Well, I just switched out keyboards. I had been using the keybaord that came with the computer, but then BJ gave me her erginomic keybaord when she left and I've had it sitting in the room here gathering dust for a long time. So today I started to write a blogger update, but got so annoyed with that straight keybaord that I switched out the keybaord instead. Most of the time that doesn't take very much time, but it took a little longer because I had to put all the bu pu mu phu stickers on this keyboard. I'm really glad they sell those stickers, 'cause I looked all over and couldn't find an erginomic keybaord made here in Taiwan with the bu pu mu phu already on it.

I just went and ate lunch with class 901. I was feeling kinda bored this morning, so I decided to wear the school uniform today, just to make things more interesting. I love walking around the school grounds wearing it: you get some really great reactions. Most of the 2 and 3 year students just laughed, but a lot of the 1st year students (who weren't here last school year when I wore it) where very, very shocked. Plus you get some really funny looks from the teachers.

I love Lucy. Last night Ginger and I spent a couple hours at her place, just hanging out. At first Lucy had a lot of customers, so Ginger and I just sat in the back and talked, which was fun. Then after closing time the three of us just sat and talked and listened to music for a long time. That was so fun. Esp. after a long week of teaching.

Guys, I have no idea what to do about teaching with Kiwi. Half of the classes I teach are with Kiwi. And he is a horrible teacher. Like really, really bad. His classes are totally and completely out of control. Their nuts. As in: kids running around the room, wrestling on the floor, yelling at each other across the room, throwing stuff at each other, not even looking up when he pounds on a desk and yells. They know he doesn't really care about them or if they learn and they don't have any respect for him. This past week I showed the kids some Amarican money that I brought here. Yesterday one class was so out of control that I stopped right in the middle, told them they were behaving too poorly and that they weren't going to get to see the rest of it. I then went and sat down in my chair. Another class was out of control, but there where five girls who were paying attention. So I told the class that I wasn't going to show them the rest of the money because they wouldn't pay attention. I then took the five girls to the back of the room and showed them. I'm not sure if that made any difference for the rest of the class, but I do know that there was a little change in mood for the class.

Ok, moon festival. That was fun and interesting. It was offically on Sunday, but things kinda got started for us on Friday morning (not this Friday, but a couple weeks ago). The minister of education (for Kinmen) came by the dorm and gave each of us a box of moon cakes. Now moon cakes are all good and fine, but six boxes is a LOT of moon cakes! We still have some left now. And that's after giving a ton of them to our friends. At any rate, it was a nice gesture, just perhaps a little too large of a gesture.

Saturday we had a b-b-q at the church. But a few hours before that Ginger and I dicided to go to the beach instead (we'd heard the waves were supposed to be big). Turns out the waves wheren't that big, but we still had fun. After it got dark we came on back to the dorm. The kids where having a b-b-q outside, so I hung out with them for several hours. That was a real hoot.

Sunday night (which was the actual date of the moon festival) we were taken to one of the schools for another b-b-q. There were quite a few people there and lots of gal-eeion liquior. One old guy who spoke a tiny bit of English wouldn't leave Rebekah and Ginger alone. Andrew did a very good job of trying to keep him distracted, but that didn't stop his drunken proffesions of love. "I love you...more than I can say." Then he would turn to somebody else and say "Is right?" That person would then nop his head and say that yes, his English was correct, prompting the drunk guy to say it again. He also told Meagan this his son loves her. Meagan replied (without the slightest bit if irony) "I don't think so, because your son has never met me."

At any rate, after maybe an hour and a half we managed to tell them we wanted to be taken home. But then as we're getting into the van one of the English teachers turns to the driver and asks him "Ni hu jo ma?" (have you been drinking?) He said "Yo!" (yes!) "Hun dwo ma?" (a lot?) "Way!" (yea!) And at the same time Lucas is saying "Oh my, he's driving us? I saw him drinking quite a bit!" So I stepped out of the van and said I wasn't going with them. That caused quite a stir. I told Terry he could just call a taxi for me, but they would have none of that. Ginger and Rebekah were kinda upset with me, but I figured I'd rather have them angry than be dead. Finally they found somebody else to drive the car. Rebekah kept on saying "bo how ea-si!" (the meaning is somewhere in between "I'm sorry" and "I'm embarressed") That kinda annoyed me. It was their "bo how ea-si!" The driver knew he was supposed to drive us back: what was he doing drinking?

While in the states I went to a karate tournament. It was only five days after testing for my brown belt, so I was really nervous about being in the advanced division. For kata I did wansi-sho. This is actually an upper black belt kata, but I was taught it by the head of our system several years ago. For almost a year I worked on that kata just about everyday. Last year I used it to win both Octoberfist and Missions Tournament. So I did that for this tournament. Christa Bailey (very good black belt with beautiful kata) gave me a 9 (a really, really good score). Mr. Witticker, a 6th degree black belt who is very, very old school, gave me a 9. But his son, Witticker Jr., gave me a 7.5 (a very bad score). He didn't like the fact that I had done a kata above me. That really annoyed me. Had it not been for that I would have taken first. And I had every right to perform that kata: Mr. Houlzbaur taught it to me and Mr. Murry helped me prepare it for tournament. Oh well. I got 3rd at any rate. Which isn't that bad actually...even with one judge giving me a really bad score, I still out-did all but two of them. Cool.

Alright, talk to you guys later!

Hey! I'm going to try and make this a short update, because I figure if I write several short updates, then updates will actually happen. But if I try to write one long update it will never actually happen, and if it does, then nobod will actually read it.

