Howdy all...
Well, I realized today that "Flat Sharon" who was "born" on June 12, 2009, is now over a year old! (refer to some of my first posts on this blog if you are confused at this point)
So I took her on a walk today since I haven't taken very many pictures of her, and snapped some photos of her chillin' in her apartment and on her scooter. I also had some cute Bumblebee pictures, but blogger won't upload them. I think they updated their photo uploader and I don't know why it won't work. Well I will try again another day I suppose.,
I lost my cell phone yesterday. I'm super sad. We went to KTV (karaoke) with some friends for Jimmy's birthday (which is today), and I think it must've fallen out somewheres. pooh.
Really, nothing exciting is going on. That's why I took Flat sharon on a walk. Because nothing else is going on. :)
School's almost over. Two and a half more weeks! Go Sharon Go...

Taxes, and other miscellaneous goodies

"goodies" I say. Hahaha.... er, anyway. Why's that funny? Well, moving on...
Yes! I did! My taxes in Taiwan! WOWie was it easy! I got my little wage statement paper thing a few months ago from JacksonFive but you can't file taxes here until May. So Jimmy took me to the tax office the other day, which was seriously about one minute away from my house. When we walked in, soooooo maannnyyyy peeeooopppllllee waiting...waiting...(kind of like everywhere else around here), but when we followed the signs to the place where foreigners are supposed to file their taxes, there was only one other dude and then me! It was groovy. So I filled out a paper, showed my passport, signed a thing, and in ten minutes I was done.
I wish all my tax returns in the US had been that easy. Actually, today, the 27th of May, is my 330th day in Taiwan. Which means, I now pass the "physical presence test" to have my foreign earned income exempted on my US tax return. What a pain. As a US citizen working abroad, I get an automatic 60 day extension on my taxes, so I'm able to file this late. I'm so glad, otherwise I would have had to PAY taxes on my income earned here, which would have been a CRUMMY deal! As it is, I think I'm going to get a big fat refund since I worked in the US half of last year and I can claim all kinds of exemptions for taking a job abroad. This is the only year it will work for me. Yay!! :)
I spend about three hours on the IRS website to figure out just that little bit of information in the previous paragraph. *virtual high five* if you also hate filing taxes. What a pain. But I like the refund thing.
In other news, um.... hm. What other news. Well, my roomates will all be trickling out of our apartment to move on in their lives, starting next week. One roomate is moving in with a Taiwanese girl in my cell group, because she (Katie my roomate) wants to improve her Chinese and be in a Chinese speaking environment. So she's moving next week. Then Stephanie, another roomate, will be going to Bethel college, a ministry school, in July. Then Amanda, the other one, has plans to move to Taipei and work with the Banner church there, in October/November. There are several new female teachers coming this summer, so within a few months I'll have a complete new set of roommates! It's happy, but also sad because my roommates now are great and we get along so well. But I'm happy for them. I will be moving into a much larger room, so that's a plus for me. But it will take some adjustment to get used to all the new people in the house.
I've been drinking a lot of iced yogurt green tea lately. Have I mentioned how wonderful this drink is? I must have the happiest stomach in the world, with all the yogurt I give it every day.
Oh, good news! I'm not sick anymore. For once, I feel fine! WHEW! Let's see how long it lasts. I'd like to be optomistic, but generally I get sick every month. Pooh.
Summer's officially here. It's hot again. I vaguely remember the days of yore when I first got here and rode that bike to school and back in the blistering heat...oh I was a brave soul.
I parked my scooter at the school (kind of on a covered sidewalk area where many people park), as usual, one day last week, and when I came out to go get dinner later, the left bottom bumper thing was half falling off! I think someone swiped it on accident and didn't leave a note. Grr... It still drove so I stuck it loosely back on and drove it for the next couple of days. Then, on my way to work a few days later, SCREAAAPPPPEEe...bump, CRACCKK bump, BANG! and I was startled to look down and find my bottom bumper thing bumping away down the street as I sped away, and scooters behind me made little swerves to miss it.
Bummer. I made a quick decision that it was safer to continue and be embarrased about my ugly scooter, than stop and try to retreive it. It didn't hit anybody.
Jimmy helped me get a new one and it was relatively inexpensive. Whew. Usually I would hit the brakes if something like this happened, but on the streets here, hitting the brakes will probably get you rear ended. Traffic is kind of close together and if you make a sudden move, you could easily have an accident. So I think I reacted well in continuing. Haha, I must be a pro Taiwanese scooter-er now. So, thanks to those of you who pray for my safety. That could have easily been an accident, but turned out ok. Praise the Lord for those guardian angels! :)
Well, it's late now and as I have no pictures or anything else of real interest to write here, I think I'll go to bed. Yes. That's a good plan.
Wan an! (Good night!)

