Always an Adventure...

A very cool gift - an MP4 player - It plays MP3's, but can ALSO play movies. It has 1 gig of memory and can store pictures, documents, listen to FM radio, record voice and it just LOOKS cool. I'm so excited about it. I've been talking about buying one recently. But now I don't have to! So this year, not unlike last year, I kind of had the birthday that kept on celebrating haha (though not as extensively as last year) Tuesday: lunch with some church people at this great hot pot restaurant Wednesday: class and gifts from some of my students Thursday: one class sang "Happy Birthday" to me, Starbucks, a movie and this really cool ice cream thing! **Edit** for all (two of you) who complained and anyone else who may be interested: below pictured is not, in fact, ice cream, and the qualifier "thing" should be taken to mean shaved ice with various (and randomly filled) jellies underneath topped with a brown sugar syrup and sweetened condensed milk ***End Fr

 

 

 

 

 

April 27 Independence Day in Togo ( 1960 ) and Sierra Leone ( 1961 ), Freedom Day in South Africa 1667 - The blind, impoverished John Milton sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for £ 10 1810 - Beethoven composes his famous piano piece, Für Elise . 1964 - " Love Me Do " by the Beatles was #1 for one week in the US 1981 - Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse . courtesy of Wikipedia Well, today I shall celebrate my 24th birthday without much flair, but hey, it will be good anyways, I'm sure. I have to teach in Hualian, so that means getting up early to take the train. I'm planning to make an angel food cake on Friday for my students.

Have you ever seen a traditional Chinese painting? I hadn't seen many before I came here, but I'd always admired the style. I really like the grace and simplicity of slender bamboo, majestic landscapes, or exuberant cherry blossoms. Since my friend A-hsiang is a really talented artist, I've been bugging him for awhile to teach me how to paint this style. On Saturday I went to Hualian for my first impromptu lesson. We took all of the painting stuff like ink, his really expensive brushes, different types of paper, and a piece of felt cloth to place under the paper, to a nearby lake and found a little coffee shop with big tables. We asked them if it would be ok to have our little "class" there. They didn't mind (there weren't a lot of customers) and we bought some drinks. It wasn't long until the boss marched her 10 year old daughter out to watch us and learn something. Throughout the time he was teaching me, the various friends and family members would c

The expert at work 

Painting bamboo 

Painting orchids 

The finished product! 

I have 15 pairs of shoes (I am ashamed) I have 14 TESOL books I have 13 Canadian dollars in my desk drawer I have 12 items in my makeup collection I have 11 movies (DVD and VCD) I have 10 spices on my cooking shelf I have 9 pens on my desk I have 8 windows in my room (one wall is almost completely windows) I have 7 drawers in my desk I have 6 3M hooks on my walls I have 5 pictures on the headboard of my bed I have 4 bibles (NIV study Bible, English/Chinese Bible, Pocket NLT, and Chinese New Testament with phonetic symbols or “bo po mo fo”) I have 3 suitcases I have 2 pairs of glasses I have 1 cell phone (unlike many Taiwanese people who have been known to have 2 or more) If any readers want to post this on their blog, feel free. I guess I could tag Hope and Johanna , my 2 extremely faithful ex-roomies/roomates forever.

On the train headed for the Green Expo

 

These three girls come to my Friday night conversation class in addition to my classes at their school, L-R Xenia, Shania, me, Nancy 

Hua Lian - face painting for free! Definitely didn't take this in with my two male students.

Xenia wasn't so brave, so she opted to have her hand instead of face painted 

It's alive!  

