Well howdy folks. Yes, I know it's been forever. I now that most of you have probably stopped looking at my blog at all. But this time I am not going to say I'm sorry...haha! No, I'm just going to pretend it's just a normal thing for me to leave my blog without any new posts for an entire semester while I take 19 hours and get a 4.0 and not apologize to anybody!

I am in Kinmen now. And having an awesome time. It's wonderful to be back here with old (and new) friends and hearing Chinese and eating lots of good food...ahhh...yes, it's awesome. I'm not working as much this time, which is good since I'm keeping fairly busy preparing things for the church camp, which will be July 7-10 and for junior high students (no more pre-K students, yea!) I'm also doing some tutoring and teaching a class for high school teachers. Monday and Thursday nights we are having karate class at the church, which has been very fun.

Andrea and Young, Pastor Samuel's two kids, are coming back with me to the States and will be spending a month at our house. We're all really excited about that. Andrea has been working on her English a lot the past two years and has learned quite a bit. Young speaks almost no English, so BJ and I will be kept busy translating for him. Andrea has been doing very good in the karate class and I'm hoping she'll be able to test for yellow belt while in the States.

This past semester was very, very full. I took 19 hours and worked two days a week as well. All told I spent about 36 hours a week at work (although part of that was at night, when I'm able to sleep) and probably close to 35 hours at school. Fortunately I am able to do school work while on the job...otherwise I don't think it would have worked. The cool news is that I made a 4.0 for the spring semester and next semester I am only taking 12 hours. I also took and passed the Oklahoma Subject Area Test (OSAT) for English, so now I've only got one more test left to become a certified teacher (and I still have to graduate, of course). I'm planning on taking that test in September and then taking a couple more OSATs over the next two semesters, so eventually I will be certified to teach English, ESL, Special Ed and History.

In Feb. Ethan and I passed our test for first degree black belt, which means we are preparing for the black belt test on September 20th. We're both extremely excited and nervous about it. Luke and Josiah, the last two guys from our dojo to test for black belt, set the bar really high. We'll have to work very hard to meet that standard. On top of that, I would really like to raise the bar somewhat in the area of breaking. I plan on being the first (as far as I know) black belt candidate to break monster boards and I'd like to include some shin breaks as well. I've got my eyes set on breaking a baseball bat at my second degree black belt test (yea, I'm already thinking about that...I'm nuts). Ethan and I have been keeping each other accountable for running these past few months...Ethan's running 5 miles now! I'm running about 3 and a half with 10 minutes of jump rope before running.

But enough about karate. Dad made it home from Iraq safely just a couple days ago! YEA! We're all very, very happy that he's back at home and all in one peice. I called home and talked to him the day after he got home...it was good to hear his voice. I haven't been able to talk to him the whole time I've been here in Taiwan. For a while we had the family in three different parts of the world...that was interesting.

Ok, I'm going to close for now...talk to y'all later!