Always an Adventure...

Well, the day is here. There's no more dreading, avoiding or bemoaning to be done.  I'm 30, flirty, and thriving, (not thirty, hurting, and crying) This has been a difficult milestone for me to face in some ways. Like many, I found myself approaching 30 thinking I was supposed to have a lot more accomplished by now. Thanks to a few pep talks and a lot of prayer in the last few months though, I'm feeling pretty ok. I don't have to have it all together yet. I can start making choices now that will affect my life in my 30s, 40s, and beyond. God has also been bringing a lot of words into my life for this time. In the last few weeks, almost every verse I read in a devotional has been something about Him directing paths, guiding our way etc. Another quote that has kept popping up is by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Do not go where the path may lead, instead go where there is no path and leave a trail." It's scary to think of being a trailblazer. It's har...

The birthday celebrations have begun...on Monday night my class got me a cake, on Wednesday and Thursday I had birthday meals with friends. Tomorrow I have class in Hualian with a birthday dinner in the evening. I got myself two birthday presents this year - the first was getting my house cleaned ($2500 for half day of cleaning - about $75 Canadian). It seems like a luxury I guess, but it feels good to be starting my 30s with a clean home. I'm also trying to get rid of more unnecessary stuff. The second was coloring my hair a fun and vibrant red. I figure as I get older, my hair will probably lighten a lot, so I wanted to try going darker at least once. Some have said they like it, others told me "next time don't get that color," but hey it makes me kind of feel young and adventurous still. There is a little voice that tries to tell me that after 30 there will be no fun to be had. Of course I know that's not true, but in these last few hours of my 20s, the do...

So I was browsing Amazon looking for some fun stuff for my Kindle last night when I came across a book about turning 30..it seems I'm not the only one who has a mid- (quarter?) life crisis when approaching this age. Here's what the book description said: Competence. Now in convenient book format You’re old enough to own property and have a family, but can you safely open a bottle of champagne? Or change a flat tire? 30 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do Before Turning 30 provides idiot-proof instructions for mastering these and other essential, face-saving, and possibly life-saving skills. You’ll learn how to... 1. wrap a present 2. start a successful fire in a fireplace, at a campsite, and in a barbecue 3. finish a piece of furniture 4. get a raise 5. order wine at a restaurant without getting stiffed 6. parallel park in three breathtakingly beautiful movements 7. dance a “slow dance” without looking like an idiot 8. use a full place setting properly, inc...

One of my 30 before 30 goals was to do more hiking in Yilan. There are so many amazing hiking trails around here, and many I didn't even know about before. The first thing I did was make a list of all the trails I knew how to get to on my own, and checked off each one as I hiked it. Since I love making lists, this really did help me to achieve my goal. There is one trail that I haven't made it to yet, but I do have one more week to go! I think this year, I will try to do each trail a 2-3 more times. Another thing I did was suggest hiking as a group activity or accept invitations to go hiking with others. This led me to some new places, including a botanical garden with an amazing English garden on the top of a mountain. There were "Watch out for monkey" signs, but to my disappointment, I didn't see any.  The view from the top was incredible. We could see the whole Yilan area. Another hike I did was to a waterfall, that turned out to be 4km each way! Unlike the...

Easter is coming! It's one of my favorite holidays. It's a time of reflection, mourning and rejoicing, and the promise of new life. Last Friday, I was at church when the pastor asked me if I had any ideas for a Good Friday service. We talked for about an hour, and by the end, we had put together a really cool program! I'm really excited about the opportunity to be involved in this way, and that my church is willing to try something a little different, that will hopefully be meaningful to them. We're doing a partial candlelight service that includes video, singing, silent reflection, spontaneous prayer and dramatic scripture readings. The major church holidays aren't really celebrated in Taiwan, even in the churches, so I'm glad that we can spend a little more time on Easter this year. I also wanted to share my Easter playlist, partially inspired by my friends Amanda and Hope who have both shared some of these songs with me. I'm making them links to yout...

I've been home for almost a month now, and when people ask me "How was Thailand?" I say, "Great!"   The weather was perfect. The food was amazing. The bargains were cheap. Evening entertainment - Settlers of Catan In class The company was fun. What more  could you want? But when they ask, "Did you do anything exciting?" I struggle to find something to share. This year, I really didn't do much, and that was OK. Part of the reason was that I've been there before, and I've done the elephants and tigers already. Part of the reason was that part of my fun budget was devoted to my layover in Singapore. And part of the reason was that I was there for other reasons... like to study and reconnect with my cohort members. Both of those goals were certainly achieved. It was kind of sad to realize that this was my last winter study term in Thailand. I may have to find an excuse to go back though! It was sad and happy, because that means...