A boat made from water plants 

Giant spider made of sticks 

Shania is feeling brave 

...something of little interest to most of you: My Chinese blog! The address is wo de zhong wen blog.blogspot.com (my chinese blog.blospot.com) haha. It's called Ou Cai Lin's room 歐采琳的房間. For those of you who don't remember, Ou Cai Lin is my Chinese name (also my msn name at the moment). BTW North American friends can you read those Chinese characters?? I know some computers aren't enabled to read Chinese. Anyways, It's just a place for me to practice my Chinese. It may seem like I've been doing little else lately besides working on my blog, but actually, I've been having all kinds of fun, visiting Green Festival again on Monday with some girls' school students, being sung Happy Birthday to on Tuesday at the boys' high school (better early than late I suppose), checking out another apartment in the afternoon, and same old classes on Wednesday, with actually a fairly positive day at the vocational school, or as i normally say, my "difficult"

Well, I've decided that since I've been blogging for over a year and a half, maybe I should find a way to organize my posts for easier browsing. I've been looking into a bunch of different ways to do it, and for now have chosen the least labor intensive (since I have more than 500 posts) which actually uses search. It's ok for now, but doesn't quite get the results I want, as far as categorizing my whole blog, but if you are looking for info on a certain topic it should be fairly helpful.

It's been a cold (relatively) and rainy week and my head's been full of many thoughts and plans. I continued my Easter lessons on Friday night with dying eggs in class; my students really liked it! I'm glad I found dye, though it was REALLY last minute... like I bought the dye at about 11am and started boiling eggs at 3pm for my 7:30 class. If you recall, we also dyed eggs last year , but on a much larger scale. I only boiled 16 eggs this year (they come in packages of 8 in the grocery store) Got up early Saturday to attend the girls' school anniversary celebrations, which included dances and plays by the students, artwork displays, and booths set up by each class selling food, drinks, and other miscellaneous things. The weather held until halfway through. My students were excited to see me there, and all tried really hard to sell their class' products. I also met a few of my students from another school who were rather suprised to run into me. Rode my bike home in

1. O come and mourn with me awhile, O come ye to the Savior's side O come, together let us mourn, Jesus our Lord is crucified. 2. Seven times He spoke seven words of love; And all three hours His silence cried For mercy on the souls of men; Jesus our Lord is crucified. Chorus: O love of God! O sin of man! In this dread act Your strength is tried; And victory remains with love; Jesus our Lord is crucified! 3. O break, O break, hard heart of mine! Thy weak self-love and guilty pride His Pilate and His Judas were: Jesus our Lord is crucified. 4. A broken heart, a fount of tears, Ask, and they will not be denied; A broken heart love's cradle is: Jesus our Lord is crucified. Chorus: O love of God! O sin of man! In this dread act Your strength is tried; And victory remains with love; Jesus our Lord is crucified! And victory remains with love; Jesus our Lord is crucified!

Well, I often joke about speaking "Chinglish" since my day to day life is usually carried out in a peculiar mixture of Chinese and English, but here, my friends, is a great example of Chinglish, which I spotted in Hong Kong, not suprising since there is such a mixutres of language and cultures there. Now the great thing about this for those of you who don't read Chinese is that the Chinese character there is pronounced "Fan" thus forming the word Fantastic. Even cooler is that the word "fan" in Chinese means rice, and is sometimes used for food in general. This is particularly appropriate since they're advertising a buger that replaces the bread with rice patties (not to be confused with paddies).

Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns! My project for the day was making hot cross buns for my students to sample at the end of my Easter lesson! It was fun, with only a few minor disasters (running out of flour, burning one tray). I used my own oven and also the ovens in the first-floor coffee shop this church runs. Needless to say, a large part of my afternoon was spent pao qu lai-ing (running back and forth) up and down the stairs/elevator. Apartment news: I did go to see a possible apartment yesterday, the one my employers want me to move to, as it is part of the office space they are planning to rent out. Part of the office space is maybe an understatement. The place is really nice, very open, with a kitchen, bathroom and large common room on the first floor (which will be converted into the office with two other employees working there). There are two bedrooms on the second floor, which is more like half a floor, as the bedrooms overlook the l

I travelled more than 4 hours I used 4 different types of transportation (taxi, bus, airplane, MRT) This was my 4th visit to Hong Kong I woke up at 5:04am I bought 4 things (picture frames, a book, a hair clip, some chocolate) I got lost 4 times I was away from Yilan for 4 days (though only one of those was in HK) I took more than 4 pictures:

One of Hong Kong's famous trams.

 

The world's longest escalator system.