuff. The weather's getting chillier. I'm wearing both a pink shirt AND a headband today! (really, two things I NEVER do). I have a new white watch. I had some good fried mushrooms this weekend.
   That's about all the news from me! Hope everybody else is doing well too! I have to go to work now!  :)

  

Reverse culture shock!

 Greetings, friends! I just spent the last twenty minutes or so of my life uploading all these photos I wanted to talk about in this blog post, thinking blogger would load them backwards as they usually do, so I started with the photos I wanted to end the blog with and worked my way up to the ones I wanted to start with. However, they did not upload backwards. They uploaded exactly in the order I chose them. Which is what they are supposed to do but have never done before. So now I have to blog backwards in time. Boo...

 Well, let me begin then with the most recent happening! I may have mentioned before that in our house here in Taiwan, our beautiful friend and roommate Amy moved back to the US. She left about six hours after Aaron and I returned from our trip! How SAD is THAT?!? Anyway, it left an empty room in our house, and I offered to take one of the smaller rooms so my other two roommates could take the two bigger and far nicer rooms with the big windows. Because I don't care that much about nice windows. So when I returned my Things were all piled into this room here on the left, which was my roomate Beth's previous room. She has since moved into my old room.
I should have taken a before picture and then you would know how different it looks in these photos! I moved all the furnitures around. I'm fairly happy with the finished look, and although the room is much smaller, I like the comfortable-ness of it, and it is very nice to not have a litter box smell permanently hanging in the air. Beth has agreed to take over the care of Samson, something he is having a very hard time adjusting to... but... I'm tired about talking about Samson's anxiety issues and also tired of cleaning them up, so I will suffice to say that we're all crossing our fingers that when Beth returns from her vacation, he stops peeing on stuff.

 It's drippingly humid here in Taiwan, which makes it hard, I've found, to get things to stay up on the walls. I took this photo right after putting up all the wall stuff, and then over the next couple of nights, a lot of it slid back down! The sticky squares didn't work very well. Beth had recently painted this room so I don't want to use anything that will damage the wall. Not sure how to get things to stay without heavy duty tape though... most of the hooks stick pretty well, so that.s nice.

 A few nights after Aaron and I got back, he gave me a break from cooking dinner and took me on a nice date to this tea house. It's a very old traditional tea house that we pass every day on the way to work, one of those where you sit Japanese style on floor mats with a low table, and they pour your tea for you. And it had a giant Koi pond in the middle. How cool is that? Made me feel very Taiwan-y after our two weeks of full-on American culture.

 I didn't cook at all while we were in the US, because we ate out most of the time, and Aaron's mom made dinner a few times. It was a little nice to have a break from cooking, but I do enjoy being in the kitchen. This is the salad I made the day after we got back, and I was very proud of how beautiful it looked. *pats self on back* I have taken photos of most of the foods I try, but never upload them anywhere. That's another blog post I surpose.

 Ah, here we get into some of the photos highlighting our trip. Most of these are Facebook repeats. Here is me and Aaron's mom in front of their house. I totally thought I was uploading the one of Aaron and his mom, not me. Oops. Aaron's mom is very cute and it was so enjoyable to get to know her a little bit. She is very much like Aaron's stories of her. She has a business selling things on e-bay, and we went estate saling with her the two Saturdays we were there. Estate saling is fancy "yard saling". This is something I really miss living in Taiwan. People don't do yard sales here... :(

 We took a trip to Plymouth one day to see the famous Rock and the replica of the Mayflower and all the other Plymouth-y delights. Here we're at Plymouth harbor where we toured the Mayflower II and walked around main street where I bought a t-shirt. Yay! Look at all the clean fresh air! It was delightful. I greatly miss the clean fresh air while in Taiwan. I don't think about it most of the time, but when we were in the US I realized what a blessing it is just to not be breathing smog. I'll be trying not to take that for granted next time I live in the States!

 We went to this breakfast cafe called Pogo's, which is one of Aaron's top favorite places to eat ever. He told everybody in Taiwan about Pogo's several times, how they have giant portions of amazingly delicious foods for low prices. He painted a mouth watering verbal picture of their blueberry cheesecake pancakes, of which I got to try, and his description was quite accurate! This photo is great because, Pogo's definitely trumps most other breakfast places ever, but is located way out of the way in a tiny, run down plaza. Many of the locals don't even know Pogo's. It's a hidden treasure.

