N: A slew of disconnected stories

I am going to skip the part where I say how silly I am for waiting so long to post, because if you are reading this, my procrastination hasn’t stopped you from coming back to read!  So, thanks, and welcome back.  Or maybe this is your first time reading my blog.  In that case, I have blogged daily without fail for the past 6 months!   That’s a lie.  But now you know where your expectations should be. 

So hi.  (: 

Taiwan is a magical place.  I even wrote a song about it.  And that’s saying something because I haven’t written a song in at least a year.  Maybe two.  So that’s an exciting piece of news!  The second piece of news is that there is only 2 weeks of school left!  I don’t know how I feel about it.  Being done with lesson plans will be nice, but life without my kids is a touchy subject.  I don’t want to leave them!  I want to pack them all up in my suitcase and bring them to America.  They have become so much a part of me in the past 6 months, that it will feel…different without them.

A funny thing I have enjoyed wondering about for the past 6 months is that all the kids love poop.  Like, cartoonized poop.  They think it’s hilarious.  One of my kids gave me his homework folded up and it said, “To: Nick.  Cool!  Ted’s Homework” and it had drawings and little pictures of poop all over it.  Haha.  Oh the things the kids find amusing here.  Another is all things cute.  Even the boys like cute things.  I wanted to buy journals for my kids, but all they had were cutsie type notebooks.  Finally I gave up.  If the boys hate them, they can tape a piece of black paper over it, I thought.  But guess what?  They all loved them!  I was happy, but I knew that would not fly in America! 

Some of the little rewarding things during my time as a teacher: 

Teaching my kids how to pound it and then having them prefer it over high fives

Teaching Eric how to tie his shoes. 

My favorite child.  There I said it!

Giving my 16 year old twin tutor kids the first birthday party ever.  It was their 16^th birthday and they had never had an actual birthday party!  One wrote later that it was the most special birthday in her life.

My 6^th graders made a facebook group for us, and named it Nic (it’s my nickname and the password to my computer, that they all know (:)

Force feeding my kids PB&J, ants on a log, grilled cheese, and banana peanut butter honey sandwiches after telling me it was weird and then liking it.  (Except for the celery.  No kid actually likes celery.)

Teaching my kids knock knock jokes and then hearing their own made up ones.  Ex.  knock knock.  Who’s there?  Sharpie.  Sharpie who?  Sharpie you’re wife!  (She’ll be).

Teaching my kids about the tooth fairy.  When I couldn’t tell them exactly what she looked like because I had never seen her, they all spent the next 10 minutes telling me they had seen her and described what she really looks like.

Teaching my kids the word “inappropriate”.  Now even my 6^th graders tell on each other!  It’s good because I can’t keep up with all their ridiculous little code words, and sometimes they get away with inappropriate jokes.  Not anymore! Muahahahaaa.  It’s amazing what a more advanced vocabulary does to your integrity.

On a contrary note, here are some stories that have resulted from my lack of teacherlyness:

One of my babies stuck a bead up his nose and had to go to the hospital to get it removed.  Yeah, I’m a really attentive teacher.

Some of us teachers bought some cheapo temporary butterfly tattoos one night for fun.  I put mine safely under my shirt (or so I thought).  I went to class the next day without an undershirt on, like I usually do, because it was so hot.  During KE that morning, one of my babies pulled up my shirt and yelled, “Butterfly!!” and another one of my kids saw, too.  Now they point to my waist and say, “butterfly!” at least once a week.  It’s quite comical.  Especially so, because I taught them that word.

After class, I saw Eric reading a book while he was waiting to go home.  I came over and told him to read it to me.  When he got stuck on a character, I read it for him.  It wasn’t until the second or third time I read the words, that he realized I was speaking Chinese (which was a surprise to him because speaking Chinese in English class is a no no).  His face:  priceless.

Our school has 2 locations, and I teach at both of them.  I went all the way to the “old school”, and realized I had forgotten the snack.  Dang.  Well, I went on back and got it.  Halfway back to the school, out of nowhere, rain just decided to crack down!  Torrential may not be intense enough to cover it.  I got to the school so wet, I didn’t even go in!  I looked like I had belly flopped into a pool.  My kids got a kick out of it!

