Always an Adventure...

This past Sunday, my local church put on a Tomb sweeping service. It’s the first our church has ever done, and the first I have ever attended. And I found it to be deeply meaningful. Growing up in a Lutheran church for a while, and being part of this generation that seems to be moving away from consumerism and entertainment-driven worship and toward liturgy and a deeper connection to past, future, and community, I found it refreshing to be a part of this service. Now for those unfamiliar with the holiday, Taiwan celebrates Tomb Sweeping Festival on April 5. It’s a day off when families traditionally visit the family plot where their ancestors are buried, and, literally, sweep or clean it up. Cemeteries in Taiwan do not, to my knowledge, have groundskeepers or other employees. Thus it is the family’s duty to make sure grave sites are maintained. Traditionally this would be accompanied with burning incense or ghost money, making food offerings, and prayers to the ancestors for blessing...

I just got back from the Christmas outreach service put on by the local church I attend here in Taiwan, during which I started putting this post together in my mind. 8. Expect variety, a LOT of variety.... the variety show is an extremely popular form of entertainment here and a formula a lot of churches follow... we had performances by groups of all ages and in many different genres tonight. 7. Expect at least one aboriginal dance or song, which will be amazing... Ok I've lived on the east coast for all of my 8 years here, so this might be different elsewhere... Tonight's dance represented at least three generations and three different tribes. They were great. 6. If you dare to wear red, or put on a red hat, someone will excitedly say that you look like Santa Claus... even if you're a woman. Who doesn't have a beard. I skipped it this year.  5. You might sing one or two actual Christmas carols. One of them will be "Silent Night." 4. You wil...

This past year has been a lot about reflecting for me, which is good, and I still have 4 more months until my 30th birthday. I hope I can continue to work toward my goals in that time. In the meantime, life still happens, right? Christmas went by in a flurry of parties and events, and new years was kind of the same. There are only 11 more days until my trip to Thailand and starting new classes. But for now, it's time to think about what 2012 is going to bring. One of my kindred spirits, Krystal shared this blog on Facebook, and I was indeed inspired. The blog challenges us to come up with a word (One Little Word) to represent your hopes for the next year. On the blog it says,  You live with it. You invite it into you life. You let it speak to you. You might even follow where it leads.  There are so many possibilities .  Do check it out. A lot of people had some very nice sounding words, especially in the comments, like nurture, gravity, believe etc. And as I was reading...

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...

I went to Hualian for the weekend to visit my favorite family and see their daughter's graduation recital (see upcoming post), and part of the fun was making rice dumplings, or zhongzi with some of their friends. These are one of the many foods that I didn't really like at first, but have now really grown on me, especially if they're homemade and filled with yummy stuff! There are actually a lot of steps to take in order to make them, and a lot of different ways to do it as well. 1. Soak the bamboo leaves and cook the rice 2. Cook the meat 3. Stir fry the mushrooms, dried shrimp etc 3. Fry the rice with peanuts Then comes the part I was involved with: assembly! 4. Take 2 bamboo leaves and fold them 5. Put some rice in the bottom 6. Add the filling 7. Cover with more rice 8. Shape and finish wrapping 9. Tie up with string The wrapping part is the most difficult, and I admittedly, needed quite a bit of help, but it was fun, and then we got to the best ...

Spring in Taiwan is really nice, and I'm glad it is finally here. This past winter was one of the coldest I've had here, and it seemed to last a long time. My grandma was here visiting at the end of March/beginning of April and she didn't get to wear most of the summery clothes she brought! But anyways, spring is here, and on Easter, I went out and bought some lilies to make my house a little brighter. 3 weeks on, and there is still one that hasn't dropped its petals yet, ah perseverance. It reminds me to keep working on my papers (the next of which is due on Saturday). There are also some beautiful white lilies at my church right now, and my pastor cut two for me to take home last week. I love the dramatic flowers like lilies and orchids. And since I was too busy to blog about it at the time, here is a picture of me and my grandma at an orchid farm here in Yilan! We had a great time when she was here, and hopefully I can share a few more of the highlights as they co...

This past Sunday was Dragon Boat Festival. No long weekend this year! After church (where we ate traditional rice dumplings - zongzi for lunch), some of us decided to go to nearby Dongshan river to see if there were still some races going on. We got a nice spot near the finish line. Here are the boats turing around after their race. Actually, we got there fairly close to the end, so we only saw a few races, but it was nice just to get out for awhile. The weather was great. As you can see, tons of people flocked here. Parking was a nightmare.... I'm glad I wasn't driving! Here's the end of a race, one team clearly in the lead. Good friends, Su-wan, Pastor Jane, and Sunny. Albert, our driver took the picture. Sorry I dont' have a lot to write.. I'm buried under a pile of grading right now... semester's almost over though!

Happy Easter everyone! Jesus is risen! I celebrated Easter from Sunday morning to Monday evening. I joined the worship team on Sunday morning and we sang about 10 songs in Chinese. Fortunately they were almost all songs I know in English, so I figured if I forgot the words, I could just switch to English. We got to wear choir robes, which were really hot.. haha, no literally, I was sweating, and I just had short sleeves underneath. After church we had a big lunch. I spent the afternoon making a cake which I kind of botched, but was able to recover (thanks to LOTS of icing!), and getting ready for the Easter party in my class Monday evening. At the party we colored eggs, watched part of the Jesus video, sang songs, made a craft, and had a scavenger hunt. My students LOVED the scavenger hunt, though they got quite competitive. There are some pictures of the class here (it's all in Chinese, posted by another class member, but you CAN see pictures). Oh and speaking of new life, my hai...

