interesting happenings

I'm sorry. I'm so bad at blogging.
It's late at night now, but I have been having so many thoughts in my little head, so I thought I would type a *hopefully* quick update.
Most of you are also on my Facebook, so you remember I posted about my student Mason last week. Mason hit his head on the concrete of the playground and had internal bleeding to his brain, and was in NICU for a few days, and in hospital for another week after that. He came home today, and will be in class again on Thursday. So praise the Lord for healing Mason. I hope Mason's family comes to know Christ through this testimony. Thanks for praying with me for him.
Also, it seems we are in a new year since last I posted! oh I really am quite behind. My schedule at Jackson Five leaves me so tired and also I am a social creature and rather like to spend time with friends instead of bloggering on the Internet. Sorry.
Well, in a shorter version of what's happened since last I posted:
-Christmas came and went, all went well, gave lots of gifts out and got great gifts back and had fun times with all friends.
-New Year's came and went, had a party at our house, did the countdown on the roof, saw fireworks displays, and missed Suriname!
-Thus far in the new Year, two of my friends (well, four I suppose..) started relationships with each other, and two other friends have been in car crashes. And it's only the 17th. Makes me wonder what the rest of the year has in store..
-Our Chinese new Year's plan (5 friends +me) is to take a trip down the East cost of Taiwan by train. I'll post photos on Facebook. Chinese New year this year I get -1/29 - 02/06 off work.
-Next year's school schedule is officially very, very part time - one evening class on Monday's/Thursdays at JacksonFive. This is enough income for me to pay for basic, basic expenses, and hopfuly I'll be a full time student on scholarship at Feng chia university language Center. I'm really actually quite excited to be a full time student again.
-I had an encounter with someone today that challenged me to study Scripture to be prepared to defend my faith to anybody. I may meet with them again on Saturday. Without going into detail, pray about this meeting, if it happens. I know that's vague, but I do appreciate your prayers.
- Our cell group is undergoing some changes in leadership soon. Pray about this, if you can.
- I recently have felt like I want to research and become knowledgable on so many subjects. I also have all these projects I want to start. But I don't have any time! *sniffle* I've had trouble sleeping for all the Thoughts in my head. It's kind of annoying. I feel like I need to have a File Day in my brain and file all my thoughts, but I never have any time.
I'm tired, I will try to go to sleep now. I feel like this was a serious and rather depressing post somehow because I did'nt make any jokes. Ok, so I'll end with a joke:
How do you stop an elephant from charging?

........

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You take away his credit card!!!
oh yah. See! I'm still funny. :)
Thanks for your prayer support. I need it!
~Sharon

Thinkings..

