Court's adventures in Taiwan!

This is hilarious!

2009-04-05T11:42:00.001-07:00

Guys please read the book.... why?..... Because Edward is dreamy!

My Oma freakin' rocks!

2009-04-04T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is the best thing that my Oma does. She has said this to me all through out my child hood. Its the best thing ever. I love her so much. Its about having holes in your underwear and shoes and the air going through it and if my mother knew I would be in trouble. Yes, this is the best translation I could get. But its awesome, I hope you enjoy it!

**make sure you turn off my music on my blog.

Energy Drinks is what we do!

2009-04-04T00:49:00.000-07:00

So this is what my friend and I do at 4 in the morning after drinking lots of red bulls (addicted). And I am still laughing about it, I could not help but share it with the public, since so many people read my blog cause I am Sereana Vanderwoodsen. jk!

The Color Festival

2009-04-01T01:15:00.000-07:00

I can honestly say this is the most funniest, fun, exhuberating, different event I have ever attended in my entire life. It was amazing! So much fun, but the best part was when we were in the mosh pit, I was full on riding on top of Wade's (old man) shoulder's. It was intense. Oh my goodness, I cant wait to go again in August. I was a body full of chalk, so beautiful! ... oh and chalky!

People in general love the crazy, most ridiculous faces I like to pull.
I loved riding on top of the elephant. It was freaking greatttt...

I just couldn't resist!

2009-03-31T00:37:00.001-07:00

ha ha ha ha ha ha this goes to my fat dog sadie, she is always pulling this stunt.

The Venus Foldover Sneaker

2009-03-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, I like being a girly girl, but what girl doesn't right. I love feeling original, and with these high tops or fold over sneakers, you can definitely never go wrong with a pair of these. Plus I secretly have always been obsessed with the converse look.

Betsey "me" Johnson!

2009-03-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

These multi floral shoes are perfect! You can basically wear them with anything, A nice pair of skinnys would be super cute! You can dress them up or dress them down whatever you prefer!

DOLCE VITA, PLEASE!

2009-03-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Please add a pair of Dolce Vita's to your shoe list as well. Someday, I am determined I will be a Shoe designer, honestly a pair of adorable shoes such as these can always always top off your outfit!

A breathe of fresh air! :)

2009-03-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

So I have a fetish for shoes, my currently favorite designer is Sam Edleman. He has everything from flats to heels, to vibrant to mild. I love it. I own a few pair of his shoes and I get compliments on them all the time. And no one has heard of the brilliant guy. So for all of you girls who are looking to buy a cute pair of summer (might I just add, they are very comfortable) shoes then check out Nordstrom's or Dillard's. *** Love the photography structure in each of the pictures, it accentuates each style of shoe.***

The 21 bash!

2009-03-17T22:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks everyone for coming! It was seriously the best party ever! So much fun, and thanks for the Pinata Chels, You're seriously the best!

T-baby and me! :)
Our sick grills!
I know I finally cracked the pinata open!

Thanks for being a sport Wade, sorry I almost killed you 21 times!

sick....

Love your smiling face Angela!

Happiness is what I need!

2009-03-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

I once called this little boy penis.... cause in Chinese they refer to their little brothers Deedee, and I called him Gigi, translation- penis.... so embarrassing. But I absolutely loved this little boy he was 2 of my favorite students little brother! And he was all over the place! ha ha, kinda like me!

Curly!

2009-03-06T00:54:00.000-08:00

Im kind of in this curl fetish. Loving them, its sassy, funky and just fun to bounce around in, and secretly I have always wanted to be a mini Shirley Temple! When it came to school pictures, every year my mom would take out time to do up my hair in the old fashion sponge curlers, and baby did they produce some tight curls! So springy, cute and it made me look like a real Shirley!

Can't touch this!

2009-03-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Mc hammer in the red shirt and the black beanie

So Friday night I went to the Mc Hammer and Vanilla ice concert. It was awesome, we had VIP tickets so we could eat all the Costa Vita and energy and fruit drinks that we wanted. It was awesome. During the concert we did go down to the crowd to get our groove on. It was sweet. But I'm not gonna lie Vanilla ice left me in disappointment, he's like a kid rock wanna be.

Sunday Walks

2009-03-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

Sadie is not a fan of Zoey at all, its kinda funny to watch Sadie interact with her, she acts like she is a little mouse that she is completely scared of. ha ha!

Finally!

2009-02-26T23:12:00.000-08:00

So this is kinda funny, I came home from work yesterday, and I was home all by myself. I was just watching some t.v. while resting on the couch. When I kept hearing rattling noises coming from my Mom's bathroom. So I went in there and stood in silence, and I couldn't hear anything. So I started just going through my mom's make-up when I heard the rustling noises. But before I left, I swear I could've seen my dog Sadie laying with me while watching t.v. Anyways, I kept hearing clawing noises at my mom's closet door. I thought to my self, "Could it finally be that I am getting a new puppy, something that i have been yearning to have!" My heart was yes, "yearning" for a puppy. So I opened the door and to my excitement it was my cute ol' mut Sadie. No, new puppy, I was bummed. But then today, after a long day at work, to my surprise was there a puppy. How ironic, I was so excited to see this precious little thing. I love her. So if any of you have ideas what to name her please let me know. I'm thinking ZoEy! She's so funny, and out of control crazy. I love it!

What defines us as humans!

2009-02-26T01:35:00.000-08:00

So, it hit me, I miss my kids more than anything, I just look at my pictures from Taiwan, and miss just waking up to my kids pulling and tugging on me. Its been a good and hard adjustment being home. I thought things were going to be one way and no did my life take a switch on things. But hey, thats how life works. When one door closes two doors open... right? I honestly cant wait to start adopting kids. I have such a passion for kids. I can play with them all day and never get sick of them. I was just telling my friend Ozz tonight that the one thing i miss is being these kids mother, well not literally but I went to school in the morning and was there all day until 9-10 at night. I felt like I was there mother, I would play with them, eat with them, play with them, spy on them while they were sleeping, play dress ups with them, it was a never ending story. And to think I will never be able to do this breaks my heart. But I will definitely never forget how much I have grown and learned from these kids especially little Annie, I absolutely adored her, and her little bug bite marks that are permanent. She told her mom that she wanted to get them surgically removed when she gets older, what 4 year old knows that she hates these remarkable cute marks on her eye. I always told her I loved them, and she would always reply, "Teacher, they are ugly"

Captain Underpants!

2009-02-26T01:32:00.000-08:00

I just absolutely love taking pictures of Avery, she is so much fun, and pulls the best facial expressions. I have one that she honestly looks Asian, I will post this soon. But my brother- in- law Ry and I were just playing around with her taking some sweet pictures with her little pants on her head. Photography is amazing, and she is a gem!

The babe of the babe!!!

2009-02-23T15:03:00.001-08:00

Wow! I can't believe I am already home. So much has changed since being home and one is that I have a bran new niece that mostly everyone knows about. I love just making her smile, she is easily entertained by my silly faces that I pull with her. She is such a doll, I absolutely love being an aunt. And secretly I think she will be a huge thumb sucker like me! Im off to a great fresh start. And I have to say this, sorry Steph and Ry, but when I got home, before I could put the little squirt into my arms, first I had to wash my hands because they didn't want me to contaminate the little buggy and two, I had to wear this bandanna. And when we took this picture I had to hold my breathe, it was kinda funny, I'm not gonna lie!! :) I

Happy Thanksgiving "Jackass"

2008-11-28T08:17:00.001-08:00

For all of those who enjoy Jackass, well I hope you enjoy this! ha ha. This was on Thanksgiving and we were the only ones that were on the train lucky for us!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

November 21, 2008 The rine stones and the velvet top! Doesn't get much better than that!

2008-11-23T06:09:00.000-08:00

This will probably be the funniest video you will ever see. Well it is for me! This kid is seriously hilarious!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

November 19, 2008 Twinners!

2008-11-23T04:33:00.000-08:00

Today, I told Cindy to bring her jacket because I had a surprise for her. So when I saw her wearing her jacket, I hurried and grabbed mine to put it on to see her reaction. She absolutely loved it. She was so happy to see that I was wearing here school jacket. She is a absolute doll! She told me that we had to show her mom. Later on when her mom came to pick her up, her mom was just as excited as Cindy was. ha ha! She pulled out her camera and said "I should get a picture of this!" :)

I had to get my school's name embroidered on the jacket. It says, Maryland Mei you? Meaning Maryland (schools name) American institute.
I just love Joshua, everyday we get at least one picture of him. He has the best outfits too!

November 18, 2008 My nan pengyou!

2008-11-20T06:10:00.000-08:00

Joe fell down really hard on his head in gym and got an instant goose egg and had to wear an ice pack taped to his head.