I slept through my alarm this morning. The school van picks me up at 8:00. At 8:04 Bekah knocked on the door...ahhh! But by 8:07 I was dressed, had all my teaching stuff together and was getting in the van. Wow! Thank you Life Focus!

There are a million new kids here at the dorm. We've got two Taipie kids who speak English almost as good as we do...it's really strange to talk to easily to them. It's also strange, because now we can't say anything we want around the dorm kids. Last semester, if you used big words and said it fast, then you didn't have to worry about any of the kids understanding you. But Jimmy and Jerry can understand an amazing amount.

There's a new 7th grader named Riddick. He's taken a real liking to me and we like hanging out together. Saturday we went and got lunch together: that was really fun. One really cool thing was that we walked all the way to the lunch place and back talking Chinese! I also saw one of my old Small Kinmen students and carried on quite a catching-up conversaton with her, all in Chinese!

There's a little girl by the name of Peggy in 7th grade who's new here at the dorm. She looks like a 4th grader. She's very short and still has that round, baby-fat look. And she's a hoot. The other night she was with us in the living room and started to examine (sp?) the strange features of the Amarican's. First she stared at the back of Lucas's neck, noting the difference in hair color between his head and his neck. Then she measured the noses of everybody in the room: eye to bridge, bridge to tip, tip to face, all with her right index finger. Then she measured her own nose and compared. Then she just stared. She would stare directly at your face, then at your profile. Then she would compare what she just saw to somebody else in the room. All the while she hardly said a word: she simply made simple exlamitory (sp?) noises. Talk about a hoot! We were all just cracking up watching her.

The twins are gone! They said they would be back this semester, but apparently something changed over the summer and they now are living in Taiwan. Dude, I miss those kids!

Man, speaking of missing, I seriously miss Jr. high. Everytime I come back from school and see the Jr. high kids (many of them my old students) I feel like screaming crying at the same time. It's not that elem. is all that bad. But I just can't get into it. I've got lots of cool students, but it's just not like Jr. high. Jr. high you can actually get to know the students and be friends. But what can you do with 3rd graders that you see only once a week? On top of that I feel like I never understand what's going on in the classroom. I've only got two out of six teachers that can actually speak decent English. 10 out of the 20 classes I hardly do any teaching at all (very strange after teaching 45 minutes almost every class last semester).

Sure, I know it's better for my Chinese. None of the kids can even begin to talk to me in English. But I just really, really miss Jr. high.

Ok, in spite of that, things are generally going very good. Awesome, in fact. My monday night class for Sr. high students is going very good. Tonight I told them a story and had them translate it and we also did charades. Then we went to easy way and got stuff to drink. I've got a new class on Wednesday nights that's all students who used to be mine in Jr. high. Most of them are from Small Kinmen. That class is such a hoot! They're english level is a lot higher than my monday night class, so there's a lot more stuff I can do with them.

I'm working on characters a lot. I've got almost 100 characters that I can both read and write now. I like going to La Caffe and sitting in there for an hour or so and working on characters. Garry, the owner, speaks a little English and is always willing to help me if I have a question. He and his wife are both really cool.

There's a couple new forigners on the island. One is taking Tim Nall's place at the college and another lady and her husband are teaching at one of the Jr. highs. I figured it up and I think we still have about 14 forigners on the island total. Not that many. Which is very cool.

Ok, I'm going to get off now. Plan on hearing about our moon festival sometime soon. Drunken proffesions of love, moon cakes coming out of the ears, b-b-q with the dorm kids...all sorts of cool stories.

Love you guys! Bye!

This, my friends, is what you call a tall guy. Say hello to Greg, the 7 foot man.
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Hello! Greatings from the middle of nowhere! Yes! I am back on my little back water island that nobody has ever heard of! Wow-who! I am a happy camper!

Getting here wasn't all that fun. From the time I went to the airport in Tulsa to the time I landed in Kinmen was 34 hours...bleh! Not fun!

First thing I did once we got home was run over to the classrooms and see my students. All my 8th graders (9th graders now) said that 9th grade is very ?? (bad). Poor kids. All of the new sixth graders are so small! It really shocked me!

Wednesday I went to the high school dorm and visited with my ??? (small Kinmen) kids. It was so awesome to see them again! Sunday I am going to be meeting with Selena to get things figured out for my new high school conversation class...a lot of those kids will be from Small Kinmen.

Today we are going to the beach. A typhoon is headed this way, so the waves should be big...Ginger is going to borrow some boogie boards and possible even Chris's surf board...so that should be really fun. Tomorrow Andrew and I are going on a bike rie to explore the south-western end of the island. I don't think I've ever been down in the area before, so that should be fun.

Ok, a coupel things that happened back in the states....I got my brown belt! Wow! I went to three or four classes a week while I was home and Mr Murry let me test! It went very well. I got real good scores on my sweeps and pretty good scores on my jump kicks. Fighting for 10 minutes wasn't too bad (I'd been running about 30), but I just about died in plural fights. During my 3 on 1 fight I fell down and somebody put his heal right in my calf muscle, frogging it really bad. Then in my 4 on 1 I frogged the other calf...ouch! Other than that it all went really well. The next morning I could barely move and had a really good looking black eye, but I was a brown belt! Then on the following Saturday I went to a tournament, which I was more than a little bit nervous about, since I would be in brown belt devision. But I took third place in kata (more on that later...) and second place in sparring! So that was cool!

Ok, I need to go get breakfast now. Talk to y'all later!

8-5-05
I love Newsboys. Such great words and good music.

