Pandas, Indian Food and the Stationery Store

This is my boss and his family: wife Angel, daughters Chloe and Faith (who is so not looking at my camera)..

This is the Panda we went all the way to Taipei to see! It did this the entire time. I was a little dissapointed but at least I can say I've seen a Real Live Panda.

This is very Cool to me (haha, literally..) it was SO HOT at the Zoo and they had these Things above us that sprayed fine mists of water (some of the businesses in town do this too) to cool things down.

This is me with one of my roomates, Katie Jo on the left and Ching on the right (Ching is a friend from Maylasia)

So yesterday: The Taipei Zoo. First of all, let me start by saying, that my Boss, Jackson, wanted me to meet him at house at 8 am yesterday morning to go to the Zoo. He wanted me to walk there, "for adventure" he says. He lives at 151 Dadun Road, he says. Half an hour walk, he says. Easy, he says. Okay..so I get on Google maps and find 151 Dadun Road, and think, easy.. okay. So I leave my house at 7 am (in case I get "lost")..and promptly forget what Google maps said. So I figure, I kind of know that Dadun runs parallel to Wenxin Road, and I knew where Wenxin Road was in relation to where I was, so I figure, if I walk around a little in that general area I would eventually hit Dadun. So, I walk around a little (like, half an hour), Not Finding Dadun Road, and then I FOUND IT! and I looked at the number on the closest building. 851 it says. Hunh, I say. Jackson lives at 151. You do the math. 45 minutes and a lot of sweat later, I find 151 Dadun Road. I could tell it was going to be a great morning.

So we get on the bus and go to the Bullet Train station. The Bullet Train rocks. Taipei is about a three hour regular bus ride from Taichung. The Bullet Train it is 50 minutes (but expensive..) so I got to see the country between Taichung and Taipei...really fast. But I was also entertaining Jackson's two kids, Chloe and Faith, during the majority of the time so I really didn't get to see the countryside much at all. They were really cute though. We played games with my little calculator and drew pictures of Pandas (mine looked like of like..cows).

So we get to Taipei and we ride the MRT to the Zoo. So Hot. So So So So SO HOT. and I wore JEANS. Oh bad bad Sharon. So Hot. So we go find the Pandas and we get a Ticket that says we are Allowed to see the Pandas betweent 12:50 and 12:59 AM. This is our Time. We were lucky, Jackson says. If we had come on a Saturday, we would have gotten 9 seconds, he says. So at 12:50 we go to see the Pandas. They were excited to see us too. I could tell. So excited that they slept the whole 9 minutes. *disappointment* but we spent lots of time in the Panda Gift Shop where I saw many Fake Pandas.

Then we went on to see a whole bunch of North American animals (hunh!) like beavers, various reptiles, wolves, and other Things. And the Koalas. oh and some Penguins. It was fun, but oh so Hot.

So Today I made a Find: The Stationary Store!! close to my house and oh so interesting! Asians make such Cute Things! Cute little note cards, papers, pens, note books..I will be spending Lots of Time in there in the coming months.

Also tonight we went out for Indian Food, and it was SO GOOD! OH wow I couldn't believe how good the food was. We ordered coconut beef, some kind of mutton thing, some kind of chicken thing, and some kind of indian cheese thing. It made up for getting "lost" yesterday. :)

New Things:

1.) Squat toilets still exist and are kind of scary. Also in the western toilet stalls there are signs (at least there are in Taipei) saying things like "Do not stand on the toilet" and "Do not crouch to prevent accident" in case someone mixes up a Western toilet for the old-style squats.

2.) There is a Body Shop (a real one!) in Taichung, not far from my house. Oh happy discovery...

3.) Chinese people can cook REALLY GOOD Indian Food.

Well, my internet is being spoofy on me again..at first I thought maybe the internet at the library was iffy..then I thought it was Gib and Retha's internet acting up...THEN I thought the internet at Rhonda's house where I was housesitting was doing funny Things...but NOW it's doing it AGAIN and I know it's not the internet's problem..it's MY computer.:( Just in the middle of doing things online it will suddenly decide it can't contact the server. No reason! It does it off and on with NO reason. So now it's tell me it can't save my Blog because they the computer can't contact Blogger.com. So irritated. So I will save this in Word and post another time when it IS working. SO irritated. but there is an Acer repair shop not far away. Acers are made in Taiwan. Go figure. :)

Until next time..