 We took a trip into Boston for a couple of days and stayed with some of Aaron's friends. One of those days we paid a visit to the Museum of Natural Science, where we sat very close to this Thing and watched it make lightening. It was very cool.








I took this photo of a street in Boston, because it represented to me the old fashioned cuteness of most of the streets of saw in a lot of places we went.

 We were out doing things the majority of our time on the Cape, and our down time at Aaron's house was spent mainly doing one of two things; watching Tv or a movie; or playing Rock Band! Rock Band is a playstation game that is like a glorified version of Guitar Hero, if you know that one. Aaron can play on expert mode for most of the instruments, and I mananged to get pretty good on medium mode with the bass guitar. We played several times with a bunch of Aaron's friends, and you can play with up to five people I think; 1 drum, 2 guitars, and 2 singers. It's way fun.

 We walked a very, very, very, very long way to find this lighthouse! This was on the 4th of July in Provincetown, at the very tip of the Cape. This was also the day Aaron and I got very sunburnt, being used to the sun in Taiwan which is very powerful, but doesn't give us sunburns that often (we suspect due to the smoggy air, how gross is that?!), we happily spent all afternoon out in the sun on the Cape and realized we needed to get some sunblock.

 We spent a day on the beach where we threw a football and played beach baseball, which i swhat we are doing in this picture. That's me on the left with my powerful swing of the bat.

This is our gate at Taoyuan airport, getting ready to depart for Boston. They had little wooden benches instead of chairs, and a display about Taiwan aboriginals based on the movie 'Seediq Bale'. It was very, very cool.









In a two week turn around trip to the US and back to Taiwan, I've had to get used to -being able to flush toilet paper again in the US instead of throwing it in the trash can (took me two days to figure that one out), and then returning, remembering to throw the toilet paper in the trash can instead of flushing it (again..two days..); - fishing out 10NT coins instead of .$.25 cent American quarters, both of which are similarly sized, as well as the $1NT coin and the American penny, and I accidentally mixed all my change together, so buying a coffee was like a five minute interaction with the checkout counter. - Realizing how terrible the traffic in Taiwan REALLY is after driving on the nice, wide, American roads; -strangers, in general, in the US, are far more grumpy and less happy with their jobs than people in Taiwan, who are on the whole very friendly and hospitable, and take their jobs very seriously and try very hard to make you happy; - there are SO MANY NEW KINDS OF CANDIES! in the last year since I was in an American grocery store! The States really really is blessed to have, not just candy, but an abundance of any kind of food imaginable readily available. You don't realize this until you live overseas, even a place like Taiwan that has many, many things available, there are still certain basics that you just can't find here.
  I'm sure there are other things but now I am tired of typing and I have to go make falafels. Anyway, just wanted to wrap up by saying, that when I first moved to Taiwan, I had lived in the US for... nine years by then, and I was a little fed up with the States and American culture in general, especially after working in a welfare office for two years. Slowly, starting with last year's trip to North Carolina to see my brother get married, and then this trip to Cape Cod, I've realized that there are many blessings to be had living in America. I love my life here in Taiwan, and there are certainly many blessings and perks to living here as well. But I'm far more excited and happy now about the prospect of living in the States again, when that opportunity should arise. I've realized, and continue to realize, that while living in another culture is a wonderful opportunity that has it's own blessings and advantages, I'm very grateful to be an American citizen with all the freedoms, opportunities, blessings, and advantages that American citizenship brings.
  Ok, I'm really going now. School starts tomorrow! Next time I blog, t'will be about my new class! What fun!

Hello from Cape Cod!

I'm finally here! This won't be a very long post, but just a quick update that after 30 hours of frustrating, tiring, nauseating travel, and thousands of miles later, Aaron and I finally made it to his hometown of Barnstable on Cape Cod, Massachusetts! This is now the beginning of my third full day here, and I can without a doubt say that my first impressions of Aaron's home and the Cape are that they are ADORABLE! The little surrounding towns and villages on the Cape are so super cute and charming and quaint and adorable and all those other adjectives that make you want to squish someone's cheeks and speak nonsensical cutesty baby talk at them. It's also a very refreshing change to be in the US again for a while, although the people here are in general more grumpy and far less friendly and outgoing than the average Taiwanese stranger, the air is astonishingly cleaner, the trees are far more plentiful, the scenery is by far more beautiful, and it's just nice. We've been keeping pretty busy with seeing all of Aaron's fun friends and going out and doing all kinds of things of which I have posted photos already on Facebook but for some reason it didn't post the album to my Wall? So you have to go on my profile and click "photos" and then find the latest album titled Cape Cod part 1. Ok, we're off to do more things so I will post more another time. :)

Choose happy!