I also love my new ipod. Yep, I have an ipod! 20 gigs baby! Yes, I am happy! Got it on ebay for $230. Not bad.

Kuyu is gone now. He left on Friday morning. What a hoot having him over! Me and Bonnie took him to Oklahoma City to the Cowboy Museum and Frontier City. That was really fun. The roller coasters weren't really the greatest, but I enjoyed it. They have a ride called The Eruption that is something else. I liked that one a lot.

Anna bought herself a nice digital camera just before I left for Taiwan. But she pretty much spent everything she could on the camera, and so has been living with a 16 MB picture card for the past six months! Poor girl! So I got her a 256MB card for her birthday. She's going nuts taking pictures now.

Dude, I'm loving being home with my family. But man do I miss Kinmen! I miss hearing Chinese, I miss EasyWay, I miss going to Small Kinmen (that place rocks), I miss going to Monkey's for supper, I miss my teammates...

Thursday night we stayed up all night. Kuyu had to leave at 4:30 Friday morning, and Mom, Dad, Isaac and Caleb have all gone up to Chicago for a wedding, so we just stayed up and watched movies! We watched Ice Princess. That was interesting. Don't think too hard and accept that you can see right through the plot and it's a fun, mindless watch. Having been in gymnastics, I've seen a lot of girls pushed the same ways as the skaters in the movie.

Random note: Even though his Chinese is so marble mouthed I can hardly understand a word of what he says, I love listening to music by Jay.

Then we watched part of Fat Albert. It had some pretty funny parts in it. But we didn't finish it because it was getting late into the night and we wanted time to watch Con Air.

I had seen the end of Con Air in Kinmen on TV and thought it looked like a really cool movie. So we watched the whole thing. Very cool movie! Not something I want the little kids to see, but I think Mom would like it. I just think the ending with running into all the casino's in LA was a bit over the top. And while I don't normally approve of face smashing, I really liked the part where the main character smashes the rapist's face into the wall. You have to have seen the movie to understand. It was totally deserved.

8-14

Ok, this has been sitting in drafts waiting for me to finish it...I guess I should.

Today I talked to the church for evening service. Showed pictures and basically talked about what's going on in Kinmen. I think it went pretty well, although I was stuck standing behind the pulpit: if I moved then the speakers would start screaming. I really like moving around while talking to a group, so it made me a little nervous to just be standing there talking. Still, they seemed to like it and I covered most of what I wanted to (I only had twenty minutes...although I think I may have run over and done about thirty without realizing it).

Man, life callings are difficult things. I'm really wondering about some things that I feel like God has called me to that seem to conflict with each other. When I was ten years old I felt God call me to make movies. It was a very strong call and I've had that goal in mind for years and years. But between Feb 5th and Feb. 7th (I even know the exact date) that goal was been shaken. God placed Kinmen on my heart. It's not something I can describe or explain, but God gave me a supernatural love for that place. I can't seem myself going anywhere else.

I know I need to be there for this next school year. Will God lift the burden after that and will I move on to something else? I don't know. But I don't think so. So now I'm starting to look into staying in Kinmen on a more long time basis. I'll need a 4 year degree (which I can probably get in three years with hard work) and then I can go back and live in Kinmen (instead of being on a six month visitor visa and not really being a teacher). That means I need to start work on this college stuff soon.

What would be really cool is if BJ and I end up living and working together in Kinmen.

Ok, I'm going to get this posted and get ready to leave for karate. I'm going to be testing for my brown belt in two weeks! Yikes!

Good heavens. It's been forever since I updated. I've actually been wanting to update for quite some time, but our internet has been totally down for almost a week now. Even our network is down (which means me and Shawn can't play CS together! How horrible!)

At any rate, Thursday was my last day of teaching this semester. Now it's on to camps and then home. I'm really, majorly bumbed about the semester being over, because we have now been told that we will not have Jr. high next semester. I am going to miss my kids so much. Each class has become so special to me. Two of the classes gave me a huge bunch of beautiful flowers. Another class gave me gifts as well. Next Thursday I'm going to be taking sticky pictures with my "daughter" and some of her classmates.

Oh yea, my "daughter". She's an 8th grader who started calling me "Ba ba!" a few months ago. So I started yelling back "New er, gamma?" (Daughter, what do you want?) in a very annoyed voice. She and a few of her classmates have become my good buddies.

In fact, maybe I'll try and post something about each class.

Monday:
707. Really interesting class. This was Big Angel's class, until she moved to Taiwan. There's an interesing boy who sits in the back left (or right, depending on the day) that's a friend of Lucas. He comes to chuch sometimes.

806. AHHHH!!!!!!!! This is the only class that I do not like to teach. I actually like a lot of the kids in the class, but teaching it can be really tough. You try teaching with four kids yelling obscene things in Taiwanese at you while the teacher literally roves the aisles hitting students with a broom stick. The general English level is pretty low in this class, but Micheal and Peter have REALLY good english.

902. Really cool class. I teach this one with Susanann, who is really cool. There's one boy in this class who had an attitude problem. He was not going to enjoy the class, no matter what we were doing, or how fun it was. Sometimes I would make a joke and he would start to laugh, but then remember that he couldn't have any fun in class, so he would go back to frowning. So I talked to him (through the teacher) after class. I told him that I could tell he was trying really hard to be miserible. I told him he was being really silly to work so hard at not having fun while the rest of the class was enjoying themselves. The interesting thing was that after that he didn't have such a bad attitude after that.

