Always an Adventure...

It is getting extremely HOT here, I heard that Taipei set records by reaching 37 degrees on Thursday. Here it's been a little cooler, around 33-35. It's also one of Yilan's rainy seasons (the other being winter) called "mei yu" spring rains, or plum blossom rains, which are supposed to last until Dragon Boat Festival coming up next month. Last week it rained a lot but I tried to ride my bike to church quickly when I saw what I thought was a break in the weather. From a Canadian point of view, if it's raining, it will probably stop soon... it can't rain like that all day, right? Wrong! The rain got heavier and heavier as I made my way to church and by the time I got there I was rather damp. After a long service, some time playing with kids and lunch, it still showed no signs of letting up. But the people at my church are so wonderful! They found someone to drive me home AND dropped my bike off later on. So no slippery bike accidents OR getting soaked! Speak

In a describing people role play: A: Did you see the man who stole your purse? B: Yes, he was tall, really tall. A: What about his hair? B: He had red curly hair. A: Do you remember anything about his face? B: Umm he had a big red mouth. A: What was he wearing? B: He was wearing yellow, with red and white stripes. A: That's helpful, anything else? B: Yes, his shoes were big and red! Yes, this actually happened in my class. About half of the audience figured out who they were talking about and were giggling, while the rest were a little confused. Do you know who stole the purse?

Ok, lots has been happening with me. In the last two weeks I've been to Taipei twice and to Hualian twice (each an hour and a half away), so that's about 12 hours of train time...15 actually if you include my trip to Yuli (another hour and a half). And of course to get to the train station I've had to ride my bike. Once I get to the station I park it among a hundred other bikes, mostly belonging to students and other travelers. But for some reason on the last trip, I came back to discover my bike was nowhere to be found!! I looked up and down the parking lot with two bags and in sweltering heat, and wasn't able to find it. I ended up taking a taxi home. I was frustrated to the point of tears. This is my second bike that has been stolen in Yilan. And it's just really inconvenient to have no transportation. I called someone to pick me up for my evening class and shared what had happened with them. At the end of the class, as I was thinking about one more train ride I

i finally splurged and did something i've been wanting to do for a long time: got my old glasses tinted. now i have prescription sunglasses woohoo! too bad tinting was almost the same price as the glasses in the first place, though still incomparably cheaper than in Canada! i won't be around much for the next week, but i'll update when i get the chance.

Sometimes it seems like my life is simply a series of amusing events that I must somehow navigate. It usually helps to keep a sense of humor in any case. Here are the stories from the weekend: SURPRISE!: On Friday night the church prepared birthday cake and fruit for my class, only forgot to tell me! They assumed I knew, and I didn't think anyone even knew it was my birthday. I stopped in at the office before my class and they didn't mention anything, and then when class was over, I was the last one to come down as usual and the guy who works on the first floor came looking for me. He asked where everyone was, and why we hadn't come down to eat cake. Uhhhh...what cake? Oh like the massive cake (that could have fed 50 people!) that he'd been asked by someone (it's a mystery to all) to go buy and cut. So here I was at 9:30pm with a giant cake on my hands... it all turned out ok, as I got to go around and bless the students doing their homework and the Sunday worship t