We did a murder mystery game in 6^th grade.  I must not have explained the directions clearly, specifically the purpose of secret clues in the game.  After giving out the secret clue to the kids who needed it that round, I looked over and saw one of them dipping it in a cup of water!  I said, “what are you doing?!”  He said, “everyone is trying to see the secret clue!”  I said, “it’s okay!  You can show it to people!”  He said, “…oh!”  Everyone had to carefully take out the dripping wet, ripped piece of paper and put it together.  Hahahaa.  I don’t know why, but that story makes me laugh so hard!

I spoke Chinglish, and my kids corrected me.  THAT was an interesting, and slightly embarrassing moment!

I just have so much fun with my kids.  I want to take them back to America with me!!!!!  It makes me really sad that this will really be the last time I see most of them, and they will most likely forget me.  I’m coming to terms with that fact.  But I know I will never forget them, and when I come back in the future and see them, I will give them the biggest hug however much older they are, no matter what!  They will probably freak out and it will be completely awkward…So I’ll make sure someone is filming it.

Here’s to the next 2 weeks! Makin' em count!

N: Pictures are worth a thousand words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I wonder what a cute picture is worth...  Call this post science!


This is for Katy, and for all of those who can't get enough of my adorable kids.  And for science.  (But mostly the first two)

Dragon Boat Festival rice dumplings!

He ROCKS this dance

Say love, say love, oh love's gonna get you down

I named this little girl!  Anna

N: Time, Fish Torture, Earthquakes, and other stories.

Welcome to month 4 of my Taiwan adventure!  Wow.  Time has  a mind of its own over here. I always have Time.  I have Time when I need it, when I want it, and when I don't!  Time goes by so slowly when I want it to- when I'm getting ready in the morning, or when Monday is only a couple hours away, or when I really want to do an activity with my kids after they finish their classwork (okay, maybe I don't have THAT much time). Then it gets weird.  I have all this time, but when I look back on my week or month, I think, what happened?!  I just got here!  Where did Time go?!  To be completely honest and totally cheesy, it went right into my heart.  Taiwan has a saying:  Taiwan touch your heart.  It's all over everywhere.  We always make fun of it, but secretly, I think they're on to something...

So, here's what has happened over the past month!

I don't know if I have ever mentioned this, but the success of every day (well, at least Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when I have them) is measured by how my 6th grade class went.  I love those kids so much, even the crazy ones (actually, especially the crazy ones) and the ones that don't like me very much.  When my kids are on task and don't break every little rule the school has implemented, class rocks!  But, those days come maybe once a week.  We're working on it... Teaching is hard!  Actually, I take that back.  Teaching is a cinch.  Classroom management is hard.  Sometimes, completely impossible.  It takes good ideas, time, knowledge of your students, stubbornness, but flexibility, and most of all, experience.  Knowing that makes me understand why I liked the teachers I did.  They were almost always older teachers.  They just knew how to handle a class!  They knew what kids like, don't like and how to manipulate the whole system so us kids had fun while doing things we found incredibly boring.  The teachers I liked that weren't them were either super easy or really attractive.  Truth.  But yeah.  6th grade.  My favorite group of 12 year olds I have ever known.

These kids rock.

As you may have seen on facebook, this month was science project month.  We had fun!  I had originally planned on us growing salt and sugar crystals, but they had already done that, so I changed our big project to one called, "Pavlov's Fish".  The idea was that you feed the fish, ringing a bell first for a couple weeks and then one day just ring a bell and see if they expect food.  Sounds simple and interesting, right?  It would, wouldn't it?  But you don't have my class.  Number one, we didn't get the suggested Goldfish... I don't even know if they have those here.  Number two, the school didn't have fish food at first, but they did have turtle food!  They said to just crush it up and the fish would eat it.  Well, they didn't.  And it took my kids all of 2 minutes to realize what they were feeding the fish and freaked out!  My camera was filming one of the fish, so I got this whole conversation with my kids on video of them explaining why fish won't eat the turtle food.  Part of it when a little like this: "This is TURTLE food!  Fish don't eat TURTLE food!!  Like, we don't eat elephant food, and people will not eat pig food!  Fish will not eat turtle food, OKAY?!".  Haahaha. Number three, I had to replace fish at least 5 times in the first week and a half.  I don't know if these fish were dumb, defective, suicidal, or if the torture they endured in class was just too much for their little bodies to handle, but they did not want to live.  In fact, one teacher told me that one of the fish actually jumped out of its bowl and died on the counter.  Oh the horror!!  Number 4, we have such little time in class (and a general lack of self control), we are often doing it in a hurry, not exactly waiting for the right times to be ringing the bells and such... If nothing else, we had an excuse to play with fish for a month.

