Always an Adventure...

We just had an election here, but the morning before the election, my good friend Libeck was part of a duet singing The Prayer , a beautiful song that has been on my heart ever since, and quite fitting for this time that we should really be praying for Taiwan. There are lots of versions of this song, and I wish I had a record of the one they sang last week, but here is one. If you have time, check out the duet between Josh Groban and Charlotte Church, or Chloe Agnew giving it a Celtic flavor. I know the last line of the chorus is "Give is faith so we'll be safe" but I can't help but replace it with the word "saved" sometimes. Like the man in Mark who cried out to Jesus "I believe, help my unbelief!" Anyways, all that musical goodness to say: Taiwan has a new president! Well, he won't take office until May, but he was elected on Saturday. Ma Ying-jeou is the leader of the Nationalist party or KMT, or as known here, the blue party. ...

Hello everyone! I'm the next president of Taiwan! Our slogan for this year is "Make Taiwan Lovable" 1 (literally cute). This of course needs to start with the Taiwanese government, so my first act in office is to move the Parliament (I know I'm using Canadian terms) to Hualian, because Hualian is the most beautiful place in Taiwan. Then we can invite Hu Jintao (the leader of Mainland China) to come and see Hualian's beautiful scenery and fresh air, taste it's specialty food, go to Taroko Gorge, and watch fantastic aboriginal performances. He'll be so touched that he'll immediately cancel all plans to bomb Taiwan with missiles! 2 Even though the government is in Hualian, the president won't forget the needs of the rest of Taiwan. Here's my plan. The most important is to finish the MRT system, taking it even to more remote centers on the east coast like Jilong, 3 Hualian, and Taidong. Then I can go on vacation whenever, wherever I want! Oh...no...

One of my 11th grade classes. Sorry all, I've been mang de bu de liao ....crazy busy for the last 2 weeks! Since the calendar changed, I've been: Finishing all my classes for the semester Giving and grading tests Calculating final grades Trying to figure out schedules and plans for next semester Finding out I'm doing a mini-camp on the 21-24 Hanging out with friends I haven't seen for awhile Writing and practicing a speech for a Chinese speech competition Anyways, my last class of the semester (except aforementioned camp) was on Thursday!! I finally felt like I could take a big breath. I love teaching, but there's a reason we have summer and winter vacation! Tomorrow (Sunday morning) I'm going to take part in a speech contest!! There have been flyers for the competition floating around the office and a few people encouraged me to enter. But the topic was one that I didn't think I'd be able to write about: If I were the president of Taiwan . Personally I ...