N: Oh, you know, the usual.

So, I was trying to think about what I should post about the other day, and besides a couple cool places I visited, I thought, man.  Nothing's new.  I've just been doing normal day to day things.  My post will be really short. I'll be like, well, I've just been doing the usual.  But then I thought, my "the usual" is Teaching English, learning Chinese, biking, hiking, and eating a lot of crazy foods in Taiwan".  So, it's actually kind of interesting (for the time being)!
So here is the usual:
I've been teaching, teaching, teaching.  Sometimes I feel like it's all I do from Monday to Friday.  I teach, take a break, teach, and then if I don't have lesson plans to do, all I want to do is nothing.  I get so tired, all I do is sit down until something pressing comes to mind (and even then, I usually procrastinate it to just do nothing).  I do love teaching, though!  I LOVE my kids.  Like, SO much.  They all have special places in my heart, and sometimes I have to trick my brain into thinking I'm never going to leave them.  Some of my favorite kids are the trouble makers, or the rowdy ones.  They just make class so interesting and it's not the same when they are gone (in a ghostly quiet way).  I love going downstairs after classes and playing with the kids while they wait for their parents.  Except for my 6th graders, the kids always come yelling, "teacher! Teacher!"  and hug me and play.  It's precious!!  I like that I can pick my kids up.  In America that's a no no.  No hugging, kissing, or holding.  It would be so hard if we had that rule, because my kids are so gosh darned cute!!! Especially the 3 and 4 year olds.  One of my babies, Melody today came up to me and started kissing me all over my face.  I had no idea how to react to her, but she was so cute and I wasn't fired. :)

I am doing 2 language exchanges.  One is with a wonderful sister from church, Sister Domy.  She is a great teacher, and she brings us lunch:)  She is so thoughtful! It is me, Kaitlyn and Brendan who do the language exchange with her.  Love it.  The other is with some of the secretaries at the school.  I love our secretaries here!  They are all SO nice, patient and very, very, very helpful with the kids and just about anything else we ask them about.  Our first exchange, we met at Starbucks.  It was two stories!  Super fancy.  We started learning colors, which is great.  Last week, we met at a Japanese food place and ate all kinds of yummy things.  We had sushi (my particular favorite), some type of noodle soup, onion, sahimi (it was good!  Like my rainbow roll...without the roll), and a rice ball thing.  Yeah, I try a lot of foods and have no idea what they are called, so I just call it whatever it looks like followed by "thing".  (I do know the name of something I tried the other day, though, because I asked: moaji (and of course, it's Taiwanese, so I have no idea how to spell it).  It is a squishy white dough rolled in a sweet powder.  I love that stuff!)  Next week for language exchange, we are getting stinky tofu. Yummmmmm... We'll document it well, don't worry.

At fancy Starbucks

At the Japanese place (taking turns wearing Peggy's daughter, Katrina's little veil)

Some other foods I have had recently are pig's ear, rice popcorn square thing, oval chewy squishy thing with fillings, bean shaved ice, squid balls, fired nut ball things, and a sweet-sour powder that they put on everything.  The pig's ear had a good flavor, but rubber and cartilage aren't the most appetizing textures.  On one of out hikes, we got a square of rice that is cooked with sugar until it pops like popcorn, then they package it in squares.  It tasted like a light popcorn ball.  We also got some things that I just don't even know how to explain.  One was pink, kind of swee filled with red beans, and one was green, filled with some kind of stringy seaweed or something.  They were both chewy like moaji, but more rubbery than doughy.  Not my favorite, but we ate it anyways.  I went out with a friend and she got shaved ice for us.  I was expecting something a little like a snow cone, but when the lady gave it to us, it was quite different from what I expected.  It was shaved ice, with a sweet syrup, topped with beans and some little balls that were chewy.  It tasted like sweet, chilled beans.  Good, but...unexpected.  We also got squid balls which ROCKED.  They were fried dough filled with squid with some spicy sauce on top. YUM.  We also got some other little fried ball filled with some kind of nut.  Macadamia nut, maybe?  I don't know, but it was delightful.  I got some of this powder that I need to find the name of because I LOVE it.  I put it on guava and it is awesome.  It's kind of a sweet, but sour taste that goes on everything.  It's great.  So, those are the top things.  I have had some other different foods, but, you know, it's just the usual. (AKA it needs it's own, separate post) :)


For hiking and biking, there's not much to say.  I think pictures really take care of that!  Enjoy these :)

With Joanne and Kathrine, one of the secretary's daughters