Well, recently I've been in a rather negative state of mind that I can't pin a reason to! Perhaps its the abundance of time I have to myself that keeps me in my own thoughts most of the day whilst my roomates and friends are all out and about working and doing things. Or perhaps nerves over my upcoming trip to the US, or perhaps sadness over the idea of people I've grown rather fond of moving back to the US this summer, and other changes to come after summertime with new school schedules and classes, etc. Or perhaps my attempt to drink less coffee is also coming into play, although I've been not doing so well with that lately! In any case, whatever's causing my negativity, it hasn't been fun to feel unhappy and irritable all the time. And wouldn't you know it, Aaron is exactly the opposite of unhappy and irritable. All. The. Time. He's always happy and joyful, smiley and laughing, always seeing the positive side of every single situation you could ever think of, and always keeping a very positve and realistic perspective of things. Perhaps this is one of the reasons God brought us together, because I need a large dose of Aaron's positivity and perspective very very often! In light of trying to change my own perspective to one of positivity instead of negativity, here is a nice list of things I am extremely grateful for and reasons why the little things that bother me are actually Nothings:
   -I was raised right by Godly parents who love me unconditionally and taught me to know Jesus and how to be a good adult with biblical values, including a strong work ethic which I don't see in a lot of other adults my age!
   -I've taken many varied opportunities to travel and live in different parts of the world and befriend many different kinds of people. In Taiwan, a lot of people dream of the opportunity to live or work abroad, but many of them never leave the country and spend their entire life wishing. I'm blessed to have gotten to live my dreams.
   -I have a job at undoubtedly the best school in this city, with a godly boss and co-workers who actually love each other.
   -I'm healthy!
   -I have all the things I need, from an apartment within my budget, a scooter to get me around, easy access to fresh and healthy foods, lots of entertainment options within walking distance, and great friends.
  -I have a happy church family for support.
  -I have a happy, loving, and supportive boyfriend who loves God, makes me laugh, makes me feel special, treats me and all my friends with utmost respect, and helps me be a better person every day.
  -I have a cat who may or may not love me back, but makes for nice company in the afternoon while everyone is gone. :)
   -I'm not rich, but I have enough to take care of myself and even a little extra for things I want.

And that's just a start. So you see, there's no reason for me to feel negative and unhappy! I'm a work in progress, but I think a daily tab of things to be thankful for is putting me on the way to a more healthy and positive perspective. Reminder to self: happy or unhappy is a choice. So, choose happy!
 

Oh my!

Oh! Oh my! It's been two months since last I posted! I'm terribly sorry! I sort of forgot I had a blog! You people who check my blog ought to poke me on Facebook and remind me to write stuff sometimes. :)
However, nothing fantastically interesting has happened in the past two months, so you need not fear you have missed super important details of my life. You have not. I assure you, you have not!
  Here's what I recall:
     -I finished my Chinese class and received a passing grade of 92, which considering how I studied for terrifically difficult exams and managed to range between 80 and 95 on most of them, I think is pretty good.
    -I finished tutoring my two business English students last week *sniff*, which I will miss somewhat. It was a nice class and a nice source of extra income, but I don't want to continue next year while I will be teaching more hours. This week they're treating me to dinner at Outback steakhouse across the street from my house, as a thanks. Whoo hoo!
   - I just noticed I can't 'block' the text of a blog entry, which bothers me greatly, as I much prefer all my sentences line up on both the left and the right sides. :(
   -I caught a Cockroach (with a capital C for bigness of size), in my room last night, which I sprayed to death liberally with Doom.. er, which I sprayed liberally with Doom while screaming, and my roommate actually came to finish spraying it to death, and it died in a grisly dance in Samson's litter box. As both Samson's littler box, and his water/food bowls had by then also been sprayed liberally with Doom, I went to the pet store and bought new litter, scrubbed the box, scrubbed all the dishes, and cleaned everything up. This was at like 1 in the morning. O the joy of a tropical climate in rainy season..
    -Now I continue to have the creepies at the thought of more Cockroaches potentially being present in said room.
    -I got my new ARC which means I'm legal to stay here until July 2013. Whee..!
    -New ITPS family is arriving in a week and a half, with two small children. I'm in charge of teaching them a few introductory basic Chinese words and phrases. Oo!
   -Finished my US taxes, and since THIS year I haven't got ANY bank accounts/credit cards open in the US, I had no way to pay TurboTax (which I always use), and couldn't use free TurboTax because I had to file a form 2555 for foreign earned income and it wouldn't let it do that free, so I went to the IRS website and downloaded the two forms I needed and filled them out all by my little self, and mailed them in hoping they would forgive any potential mistakes because I am a little person making little monies in a little country. You think?
    -I won 400 NT dollars in the Taiwan Receipt Lottery! Google that if you want, it's too long to explain here!
   -No more subbing, everyone stayed healthy. Aaron and I leave in two weeks for the Cape. We catch a bus from here at 3:30 in the morning to Taoyuan airport. THAT will be unpleasant, but once we get there it'll be great fun!
  -I had some good meatballs tonight.
That's all! Here's fingers crossed hoping I remember to blog sooner than two months away next time. :)

