Whoa chu jian, ziah nall lee?

As I mentioned earlier, I got a tie dye kit from the parentals. This Friday night rocked. We decided to hang around ChangHua this weekend because we were invited to go to a dance concert for some of our kids (I know what you're thinking, I thought the same thing) This is the result of some good ol' tye dye....

As you can tell we did not use gloves.... and If you're gonna tye dye you MUST use ALL of the dye..... hence the large amount of plastic bags full of whatever random stuff we could find. And of course to honor my old disgusting shirt, that seems to be on whenever I take pictures, I had to wear it. 

The finished result! Jealous? I'll now be sportin a sick new skirt, 2 shirts, a pair of socks, and my disgusting Tom's got a nice little face lift! If you were sick of seeing me in my old tye dye shirt, well now you're going to see even MORE of it!!

And not to worry, my mama sent me with a refill pack. Meaning.... I will be tye dying with my 5th grade class. That should be rather interesting, considering the kids nearly blow a gasket when you put food coloring in their food and it dyes their tongue (they think it will make them sick). I'll let ya know how it goes.

On Saturday we made a trip to Taichung in hopes to see this beauty.

The Natural Science Museum. We had our bus number's ready and set out on our way, so well prepared. Or so we thought..... We got on the bus that was supposed to take us to the museum, after quite the long ride, the bus driver pulled over and motioned that we had to get off the bus. Uh.... ok? We knew we weren't in the right place because we had our specific stop to get off at. So being left in the middle of the city we wandered around for a little bit, thinking the bus driver kicked us off because there was something to see. Don't worry, there wasn't anything. So needless to say... we didn't get to the museum yesterday. However! 

We did stumble across this old Confucius temple that was kinda cool. Honestly when I first got here I was so dumb struck by the coolness of all the temples. Obviously i've lived here a while because I really could care less about the temples now... But this one was a little different. They had these sacrifice burning majig's where they bury and burn hair, blood, and silk. Supposedly it's the only temple that has them in Taiwan and I found them rather disgusting.

But the ULTIMATE SCORE OF THE DAY goes to none other than the THRIFT STORE!!

I've been hunting like a mad demon to find these! Pretty much every house and store you go into here has one of these puppies hanging on the wall, and they are all so cool! I've been WANTING on so BAD! But despite my savage like scavenger hunt I've been on to find one, I've only failed... Until yesterday! We saw this thrift store a while back and wanted to go in it, so yesterday we did. At first they really only had a lot of quite frankly junk that should have been thrown away 20 years ago. As we were about to walk out the door, we stumbled upon these. You can bet that I bought 5, yes FIVE, of them in all sorts of different shapes and designs. Some of them are a little hammered but that makes them all the better, so count yourself as one lucky devil if I decide you are special enough to receive one once I get home.

 

Like I said we were invited to go to a dance recital Saturday night, yet again, we thought we knew where we were going and surprise SURPRISE!! We didn't. We rode our bikes to where we thought the recital was to be at, and there just happened to be a dance recital going on outside, obviously we thought this HAD to be it. We sat there for a while, and most dance recitals are bad enough.... this one was really bad. After sitting through 45 of agony, the girls dad came running up to us, after looking for us around the town for a while, and told us we were at the wrong place! 

So, after sitting at the dance recital of dance rejects we got to the right place. It was actually not too bad, unfortunately we missed the girls dance, but we got to see the older kids which were pretty good! 

So, today being our stake conference call me a sinner but you can bet that I was NOT about to travel 2 hours to get there. So, we went to our local ward. It was splendid. This is our sweet friend Amy. She is awesome! Kinda a tom boy and I loved her church get-up so much today I had to take a picture. Like the playboy shirt? They don't understand what playboy is here, or the F-word for that matter. It's plastered all over the place!! But we did see one of our students from our college class at church. She is getting baptized in November so we were super excited about that! One of the members said they have at least 1 or 2 new baptisms a week here, which is incredible!

Wow, I'm on a yik yaking roll today. Sorry! 