Our first, very messy, science experiment

Vinegar+baking powder balloons

Extracting DNA

My kids wanted to see if they could scare fish to death...

One back up remaining...

In my baby class, I have to admit.  I have favorites.  Love them all!  But some I just downright enjoy every day.  Aison, Joe, and Jerry (for adorableness), and Julian (for hilariousness).  Julian I have story after story of the funny things he does or says or just about his personality.  He has a semester less of English than the other kids, and Kaitlyn and I have practically been been his first English teachers.  He said nothing for the first couple weeks, but then one day he just started shouting everything!  ORANGEEE!  ORANGEEE!  He got really good at that word.  One other story I think is funny of him:  We made patterned necklaces a couple weeks ago.  He really loved it, except he didn't want a necklace.  He just wanted the untied string with the beads on it.  He refused to let me tie a knot.  Well, during break, he went to the bathroom and didn't come out for a couple minutes.  I wondered what was up, so I went over and just started laughing!  He must have lost all his beads while he was going to the bathroom because he was standing in the middle of the floor, trying really hard to put the beads back on his string with his little pants down.  Hahaha  ohhh, I just went in and helped him and tied a know on the end of his string even though he still didn't want one.

Jerry's new haircut

I have plenty of pictures of Julian, and none are of him smiling.  This isn't 

candid!  He seriously posed his face like that.

Aison is so silly.  He loves my glasses!

It was cute when he did it, then it just got crazy when all the other kids wanted a go

(:

Joe!  

We had a pretty significant sized earthquake here on Wednesday!  (I heard it made US news?) It was a 6.0, but we probably felt it at a level 5 intensity.  Still pretty big!  I have felt some pretty significant sized earthquakes since I have been here, but they are all like 5 seconds long (long for what I experience in Cali,  but still short enough to just wait out).  So the interesting thing about this earthquake was that it was really long.  I noticed it right away, but I thought we'd just wait it out.  Then it didn't stop!  And I had no idea what the procedure was...  At first I was just standing there, looking out my classroom window, swaying.  It was the coolest feeling!  We got love waves at Berhan.  (This is where I usually give a warning that I will start talking Geology and give my audience the option to skip down a couple sentences if they want, but I know whoever is reading this isn't lame.  So, read on and like it!) There are two kinds of surface waves- the kind we feel when an earthquake happens.  Rayleigh waves and love waves.  Rayleigh waves have vertical and horizontal displacement, so you get up/down, side to side shaking.  Love waves have no vertical displacement so it's all side to side shaking- but it's not really shaking!  It's like swaying.  Puts you in a weird trance.  Okay, so that last part isn't scientific, but that's what happened to me!  Took one of my kids to snap me out of it!  My little 8 year old, Gabriel, saw that it wasn't stopping and he got up and ran to the wall across from me, sat down and put his hands over his head.  He looked up at me like, "Teacher, what do we do?!"  And I had no idea.  What were the drills in school in the US?  Oh!  Right!  Get under a table!  Well, it looked like the kids were taught something else, because they were all against the wall, except for a couple.  So I thought, oh! Uh, door frame!  So I lead the remaining kids to the door.  By the time I opened it, the earthquake had stopped.  We took all the kids out of the building and waited there for like 10 or 15 minutes.  In case of an after shock?  I'm not sure.  Made it a very interesting morning, though!  So, 2 things I learned from this experience: One, I really need to clear up the whole earthquake drill thing.  Two, I understand why they're called love waves!  Cool!


Last little tid bit:  I finished my 3rd book!  I have read The Notebook, Hatchet, and The Help.  Onto Great Expectations. 

K: The many joys of the Taipei, Taiwan airport

On grounds of not displeasing a most beloved father (whom I made a promise with that I would write in the blog before the end of this week), here I am making my second, yes, second, post! I know, Nicole totally has me whipped at blogging, but hopefully I can slowly redeem myself beginning right now (with emphasis on “slowly”).