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...

This summer I skimmed through The Book of Awesome during one of my lovely visits to Chapters. They have a pretty fun blog too, with entries like this : #986 When you pull up to a red light and the guy in front of you nudges up a bit so you can make a right turn Don’t you love it when you pull up to a red light in the right lane, and the guy in front of you notices and squeezes out into the intersection a bit, just so you can make your right turn a bit faster? What a great thing that is. Careful though — now it’s your job to give a sincere  Thank-You Wave  as you drive by, because you know they’re waiting for it and besides, did they just shave twenty seconds off your commute or what? AWESOME! Lately, I've seen a few awesome  things around here that I thought I could share. #1. A guy riding a bicycle while balancing two 10-foot bamboo poles on his shoulder. Dangerous, but AWESOME! #2. A lovely sunny day today in the midst of all the winter rain....

To all my American friends out there, Happy Thanksgiving! I know Canadian Thanksgiving was awhile ago, but when you live in an international community, all the holidays kind of blend together. This year, Canadian Thanksgiving happened to be the same weekend as Taiwan's Double 10 holiday (national day) so both had a long weekend. This weekend I'm planning a short trip to Taipei to watch The Help with friends and attend a Thanksgiving dinner with friends from many different countries :) I was thinking lately that it's been more than 5 years since I've seen snow! It's cooled off enough that I've started to take out my winter clothes, and even wore long pants the other day, but it's still above 20 degrees here. It certainly doesn't feel like winter. In fact, because of the work I do, the seasons get quite confusing. At the moment, I'm writing tests for March, proofreading things coming out in February, and preparing teaching lessons for December. Plus...

Well email posting so far is rather disappointing... I tried to send this 3 times before it would show up...and then the text was missing, so I had to email the text to myself separately and then copy and paste it here. So much for that idea, but I'll try again sometime, maybe without photo? This semester I'm doing a lot of my work from home, which is nice unless they're renovating the apartment next door all month. Fortunately the local Starbucks is nice and quiet during the day. They just got their long-awaited (maybe just by me) Christmas drinks! Note also that I come here so often that I have my own cup, which they pull out as soon as I walk through the door! I even get a small discount for using it. Time to plan my lesson for this afternoon which will be somewhat challenging since I lent out my textbook to a student who forgot his and just realized that I never got it back... Has that ever happened to you?

Tuesday, October 18: My poor little old scooter had a rough day today! It has been through a lot in the 3+ years I have owned it. Since I bought it from a teacher who was moving back to the U.S. for about US$200, it has driven me through rainy Yilan winters, made it all the way around Taiwan, and carried many guests, including my grandma, not to mention getting me to and from all the various schools I teach at. This semester, I need to drive almost twice as much and started thinking about upgrading a little, after all my little scooter was already 12+ years old when I bought it.  Now 3 years later, I was thinking it was time to switch. But I was still a little hesitant, did I really need a new scooter? Was this a good investment? I’d been to look at some secondhand scooters last week, and still hadn’t reached a decision. Then two very odd things happened today. First, when I went to drive to school this afternoon, I found that my rear tire was almost completely flat. I ended up...

Our first week in Yuli October 16, 2004 I arrived in Taiwan with no idea what I'd be getting into. I was originally only planning to be here for one year... but 7 years later I can say that I truly enjoy my life here. It still feels a little surreal that it's really been 7 years. They do all kind of blend together after awhile, there was the year in Yuli, the year I broke my leg, the year I started commuting to Taipei, and so much in between. A song that I've been listening to a lot lately is Never Once by Matt Redman, and part of the lyrics say: Scars and struggles on the way//but with joy our hearts can say// Yes our hearts can say// never once, did we ever walk alone// never once, did you leave us on our own// you are faithful//God you are faithful I've had plenty of struggles along the way, and one long scar down my left ankle, but it's true God has been so faithful in big and little things, and it is true, never once in these 7 years have I ever walked ...

Ok, so I kind of fell off the 30 before 30 wagon, but I still have almost 7 months!! There are a number of things I was going to post about or wanted to post about... but it just didn't happen. I achieved two of my 30 before 30 goals, going to Hollywood (see pics here ), and swimming across Sun Moon Lake which really does deserve a post of its own. I also had a very eventful trip home, which included a trip to Banff with my sweet nephew, my grandparents' 50th anniversary, and my great grandmother's funeral (she also has a tribute post all written in my head) One of the reasons I haven't been posting is that I've been having issues with Chrome, which is the browser I normally use, not working, causing me to lose a couple of entries :S But I just set up email posting, so if I can get that figured out, maybe you'll suddenly see a lot more posts! This semester, I got a huge surprise when I found out I wouldn't be continuing my weekly commute to Taipei. In...