801. Wow. Super awesome class. They have the best english scores in the school. Their teacher, Mr. Choung, is super awesome. Jason, Una and Lucy and three of my favorites in the class. Una and Lucy always steal my stuff after class. One day I came into class and found them playing cards: with my cards that they had stolen the week before! I love this class.

706. Probably the class with the lowest English level that I teach in big Kinmen. But they are super awesome. There's a special needs kid in the class and I just found out a few days ago that he won't ever speak English when I'm not there...but he always does a lot when I'm there. Nicole is in this class: she always tries to teach me how to say stuff really fast in Chinese after class. Actually she's a pretty good teacher.

Tuesday

My favorite day! Small Kinmen! ???!

802. Rather difficult class. Two or three boys who have very bad attitudes and fight with me almost every week. Abbey is in this class. She has the best English of any of the Small Kinmen 8th graders. She's really sweet. I'm going to miss her alot.

702. My hat girl is in this class. She always wears a hat. Turns out she actually has some sort of scar or something on her head, but I can always tell who she is when I see her in a crowd, because of her hat. Very cool class, but they are really quite. They like it when I just pick people at random: they don't like volunteering. It's a very Asian thing.

902. Wow. The coolest class ever, with the coolest teacher ever. Linda, Summer, Vicky, John, Ivy and my Sleeping Boy are all in this class. The English level is really good. Linda is the girl who Dad and I went with on family treatment. Really cool girl, really good English. John is the class leader and a hoot. Ivy is totally nuts. Summer is really sweet and one of my favorites. Sleeping Boy is never awake in class. I fight with him every class. He doesn't have a bad attitude or try to give trouble: he simply won't stay awake. And of course I teach with Selena, who is awesome.

901. Cool class, although too quite. Vincent is in this class. At first I don't think he liked me, but in the past couple weeks he's warmed up to me. Really good English. Also Eddy. Not so good English, but he's cool.

801. Super awesome. Very low English, but really good attitude. My head butting girl is in this class. Every time she sees me she motions for me to lean over. Then she head butts me in the forehead. Then she rubs her head and says "how tong!" (ouch!)

701. I love this class. Peggy, Lilly and Victor are in the class. All really good English. This class will talk more than 702.

Wednesday.

805. Amazing class. Dorm John, June, Luke, my daughter, Jason, my buddy...an huge number of amazing kids. There's one new boy who just joined the class a few months ago. Every time I see him I yell "Whoa bee ne swi!" (I'm more handsome than you!) He always yells back something about how I shouldn't pretend ("My gay!").

809. Dorm Bill's class. Bill is really quite in class, but he's my special bud. Also Shoiw Cu-eye's class (small cute...so called because she's my smallest student..i think I posted a picture of her before).

905. Wow. We all about died when we found out who was in this class. Jerry (the try to break BJ's hand Jerry) Allen, Pink Pig, Joe...some of the worst behaved kids in the school. But actually I really enjoyed this class, after the first month or two. The teacher has very poor English, which made it tough. This class gave me a really cool card at the end...I just about cried reading it. Their home room teacher has very good English (better than the English teacher's...) and I really enjoyed visiting with her.

Thursday.

807. Really high English level. I can always be sure to get an update on everybody's love life in this class..."He loves her! And she loves him!" This class is very competative and their always telling me that 801 is not good and that Michael is not good. Monkey is in this class. He's a hoot. Very good English. His parents own a be-in dong (boxed meal) place that we go to real often...great food for an amazingly low price.

710. One of my very cooles classes. While not all of them are good students, I don't have a single trouble maker in the class. Jimmy and Lucky have really good English in this class. Mandy (my dancing girl) and dorm Gilly are in this class.

910. My most crazy class. Totally insane. The teacher has very poor English: lots of the student can translate better than her. Some really sweet kids are in the class. There's also a boy who renamed himself "Juggle" after I started teaching his class!

907. Also very crazy, but in a cooler, more quiet way. Dorm Jason is in this class. Pretty good English. One time when I brought a monster mask to class, one of the girls put it on and went into the teachers office...that was really fun.

Ok, I have to stop now. I'm too tired to write any more. And my spelling is really bad tonight. And I want to play CS with Shawn and Terry (we're at an internet cafe). Expect an explanation of the previous post soon.

When is it ok to hit a stranger? This is a question that has been nagging me since supper time, when a total stranger came up while we were standing at a drink stand and places his hand on Christine's butt. He seemed to be a little bit tanked and was chewing beatle nut. First he came up to me and yells "Hello!" in my face. I said "hello" back and then purposely ignored him. He got his drink, then walks over to Christine (who had her back to him) and touches her. I nudged him in the shoulder, gave him a really big glare and said "Bo ku-ee!" (Not permissible!) He just grinned and stood there staring. Christine went ahead upstairs (where we were waiting for our food) and I hung around downstairs until all the girls had gone up.

I think I should have at least hit his arm really hard. I know where some nerve bundles are and a well placed knife hand can pretty much disable your entire arm for a good three minutes. I really don't know what would have happened if I'd hit him (if it'd come to an actual fight, I think I could have beaten him pretty easily...he was a half drunk, older, fat dude).

Mom has always taught me that a gentleman will not stand for that type of thing. He'll either teach the guy a lesson or get beat up trying. The end result isn't important: it's simply what a gentleman has to do. I feel like I let Christine down. My reaction should have been instant: instead I hesitated. I shouldn't be wondering these things: I am a karate ka. I'm not trying to brag, but I have the ability to seriously hurt and even kill a person. Simply having that power is dangerous. I must know when to use that power and when to refrain. I cannot make those decisions in the heat of the moment.

Ok, I probably should go to bed instead of rambling on like this...good night.