Chinese New Year is coming!! Yilan has set up a "New Year's Street" which has some performances, food, and vendors selling tons of holiday wares, including new clothes, dried fruit and fish, candies, tea, and nuts. These are all things that you would find yourself snacking on during a visit to a Taiwanese home during CNY. Most towns have their own small New Year's streets, but Taipei has a huge one called 'Di Hua Jie'. I went there a couple of weeks ago with Michelle and Lauren who were up from Yuli. The main events at the street hadn't begun yet, but we still got to see (and sample) tons of interesting things! Here are some fish ovaries, which are dried and... well I'm not exactly sure how they're prepared or consumed, but I won't make it for you, don't worry! We also saw dried seahorses, shark fins, and giant dried mushrooms: At one end of the street is a temple where young people go to "pray" and burn incense, what are they pr...

Despite reports of -40 to -50 windchills back home, I must say that spring is coming here. I spruced up blog a little and hopefully will spruce up my house soon.... Spring Cleaning this week I have no classes, so I need to do a number of things, including putting away my Christmas decorations, cleaning my house, and getting organized for next semester Spring Festival Chinese New Year is also called Spring Festival. It's also Chinese tradition to clean one's house this time of year, and buy new clothes (like I ever need an excuse for that!) . I'm going to decorate my house a little. All of Taiwan is on holiday (except poor 7-11 workers I guess) from Feb 7-11. I'll share my plans for the holiday later. Also I'm trying to send out some Chinese New Year cards or other mailings that I should have sent at Christmas (sorry). If you want a card and you're not sure I have your address send me an email or a note on Facebook! Spring Flowers The picture above is plum bloss...

Mouse over pictures for captions. More pics coming soon!

I hope you have a great holiday this year! Mine so far has been lovely, and activity-filled. In honor of the holiday, I wanted to share my top 5 Christmas memories. Christmas Eve My parents always have a huge party on Christmas Eve, complete with food, music, etc. They invite friends of the family and people who have no family around so they have something to do on Christmas Eve. It usually starts right after church and goes until midnight or later! Us kids started inviting friends out too. I remember one when I was in high school when there must have been 30 people in our house! Some traditions were created as certain guests brought the same things every year. Later I found out that one of the reasons they started doing it was to keep the kids occupied so they wouldn't be begging to open gifts all night. Christmas Tree I've had a lot of different types of Christmas trees, including my tiny one here that was mailed to me. Tammy and I used to drive out into the bush and load s...

My weekly commute has taken an interesting turn with more travel options opening up all the time. There's a large tunnel that shortens the route from Yilan to Taipei an d it has recently begun to allow buses to go through. Before I usually took the train (223 one way or 402 round trip), later I sometimes took a taxi (250 one way) which only takes about 50 minutes to the train's hour and forty minutes. Now not one, but two competing bus companies will get you there in an hour and a half for about 130NT. And FINALLY, they are allowing sleigh rides through the tunnel! Did I get you there? Ok so Santa didn't really drive me to Taipei, but my thin, beardless, Taiwanese bus driver was dressed in a Santa suit, just for the fun of it I suppose! In any case I'm here in Taipei now until Tuesday! I'm so thankful that I get a long weekend-ish and a chance to celebrate Christmas. I was told we're supposed to wear Christmas colors tomorrow! So it begins.... Oh and speakin...

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...

10 more days until Christmas!! I'm getting excited already, especially with the first Christmas activities happening this week. On Monday night there was a huge Christmas rally at my school (over 1000 people where there) and tomorrow I'll be having a smaller Christmas party at my church! I'll post pictures when I can! So many things to say.. first I updated my links and added 3 more great blogs of awesome women in Taiwan.. you should definitely check them out! I've been baking up a storm for my Christmas party (and for the parties I'll have with my students). AND I actually get Christmas off this year! I'll be spending the weekend in Taipei, and hopefully doing lots of fun stuff! I'll have more interesting things to report after tomorrow.

Courtesy of my cell phone!! I got a new cell phone recently, that's a little more high tech, it can play mp3's and take pictures, along with some other random things... so I've been snapping some random pictures.. of the Christmas tree and decorations at work! Of nice sunsets at the MRT station. Of fun and unusual things like these (delicious) tiny bananas I bought. Of DaZhi bridge in Taipei Of a rainbow!! And of course of my dessert! mmm This week has been quite eventful, including a murder mystery and a Christmas Bazaar, more on that when I get some pictures from my friends!

I didn't have the opportunity to celebrate much on Canadian Thanksgiving except for a phone call home where I got passed around to a bunch of family members. Thanksgiving isn't celebrated in Taiwan, but around the American date, more Thanksgiving-y stuff becomes available at places like Costco which sell turkey. On Thursday, Sylvia, a coworker who I work with at one of my schools, invited me to her church. They were having a Thanksgiving service/outreach event with a turkey dinner afterward. The service was good, but quite long, with a number of testimonies from different people in the church. The dinner included turkey, tofu, sushi rolls, red bean cakes, you get the idea... but it was a fun time and I got to meet the members of Sylvia's small group, which holds its meetings in English! Here are some pictures taken by others to give you a taste of my celebrations. But the celebrations weren't over there! On Saturday a bunch of us gathered at a co-worker's house for...