It must be 8 am, I hear "Fur Elise"

The view from one side of the balcony.

OK..this stand in the day market was so gruesome..this dude cut chicken necks, dropped them in this vat, feathered, and gutted them right there. Ew! but so interesting..

The courtyard of our apartment complex. It's really pretty but this day was overcast.

Me and a giant guitar playing kiwi! This was a display outside a new shopping mall. SO FUNNY! It was even fuzzy like a kiwi.

The view from the other side of the balcony.

This is our recycling system. :)

This is our living room. Cute, isn't it?

Flat Sharon says goodbye to her Trusty Blue Escort...

So, life goes on! I've officially lived in Taiwan for one week and all is well. I've finally gotten over that awful cold so I am a lot more optomistic about Taiwan now. :) I spent a lot of time at Banner church last week due to a three-day conference that a professor from Regent University spoke at - a Dr. Bekker who spoke on Finding Intimacy with God: Biblical Discipline of Devotion and Transformation. It was very good and very well attended. Banner church is a rather large church and so they are also a "cell group" church so that each member can plug in somewhere and get to know the other church members (which is hard to do when the church is so large). I attended also the youth service on Saturday night, which was also VERY well attended and not just with youth - the worship was slightly louder but otherwise it was very similar to the Sunday morning service. It wasn't like the "youth group" gatherings that we have in the States where they play games the majority of the time. Sunday morning service was also good and Dr. Bekker spoke again as a guest speaker. Sunday evening I attended the English service which was much smaller in attendence but it was nice to finally sing songs in English. :) After that service I checked out a cell group that my roommate Amanda leads at our apartment and that was a great time. I got to meet some of the other young people in the church, most of which spoke English fairly well. Cell group meetings are like small Bible studies and the topic of discussion is generally the sermon or topic that was discussed in the Sunday morning or evening services. It was very good. I think I will check out another English cell group this coming Sunday and decide which one to attend regularly. I have to attend one on a weekend since once I start working I will not have weekday evenings free.

When I WASN'T at Banner church, here's what I did: 1.) I ate out a LOT last week - Grace, the ITPS lady who came with me (who is from Taiwan), was determined that I should try all the local Taiwanese fare in my first week! :) Or so it seemed. I tried...oh I don't recall the names of everything... a lot of noodle dishes, similar to our Top Ramen only way better; we had this sauteed Cabbage stuff that was out of this world good oooh I could eat it all day; seaweed stir fry stuff, all kinds of chicken dishes...most of it was pretty good, but by last Friday I was CRAVING pizza! I felt kind of guilty for wanting American food so badly so soon, but I subtely ordered a spaghetti dish at dinner that night and it was SO good. :) Grace gave me a "look" like "why you order American food at a Chinese restaraunt" kind of look, and made me try some of her seafood soupy thing which included a large Shrimp that was not deheaded or deshelled and still had its eyeballs on it. Anyway, the last few nights we have been cooking at home which has been really nice. They don't have Mexican restaraunts here (of course) so we cook Mexican at home (a lot, I'm discovering). I found out you can buy Mexican seasonings like chili powder and taco seasoning at the Costco (expensive but at least it's available). yay!

I have three roommates but Stephanie is in Canada right now so I haven't met her yet. Amanda is from New Zealand and she works part-time at a cram school (English school) and devotes the majority of her time to Banner church ministries. She is very involved with the English ministries. Katie Jo is from Colorado and is very close in age to me - about three months older - and she is here to study Chinese. She attends classes at the local University and also works part-time at a cram school. I'm so grateful for friendly fun roomates. So far I think we get along well and they both have fairly busy schedules so are in and out a lot. I will be fairly busy as well once I start teaching in August. We also have had a girl named Ching who is Amanda's friend from Maylasia staying at our house and she just found a job at an English school as well. She won't be living here but has been staying here over the past week. So I'm discovering that our apartment is kind of a social hub where cell groups, friends, etc. meet and hang out. It's kind of a welcome change to my hermit life that I had in Alaska. :)

