Always an Adventure...

Another AWESOME thing that relates to post #18 is:  Eating the last piece of dessert somebody left at your house . Which made me think of my small group. I have taught different kinds of English bible studies throughout my years in Taiwan, and I'm even writing a paper on it this semester. But this year is the first time I've hosted a home group. The focus is bilingual and rather than an English class, it's more like a bible study/discussion. I have about 8-10 people, and I host it in my house, which is great for a few reasons. First, it forces me to keep it clean! Also, as mentioned above, people bring yummy things to share, plus some interesting items like two bags of disposable plastic gloves. Last week is a perfect example of this. We didn't plan to have a potluck, but ended up with a feast! I baked Christmas cookies just for fun. Debbie brought kiwi from her recent trip to the mountains in Taiwan. Andy brought organic "ugly" oranges that he grew himself. L...

Last Sunday was the wrap-up for my English bible study! We'd been planning the party for awhile, and students invited their friends and family to come. We had singing, games, a potluck dinner, and then watched a movie on the big screen outside. There was TONS of food. I made a chocolate orange cake and a pasta salad. As you can see there were 2 tables alone just for fruit and dessert. There were another 4 tables for food. Here's Janet and her son Roy making fish-shaped pancakes (waffles?) in a waffle maker they brought from home! Another adorable 10 year old student proudly showed off the scrambled eggs he brought. I was really happy about how many people showed up! Some students from my classes at the schools came too. here's everyone getting ready to sing. I looked up during the program and saw this amazing sunset and had to snap a picture! It felt like a message from God. Actually it was like a miracle on Sunday. We weren't sure the weather would cooperate. And it P...

this overdue blog update is brought to you by the friendly neighborhood construction...grrr Life in Taiwan is punctuated by short breaks between construction it seems. First it was the house above us, then across the street, and now it seems to be right outside my window .. i mean somewhere below. Anyways, there's nothing I can do about it, except be grumpy that it woke me up at 8 on a SATURDAY morning! Taiwan doesn't have as much construction as China, especially from what I remember from Hong Kong, and of course I'm sure there's even more in Beijing as it's getting ready to host the Olympics. But people are always building something new, or renovating their old place, or building an MRT station or.... It just seems like there's way more than in Canada, and due to the close proximity of everyone, especially in crowded Taipei, you can tend to feel like there's no escape from it! On a list of countries by population density, Taiwan is number 15 . What about C...

Last Sunday we had an English Christmas party at church! It was fun but a little stressful as I was organizing/leading it! It reminded me of some of the things we used to do in youth group...except that I wasn't one of the students! It was the first of hopefully many English services. It went really well I think, we had a great time! We sang Christmas songs, watched a movie, played games, and I gave a message! That was the scariest part perhaps, though it went well despite a few translation difficulties. After we finished there was a discussion time and then we had snacks! I made about 80 cookies and they didn't last that long... well I guess there were about 60 people who went! Someone 'confessed' to me that she had eaten 3! You can see more pictures of the day here . Christmas is coming fast, and I spent the morning doing songs and gift exchanges with my classes! I'm heading to Taipei as usual on Wednesday night after spending the afternoon judging a drama compet...

Sniffle.. I'm slugging through my yearly cold this week, and the constant rain is not helping much (actually it's one of the suspects), I've been extremely thankful for microphones in class this week! I was about 15 minutes into my class last night when two tall, white people walked in and sat down! It was very unexpected since it's an English Bible study for ESL learners... later I discovered that they're friends of the pastor who were visiting Yilan. Turns out they're missionaries from Finland who are working down in Southern Taiwan. I don't have any pictures unfortunately, but it was really neat to have them in my class, and the rest of the students were really eager to chat with them. They were really interesting. In Taiwan for 18 years, then went back to Finland, and spent 2 years doing Chinese ministry in Israel, and are now back in Taiwan! I'll have a chance to chat with more teachers this weekend as I head over to the ETA (English Teacher Associa...