I believe my last post dealt only with my plane flight to Taiwan, so I’ll skim over a couple things and do my best to catch everyone up!  Basically, I got off the flight in Taiwan and (having thankfully listened to Nicole’s step-by-step recordings of telling me what to do) followed the majority of my fellow flyers to the customs line. Once there, having no idea what was going on, I simply jumped in line (which of course, wasn’t what I was supposed to do). After waiting patiently for several (or more like twenty) minutes with an over packed carryon that I was regretting more and more by the minute, I reached the front desk and spoke with a man that immediately asked me for my paper work. Now, if I had been paying more attention, I would have noticed that before most of the individuals were getting in line, they were filling out a small piece of white paper with basic information on tables nearby. I, being somewhat dazed due to the 14-hour plane flight, had completely missed this small detail and was sent back to fill out the slip. After getting back in line and reaching the same man yet again, I was told that because I didn’t have my visa (thanks to the San Francisco Embassy who had been in the middle of some switchover before Nicole and I left, or something of that sort) I needed to go to a different line and then come back. I tried to explain that the school, Berhan, was going to get my work visa once I got there, but I think that when he heard the “six-month” part he didn’t think I wanted to get the temporary visa that would have allowed me to go to baggage without any problems. So after leaving the line yet again, I got in a third line, spoke with an individual who was confused as much as I was (I think the whole language barrier was the majority of the problem), and ended up simply jumping back in the line I had just left. Once again, I returned to the front of the customs line and this time, speaking with a different gentleman, was allowed to get a 90-day visa and be on my way.  Hallelujah! I swear I could hear the angels singing.

Once I got to baggage and found my luggage, I stayed calm, found Nicole waiting for me, and made it to Berhan without the slightest of struggles. NOT. I mean, where is the fun in having something workout according to plan? Instead, I got my baggage, couldn’t see Nicole anywhere, and slightly (okay, maybe more than slightly) began to panic. I sat down on my suitcases, pulled out my laptop, and got on facebook to see if Nicole had written me. While reading her message that she had made it to the airport, I began responding when I heard a voice ask if I were a teacher going to Berhan. I looked up and with a flood of relief, realized that I had just met one of my fellow teachers, the amazing Kylie Weiser, and instantly began a conversation.  Nicole and the fantastic Sunny (also another teacher) met up with us after a few minutes, and thus began our journey to Berhan

Okay, seeing the length it took me just to tell the above story, I should probably take my own advice at the beginning of the post and condense. We found a currency exchange station, traded out our money for our first Taiwanese bills (well, with my college funds it wasn’t bills quite yet, just coins), and found a pay phone. Surprisingly, using payphones in the Taipei airport is about as fun as waiting in lines at the DMV on your day off (you can all thank Nicole for that brilliant analogy). After finally receiving help from a woman at the lost and found, and thanks to Nicole’s Chinese skills (which although she says are “ incredibly limited… sad, really” are ten-thousand times better than any of the other teachers at Berhan), we were able to reach the school and let them know we were on our way (or more
correctly, Nicole was able to reach the school and let them know we were on our way, while I read a  fascinating display on the quality of Taiwanese coffee beans). Once finished with the phone, we made our way to the side doors of the airport, bought bus tickets to Taichung Station (or so we thought…), and boarded a bus that started us on one awesome adventure.

As the hour is growing late, I’ll end here with promises of posting again on the morrow (…or maybe in a few days)! Trust me, the story is worth reading.

N: Chinese New Year Adventures

Before I got to Taiwan, I was thrilled by the idea that I'd be spending Chinese New Year there!  It was an experience I couldn't WAIT to have.  Then my dad booked a flight during Chinese New Year and I knew it would be the most epic week of my short 20 years.

FRIDAY:
Dad got here on Friday and poked his head in my classroom window.  "Xiao pengyou hao!" He said.  I was happily surprised!  He was supposed to get there like an hour later and Gerald would go pick him up, but he just used his Mandarin/ direction skills and just walked from the station to the school!  (Yeah, I know he's awesome.) He hung out in my classes, entertaining my kids (especially Eric who could NOT stand still-he just wanted to climb all over him).  After my morning classes, we went to got some lunch from A Bao house and a bing sha from our little bing sha place on the corner of the street.  (Man, a pork burger and a chocolate banana bing sha has to be the best lunch ever!)  I gave my other classes some American goodies that my dad brought up for me: valentines, silly bands, candy hearts and life savers.  They were a big hit!  After my 6th grade class, I had my High School class, which is only one girl, so we went out to a Japanese place for dinner. Super good.  It was a good day! 

