Adventures in Scooting

I finally have a scooter! Yay! It's a little 50cc that I can drive legally with my international license, it's cherry red, and it has a basket! I also got my health card and my Visa debit card in the mail yesterday. So now I'm all set! :)
Scooting is way better than riding a bike. It's much faster, for one thing, and sooo much cooler (both the hip kind of cool and the wind/breeze in your face kind of cool). Traffic here is so funny to me. Instead of watching the traffic light, the people stopped at a red light will watch the little countdown walking guy at the crosswalk, because it counts down to when the opposing light will turn red. So when the digital crosswalk guy begins running and then says "stop walking", the traffic stopped at the red light will go even if the light is still red, because it is going to turn green in a few seconds. So far I haven't seen any accidents due to this but I'm sure they have them. I still wait for the light to turn all the way green. I saw a guy today carrying about 10 huge bags of leafy green vegetables on his little scooter, very cleverly perched all of them. It's amazing what people manage to fit on their scooters.

My afternoon class, the Bumblebees, we've been doing a summer theme unit on Ants. Today we made models of the Ant Family with silicone clay. Silicone clay is awesome. I don't even think it's on the market. I think my school has some because one of the kid's parents works at some hi-tech place that does stuff with silicone and he invented it. Silicone clay doesn't dry out, stick to things, or get hands dirty. It's cool.
The kids had a lot of fun with that.
Also today we practiced writing sentences again. The Bumblebees are learning to write for the first time this year, so their sentence skills aren't so great. But this one little guy, Hank, was so funny - the kids all got this worksheet that had half of a picture of a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end, and they were supposed to finish drawing the other half of the picture and then write a sentence about the picture. Most kids finished drawing the rainbow, maybe a flower or two, or another pot of gold. Some kids drew people. Most kids wrote sentences like "I can see a rainbow" or "Look at the beautiful rainbow". But one little boy, finished drawing the other half of the rainbow, and then underneath the rainbow he drew two obviously dead-looking monsters. Then he wrote this very short sentence: "Two monsters die."
I laughed so hard. Then I gave him a star. (they get stars when they complete their worksheets) Kudos for creativity.
They had another worksheet where they had to do the same thing, finish this picture and write a sentence. The picture was one-half of a hot-air balloon floating over a river. Most kids wrote stuff like "I can see a balloon" or "Look at the beautiful balloon" (sensing a theme here?) but this kid drew a person in the balloon, holding a fishing pole that went all the way down to the river, and wrote "I am fishing from the balloon". He got a really big star. That's my kind of kid!

Tomorrow we're taking a school-wide field trip to some farm place. Fun times to be had by all!

The other night I learned how to play mah-jong. I actually learned more chinese words learning how to play mah-jong than I did my entire first month in Taiwan. I learned how to count to ten, how to say "north, south, east, and west" and then all the other names of the tiles. It's very much like Rummikub, only more Chinese and more complicated. :)

New Things:
1.) The best kung-pau chicken in the world - see pictures on my Facebook because I am having a problem uploading them to my blog for some reason.
2.) How to get gas for your scooter at a gas station - pull up, open the tank, smile real big at the attendent and point up (as in fill it up because I don't know how to say that in Chinese yet), pay the NTD equivalent of about $3 USD, then scoot off! A much simpler and cheaper process than putting gas in my car in Alaska in freezing wind and snow.
3.) Discovery of Funnyions at the Carrefour. "Funnyions" are like onion rings only with no real onion. They're onion flavored rings. Actually Funnyion is the American version and I discovered a chinese version but still a very happy discovery.
4.) The milk ladies at the Carrefour. I was looking for "my" milk there the other day - the bottle with the red lid that means "whole milk" with the famous baseball player guy on the front holding a bottle of the same milk with a cow peeking around it, and whilst I was in the midst of looking, I was bombarded by Taiwanese Milk ladies asking me stuff in chinese and it scared me away and I never did get my Milk. :( I think they were probably asking me if they could help.
5.) The gas guy. Apparently Gas Guy comes once a month to read the gas gauge. I was home in the morning yesterday and he rang the doorbell and I opened the door to Gas Guy, only I didn't know it was Gas Guy because at first he was just Strange Old Chinese Guy I Couldn't Understand. So I kept saying, "No thanks, I don't want any!" but he kept saying "Gas-uh! Gas-uh! (chinese who don't speak English very well add "uh" to the end of their English words) and finally I got it! "Ohhh... GAS!!" so I let him in and he checked the guage and then bowed a lot and left. I can't wait to learn Chinese.

