Day In The Life

Ok, so I've realized that is all I really ever write about is our saweet weekend trips, never about my actual teaching and life here. Which is what we spend the majority of our time doing! So, luckily we are EXTREMELY busy..... probably the busiest i've ever been in my whole life. Which is really a blessing if I was bored out of my gored all the time life wouldn't be nearly as grand. But for the most part i'm at the school from 9:30 to 6:45 everyday. I've never worked this much in my whole life, and let me tell ya I get tired. Kudos goes out to you Mom and Dad, I can really appreciate and understand your hard life now. When we get done with school we usually go to the track and do some running. We're running a 10k in October and a half marathon in November which should be rather interesting.... But I'm super excited for it!

But as for my teaching it is so fabulous! Some days I would really like to strangle the children but then..... they pull out something absolutely ridiculous and I can't help but love them!

Example A: These children decided to start throwing water at each other while I was busy, I was going to get ticked at them and then they pulled faces like this. This seriously is the real-deal I took no part in these poses. Take a look at the gray shirt kid (Kerry) he put some water in his hair and was lookin fine. This kid is definitely going to be a major stud in about 10 years.

Oh and take a look at this video of Jimmy, the kid in pink. This kid is SUPER smart and knows not only knows a lot of English, he knows a lot of American songs..... Like backstreet boys.... ya their back in Taiwan, he also loves to belt out 80's love songs quite frequently.... He makes me love my job every single day. check it out here (p.s. I couldn't get the video to upload here so click on, check it out here and it will take you to it.

Next up is my 3A class which is the equivalent to a 5th grade class in the U.S. Can I just say that I absolutely adore these children! I swear I was not as clever as these kids are when I was in 5th grade! These kids know what is up, PLUS they can all speak fluently in English. They also do the funniest things, one of my favorite moments with them was while I was reading in one of their journal entries it said, "My teacher is very unpleasant because she is so loud and crazy." Hmmm.... thanks?

P.S. Dad do you see what our subject lesson was about for that day? Oh yes, VOLCANOES! Those kids know all about strato, shield, and cone volcanoes baby.

Meet Harry. I don't think i've ever had a greater love/hate relationship with a child before. Let me tell ya a little background on this kid.... he's new to the school and knows very little English. It can be quite the challenge with him considering he still doesn't recognize his English name.... ya getting this kids attention and having him stay on task in class is a JOKE. Sometimes I have to practice my best patience now to scream at him and then I look over and he's doing something like this. It's his favorite pose. All the kids will be sitting coloring or something and I'll look over, what's Harry doing? Meditating! He's hilarious, and when he does decide to pay attention it's a little too good and he literally will repeat, EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. That I say, which also is pretty adorable.

Oh and not to mention that getting Harry's attention is hard enough already, oh don't worry we have TWO harry's in the same class. He only ignores me all the more now, he now responds to his name..... but usually for the wrong reason.

Recently we've been doing a lot of home visits with the kids. Can I just say that these are the GREATEST! It's so amazing to get to go into people's home and really experience and be FULLY submersed in the culture here. It definitely is interesting.... like the food at this place.... a full fish ladies and gentlemen. I took some and lets just say I may have had a full mouth full of bones. They looked like they thought nothing of it, so I just sneakily tried to spit them out.... (uh didn't work so well)It's really interesting and I've come to realize that the Taiwanese are a messy people. Everywhere you go is a mess, they love to pile! It's really odd, and closets here.... what the hail is a closet? But needless to say it's always an interesting experience to go on home visits.

As for this weekend around here, we decided just to stay in ChangHua since there is alot of things here we haven't seen. So we went up the mountain to explore. We ran into this health market of sorts on the side of the street, it was cool there were loads of ladies dancing to some sick beats and tons of ladies getting pedicures, facials, and massages. We saw one lady with what looked like a nice mask and another who looked like she was getting a good face massage. We decided to try it... (plus I was so dang sweaty, notice the shirt, that I didn't dare put a massage person through my wrath) Uhhhhhh this "facial" was NOT what I was expecting..... The lady started out all nice and cleaned my face and such then she pulled out that string of DEATH! The freaking lady pulled out ALL of my facial hair, it hurt like the dickens!! But needless to say my face does feel real smooth and nice now but, so help me if I grow back black hairs on my face i'm gonna be t-o'd!