I'm here in class this week, and my brain is going into overload, filled with words like rheme, prosody, and discourse semantics. But speaking of fun words, our prof (who was teaching at Briercrest last semester - small world!) shared this website as a teaching tool or just for fun at www.wordle.net Here's a sample of what I got by inputting text from this blog, enjoy!

I'm already 1/3 of the way through my 30 before 30 goal, that's good news! I have a few more ideas coming up too, one of which is that this coming October will mark 7 years in Taiwan! But for now, let me share a little about my trip back to the cold west! 33-19 degrees - yes, it's a lot cooler here, which means all the pictures of me will be wearing the same hoodie since I only brought one! 24 hours of travel - including a very long trip to the airport. I booked a shuttle van to pick me up at home, and they arrived at 11:30am, to get me to the airport for 4:20pm??? I was thinking I'd get there quite early and could have lunch there, mail something etc. little did I know that after picking me up in Yilan, they'd go south (away from the airport) to Luodong, Nan-fang Ao, and then Su-Ao for other pickups! We didn't even leave Yilan until quarter to 1!! Then we hit torrential rain just past Taipei, so my ride was a little delayed. I flew to Hong Kong without inc...

Last week I helped out at a kids camp for my church. We were out in the country at this little school, and the kids were sooo cute! Actually they reminded me a lot of the kids in Yuli, a lot of them were aboriginals. For me it was fun, but kind of a challenge. The worst thing about the camp was that there were these venomous monster mosquitoes out there, that left itching red welts on my legs, if I ever go back there, I'll definitely wear long pants, 33 degrees and no air conditioner regardless. Anyways, I was teaching the youngest age group, which is quite different from the high school and adult students I'm used to. They take a lot more energy, that's for sure! Some ways teaching 7-year-olds is different from teaching adults: You have to accompany your students to the bathroom You have to worry about students putting their food into the hair of the person next to them You use the word "xiao peng you" ('little friends') a lot Your tone of voice a...

"If you put your happiness in temporary things, your happiness will be temporary." Last Saturday, we took about 30 students from Yilan to see Nick Vujicic give a talk. If you have never heard of this amazing man, take a few minutes to check out his website . Nick was born without arms and legs, and doctors could give his parents no reason why. He went through a very challenging childhood and at one point, even thought about drowning himself in the bathtub. But God turned his life around and gave him a purpose. Today, he is a motivational speaker who travels around the world sharing his message of hope, speaking against bullying, and encouraging people to "Never Give Up." Words can't describe how inspiring it was to see him here in Taiwan, and have him share with a sold out auditorium. He talked about the story of the blind man in John 9, who was born blind, not because of his sin or his parent's sin, but to give glory to God. Nick told us emphatically, tha...

A few weeks ago I bought a whole box of amazing Taiwan mangoes. They are one of my favorite fruits here, especially for my morning smoothies! Today I put some in my fresh salsa (as a friend had suggested), and it was deee-licious! It's one of the easiest things in the world to make as long as you're up from some chopping. Incidentally, planning meals is one of my 30 before 30. I try to buy good fresh ingredients at the beginning of the week that I can hopefully use in a variety of ways. It is a challenge because it is so fast, cheap, and easy to eat out here, especially when you're cooking for one. But if anyone wants to try it out, here is how I made it today: 1 medium mango 1 medium red onion (you can use regular onion) 3 cloves of garlic 3 bunches of fresh cilantro 3-4 large ripe tomaotoes Lime juice (or lemon) Chop it all and put it in the fridge. After about an hour the flavors will mingle together quite nicely, and it'seven better the next day! The propo...

My Taiwanese "little sister" Annie is graduating from elementary school this year! I took the train to Hualian to see her graduation recital on Saturday, where she played the flute and piano. I've known their family almost as long as I've been in Taiwan. My first year in Yuli, Hope and I went to their house for a weekly dinner. I also spent my first Chinese New Year with their family traveling around Taiwan. She was only 5 years old!! Sometimes it really starts to sink in that I've really been here for a long time, and I'm so thankful to have good friends like this family, who have really taken me in and made me feel like I'm not an outsider. I took a short video of her playing, I am so proud! She said she'd give me a few tips if I bring my flute back from Canada this summer...it might take a little more than a few pointers to make up for over 10 years of not playing though!!