This list had five things the other day but I had problems uploading my pictures so I just saved this blog and posted the pictures to my Facebook. So I will now add a couple of new things to this List:
6.) A Costco card! I got caught at Costco using my roomate's card yesterday and I was so grumpy that they told me I couldn't buy my stuff with her card, but I did the math and figured that even if I only bought two packs of ground beef there per year it would still come out even with the membership fee (ground beef here is REALLY expensive and buying the Australian ground beef in bulk at Costco is the best and cheapest option by far) (also I can get Ghirardelli (spelling?) brownie mix there in bulk) so I figured it was worth it and gave in. Yay me.
7.) Um...can't think of any more right now. Gotta go out and get stuff done. :) More later.

Adventures in Typhoons

This is the canal (kind of a sewage canal but sort of cleaner) tree-lined road I walk up and down all the time. In the typhoon, these trees were bent waaay sideways, the canal was full of rushing water, and branches were all over the road.

Um...this is a bottle of lychee fruit wine I took this picture for Michael (this wine smells really really gross and was a gift to a friend of mine but I thought it was funny to see lychee wine)

Sharon and the Giant Mango. this picture also is on my Facebook so most of you have already seen it.

Sorry still not very many pictures. :(

Whoa! First typhoon day in my first week of teaching! Classes have gone better than expected but I was supposed to take my afternoon class, the Bumblebees, to the park to observe ants on Friday. We took them on a school field trip on Thursday afternoon to this children's library place and they were just bouncing off the walls! It's been raining all week so the kids have been penned up inside. So I wasn't looking forward to riding my bike in the rain (again) to work and coming up with a last-minute lesson plan to replace the park idea because it was raining (again) and the kids would be all hyper, but then all classes got cancelled island-wide to the Typhoon Morakot! hip hip hooray! So I had actually no idea what a typhoon really was. Turns out this particular typhoon was 1.) a looot of wind on Friday but very little rain - but so much wind it blew over tree branches and store signs and stuff. 2.) hardly any rain or wind on Saturday but very overcast and kind of eerie, and 3.) a LOT LOT LOT of rain AND wind today! We don't know what's up with the typhoon.

Great Things Taiwan has that they should have in the States too:

1.) Sealed plastic lids on to-go drinks. This is a GREAT idea! They put your drink in this machine that seals a plastic lid on it, then you stick your straw through the lid and you have a practially spill-proof drink! It rocks.

2.) Umbrella covers in store entry ways. A machine you stick your umbrella in and it puts on a plastic umbrella-shaped bag to keep it from dripping in the store. Genius!

3.) In more remote towns closer to the coast, I'm told the houses build metal pull-down walls around them so when a typhoon or whatever is coming they just have to pull down the metal wall thing (like a thin garage door) instead of spending tons of time taping windows and barring doors. Brilliant!

That's my list so far. I'm sure I'll be adding to it in the days to come.

Adventures in HOT

Yeah...I've only taken two pictures total since my last post - one of a bottle of Lychee Wine (just to post for Michael who is a big fan of Lychee Fruits - the wine is really gross but I thought the idea was interesting) and one of a street. But I'm too lazy to go get my memory stick and upload them. Hah!
So time marches on...as it inevitably will. Yesterday, all day, was terribly miserably, awfully HOT. I learned later (like at the very very end of the day) that it had been about 38 degrees C (which I think is around 100 Fahrenheit!!) which is why even the aircon wasn't helping a whole lot. I would step outside and become a large wet Blob of Sweat. It was not cool.
But today it is raining and I got to bike home from Jackson5 in the rain which was admittidly cooler but also not so much fun! The guard at our apartment laughed at me when I pulled in, probably because he doesn't see so often wet dripping nerdly-helmet foreigners.
My first three classes went well, and my Bumblebees are a handful but manageable with the help of my Awesome chinese co-teacher Tina. They ooh-ed and aah-ed over the pictures of my family, King Salmon, mooses, snow, and appropriately went "eeeehhhhhh!!!" when I told them you can fit 26 Taiwans into the entire state of Alaska. We learned today that all insects have three parts and six legs. What's really fun is teaching small Chinese children to say "thorax" and "abdomen". Oh yeah. But teaching, I did learn today, is not going to be a job that when you don't feel good or are distracted by other Things in Life that you can slack off on. I can't just stare into space for five minutes in my small cubicle when I feel sick because I don't have a cubicle! I have 18 active wiggly kids with (hopefully) their small eyeballs glued on ME! You have to invest all your energy and attention and focus on the kids and the lesson when you are in the classroom and so it was very mentally exhausting for me. I suppose it will get better with time. But as for tonight, I'm going to get some food and take an ibuprofin and do it all over again tomorrow!
Tomorrow I also start my evening class with the Koalas, they are older but I'm told their phonics skills are terrible so Phonics focus it is!! whoo hoo.
My blogging is probably going to be fewer and farther between but I'll try real hard to have some pictures next time. =)