So now that we've been here for 2 months I think we're finally starting to miss American food a little.... At some point someone mentioned cinnamon rolls..... I don't love cinnamon rolls or anything but ever since then I couldn't get my mind OFF of them. So we made them.... in our toaster oven. You know what?!? They worked..... who would have thought. So Grandma Lila no more just toasting english muffins.... heck you could make Thanksgiving dinner with that bad boy!

Kaohsiung is great.

So this weekend we had the great pleasure of going to Kaoshung. How great was is there you ask? Pretty darn GR8t!!! One of my roommates Anna was roommates in Provo with a girl who is from Taiwan. Conveniently she was there to show us around for the whole weekend. It was Glorious.

Ok, so normally I wouldn't put up a lame picture of us on the train but... There's a story behind this puppy and we were extremely grateful to be on that sucker. So the whole week we'd been trying to figure out the dang train. After FINALLY finding the train schedule website in english (this took an hour or two with multiple looking p.s.) we found our train. 7:16 on Friday night, that was our train. So being all peppy and prepared we had one of our secretaries write down the train and we went a day early to buy the tickets to make sure we got a sitting spot. Friday night rolls around... we go to the train station.... our tickets don't work.... what the heck? We realize... we'd purchased tickets for the night before *?&*!! After haggling and frantically trying to figure out how to switch the tickets, we ended up just buying new tickets (with the help of some extremely kind translators...) but they told us to keep our old tickets and we could get re-embellished in Kaohsiung. Sweet! We get to Kaohsiung and try to get our money back. We need our tickets we just bought to get there.... ah problem.... we gave them to the dude as we exited.... crap. (mind you these tickets were a whopping $15 US dollars which seems like a small fortune to me now... so we wanted our money back!) So, long story short,there we were at 11 at night sifting through hundreds of old tickets in a garbage can..... Eventually we got our money. So just a word to the wise if you're ever in Taiwan make sure to buy tickets for the right day... it'll save ya an hour or two of sheer chaos and confusion.

Ya know people seem to think Americans like things big and flashy, I don't think people have noticed Taiwan. These people do too, every freaking corner you turn there's some ridiculously large thing!! But this place could easily be one of the coolest places we've been yet. It was called Fo Guang Shan, it some major major major Buddhist grounds, they even have a University there!! It was cool, we saw about a jillion monks, and call me a complete fool but I didn't know monks could be women. I guess since their heads are shaved I always thought man... no... every one we talked to pretty much was a woman. huh. But anyways this place was el coolio on top the stand Buddha, you can't see too well but it was surrounded by HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of smaller Buddha statues, it was incredible. And the other picture is just one of the many temples on the grounds, it was GINOURMOUS though as well. There seriously were at least ten different kinds of shrines and temples at this place and it covered a couple of miles. It was incredible.

Another random statue. Great. I'm not sure what it's trying to convey but.... you wanna know what I see? One Buddha looking really evil and attempting to give the other a wet willy, i'm pretty sure if I asked the artist I would be correct.

Our next stop? THEE BEACH!!! Wahoo it's been driving me crazy I live on this dang freakin tiny ISLAND and I haven't seen the ocean the whole time i've been here. Finally we did, and it was no greater than fantastic. I'm a sucker for the ocean, as you can tell from the sick fist pump i'm doing in the picture.

Just some saweet night life at the beach. Ok, so I don't know if I've mentioned it before but people here really truly think that tan skin is the ugliest thing since blue eyeshadow. So when they go out they cover up their ENTIRE BODIES!! Mind you think island is the HOTTEST freaking place in the world, they are crazy about white skin. I just thought this lady was funny all covered up, notice it's dark out, and the nice reflector tape on the rice picker hat.

So, after church today (and getting to meet Sister Dalton the General Young Women's President.... incredible) we went to this place called Lotus Lake. It was pretty cool and for whatever reason they decided to surround the lake in odd statues and figures. Literally, everywhere freaking every 50 steps there was some sort of pagoda, odd statue, cool hug coi pond, some sort of temple, odd criss crossing bridges, women singing the most awful Karaoke, old men surrounded by dogs talking to them as if they were people, pretty much you think of it and it'll be here. Here are just a few that I found the coolest.