Click here for more pictures!

It's interesting to watch the girls over here try and wear revealing clothes. (yea, I know that sounds really bad, but give me a moment, I will explain)

Over here, tan is BAD. As in really, really, very BAD. So while you may want to wear something revealing, that will expose your skin to the sun, which is BAD. So the apparent solution is to go ahead and wear your revealing clothes, but then to wear non-revealing clothes over them. It's not at all uncommon to see a girl walking down the street, sweating all over and wearing a jacket backwards. I find this to be halarious, because you know that underneath that jacket is a revealing shirt of some sort that she probably paid an arm and a leg for and that she is extremely proud of, but of course nobody ever sees it. Is that actually funny or am I just strange?

Another funny thing over here is some of the things that they think work, but don't. Like their brooms. Now the concept behind a broom is very simple, and you would think that a civilization that has been around for thousands and thousands of years would have figured out (what did they sweep that gun powder up with, anyway?) But no! They are totally clueless when it comes to brooms. And they are confused whenever you talk to them about it. "What do you mean? Of course our brooms work! What are the brooms like in the USA?" And I can't describe the difference, or what exactly is wrong, but let me tell you, these brooms over here do NOT work!

Another thing is their spoons. Dude, it's no wonder they use chopsticks! These stupid things they call spoons are totally useless! And once again, they don't even realize it!

But at the same time, they've got stuff over here that I wonder why on earth we don't have in the states. When you go to get a drink, you can turn is upside down and shake it, put it in a bag, drop the bag in your bicyle basket and ride two miles without ever worrying that your drink will spill. Why? Because they seal the top of the cup with a sheet of plastic. Once you want to drink it, you simply poke the straw through the plastic and enjoy your drink. Drop it after you've poked it? No problem if you pick it up fast enough, because it's only one small hole. You only spilled a little bit. I very serioulsy wonder when these things are going to hit the states and everybody will love it and everybody in Asia will be like "What? You didn't have those before?"

I'm in Small Kinmen right now, enjoying my lunch break. I've got two classes after lunch and then I take the four o'clock boat back to Big Kinmen. Classes have gone really good so far. I love my ninth graders over here! They are totally awesome.

Yesterday was my birthday. Over here it is traditional to give away candy on your birthday, so I've been giving each of my students a sucker during class. It's going to total something like 530 suckers by the end of the week...

The team did a supprise birthday party for me last night. I was kinda expecting them to do something (because we've always done something for other people's birthdays) but I didn't have any inkling of when it would be until about three seconds before they said "happy birthday". BJ and I had been planning to go out to eat at a certain place for over a week and for one reason and another it kept on getting put off. So Monday Bonnie asked if I wanted to go eat there and I said yes. Since it had actually been my idea in the first place, I didn't suppect that she was using it to get me out of the way for an hour or so. Shawn and Ginger came with us and we had a blast. Then once we got home everybody was in the living room waiting for me. It was really cool. A few of our high school friends also came over, which was a hoot.

Yesterday I also learned how to write my Chinese name. I'd actually known how to do part of it for a while, but now I can write the entire name. I'm also learning how to write a couple other characters. Tomorrow I have a Chinese test and I actually haven't studied for it very much, because I've been working on the character stuff. But oh well. I've still got a full day to practice and I already know most of it (don't panic Anna...this is the exact same study pattern I followed last week and made a 95%).

Ok, I need to get off now. I'm about to fall asleep setting in this hot, quiet room, so I think I'll go walk around outside. God bless each of you!

Here there. Don't know how long I'll be able to make this post, but I figured it was high time for an update.

Today was a blast. Josh, Chase, Daniel and Joel, all fellow English teachers in Taiwan, came over for the weekend. This morning and early afternoon we went to Small Kinmen and went swimming. What a hoot! Some of Andrews students came by the beach and played with us...BJ and Lucas and I got in a mud throwing fight with them...I hope their parents weren't too upset about that. BJ was totally covered in mud by the end, because Lucas and I were a little more timid than her.

Ginger and Shawn's friend Angie came and visited us here in Kinmen for about three weeks. She left on Thursday. That was interesting. At first she really annoyed me. But by the time she left we were getting along pretty well (although I wasn't exactly sad to see her go either) It's not that we fought or anything, it's just that she was so extremely immature. At any rate we did have some fun together. Wednesday I skipped out on Chinese class (after taking my test and getting a 95%) and went with Ginger, Angie and Shawn to the beach. That was a total hoot. I'd never been swimming in the ocean before. It was a very interesting experiance. It's salty! That was a shock (don't know why...) Then Karen, who owns Cal. Pizza (and speaks very good English) came with her boyfriend and joined us. We ordered a pizza and spent about five hours just hanging out.

On the boat back to Big Kinmen this afternoon (after we went swimmming...not Wednesday, but today) I got to visit with two of ninth graders. It was really cool. Their names are Summer and Elly and Summer is the one that wants to marry my brother Ethan. They taught me some cool Chinese stuff. For example, the last character in my Chinese name means "hears". But actually it is two character combined: the character for "door" and "ear". So "hear" is "door" and "ear" together...cool, no? They also taught me how to say "sunburned"...bet you can't guess how that came up...

BJ is really feeling the crunch of leaving in only two months. I've still got over a year here and I'm even starting to feel like I've hardly got any time left. I know that must really sound odd to those of you stateside, but that really is the way I feel. I'm already trying to figure out how I can come back after I get my degree. And trying to figure out how I'm going to keep up my Chinese while I'm gone.

