Day...008?

Yesterday we all went out to dinner at the orange chicken restaurant. I'm not sure what it is actually called, but it was so good! I went a little overboard and ordered too much, but ended up sharing, so everything got eaten.
These are some of the girls I'm living/teaching with. Haha, not the best photo of some of them, but not awful either :)

(Veronica, Heather, Sara, Rachel, Kendra, and Kylie)

Sweet and sour fish, egg flower soup, and fried pork dumplings, yum :)

There are a lot of funny ways they use English over here. My milk container says "Born in Taiwan," and there is a lingerie shop chain over here that is actually named "Easy," ahahahaha :D I don't actually have a photo of the second one, but the photo I do have is the same concept, it's just a brand instead :P

Has it Been a Week Already?

I can't believe it's Monday again already! It has been such an amazing week. We all went to to Taichung for church yesterday. The English speaking branch here is only 40 to 50 people big and ten of those people are the teachers at Berhan. The relief society and primary presidents are Destiny and Kiri, both of whom are leaving this week, which means we are all probably crossing our fingers that we don't get those callings, haha :) But I am so glad that I was able to go yesterday. My remaining fears and doubts about my decision to come here to Feng Yuan have dissipated and I feel completely at peace with where I am and what I am doing. This morning when I woke up and walked out to the hall and saw the sun over the mountains I truly felt like I was home. I am so grateful to be having this experience right now and I know that I have so much to learn and so many ways to grow while I am here.

We got our teaching assignments today and I was actually very surprised by the classes I have been assigned to teach. I teach afternoon kindergarten Monday through Friday, 2nd level elementary a few days a week, and I also have both a junior high and high school writing class. It is a wider spectrum of age than I was expecting and I didn't realize that anything above elementary was taught here, but I am so excited to start. I know that I am going to love this. I have the best feeling about it and I am so glad that I get to work with older kids too! Hooray!

Also, since I tend to skimp on the writing...and on the photos, here are a few links to some of the other teachers' blogs. They are a lot better about mentioning the little things and posting more photos. I am too much of a perfectionist to post unedited photos, and I think that I will be busy enough that I won't want to spend hours on a single blog post. These girls are amazing and I think it will be fun for you to see it from their perspectives too (plus you will have a slightly better idea of what really goes on over here), so check out their blogs!

Rachel- Pink Lemonade
Kylie- taiwantaradiddles
Kaylee- How Did it Get Late So Soon?
Heather- The Time of My Life
Kendra- Oh, The Places You'll Go

I haven't taken very many photos in the last two days, but here is one from the roof of the school at night. Apologies. My nighttime photography skills are found to be lacking.

Taichung Night Market

 

 

Taiwan: 004

So, I am supposed to be posting every night about what happened over the day, but last night we got home late and I wanted to get to bed, what with church being in the morning and all.

Yesterday morning (actually, it was like 10 and we'd already been up for about 5 hours) Rachel and I decided we wanted to ride our bikes to Sogo and walk around again. Sogo is a big department store in Fong Yuan where they have oodles and oodles of really cute (and pretty pricey) clothes, shoes, appliances, cosmetics, and other things that you would expect to see in any department store. And it is very nicely air conditioned :D We got there at about 10:30 only to discover it doesn't even open until 11:00! So, rather than sit outside for half and hour we decided to explore the street on foot. We found an awesome store a few blocks away. I might be spending quite a bit of time there. First of all, they had racks and racks of the cutest hair accessories. Most of them probably aren't appropriate for a 22 year old to be wearing though :/ But that is okay! I will tell you why: because they had aisles full of totally awesome office and art supplies! YAY! When we went to check out a little boy ran up to me and said "Hi, how are you today?" I answered him and he looked at me with a blank stare for a few seconds and then just ran away. It was pretty cute. Also, upstairs they had snacks and we found this:

 

 Jumping candy! Hee, hee :} It's a chocolate bar with Pop Rocks inside. It reminded me of the Mother's oreo cookie things with Pop Rocks in them that I was obsessed with in junior high. Remember those mom? They were sooo cool, and now we've found something almost as cool!