HIIIIIII Ethan!
He looks so sad
Cindy in a daze.
The Hawaiian babe. I absolutely loved what she was wearing today; her little lava lava with beads hanging from the slits on the sides. Adorable!
Our favorite song, the weather song!
For some reason today Joshua and Annie were acting like boyfriend and girlfriend they kept kissing each other on the forehead and putting each others arms around each others shoulders.
Whats up little dude?
Belly flopping time.
Minnie was so excited to give me this piece of paper with eveyone's colorful bubbly name on it. She is such a sweetie.
Oh Annie babe you look like a fishie here!
My class but Melissa decided she would stay and make the no bake cookies for me while I tamed the little kids instead I just took the pictures... what I do best!
They are "hoovering" over the pot. (inside joke)
I wish that you could see Joshua's face in this one. Its one of the best facial expressions.
I was trying to tell them to lay in a star so they did kinda and then they put their little feet in the air....

Joshua fake sleeping, and Cindy lou covering her face.
I was driving next to this lady and her daughter and I noticed the little shitzu just kicken it in the basket. The dog with its red puffy jacket was loving it. It was so dang cute. It was sitting "pretty style"
After work I went to Moss Burger - which is a delicious place by the way. And meandered there after work by myself. The weather went from being so warm and nice to being rather chilly. I have to wear a jacket now outside, but I'm still sportin' out the flip flops. When I got to Moss Burger there was a girl and a boy at the cash register they just had the biggest smiles on their faces. They always get so giddy when us American's walk in the door. Anyways, I order my meal and wait patiently in the corner correcting my kids spelling test. Within ten second I hear a girls voice Say, "Excuse me where do you come from?"

Me: America

Burger girl: oh really! Well Do you have a boyfriend because he wants to know (pointing to her friend that she works with)

Me: Yeah, I actually do.

Burger girl: oh really! Here in Taiwan,

Me: No actually back in America

Burger girl: Oh really, because he really wants you to be his girlfriend.

Me: That is so sweet of him, tell him if I didn't have a boyfriend he would be my nan pengyou.

Burger girl told him those exact words to him, of course in chinese and he got so embarrased. I told him not to be nervous and he said he was just shy. The girl went on asking me: So do you think he is attractive, my friend that is?

Me: Yes he is good looking

Burger boy: You really think I am?

I told him yes, and he was so so happy, he couldn't stop laughing. Right when I told him that, I asked the girl how to say good looking in Chinese and she told me and right when I repeated it back to her a bunch of high school girls came in just eyeing me and laughing at me because the figured out what was going on. It was quite funny.

Wow I wish it was this easy to get a boyfriend back in the states. Instead American boys like to play the games, here they just go straight to home run! ha ha It was quite the night!

November 15, 2008 KTV all the way!

2008-11-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

Our secretaries and cook wanted to take us all to Ktv (kereoke) Oh boy was I excited for this. Right when we got to the place I thought to myself "Am I really in taiwan or in a four star hotel" I felt like a complete celebrity, we had this guy lead us to the elevator then to our room we walked in and the walls were all shimmery with another wall with cheetah wall paper on it. There was a long leather black couch that went around the room with a big glass table and a big flat screen t.v.! It was freakin awesome. We would have people come and go with food the entire FOUR hours we were there. It was quite good food, but quite random at the same time.

Seriously after 5 minutes of being there Jane was already singing, and quite frankly I couldn't believe it was her singing. Dang that women had a good chinese singing voice. All of them did. Us roommates got a book with all English songs. We had a pretty good variety of songs to choose from but I was to entertained watching Emily, Jane, Penny, and most of all Wen. Wen is Penny's boyfriend. And boy oh boy are they not the cutest couple ever. We all loved watching them interact with each other. It was the cutest thing ever. I loved it. It was so fun watching them do duets together. They got so into it.

Our Chinese friends probably sang for a solid hour in a half then after we had entered our songs into the computer we were up. We all picked awesome songs even though more then half of mine were a failure cause I could not stay on beat. Good thing there were words though, I mean I'm sure I could've done just fine with out words... for those who know me I'm pretty good at making up words to songs and making the song sound just as good! ha ha! I think after this experience my vocal skills went from a 0 to a 5. One of the last songs we all sang together that me and Britta were so giddy about was THRILLER by Michael Jackson. But guess what it was a failure too, it was like one of the only videos that didn't have that actual Michael Jackson Music video playing instead there was a girl who had long black hair who was gracefully doing all these weird moves on the beach trying to be all sexy and stuff. ha ha it was the funniest thing to watch. Sexy girl and Thriller... mmm... these two things just seem to clash. But thats just me... But I forgot to mention though, the flat screen tv had the words and music videos to each of the songs that we picked. It was a sweet set up. I think America preferably Utah needs to look into this Taiwanese Hobby.

After we did a little of singing, dancing and eating we were off to a night of bowling! Bowling was so much fun minus the fact that there was smoking allowed and it made me sick and dizzy. I wasn't a fan of it. On to another note, the first game was intense of bowling. Darren beat me by 1 little point awwww I was fuming, and Wen (who was a pro at bowling) beat us all. So we did a rematch and yes I did beat Darren on the 2nd game. It was great! I think everyone actually beat him... sorry Darren, maybe next time... game on! :) After bowling Darren and I played a mad game of air hockey... and it just wasn't Darren's lucky day because I beat him! It was intense, I secretly like air hockey, its fun!

Don't worry the night is not over yet. Over here in Taiwan you do a full on day affair with your friends. We went out to dinner at 50 cent pizza. Boy oh boy was it good, maybe because it was the closest thing to American food. I ordered an eight slice pizza and a bowl of gratin rice...( I have no idea what gratin means. ha!) It was delicious . After dinner we came back home and watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was such a fun day full of activities and pure entertainment!

The KTV crew!

Wen was getting so into I loved watching him sing.
My boyfriend (nan pengyou) I carry his picture around with me everywhere I go. And I got to see his music video. Britta's boyfriend and mine are in the same band. They are so smokin' hot right now.
ha ha
sing sing sing .... pieces, pieces of me... Ashley Simpson, but the best song we sang was Maroon 5 "This Love"
Penny and Emily
The sweet set up.
The cutest couple ever! We all just loved watching them the whole time.
Love us!
Jane was such a great singer, I was amazed!
ha ha ha, I just couldn't help but to laugh.
Just singing away!
Emily!!!
Duet time.
I was getting so sick of all the smoke in the bowling alley! peee youuu!!!
Penny and me! Love her!
The bowling alley and Penny and Emily laughing at something!

I just want to smile.
Oh how I adore these ladies. It was Jane's 2nd time in her entire life of bowling.
Penny's outfit was great. A yellow jersey looking shirt with a bow that tied in the back, black velvet shorts, a white laced belt with a brown leather buckle, tights under her shorts and boots. The brown boots topped it off.
Strike.. oh shoot there are still two pins up.... I mean spare... thats more like it!
Wen's shirt was hilarious. It says- "A married man should forget his mistakes, there is no use for two people remembering the same thing"
So here I am in "Courtney world" I hear chuckling come from the corner it's Darren, Melissa, and Britta all laughing at me because I was taking pictures of my shoes, and apparently they were taking pictures of me.
Darren told Britta and I to whip our head from side to side as fast as we can and to snap pictures of it while doing this. My results:
Britta's results: Yes it was really hard not to laugh, cause we couldn't stop laughing
Doing a little dance before bowling.
Yay! We were just so thrilled to be bowling.
Its a girl thing.
Playing some air hockey against Darren
Yes, I am well aware that it says LOSER in the background, but don't worry that is pointing to Darren, I beat a boy! I'm such a competitive girl!
This signs means "cool" in Taiwan its kinda funny and random.
Jane our school cook, and no Jane we are not going to bite you, she almost fell of her seat.
Emily and the "cool" sign, Mrs. Jane!
Us at 50 cent pizza, it was amazing, oh wait its because its American food!

November 14, 2008 Indian headbands "sooo cool"

2008-11-17T07:19:00.000-08:00

Today in art we made head bands "Indian Headbands" They were awesome because we got to add a feather. The kids loved them, even though they didn't sport them out the whole day like me! And for gym, they played basketball. They were wild, as you can see they were all piling on top of each other for the ball. It is pretty funny how they fight for the ball each and every day, they love the ball! And the pictures right below are of me and Britta's -2 A class. They are a wild class. Sherry has had to come up numerous of times to calm them down. They are all between the ages of 10-12, and with out fail one of them goes home crying each day. Some of the girls are huge brats, well only one and her name is Angel, who would of thought right! But I still love my kids like usual, how can you not. How am I ever going to leave them. Also Melissa, Britta and I got uniform jackets and uniform shirts (as previously mentioned) and wore them to school and took pictures with our students. The kids freaked and kept saying "No Chinese" ha ha It was quite comical to watch!

Trevor

November 12, 2008 The headless Chicken

2008-11-16T04:09:00.000-08:00

So Joshua comes to school today with one of those mask that you wear when you're sick. All the teachers kept asking him if he was sick, but he never really answered. Knowing Joshua, I think he wanted to wear it just to wear it. He is adorable, and I enjoy what facial expression he is going to pull in every picture that I take of him. ha! So Rowland taught Yoyo something, and it absolutely drives me nuts. They get their token bag and spin it around like a helicopter. I know this may seem silly but when tokens start flying across the room and hitting the kids, that is when it gets way to out of hand. And its their new addiction, they always have to do it now... oh well, there kids right. But it will come to an end, it must, must, must!