Adventures..in...Tired...

Oh man! This medicine the doctor-man gave me is making me really tired! Either the medicine or the fact that since I do not have a scooter yet, I am riding a bike everywhere I want to go and I've probably gotten more excercise this week than I have all five years I lived in Alaska. Speaking of biking, what a hairy adventure THAT is! Trying really hard to stick to the farest rightest side of the road as possible but such efforts being thwarted by all the Obstacles that like to park themselves, mostly illegally, in the quite wide scooter/bike section of the road forcing the scooter/bikes to veer out into the Real Road where there is Real Traffic...*whew*. Delivery trucks, cars of all shapes and sizes, carts, busses, and who knows what else all block the side of the road. So far I haven't had anything truly scary happen to me on the road, only something a little embarrassing, such as the time I pulled up to the corner where there was a cop standing there for some Unknown Reason, waved hello to the cop, and then proceeded to pull out when the light turned green and turn left onto my road from the wrong side of the road I had been on. Ok, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in words, but I made a couple of cars kind of mad because they too were trying to turn left and had to wait for Slow Foreigner Girl with Funny Helmet on Bike to get out of their way. I kept waiting for the cop to blow his whistle, but thankfully I learned later, that cops don't pull over bikes and especially not foreigners on bikes because they expect us to be just that dumb. (that's my own theory actually...).
So anyway, it's an adventure to be sure, but not really very scary although it sounds like it. (don't worry, mom, it's really not as bad as I made it sound. :) To me, biking here is more of a pain (literally, my legs are screaming for mercy), and by the time I get to the school I'm so hot and sweating and feel like I've lost 10 pounds. I can't wait to get a scooter.
On a brighter note, I found Honey Roasted Macademia Nuts at the Costco today. TOTALLY awesome disovery!!
I've completed a week of training at JacksonFive and am now more nervous about teaching than I was..like, ever. It takes me foreeevvveerr to write a lesson plan, and I have to write them a lot and all the time along with bunches of other paperwork and creativity and rules to remember, and all kinds of little tips and tricks and teaching Stuff to remember. Ack! My brain is so tired.
So I don't have any new pictures from this week because mostly I've been training and riding my bike around which takes too much focus on the road to take any pictures on the way.
I will be "helping" lead worship at the English Service at Banner this Sunday..I write it that way, "helping" because I'm playing second keyboard which is not really a needed instrument for the worship team, but more an opportunity to get me used to being on stage and playing with the team. Mostly I have to plunk out some chords at the right time. Kinda cool!
New Things from Taiwan:
1.) Seaweed flavored Pringles. And also Sushi flavor. I haven't tried them...they scare me. But I probably should try them. Where else am I going to get the chance to eat Seaweed flavor Pringles?
2.) Air raid sirens. They did a test the other day, big ol' loud siren. Supposedly this is what they will do if we ever experience an air raid from China. And then all the people are supposed to go inside when they hear the horn. And then the guard at our apartment will keep us updated through this loudspeaker that is installed in ours (and every other) apartment. So I'm thinking, suppose we ever have a Real Air Raid? so we all go inside and sit? It's kind of silly to me, but hey, who am I?
3.) Betel nut juice. This is so gross. They sell these gross Nuts called Betel Nuts at these stands with scantily clad girls (anyone who does any research at all on Taiwan will read about these) and (mostly guys) but some old women chew these nuts and spit on the sidewalk. Supposedly they have a kind of drugging effect. But the spit leaves read splotches all over the roads and sidewalks. I didn't really notice those until I started riding my bike. Ew.
4.) Swim caps. These are required at all the swimming pools, to prevent Clogging of Drains. Next week all the summer kiddos at Jackson5 are going on a swimming field trip, of which I am a supposed to participate so I purchased a groovy black swim cap. I don't think I have ever worn a nerdlier piece of headgear. And I ask the question overheard by my roomate Katie at her university one day on the subject of swim caps: "Do you have to wear them if you're bald?" not relevant for me, but still curious.
5.) Tea - really not as bad as I once thought it was!
6.) Eating a chicken drumstick with chopsticks is tricky business yet somehow all the Taiwanese do it so easily!
7.) Taiwanese friendliness - a parent of one of the students at Jackson 5 treated Jackson and I to free lunch at her sandwich shop because I was the new teacher. :) A girl at the Giant bicycle shop practiced her English with me and gave me all extra tune-ups with a big smile. Etc. People here are so nice.
8.) And the kid at Jackson5 who, when I was chasing him on the kiddie jungle gym thing says, "Oh! this one new teacher so fun!" Things like that make my day. (and I did not correct his sentence. :)