Dad talking to the kids, while Eric waits eagerly for his turn to jump on him

SATURDAY:
Saturday morning, we went out for an amazing breakfast.  Some hot dojan (hot soybean milk), a baozi (soft bread filled with meat and veggies), and a dan bing (like a green onion omelet in a thin tortilla).  YUM.  After, we went to Taichung to check out the mission home.  My dad was so pumped!  He a bunch of pictures of the area and the place he stayed his first night on the mission.  Then we walked around the Art Museum (it was closed for CNY) and just enjoyed the sights and the amazingly beautiful weather.  Later, we tried to go to Lukang.  It had been a while since I went last, but I was pretty confident I knew how to get there.  Well, we got there alright, but it took a lot longer than I had remembered and it was dark when we got there.  On top of that, nothing was going on.  I was super bummed out...not necessarily because I really wanted to see Lukang, but because we spent a lot of time and stuff getting there to have to turn around.  But we decided to try to go another day.

Dad and the mission home in Taichung

Beautiful, isn't it?

SUNDAY:
This was a pretty cool day!  Dad and I decided to go to the Chinese ward near the school rather than my branch in Taichung.  He knew there was a sister that served in his mission who went to that ward, Sister Lin.  Well, she was apparently out of town wen we got there, but we still enjoyed the meeting (only had 1 meeting for CNY).  There was some other information we were also looking for there.  My dad's mission friend from home told us that she had a friend, Frances, she taught on the mission that she would like us to visit!  We asked around to see if anyone knew her phone number.  Well, the people are so amazing, someone got her on the line for us AND my dad's friend who was out of town.  We got to talk to both of them.  Frances came to the church and we got to talk to her for a while.  She is so nice! It was really a lovely visit.  Then, Sister Lin invited us to come by and visit later that day, and we did!  It was so nice.  We looked though all their old mission photos and they talked about all their friends and stories.  It was so much fun to listen to my dad speak Chinese with others. 

With the Lin family

MONDAY:
Today was another rockin day.  Kaitlyn, my dad and I went to Sun Moon Lake. We first stopped in Puli to get some pictures and footage of it to show my dad's friend and old mission comp who served there.  We weren't exactly sure where to find a chapel, so my dad started to ask around.  We walked into a little food place and my dad asked some of the people sitting in there (I think they were part of the family that ran the place).  We ordered a dan bing (it had corn in it!) and they looked up the address.  The lady who was making our food told the people we were talking to to drive us there!  So they drove us over and we snapped a few pics and they drove us back to the bus station.  Such nice people!  On an earth nerdy-note: Puli is the epicenter of the big earthquake here in 1999.  It was kind of exciting to be there for that reason:) Sun Moon Lake was gorgeous.  The lake was huge!  We took a boat over to the other side to ride on the cable cars over a hill over to the culture center.  It was so beautiful being above looking down on all the trees, giant patches of pink flowers, and then the lake.  Awesome.  We wandered around the streets, got some fresh squeezed orange juice, and mu gua niu nai (papaya milk), or was it dong gua cha (winter melon tea)?...either way, something delicious.  We ran into a bunch of missionaries hanging out on their Pday!  That was cool.  (It seemed that we saw missionaries everywhere we went this week).  We took our time looking around, taking pictures and soaking it all in, then headed back!

Some beautiful geology upon entering Puli

TUESDAY (As my dad called it: Tainan Tuesday):
Today, dad and I took the bullet train down to Tainan.  We walked around a big Confucian Temple where there was a bunch of fun things going on in the streets.  People were drawing on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk, selling, buying, performing (there was a couple American guys playing country music! Haha.  Oh, and there was a cool mime), and enjoying (yet again) the beautiful weather.  We spent all day just walking around!  We saw two church buildings, one of which my dad went to on his mission.  He was amazed by how much has changed since he was here.  So many buildings now fill the giant empty fields that surrounded the building when he was here last.  Adventurous day!