Umm.... take a good look at this picture.... a real good look. Yep, you see it correctly that's a sheep and a pig. No, they're not wax they're real. Apparently the Buddhist still believe in animal sacrifice. This weekend we've seen tons of these tents set up all around for some Buddhist holiday. They normally just have seriously a small grocery stores amount of food, but this one took the cake, with freaking animals!

So as you can tell this weekend was pretty great. But I do need to add this in. Earlier this week I was informed with some horrendous news. My good friend Nick Raitt, who has been battling cancer for the past couple of years has relapsed. Please keep him in your prayers.

Taiwanisms

Ok, so not that I've been here almost two months i've noticed several odd things about Taiwan. I thought I'd share them with you.....

1: Warm Water:

If you drink something cold you WILL get sick. You must always drink water and everything semi warm to avoid sickness. I am being completely serious. (however my Grandma Lila would be in heaven here) People c'mon, I mean i'm not a doctor by any means but seriously, i'm pretty sure those ridiculous strong stomach acids you've got rollin around have got it covered. It's just down right weird.... even in school sometimes we'll make smoothies and have ice cream, half the kids say their moms won't let them have it because they'll get sick. I'm sorry but this is child abuse. You DO NOT deprive your child because of some stupid cold-drink hoopla, welcome to the 20th century.

2: Garbage man:

You hear a happy go lucky song rollin around the corner and being born and raised in America, what's the first thing you'd think of? ICE CREAM!!! URrrr wrong. This ladies and gentlemen would be the garbage truck. Yes this guy drive around play old musical tunes. I'm pretty sure I have the tune da daaaahhhh da duh duh duhhhhh embedded in my memory. Weird, yet I must admit brilliant for all the stupid people like me, that miss the garbage man for 3 weeks in a row, this would be a nice reminder.

3: Automatic Doors:

So, in America you walk up to a sliding door and the thing detects you from about 2 or 3 feet back and opens up for you. You don't even have to miss a stride in your step it's rather convenient, in Taiwan it doesn't quite work that way. Ok, quite literally you walk up to an automatic door and you have to get so close to the dang thing that your nose is touching it.

4: Lines

So, quite frequently i'm standing in line somewhere waiting to check out. I usually stand a foot or two back from the person. Apparently that's not what you do here. I can't even number the amount of times i've been standing in line and a person has walked right in front of me and just gone ahead. Uhhh hello? Must I really be groping the person in front of me to make it any more obvious that i'm standing in line. Maybe it's a cool thing to stand behind a person here smack dab in front of the cash register or something, so I just don't get it. But let me tell ya it's weird.

5: Hand drying and washing:

So, as mentioned earlier people are a little bit overly ridiculously cautious of getting sick. Maybe germs and how they work was discovered in America and hasn't spread to the Asian continent yet... I don't know but these people don't quite get it. Your lucky if a person "washes" their hands after they go to the bathroom here, and if they do they just run it under the water. And no one, NO ONE dries there hands. If you come by a towel or a blow dryer here, I want to bow down on my knees and praise it.

6: Washing Dishes and Soap

So this one relates to the last one. Yet again these people don't know how to clean. First of all people don't really wash there dishes, they simply put them under the water until they look clean, maybe just maybe if there is something really grotty you'll get some scrubbing action going on, but soap is un-heard of, who do you think you are a queen? Second of all, I swear concentrated soap is not that new of a concept. But maybe it is because Taiwan sure doesn't know what it is. So, we being Americans and doing the un-thinkable actually wash our dishes WITH SOAP, weird, but the soap you get here is not everyday soap. It's more like bubble water. I seriously have to put around 10 pumps of soap to wash my spoon. It's a real wonder none of us have gotten sick yet.

7: Driving:

PEOPLE. HERE. ARE. MANIACS. WHILE. THEY. DRIVE. It truly is a wonder how I ride my bike through town and am still alive. Blind spot check? What is that? You have rear-view mirrors? Why do you need to look behind you while you drive? It seriously is like a mario cart game!

8: Farting and Burping

Ok, so for those of you that know me, you know that ya know if i've got some sort of gas I let it rip. In America, if you let one rip in the middle of a first grade class all hell would break loose. Here, they don't give a darn. Literally people fart and burp like there simply blinking or something. I'm not sure if i'll ever get used to sitting next to a cute, delicate, quaint old woman and hearing her belch and thinking that's not a little odd at all...

