Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Zigh Jian Taiwan


I fell in love with these kids.
Really truly.
I CANNOT believe it's over. Here I am sitting here at 4 in the morning at my house, trying to get over jet lag.
Where did the last 6 months go?
Why am I not telling kids to sit down, or stop throwing water around, or to not cut their hair, or tie themselves to the chair, or to stop hitting each other, or to stop painting on their clothes, or confiscating their toys and giving them back after class.
What the heck!
I left a piece of my heart in Taiwan.
I now know what it feels like to be heartbroken.
It kinda hurts.
Look at her. This is Penny I really loved her as my own.

Stanley. I can't say more other than I love him with all my heart!

Scott, this child is thee most thoughtfully cute thing you will ever meet. Seriously a stud, he's knows what's up in life. My favorite Scott expierence? Him going to the bathroom for 15 minutes and coming back soaking wet with his pants on backwards. I also love it while he sings at the top of his lungs while he goes to the bathroom.  

Tony. This picture is tells the story of Tony's whole existence.
See why I fell in love with him?

Flora of Flora.

Joe. This kid is disgustingly flexible. He seriously would pull his arms out of their sockets. It completely grossed me out. I had to threaten him with warnings because it weirded me out so much!

My blessed 3A angels! We did tye dye on one of our last days of class. What a joy! They took great joy in wearing those garbage bags and kept saying there were the garbage class. Their little werido's but I love them! So i'm really scared of cockraoches so and I had to kill a couple in class. I always made quite the scene screaming and all. So they for whatever reason called me, Mr. Ridiculous (ridiculous being a spelling word I taught them thank you very much!) cockroach. Teacher Mr. Ridiculous Cockroach, how classy.

This is Grace, the greatest person ever! She was one of our college students and she is so great. She's trying to pass some tests so she can come get her Ph.D in America. I REALLY hope she comes. Nothing would please me more.


This is Jacob. My Taiwanese crush. He is INSANE, if he could speak fluent English and was America we would be married.

My favorite boys Alex, Jacob, and Antonio. They made my whole college class teaching experience. AHH even just thinking about how much I will miss playing charades with them to try to figure out what in the devil they are saying makes me sad. I never thought coming home would be this hard. We had such deep roots there, it was my life. I had a social scene, routines, I knew the ladies at the grocery store... it's hard to leave that forever.

Lison is the most adorable person EVER! She's a ping pong champ too.

Becky. I just love her.
I know you're probably wondering if I am drunk or something right now, because i put such a HIDEOUS picture of myself up here but... it needed to be done. This was our goodbye to our dear 7-11 ladies. They were so adorable and we really got to know them (or at least tried, it's kinda hard with the intense language barrier and all) But they cried when we said goodbye. It was so sad.

Well, here I am sitting at home next to a warm fireplace. I am so glad to be home, sometime I thought the time would NEVER come when it would be time to finally come home. Now that i'm home it's so weird to me. Did I even leave? What the heck!! I think it's mostly just weird because I can't really explain the things I saw and the experiences I had to anyone and they will understand. No matter how many times I tell you about my cute bracelet man at morning market or about our cook Linda at the school, it just isn't the same as if you had met the people yourself. Oh well life goes on and I learned a LOT and I know that. That's all that really matters. I hope I can instill some of the welcoming loving Taiwanese culture that I experienced for the rest of my life

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Reality Slap

(sorry again I started this post last week but, haven't had the time to finish it until now)
How did this happen?!?! 
One minute i'm unpacking and trying to find my lost baggage, the next i'm packing it up again. Seriously though. 
I've decided that while I've been in Taiwan I kinda live in la la land. I really don't live in reality. Meaning I don't understand time. While teaching here has definitely been thee HARDEST thing I've ever done in my entire life, it still is like we're on a vacation. I know this is only short term so the whole time we've been here has just felt like a daydream.

We were riding our bikes the other night and passed by this puppy. You realize that this thing is HUGE right? Well it is. And you want to know what is really is? It is a freaking huge temple for a puppet show. The puppet shows here are nuts, and for some reason they just popped this one up in the middle of our city.

They have life size dolls that spin around and it plays music. Pretty sick.

Unfortunately, this is also my reality at the moment. The reality not being my disgusting looking face. The new teachers came this week meaning we had to move out of our rooms and are staying at an apartment next door to our old one. Well Karyn and I are sleeping together. To our dismay last night we went in to go to bed, completely EXHAUSTED. Well.... we locked our key in our bedroom. crap. I was so pissed. We tried picking the lock for a good 15 minutes. Failure. So, being completely moved out we had nothing. No pillows, no blankets, nothin. So we got to sleep on the couch. Lucky. us.
Oddly though it'll be things like this that i'll miss so much about Taiwan. Our lives are ALWAYS ALWAYS some sort of crazy mess. But, it makes it really fun. I've loved flyin by the seat of my pants in everything we do here! It makes life real exciting.

Shengdun Kuila!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!
Ok so I realize that is a little late.... but..... who the devil cares. This last week or two has been INSANE! We've been busier than ever and I swear I never get a chance to catch my breath, let alone write on my blog.
So here we go. Christmas In Taiwan! So as you may know already we decided to stay in Changhua for Christmas. We really wanted to go to Taroko Gorge, which is supposedly really amazing, but ya know once you travel pretty much every weekend for 6 months a person gets tired. And we are, plus we wanted to be around our friends we have made here so we had a little Christmas party. It was oh so fun. We made kiss cookies, sugar cookies, oreo truffles, and some chicken crescents. Yes I ate just about as many sweets as I would have normally. Plus one of our friends brought over a duck. It was a lovely feast!
This is Emily one of our adorable little secretaries. These were the kiss cookies that we were making. It was so cute she was so excited to roll cookies because she had never done it before.


Our Christmas feast. With karyn in all her glory.


I love these ladies with all my heart. 
I will miss them so much.
Merry Christmas! (a week late....)