WEDNESDAY:
It was nice to sleep in and take it slow on Wednesday.  We lounged about in the morning until about noon, and we went over to the old school (the other school's location across the street from the owners of Berhan)
for a lunch with Gerald's wife's family.  The way they presented the invitation, it sounded like a low key kind of come in, grab some food , say hi and socialize a bit.  What I forgot was that I was in Taiwan and it was Chinese New Year.  There were so many people there!  Tables with elaborate pink table cloths, wine glasses and plates waited for us.  And then the food came.  SO MUCH FOOD!  When Gerald mentioned ten plus courses, I thought he was joking.  He wasn't joking.  We started out with a tray full of fish appetizers, sahimi, squid eggs (which didn't quite make sense to me because they looked like jerky), abalone, and duck (okay, that's not fish.).  Then came a soup with shrimp, bamboo, and some other things that I never got to ask what they were...  It was good, though!  Then we got a giant fish that we just all dug our chopsticks into.  The next thing we ate was crab.  Now, this was no ordinary crab.  It was an entire crab.  Legs, shell, pinchers and all.  It was deep fried to the max-you just ate the whole thing.  It hurts me to admit, but it was my favorite thing we ate that day.  I had at least one an a half.  Dang it was good.  Then we had a little stir fry with scallops and veggies.  That was pretty good, considering scallops aren't my all time favorite seafood.  If the the crab wasn't enough, out came lobster!  This little guy wasn't fried, but still really yummy.  Then we had another soup with veggies, which was really good.  THEN we got a plate with fried pork steaks, and one with spring rolls, rice dumpling-type things, and a bean pastry thing.  I was stuffed to the max by the time dessert came!  Cake, little jello cups, and chocolate ice cream hearts.  Gosh.  Definitely on my list of most amazing food experiences ever.  After socializing for a little while, we went back to the school for a bit.  Then my dad and I went on a bike ride.  The bike path was super crowded!  But it was still really fun.  We went on the bridge to the tunnel through the mountain to Houli.  It was such a nice ride!  The weather was great (still) on top of everything. 

a pineapple field!

THURSDAY:
Sister Lin and her two boys took us over to Lukang!  Yay!  I love Lukang.  Because of CNY, it was super crowded, but still really fun.  We didn't dare try to squeeze in the little alleys we like to shop in when we come here, but we went over to the bigger streets and the Oldest Temple in Taiwan.  We watched as everyone prayed, burned incense, and hit the big golden gong (we did, too!).  Sister Lin got us all a bunch of yummy things to try and showed us places to look and shop and walk around.  She is awesome.  Such a wonderful guide and friend!  I got some Moji.  YUM.  Love that stuff.  We hung out that afternoon, and I started reading The Notebook (which, FYI, is totally different in than the movie.  Love the movie, love the book, but besides the main premise, there's not a big similarity).  Then we went shopping downtown for a while.

FRIDAY:
Nearing the end!  Tried not to think about it.  Today, Sister Lin and her two boys came again and took us to the COOLEST day market I have ever been to.  It is down town and it is super cheap and really exciting.  I will definitely be going back.  That was pretty cool.  We got lunch at Le Chie's and got bing sha's, then had the best lazy afternoon.  Dad updated facebook and we took naps in the lounge.  It was awesome.  I contemplated taking a walk because the weather was so nice, but the sun shining through the window and the wind blowing in made the big seat I was reading in 100 times more comfortable and I finally gave into the nap urge.  It was marvelous.  AND I finished The Notebook (they DON'T die in the end.)!  When it started to get darker, we went to the night market.  To our surprise, our little night market down the street wasn't there!  Probably for CNY... So we ventured on down town and hung out there and did some shopping and had the most delicious bing (shaved ice) with chocolate, peanuts, strawberries and sweetened condensed milk.  When we got back, it wasn't too late so we popped in Freedom Writers.  It was great.

Bing in the making

Watch it-Don't drool on your computer, now

Tired, walking through crowds and the smell of stinky tofu, but worth it!

SATURDAY:
Woke up at 8:30 so we could go back to the yummy breakfast place we went to the week before.  It was great, as usual.  With the few hours remaining before he had to go, dad packed and then we went for a little bike ride.  We rode down to the bike path to Dongshi, but we stopped at some benches along the path and just enjoyed the environment!  I love this bike path.  I couldn't help but take a video.  It was a perfect day!  The weather was lovely, birds were chirping, butterflies all over the place, and people passing by, saying hi to us.  It was great.  We went for one last mu gua niu nai and a chocolate banana bing sha and waited for awesome Sister Lin to come by and take dad to the train station.  It had been a awesome, awesome, AWESOME week.  Of epic proportions, as I predicted.

After dad left, I plopped myself in my comfy chair in the lounge and started reading The Help.  Then I watched Pitch Perfect, The Frog Princess, and a bunch of Psych episodes.  It was awesome.  I love not doing anything productive and it being okay!!

I spent today, my last day of break, at church, then at home writing this, sending emails, hanging out, eating all my apples for lunch and dinner, and dancing on the roof.  I'd say it was a good last day of break.  I will definitely never forget this great week!  I'm ready to see all my kids again:)