Well hello. I'm back! I've successfully gotten four of my wisdom teeth removed, and it was a million thousand katrillion times better than the first attempt. For starters, the teeth actually got removed this time. :)
The hospital was ok, and I had some wonderful friends who gave up time from their busy lives to come visit. I don't remember a thing about the surgery. I woke up back in my hospital room, tried valiently to stay awake like they told me to, ate some pudding, and came home. It's a huge relief to have that all over with.
I could say more about the rather painful IV starting experience, or the funniness of the oral surgery interns who were assigned to my care because they spoke English, and how they always appeared in groups of three to do Very Important Things like measure how big my mouth is and things like that, but... I won't go into detail. I rate the whole experience a 8 out of 10. 2 points off for the IV experience.
I'm now admiring my beautiful bruised jaw. I don't think I've ever had a large bruise on my jaw. Better add that to my list of firsts. Haha. You think I'm kidding?
Well, while I'm writing about small goings-ons in my life, I got a package today (thanks MOM!) which always makes people go ooo ahhh (getting packages is a very VERY VERY rare experience for me..in fact, this is only my.. um.. second? package since I've been in Taiwan. No, third? and package #'s 1 and 2 were things I ordered from Amazon or somewhere). So I have a happy.
So, most of you know it's almost my Birthday. Every year, 'round my Birthday, I start having these things I like to call, Thinkings. Usually the Thinkings result in a nice detailed list of things I need to do in the coming year to Improve My Life. Things like, routine exercise, eat lots of vegetables, memorize passages of Scripture, Get up early, and things like this. Good Things. Yes. And then I am very Good for about a month, post-Birthday. So by the time most people are starting to work on their Lists (or as most people call them, new year's resolutions), I am failing mine. *sigh*
Well, so this year, my Thinkings went sort of like this: I started Thinking the other day, that there are so many things I used to love doing, hobbies or activities, that I don't do at all anymore. Really, since moving to Alaska over six years ago. I got busy with Real Life, like having a job and teaching Sunday School, and volunteering and stuff, that I lost track of all the little things I enjoy doing. Things like, taking pictures. Like, I still take photos of my friends or whatever, but nothing I used to do in highschool, or even college. I used to really be into photography, but somewhere along the way I just stopped taking so many pictures. Along with that, I used to really love scrapbooking. Saving memories in a creative way was so much fun for me. I haven't touched a scrapbook in years. I'm doing well just to upload the few photos I do take onto Facebook. Also, sports or outdoor activities like hiking, or playing soccer or volleyball. Those things are harder because you kind of have to find someone else to do them with, but even in Alaska, I played "Wallyball" with my co-workers once a week and I really looked forward to Wallyball night. In highschool I'd go running with friends, in college I played on the girl's basketball team for a year, intermural soccer and volleyball, and I loved it. And now, I'm doing really really well to jog for like ten minutes down my street. It's very sad to me.
And COOKING! I love cooking. and baking. I did some in Alaska, but not as much as Id've liked. And reading. I used to read and read and read all the time, all throughout highschool and college. all kinds of books, novels, trilogies.. Somewhere along the way after that, I just stopped.
And I was thinking about how sad I was that I didn't do these things anymore, because I want to. I tell myself I don't have any time, but really, people make time for things that are important to them. This is the truth.
So, this year, in addition to all the normal things I need to do to Improve my Life, I am going to make a big effort to bring back some of the joys that these hobbies used to bring me. Starting with this, I'm going to invest in a new camera and this time, I'm actually going to use it. You can keep me accountable! Ask me where all my pictures are. :)
This last year was kind of a blur for me, and I think I spent most of the year trying just to keep up with myself. I think I've finally settled here and become comfortable with the area, the people, and myself in this culture. and I have big plans for next year and I'm really, REALLY excited about them. Instead of working for Jackson 5, next year I plan to take Chinese classes at a local university. I'll be applying for school in the spring, along with a scholarship that will allow me to study full-time without having to work. Even if I don't get the scholarship, I can make it working part-time, if I'm diligent about saving now.
I had a whole bunch of really insightful, wonderful, deep things to say here, but I got really tired all of a sudden and I think I just lost one of my stitches. Aahh!
Anyway, fellow bloggers, please help me to pray for my Chinese study plan for next year. I feel this is the direction the Lord is leading me, so I'm gonna go for it. I'm also just very recently starting to become more involved with my cell group here, and next year will also be attending more of the Banner discipleship training classes, so I'm expecting next year to be one of tremendous spiritual growth, change, and happiness.
OH and also, over the next couple of weeks I will be strongly presenting the Gospel in my younger class, so.. that's a prayer point too. I'm hoping most of them understand enough to commit their lives to Christ, even at such a young age. Help me pray for that too, ok?
THANKS! I'm going to bed. No. first i'm going to check out this stitches situation. Ok. Later! :)

I'm back!

