Elephant Gun

Sometimes you are forced into situations where you have to make new friends. Sometimes, you are lucky enough to make such awesome friends like the girls I have met here. Sometimes, you get to go to awesome places with them like Kenting. And sometimes, I will share pictures of my weekend with you. This is how to have the most perfect weekend. Give or take a few details.

Upon arrival in Kenting, and after finding food, you must run down to the beach at 11 pm to watch the fireworks.

After sleeping in, you must go to the beach and soak up all the sun and beauty.

And then you must have a photo shoot on the rock near the water's edge.

Between the beach and dinner you must go on a little walk in the national park and avoid being eaten by a wild boar, like so.

Then you find a little hidden beach, and there you must practice your modeling skills...but don't put those photos on the internet.

Then you get a delicious thin crust pizza from this pizza truck. But every time you go to the main street you will be too busy eating all the food you can find to take any other pictures of it.

On the second day of your trip you must rent some scooters to drive down the coast. Stop at this big rock. Apparently it's a "must see."

After the giant rock, keep riding the scooters down and go to this park place thing, you will walk through some cool forests.

You will come out at this beautiful beach plank walk.

Obviously, you must take pictures like the Asians do.

After returning the scooters and getting more food to eat, you should make your way down to the beach to watch the sunset. Pictures won't do it justice though.

On your last day go to the beach for a few more hours, then pack up and make the long journey home. But beware, the sunburn will be a little painful.

Say Goodbye

This made its way into the class mailbox this week.

Oh to be young and in love. 

The Book of Jacob

Have you ever taken a picture that turned out far more awkward than you expected? And then said picture becomes one of your most favorite pictures and you laugh at it for days? Weeks? Years even? Yeah, a new one of those was captured last night. Even after I clearly stated, "ok, we CANNOT make this awkward." Just another one to add to the album of funnies.

The End of the Line

Sometimes after a week like last week, a day like yesterday is all you need.

The Blond Leading the Blind

I guess you could say it was love at first sight. It was our first week here in Hualien that we saw these stretchy pants at the local grocery store. We knew then and there that we needed them. But we were very limited on cash. We couldn't wait 'til we started tutoring so we could buy ourselves some stretchy pants. We talked about them nearly everyday, we even told our friends about them. You better believe that the first Saturday after tutoring we took the tuition money and bought ourselves those stretchy pants. Ashley's are the very colorful stretchy pants with the scary monsters (didn't see those until after the purchase) while I picked the more subtle polka dotted stretchy pants. Luckily for us, there are many more patterns and colors to choose from, and you better believe that we might be starting a stretchy pants collection. I'd like to say that is money well spent.

Sweet Pea

My oh-so-great Valentine's Day:

We found these to give the kiddos.

Our Valentine's

I didn't know I could miss tortilla chips so much.

Baked rice? Whoda thought?

Making our Valentine's. We don't have many friends,
so you could probably guess who we'll be giving them to.

My Valentine. Always.

Lesson from Asia: #2

If you think that making maracas with rice for children with simple rubber bands is the correct way, you are quite wrong. The Chinese teacher will start to laugh, and ask you if that is what you think will work best. She will then make you glue each paper, and then cover it with tape. And then, once you finally get all of them made, she will come and tell you that they are too heavy. Even a little bit of rice will make enough noise for them to hear.

Don't You

Here it is, Sunday night again. And let me tell you, I was so exhausted today I took a longer nap than I probably should've. But that's ok. Earlier this week we took pictures for a class book that we are going to make for a self-esteem lesson sometime in the next 4 months. Here are some of the best outcomes.

I'm Here to Stay

Wow, Thursday night already!? This week has gone almost as fast as last week. But it's ok, because come tomorrow afternoon, I only have one more week of my rice topic. I'm definitely running out of ideas that have any relation to rice...

This week we had three birthdays. And as we all know, Happy Birthday just happens to be my favorite song. So it was a good week. On birthdays we end school 20 minutes early so we can have a party, which includes cake. I like this 20 minutes early part, less time on rice, which makes me one happy teacher!

The top is Oliver, he turned 3 on Monday. Next is Mina (who is very validly one of the cutest children I've ever met) and she turned 3 today! Ryan turned 6 on Monday as well. Plus, all that cake is bomb. We can't figure out how they get it so moist.

Every day I find myself falling more and more in love with these kids. I already get sad thinking about leaving some of them in five months, and then I think, wow, you still have five months, that's a long time. Or maybe I'll just have to bring some of them home, but as a friend said today, that is probably not allowed. Dangit.

Festival

Pingxi Lantern Festival=No words to appropriately describe it. And my pictures don't even do it justice. But what I can say is that it was beautiful, and crowded, and awesome all at the same time. Definitely put that on your bucket list.

This is us in the middle of the night trying to get home. And after looking through these pictures again, they are not doing the real thing justice. And my neck is very sore from looking up all night, I kept running into things because I was always looking up. But what do they say? Pain is the price of beauty?

The Runway

I was going to do a fun little post about my week, but I'm too lazy. This week was busy, and ended with a kid on the front row of class blowing chunks today as I was speaking about fruit. But here, I'll give you a little hint at what I'll be doing tomorrow...
minus the leading man, and all the singing. Except we totally know this will be going through my head all day. It's all I can think about.