Thanksgiving and the past two weeks

Wowzers… Long time, no update.

It has been an awesome few weeks. I have been so busy that I am exhausted, but it is a good busy.


Last week I taught in the English classroom. The interns and I taught on Restaurant vocabulary. I've also had several girls dinner and one on one dinners with women in my small group! It's been awesome!

Last weekend, I met my fellow Foreign English teachers in Kaohsiung (a town about 1 hour away) for some sight seeing. We had a really good time. We viewed the Lotus Pond, the dome of lights and went up Monkey Mountain where there were tons of scary Monkeys. It was really fun to see everyone and catch up with the people I came to Orientation with.  

This week was Thanksgiving of course. Although, I did not have the day off, I still managed to enjoy it. By now, I have had three Thanksgiving dinners, all including Turkey. Wednesday night, I got together at a restaurant with my English Small group from church and had an awesome turkey dinner. The pumpkin pie was especially wonderful. It was a small group, but we had a lot of fun. Thursday night, my Taiwanese coworkers, the interns and myself all had Thanksgiving dinner together at a restaurant. It was very good and very fun. I got to pray before the meal and explain the origins of Thanksgiving to the Taiwanese. We also found the wishbone and broke it. I won!

Friday morning during my break, I played volleyball with the 11^th PE class. It was a lot of fun. I accidentally hit the ball once and hit a kid in the face. It was ok because a few minutes later, someone hit the ball and because a teacher was talking it me, I didn’t see it and it bounced off the top of my head. They were so funny and so concerned for me, but it didn’t even hurt. 

Also on Friday I headed to Taipei to see Alicia for the weekend. After a quite eventful trip, I made it to her church and attended the last Alpha meeting (I was there for the pre-Alpha event the first time I went to Taipei). There was good food and entertainment. I even ended up singing in the choir (Imagine that). After Alpha, Alicia and I went and got YoFroyo (yogurt) and watched a movie while she cut my hair.

 Saturday we went and saw Joshua (a baby in an orphanage that she helps take care of). Joshua is severely disabled and has very bad seizures, but Alicia loves this little guy with all of her heart. It was so good to meet him and all the people at the orphanage that she talks about all the time. While she did Joshua’s exercises, I played with the other kids. It was a blast. After that we went and  ate lunch at MaryJane’s pizza! The best pizza ever! Then we went to Chiang Kai Shek’s memorial.  (probably grossly misspelled) While we were there we saw the soldier’s ceremonially take down the flag which was really cool. We took tons of cool pictures before heading back to meet Caty, Dillon, Cindy, and Joe at Tostaria, a grilled cheese restaurant. It was fun and we sat and talked for a long time!

Sunday we went to church and then I went to Moses and Joyce’s (Alicia’s pastor and his wife) house to cook. I made grandmother’s apple salad and it turned out ok. Not as good as hers, but decent. There were probably about 30 foreigners and Taiwanese there. Everyone brought a dish and it was delicious!! It really felt like Thanksgiving. After we ate, we sat around and told stories about family Christmas and Thanksgiving. 

 

Monday, we got up and headed to DUNKIN DONUTS to meet Caty for her and Alicia’s weekly “catch-up”.  Amazing Donuts!! After that, I got on the HSR and headed home. At 3 pm. I met Evie Bielby and we went and saw Breaking Dawn. Honestly wasn’t that impressed with it but we had fun. There weren’t many people in the theatre and Evie and I laughed and whispered all the way through the movie. Most Taiwanese don’t have the same sense of humor as we do, so we were the only people laughing at most of the jokes. 

It was a great weekend with good friends and lots of spoken English. I now go back to struggling to learn Chinese and communicate in the hardest language EVER!