Taiwan is pretty close to what I expected it to be! Busy & noisy, hot & humid, but so far I'm loving it! I LOVE the fact that I can walk out of my apartment and there is a coffee shop right next door, and I'm within walking distance of all kinds of cute little shops and cool places. Yesterday I walked to the Carrefour store, about a 5-7 minute walk down a really pretty cool tree-lined street. The Carrefour is like...a brighter, cleaner, cuter Asian Fred Meyers of sorts. It's a department store but with restaraunts inside too. Some of the prices are cheaper than similar items in the States and some are the same or higher. I guess it depends on where they have to import it from. There's also a supermarket about two minute walk down the same street from the house. The church is about a 15-20 minute walk. My school is further and I don't know how to get there yet. I've been there to do my paperwork for the ARC (Alien Resident Card) but I took a taxi so I don't know how to go on my own. I tried scooter riding in the basement the other day - WAY harder than I thought it would be! I think until I get used to it I'll be biking or taking a taxi. Or walking. :)

I'm REALLY glad I brought several knee-length skorts. It's so hot and the locals don't really wear shorts a lot, but jeans are WAY too hot. I don't really have pants that aren't jeans (or black) so I'm ending up wearing the skirts. The local girls wear a lot of skirts so I fit right in.

Let's see...what else happened over the last week....this is what happens when you have a blog that you don't update for a while then you forget all the cool things that happened. :) Anyway, everything is going fine and I finally am starting to feel comfortable here like I will be able to learn everything and figure out my way around. And the taxi station is right around the corner if I need to in a pinch have someone ELSE figure out where something is. :)

Here are three New Things I have learned over the past week about Taiwan:

1.) 8 am in the morning - Garbage Pickup - but oh no, not quite and subtle - they announce the truck's presence very loudly with a tinny version of "Fur Elise"! It's still kind of amusing to me but I anticipate it won't be amusing much longer.

2.) When you meet a new Taiwanese person, they often ask you how long you are going to be in Taiwan. At first I thought this was just a standard "making conversation" kind of question, but was later informed by my roommate that they ask this on purpose to discover how much effort they are going to put into a friendship with you! Like if you say, "oh I'm here on a year's contract", then the Taiwanese person will assume you are only going to be here a year, why put any effort into being your friend? On the other hand, if you indicate you might be here a long time or indefinitely, then they will be much more open to befriending you. So I've learned to reply "I'm here until God sends me elsewhere!" or "At least a couple of years, but maybe longer" and then the Taiwanese people are very friendly to me. :)

3.) Avoid the day market - although the fruits and vegetables are much fresher and generally cheaper, they also have little stalls where they keep live chickens and then slaughter them, boil them, de-feather them, gut them, and quarter them right there next to the vegetables. It disturbs me and I do not think I will be spending lots of time at the day market.

4.) Scooters are heavy a lot harder to drive than they look. Oh, that's four new things. oops.

Well tomorrow I am going to spend the day in Taipei at the Zoo with my boss and his family. This should be an interesting day as I am still a little bit conserved around my new boss but his wife is very sweet and they have two cute little girls. His wife Angel took me to the hospital on Friday to get my health check done for my ARC so I got to spend some time with her and she is very sweet.

Here are some prayer requests if you want to know how to pray for me; they are much the same I think as last time I posted prayer requests:

1.) Continue to pray for the youth camp next week. The youth are very excited about this and have put a lot of effort into the planning and preparation.

2.) Continue to pray for good memory for me! as I am still finding my way around and trying to pick up some basic Chinese.

3.) Pray about where the Lord wants me to serve in Banner church. There are many opportunities to plug in but finding one that will fit with my school schedule is the key.

4.) Pray they I will develop good lasting relationships with some of the local Taiwanese people. They are very friendly and open to building relationships.

Ok! Well this is a long post so I'll go for now. I am looking into getting a new camera soon since mine is having very many problems (which is why I don't have a whole lot of pictures - it only works about half the time), so hopefully I'll have lots more pictures soon. :)

Until next time! Zai Jian!

This is Grace, Danielle and I making pork Dumplings (which are Most Excellent and also fun to make)

Danielle, me, and Francis at..um..I don't know which beach in LA, but it was pretty.