Oops

Um, so I just realized it's been well over a month since my last blog post. Sooo sorry...I guess I assume most of the people who read this blog anyway are on my Facebook which is where I post the majority of my photos and keep updates statuses (sort of). But for those of you not on my Facebook, I apologize for my lack of blogging.

Nothing terribly fantastic or exciting has happend since my last post anyway, so you're not missing a whole lot...

Just work, work, work! The school year is over on June 30th and then I have a month of vacation in July. I'm SO excited about that month! Except, I plan to have my wisdom teeth (yep all of them) surgically removed, but that's ok. It's a good excuse to stay in bed and watch Tv. hee hee....

Also in July I plan to help out with the Banner youth camp again like I did last year. I can't believe it's been nearly a year since I've come to Taiwan. It really flies by...

ITPS is sending three new teachers who will arrive in June. My three roomates are also making plans (some plans not set in stone, but highly probable) that they will be leaving around this summer as well, so things will be changing up around here. Whew...

Otherwise, my schedule is pretty well the same every day..get up, each lunch, go to work, eat dinner, hang out with Jimmy a few nights a week, and other nights hang out at home. Nothing really exciting. I've been sick with a bronchitis-ey sortish of a thing the past couple of weeks so I've been really run down. I miss American TV but found I could buy seasons of the Amazing Race and Survivor pretty cheap on iTunes so I've been coughing away in bed and watching my iPod.

Being sick in Taiwan is so strange. They treat the smallest cough or sniffle as if it was the most terrible of all Terrible diseases. If you have the slightest sniffle or smallest cough or *heaven forbid* a fever (even a really low one), you Must wear a Face Mask. You also must go to the Doctor, get loaded up on questionable medicines, some of which may or may not be antibiotics, you must not drink or eat anything cold, fried, dairy, or sweet. The Doctor will also make you inhale steam, no matter what your ailment is. It's very strange.

But, whatever the concoction of potions I got this time, it actually did the trick and I feel better. I'm not sure if they are antibiotics so I'm going to finish them all even though I'm getting better. Bah.

Today at school one of my co-teachers gave me a drink. It looks like this:

Anyway, it's a quiet and unassuming sort of a drink. But she tells me it's good for girl's skin, she says. Ok..that sounds nice. Then she says, yes in the olden days of Chinese yore, only queens and very rich women could afford this drink. Oh, and also, it's made from swallow spit. Yes..swallows like, the bird. And these dudes climb up to their nests and steal the nests so they can process their saliva and make this drink that's good for girl's skin. I'm doubtful if I will try it or not...everytime I look at the can all I can think is "swallow spit" and makes me want to gag. But it might be good. We'll see....

Also, note the back of my toothbrush packaging. If I'd been more careful when opening the toothbrush, there was even more wonderful advice on the back.

I'm so glad I found a toothbrush to clean all those tooth bacterium speckles and protect my tooth hair. It's quite a relief. ;) Really, though, this toothbrush came in a package attached to a large tube of toothpaste, and in a three pack for about 60 NT (about $2 US). Can't beat that with a stick. The toothpaste, of which I do not have a photo, is appropriately named "Guardian of Tooth" and promises to take care of my "oral teeth". I wonder what I'm supposed to use to take care of all my other sorts of teeth. You know, the non-oral ones.

I'm so tired, I'm becoming sarcastic. Funny though the English is sometimes, I think it's incredibly cute especially when coming from my students.

I'll leave on this note: I gave my students an assignment to write some sentences about their mothers for mother's day. They wrote great things like "Mom you are my honey" "Mom thank for take care me", etc. But my favorite of all:

"Mom, you are so beautiful because you always clean your face." Just like that. Good grammar and spelling and everything.

Oh yes, warms the heart. :)

Ok, Zai jian!

oooh it's so laateee...