Jimmy, Joshua, Yoyo, Thomas

So my good friend Steve sent me some propel that you just instantly poor into water and Wa la it taste like fruit water. My kids love, absolutely love to get the package from me each day and eat the remaining sugar from it. Today's lucky person to get it was Cindy! She was sucking the life out of the wrapper! Also on the bottom right hand, the picture with YoYo and Rowland fighting... well see Rowland has this problem where he fights with him self and he makes the weirdest noises ever. But don't worry I got it on video because pictures don't do justice! So I kept asking YoYo what he was doing and he said he didn't know, and then all of a sudden YoYo jumped in on the action and started playing with Rowland. I still think he was a little confused as of how weird Rowland and his noises and especially his moves are. He flings from one wall to the other and his arm is the sword. I love watching it each and everyday! ha ha

Laying on the floor is - Rowland, YoYo, Jimmy, Cindy, Joshua, and Thomas. (left to right)

Apparently they didn't want to line up they just wanted to lay down and rest their bodies. And I.. I just stared at them and laughed! Im such a good teacher sometimes

Betty, Frank, Jerry, Duncan, Andy, and I had milk chocolate for kitchen, after we played Pictionary than it was time to switch classes. They are a very well behaved class, minus the fact that Jerry blew his nose and said, "Teacher, Teacher look." So I looked and I don't think I have seen so much green snot in my life, it took me everything not to gag. It was freaking gross! Sick!

Each day I get 3 different groups of kids- F.Y.I

Eric and his SpOnGe BoB!

Today was wild as usual! In art we had to color turkeys. And William, ADHD boy decided that when he was done coloring he would go through all the cupboards and rummage through everything. Before I knew it he was covered in feathers. I was chasing him around the room to tell him to sit down. I felt like I was chasing a headless chicken. The kids were all laughing and screaming. It may sound funny but it was quite frustrating especially because that was the one hundredth time I had told him to SIT DOWN! I finally gave up and got my camera and started taking pictures of him. Eventually, I did start to calm the youngen down and I got him to sit down. After art, we headed to drama. The kids were all pretty good except for William again. I had to constantly tell him to listen. And later I had come to find out that William's mom was watching me the whole time from the window of the door... mmmm... I don't know how I felt about that just because I'm sure I was just getting mad at him the entire time. After reading the story about our faces we all played the staring game, it was quite entertaining. I think each kid beat me every time, I suck at staring. Megan was doing flips and we made a choo choo train. At last the kids counted their tokens. Annie was being a little pill today, she would only let me give her yellow tokens. It was getting very annoying but I just had to keep telling myself, "Patience Courtney.. Patience."

William the CRAZY ADHD TURKEY!

After school I went to go get my "uniform" shirt and jacket. All the kids here in Taiwan have to wear uniforms to school and we wanted to get some of our own to take back home to America so we can be and look cool and have something that will forever and always remind us of Taiwan. On the back of my orange and blue zip up jacket I got some embroidery on it which was in Chinese and it says, Marlyand school American language. I love it! I got so many looks out on the streets and so many people smiling and waving at me. It was great! This is just the receipt for my jacket to go pick it up.

November 11, 2008 A day full of cute wardrobe and drama!

2008-11-16T03:36:00.000-08:00

November 10, 2008 Another day of SPE'S!

2008-11-16T02:39:00.000-08:00

This is a typical day of SPES: shop, kitchen, games, gym, drama, and art. And before all this goes down they take there sweet little nap in the gym. Today I have pictures of shop, gym, and games.

Sound asleep.

Nuts and bolts-

Vincent playing with the magnets.
EricEthan
Bowling time!

Pick-up-Sticks
Yoyo can!

right...

wrong... (all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth)
Who can do it the fastest? Kuai, kuai , kuai... whoopsy " NO CHINESE" as the kids would scream out!
Cindy is just jealous that Jimmy can pick them sticks up but she cannot
So stinkin darling!

November 7-9 Kenting

2008-11-15T19:49:00.001-08:00

So after school on Friday we had to book it to the train station to catch our train that was leaving in approximately 20 minutes. It was wild getting down to the train station. I mean it always is, Taiwan's streets are just straight up wild as it is. We had to take a 2.5 hour train ride to kaichuang and then another 3 hour bus ride to Kenting. We arrived in Kenting around 12:30, our bus driver just dropped us off at this random stop, we told him we needed to go to the police station and instead we ended up at a hotel full of ducks (they were fake). It was kinda weird. But the man at the front desk helped us figure out were we needed to go.

Long story short, we were suppose to go to the police station so they could call the guards at the place that we were staying to let us in. And instead this hotel guy called the guards and notified them that we were on our way. We walked out of the hotel walked for literally 2 minutes and then right before us was a guy honking his horn telling us to get in... and yes we just hopped in. I guess he was the guard for the place that we were staying at. We came to find out that we were staying at a hostel that was in a livestock research institute! It was by far the most random thing. The hostel was just what I had expected, I wish hoping it would have been a little nicer, but it wasn't.

On Saturday we woke up to a cloudy day, but luckily it hadn't been raining, well not yet at least. We rented some scooters and made our way straight to the nice sandy beach. We did make a couple of stops before, I got my first cute jade bracelet for $5. I like it, its better then spending $1000 on one. When we got to the beach it was everything that I had imagined... but ..... then it started to rain! NOOOOOOO we were so so sad and mad. Of course we didn't want to get in the ocean, be all wet and cold and have to ride our scooters to the next destination. So we sat underneath a little hut for like 30 minutes, hoping it would blow over. But that was a definite negative. It started raining harder and harder. So we decided we would spend the rest of the day at the aquarium. It was so much fun, even though we only had an hour in a half to go through the entire museum. We saw so many fish and went through so many water tunnels it was a lot of fun.

We got done at 6:00 and it was pitch black outside. We then went back to our hostel took a nice warm shower and got out of our soaking we clothes. (p.s. we didn't have a poncho the entire day, we were soaked from head to toe.) After we took a stroll down to the main streets of Kenting. It was hopping! There were so many shops, restaurants, and people especially foreigners. We heard about a mexican restaurant that actually sold authentic mexican food. We saw this one place that looked really busy and had a mexican menu. So we gave it a shot. I got a cheese quesadia. It was okay, it wasn't anything amazing, and by no means I don't think it was really that authentic. But it hit the spot and I was satisfied. I was even more satisfied when a man went outside on a stage and started pulling out these weird dance moves. They were the most hilarious moves I have ever seen. He was like spiderman or something.... oh and then off his shirt went, but we was trying to be all sexy, yeah it wasn't really working for him and not to mention his body wasn't all that nice. But it was very entertaining. After dinner we just went shopping. I didn't really find anything that I wanted. I wanted to get some Havianas but they were very expensive, so it was a no go. Then we ran into this peruvian that was working at this bracelet shop. Britta and Melissa are both fluent in Spanish and were having a full on conversation with this guy. Then he saw me, he grabbed my hand and was kissing it for a very long time. It was creeping me out, then he was just telling me how beautiful I was and how pretty my blue eyes were and my smile. I finally got my hand out of there and was kicking Melissa to go. But they kept on talking and talking and finally at once we were leaving. He grabbed Britta's hand and kissed it, then Melissa and luckily for me I got out of there until I heard him say... "Oh where are you going miss?" He grabbed my hand, kissed it like 5 times and was almost licking it, and then I said, "Ok bye!" and looked behind me, Britta and Melissa had left me with him. He was completely pervin a dish. So now I have a "Peruvian Boyfriend" He did ask if we wanted to come back later and hang out with him and his other roommates. But Britta told him we had other plans. Thank goodness!

The next day we woke up with our fingers crossed hoping the storm had passed by. Unfortunately, it was raining outside. We went down to the good ol' Seven Eleven and purchased some ponchos. We started blending in with the Asians. :) ha! Anyways we were on our way to the surfing beach. We got half way there and we all couldn't take it anymore. The wind was so strong and the rain hurt really bad. Britta was Melissa's protector but seeming that I was the only one on my scooter it was just me and no protector. We were all very crestfallen we couldn't make it to the beach and even more so it was raining.

I guess you can't always have your cake and eat it to! Our luck is starting to run out! Oh well... maybe next time!

The view from our hostel. So green and beautiful, but rainy.

My bed is on the left, and Melissa and Britta's is on the left. My blanket seriously weighed like 10 pounds. So heavy!
A moment that needed to be captured.
Our first stop.

At our first stop there was seriously no one there, and then we started walking back to our scooters and there were thousand of teenage Asians in there yellow ponchos. It was kinda funny actually. It's like a swarm of bees that always travel together.
We went to the bathroom and when we came out this was the line. Unbelievable.
The nicest beach in Taiwan, the first sand beach that we came across in Taiwan. I just wish it wasn't raining. I was looking so forward to surfing, reading a book, snorkeling, and swimming in the beautiful warm ocean. But we didn't get to do any of that. I was so disappointed.
Say cheese.

Melissa had a sweet water camera that we had fun with.