Whoa! It's been a while since I've had a chance to sit down and "blog". :) Well, I made it! All the way to Taichung, Taiwan!! Where should I start? This might be a very long post..heh, heh...let me start with a week ago, Tuesday. Or rather, Wednesday I guess. I got to LA early in the morning, and went to the house was staying at in Irvine (I think), the home of Francis Wang, the leader of ITPS. I think I slept all day on Wednesday, except when we went to eat. I was in LA for about four days, and learned all sorts of useful Things for my new life here in Taiwan. Things like...how to use chopsticks, that you should never give a Chinese person a clock for a gift because it is offensive, and also how easy it is to accidentally say "how are you, horse" instead of just "how are you"? :) Seriously though, it was a really good time of training and discipleship and preparation for coming here. There was only one other team member this year, Danielle who is going to Shanghai in August who is in the pictures.

Well, then on Sunday afternoon Grace and I went to LAX to leave for Taipei! Thank the Lord they only charged me overweight fees on one bag (even though both were over 50 lbs) and there were no problems getting on the plane. The 13 hour flight was waay nicer than I had expected it would be. We flew over the Pacific (I thought we would fly over Alaska!) which I think shortened the flight a little. Very minimal turbulence and an empty middle seat (I had a window) and a friendly interesting Aisle Seat Person made it actually quite a pleasant flight. The food, in flight movie players, foot rests, and very cool reclining seats didn't hurt either. :) We landed in Taipei about 7 pm Taiwan time and got on the bus to Taichung, another two hours but I slept through that trip ( I had a gotten a cold Saturday night so I was fighting to stave off a fever because in Taipei airport they screen all passengers for fever (due to H1N1 virus if you have a fever they quarantine you and it can be up to two weeks) but thank the Lord I didn't have one ( I was running a small one on Sunday morning). But I was pretty fuzzy in the head upon landing so I don't remember much of those fleeting first impressions of Taiwan.

Then I woke up this morning and felt MUCH BETTER! :) We went to see Banner church this morning, where I will be serving with my roomates Amanda and Stephanie and also we went to Jackson5, the school I will be working at. I didn't take any pictures yet but will post some soon.

J5 is a very cute school, and my classroom is pretty big. I met my co-teacher (whose name I have forgotten now along with many other things I vowed to Remember throughout today) and gave Angel, Jackson's wife, my documents for my work visa. I rode on the back of Amanda's scooter and also tried very hard to Remember all the roads and turns to get to the school but totally lost track after about the third turn. Scooter riding is not quite as wild and crazy as I had imagined it might be, but it's still a little hairy especially the big intersections.

Taichung has a population of about a million people (which seems mild compared to Shanghai's population of about 17 million), but it is not as congested as I had anticipated which was nice. It is pretty hot and humid but actually very similar I find to Suriname's weather and although I'm not used to sweating, it was nearly as bad as I had read and heard. AND my hair seems to be reacting quite well to the weather, and didn't give me a Frizz Head like I did in Guatemala and Suriname. :)

I have three roommates, although one is in Canada now until August - Stephanie. But Amanda is here, she works on staff at Banner church and is involved with the English zone ministry there, and Katie Jo who is taking Chinese classes here at DongHai (I think I spelled that right) University. Both teach evening classes at a cram school (an after-school English school). They're both quite friendly and very willing to help me adjust which I am SO THANKFUL for! :) My apartment is very cute, and although a bit smaller than I am used to is just fine and I'm thankful that there is a room for me here. I haven't seen any Nasty Bugs so far, just some gnats. I'll post some pictures soon but for now my room is a complete mess and I have Stuff everywhere.

I'm thankful for all your prayers as well! and if you'd like some specifics to pray for...

- that I would recover from my cold and residual cough

- that the Lord would extra special bless me with great Memory to remember all the Things I need to know to just get around in this new culture

- that I would be able to pick up some basic Chinese quickly

- for the upcoming Biligual Youth Camp that I will be helping with in a couple of weeks. I think I will be responsible for the Drama Workshop so pray that the Lord will give me some good ideas and be able to build relationships with some of the youth that come to this camp, also that they may turn their lives over to the Lord.

Here are three New Things I learned today:

1.) If you leave space between you and someone else in front of you in line, someone will step in there because they think you aren't in line (eg. no personal space) :)

2.) When you are crossing the street, the crosswalk countdown Thing on the opposite side has a little digital image of a Guy walking, and as the seconds count down the Guy walks faster..and faster..and faster..until he's running! That's your cue to book it if you want to cross! (this is SO funny to me)

3.) Chinese really like white skin (like they prefer pale skin to dark skin as opposed to the US where everybody wants to be tan). They find it more beautiful to be white. So I guess I'll fit right in until I get a tan! :)

THANKS SO MUCH for all your prayers! I promise I will post many pictures in upcoming days but this is a time of Great Transition for me so be patient! :)

Until next time!!