well, here I am.

So, today is one of those annoying sorts of days. You know the ones! A day when everything irritates you and there's nothing really to blame your annoyedness on. A day that starts with waking early to study for a big Chinese character midterm exam, which is already annoying, and then feeling annoyed when you run out of time to study for said midterm exam, then forgetting how to write characters you just studied an hour ago (super annoying), then having to go to the bathroom 561 times in a day (almost not even exaggerating) because you drink so much water, then thinking about your delicious soup in the fridge all morning only to find it's been taken to work by a roomate on accident, then trying to take a nap while the cleaning lady vaccummes the entire apartment (not possible, by the way), finding that the house fund box is somehow short a sizable chunk of money for no apparent reason, discovering as well that the house fund box has no change for the cleaning lady so having to run to 7-11 to make change, then seeing the cat flip dry food all over my newly swept floor, then getting an email from an unknown other English teacher we're giving a ride to Kenting next weekend saying "by the way, I work until 9:00 so we need to leave late", after we'd all arranged subs so we could leave earlier, and so on and forth. Actually, some of this stuff happens regularly (like the flipped over cat food), but today it just FEELS more annoying. Am I allowed to be a grinch for one day?
   Lately I've been trying to eat more heathily, which isn't much fun actually, but surely more helpful. More healthily consists of lots of beans and vegetables, and some fruits, and no sugar or caffeine. Yes, you read correctly; I'm cutting myself off from caffeine. oh! is that a gasp I heard from my coffee-loving readers? I feel sad and I muchly miss my afternoon latte that I used to drink daily while I studied, but.... I wanted to try feeling awake and alive naturally for a change. So far, I still really miss the coffee. Well, it's only been four days, so we'll see. Perhaps this lack of caffeine is contributing to my said annoyedness.
  In earlier reference, I spoke of a trip to Kenting next weekend. It's another English teacher's weekend retreat, which I greatly look forward to. These take place at a large facility, the meetings are always over different topics. The last one was how to re-tell Bible stories for students, and I'm not sure what this one is about. These retreats happen a couple times a year, sponsored in part my OMF, but this is the last one ever! So I'm grateful I'm able to go. The other JacksonFive teachers (the full time ones) have PTA's that weekend, but little part time me is free! So poor Aaron will be talking to multitudes of parents whilst I am happily frolicing in the warm waters of White Sands beach in Kenting. Amy, Beth, and I were just going to borrow a car and happily drive down on our own, but OMF agreed to loan us their large van to drive down for the weekend if we can give a few other teachers a ride, so they don't have to take the train. Thus my reference to the email about one teacher who can't leave until late. It's not actually a big deal and the other times we went to these retreats, we usually leave after nine. I guess I was annoyed because I'd specially arranged Aaron to sub for me when I really don't like to have a sub, just so we could leave earlier. Even though now we have to leave later, I still need him to sub because this guy we're picking up is in a different town so we need to leave in time to get him. *sigh*
   Anyway, in other news, my days are back to "normal" now, as Karen has taken both her classes back. For which I'm grateful, because with weekly (very large) chapter exams and a humongolous midterm exam (which is now, thankfully, at my back), I've deperately needed my afternoons for studying.
  I've realized now that July is just a couple months away! Oh boy. Perhaps I've already mentioned it here, I don't remember much these days, but in July Aaron and I will go to visit his mom and friends in Cape Cod. It's a large expense, but I'm still excited because I've always wanted to see the Cape, and I get to meet all his friends and his mom who are so important to him. Also it's nice to get a break from Taiwan for a while. We've both resigned our contracts for next school year starting in August. I will continue to teach my one evening class on Tuesday and Friday nights, and take on a new year 1 afternoon class again. I'm actually happy to be getting a new year 1. I really enjoyed the Dolphins last year. The Dolphins continue to be the best class at that school (and not that I'm biased or anything...) Aaron has been a super fabulous teacher for them! They've all grown up both in character and in their English, and become so much more confident in themselves. I can't imagine having a better teacher come to take my place this year. :) In more ways than one. Aaron will continue to teach the Dolphins as they go into year 3 and his one evening class, the Dragonflies next year, as well as a new evening class, so he will be teaching four nights a week.
   I think I will hire a tutor to continue my Chinese studies. My conversational skills have grown far better, but I don't get much practice outside of class. I think a tutor will be worth the expense and be able to fit my schedule nicely. We'll see.
  I have to go make soup for dinner now. I hope no more annoyings happen. I've had my fill for the day.
Thanks for reading! :)
  
