Christmas time is upon us

This weekend was pretty legit. We had so much fun, did a lot of work, and were really frustrated. 
What happened was Jared, Alex, and Amber decided to ditch us and go up to Nantou for the weekend to watch Phantom of the Opera and hang out. Aaron, Julia and were kinda bored on Saturday so we were just hanging out and didn't really have anything to do.
About 12:00 we decided that we should decorate for Christmas and by doing that we would kinda clean up the house. We set up the tree and looked really lame, with much thought and consideration we decided we needed to help it.

We rode our bikes to our little store and bought some supplies and decided to do some things. It was awesome! We had a lot of fun decorating and making things to go in the house and everything. Kyle and Camellia were in the kitchen (which is connected to the living room), we told them we wanted it to be a surprise for them, but they didn't want to leave. So worse came to worse and we had to do that horrible thing and put up a sheet in-between the kitchen and the living room. 
The next problem was they could hear us and figure out what we were saying with only a sheet up. That didn't stop us though, code words came into play. We're sitting there talking about chimey-changas, dinosaurs, and poking the pig while we're decorating for Christmas. 
By the time we were done it was 10:00 at night. Saturday seemed like it went by so fast and so slow, it seemed so productive but the finished product did NOT seem like it was worth 10 hours of our life. It's alright though cause now our house is pretty. 
Now you can see what it looks like.....

We were pretty pleased with the final project. It took so long because Julia and I hand sewed those stockings...all 8 of them. I realized that this was my third year in a row to make stockings, I think I'm an expert now, just kidding. It took a long time too cause Aaron made the fireplace out of paper. He came up with the design, drew it, cut it out and glue it all by himself. The fireplace is so super amazing! 
See the bear in that picture? That's the 9th member of our team, her name is Sally. She's a great member! We all love her to tears. 

You remember that fall tree we made? Well, keep tune for the winter rendition of it.
We made all this stuff then I realized it’s not even winter yet. It’s getting cooler here though; it’s so nice outside! The weather is cool with a breeze.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
D2

A Thanksgiving Post.

Today is Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving! My family always has a splendid Thanksgiving because we get to spend it with our family. Right now I’m a little jealous though because my family is now in NC with my Dad’s side of the family having an amazing time! Yep, I’m jealous. And just so you know guys you better not break tradition by not watching Hi-Tops.

But seeing as it is Thanksgiving I guess I should be grateful. I’ve kinda always taken holidays with my family for granted but this year being away from them is going to be so hard. Things are going to be so different it’s weird. For example, for Thanksgiving so far nothing has been like normal. I’ve had to work on Thanksgiving and we’re not planning to have turkey because we don’t know where to buy it. I’m not surrounded by any family at all and our meal isn’t a feast it’s just a few things we could put together.

 So item #1 I’m grateful for, family to be with on the holidays. Item #2, amazing food cooked FOR me not BY me. Item #3, traditions. Item #4, a day with no work. Item #5, making a weekend trip out of going down to NC.

Today I had to get up early and go to school to teach some kids and it was really easy to not count my blessings and to be a downer. We had to get up early, then I had to ride a bike to the train station, then I had to wait for the kids for an hour. It was so easy to be like wow, my life stinks, I have to get up early just to wait. But no! not today, it’s Thanksgiving so we need to find things we’re grateful for.

Item #5, having a job. Item #6, not having to ride my bike to school. Item #7, friends that come with me who I can talk to and spend time with. 

After the kids finally arrived at school, (after they were supposed which meant we had more waiting time than normal) we did our introduction with them. Jared told me to do it even though I wasn’t planning on doing which meant that I had to be the main person and talk. Then our first class was only 15 min long and the kids were SO bad; they didn’t listen to me at all. I thought to myself, well, that’s okay it was just that group. Nope! All 3 other groups of kids were bad too, they didn’t listen, they talked, they were really loud, and they didn’t want to play my game. I finally had to make a “naughty chair”, I hate making kids sit in a “naughty chair.” Finally after 2 hours the kids left!

Item #8, the kids knew good English. Item #9, by the end of my class they knew what they were supposed to know. Item #10, some of the kids listened and made me think they were paying attention. Item #11, the teachers were cool. Item #12, introduction didn’t go bad. Item #13, arriving late gave us less time to teach. Item #14, the first class was short!

Normally on Thursday’s the school provides us lunch but sometimes it’s not amazing. Today though, they gave us chicken nuggets. It was so awesome, I was so happy to go to the cafeteria and eat chicken nuggets. 

Item #15, the chicken nuggets were an amazing lunch. Item #16, we didn’t miss the train. Item #17, the weather is nice today. Item #18, I have friends that can help me cook and we can cook for.

All of you in the USA don’t forget to thank God for our turkey and family that you can be with on Thanksgiving. I’ll sit over here and be thankful for the goose that will hopefully be on the table tonight!

Conclusion: Thanksgiving should happen every day, if not in food, in spirit.

Note: this is not to complain it is take the bad and turn it into good. 

D2

HK - The place to be: Final Post

Hong Kong was amazing. There was so much walking and taking buses and walking and seeing new places. I loved it.

One of the things was so different from Taiwan (at least where we live) was how many tourists were there. Where we are there are no white people, we’re literally the only white people in our town so everywhere we go people stare and say hello and all that good stuff; there, no one did any of that because they’re so used to us white folk.

Another thing was how many people spoke English. It was kinda sad how many people knew English actually. We would walk down the road and have to be careful what we say and how loud we say it here. Here, in Taiwan, we can pretty much say whatever because people don’t speak that much English.