Adventure #2: The Airport

Okay, well it hasn't been much of an adventure thus far since I've only been in the Anchorage airport for about...ohhhh and hour or so. No problems checking in my Monster Bag after I shuffled stuff around - -- whoa there go some really fast running travellers, hope they make their flight --- anyway, as I was saying, shuffled some stuff around since BOTH my bags weighed in over 50 lbs at the Kenai airport! Augh. But I would like to say, that Grant Aviation made me REALLY happy tonight when the really Nice Pilot Guy took my Monster Bags all the way to the Alaska airlines counter for me. And the guy whose foot I dropped my carryon bag on was very friendly. Lots of friendly people. :)
So now I'm sitting here waiting for my plane to LAX. It's a mixture of feeling really sad and kind of excited and a little worried that I forgot something important (made it past check in so I think I'm ok but you never know!) and a little hungry but too nervous to eat and achy because I've been running around all day and hauling the Monster Bag.
I'm going to stop here because I could probably babble on and on since I'm tired and I have all this time on my hands, but I think I'm going to go find a drink and a Sodoku book (easy level, of course :) More later!

Enter: The Adventures of FLAT Sharon!

Flat Sharon's first adventure is The Packing Adventure. I have discovered one of the most indispensable packing Items ever: Hefty 2.5 gallon Zip Top Bags. As Flat Sharon is demonstrating in the picture here, I have managed to fit my entire wardrobe into these amazing zippy bags and condense all the air out of them! I now have very nice, very flat rolled up clothes all ready to put in my humongous duffel bag. Hoo-rah for me. :)

okay, I just uploaded my second picture and I don't know why the "Blog" keeps sticking my uploaded pictures in funny places so I can't label them properly. I need to figure this out. Anyway, that other picture up there is of me and my other two Amigos, Amy & Lenore who were hired at Kenai DPA at the same time as me. *sniff* gonna miss these guys! They made me Flat Sharon who will appear in many a Blog photo to come. So..those of you who aren't familiar with the "Flat Family" (for example, Flat Stanley), these are Flat paper doll People who get mailed around the world. I think they originated in elementary schools for like, pen pals, but when I heard about Flat Stanley I thought that was the most funny idea ever. There's a much longer story here about how we made Flat supervisor dolls at work and...anyway! I don't feel like typing so much as it would take to tell the story. So as a parting gift from my thoughtful co-workers, I got my very own Flat Sharon to take as a travel companion. :)

I leave in a week! Thanks for all your prayers! :)

Last few days in Alaska

So here's some more pictures of some of my last days in Alaska! This first one is me and some of my favorite kiddos on the beach at Captain Cook State Park. Then it's me and a Walliball buddy sporting our super cool Ponchos; and again on Skilak loop trail.

So I spent the entirety of today packing and re-packing and thinking and moving stuff around and PACKING some MORE. *whew* and then I ate some ice-cream. Packing is the pits!

I leave a week from tomorrow! More later! :)

Ok, well so I'm not really that much closer to being in Taiwan , but I started thinking how sad and lonely my Blog looked since I am not Blog-savvy and hadn't added any pictures yet. So I found some. One that I just took of the hiking trip I just went on (the reason my back is grumpy with me right now), but also one to show my great short haircut. And this trout. This is my first lake trout! I ate him, but he had a lot of pokey bones.

I've been having a world of trouble getting my Facebook to upload photos, so I guess I'll just start posting 'em here instead. Whoa. The "Blog" stuck my second downloaded picture up there with the first. I'm suspicious. Anyway, that one on the top is me and my Awesome Poncho (affectionately dubbed "The Smurf") at the top of...um...some mountain above Skilak Lake. In the pouring rain. And the wind was incredibly strong. I think probably if I flapped my arms I would have flown. Maybe a little bit. Like a chicken, maybe. oooo chicken...

Oh boy, I'm tired. I don't think I'll upload any more pictures. Good bye, world...parting is such sweet sorrow...

Oh man. Ok, i'm going to sleep for real.