  

I'm Busy, Busy, Dreadfully Busy...

You've no idea what I have to dooo....

-Veggie Tales

I am ever so tempted to leave my blog at that. However, being the kind-hearted soul that I am, I will explain a bit.
My co-worker Karen is back in recovery, having had a kidney removed in a 7-hour long surgery three weeks ago. She's doing remarkably well, all things considered, and is recovering at home. I've been teaching both her afternoon classes, a very full load, on top of my own evening class and tutoring. My Chinese classes at the university began this week in the mornings, and so my lazy, peaceful, and quiet days at home suddenly shifted into non-stop activity.
Wheee....
I'm thankful that I'm able to help Karen out so she can recover in peace, and also thankful for the extra income and some time with the cute students. But I'm kind of exhausted and a little worried my Chinese studies are going to suffer for a few weeks while I'm yet subbing for an indeterminate amount of time. Thus, I haven't blogged in a long time and probably won't again for a long time.
There.
Ooh, in another more interesting report, prior to all the busyness, I stuck very well to a new budget plan which included cooking at home all the time, and I made some pretty tasty cococtions if I do say so myself. I, being very Taiwanified at this point, took photos of all of the foods for future blogging fun-ness. They will be uploaded at some undetermined point in the future.
I'm all the done with the up dating now. Bye bye!

Eleven months until Christmas!