Yah, so that's my week in a nutshell. Hopefully once I am used to biking and am off this medicine and can drink caffeine again I'll be more awake. Thanks again for all your continued prayers, and if you could remember safety on roads too, since as Jackson put it the other day: "Every foreigner I know has at one point or another hit an opening car door on their bike as they passed a parked car, so watch the parked cars in the bike lane." WHA! There are SO MANY parked cars in the bike lane! Yeah, so pray for safety. I do wear my helmet even though no Taiwanese bike riders do and I look even nerdlier than the usual "foreigner nerdy" in it. Better safe than sorry.

Hopefully by my next post I will have some new pictures for you guys. Sorry. :)

Adventures in Heathcare

So today was my first day of training at JacksonFive. I was going to do another Adventure and try my hand (or feet) at biking to the school, but the bike I was going to use is an older one left here by a previous roommate and the tires are leakyish I think because when I sit on the bike they go Flat. So I abandoned that idea and took a Taxi. So basically we went through some paperwork and Jackson explained a few of the basics of lesson planning, etc. So I was coughing my (by now usual) cough and sniffing my (by now usual) sniff throughout the morning, so Jackson says, I'm taking you to the doctor. Oh, I'm getting better, I sniffed. I'm taking you to the doctor, he says. Oh, I say.
So we go to the doctor. A tiny teeny little clinic in the middle of Somewhere I would never be able to find again, apparently a nose & throat specialist. The clinic smells really disinfected-ish and is covered with colorful posters that of course I do not understand because they are all in Chinese. Jackson helps me "fill out" a form and then I see the doctor (very surprised, nobody makes appointments here, most of the clinics are walk in and with very short waits - apparently there are lots of well-trained doctors in Taiwan and there are clinics everywhere all vying for clients so this is another reason why healthcare is so much cheaper here). So the doctor pokes a Thing in my nose, and another flatter Thing in my mouth and goes mmm, aaahh, and asks a couple of questions about my cough and then declares, "Sinusitis. Do you know what that is?" "Some kind of itis, er, I mean infection?" says I, feeling less and less smart as this adventure progresses. Especially since every time I get poked Dr. Lin laughs at me. I think more at the face I'm making, but still. Dr. Lin goes on to describe the Ickiness that is Living in my Throat and then he squirts some airy Stuff in my nose and declares I must take medicine. So after an interesting exchange with Jackson translating we determine the Medicine he wants to give me will not interact with the Medicine I am already taking. Then I get my medicine. It's colorful. They tell me I must not drink caffeine with the medicine. I make a face. They laugh. Then I pay. Then we leave.
This was my First Adventure in Healthcare. Oh wait, that's not true. I got my healthcheck for my ARC a couple of weeks ago. But that was more different. That was your basic chest x-ray and blood test at a modern looking hospital. Anyway, tomorrow I will try the Adventure in Biking again, I think with a borrowed bike. Until then, zai jian!

Adventures in Youth Camp

375 kids plus all the staff makes for a lot of people in this meeting room!

Some new friends: Amanda, one of my roomates to my right; Paul, a Taiwanese friend in the cell group I've been going to; Ruby, a university student at BIOLA, home for the summer; and a couple of camp kids to our far right and left.

Drama workshop kids - Taiwanese people LOVE cameras and posing for pictures. The peace sign is very popular, I'm not sure why.

This is me and Annie, my co-leader for the workshop. She also attends the English cell group I've been going to. She's super sweet and a lot of fun.