The beautiful picture of the ocean on a nice sunny day. :(
I had to get a picture of this. This is exactly how chinese people dress. I guess someone out of this universe needs to think outside of the box! Mmmm... Chinese people win the award for this, most definitely!
National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium
My nan pengyo, he is so hot and so gigantic.

kissy kiss
The little water park that we played in, he he he.

Pirate world!

Yo ho Yo ho a pirates life for me. Just ask Jack attack to sing this for you! She is a professional!

These were the coolest little eels I had ever seen. They are planted into the ground and eat whatever is floating in the water. They move up and down and apparently around eachother.

I'm getting ready to go swim with the sting rays.
Taiwan's largest underground water tunnel.
No flashing, please>thats what the sign says!
You can kind of see the water tube.
Watching a 3D aquarium full of just fish, Britta sneakily captured this picture of me. I was so caught up in the moment, I thought I was going to get eaten alive!
Amazing
These fish look so peaceful.

These eels look deadly.
The coolest longest shark I have ever seen with her little babies following underneath her wing.

The diver feeding the fish.

Mr. Happy sting ray.
White Jellyfish
Pink jelly fish
Coy fish
Penguin city! I felt so incredibly bad for these little guys. They were so loud and screaming for help. I know it! They all just look like they are miserable.

My favorite kind of penguin.

We went to this so called mexican place and we ordered chips and salsa and they came out with Doritos and fairly good salsa.

This would be my Peruvian boyfriend.

These are all flip flops jammed into this car.

And again, gotta love the Asians

I was struggeling on the scooter it was pouring rain and I was following Melissa and Britta. The wind was so strong that I almost got blown over and might I just add that my helmut did fly off my head.

We put on some sexy dragon "Tats" for the beach, too bad I didn't get to show them off!
The name of the place our hostel was in.
Southern most point of Taiwan! -put that on our check list!
Britta and I walking on the path to the most southern point. I was sliding all over the place because it was so wet, I nearly broke my neck like ten times. It was intense.
The view from the southern most point.

Right before we left Kenting and it was still pouring rain!
Melissa and Britta saw their adorable students in Kenting, Its a small world over here in Asia too!

It was so cold on the train that I whipped out my pants and used the legs as arm warmers. Hey it worked and it was quite cozy.

And this was our trip to KENTING BEACH, located on the very South part of Taiwan!

October 15, 2008 "Chopsticks"

2008-11-14T06:15:00.000-08:00

So today was another day that I was sick. Lucky for us the doctors office is just right across from our school. And what is even more better is that you can be in and out of the doctors in only 15 minutes. How convenient is that? So I went to the doctors and got some medications for only 3 dollars. I hate being sick over here in Taiwan. It is not the funniest thing.

Anyways the night before we all went to dinner with our new friend Tom and all of the roommies and secretaries. I got sick and had to leave early, but from what I heard I didn't miss out on much. I heard it was kind of awkward. However, Tom did end up paying for all 8 of us. It was pretty nice of him.

So today Britta and I were sitting and eating lunch with the kids and Jane. And I signaled to Jane to have her come over to me. I held up my chopsticks and asked her what they were in English. She kind of had a hard time remember, so I gave her a hint and she knew what they were called. The funny thing is , is that she can't really pronounce it. She has such an underbite that it is hard for her to say some or a lot of things. So while she was saying it, her tooth came out, she was seriously trying so hard to say it. She felt so embarrassed that she picked up her tooth and walked out. Ha ha it was kind of funny I have to admit. It just kind of sucked because Britta was sitting right next to me and missed the whole incident. It took me everything not to laugh. Jane is such a sweet lady and hilarious.

Reminder!

2008-11-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT MY HALLOWEEN POST, ITS BELOW THE OCTOBER 18! I'm sorry for the inconvenience. ha ha i sound like a lame computer warning. Anyways, yeah my dates are kind of all out of order, this blog thing is difficult sometimes. AND also I just added my story about my Taroko and Hulian trip. And last, I just added the Andy Warhol- picture of the week. I love his paintings I find them rather fascinating! I love the way he paints!

October 18, 2008

2008-11-05T06:40:00.001-08:00

The jewish star that Amy eyed out that was on the floor of the Indian restaurant.

The final look! With our hair dressers!

On the way to the mall we had to walk through a park and this punk rock band was playing, of course it was in Chinese but they were pretty good.

Today Amy invited me to go shopping with her in Taichung! It was quite the day. I'm so use to Britta getting us around Taiwan and now I was the one that had to get us around seeming that Amy had only been to Taichung once. So I whipped out my Chinese sentences and got us there. I was worried for second, I'm not gonna lie. When we got there, we found a barber shop and got our hair washed and trimmed. Amy's hair dresser was fabulous... mine on the other hand... lets just say I miss Nicole my sister and Chelsea doing my hair. But my hair was in great need of a trim. Ha the best part is, they wanted to highlight my hair, I was like "Oh HELLS no!"( ha ha ha) considering asians hair is black, I'm pretty sure they don't have much experience in highlighting hair.

After getting our hair cut, we found some clothes for Amy and I found a cute causal pair of shorts for $6. They are perfect for school, now that I don't have to worry about wearing out my one pair of shorts that I have. We went to our favorite Indian restaurant here. Its on the 13 floor of Chung yo (the mall/department store). It was quite tasty. And after dinner to avoid the hassle of waiting for the buses Amy got us a cab. It was great, we got home so fast.

We came home to a great surprise... our neighbor Tom was there with his wii. Britta, Melissa, and Tom where playing up a storm. Ha ha and I immediately jumped right on in and played some bowling and tennis!

October 31, 2008 Happy Halloween in Tiawaneen!

2008-11-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

Today is Halloween! This was the best Halloween yet. It was seriously the longest day but the best day. We woke up at 9 and had absolutely nothing planned. We did an amazing job for the amount of time that we were given. Our haunted house was the bomb.com. Even though we did make like 5-10 kids cry. They almost peed their pants. It was sad, and it was even more sad because I was doing most of the scarring. Well kind of, Darren looked pretty freaky and he had the most disturbing scary noises playing while he was pretending to chop off our secretary's leg. The best part was Penny (the secretary) with her little voice would say "help me" But it sounded so scary and lonely. Apparently from what I heard all the kids were scared of Penny. My room was first when they entered the haunted house. They would have to duck down and go through a cave, then at the end of the cave they would have to put their hands through holes and fill Eyeballs (grapes), brains (sticky noodles), and bugs (plastic bugs :), it creeped them out then they would enter the room with Britta heckling and me shaking out of control and scarring them with Albert hiding in a desk and grabbing the kids legs as they would run by. Then they would have to duck again and go into room #2. There was a T.V. going (like the ring) all staticy and such with a mirror at the end of the walk way then they would walk into the room with Dr. Darren (the old scary man mask) and Penny with her chopped off bloody knee.

I must say it was pretty intense! But awesome!

Before the haunted house though we did have an opening where the mummy presented herself with the awards with who had the most original, silliest, craziest, prettiest, etc. costumes. It was exciting to hand these out. We had some pretty clever costumes. Check out my Facebook to see a lot more pictures from Halloween! :)

After, the kids went trick-or-treating, played games and did some face painting. I will never forget this Halloween...especially with me being the mummy!

A hard day of work as being a mummy, the kids ripped me up into threads...

Devil Melissa and Minnie.
Sweet pic Jimmy choo!
still crying after the haunted house! ha ha ha ha
Ring toss
Ethan

Joe the pumpkin.
Little kitty has hurt her wittle eye.
Musical chairs.
The afternoon classes lining up getting ready to go in the spooky, creepy Haunted house.
Goin' fishin' We had killer prizes.
The two love birds.... we always tell Cindy she can do better, she just sits there and smiles at us everytime... its funny! There are better fish in the sea.
Annie and Megs
Joshua pulls the best facial expressions if you haven't already noticed, just look at all my pictures of him. He is a hoot.
The kiddies.
There were two rooms that made up the haunted house this was one of them. It was way cooler when it was all dark and we had the really scary music playing and the creepy lights.
Entering the room with the Dr. chopping off the innocent girls leg.
This was a straight up scared face.
Please just picture me with my body moving up and down really fast and my arms shaking back and forth with the rumbling of the desk. It was pretty creepy I must say.
Enter if you dare.
Jimmy was so scared of me, I felt kind of bad, he had no were to run.
Evil witch!
Boo!!!! The kids went crazy when I walked into the gym!
I had to get touched up before the haunted house from all the kids pulling on me...
I got my little Albert.

ta da! I am a real Mummy!
The wrapping gets tighter and tighter each time.
Amy knows all about the mummification and all, so she put her hands and mind to great use.
Penny with her leg shopped off my Dr. Darren, the kids were terrified.
Ethan, he had the coolest spider made out of that piper stuff sewed onto the back of his shirt.
I think everyone needs to get familiar with William. All of the teachers have a hard time teaching this kid. He is nothing but wild... seriously and this is no exageration. Every two seconds you have to say "William sit down... WILLIAM SIT DOWN!" ... and now this explains why he is the way he is, he just got diagnosed with ADHD! Wow he is such a challenge but its getting better day by day.
All the night classes.
Yes he has the whole afro going on...
How cool is this?
Ella and Minnie
My little miss Annie.
Billy trying to act all tuff.
Jocelyn and joshhhhuuua!
Jocelyn

Show us what you got Cindy!