Speaking of my Chinese, I feel like I've broken through a barrier in the past week and a half. I'm able to communicate a lot more and understand a lot more of what I hear. I'm starting to feel like there actually is some hope of me ever being able to really speak Chinese. I'm also starting to really want to learn how to read Chinese. They say if you learn 3000 characters you will be able to read the newspaper. Some days that number seems impossible. Other times it seems that I should be able to do it. I figure it will be at least six or seven years before I can fluently speak Chinese, but i'm hoping to be able to haltingly communicate within a year.

Ok, I have to get off now. I still have to send some stuff to Sandy and plan for Sunday school tomorrow morning.

DANIEL SAUTER BEAT JAMES PRICE---7 TO 2!!!!

And I'm a little bit excited about that.

Hey there! It's been a long time since I updated...a long time! I'll see if I can make this one interesting in order to make up for it.

Today I had no class. Today and tomorrow all my students are having their monthly test, so they didn't need me. So instead I went with Rebekah to her schools. That was fun. In the morning we went to a small school with only six classes (four of which have English class). The 4th and 5th grades where cool, but I really loved the 6th and 3rd grades. Now, I have nothing against third grade. I just don't think I would want to to teach it. But this is the first third grade class I've met that I think I would actually enjoy teaching. They were awesome! 6th grade was really cool: if I do teach elem. next year, I think I'm going to ask to have as many 5th and 6th grades as possible. I also got some really cool pictures...maybe I can post some of them.

The goverment gave us a computer for our room. Shawn of course has his laptop, so I get this computer all to myself! The only problem is that it's in Chinese! So we've got Windows XP ordered and we'll be installing that soon. The graphics card was only 32 MB, so I bought a new one for it...and if you're going to buy one, why not go all the way? So I am now the proud owner of a 256 MB card! Wee!

Hey, I know it's possible to parition a drive and run Windows on one and Linix on the other...is it possible to have two versions of Windows on a computer? I'd kinda like to keep the Chinese on here and I don't want the hassle of formating the drive. Anybody know about that?

Tomorrow some of us are taking a friends car and driving around the island a for the afternoon. I'm not sure yet if I'm going or not...depends on if BJ decideds to go. If she stays, I'll go (no, not becaus I don't want to be with her! There's only one more seat open in the car and since BJ is going home in a few months and I'm staying another year, I figure she should get to go if she wants).

King Car has told us that we will not be allowed to go home over the winter holliday. I'm pretty upset over that. It's by no means set in stone yet (nothing with King Car ever is) but I tried talking to Sandy about it and it was like running into a brick wall. Pray about that please.

Last Friday I just about got my nose broke. We were down stairs sparring and Ginger walked by...she has just been playing volleyball and so was wearing shoes and pants. I threw a couple punches at her...she turned around and came back at me full force, landing a beautiful backleg round house right on the bridge of my nose. We all heard a very loud *CRACK* and tears came to my eyes. BJ and Ginger (who was freaking out) both said my nose was crocked. Not just a little, but quiet a bit. So ran up to the bathroom and pushed it back straight (ouch!!!) Monday Pastor Samuel took me to the hospital and we had it X-rayed. Turns out the bone isn't broken, but the cartilidge was probably ripped loose. It was pretty swollen and tender for several days. Now it's just tender. I guess it's cool that it's not broken...but if I have to go through all the pain and bother, I'd kinda like to at least be able to brag that I've had my nose broke in a fight...

Speaking of fighting, I've got a couple 8th graders on Small Kinmen that have decided they want to sleep through my class. Last Tuesday one of them wouldn't pay attention...so I took his chair away. He wasn't so happy about that. Oh well. The class is still really cool.

I have to go to bed now...it's two o'clock. Here's some good bumer stickers and a quiz I took (thank you Christine! Good job!)

Do unto others before they do unto you.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Do I look like a freakin' People Person?
Don't play stupid with me... I'm better at it!
Driver carries less than $20 IN AMMUNITION
F U Cn Rd Ths U Cnt Spl Wrth A Dm!
Forget about World Peace...Visualize Using Your Turn Signal!
Front bumper -Run, Hilary, Run!
Go On, I will See You At The Next Light.
Have you slapped an environmentalist today?
HONK IF YOU LOVE GORE (use the button on your steering wheel)

You scored as Samuel. Your very comfortable with who you are. You don't mind wearing pink tie-die. Your very straight forward with what you want to tell people, and you almost always mean what you say. Samuel 92% B.J. 92% Megan 92% Rebekah 83% Christine 83% Andrew 67% Shawn 67% Ginger 58% Lucas 25% which Taiwan English teacher are you? created with QuizFarm.com

A few more pictures have been added.

Ok, I had meant to write an update tonight, but I ended up posting a bunch of pictures instead. Sorry! I'll try to write one soon...how soon I'm not sure though. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for a weekend in Taipei. Pray that it goes well. Dad left about six hours ago. :(

Click here for pictures!

WOW! The other day I was down at the beach and I got to thinking "Can you believe that I'm walking down a beach, listening to Chinese music, wondering if that peice of metel is from a land mine, on a small island from which I can see mainland China?!?!"

God's ways are so much higher than our ways. Two years ago, if you had told me where I would be today, I would have laughed at you. But it's so perfect. I love this place. I love the people. I love my students. I love the dorm kids here at the Jr. high where we live. I love the old man who sells clam soup around town and always yells at the top of his lungs and smiles when he sees us. I love our church. I love the food. I love the small alleys I walk down on my way eat "hot pot" at the tenth floor (the tallest building in Kinmen). I love teaching my kids the only card trick I know and then watching them show it to their friends.