Group photo with "teacher Sharon" :)

Playing "Have you ever" as a time-filler at the end of class on Friday.

Well...I've been away for a few days at the Banner church Youth Camp. I posted a bunch of these pics on my Facebook too but for those of you that don't have Facebook here they are again. This has been a great week and would have been greater except that I've had a cold (again) and a cough (again) all week which was no fun but otherwise had a great time. I think maybe since Alaska had beautiful fresh air and Taiwan has dusty polluted air and also since I'm constantly in really hot heat and then really dry cold (inside airconditioning) that my lungs and throat are trying to make the adjustment. I read about this sort of thing before I came but somehow pictured myself as Mighty Sharon who would never get sick from dusty pollution because I am Immune to All Bad Things Happening. (Hah!) This is the problem of being an optomist. But anyway I'm getting better and as they say, it could be much worse. :)

So we left for...good grief, I don't even remember where the youth camp was...Daya? I think..still in Taichung, but about a half-hour scooter drive from our apartment. We stayed at an old American Air Force base, so our housing was kind of oldish looking (furnishing-wise) but really nice and spacious, and the meeting hall was nicely laid out and there was a pool which I intending to swim in but never did. The camp was a Bilingual youth camp (the bilingual aspect drew a lot of students looking to practice English), and the Bilingual part was the responsibility of the English zone from Banner church which is led by my roommate Amanda. There were technically only four "legal" foreigners at camp (Amanda, me, and our couple friends Mandy and Jacob) and 400 kids (well, 375), so..but we had several other "foreigners" who were actually Taiwanese but had been to university in the States or for whatever reason spoke English so it was really nice to have kind of a "week away" to get to know everybody.

I heard about 50% (approximately) of the youth were Christians, and most of the other 50% had never been to a church camp and some had no idea what Christianity was about. The youth from Banner church were entirely responsible for the camp and did an EXCELLENT job with the activities and the worship and the whole organization of everything. I was so impressed that these young kids were so passionate about reaching their peers for Christ and devoted so much time and planning into this camp. The English zone was responsible for a chunk of time one day to do "games" with the kids so we had planned a big outside game for them, but we had a (small) typhoon so it rained cats and dogs all day that day. But it started raining like 20 minutes before the game time was supposed to begin. So we had to be really spontaneous about coming up with indoor games to entertain these 400 kids. The Lord really helped us and we very quickly came up with a list of games that we executed with no problems and the kids all looked like they had a GREAT time. We played an old favorite that I remembered from our youth group at ACS (way back in the day), where you have two teams and number them off and then put a ball or rag or something in the middle and call a number and both numbers from each team have to try to grab the object and bring it back to their side. We had to do this with four teams since we had SO MANY kids and we used a big rubber game ball and it was a good time. We also did some relay races and stuff.

Then that night was "international night" so the foreigners did a small drama, a couple of "games" with volunteers from the audience, a testimony from Jacob, and worship songs in English.

The next day the kids took part in what they called a "Grand Tour". They were divided into groups of about 20 kids each and each kid was given about 30 NT (less than $1 US) per person which they had to use to get to specific checkpoints in Taichung AND find a way to eat lunch. This really challenged their creativity. They were sent out with no cell phones (exept the leader emergency only phone) and no other money except the 30 NT. Some of the groups managed to catch rides with delivery trucks; one group even got some police cars to take them to their destinations! The groups washed windows in restaraunts, helped store owners advertise on the sidewalk, weeded a garden at an elementary school, sang songs for the old folks at a nursing home, prayed for people who lived next to a temple, and in return they got fed. One group prayed for the dumpling shop owner who gave them all they could eat dumplings in exchange for the window washing and he cried because nobody had ever done that for him before. It was so exciting to hear their stories and the kids were so excited because most of them were full-time students and studied ALL the time and had never done anything like that before.

The rest of the camp was more games, team time, etc. Thursday and Friday were workshop days and I was responsible for the Drama Workshop. I was a little apprehensive about this because I wasn't really an expert at Drama or anything (except for a few Sunday School skits), and I hadn't really worked with youth before. I had about 30 kids in my class, so I prepared a couple of icebreakers, and then printed out three stories for them: The good Samaritan; Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace; and the Prodigal Son. I divided them into three groups of 10 and gave each a story to prepare a short skit. I told them, be creative! you can modernize it or whatever you wish, but stick to the theme of the story. I went over the stories with each team to make sure they understood the main themes of each story. Then I let them be creative. I was a little apprehensive that maybe their English skills weren't enough that they understood, or if they would be bored...but they FAR exceeded my expectations! These kids were SO creative and their teamwork was absolutely outstanding!