Hun Hoa

Life is good. Life is great. Life is Beautiful. Like is Lovely. 

Wanna know why?

#1: I received a package yesterday from my great familia. Made. My. Day.

So here's the thing. At home, I have copious amounts of clothes. I didn't bring so many to Taiwan, and alot of what I did bring I don't wear because clothes just get ruined here. Therefore, you may not have noticed but surely will now, I wear the same thing over and over and OVER and OVER and OVER!! My parents have noticed this, and like great people they sent me some shirts and tye dye. YOu know what that means?!? This weekend looks like a party! What else was in the package you ask? Oh just some twizzlers, tootsie rolls, and tootsie pops.... not my favorite candy or anything.... 

Currently i'm wearing one of the white t-shirts (I just couldn't wait to wear a new shirt) and i'm munching on some twizzlers (why I have grown this weird liking for licorice while I've been here, I've not a clue)

#2: My kids are Hilarious. Want to hear a funny story? Well, you're going to here it anyways....

So, I have this class of kindergarten kids, they are banchi's let me tell ya!! Sometimes I just sit back and laugh because these children are so out of control. Seriously, INSANE! But anyways, last week a kid asked me if he could go to the bathroom. Not wanting another pee your pants in class incident, I said yes. Usually it takes kids a whopping 30 seconds to go to the bathroom and be back. Not this kids. Seriously 10 minutes later he still wasn't back. Due to the craziness of the class and that our school intercom system is being fixed, I couldn't go to check on him. So, after about 15 minutes he returned..... His pants were on backwards and his hair and face was soaking wet. Umm..... hi there bud! Did you just decide to take a shower while you were in the bathroom or what? I'm not sure exactly what went down, but let me tell ya, no matter how hard I tried to hold it in, you can bet I was belly rollin in the middle of class! 


Those are just two brief reasons why my life is so great. Thought i'd share. 

This weekend, I feel in Love.

Odd caption, i know. But that's the only thing I could think of to describe it. This past weekend we went to Green Island. Wow, I almost keeled over just thinking back at the beauty of this place! And what is a great weekend without a couple of near death experiences? Not a good one at all i'd say! So with the perfect mixture of these two, I tell you I fell in love.

So Green Island is an island just off the coast in southern Taiwan. So our journey started out with a real long train ride there, and then what I thought would be a nice relaxing boat ride to the island. I mean i've been on ferries before going to Cornodo Island is California. Let me tell you this was no peaceful ferry ride like that one. I never get sea sick. I got sea sick. This boat was rocking and shakin so much I wanted to kiss the ground when we finally got there! We immediately got our scooters rentals, checked into our hotel, and were ready for some snorkeling.

Here we are, in all of our glory. Ok, so lets just say people here take water safety very seriously (and that's an understatement). Snorkeling in the US they throw you some goggles and a snorkel and you're off. Not here. You'd think with our full body wet suits the water would be below freezing or something, no it was a warm 70 degrees. and the life jackets? Oh yes you definately need those puppies for snorkeling in 5 foot deep water. And you can't see them but they made us wear these ridiculous water socks.

We were greeted with this sign at the beach where we were going snorkeling. Dang it!! I can't electrocute or bomb the fish? Crap. Now my entire weekend is ruined!

Ok, so I thought that wearing a life jacket was a little extreme. Well apparently not extreme enough. We went in and they had these floaties tied in a chain. We all got one and had to hold onto it while the snorkeling guide carted us around. I was giggling the whole time. I loved it. Had we had a normal snorkeling experience it would have been down right boring. Despite the EXTREME safety precautions that they took the snorkeling was awesome! Some of the best snorkeling i've seen before. Since it's a volcanic island there are really beautiful coral reefs and lovely fish! Very worth it.