On our way to the store we saw this dog just chillin'. We kind of woke him up from his nap when we took photos. Sorry doggy.

Apparently there are a lot of stray dogs around here. I guess there are packs of them up in the mountains, but they are nice dogs mostly. And they are cute.

Yesterday evening we all caught a bus to Taichung. We were going to the night market, but decided we wanted to eat first. Well, this is where we ended up getting dinner:

Just in case you can't tell what that says, the big print says "Modern Toilet." Yep. we ate at a toilet restaurant. We sat on toilets instead of chairs. Our tables were big pieces of glass on top of tubs and sinks. And the dishes...well, how about you just look at them.

Those last ones are squatter toilets. 

The food was actually really good. I had smoked chicken with cream sauce (second pic). Yum :) But I definitely don't think I'll be eating there ever again. I know, I'm no fun, but I think once is enough in this case for me.

Taiwan: 003

I love it here. Can I just say that? Actually, I really hated it for most of the first day. It was really fascinating until we got to the school and had to drag 50 pound pieces of luggage up three flights of stairs (my arms are still sore). I was so exhausted and it was only like....I don't know, 11:00 in the morning? So we couldn't go to sleep. They actually told us "No sleep until 9:00 tonight!" So, day one I pretty much wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. I was tired, there wasn't very familiar food, I was thirsty, and hot, and I felt so gross from the long flight and humidity. Being in a foreign place is a lot harder to deal with when you feel like your basic needs are not being met. I kept thinking "I have to be here for six months. I think I would rather die than do that." But after a solid 8 hours of sleep (I was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I slept like a rock) I was feeling much more loving towards the world and I have loved Feng Yuan since I woke up yesterday morning.  And I am so grateful that they made us stay up. I didn't go to bed until 10 pm, but I woke up at 6 am and haven't experienced any jetlag. Hallelujah!  The people here are so nice, although some of the things they do can be a little disconcerting, i.e. leaning over the table next to my chair, inches away from my face and staring at me, but they are so willing to help and patient with my lack of ability to communicate with them. I know about 15 phrases in Chinese. Yep, gotta work on that.

Anyway! This morning before training we rode our bikes to morning market. I would have thought that riding a bike here would be...stressful. The streets are packed and nobody really follows traffic laws, but I absolutely love the chaos. There are so many colors and noises and sounds and people to watch and new things to figure out and learn. I am in heaven.

Here are some photos of morning market:

 

I was walking through the stalls with another teacher and this lady stopped us and handed me a lychee nut (second photo on the left in the front). I tried it and was thinking "okay, maybe I should buy some," so I nodded and said "yao" (want) and she started just loading a ton of them into a plastic bag. I was like "ah! Enough! That's enough!" and playing charades to try and help her understand what I was saying. So, I now have an enormous bag of lychee nuts that I don't have strong feelings of fondness toward. Oh well, it only cost about $1.75 US...I'll eat some of them.

Taiwan: 002

The view from the rooftop:

The bakery down the street and around the corner. I have a feeling that I am going to be eating here a lot. Soooo good.

Taiwan: 001

I was a zombie yesterday due to sleep deprivation, so I don't remember too much except being super excited on the bus, missing jamba juice (but they have bing-sha here which is almost as good :D), and the yellow building on the corner of Ay Gwo St. and that other important street with the grocery shop and tunnel of death.

Anyway, Taiwan is awesome! The people here stare at the pack of white-girl "foreigners" walking around. Like, shamelessly. If you look at them they just keep staring, so all you can really do is smile and wave or say hello, but they like that and I like that they smile back (this place is waaaay better than Salt Lake City in that aspect).

There are really cool bugs here. On the bus I saw a huge black butterfly fly past. This little guy(actually, he wasn't so little) landed on one of the other teacher's jacket while we were waiting for the bus.

Oo! and also there was a gecko on our hallway wall last night. He was named William. But I am lame and didn't take a photo of that so I will just show you one of the super colorful buses they have around here.

Also, they have super cool frilly curtains on the insides of the windows which get a little annoying when you are trying to see what is going on outside.