They truly love each other, everyday we have to separate them two. Its so funny to watch little kids fall in love and how happy they are ha ha!
Cindy the mime.
Jimmy a CAT! Meeooow

My favorite, Albert, he was my little side kick the entire day.
Britta's Rest in Peace grave stone...
Playing musical chairs with some awesome Halloween music.
Jazmine getting her face painted.
Goin fishin'
"Ei ei sir, I am, I am a pirate" Says, Eric
Amy is such an artist.

October 17, 2008

2008-11-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

My angels! Jazzy and Jocelyn!

Yes ha ha ha on our way to Mcdonalds. Biggest Nostrils ever!

Today was super student day, so you know what this means. We all get to pile up in the van and go over to Mcdonalds. It was so much better this time compared to last time. My kids that I was in charge of played Halloween Bingo. They loved it. After we play games we eat, and play in the play set, and talk to the parents. It was so nice, Megan's mom bought us all ice cream after wards. Oh I love super student day not only do we get to play with the kids and laugh but we get free AMERICAN food, and no im not proud to say it's from Mcdonald's but im just glad it was good, nothing is better then a great big, Big Mac and fries!

After we were driving home we heard music coming from the huge temple right next to our apartment. It was a puppet show. These things are so random, you can find them on a busy street in Taiwan or simply at a church! They make me laugh, I feel all trippy and stuff when I watch them, just because there are lights and music that is just off the walls.

Jocelyn, Jazmine, and Joshua they are all in the same family. I teach/tutor Jazmine, she is a doll and so smart. And I also teach Joshua.

The kiddies and me playing Halloween Bingo.
Everyone, and you can easily spot us out in our neon yellow vest!
We are the mother to these kids! ha ha I wish! It would be a zoo 24/7 but it would be totally worth it.
Oh Britta teaching everyone how to be Walrus'

I love this picture of Megan.
So here comes the face-off on who is the strongest.
Contestant #1- Joshua
Show us those muscles baby!

Contestant #2- Ethan
This is what we like to do with our crazy kids. ha ha!
Megan and her brother Tony.
Sherri and the girls.
Penny
When someone dies they usually block off the whole road and put these tents up and dress in white. It last for like 2 weeks. Its kind of funny. Britta was telling me she found this website for people that are hired to "fake cry" at funerals, and you can get a butt load of money. It was ridiculous as of how much you can make. If I could cry on the spot I totally would do that, I mean I'm as emotional as it is but I don't know if i could do the whole "fake cry" at a funeral especially if I don't even know the person who is dead. I just thought that was a little interesting.

The puppet show! With no audience... how sad. Good thing we came even though I was half dead and felt like I was high from all the medications and stuff. The lights where making me sick.

Or should I say the one man puppet show!

Awwwwwwww!!!!!!!

2008-11-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

Im still bitter about my post below as you can see.... And yes I am literally screaming, there is certain kinds of screams, screams of excitement, happiness, terror, frustration etc... This is more of terror scream but its suppose to be a scream of FRUSTRATION!

October 9 -12, 2008 Taroko Gorge and Hulian

2008-10-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

Side note: Please bare with me. I just want to cus, I know that may sound bad, but literally this post has taken me three straight days to do, and I still didn't get done with it. I have so many pictures I wanted to post but it takes hours beyond hours and now days beyond days. I want to pick up my computer and throw it into the wall. awwwww. So please appreciate what I have done. And on top of that my pictures got all out of order and Im getting so frustrated with that. But whatever... Its just a blog with pictures. But I really have taken some actually not just some but a lot and a lot of time to do this damn post. So enjoy!

Taroko was AMAZING! It was so neat and it was sooooo quick. We did everything in 4 days. From traveling there by train on Thursday at 7:30 am (which we almost missed because Courtney's alarm didn't go off) to running to catch the train Sunday afternoon. We just didn't stop running, walking, hiking or biking.
We did in fact catch the train Thursday morning and arrived in Hualien around noon. The next bus up into the Gorge and to Tiensing where we were staying didn't leave until 2:30p.m. so we had a couple hours to chill. There were some taxi drivers that would not leave us alone, we where not going to pay the outrageous prices that they wanted us to pay to get up to Tiensing any sooner. It ended up working out great anyway because for most of the way thorough the Gorge to Tiensing we where alone on the bus and the driver stopped for us to take pictures and let us out once. It was like our own personal tour anyway for 155NT each instead of the 2000NT that the taxi's wanted to charge us.
We finally arrived up in Tiensing about 5 o'clock pm which didn't leave us much time to do anything on Thursday. The town of Tiensing was a ghost town because most of the Taiwanese people did not have Thursday off so it was eerily quiet (Friday was Taiwan's Birthday). We wandered over to the Buddhist Temple and started to take pictures on the bridge and along the way with cool camera settings. It was way fun. When we finally got to the stairs to climb to the Temple a lady came and told us that it was closed and we had to leave. So since it was getting dark we started to wander back to the Catholic Hostel that we where staying at but we decided to stop on the way and take a look at the Grand Formosa hotel which we decided not to stay at for 4800NT a night. But we walked in wandered around and then headed back to our 1400NT a night hostel and had a peanut butter and honey (which we carried with us the whole time) sandwich, talked, wandered around the hostel, played pounce, talked to our traveler friend from Holland and finally went to bed.
We got up around 7:30am and headed up the Gorge further. We walked up the street for a little ways and took a trail that we had been looking forward to. This trail took us to the water curtain tunnel which was really cool. This tunnel that the Taiwanese had carved out of the mountain for a trail has water just cascading out of the roof and the sides because of the water that runs between the layers of rock. We then played down by the river on the HUGE boulders back near the entrance to the trail. After that one we continued up the road towards another trail that we wanted to take. We where getting a little tired and sore but we found the trail to the old Hot Springs but it was blocked off because the hot springs where no longer functional because of river floods and earthquakes that had occurred. We decided that we "couldn't" read the sign that said don't go that way and went anyway (Britta and I would pull out our only Spanish routine if anyone caught us and got mad.) It looked like it would have been a really cool place before the damaged occurred. We then went back to the road and headed for that trail that we wanted to take to the Ponds. We stopped at the next little place to re-fuel (Super Supa is the closest thing to Gatorade that we can find). We asked how much further and started walking yet again. We finally had someone offer us a ride but the place where we wanted to go was literally around the next bend and got out less than a minute later. We started down that trail and we ran into an American and a Taiwanese lady at one of the bridges that we had to cross. They told us that they where headed back and they had not made it to the ponds, we decided that because of time we would not go the whole way. Instead we started taking pictures on the bridge and had fun with that and then headed back. There where more people in Tiensing Friday night because a lot of Taiwanese didn't have to work. It is the major holiday for the Taiwanese. So we ate fried rice at the little dive in town and played the game "guess where the other foreigners are from" which really turns into "what language are they speaking?" We where guessing one group was speaking Norwegian and there where a couple English speaking groups and two girls speaking German. We then headed back to our Hostel in the dark and played more pounce, ate more sandwiches and slept.
The next day we decided to head down the Gorge since we had to carry everything with us. We did not stay up in the Gorge the third night, which we decided that we where inspired not to because there was not all that much to do up there after 5 pm. First we walked to the Pavilion or the Buddhist Temple that is up in Tiensing. That was what we started to do the first night but where turned away. We walked up the many many many flights of stairs and took some awesome pictures of Tiensing, the Grand Formosa Hotel and the surrounding areas. We then started our trek down the Gorge. There where some pretty tight one lane sections that we still don't know how the big huge tour busses make it up through and then some pretty dark tunnels that where a little bit scary to walk through (needless to say we hugged the walls!) Along the way we took a lot of pictures and made a few stops. There was the ecological museum and the short little trail from that section. We also went along the Nine Turns trail which really is the old road that they made a pedestrian path and created a new road for the busses and cars through a huge tunnel. That is actually the coolest part of the Gorge I think! Really deep canyon of granite cliffs. There was also the Swallow Grotto where and along that trail there was a tour bus escorted by 4 cop cars (we know it was someone important but we have no idea who.) We stopped, we walked and walked and walked until our feet hurt really bad, Courtney was struggling and at one point Britta had both Courtney's and her own back pack on (one on front and one on back) and I am guessing that this is when we looked the most pathetic because someone of the millions of cars that passed finally stopped and asked if we wanted a ride. We took it, it was a cute family of 2 girls and a mom. The girls where Miki (24, who consequently had spent 3 months in America, 2 months working in Bryce Canyon and then another month traveling on the west coast) and Kimberly (22). The girls where home for the holiday since they both study in Taipei. We talked and told them that we just needed a ride to the mouth to catch our bus but they didn't end up stopping. They asked us if we had seen the beach yet and we hadn't so the mom decided she wanted to take us! So we went to the beach. They then took us to our hostel and we exchanged email addresses so that when we made our next trip to Taipei she could show us some stuff or go out to eat with us and when she goes to America again she has some contacts in the Salt Lake Area. After dropping us off at our hostel (which was way nicer than we expected!! We actually thought that they misunderstood and took us to the wrong place but it was totally correct) we actually had a little extra time so we headed to grab food which McDonald's ended up being the place we went because we can read the menu. We then headed to the aboriginal show that was our main goal for the night. We watched it and it was actually pretty cool, we got pictures with the dancers and decided to head for the night market. We ended up being misinformed and went in the completely opposite direction but instead found of all things BEACH VOLLEYBALL!! Which by the way had better sand than any of the actual beaches in Taiwan. Courtney and Britta graciously let me have my few moments to gawk and then Britta in her (actually getting really good) Chinese asked if I could play with them and they let me. They thought I was amazing although I felt like I couldn't do anything since I haven't played for so long. Britta and Courtney actually ended up playing on the other court so we all had volleyball fun. The people that I played with where also from Taipei and we switched email addresses as well so that we now have all sorts of contacts in Taipei. We then went to the night market which we found out was on the other end of the street we where on just in the other direction. I bought a pretty cool headband there. We saw our volleyball friends again (Eric and Shawn, and others I don't know the names of). It started to close and we headed back to our hostel with our favorite 7-Eleven stop on the way (I honestly don't know how we walked so far!) After 7-Eleven we headed back to our Hostel and someone was yelling at us from behind. Some drunk Taiwanese where fallowing us so we "pretended" that we didn't know English or Chinese and started only speaking Spanish (well Britta and I did). We got to our hostel hurried to the elevator and heard them follow us in. We pushed all the buttons because at the bottom it tells you what floor the elevator is on and we ran to our room and locked the door (we where actually laughing hysterically). We then showered, gave each other massages and went to bed.
Sunday was our last day in Hualien and we had to catch a specific train later that day to make our later connection in Taipei to head home to Chunghua. We got up, packed up and left our bags behind the counter. We rented bikes for 100NT for the day and headed back along the trail towards the beach that we went to the day before. We road for sooooo long. It was actually really cool but it was just really a lot farther than we thought that it was going to be. We eventually made it took pictures and then headed back to Hualien to take pictures of the cool benches that they have there. Hidden throughout the city there are the coolest stone benches that are carved from Taroko granite and placed all over. We had decided the day before that we wanted to see how many we could take a picture of. We started doing that but stopped and ate some food at this place that we saw the night before but didn't know how to order what we wanted, we just kind of pointed this time. With the help of Britta knowing words we got good food!! We then took pictures of benches, took the bikes back and then started the trek to the train station. We realized that we where not going to make it and started running but then we decided it was taxi time (by the way we where still trying to snap pictures of the benches as we where running). We where trying to flag a taxi, still run and not fall (I did and it was so slow motion and sooooo funny, I didn't get hurt I fell so gradually it was just I could never get my balance because I was top heavy with my bag). We also saw a sister missionary just staring at us, she has no idea that we where actually of her faith and she just thinks she saw crazy American girls. We then said Britta go get the picture of these 3 benches we want, Courtney pay the taxi and I would buy the train tickets. We almost didn't make it, the line was so long. Britta got in and started trying to find out info from the guard, he told her that we could buy platform tickets and pay the difference on the train, which all happened right as we got to the front of the line. So we jumped out of line and headed for the train, we booked it to the train. People where waving us on and literally seconds after we got on the doors shut and we where off. We ended up because the train was so packed never seeing the attendant to pay the difference and when we got to Taipei we never left the station so we ended up only paying 6NT for our Hualien to Taipei train ride (not supposed to have happened that way!) it only happened because we already had our tickets in hand for the next train so we didn't have to go out to purchase them or upon exit you give your ticket and pay the difference. So after standing for 2 hours we got to finally sit on the way nice express train and end our adventure in style!