First of all, my apologize for slacking off in the blogging department! By the time I remember I even have a blog, I'm too tired to sit down and type about stuff that happened in recent weeks, and by the time I finally do get around to it (like..um..now), I forgot half the stuff that happened. oops.
But I'll do my very best. Let's see.. well, as you all are well aware, last week (no..week before last? no. last week. ? ) was Thanksgiving, thus we appropriately had a Thanksgiving gathering (gathering = 32 people in our modestly sized apartment) the Sunday before Thanksgiving. One of the guys in our cell group picked up a turkey, complete with the head and neck
(side note * I may agree with the Asians on this one - the turkey looks more complete with the head and neck even after it's cooked. I always secretly thought the headless, neckless, tidy little turkeys and chickens in the States were kind of...sadly unwhole. This turkey was like "look I'm proud to be a whole turkey even though I'm cooked". Anyway, there I gave you a sneak peek into Sharon's logical little world... )
And we managed to whip up (no pun intended) some mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry yummy stuff, and other appropriate Thanksgiving fare, such as black peppered soybeans, steamed water chestnuts, red bean ... um..deserty stuff, cream puffs, dumpings, and ... sweet potatoes.
?HAHAHAHA Samson was standing on my Bible just now and he slid off and scared himself. That was funny. He looks rather miffed.
Dumplings. Not dumpings. I re-read my last paragraph. Oops.
anyway, if you follow this blog, you may recall that a few months ago I attempted to have my wisdom teeth removed in clinic with a local anaesthetic and it didn't work out so well. I have kind of put it off since then, and lost contact with that dentist (who I'm quite certain never wants to see me again), and so was wondering how I was to go about getting my wisdom teeth removed. I finally brought it up as a prayer request in cell group, and one of the girls in my prayer group was like, "Oh, my boyfriend's a dentist. Why don't you talk to him?" It turned out he was also in cell group that day. He helped me with an appointment at his hospital and they scheduled a surgery for me. In two days. This Saturday. Augh. While I am very grateful to the Lord for working all this out for me, and I learned a good lesson that I should just pray first about my problems instead of worrying about them and save myself all that mind trouble, I'm not very excited about this Saturday.
I have been googling "wisdom teeth surgery" which, by the way, is a terrible way to ease your nerves before a surgery. Yikes.
But! at least it will be over and done with and I never have to think about it again, and when I wake up in the mornings, my teeth won't hurt anymore!
So, enough about that. I took some pictures of my kids, but I'm too tired to upload anything. I can't think of anything else interesting to say. I really do have a great, fun, interesting life full of little adventures every day, but I can never remember them when it's time to blog. My apologies! Oh, yes I do remember one little adventure:
So local Taiwan elections were last Saturday, and for about a month prior to the election day, the campaigners were very very active. By active, I mean driving around in little loud blue trucks blaring campaign advertisements and little tunes that are supposed to make you want to vote for whoever. I don't understand this. Being catapaulted into consciousness at 8:00 in the morning when I was enjoying a nice deep sleep with a good dream does not make me friendly towards anybody. They drive by everything everywhere all times of day, making it hard to teach at times and if you get stuck behind them on the road, they are quite slow. Anyway, the few days right before election day were very lively. The blue trucks increased in number on the roads, and in addition to the normal little loud blue trucks, there were large open blue trucks with people in the back, bonging away on drums, and launching rockets into the sky (like bottle rockets with whistles, and the occiasional person hopping out of the truck to ignite a small string of firecrackers in the middle of the road. And people, walking without a care in the world for the scooters and cars trying to sqeeze past them (and around them, through them, hopefully not on them), in parade fashing in appropriately coloring shirts or vests and carrying flags. I actually had a thought whilst I was stuck in the midst of one such parade (complete with many small loud blue trucks, large open drum-bonging trucks, scooters laden with firecrackers, police escort, and marching people without a care for traffic), that it felt a lot like being in downtown Parimaribo on New Year's Eve day. I recall waiting at a 92 second red light (there are countdowns at the lights so you know exactly how much time you spend at red lights every day), breathing in the scent of "recently exploded firecrackers", and imagining myself thousands of miles away in Suriname. It was a nice 92 seconds, (probably not for my lungs though).
Ok, I'm really really quite tired so with this I will leave you. Hopefully my next post will be full of great adventures and a succesful wisdom tooth removal story.
Goodnight!

Rubrics...and...um..whatnot.