After our snorkeling adventure we got to watch the sunset. Now can you see why I love this island? (mind you i'm an awful photographer and even I can make this place look good)

Oh just an average BBQ dinner. What am I about to munch on with such a disgusting look you ask? Oh, just some rice soaked in pigs BLOOD! This stuff is supposedly the most exotic food in the world. They knaw on this stuff as much as we knaw on extra gum! They love it. I wouldn't say it tastes too exotic just the whole idea of it... But this is how they BBQ here it's rather fun. We had a buffet style and you went and chose your food and then cooked it yourself. What is all that on the table you ask? To be honest alot of it I don't really know, I just eat and don't ask. But white in the middle is some sort of taro plant thing, we ate some chicken heart (pretty good actually), whole squid (the odd purple looking things, flying fish, and who in the devil knows what else! But it was sure tasty.

So we'd heard that a typhoon was coming but wouldn't hit until later on this week. Well we started to feel the affects of it while we were on Green Island. During dinner it started to rain. HARD. Our drive back to our hotel was a doozy! Imagine this: Kailey behind the wheel of a scooter(scary enough thought as it is) with Karyn behind me trying her darndest to sheild my eyes from the pelting rain so I could see somewhat where I was going, complete darkness (no streetlights on the island and very few people), large puddles, wind howling. Yes, this is one reason I thought I was going to die. I was so friggin scared. When we got back to the hotel I again wanted to kiss the ground.

After being completely soaked from the rain, I really just wanted to take a shower. Well, Taiwan is super into this whole "Global Warming" spheel. Therefore, they try to conserve water and energy as much as possible. Ok, that's cool good for you. But you know what? You've taken it to far when you don't give people towels. This was my towel. Some disposable cloth thing. No joke it was folded in half in that package. (the size of a hand towel) Uhhhh.... ya air dry it is i guess, considering I wiped half of my leg with the thing and it was soaked....

Just the glow in the dark painting on our ceiling..... pretty sick eh?

The next morning we woke up at 4:45 in the MORNING to see the sunrise. Since it was so cloudy from the looming typhoon it was nothing too great. But luckily we went to watch it from the hot springs. They were lovely and quite magnificent. There were a bunch of pools up higher where they pumped the water up (what i'm standing it, like all of the sexy men in speedos?) There are also a whole bunch down closer to the water, but we weren't allowed in because they waves were really big from the storm.

This is just a little part of the hot spring down close to the beach. They really were magnificent! But when we first got there I saw all of these people with egg cartons. I couldn't figure out why in the devil all of these people have egg cartons! There not that nice to carry stuff around in or anything. Then we figure it out. See that rock thing right in front, and a huddle of people down farther. Their cooking their eggs in the scalding hot water! Clever? I don't know, maybe cooking them in the water will make the egg be like the fountain of youth or something.....

This picture doesn't even describe the gale force winds that we were experiencing.

If you don't think this is beautiful, i'll slap you in the face.

I love that they've really left this island in the most natural state that they could. Just some goats a grazin on a meadow overlooking the magnificent sea. Yes, this is my real life. I love it.

"Exterminate the Communists, Restore the country"

That's always been my ultimate motto in life. You all know what a politic guru I am... NOT. Here's a little background to this: So the Chinese came in and were real buttheads to the Taiwanese. They had a prison on Green Island for all the people who spoke out against what they were doing to them. This is by the old jail.

No memorial museum is complete without human wax figure portion. The wax figures potrayed how hard life was for them and showed the work they made them do. Uhh...... and then we got to this. Apparently you can't show how difficult life was for people without showing them going to the bathroom in quite the graphic manner.

And I must mention our boat ride home.... Oh my great land! So you know how the typhoon was coming? Well obviously high wind=angry seas. I thought I was going to die on the first ferry ride. I would have killed for that "safe" of a ride on the way back. Lets just say 15-20 foot swells and one rocking boat. I honestly, no exaggeration, didn't know if we would make it home alive. The boat was swaying back and forth at like an 85 degree angle!! I seriously had it all planned out in my mind what I would do if we cap sized. I felt like I was on that fishing show on discovery channel. I really wanted, yet again, wanted to kiss the ground once we finally hit land.