wowie zowie, I really should be asleep, but I'm NOT! I don't know what's wrong with my sleep schedule but I can't fall asleep before 2 AM. Good grief. I blame it on my nine o'clock bowl of Frosted Flakes. I should really stop that habit.
Let's see, what's new in Sharon World.
Well, last weekend I visited Jimmy's hometown of Kaoshiung. We rented a scooter and zipped about, visiting a very large art museum and little shops here and there, a big mall, and the beach. It was good fun. Got to stay with some of his cousins, that was nice.
We tried to visit a small island just off the shore of Taiwan on the China-side (south - west coast), the name of which has, of course, by now escaped me. I say tried, because that was a hairy experience! To get there, you have to take a ferry. Kaoshiung is a very large ( bigger than Taichung) city, and much nicer looking, cleaner, prettier layout, more parks, more trees and a river through the city, and lots of green everywhere. It's really beautiful. More than Taichung. So we scooter over to the ferry dock, and there's a huugee line of people waiting to get on the ferry. Also a huge line of scooters and bicycles. So we sit in the scooter line and after about 30 minutes, we get on the ferry. We sit on our scooter on the ferry with about a thousand (ok not really, but packed like sardines) other people on scooters, then about ten minutes later we scooted off on the other side. Not so bad..but on the tiny island, they were having some sort of weird Buddhist parade ceremony thing that we didn't know about.
It was like entering a different world, from the tall buildings and beautiful setting of Kaoshiung to this tiny, very traditional island. I saw more old temples while we were there in 20 minutes than I have since I've been here. I wish, wish WISH I could have taken some pictures (not of the awful Buddhist parade) but of the people I saw there. They really looked like pieces of history..there were so many older people, faces lined by years of hard work and you could see it in their eyes. They looked so...sad, and vacant. It was awful. I saw an entire family of about six, with tiny children, all on a little scooter pushing their way through the crowd while a tall thin father with a white goatee and a hard-working, tired sort of face navigated them through. Just so many little things I wanted to take a picture of, but I couldn't. There were too many people and also my camera was in the scooter seat.
The tiny island was packed PACKED with PEOPLE everyyywwhhhere, on foot, scooter, bicycle. I think it's a miracle Jimmy didn't run over anybody and nobody ran over us. Everyone was going the wrong way on the road and there were no rules. And, on almost every street, there was more of the Buddhist parade. There were about 8 young men in paint and blue shirts weaving a large scary dragon puppet above the crowd on sticks. There were many small temple looking things with statues and shrines on sticks that more men were holding and rythmically moving up and down to the beating of a large drum. There were people dressed as large Buddhist..deities, I guess, but not very friendly looking ones, marching through the crowd. Bright colors, Buddhas statues, dragons, red & gold was everywhere. Men with painted faces danced through the street. People were walking along in costumes, waving flags and incense sticks. The drum beat so loudly, and to top it all off they were shooting off fireworks right in the middle of all the people.
THAT I was actually not fazed by since my years of New Year's Eve days in Suriname have made the sight of firecrackers in streets and the smell of smoke and gunpowder pretty familiar, but it still stung my eyes and just made the whole parade that much worse.
Jimmy went up and down almost every street on the island trying to get away from the parade and find a quiet place to eat, but after about 20 minutes we gave up and got back on the ferry. "We picked a bad day" he said. He also told me that all this temple ceremony froo frah they do is organized by the mafia, who also control most of the temples and take money from people. Jimmy's family isn't religious and never did temple stuff so he wasn't real familiar with any of it either, despite having grown up here.
But, while that was an interesting cultural experience, it also really broke my heart to see all those people so blinded and misled by Satan, with no idea of the true freedom and joy they could have in Christ. None of them looked happy. Most of the people were coughing and trying to avoid being squished by scooters or cars. Each face I saw looked sad, upset, or generally uncomfortable. What kind of celebration is that? I know Taiwan is a Buddhist and Daoist country and I see the temples on my way to the store or wherever, but it's not quit as in-your-face as that was.
As we squeezed our way past on the streets and I looked into the faces of people in the ceremony and also watching the ceremony through the safety of my helmet visor (which hid my foreign eyes that people like to stare at and that bothers me), I was thinking how much things like this must break God's heart. And I was thinking, although not as blatant as that particular ceremony, this is the kind of thing some of my Bumblebees are exposed to in their families. Some of them come from Christian homes, but most of them don't. They are familiar with the "praying hands bowing pose" people do in the temples here.
One little girl in my class lives with her grandparents because her parents don't want to take care of her. Her grandmother is a Buddist priestess (I think) and "translates" messages from "ancestors" spirits for people in the temple. She always comes into the school smelling like incense and Candy's clothes smell like incense sometimes in class. But the grandmother did come to both Christmas programs at JacksonFive the past two years and told Jackson she's never felt peace like she felt while at our church. It made her curious, and she has become good friends with the Chinese staff at our school. I don't believe she's made any kind of change in her religious beliefs, but she knows something is different for us and I think it's planted a seed for her heart.
We teach the kids about the love of Christ at JacksonFive, we bring it up as often as we can, and they all know the Gospel message, they know that Jesus died to take their sins away, they know he rose again to give them eternal life, they know all they have to do is believe. But then they go home and for some of them, their parents take them to temple and put incense sticks in their hand for them to wave around at ancestors. They give them paper money to burn in temple barrels. So..what do they believe?
It hit me more than ever how important my job at the school really is.
So with Easter just past and I told again the Passover and Good Friday and Easter message that they heard last year from a different teacher, they answered all my questions correctly, they know the story. Most of the kids in my class have made a verbal commitment to the Lord last year. And we learned John 3:16 and talked about how the reason for all of it was love. Because God so LOVED the world, even despite how the world treats Him. The Bumblebees all worked together to make a big awesome banner that says "LOVE" real big in the middle and is covered with John 3:16's and crosses and "Jesus is alive!" and things like that, and put it right in the front window of our school facing the street. But I hope that each and every one of my kids really, truly understands what that means., and doesn't see everything we do as just another "English school activity". That their relationship with Jesus Christ is real and true, and will continue to grow throughout their life, strong to fight against potentional parental opposition or judgemental family members and friends.
Next year I will continue teaching Bumblebees in year 3 along with a new first year class, brand new to English and most of them will be brand new to Christianity. I will get to tell them about Jesus for the first time. What a great, important responsibility! So my fellow blog readers, if you could help in prayer for me and for them... I hear it all the time here, that China within the next 50 years will be a major world leader and Taiwan along with it. These kids are potential next generation leaders. I think God is opening my eyes to how important the job He gave me here really is.
I'm seriously tired right now and this turned out to be a really long post. But I hope it all made sense what I wanted to say. Zai jian!