Yes, as you can probably tell from my oh-so-interesting Title, there hasn't been a whole lot of exciting goings ons around here.
I just finished typing my 35th theme rubric comment (for those of you who need a definition of "rubric" (and I did when I read my JacksonFive contract for the first time but now I like saying it - it sounds all official teacher-ish. Anyway, you can check out this groovy website: http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/rubrics/, which uses a lot of big words. Basically a rubric is an assessment of the skills the students learned in class. Like a test, only a lot fancier and harder on the teacher).
Mostly, I meet with the students one-on-one while all the other students watch a movie, and I ask the student questions based on the theme we learned that month. If they answer without any prompting from me, I check the "No Teacher Help" box. If they need a little prompting from me, I check the "Little Teacher Help" box. There's also a "Moderate Teacher Help" and "Must Have Teacher Help" boxes. Then after I figure out where to put all the little checks, I have to type a 4-5 sentence long comment about how the student did in the theme. It takes a lot of my time, especially since I have two afternoon classes now.
That's just the theme rubrics, which we do once a month. Once a semester, we also do general rubrics, which is an overall assessment of their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. It takes a lot of time to assess where each check should go for each student there's like a million little boxes to check. Blah. But at least I don't have to grade homework.
Anyway, I'm caught up for a month at least. Next month the theme rubrics and general rubrics are all due in the same week so I will have over 70 rubric papers and comments to write. That's...a LOT.
But I still like teaching, regardless of the millions of little dancing check marks that are currently floating before my eyes as a result of me staring at them for the past couple of hours.
I picked out my Christmas songs for the JacksonFive christmas program and I start teaching them tomorrow (oh happy! Christmas is starting!). The Dolphin class, year 1, will be singing "I'm the Happiest christmas Tree" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqnjGEg0PVo&feature=fvsr and "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f7SE3zOtXE&p=FF5D74CE72FF8092&playnext=1&index=48
And Bumblebees will be singing: "One King" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OODyWYnkTl8 and "Beautiful Saviour" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCleEjxB-jI

In case you're interested in a sneak peek. And I will be teaching the Bumblebees sign language to both One King and Beautiful Saviour, which will be a lot of work, but both songs are BEAUTIFUL and will be absolutely amazing with the sign language. My co-worker Karen knows sign language so she's an invaluable resource when it comes to things like this. Actually sign language is quite fascination when you learn it. I'm intrigued.
anyhoo, as far as anything else goes, there's not been much else going, really. I'd like to report some adventures, but there haven't really been any. Samson is doing some mischief I hear in the corner so I'm going to go check it out. Hopefully my next post will be more adventurous and interesting. :)

Moon Festival, clean rooms, and (a) typhoon.

Yay! I finally figured out that if I load photos to Blogger in a backwards order than how I want them on my page, then I don't have to scoot them all around after they upload. I'm so brilliant, it's scary sometimes.
I have to give credit where credit is due, however, for these Kenting photos. As I previously mentioned in another post, I forgot my camera in Kenting, so I didn't get hardly any photos of my own. These are borrowed from my roomate Amy. You rock, Amy!
This is one I asked her to take specially for you, my blogging fans. Although my hair is askew and my legs are red as red can be, you can see I really, truly was in Kenting. HAHAHA, you know, in case there were any doubters out there.
The coastline was fantastic. It was a gorgeous scooter drive. And I don't usually say gorgeous. But it was.



Here's one of the beach from a cliffy sort of pullout on the road we were scootering on. Of course, as is usually the case, the real thing was much better than this photo portrays.












Here I am again, this time with a proper peace sign. Because, you know, I am in Taiwan. I can't forget to do a peace sign in my photos.
















Here's one of everybody, and we're all really tiny, but it was the one where everybody's hair looked the best. The wind was vicious (spelling?) up there.












As I mentioned before, one of the scooters broke down. We waited maybe 45 minutes to an hour to get it fixed in a scooter shop in a small nearby town. This is Autumn (my coworker at J5) and I waiting patiently. We are most patient. Mostly all I remember of this episode was the pain I was in already from my sunburnt legs.

I put him also on Facebook, but again here is my oddball kitten, Samson.