This place has taken a greater hold on me in a shorter time than anything else ever has. I am not capable of this love I have. It's totally a God thing.

This place breaks my heart. I've cried over it almost every day the past week. When you see people wailing and following a funeral parade on Easter Sunday morning, you have to cry. When you see a 7th grader you've come to love smoking and trying to hide from you, you have to cry. When you realize that you dear friend Douglas is headed for hell, you have to cry. When you see children left at a school dorm while their parents work on the mainland, you have to cry.

This place makes me laugh. When you're playing "Apples to apples" and your team leader gets the cards "Useless", "pathetic", "naive" and "dead", you have to laugh. When a kid tries to give you the finger and doesn't know which one to use, you have to laugh. When college students drive by on their mo-peds and yell "hello!", just to prove that they know some English, you have to laugh. When one of your students comes up to you with a huge grin on her face and says "I'm angry!" because you took her picture, you have to laugh. When Moody didn't undestand the the word "half" and you ended up with two pizzas instead of one, you have to laugh. When you say "I don't understand: sorry" in Chinese and Taiwanese and the old lady on the bus starts jabbering at you about how good it is that you said something in Taiwanese, you have to laugh. When James losses his voice and makes a marker board to talk to you with, you have to laugh.

This place makes me pray. When you can't get a student to even look at you, you have to pray. When your team mate can barely walk because of a hurt foot, you have to pray. When you have no idea what you're going to teach in class, you have to pray. When you feel like you're going to explode from the stress of everything that is expected of you from your 3 different bosses (and millions of friends!), you have to pray. When you can't understand the laungage, you have to pray.

This place makes me praise. When you pray that God will help us to talk to TIm and then he calls one of us within half an hour to arrange a meeting, you have to praise God. When you stay up till 1 o'clock with BJ and Ginger talking and praying about you classes and then every single prayer you lifted up is answered within twelve hours, you have to praise God. When you see Bekah walking down the street without even limping, you have to praise God. When you God gives you the chance to talk to James about spiritual matters for over an hour, you have to praise him. When you can understand something said in Chinese, you have to praise God.

The is no way to describe what this is like. There is no words to describe how I feel. The love, joy, sorrow and stress mixed together, all combined to force you to lean on God.

Hey, I've created a blogger for my pictures. No need to bookmark it or check it...any time I post pictures to it I'll post a link on here.

Whoa du pictures!

What do you do when somebody you love is hurting themselves and you can't even talk to them? How do you express that deep, horrible pain you feel? What do you do when they run away from you, and when you finally corner them, they just keep telling you it's no big deal and everything will be fine?

What do you do when people you love are changing for the worse and you don't even know how to yell "You're too good for those guys! Why do you have to hang out with them?" How do you reach out to people abandoned by their parents and help them grow up when all they can understand is "Are you ok?"

I love these kids so much. And I hate to see them doing stuff I know they will wish they hadn't.

Last nigth we caught Big Angel smoking. I felt liking just sitting down and crying. Kelly is starting to hang out with some of the wrong crowd. Allan has really gotten into some bad stuff: I'm not sure what. I'm just feeling really depressed about these kids. They are each so precious and special.

Sometimes I feel so powerless. I can't even talk to them, and even if I could, what would I say? I feel like screaming and crying at the same time.

"Jesus wept." I wonder if he ever felt like this...

Christine and Bekah
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Yummy finger situation! (Ginger)
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Drew, Gingers Dad and Mom and James
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The first Taiwanese bug I ever saw!
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My cool roommate!
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Good picture of BJ.

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Hi there. I have BIG NEWS!

I'm staying for another year!

Goodness, I can't really believe it myself. But yes, I am staying. I will be coming home this summer for a few weeks (not sure how many) and then I'll be coming home during winter vacation (in Jan.) I'm really looking forward to being here longer: I've come to love this place so much in just the few weeks I've been here.

This past week has been awesome. I've been praying for my classes alot more and I can really see the difference. I've had two classes in which every student volunteered to say the tounge twister! Wow! That's just about unheard of. Tuesday Andrew gave me a really cool idea for a game to play in the class room and I've done that all week: it's very popular.

Tomorrow night I'm having a party for my Jr. High English teachers. We're going to play Apples to Apples. We're also going to talk a little bit about Easter, so pray for that.

Dad is going to be here in one week! I can't wait! WOW!

I've started running again. I hadn't been doing it the past several weeks: what with being sick and the cold weather I simply couldn't make myself do it. But it sure feels great to be running again. Last night after I ran I went over to the big gym and did all my katas. There were a bunch of people there dancing: it was interesting to watch.

Ok, it's time for team meeting. Bye bye!

Good heaven's. I feal horrible. I had gotten over being sick a few weeks ago and was doing fine, but then Sunday night/Monday morning our heater got turned off somehow. The room got real cold. I didn't feel so great during class yesterday, and then afterwards I went downhill pretty fast. BJ and I went out the get supper and walking back I was carrying our food and my arms got so tired I finally had to give it to her to carry (we're talking about maybe two pounds here!) I went to bed at about 7:30. And I've had to miss school today. I'm really bummed about that: Tuesday is one of my fav. days, in spite of the fact that it's my longest. The school on Small Kinmen (the smaller of the two islands here) is smaller in size and the two teachers I work with are totally awesome. In fact I got a get well e-card from one of them this morning! How sweet!

I'm starting to really love Monday. I've got some awesome classes. Yesterday one of my girls brought her mouse to class and showed it to me: it was the cutest thing ever!

