Say Cheese!, Eat Cheese, Cheesy Smile.

This was after our temple trip in Taipei. This is more than half of our branch.

After the temple they let us loose in Taipei and we went to Taipei 101 to have dinner. This food was. . . good but the seasoning was very strong. They also love to put salad dressing on everything and call it mayonnaise. Don't understand it but I suppose I'll survive.

After we got home from the temple Laura decided she wanted a haircut. So it began at about 10:30 and she was nice enough to let me straighten her hair. Luckily I didn't burn her, but that would have made it exciting.

The Roller Coaster that is Taiwnese Bureaucracy

So, I must say the living and working in Taiwan has given me a greater appreciation for the government system in America. Here is where it all begins. When I signed up to work in Taiwan I was told that it would be really easy to apply for a visitors visa for Taiwan. I believed them of course but then things began blowing up in my face. The San Fransicso TECO (Taiwan Economic Cultural Office) had me run circles for my visa and it took me even longer to get my visa than normal. It ended up taking about one month longer than I expected so that was truly an adventure. So that was not a highlight of my life.

The young girl on the right is one of my fourth-graders.

How about the good things that come out of Taiwan? Well, for a start we went to an awesome concert on Thursday night and had the chance to hear a few songs in Chinese and a few in English. It was nice to hear some English although I must admit that their accents were pretty strong. The mayor of Feng-Yuan was there and one of my students performed on the violin. The MC was great because she danced around during every song. Apparently Taiwan is able to produce something good, although sometimes it just takes a while.

This is the Mayor of Feng-Yuan

Teaching in Feng Yuan

So what is teaching in Taiwan really like? Sometimes it feels like organized play other times it just feels like organized chaos. We tend to have some fun in nearly every class period but sometimes it feels like to just barely have a handle on what is going on. As my roommate Joseph so eloquently mentioned in his blog, the Chinese teachers have a one up on us in regards to classroom management. Although I don't agree with the Chinese teachers being able to physically punish the students it does make it a little harder for us to do our jobs. When the kids don't have to worry about us hitting them it makes us look like pansies. Well sometimes we have pure moments of delight though. For e.g. ( a word I recently taught some of my students.):

So those are the awesome teaching experiences that I have enjoyed so far while teaching in the little city of Feng Yuan. Perhaps the greatest part about teaching the second language though is that I know exactly what is going on in the conversation. However that will soon be changing. I talked to one of my students fathers today and he invited me to do a language exchange. Basically what that means is that I will be signing my Tuesday nights away for the next six months to try to improve a families understanding of the English language. In return I believe that they might purchase a few meals for me and try to pound a few more Chinese phrases into my head. I'm hoping that I enjoy this and honestly it should be an exciting experience. I mean who knows how many times I'll get to brake the Word of Wisdom by drinking a drink that turns out to be tea? On second thought, no one drinks while they eat dinner so that shouldn't be a problem either. Hopefully it will turn out all right but I am grateful for the opportunity to learn a little bit of Chinese. Who knows, maybe I will have the chance to share the gospel with this family and they might even invite me to spend the Chinese New Year with them. I'm hoping that it leads to great opportunities be it might just be a dud experience too.

So back to my teaching. On Wednesday and Friday nights I teach what some like to call a writing class. There are two girls and me. They are 14 and not really interested in talking to me. The first night of the class was. . . awkward. I had no idea what sort of lesson plan I should be following and the only things that I was told was to talk to them. Somehow I made it through two hours of murder and I had Wednesday night to look forward to. I decided that we would play Monopoly and that was my only plan for tonight. It turned out rather well. I just kind of sat there, had them read me the rules and we began playing. It might turn out to be an interesting game though. At the moment I have a monopoly on some light blue section, one of the girls is almost out of money, because I bid against her and dropped out when the price was too high. The other girl doesn't really like to buy anything and so now she is running out of money and has almost nothing to show for it. I am afraid that I am a little bit too competitive even against my students. If the game continues like this I will be the only person in a decent spot and I'll feel real bad for losing.
Well, seeing as it is now 12:30 I should probably post this thing and move on with my life. Happy hunting and have a great day.

Adventures in Church

So I have finally decided to update my blog after many complaints from admiring fans. Joseph my roommate can hear them screaming. It's all in his mind, I think that he is going crazy, sometimes I worry about him. If you read his blog then you'll know what I mean. Anway, I told you that I would be writing about my life and that is why you came to my blog so I should probably live up to my word and follow through.

As the title of the blog states, there are adventures in going to church in Taiwan. For instance, going to the ward activity proved to be quite the adventures. We made it onto the bus and we though that we knew where we were going. We were getting a little overconfident and then suddenly I realized that we had passed the stop which we had gotten off at the week before. You wouldn't imagine the things that run through your head when you are racing through the streets of a foreign country where everything looks the same and the character mean next to nothing to you. Because none of us in our group speaks any workable Chinese we would have been lost for days. Luckily we did get off of the bus though and made it to the church. Granted we were a little bit late for the activity but we made it without any harm done.

So the ward activity was . . . interesting. We played a game where an egg gets passed in a circle on a spoon. An innocent activity, if the egg is hard boiled. Unfortunately the eggs had not been hard boiled and well lets just say we got a little overly emotional involved. One of the members of the circle got bumped after the egg had been passed to him and he dropped the egg. We cleaned up the first mess and then we tired to hurriedly pass another egg and this happened:

The next day in priesthood we noticed that the egg had lefts its mark and we couldn't let the moment pass by without proper documentation.

So the church. I have already posted a picutre of what it looks like but I have failed to mention that it is in the middle of city with a hospital on one side, the mission home and office directly next door and shopping centers around the rest of the church center. However the highlight would have to be the cafe located due north of the chapel:

We have not yet investigated exactly what they sell yet but it certainly seems to be sending some sort of messege to the people of Taiwan. Maybe Marihuana is the next big thing in Taiwan that I am not currently awared of yet.

On a different not many of you have been worried about me finding a Taiwanese bride while living in the country but it has already been one week and there is no reason to fear yet. At least that is what I thought until I got on the bus to go to church this morning. I sat down in the back of the bus in a row with a little table to put your belongings on. I looked down and saw this:

I started thinking about taking this diamond shaped item with me and using it to propose to a girl, thinking that this might be just the sign I was looking for. The thought did cross my mind but I thought better of it and did not take it. But it did put me into a difficult spot. I wanted to take it up to the bus driver and tell him that I had found it, but then I realized that he would not understand any of the words coming out of my mouth and I should just save my breath. Now when the time is right I will have to go to a local jewerly store and make my purchase there. This sign might be just the place I decide to pick up the ring for my lover!

How much you love me anyways? Are you reading my blog? Anyways, I have probably talked for long enough and I should go to bed earlier than I did last night. I will have a full day teaching kindergarten and fifth grade, it should be a blast! Have a nice sabbath day, mine was enjoyable.

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.