This was taken at a recent field trip to the Science Museum with the Bumblebees. The Science museum, as you may have noticed by now if you follow this blog, is a favorite place for field trips, not only for Jackson5, but most other schools and cram schools as well.

It's actually a great museum with very nice, well laid out and interested exhibits, with everything in both chinese and English. This one was about animal communication, which happens to be our theme for this month.

We are hanging out with this super cool peacock, who is, as one girl explained to me, "trying to call his girlfriend with his tail".

This is also how I explained the bullfrogs farther back in this exhibit, who were croaking loudly for mates. I told my kid Mason (there in the middle with the cheesy grin), that the bullfrog was trying to get a girlfriend by croaking. Mason said if he tried to get a girlfriend like that he would get slapped. (he acually didn't say it that way, but he acted it out and it was the same).

Well, you've probably heard news of the typhoon, ol' Mr. Fanapi (or just Fanapi..), who scooted through this weekend. He didn't hit Taichung too hard, actually much less than we expected, as he turned more south than we thought and mostly missed us. We got some wind and rain on Sunday morning, but nothing horrible. The south got a lot of rainfall and some flooding, but nothing like Morakot last year. So, yay!

We were sort of expecting a typhoon day on Monday, though, and didn't get one so all the J5 crew was a little bummed, but we'd rather have a safe typhoon than a terrible destructive one even if it means no typhoon days off of work.

Tomorrow's Moon Festival, and Jimmy explained the story behind moon Festival to me once...and I remember...something about a rabbit...sacrificing himself for a mouse..and an eagle..and then..going to the moon to live forever as a reward..or...something..like that. There's another story too but I forgot it. Anyway... what it DOES mean is a lot of food at work. The student's parents have been bringing SO MUCH stuff for the teachers, and it's a little overwhelming. Moon cakes and sun cakes (which are much better than moon cakes, I think), and cookies, and honey cake, and fruit. oh boy oh boy.

It also means barbecues! and I guess fireworks, unless those were for something else. I heard a lot of fireworks on my way home from work tonight.

We had a barbecue on Sunday, and it was nice but I think I ate something not quite cooked right because on Monday I had a stomach pain all day. Tonight when I went to take out the trash (tonight is..like..Moon festival Eve, I guess..since tomorrow is the holiday), there were about 7 different little barbecue gatherings going on in our courtyard. Families or friends were gathered around food-laden grills in different sections of the yard. I wish I could have taken a picture without looking...like a rude foreigner. Sausages, steak, chicken wings (and feet, and hearts, and..um. other parts), mushrooms, shrimp, corn, bamboo... soooo yummy.

I do miss grilled salmon though.

Um.. well, I suppose there were other things that I could blog about, but my hands are getting sleepy, and Samson is sneaking up on me like he does when he's ready to go in his corner. He tries so hard to sleep right next to me, but he's so loud when he purrs and after about 5 minutes he's so hot and I get annoyed. So I always let him sit there for about 2 minutes, then I pick him up and put him in his "corner" of the bed where he has his special blanket (it's a king sized bed so he practically has his own side). He tries about 5 more times to sneak up and sleep next to me, and I pick him up and plop him back in the corner and then he stays there and sleeps all through the night. He's a good cat.

Ok, well good night! Sorry I'm such a slacker at my blog. :( I'll try....

Samson grows ever larger...

..he is now a fat blob of fur that runs around at warp speed and pounces on everything and even things that are not there. Right now, though, he's a fat blob of fur asleep on my Bible.
My sunburn is getting better and my feet stopped swelling but now I feel rather dragon-ish with the scars and the skin coming off and stuff. It's not nice. Phooey.
Real Classes started today ( as opposed to the Sort of Real Classes that I was teaching in August's summer schedule ), and it's going to be a rough year for the Bumblebees. So much more work to do in so much less time! Whew. But we'll make it.
I taught my Dolphins 'Jesus Loves Me' last Friday. None of them knew it and nobody knew who Jesus was. So it was their very first ever introduction to Jesus. It was really amazing to sing 'Jesus loves me' to 14 wide-eyed 7 year olds and get to be the first one who tells them who Jesus is and that He loves them. It really struck me what a great privilege it is to teach these kids and also a great responsibility to show them the love of Christ and share the Gospel message with them in a way they'll understand. I hope I do it well this coming year.
Well, it's almost midnight. That's when I turn into a pumpkin. *har har har* I'm going to bed.
'til next time.....