Oh boy! It's February already! Let's see, what've I been up to..
Answer: not much! Last week was our Chinese New Year vacation, and due to my lateness in trying to get train tickets, we couldn't figure out all our transporation to take a trip to Hualien like a few of us had planned, so we scrapped that idea and hung out around here instead. For me, it was pretty much the same as I always do, since I don't work very much, but I did get to see my roommates and my Aaron a little more than usual since they didn't have to work.
We went to Taipei for the day last Tuesday, on the bus, in the rain, and spend the afternoon at the National Palace Museum. I'd been there last year, but it was nice to go again and see all the Old Special Things From China. One of the very most popular Old Special Things From China on a Very Special Display at the museum that day, was a Very Large and Special Cabbage made from pure Jade. Yes, that's right folks. Many many many Taiwanese people stood in a long line to see (not even take a photo of because you can't take photos inside the museum), of a Large Jade Cabbage. *snicker*
Anyway, the rest of the week flew by, and this week it's back to "work" (for me) and work (for everybody else) as usual. My roomate Amy's mom has been here visiting for a coupla weeks, so that's been nice.
Um... what else. OH! I am pursuing a new interest! And hoping it turns out to not just be a phase. I bought this book on my Kindle called "No More Dirty Looks", something about the truth about cosmetics and beauty products. These two authors wrote all about their research into the cosmetic and beauty industry, lack of FDA approval or laws for these thousands of common products we use every day, awful chemicals that throw our bodies into self-destructive cycles and potentially cause large amounts of damage to our bodies later down the road, and what we can do to make changes about it in our own lives.
It was very interesting, full of lots of facts, history, and data, and I followed up the book with some further internet research. And I was thoroughly frustrated about all the products I was using every day with questionable chemical ingredients, and some that were very proven to cause unhappy problems. So, I made some changes and continue to research and look for natural products to replace all the stuff I use.
For example, I replaced all my moisturizers (body lotions, creams, face moisturizer, shaving gel, etc.) with extra virgin olive oil.
That sounds like it would be rather... oily. But actually, evoo absorbs amazingly well and I've been slathering it (moderately..)all over my self for a coupla weeks now and my skin feels better than it ever has with no adverse effects. Hah! and from all I read, it's full of great skin stuff. Since skin absorbs stuff that's put on it so it ends up inside me, I feel a ton better about slathering on something that I know is healthy and edible than something that is completely unedible and full of synthetic chemicals.
I've also used it a few times as a deep hair conditioner before I shampoo, and after I do that my hair feels.. great! Really soft and not greasy. I also use a (very small amount) to control my frizzy hair when it's dry and it also does a great job of that. So I've basically replaced my body lotion, shaving gel (oh ya, you can shave with olive oil and it's actually amazing, but be prepared to rinse your razer frequently!), face moisturizer, hair gel/cream/defrizzing silicon smoothing stuff, and deep conditioner with basic extra virgin olive oil.
If you're up for it, I highly recommend you give it a try.
I've also been hunting around to see just what kind of natural or organic products are available here, and so far, I've come up with (very few) places that sell (very few) all natural products. I found this stuff called Dr. Wood's Pure Tea Tree Castile Soap (also there were Lavender scent too), that had a very short ingredient list with only stuff I knew what it was, could pronounce, and was all natural. Stuff like olive and coconut oils (Castile soap is vegetable oil based, usually olive, coconut, almond, etc. or a mixture of oils as a base, as opposed to most other soaps that are animal fat or tallow based and full of awful chemicals that strip skin of it's natural moisture), and I've been using that as a face and body wash. The bottle says you can use it for anything, shampoo, house cleaner (floors etc), shaving lotion, etc. I don't like it as shampoo because of the smell, but I love the way it makes my skin feel. So I replaced my Clean & Clear and my regular soap with that stuff and I feel so much better.
Etc. Etc. I switched to a local brand of organic shampoo and conditioner that I found as well, with a lovely short list of clean ingredients and a strong Rose smell from essential oils. So while I'm definitely not 100% crunchy and green yet, I've cut down perhaps 80% of the synthetic chemically questionableness that I've been pouring into my body through my skin every day.

If you get a chance and your interest is at all piqued, I recommend you get your hands on that book, No More Dirty Looks, or do some internet research on the safety of the ingredients in your products. This website: http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ is a database of thousands of common products and their ingredients, and gives a very thorough breakdown of every ingredient and it's potential risk by category. I find it very useful and informative.
I know it's impossible, or nearly so, or rather a major undertaking, to completely rid one's life of all the chemically questionablness that bombards our daily life. I would have to completely overhaul the foods and the way I eat, the cleaning products I use for my house and clothes, the dishes I use, etc, so on, so forth, and I'm not into all that quite yet. But small changes are better than no changes, right? :)
So that's my latest and greates pursuit. I'll keep you updated on my progress. Perhaps one day in the far future, I'll be one of those crunchy green fanatics who grows all my own food and dyes my own clothes. Hehehe. :D HEHEHE.

a few photos!

Happy 2012! Last weekend friends of mine had their wedding in Kenting, at the southernmost tip of Taiwan. They were kind enough to loan us a car to get ourselves down there, so early Saturday morning, my three roommates and my Aaron all piled into a tiny Tercel for the five hour trip to the south.

On the way we stopped at the rest area, and as you can see, we did more than simply rest.

The following are some photos I snapped while walking around the main street in Kenting, the touristy shop area. It was a beautiful day, and happily lacking in the abundance of tourists usually found in Kenting.

View from the balcony off our hotel room.

Shells are sold at lots of the shops.

Lots o'shells...

See! Happily lacking of tourists!

It's easy to rent a scooter to zip around Kenting, if you have a local scooter license or an international license. I have both, and both are expired. Oops.

Ooh, here's a tourist. Oh wait. That's my roommate Beth. She wanted some flip flops.

This small chain convienience store, along with 7-11, Hi-Life, and OK Mart, are found on nearly every single corner in Taiwan. You never have an excuse to be without coffee.

Look hard, and you'll find what results when people drink too much of what they're advertising, and then attempt to hang a sign for what they're advertising.

That's it for now!