9: Stinky Tofu

That is the true name of this stuff, not just the name I gave it. Why? Why Taiwan do you torture me with this? The smell is horrendous. I don't even know how to explain it. But one of my roommates I thought had a pretty good accurate description. "it smells like something threw up a farm and that throw up is going rotten." Why is this even anywhere appealing to eat to these people? Why?

That's really all that I can think of at the moment. But don't get me wrong if I sound like a downer or anything by these. I LOVE Taiwan!!

Lost and Lovin it

So orginally we were going to go to this seaside town called WongGong on Saturday..... well our plans changed when one of our good Taiwanese friends couldn't go with us. So, we got to thinking, we got this brochure while we were in Eurshei that talked about this amazing city called Jhoushan. We seriously researched ALL over the internet, literally everywhere. Couldn't find anything, looked in taiwan travel books, nothing. But we had a brochure, and let me tell ya the marketer for that brochure did a real good job because he made us want to go. Bad. So that's exactly what we decided to do, we went. Did we know where we were going? No. Did we have any clue how we were going to get there? No. Do any of us speak enough chinese to actually be of any good use? No. Did we really need any of this to have a great time and still get there? No. But we started our journey, only to be oh so pleasantly surprised by the wonders we would stumble upon!

Oh what have we hear you ask? Oh, no not another random Taiwanese statue. No. Not at all. But needless to say this was the MOST NORMAL for the day. I am still shooting myself in the foot for not taking a picture of some of the others we saw that day. Write around the corner from this puppy was a teapot. Why? I don't know. But get this, the best statue of the day was of..... da da dah A woman breastfeeding a child. Yes I did type that correctly they have a statue, a rather large one at that, of a woman breastfeeding a child. WHAT THE HAIL?!?! Is it my biggest regret of the century that I did not get a picture of this epic thing? Yes!! I think I was suffering from heat stroke and wasn't thinking clearly. Yes, that must have been it, I have to go back to this city for that very reason. To get a picture of that bad boy.

So after finally somehow figuring out how to making it to the lovely Jhoushan and waiting for the bus for an hour or two we made it. After aimlessly wandering around the town fully and completely lost we found the visitors center. (Who knew speaking with your hands and pointing could get you so far? Pshh) But we ran into this temple on our way to another site. Holy Kamoly so it's true there are temples all over the place here but this one, this temple was the coolest yet!(and that picture isn't even of the temple, the temple is behind that, that's just a little entrance gate thing before the temple) It literally was HUGE!! This picture does NOT do it justice, but it was amazing and a great way to start our trip!

This is one of those things that I talked about that they burn the money in to give to their ancestors. It's really interesting to watch them and these people throw HUGE wads of fake money in there.

The walk to the suspension bridge we were going to was BEAUTIFUL!! It was really nice to get out of the city and see some greenery. The whole area was covered in bamboo things, banana orchards, pineapple orchards, good smelling fruit that I don't know what it is, and big old honkin tea fields. It was utterly beautiful.

One of the many tea fields we passed on our long journey to the suspension bridge. They need these puppies big because these people drink about 10 times as much tea as Americans do Coke.

I just thought this woman was the cutest thing in the entire world. I wish you could see her whole getup better but she was a styler. And so cute just out in the middle of the river a fishin away.

We finally made it. Our beloved suspension bridge! So Kayrn has this day called fantasy day, which is August,7th? or whatever day Saturday was and this was on her list. It was super cool this thing was old and rickety and swayed a little while you walked on it! Way cool.

So after we were done at the suspension bridge we started our LONG journey back to the bus station. Well.... look at what we stumbled upon along the way. This was one of the most beautfiful places i've ever seen!! It was a botanical garden that some Taiwanese university put together. It literally felt like I was in a Tarzan movie or something while I was walking through.

So as we were walking out of the most beautifully amazing botanical garden we were greeted by this. Yes this is real life. See those leaves on the side? Ya those are not small leaves ladies and gentlemen, and that puppy is was bigger!! The body of this puppy, no lie, was the size of my palm, and the whole spider was probably about the size of my hand....if I see one of those things in my apartment so help me, I just may pack up and move home.