Thanks to Melissa she sent me what she wrote on our great adventure!

Melissa finally found some real sand a real volleyball net. We hit it right off with the locals in Hulian. It was so much fun. -Our last night on our trip. :(

Hulian city.
This guy would not stop following us around, he wanted to be our taxi driver so bad. He followed us/me basically for a solid hour.

I thought this red bridge that was going into the one of many tunnels was fascinating.
The 1st night in Taroko it was completely dead, so we went to the Formosa hotel which was like $120 a night, the only hotel beside our sweet get up hostel. And we saw the art exhibit of how Taroko Gorge came about.
The bridge leading up to the temple, it was right outside our hostel
I had just woken up- we were headed up to Taroko, we were the only ones in our bus, it was pretty sweet. A bus to ourselves at such a low cost.
We stopped in a museum coming down the mountain. There were models of the Earth and how it evolved over the thousand of years. Interesting.

Everytime I see a dragon I gotta take it for my step daddy!
Don't mind me AGAIN, SOUND ASLEEP ON WHAT SEEMS TO BE MY NEW FRIENDS SHOULDER. HA HA HA. I SWEAR IM A NARCOLEPTIC OR SOMETHING.

Hulian
The beginning of Taroko!
This was a sweet statue. So dreamy.
Yes this is a yellow and green spotted house with a mushroom of some sort in front of it. ha ha
I loved the beautiful sky.... in Hulian

At the Catholic Hostel

The kittens and the mama cat at the catholic hostel. Her poor little nipples.

You better believe it.... Wo I nee too!

This was awesome.

The entrance to the water cave trail.
These rocks were unbelievable in the sunlight.
The long cave that we had to go through.
Yes we went into the water cave.

And so did our yellow ducks, but they came prepared, however, we did not.
The water turned to an old sick muddy color after the Typhoon, it was disappointing.
But we did get lucky in some spots and we saw some beautiful water.

Thumbs up!

Little cool froggy.
Britta doing the splits on this sketchy log. Look at her go!
Mel and me!
Of course I am trying to sun bathe.

The hot springs that we had trespassed that we could have been fined for if we would've gotten caught. It got wiped out by a Typhoon years ago. It was an awesome place. To bad it just doesn't exist anymore.

Our Catholic hostel.
This was not a picture that was suppose to purposely be taken of Britta and I we just needed an excuse to take a picture of our Holland friend in the back! You should try it next time. It is a great trick! And you get the picture that you want without getting caught.
And yes the hairy man is our Holland friend.

The entrance to our hostel.
The overlook of the small town in Taroko Gorge.
The nine tunnels trail... my favorite.

This was a cool hike it was on the mountain that we hiked up and it overlooked the roads and such. It was such an adventure, like Indiana Jones or something.
It was incredible the way the busses maneuvered around the mountain.

We pulled another trick... It was funnier in person, but the lady with the backless shirt, her clothes were just flat out ridiculous, from head to toe. We are in the mountains for crying out loud.
Us eating our favorite thing for 4 days straight, peanut butter and honey sandwhiches.
The people that picked us up at the bottom of Taroko and took us around Hulian, they were so so sweet.
Oh yes did we make it to the Aboriginal Dance.

How could we simply not get a picture of this.

When he holds her by the knee that means they are married.

They love me.... and I love them...
Our sweet head gear.

We raced down these things, it was quite fun.

Food street, people waiting to get food at this one joint. It was hoppin.
I dont know what we were eating but it was by far the most delicious thing on our trip.
The zig zag bench.

And this is how this woman makes a living, out of her bicycle making hot diggedy dogs.

A funny comic strip graffitied on the wall.
I went to this really cool art gallery that I spotted out and I got some pretty cool postcards in here.
The view from the top.
The awesome waves.
Hulian- pronounced Waleean F.Y.I
And here I am after 3 minutes of wallowing over my wetness, I am just happy to see the ocean.
That seemed to fail, I got soaked anyways.
Running away from the wave, I didn't want to get wet seeming that I had to ride a bike the whole day and get on a train.
Priceless.
I like butts what can I say, Melissa wouldn't look she just simply turned her head. I know she thought it was funny.
The sea creatures are sooo cool.
Holy moley moley moley...
This was taken from across the street, we were running short on time. They are slippers.
Since we couldn't sit on the bench we took a picture of it anyway.

Fly like a bird, you only live once.
Can you find the man's head?
moooo with a !!!!!!!!

Only the fashionable may represent this one. And that was left for me to do!

The dating/marriage ritual bench
The Paleontologist benchThe bottle bench
The piano bench

Yes we had to stand here in this mob on the train for 2 hours. Yeah tell me about it! I was so comatose too!

October 8, 2008 Peek-A-Boo!

2008-10-31T21:31:00.000-07:00

Eric giving the twins the bunny ears! Don't they just have the greatest smiles! I hope you smile after you see these pictures!

Why do I look so funny to them, they are laughing at me...
I love these boys, love is the only word I can use. My heart is full of love!
mmmm.... lets just say that we were really struggling to keep our eyes open!

Thomas and me

Run run run... Im gonna get you!
Yeah he was bookin it out of there.
Thomas

So the teachers office or known as the teachers area is not really considered an office, there is no door or anything so this means that the kids can come and go as they please when they really shouldn't be but they do anyways cause they love playing with us. And a sign that says "Teachers Only" will never seem to stop them. There kids for crying out loud, they don't care about signs, cause they know they can get away with anything! I'm glad they are taking advantage of this little secret. ha! So today I was sitting there and I decided to put all my work aside and play with Duncan and Thomas, they were loving it way to much. Right when they peeked around the corner I would scare them and I would chase after them tickling them. But really they were just trying to get my camera. We probably did it for a solid half hour! It was so much fun! The pictures will just have to show you a little taste of my kind of peek-a-boo!

