Always an Adventure...

Of course, I'm extremely biased, but Emily Grace is the cutest baby in the world!! This picture gives me urges to get on an airplane and get back to Canada so I can play with her, play in the leaves, and watch her grow up in person, instead of through pictures. One of the biggest challenges of living overseas is indeed being away from friends and family back home. I don't know how the missionaries of old did it when there were no airplanes, Skype, email, webcams, and Facebook.  Speaking of which, when I was browsing through Facebook's Canada's Cutest Babies contest which this picture of Emily was entered into, and I couldn't help but thinking that a day is coming when potential employers will be googling and facebooking someone and will find their baby pictures online... the world is changing so fast. Even when I was in high school, no one really even had a digital camera.... now we just need some of these geniuses to turn their talents to finding a fast way to cros...

Yesterday, I was chatting with some of my students during the break between classes, when I had two very different conversations. The first student asked me what kind of religion I follow. I told him I'm a Christian, and asked him what he believed in. He said he believes in reincarnation, which of course, he didn't know the English word for, so he explained it kind of like this:  It's like a big circle, so I have to do many good things, because if I don't maybe when I die I'll come back as a poor person or as an animal.  What a hopeless cycle. Does it mean that poor people are to blame for their situation because of their actions in a previous life? I didn't say this to him, but it made me think about what kind of world view must accompany this belief.  Another student asked me if I would be attending the upcoming Franklin Graham evangelistic crusade, and shared that he would be dancing on the stage at some of the shows! Imagine that! A high school dance team fr...

It is actually the skeleton of a wild cucumber, dried. It can be used as a loofah in the bath, or as a sponge. In traditional markets and  old streets you can buy long ones and cut them into pieces. Mine is a piece from a friend's, and I use it to wash my dishes. 

What is it? What is it made from? What is it used for? This is object can be found in many homes in Taiwan, especially more traditional ones. A little blog contest for you guys! If you think you know the answer, you can leave a comment, or email me!

We had a long weekend last week, and on Friday I went out with some friends from Yilan for the day. First stop was a mushroom plantation. Now, when they told me we were going to pick mushrooms, it sounded really cool until I started thinking about it.... wait a minute... don't mushrooms grow in.....? Well these ones didn't! They grew in bags which were placed along shelves in a refrigerated room. We went inside and were given baskets to pick as many as we wanted. Later we had a barbecue and grilled them. They were DELICIOUS! I still have some left from my huge bag, which only cost me about $4.00 Canadian (120NT), and I'm planning to make soup, and a marinara spaghetti sauce with them this week. Before we took our mushrooms back to BBQ, we went to a lake in the area that I'd never been to before. It was really nice there, and we had a great stroll around the lake. This area, being more remote and closer to the coast, really got hit bad by the two super typhoons. While mo...

I've always loved the show "The Amazing Race" so I was thrilled to find that there is an Asian version . It's still in English, but all the teams are from Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, The Philippines, Korea, Japan, India etc.) , and they race through Asian countries. The format of the show is the same, for those who are familiar with it, including roadblocks, detours etc. Season 3 is on right now, and last week, they came to Taiwan! The funniest thing about it was that they kept asking police officers to help them find different locations, which they did (even escorting them long distances) without batting an eyelash! Glad Taipei's finest are there for such causes, even if they don't stop the scooters speeding through red lights. I was wondering where they would end up going, with all the great places to see, and they ended up going to a place called Shenkeng, which is actually on the way to Yilan! The Shenkeng old street is famous for....st...