Howdy all

Howdy! I suppose it's time to post a little note about what's going on in Sharon-World... haha..
Welll, to start with , beginning yesterday and I assume continuing into today (as I have not been outside yet today I cannot say this with certainty), Taichung has been covered in fine little dusties that got blown over from Beijing's sandstorm. Errggghhh. So annoying! I've been in Sneeze-Mode almost constantly since last night and my eyeballs are so itchy. I wore two face masks yesterday on my scooter. So annoying. But, at least it's not volcano ash like was going on in Kenai right before I left Alaska last year. Hehe, I suppose there's a bright side to everything...
The Bumblebees are plugging along and we're having loads of fun as well as moments of frustration for Tr. Sharon as certain students decide they are having SO much fun that they can disregard the classroom rules or not pay attention to lessons.
They have a favorite song now that we sang in our Let's Go class (the basic English curriculum we use): "Sue Doesn't Have Any Glue". We're learning .. I have, you have, they have....but, he HAS, she HAS....but, I don't have, you don't have, they don't have...but, he DOESN'T have, she DOESN'T have...good grief, why is English so hard? Why can't he/she don't have the same like I don't have? It would be way easier...anyway, my complaints about English aside, this song is so sad and depressing sounding on the Cd and the kids LOVE it. "Sue doesn't have any glue, Sue doesn't have any glue..Sue has some paper, Sue has some string, Sue has a bird and it's learning to sing...Sue has some ribbon, Sue has some chalk, Sue has a dog and it's learning to talk, but Sue isn't happy, no she's feeling blue..Sue doesn't have any glue..BOO HOO...Sue doesn't have any glue!" The kids really like the BOO HOO part.
So this is what's been in my head for about the past week. So the kids now understand that SUE doesn't have...but when it comes to any other he or she character, they still are writing "He don't have..." argghhhh.
We've also been drilling the adding the "s" on he/she verbs thing..again, I'm irritated with the English language. I go, he goes. I do, he does. I play, he plays. I study, he studies. It's hard for new English learners to get this down.
Let's see...what else has been going on around here... oh yes, I've started teaching one of Jacob's classes on Thursday nights..Teacher Jacob was our part time night teacher but he quit two weeks ago to stay home with his new baby girl while his wife went to work with Hess English school (I think I blogged about this a while ago). So instead of hiring a new teacher, although Jackson tried, nobody who applied really worked out for the position, so Jackson, me, Stephanie and Karen (the other two foreign teachers) are each taking a day of teaching for the week, so each of Jacob's classes have two teachers. Jackson and I took the Dragonfly class. I get the easy day, reading and phonics. It's only through the end of the semester, in June.
So the night before I have to teach this brand-new class, I have a dream. A terrible dream! And in this dream, all the Dragonflies (who I've never met) are grown-ups! And there are not 12 of them, oh no..there are 25 of them! And they will not listen to me and start throwing things. It was terrible. Now I knew in real life the Dragon flies are not grown ups and there really are only 12 of them in class. But I was still a little nervous after that dream. Augh.
So I get to class and they're all checking me out and nobody will say anything..and these are a brand-new English class, and some of the kids are teeny tiny! And Teacher Jacob was doing the reading/writing format different from all the other classes so I wasn't used to it. So I changed it back to the way every other class does it and all the Dragon flies worked really hard, but it was kind of stressful and challenging. We ended up with almost no time for phonics and had to rush through the workbook. Augh. I hope next week is better.
Well..I'm sneezing all over the place and I have to go find lunch before working time. So I know this was kind of a boring blog post, but at least it's a post! I put most of my pictures on Facebook now so if you want to see them you can find me on Facebook or leave me a message here and I'll add you.
Zai jian! Happy day to everybody! :)