October 7, 2008

2008-10-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

Of course I'm the baby!

Some random bike that was is the restaurant .
We must take off our shoes before entering.
Us at the sit on the floor dinner. Its the traditional way.

We have all decided that we love our secretaries and we also want to learn Chinese. So now every Tuesday we all go out to dinner. Its so much fun. They teach us Chinese and we teach them English!

October 4, 2008 Monkey Mountain, Ocean side, Lugong

2008-10-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm off to a great start... like always!

Take a deep breath before you read this blog post...
The family village
Kitty and I

I just really like this picture.
Another picture of the so called "Polygamy" village. Just kidding.
Here comes the Monkeys!
This would be the Mr. show off your wee wee.

This is just an entertainment picture that I just couldn't resist taking.
Oh can he do the splits.... yes he can.
Mama and the babino.
This is when they went crazy on who could be first to the fruit.

Love the pose.
Kitty could be a monkey but she would rather be a kitty. PS. this is a side note- in reality Kitty is completely afraid of dogs. Its rather quite funny.
Come kiss me baby... My favorite picture.
Wooga Wooga...

I wanted to see how close I could get, every time I got closer he would hiss at me with his fangs. It was a little intimidating.
Just look at the pink face and the eyes!

Feeding the babies.

I loved watching this family, they were doing some pretty funny things.

I was all about the pictures, my roommates took pictures of me rather then the monkeys cause they thought it was so funny how giddy I was.
ha ha ha
Reaching for the stars... I mean monkey!
Whose cuter?
I think I'm just a tad bit cuter.
Flying, this took Melissa awhile to capture.
So lonely.
He was missing an eye, it was kinda sad.
The top of the temple on the top of the hill.
We were completely doggin it, it was such a steep hike. Wow!
Finally we made it to the top.
I loved these leaves, George thought I was going to get poisoned by them, he insisted that I immediately drop it and wash my hands.

Drinking our Super Supau's.
They were remodeling the temple.
The tiger bit me... but can you see the cat? It took me a while too, don't worry.
loved the facial expressions!
I'm not quite sure what this animal is.

The second temple we went to on our way to the ocean.

George was feeling a little sick, he was sweating like there was no tomorrow.
Cat fight.
The Ocean

Lugong. We went to the Ripley's store. and there was a diseased farrot. Poor thing.
The flying fosset.
Its like a dream, this is what Taiwan looks like night and day, lights, cars, scooters everywhere!
The roof of the temple.
The historic village.

Back in the day there lived a very rich family, they had this well in front of their house that they would fill up with water so the people of the neighborhood could use it.
Today was crazy long, but so much fun. We went on another one of our little escapades with George and Kitty today. We have been wanting to go to monkey mountain forever! And we knew exactly just who to call. And sure enough George was at our apartment at 10:30 in the morning. Rise and shine is right! That may not seem to early to you but to all of us that is early because are weeks are so long and exhausting, dont get me wrong though I love my job over here! And time is clicking away.

We have come to conclude that our days with George are not your typical go on a little hike adn come home a couple hours later. yeah... they turn out to be a whole days worth of activities. First we go to a community place that George simply loves to tell us about. This family has lived in this place for years. Its a big place, if it were in Utah and a whole entire family lives there it would be considered polygamy. But No they are not polygamist. According to George its just a mom and dad and their children who grows up and they have children and that tree of life just keeps on expanding from there. Its a quite interesting place I must say.

After Kitty is "starvin like Marvin" man so we went to McDonalds for lunch. Im not gonna lie, I have never been a huge fan of McDonalds, but it is sure grown on me, I will have you know. Im loving the place. Its just so yummy, maybe probably because its the closest thing to American food. And its just so tatsy! And of course George bought us whatever we wanted, I felt so bad, he spends a fortune on us each time but he will not except our money for whatever odd reason it may be.

Now our adventure begins. I am just thrilled to see monkeys. "wooga wooga" -that there my friends is the sound of the loud lovin monkey's! So we are walking and right before our heads was a monkey just kickin back, chillin in the tree like there is no worries in his world. Which is true, he is just a monkey after all. And why I am referring to him as a "he" is because he was not ashamed to show us his little "wee wee" as my mother would say. Yeah it definitely was not the most flattering thing. But "he" did not even care. He was all about showing off his business. ok anyways. We are walking still and right before our eyes were monkeys everywhere just doing there thing which is picking at each others fur. And there were baby monkeys everywhere, most of them were clinging to their mother. It was the cutest thing. All of a sudden the monkeys went from being so calm to being overly enthused! They all took off running up the road, so we ran with them. We saw a man just throwing bananas and other kinds of fruit at these monkeys. It was wild. They were like not even a foot away from us. The guy was telling me that there are over 300 monkeys on the mountain. And I was sure to believe it. There were so many, it was unbelievable. I was going photo happy on the monks. After a good hour we kept on hiking to the top of the mount which lies a temple and a small village. There was a little parade that was going on when we got to the top-which does not surprise me. They are all about parades and throwing money into the fire thing. George was so kind and treated us to our favorite drink Super Supau's and a sick wiener dog on a sick. I non chalantly gave mine to Kitty and Britta and Mel used the "I need to go to the bathroom" excuse to throw away the hot dogs.

After we hiked back down the mountain and George then took us to the ocean. He and everyone else knows how much i love the ocean. Lets just say it was more of a pretty site then seeing a nice pool of crystalized water. It was fun seeing the beach side of our town.

After that we went to Lugong. It was such a fascinating place. Its the only place that has an old historical village. It was really cool. Then we found the lantern place. This guy makes all different kinds of lanterns and he is well known around the world. I am for sure going to get one before I come home. If any of you guys want one, give me a heads up. The night life, is awesome. There are stores and lights everywhere. It was such a fun day and night! Thanks to George we went to 4 different places in one day. It was so much fun!

October 3, 2008

2008-10-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

So if anyone knows me, they know I have an obsession with playing with cards. Especially Pounce! Luckily my roommates like playing cards as well. I must say though that I am the all time star at this game. Melissa already knew how to play it and we taught Britta. It was quite entertaining. We started out playing in our kitchen, but we decided it was getting too hot inside so we decided to go out side and lay a blanket down in between our two buildings.... oh and we couldn't forget our computer to play music on so we could jam out to it. With in 2 min we had people surrounding us looking over our shoulders at us playing this game. Then a mans voice said, "Can I join" this would be Tom, our new friend. He spoke pretty good English but he was very awkward, you could tell he was very intimidated or embarrassed one of the two. He just kept saying that his English was not good.

When we were trying to teach him we all decided to go slow.... very slow, but it just so happened to be that my hands were shuffling through my cards really fast. I didn't realize until Britta said,"Court you really know how to go slow for BEGINNERS." It was really funny, but I think you kind of had to be there to laugh. Oh how we love Tom, I have a feeling he will be around for a while, seeming that he does live on the 6th floor of our apartment complex!

October 2, 2008 Playing doctor...

2008-10-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

Our super students in this class were Duncan and Joshua!

Comical! Thats all that needs to be said.

Yes, the kids did play doctor on Britta and put cotton balls in her ear and wrapped her wrist with string.

William and Joshua... they are so very injured can't you tell?
Joshua and Vincent.
Andy and his hurt wrist.

This would be william taking a hard fall to the ground.
So cute...
Goofy Joshu--a
My poor bleeding feet.

Every month we have 2 super students per class. For all the super students we take them to Mcdonald's as previously mentioned.

Apparently today's theme is playing "Doctor" Teacher Amy and Britta played Doctor with them. This was pretty ammusing to watch the kids and what they used the panty hose for. They all had "broken heads" ha ha, so they wrapped there heads in panty hose. Wow, what are we teaching our kids. As long as their having fun and speaking English is all that matters. :) I love it.

After work, I decided after all the junk food I have been eating and the lack of sleep I have been getting I needed to work out. So I went over to the university and ran for a good 45 minutes. Every night by the track feild there is a huge group of ladies that do all these funny looking dances to American music. Its quite entertainng to watch these ladies dance. After running for a while, I noticed that I was in pain. The back part of my feet was covered in blisters and were gushing blood. I still kept running for a bit longer but then I rushed home and took of my shoes. My shoes were covered in blood. It was disgusting. But thats what happens when you haven't ran in such a long time and if you run for a long period of time.

October 1, 2008 A day at school!

2008-10-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

Getting ready to tame the wild lions so we can start off with what the date is!

All of our precious gems... oh and don't worry there are even more! To bad we can't get all of them in the picture.
I love this picture. Annie is just smiling in the middle of the earsplitting moment.
Duncan
Our favorite song that we start of with everyday. "What's the weather, what's the weather, what's the weather out today? It's not stormy, its not rainy, but its sunny out today!"