Also, there were literally no mopeds. I saw one motorcycle and that was the closest thing to moped they had. AND they drive on the other side of the road (like in England), I thought that that was pretty cool. In Hong Kong most of the people take buses or MRT’s or walk. Although there were a lot of cars there were a gazillion more buses.

Now some of the random pictures that I took during my stay ;)

We're just little ducklings, that's all..

 This was Obama's Restaurant or something silly.

 Yes, I did find this awesome.

 Doesn't this look delicious?

 This license plate was pretty legit! "HEHE, HAHA." Amber saw one that said "BIG MAC"

 You tell me what it is..Pretty sure it's an Olympic torch.

 Make sure you stay out of it.

 Woot woot!! That's where I live.

 Square toilets?

 Self-explanatory

I've decided that Hong Kong money is the coolest. It's blue and purple AND it's plastic

 Just a taste of America in Hong Kong

 Pretty cool views if I do say so myself.

 I'm pretty sure this is Franklin the turtle.

 This was at Ocean Park. What amusement park has luggage for sale?

 Camellia's Aunt...She was hysterical!

 This better not be Hong Kong fashion

 Jared eating Oreos? HORROR!

 You can't really see it that well but if you look closely enough you can see a mini cooper. That's cool cause it was a legit mini cooper with the steering wheel on the right side.

 He found his twin in the airport.

Oh, nothing much. Just a sign from God that my Mom needs to come visit me.

 Ambz and me so happy to be back with our comfort drinks......

 and back in Taiwan!

 

Once again, I’m incredibly sorry for the bad grammar and boringness this might have brought to you. I hope you at least had fun looking at the pictures.

D2

HK - The place to be: Tuesday, Day 5

Leaving day.

Before we left Mr. Chan wanted to make sure that we went and had this traditional Chinese food. I don’t remember what it’s called but we went for brunch. Basically you go and sit down and order tons of food and eat it all.

So we went and sat down and Mr. Chan ordered 38 dishes of food and we all ate, and ate, and ate. I ate chicken feet, duck feet, and cow stomach. We did that for a couple hours, and when I say a couple I literally mean a couple.

After that Camellia’s Aunt showed us a temple that I guess is very famous and huge so we went and looked around that. It didn’t seem like a temple because it was so touristy, and it had some really pretty places. 

Then we went to our house and packed up and got ready to leave. A couple hours later we left. 

HK - The place to be: Monday, Day 4

This was probably my favorite day of the whole entire trip because we went to an amusement park. It was so fun! This place was called Ocean Park; it was built on the side of a mountain. Talk about cool! I have now ridden a roller coaster in Asia that was on the side of the mountain! Okay, back up, I’m way ahead of myself.

Do you know that there is a Disneyland in Hong Kong? I didn’t know that so when I saw that there was one in Hong Kong I was really excited and I really wanted go. Camellia told us that there was this other really fun amusement park named Ocean Park that was more fun and we should go there. So by more votes we all went to Ocean Park; it wasn’t bad though, it was a lot of fun! We woke up early in the morning (7:15) and got ready to go. We ate breakfast and got lunch ready (yep, you weren’t supposed to bring lunch into the park).

We then hopped on the bus that would take us there. Every time someone would come over the loud speaker it was in 3 languages, which made me laugh. So we went in and our first stop was the panda’s. Unfortunately for us the black panda was sleeping so that was a really boring stop. 

“Enough animals lets go on the rides” cried me so that’s what we did. We stood in line for the cable cars for a really long time and finally went to the rides side of the mountain.

Okay, you have to understand this crazy amusement park. Because it was on a mountain there were two sides to the park, one side had all the rides and the other had all the boringer stuff. Of course we spent most of the day on the rides side! There were two ways to get to the other side, cable car it across or train it across. 

On the way over we took the cable car so as the other cars passed by I was yelling to them trying to figure out if we were going to have a good time on the fun side or not. I would yell things like “hao, bu hao ma (good or bad?)?” “did you have fun?” or anything I could think of. It was so fun cause the people laughed and thought we were weird, but that’s okay because we are.

That was our day; we stood in line for rides and had a grand old time! It was an explicit time. About 6ish we decided to go back to the boring side of the mountain to go watch some shows. Oh man, best part of the day. 

On the way back we took the train and it was so crowded and there were so many people I got lost. Don’t worry; it wasn’t that bad I found myself. No for real, all the other people walked off without me and it took them like 10 min to come back and get me, Julia was the only nice cause she ran ½ of the way back. Once they found me we went on the carousel and then it was time for the shows. The first show was with dolphins and seals, the second show was an acrobatic show and the third show was a light show.

The acrobatic show was so talented; it was only 15 min long but it was really good! I think we favorite thing they did was probably when the girl was boinged off the sea-saw into a chair. They scared me so bad because at one point they stacked two people on ones persons shoulders and then fell forward. It was so scary!! Of course though cause they were acrobatics they did some crazy flips and didn’t get hurt. It was awesome though because we got the acrobats to laugh at us.

that's a real person up on top there.

Next was the light show. Man, that thing was so amazing. I’m gonna let the video explain it…

Leaving the park wasn’t the end to that day. Camellia’s Aunt wanted to take us to see more places, so we did. Mind you this is about 8 at night that we left! We got on a bus and went to another mall and ate dinner. I had this curry chicken and rice, it wasn’t too bad.

After dinner with the Aunt we went and looked at the Ritz-Carlton; it was SO nice!! We went to the top of the 4^th highest building in the world. Then we went to The Peninsula where something famous happened. Haha, I really don’t remember what happened there. 

Then we walked around some more and saw a bunch more stuff and got back home at midnight. It was really fun, exciting, long day.