Lastly, because of the crazy seas we missed our earlier train. So we had to catch a later train, but we didn't have a seat. Not a big deal you think? It was a FIVE hour ride of sheer hell. Excuse me not all of it was. The hospitality of the people in Taiwan never ceases to amaze me. They really are the MOST LOVING people around. We met these cute old couples on the train and the lady let me sit on her footrest (which yes my butt was so sore this morning it felt like i'd ridden a bike 300 miles) but, they gave us these cool pencils they had just made, made out of some grafted pear trees, and some snacks. Most definitely were a tender mercy for me sent down during the grueling train ride.

So that was our joyous weekend! Now you see why I feel in love? The lovely craziness that we experienced only made the trip WAY better. I love Taiwan. I've almost been here 4 months, boggles my mind.

Kids are Kids. (period)

So a really big reason that I came here was because I wanted to be fully submersed living in another culture. Well... I surely have accomplished that, like it or not. So I've discussed the whole saving face thing as part of their culture, ya that bugs me a slight amount. The next aspect of Taiwan culture i'm about to fill you in on, more than bugs me, it down right TICKS ME OFF. That's right it really just chaps my as*.

LET your KIDS. BE kids.

I understand people are busy, and i've obviously never been a parent, but c'mon people. Kids here are so freaking JAMMED packed with activities regarding their education they literally don't have any time to play. It. bugs. me. Seriously these kids, starting at age 5 go to Chinese school, at 7:30 in the morning and the little ones get off at 1:00 and the older at 2 or 3 I think. Doesn't sound so bad right? ERRrr wrong. They then come to our school for at least another 3 hours and after that some go to other schools to help them with certain subject like: math, art, piano (not even kidding 90% of these children play the piano, and play it WeLL). Or they just stay at out school doing their Chinese homework waiting for their parents to come and get them.

No lie these kids, even the 5 year old, have at least 2 hours of homework every SINGLE night. Where is the time for dolls, and playing in the dirt? OH ya! It doesn't exist.

Okay, sorry I can't quite get off my soapbox yet. This one, this one right here, is what chaps my A*s. I can't say that I really hate anything about Taiwan, but this, I hate. Unfortunately these people left a bad impression on me, a really bad one. Child Abuse, yes abuse both verbally and physically. Here are some stories of just the icing on the cake.

- If our kids don't get above an 80% on their tests, they're supposed to re-take it. No big deal right? Wrong again. My kids will beg me to not tell their parents when they don't pass (sometime even if they get below a 90%). Why? Because their parents hit them, with belts. PEOPLE!! Your kids schedules are so damn packed with Chinese school as it is, give them a break if they don't pass a test! Some kids are lazy, none of mine are. So, needless to say none of my kids parents are ever informed when they fail their tests. (which is not that often by the way.)

-This happened to me just today, and I was sick about for quite a while. So I have a morning class with two of the cutest little girls. (i've talked about them before) On Monday's we go out in the town somewhere, today we went to the park. We were playing doctor and I was the girls patient. One of the girls wanted me to lay down on the pillow and seriously just tapped me with the pillow. She's 5, it's what 5 years old do, I laughed and just told her she was silly. The mother flipped. After at least 15 of talking to, what she said I don't know because it was in Chinese, she finally made the girl get down on her knees and bow and say i'm sorry 3 times. Awkward.... but I gave her a hug and said it was ok. I thought that this was enough as it was. Nope. Then the Mom called the dad to come. What he did, honestly in America would have gotten him arrested. Too bad here he is a police man, so he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. He started yelling at this child in the MIDDLE of the PARK! Full on. Yep, guarantee if someone saw this in the US they would call DCFS, then he started hitting her. hard. At this point the dad honestly would have been arrested on the spot. My heart broke. I didn't know what to do. Honestly, there really was nothing I could do, and this went on for at least 40 minutes. It was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced. America needs to spread the word about a new concept called time-out. It works like a charm.