All Day Field Trips and a Fuzzy Kitten. and a Sunburn.

Last Wednesday we went on an all-school, all-day field trip to some farm/entertainment park-ish sort of place in Miaoli. I had a bunch of kids to keep track of since I have two after noon classes now. We did lots of fun-ish sort of things like..."making" cookies, which involved squishing cooky crumbs into a wooden mold sort of thing and then banging the mold up-side down on the table to make the "cooky" fall out; making pinwheels, taking a tour of ancient tea-making machines, and watching a great clown/magic/fire show thing, which is where this picture was taken:

This dude is spinning some "glass" (really not glass because he dropped one on accident and it bounced - uh, huh...) bottles that are on fire, and he is blindfolded. It was a pretty impressive show, and as you can see there is a huge clown balloon on the stage.

This is a Bee I caught with my camera. He was a bugger, too. I chased him on 7 flowers before I got this picture.

Here's my "cooky-making" set-up. One box for cookys - check. One cup of crumbs - check. One wooden spoon mold thing - check. They're smiley faces.

Here's my Dolphin class! Cute, aren't they?

---aand, here are the Bumblebees, taller than ever and mostly paying attention to the camera. That little orange shirted kid on the left is Louie and he actually belongs to the Dolphin class. His English is lower than the other Dolphins and he I guess didn't understand the "move this way, Dolphins!" to get them all out of the way.

Here're two of my Dolphins, Little Shawn (we also have a Big Shawn...) , in orange and Hugo in white. They are showing off their tea leaves. Little Shawn is a silly, very friendly outgoing child who speaks pretty good English for his grade and loves to talk to me. He also loves to be silly when he shouldn't and gets in trouble a lot. But he's very sweet. He made me a paper heart at home last week and presented it to me first thing the next morning. Aw...

This is Samson, chillin' with the Word.

He's got to check everything out, you know. Even the camera.

This is one of only two pictures I took in Kenting this past weekend. The day we went out to the beach and on a scenic scooter drive, I forgot my camera in my room! *bad Sharon, bad Sharon!* I tried to take with my cell phone but didn't work. Phooey.

This is my and my friend Annie diggin' some groovy hats in the night market.

Kenting is in the southernmost tips of Taiwan and has some beautiful beaches. A couple of cell groups went on a weekend trip for fun. We spent most of the day Saturday at the beach and then went on a scenic drive around that area on rented scooters (we also had a slight delay with a broken down scooter and had to get that fixed somehow out in the middle of nowhere, but that's another story and I'm kinda tired, and it's a long one).

I applied sunblock once before going in the water. We were in the sun for .... a looong time...like...4 hours? at least. I "snorkeled" a little bit (not like, really professional...like with a kiddie snorkel), but I saw some Nemo fish and his buddies. Well, apparently my sunblock got washed off fairly soon after I was in the water, and I ended up with the mother of all Sunburns. My legs are deep dark red from the mid thigh down (I had a skirt Thing over my swimsuit) and although my back and shoulders are burnt, my legs are way ouchier. They're swollen and extremely painful - on Saturday night I nearly passed out in the night market and on Sunday I had to take ibuprofin just to stand and there was still pain. I went to Dr. today and he gave me cream and pain meds, but is still very painful.

Lesson learnt. Re-apply, re-apply, re-apply.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

My students told me I looked like a pig, and some other students said "Tr. Sharon SO SCARY!!!"

I was like a walking Sun Safety ad at the school and everywhere else I went today. They were whispering - look what happens when you don't cover up in the Sun. Hrmphphph.

I won't post a picture. The kids were right. Tr. Sharon really is SO SCARY.

Well on that note, i'm going to take those meds and go to bed...

good night.