Always an Adventure...

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...

I did this once a long time ago, and just got the idea to do it again a little differently! The idea is you type "your name is" into google (you need to quotation marks for it to work. Then post the first 10 (or 10 most interesting) sentences from the results. So here we go: Charlotte is Wise, Patient, and Caring (that really was the very first one that came up!) Charlotte is leaving the hospital Charlotte is on maternity leave. Charlotte is the largest city in the state of North Carolina (I'm surprised there weren't more like this) Charlotte is taking a hiatus from blogging. Charlotte is disturbing and shocking Charlotte is obviously suffering from the uniquely female illness, hysteria Charlotte is just as important to children's books as the other one Charlotte is from Sparta Charlotte is definitely dually talented, Charlotte is more than a pet Feel free to leave a comment and let me know if you try it!

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. ...

Yesterday I went to a training session for a new toy one of my schools has decided to buy: a computerized whiteboard! What is it, you ask? Well after an hour of demos and getting to try it myself, it's simply amazing! It functions as a regular whiteboard. You can use whiteboard markers on it. BUT you can also project your powerpoint screens or websites (anything you have on your computer actually) onto it. BUT the coolest thing is that once you have a screen projected onto the whiteboard, you can use a special computerized pen to interact with it! So you can use the pen to go the next or previous slide, and to go from a powerpoint slide to something else (like a website). No more being stuck behind the computer for the whole class. In addition, you can use the pen to write stuff on your screen! So you can underline, circle, or point to certain parts. You can also write words. You can choose to record all the screens and pen strokes you make, and can even add voice recording. You c...

Sometimes Taiwanese attempts at western food still end up being very... Taiwanese. Ordering a "salad" at a lot of restaurants will get you a few pieces of iceberg lettuce drowned in mayo with a couple of raisins on top. True to form, my "fruit bagel" this morning included apple, dragon fruit, raisins, lettuce, and thousand island dressing! hmmmm it was edible, but I don't think I'll order it again!

Last Thursday I went to see 27 dresses with about 10 other ladies. We all got dressed up, either in nice dresses, or in former bridesmaids dresses. We ate in the mall food court first, and then went to see the movie. It created quite a stir as we made our way through the mall. We got some “Hi Baby”s and stares. At the place where I order ed dinner, the chef came out of the kitchen and asked if I could take pictures with him. I posed for cell phone photos with the two chefs and one waitress. It was fun to be dressed up, but still wearing fun shoes and not spending time and money on the hair and makeup. Some of the girls wore their Crocs under their bridesmaid dresses! The movie itself was pretty good, though fairly predictable. The dress scenes were great though! I ’m thankful the ladies I’ve been fortunate to stand up with have good taste, and didn’t feel the need to make sure their bridesmaids looked awful! The most repeated line of the movie is “You can shorten it and wear it again...

The Chinese phrase Zha qi zha ba means "random stuff" First, I think I strained my foot! Not that foot, but the other foot, the good foot... wierd. I did a lot of walking this weekend, and on Sunday night my foot felt like it had a cramp, one that didn't go away. When I walked around on Monday it felt worse, and after 10 hours of class between Monday afternoon and now I'm walking with a limp! I didn't fall down or anything, but it really hurts. I went to the doctor and he said it might be a strain, since the pain is all along one area. Just got some pain meds though... hmm. Anyways, pray that it will get better... like by tomorrow! haha I am thankful though that it doesn't hurt to ride a bike! So I can still get around more or less. I haven't had to break out my crutches yet, though it did cross my mind at one point. We have a long weekend coming up next month, and I've been thinking of taking a little trip! Another colleague and I were looking into t...

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...