Fun in Feng-Yuan

So I finally made it to Taiwan, despite the visa problems and everything else that went wrong, which looking back was not a whole lot. I have officially been in Taiwan for about three days and already I love the country. Even though I did not get to go on a foreign speaking mission I think this is probably the next best thing. So what is so great about Taiwan? Well the smells are incredible. Everywhere you turn there seems to be a new smell and although they are not all wonderful, it is quite exciting.


Our branch is tiny and we have to take a 40 minute bus ride to get to church. However this past Sunday I got to ride on a scooter and on the way to church the girl I was with took me to the giant Buddha. Apparently no one really worships the Buddha but it is there nonetheless. There was a pretty cool shrine next to it though and there was a large pile of scriptures which were there for the taking. I of course had to have some and took the adult version and the child version written in simplified Chinese. The red version of the scriptures holds out accordion style and you can read it from right to left. So back to the stories about the church. There are probably about twenty members of the branch and the teachers from Berhan ( my school) make up about half of the ward. There are 13 of us that all live together and do everything together, at least up to this point in time. It was great to be back in church again although it is really strange finishing church when I know that my family back home is probably just getting to bed at 2 in the morning.

What else is exciting about Taiwan? We got our schedules for teaching and I must say that I am excited about the opportunities that I’ll have this semester. I had heard rumors that guys do not usually get to teach the kindergarten classes but lo and behold they gave me one anyways. I teach afternoon kindergarten from 1:30 til 4:30 Monday through Friday. I teach fifth grade on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 4:40 til 6:40 and fourth grade at the same time on Tuesday and Thursday as well as Saturday morning. I will also teach writing from 6:50 to 8:50 on Wednesday and Friday. I am excited because the classes will be so small. I think one of my classes has three and another just four. It will be so much better than trying to teach twelve kids like I did at EFY. I loved the opportunity but sometimes it got a little bit rough.
The next few months should be a lot of fun. We have become a little family in floor four of our school. We almost have a mom and poppa picked out as well.

Viva la Visa

I finally got a visa and I will be leaving to go to Taiwan on the 27th of December. It is a little bit crazy to think that I will be going but I’m really going to do it. As it turns out I am the only person in my group going over to Feng-Yuan that currently has a visa. For all of you traveling overseas for any reason, make sure that you apply very early to get your visa. I had to call the San Francisco Office ten times and sign my life away three times. But it finally went through.
As per other news in my life, I got in a car wreck on Wednesday after I finished my training (for teaching English in Taiwan). I was hit from behind and my bumper got bruised. I am okay though and as long as my car will last until I go to Taiwan, I should survive. School is also done so now I can do nothing, well at least I can pretend. Trying to go to a foreign country tends to keep a person busy.

So I’m sitting at the library and quite bored out of my mind so I thought I would take some time out of my day and do something else before I go crazy. So most of you should know that I’m moving to Taiwan, at least I am guessing that you do because you are reading my blog. I think that my visa finally went through so I should be good to go to Taiwan next month, if I can pass all of my classes. I had to call the visa office in San Francisco three times over the past week and fax them three letters explaining that I will be volunteering for the first few months in Feng-yuan, Taiwan before I will be getting paid. It was beginning to drive me crazy but I think everything should be taken care of now.
So with that out of the way I can move on to move productive things in my life, like finishing school. I thought that this would be the first semester where I was staying caught up on my assignments but again I fell behind. I have a fifteen page paper due on Monday and I have only written about 1.5 pages so far. Looks like another late night doing homework, oh the joy! I also thought that this would be my last semester of college as an undergraduate student but I found out this week that I will be one class short for my business minor. So I get to take online small business management next semester while living in Taiwan and teaching English. This is not quite what I expected to have happen when I decided to leave but when are things ever as planned?
I am excited to be moving far while but I must admit that I am a little bit nervous about it. It seems that everyone I will be teaching with is getting a degree in teaching already. Hopefully that means that I won’t be influenced by past teaching methods, although I would be nice to receive more than three days of training two weeks before I leave to go overseas. Well I think that I have said enough today and yet I still have 1.5 hours left of work before I get to work on my marathon paper.