I'm sorry for this grim post, but it had to be said. i know and realize i'm not a parent and obviously don't understand the whole concept. I know you want the best for your kids, but seriously? I'll say it again, let your kids me kids. They're going to pick their nose and eat it, and full on fist fight their little brother and sister, they want to play with dolls and toys, let them. Call me some hippie or something but gall lighten up people!!

Taiwan, you never cease to amaze me.

I just realized I haven't actually written on here in a while of my great adventures, just of my weird random experiences. Well... let me tell ya they indeed just keep a comin. and they are fantastic!

Here you have Wong Gong. This lovely little town on the beach, if a beach is what you could call it. We more or less just wanted to see the ocean so we went to the nearest place possible. It was an interesting little place. Fun, though. It was dedicated, I mean DEDICATED, to fishing. It was the towns calling in life to be clammerians, and scalloperoo's. Cool though and it really was a beautiful place. I'm a sucker for the ocean in any way shape or form, even if it does reek real bad.

Here are their intersting little make-shift clam cars. They were super goofy looking, it kinda reminded me of a dr. suess book or something.

A while ago we went to the Confucius temple in Changhua and saw that there was some sort of dawn festival. After researching it we decided it was a big deal, and worth going, and ya know what? It was, well.... as good as it could get considering we had to wake up at 5:30 in the freaking morning! Come to find out the ceremony here in our little town is one of the biggest in Taiwan.

It was quite interesting, and duh since I don't speak Chinese I didn't really know what in the devil was going on. But these people marched around, sang and did a whole bunch of crazy stuff. Confucisim is all about education so there were a ton of students there, who I'm pretty sure had been standing there since like 5 in the morning. Some were passing out and such.

So started running low on Honey Bunches of Oats this last week, so obviously we had to make a trip to Costco! DUH! Maybe I just haven't inspected the Campbell''s soup isle too carefully but for some reason I thought this soup was really funny. Oxtail? really? Is that normal? And the other, I know you can't read it too well but it's corn bamboo mushroom and seafood soup... YUM!

This Saturday we had the General Relief Society Broadcast at the church. This is how it goes here in Taiwan: 20 girls huddled around a computer trying to watch the screen. Interesting, but it turned out great and we still got the message across. Let me tell after going to church here and traveling 1 hour each way, I will come home and be so GRATEFUL for church a whopping 5 minutes away. Good thing i'm only here for 6 months or I may go inactive pretty soon. No exaggeration, literally.

After the meeting we went to TGI Fridays. Yep, at first I was a little disgusted and vowed to never go there while I was in Taiwan. After 3 months and some American food deprivation, I caved. Oh and let me tell you it was SO good.

Thanks to my wonderful mother and father I have a deeply embedded love of tortilla chips and salsa (and twizzlers, which aren't here gosh dang it). Considering that these staples food have been missing in my life for 3 months, I've obviously started to miss them. Well, I got some Mexican goodness on Saturday, it was exactly what I was craving. Ok, I need to stop with all this food talk. It's really ridiculous I sound like is all I have is food on my mind. I may sound obbsessed with food but I swear i'm not, just sometime lets be honest, we get bored here. really bored. sometimes it's the only thing we have to takl about....

We also went for a nice little hike on Saturday on our mountain. It was rather lovely! But I must say if Taiwan doesn't cool down soon.... so help me.... I may just LOSE MY MIND!! But we found the coolest cemetery that went for Acres and ACRES and acres it was awesome! The graves here are interesting and super cool, they;re really big and i can't quite figure them out. This picture is one I just got off the internet because I forgot my camera. Most of them look like this, most are a little smaller, but there will be zillions of them and i'd say about 1/4th of them are kept up with the grass cut the rest just go to rack or ruin. It's weird.

So, da da da dah! There ya have it, a brief synopsis of the life of me. I'm on the downhill now which is odd. I still can't comprehend time here. Sometime it feels like i've been here a whole freakin ETERNITY and then other times I can't even comprehend how i've already been here for 3 months.