New blog!

Hello! It's been almost a year since my last post, and boy I have a lot to write about. But, for that, I have started a new blog to go with my new, married, crunchy lifestyle! I won't be writing on this blog any more. Please follow me now at:   shaaronsadventures.wordpress.com
Thanks, and Happy Chinese New Year!

I blame the computer!

I'm grumpy. My little red Acer that I bought two years ago at the recommendation of several people, has turned out to be a big, fat dissapointment! Sometime at the end of last year, the hard drive just stopped working and had to be replaced, so I lost all the stuff I had on it. And then sometime in January this year, the keyboard just stopped letting me type half the letters. It's fixable, says Acer Repair Man, but for 3000 NT (about 100 USD), and although I could pay that, I felt it was better use of my monies to pay 300 NT (about 10 USD) for an external keyboard and just deal with a gimpy system. It worked ok, until about a month ago, that stopped working half the time too. Now I have to jiggle it a certain way. Like typing this post, I've had to jiggle it a couple of times already. Blah. and blah.
  But I'm here and I was inspired to write a quick update after months and months of Not Blogging. because I'm a blogging slacker.
 Life has quickly moved forward as I have Not been Blogging. I'm looking forward, currently, to my wedding in a few months (AHHH! a few months! A FEW MONTHS!! AAAAAAAAH!) and I'm not at all freaking out. :) It actually still feels kind of far away, even though I just AAH'd at the few months away it really is. Thanks to an amazing blessing from God in the form of one of Aaron's friends, I haven't had to do much as far as pulling the wedding itself together. She's doing my invitations, including the mailing, and everything else will be very simple. I bought my dress toward the end of last year at a second-hand wedding/formal dress shop, for the equivalent of 50 USD! Thanks to another great friend of mine here who showed me the place. It's very simple dress, and I'm happy with it.
  I've been slowly moving things box by bag by random handfuls to Aaron's apartment, and we've acquired several things I want/need like a microwave, oven, water dispenser, and other etc's Aaron has been doing without quite well on his own. Apparently I am more high maintinence (my words, not his.:) Also we got cute matching cushy swively chairs for our tiny, tiny, tiny living room.
   Otherwise in New News, we have also bought ukukleles, and I played mine in my class for the first time today and got kind of laughed at, mostly stared at, and a little bit pee'd on. Yep. I had two students wet themselves (for excitement? I don't know. they haven't done it in my class before. coincidence to wet themselves for the first time when I bring a ukulele to school? Hm). It was an exhausting day. They are pretty little, like first grade, but I did not expect them to wet themselves for excitement at Teacher Playing the Ukulele. I'm pretty anxious about playing again next week. Maybe I just won't.
   We decorated Celtic crosses today in kind of honor of St. Patrick's day, and they are very beautiful, even the one with the tanks and helicopters all over it (or as this particular student said "they look like cows, yah, because they is black and white, but they are tanks and here is helicopter". I'm glad he clarified, because they do look like cows.
   We are learning about cows next week. Incidentally, the Chinese f-word, sounds like the word "cow" in the fourth tone (the harsh downward tone). It's a delicate dance to teach about cows and avoid that tone.
   In honor of learning about cows and how they make milk for us, we are going to make ice-cream in class. I hope nobody pee's their pants over THAT.
  Um, what else. Oh. I've been going to a gym. It's not my favorite. I thought maybe I have gotten more Healthy and maybe lost a little weight I've put on over the last couple of years, but instead for the two months of what I've found a grueling three days of a week of Gym Time, I have gained five pounds. I am slightly depressed. I am still normal looking and not at all fat, but I thought for all the running and cycling and weights pushing/pressing/lifting I've been doing surely I would have not gained weight. I kind of don't get it. It hasn't been enough time for it to be five pounds of muscle gain. Oh well.
  It's very Late here now and it's been a long day. I'm kind of only blogging because somehow I was inspired, but now I have forgotten what inspired this blog.
  So, I'm going to bed. Perhaps it won't be so long between my next post. We'll see. :)
  
  

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!

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!