So that;s just a taste of some of the adventures we have been on lately! Teaching is going really really great! Sometimes I catch myself saying things and I can

t help but laugh, like the other day i said, "Do NOT tie yourself to the chair." Yes, those words came out of my mouth, and a child really did tie himself to him a chair. That's what makes me love teaching. Sometimes they say the funniest things that crack me up! Like one kid loves the backstreet boys and will not stop singing 80's love songs. Where he learned these? I have no clue. Do it make my whole day whenever he breaks out in song? YES!

Loving the Lukang

Okay, so first of all lets discuss the Taiwanese art. I can't really figure out what goes through these people's brains when it comes to art. Ok, I can see some random ugly art pieces around town, everywhere's gotta have one or two... But Taiwan, Taiwan brings ugly random art to a whole new level. For instance this gem of a goat. I really don't think goats even live in Taiwan nor should they belong in the middle of a really large park in the middle of the 2nd biggest city in Taiwan. But this isn't even all of them! Every single day I pass a VERY large statue of David, good thing i didn't see it in Italy... Taiwan's got me covered. But seriously these people need an art lesson on some good art. PRONTO!

Yes sadly Taiwan has Dominoes, along with tons of other American food chains. But luckily they put their own swing on the pizza. I'm not even sure if you can get the regular pepperoni or cheese pizza here. It's all seafood, really really weird. This one is lobster and it actually really delicious!

This.... ladies and gentlemen would be duck brain. Yes real duck, quack quack, brain. As if it was not enough that I ate duck, which was quite tasty, we chowed down the juicy brain. Let's just say it's probably not something that I want to experience EVER again. But it was an experience and the Taiwanese people LOVE it!

Lukang with yet, surprise surprise more odd Taiwanese statues. I still can't grasp the whole thought process. "Ya, ya, ya that's brilliant two ugly cartoon cats would be a perfect way to welcome visitors to our lovely town."

This is a temple is Lukang which they were doing rituals. It was an incredible temple and was HUGE!! It actually is a Taiwan National Monument. It is really interesting they come in with big ol' platters of any kind of food, and these huge bouquets of flowers and put them on a table in front of the temple. Then they go in with incense and pray and wave the things around. I really wanted to take picture of them but I felt bad so i just took a picture looking out. My question is though what in the devil do they do with all that food people bring throughout the day?!? No wonder people want to be monks they get to have a free feast every night!!

This is at the Lukang Folk Arts Museum.... I don't know why but I really miss swinging and throughoghly enjoyed this! Lukang was in general just an amazing place! It's really old town and is just a classy place. It almost feels like the Park City of Taiwan. There is a lot of quality things you can get there. Like these awesome fans this dudes makes. You can seriously bring in a picture of anything you want, anything and he'll paint it on a fan for you! They're beautiful! I definitely need to get one of the temple. Oh this also shows a good picture of the trees here. They are awesome and all have their roots above ground. These two were pretty small but alot of them have rope like things that hang down from them, George of the jungle style.

Ok, I had to put this in. I don't think people understand what a squatter is. Well.. the above picture not only lets you see it, but also how it is used. Why these people have them is beyond me! Sure yes i would love to pop a squat into this TINY little hole, which many people before me, as well as myself, have missed. Yep, I love standing in pee while peeing while standing. But the thing that gets me even more is these puppies are in 21st century buildings! Why? Maybe i'm not using it right or something but I dread having to ever use a public toilet, which seems like is quite frequently, crap! (Quite literally)

Ok, so i had to put this in. Pretty much everywhere we go someone says,"OH you are so beautiful" or they try to sneakily take a picture of us from their cell phones, most people stare sctrach that EVERYONE stares! It really is almost even more weird to me now if I go somewhere and people don't stare. But anyways people ask to take pictures with us all the time and I finally had the guts to ask if I could get a picture too. I really love the chick in the striped shirt. It was so blinkin hot that day i thought I was going to melt! She shows it.

Ok, well there's an update on my life!! Wahoo, and teaching, teaching is great!! I really love the kids. Sometime I want to strangle them but overall they are adorable and when they do random things like break down in 80's love songs, repeat EVERY single word I say... literally...and dance to Michael Jackson I can't help but love them!