They went to work right away assigning themselves each a team leader who assigned characters, they changed the stories a little bit but stuck to the main messages.. like the team who did the Good Samaritan modernized the story to use characters from Taiwan politics, politicians who hated each other but one helped the other out when he was robbed on the street and beaten and left for dead. The team who did Shadrach Meshach and Abednego I was most worried that they woudldn't understand because it was a pretty long story (I printed in English) but they totally did like a "Veggie Tales" take on it (kind of). Instead of an golden idol they created a "Banana King" who had a "Banana Idol" built and required his banana kingdom to bow down and worship it. But three guys wouldn't worship it and said "Our God is the true God and he created everything, including your bananas! And bananas are meant for eating, not worshipping!" and they started eating bananas and the banana kingdom people who were bowing to Banana Statue were offended and the Banana King threw the three into the fire but the true God rescued them. It was SO much fun to watch them perform and to see that they excersized creativity but completely understood the main message of the story, espescially since most of the kids were not Christians and this was the first time they had ever heard these stories from the Bible. I was so thankful that my workshops went well especially since I was kind of sick last week.

The other workshops went well too, and the last night of camp the message was more of a direct gospel message and although I didn't hear how many kids gave their lives to Christ, many kids went to the front for prayer. So thanks everybody for your prayers and continue praying that there were some seeds planted this week at camp and that the kids who were not saved would be interested in learning more about who Jesus is and what Christianity is all about. Banner church is putting on a big special youth service tonight so hopefully many of the youth from camp will attend that and continue attending youth services on Saturday nights.

So this is a really long post, hopefully didn't bore any of you. :) I start training at Jackson5 next week so I anticipate the business of my schedule picking up quite a bit. I will try to update the blog at least once a week.

Now I am going to go clean my room because it is a pig sty. :)

Adventure #....47? I lost count...

I went to the salon this afternoon! My roomate Katie Jo and I decided we were going to get thermal reconditionings, also known as the Japanese straightening treatment. We both have kind of frizzy wavy hair (if air dried naturally) and she had had it done before and liked the results. So off we go. We checked out a couple of salons before settling on the one we got our treatments at (the name of which of course I do not remember). The only differences I noted between the Asian salon and American salons are:
1.) The intensity of which they scrub your head when you get shampooed. Whoa! This girl dug her fingers into my scalp as if her life depended on it. Apparently this is a "scalp massage". But it wasn't too bad...
2.) One of the salon girls offered to go get us tea drinks from the tea stand next door. It was so nice to have a yogurt green tea to drink while waiting for the chemicals to do their chemically magic.
3.) Also they offer you a free cup of tea when you get there, which I didn't try. I only like tea that doesn't really taste like tea. The yogurt green tea tastes only subtely like green tea. Otherwise it is like yogurty fruity-ish icy goodness.
Otherwise it was much like American salons, only this one had less "stuff" cluttering the salon - like not very many bottles or posters. They even gave us a free Matrix product with our treatments. I got some kind of de-frizzing serum which is interesting since I just spent 2 1/2 hours getting my hair chemically permanently de-frizzed.
AND the best part is compared to the upwards of $300 that this same treatment costs in the US, this cost just about $60 in total. Thankfully Katie Jo speaks good Chinese and explained what we wanted done and what we DIDN'T want done (apparently they always try to "thin" western women's hair here because they think it is too thick) (we told them "no thinning" and they didn't).
So far since it was just done, my hair is super duper Flat and shiny. My bangs keep falling in my eyes. I'm not supposed to wash it for 24-48 hours (imperative, they say, to keep it bone dry to allow it to finish "setting"). But I'm pleased. It will tremendously cut down the amount of time I spend blow drying and flattening my hair in an attempt to ward off frizz in the mornings.
All in all for someone with thick wavy hair that is prone to frizz, or if you have to spend loads of time blow drying and flat ironing to look somewhat ok, this is the treatment for you. But do it in Asia. :)
I wll post pictures sometime soon. But for now I am having terrible allergies to the Dust, I think, with the sneezy itchy congested wateriness so I don't feel like posting pictures.
Until next time, zai jian!