This group of boys is the only group with boys and it's probably a good thing. They are the wildest group that we have. They are constantly jumping off the walls. Your physically exhausted after teaching this group. William the tallest one (3rd one in starting form the left) has a strong case of ADD. He constantly needs to be moving or touching something. And he is partially one of the reasons why we don't have girls in this group because he tends to think that he is in love with the girl that is in his group. He always tries to hold the girls hand and kisses her, its pretty funny to watch. Its cute but they are just a little to young to know what liking let alone loving someone is.

Andy... very mischievous.
Cindy's outfit was so dang cute and she had little green mickey heads and berries in her hair.
Penny is one of our secretaries and she is holding Minnie.
Penny and Ella
I just wanted to show you my afternoon class of spe's. These kids are such a hoot.

September 30, 2008 Best day ever!

2008-10-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

These packages were sitting right on my desk when I got to work. I was screaming and jumping up an down. It was great!

Look how much stuff. Its heaven galore!
The box full of goodies, Im seriously going to become fat now. No more goodies for me. Thanks but no thanks!
Whitters made me this card. Because im always sleeping where ever we go :)
Minnie got a haircut, its so adorable on her. -Minnie, me, Ella-
Read below...
Cute Annie.
ja ja ja Jimmy!
Annie was taking the picture and almost beat up Joshua for putting his two little peace fingers in our picture.... We really had no idea what we were making. But we work good as a team!
Retake!
My favorite, Ethan.
Look how iffy, I mean yummy this looks. I love Ethan in this pic.
Dumping in everything for the No bake cookes.
Britta and the kids stirring our made up no bake cookie ingredients.
The kids wanted to all take pictures with the fan blowing our hair. It got a little out of control
Annie and I.
Annie's drawing of me!
Cindy's drawing of : Me, Cindy, and Britta. ha ha, this cracks me up.
Our poor Maryland sign got destroyed by the crazy typhoon.

Angel who is uncontrollably laughing.
Angel
Alice
Today was one of the best days since being in Taiwan! I got 2 packages that I have been frantically waiting for because I thought they got lost. One was from my awesome family and from Stevey boy! Thank you so much, it was seriously like Christmas. I was expecting puny little things but no I thought way wrong, they were huge packages. And I feel so bad that you spent that much money on me. Thanks for all the food, letters, treats, sleeping masks, and my sweet hot pink ear plugs. Shifty gave me a couple of cd's that has sweet music on it. One was Lupe Diasco, Girl Talk (please listen to them if you haven't already. It's sweet work out music.) and a great soft music mix that was titled "Cuddle" :) So thoughtful. Thanks so much for all the time and effort and money you put into my packages. I feel so guilty, thank you thank you thank you. Im going to become a fatty now!

Today's kitchen- I was doomed, we had to make no bake cookies. And there were no instructions like always and there was no coco mix. So I yelled down to the teachers downstairs to look up instructions on how to make these cookies. Britta came running up and we got straight to work. We work well as a team seeming the last time we didnt know how to make mango smoothies. ha ha! Good times. So instead of using coco we used chocolate syrup and condensed milk. It was great. It actually turned out way better then we thought.

During Art today we were suppose to draw people with clothes on them and we talked about clothes. Cindy and Annie decided to draw me with my golf shirt. It was pretty entertaining to see their drawings of me. They really are such good drawers, well compared to me.

After I taught my 2nd graders it was time to go. Somehow me and Britta got on a tangent with Alice and Angel our 2nd graders about what my Chinese name should be. It was quite entertaining. They wanted to name me after Helen Keller. I have it written down on a piece of paper of her name in Chinese. But instead of Helen they changed it to Kellie. Don't ask me why cause I have no clue. Also they were getting the biggest kick out of me "attempting" to speak Chinese to them, cause I couldn't. But then right when Britta came in and started to speak Chinese their faces were priceless. It was so much fun talking to them. I just loved today! Thanks again for my packages, thanks for thinking about me. I miss everyone... :)

September 28-29, 2008 Second Typhoon!

2008-10-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

Uh Oh! That sucks!

Nothing is better then a cracked windshield.
Right outside of our apartment.
Britta trying to fight for her life.

Amy kept warning us that this typhoon that was happening as we speak was said to be the biggest typhoon that we Chaunghua will be getting in 13 years. I have never heard the wind blow so hard in my life. Amy said the winds got up to 188 mph. So you can probably imagine what it sounds like. Things were blowing everywhere. I can only imagine after the storm is over what our city is going to look like, it will be seriously dogging it. The typhoon did end up canceling church and work for Monday. It was great.... all locked up in our apartment all weekend long. Good thing we went to Costco yesterday to get all of our grocery's.

Also since we knew in advance well a day in advance that a typhoon would be hitting us, we rented 6 movies. It saved our long weekend in the apartment. Even though it cost 3 dollars each for a movie for crying out loud. But whatevesr You gotta do what you gotta do.

Typhoons are very un-predictable and this typhoon ended up not being so bad after all minus the wind. I thought it was going to rain a lot more. But as you can see the fence had fallen on this car and cracked the windshield. It was not a pretty sight.

Don't get me wrong though, the typhoons are wild. It kind of sucks after being all cooped up all weekend long, it will be nice to get on my bike again.

September 26, 2008 Gossip Girls/ The Hills Finatic.

2008-10-03T05:09:00.000-07:00

We got a new schedule and on Friday's I get done at 3:30, which is amazing. Everyone else gets done at 7. So today I came home and caught up on Gossip girls, and watched all The Hills. I love both of these shows. It was nice and relaxing. And later, as roommates we watched Fools Gold. I thought this was going to be a way stupid show, but it turned out a lot better then I thought. I actually liked it. It was a funny comedy.

September 27, 2008 Costco...

2008-10-03T04:31:00.000-07:00

Grace took us to Costco today, it was seriously like christmas. I felt like I was back in Utah. It was great. We wanted to find a calculator so we could do the math immediately instead of trying to figure out in our minds what everything would cost in U.S. dollars. And looky looky I found one. I was trying to find a littler one but I couldn't see one anywhere. So this honkin thing went everywhere with me. Grace just laughed her head off when she found out that we weren't really going to buy it we were using it to calculate our grocery's.

I was disappointed in one thing. I could not find poppy seed or blueberry muffins. We instead found these other good looking muffins but they were a little decieving im not gonna lie. they were still good but they weren't sweet. Im tellin ya they don't beleve in anything sweet over here. It sucks! I got Cheerios, Oreos, these really good sour dough rolls, cheese, ham, and eggo waffles. After we got churros that tasted heavenly along with pizza, ice cream, and a drink. And I was thinking smart and got a chicken bake to have for tomorrow's lunch. The pizza and ice cream were my favorite. I gotta go back pronto.

Later on, Mellisa, Britta, and me went to Tai chung. We went shopping at the day market. I got a hindu bag which looks pretty sweet, and i found my favorite earrings with the toothpics through them. At 6:00 we had to meet at our church for game night. We played a bunch of games and ate doughnuts. It was fun to be with everyone.

After game night as were heading back we found a store that had a bunch of Chinglish shirts for $100 NT which is about $300. Britta got the best shirts ever. Oh man, we were probably in this store for over an hour. But Britta got a shirt that said Tree love on it. Ha! Freakin hilarious. Also she found a shirt with cupcakes all over it with one huge cupcake in the middle and it says Snazzy with little writing saying sweet as cake. It's more of an inside joke because we are always eating sweets/junk food. And I'm not going to tell you what my shirt looked like you can see for yourself. Lets just say I'm a convert! :)

The one and only great calculator!

COSTCO
I will never forget the taste of this ice cream...
My delicious hawaiian pizza and sprite.
Everything is locked up over here and not only is it that they are locked up but they are jammed back in a such a little cage.

The crappy outlet stores. I found a way cute shirt but it was flippin $60 bucks.
mmmm.... yes, I think guys should wear this shirt...
This is the shirt I got!
You better believe that I got converted to golf. I love it with a passion. Now my family and friends will like me even more!

September 25, 2008 Parade!

2008-10-03T03:34:00.000-07:00

Alice and me and half of Winnie

Britta's class.
Britta and her cute class.

This lao wren is dropping off money to burn.

So I'm sitting in class and all of a sudden Melissa came barging in my classroom and said, "Court you gotta come see this." So my whole class and I rushed to the other classroom and saw a huge parade going down. We watched it for a while. It was pretty entertaining. Oh I love Taiwan for this reason, you never know what to expect each day.

September 22, 2008

2008-10-03T02:11:00.000-07:00

This would be the school that I teach at.

Little Ethan had a brilliant idea that him and Jimmy should stick out their butts for the picture
Love of my life. Now I finally have an excuse to do this face.
Still trying to sneak in the peace sign.
Ready for school.
Opening exercises, and this isn't even half of them...

It was suppose to be a work out class, but apparently its nap time.
Jimmy and Annie trying to compete on who can do the splits better. I'm sorry Jimmy but Annie wins this one.
and also this one... Jimmy could not figure out how to do a back bend.

Don't you just love his face. And his red lips.
"no no no ta ta ta teacher, no no no pic pic pic picture" - with his stutter.
Rootbeer floats!
Uno time!

These pictures explain my day at the school minus my follow up classes!