Man, I really wish my camera would get here. Mom sent it several weeks ago, but there's still no box for me yet! Mail from Taiwan to the states goes pretty fast, but coming here for some reason it's really slow.

Gingers parents are here right now. They both seem to be really cool. Her Dad got one of the Kinmen knives custom made by the Mr. Wu himself. Wow! And it's a really cool knife.

I bought Ethan his birthday present yesterday. It's really cool: I hope he likes it.

GOOD HEAVENS!!!!!!! I just realized it's been almost a month since I updated! How horrible!

Anna, tell Jason that I will be trying to send him a kata video soon. Hopefully once I start feeling better.

Tuesday nights we have a class for potential Jr. High Drop-outs. It's interesting. Some of the kids are really cool, others are...um....difficult. One of them, Kelly, has really captured my heart. She's really cool.

Monday nights the same kids have a karate class. I went a few weeks ago and worked out with them. The instructor seems to be a pretty cool guy: he didn't speak much English. He actually reminded me of Mr. Burnett somewhat: he was always says "Relax-a, relax-a, um...quick-a-ly, quick-a-ly." One of the kids was a big problem in class and the instructor wasn't really sure what to do with him. At first he would just glare at him. Then he would put him in a joint lock whenever he wouldn't pay attention. Then he tried having him next to him the whole time. Nothing worked. Finally he just kinda let the kid go around the dojo and ignored him. It was kinda funny to see the teacher working so seriously with the rest of us, while this other kid stared at himself in the mirror, playing with the inside of his mouth.

Last Wednesday Drew gave the girl permissoin to wear pants and Shawn, Ginger, BJ and I went over to the gym and sparred. WOW! What fun! I was really happy with what I saw Bonnie doing. She still needs to work on her extension, but generally her fighting is looking really good.

Does anybody know how I can post a link to my Yahoo! photo albums? I've uploaded a lot of pictures and I'd really like to share them with y'all.

Saturday a couple of the schools took us on a tour. We saw some of the old salt farms, went to a clam digging place (but it was too cold to actually did for clams, so we just stood in the little hut and drank hot tea!) and the "cultural village". It was a really cool tour, in spite of the rain and cold. Lucas told the schools that Saturday was BJ's birthday, so they got a huge cake and threw a party for her at the cultural village. Very cool. And it was a REALLY good cake too!

Dad is going to be getting here in about 15 days! Wow-who!

I'm going to go to Lucy's tonight and get my hair cut and have a massage (is it one or two "s"'s?) All for only about 4 bucks...I love prices over here! I also love going to Lucy's to study my Chinese or lesson plan. I'll be posting some pictures from her place soon.

Ok, and now the big announcement: I'm very seriously considering staying here for next school year. I simply can't see myself leaving here after only six months. I know it sounded like such a long time when I was back home, but now that I'm here I realize what a short time it is. I've been praying a lot about it and I think that's what I'll end up doing.

And here's the big prayer request. We have been told that there will only be six team members here on Kinmen next year and that there will not be anybody working in Jr. High. Now I love Jr. High. I really, really want to stay there. And the elem. textbooks are very, very, extremely stupid. Like, dumb. So pray that they change their mind and I don't have to teach elem school if I stay.

Ok, I've been feeling the need to write an update, but I want to be in bed by midnight tonight. I've been getting into bed around 1 most nights (don't kill me Dad!)

I am loving Jr. High. And I've got a really cool story about how God worked things out on Monday.

It starts on Sunday night. BJ and I were in her room, talking and just generally having a great time (I know I keep saying this, but I LOVE being with Bonnie again!) Ginger knocks on the door and comes in. We talked for awhile and then we all prayed. Ginger brought up something really cool: "A three fold cord is not easily broken." So BJ, Ginger and I are now the three-fold Jr. High cord! At any rate, after that we went to bed. I was feeling a little uneasy about classes on Monday, and so dreamed about it all night. But the cool thing was that instead of having dreams of everything going wrong (like I normally do) I dreamed that everything went great. And oddly enough, even while I was dreaming, I was aware of the fact that God was encouraging me throughout the night, telling me it would be alright. So cool!

Then Monday I go to my first class. It is FREEZING. Literally. And the schools here have no heat or A/C. So I'm only half awake. The kids are only half awake. And we're all about to turn into ice blocks. I started off by introducing myself and my family. They kinda would respond to my questions, but not with much heart. Then I tried juggling for them. HA! And once again, I say HA! I couldn't even feel my hands because of the cold and I'm trying to juggle! I couldn't do any more than a simple fountain with four balls without dropping...and not just dropping one ball, but at least three! Then I tried Chinese Yo-yo. HA! I tried doing several suicides, and couldn't catch the hand sticks (remember, I still can't feel my hands!) So after the class is done, I tried talking with some of the students. HA! Yea, right! They wouldn't even try to talk to me. So, dejectedly, I went to my "office". Here at the Jr. High they have given me an office. It's an empty classroom. Now, that was very nice of them, but I'm afraid that after that failure, walking into a bare, cold, unfamiliar classes room and thinking, "Oh, great, now I really feel at home" was not much help!

So I started praying. I was feeling really down and as though I couldn't do anything right. So I got about as far as "Dear Lord, please h...." when Teresa walks in the room. Now I didn't really like Teresa when I first met her, and she was like the last person I wanted to see at that time. She told me to come with her to the next class. Now, maybe it's just a quirk of mine, but do you ever feel like you didn't really pray, or that your prayer didn't really get "sent" unless you finish it? So I'm walking down the hallway, feeling like I can't even manage to say a prayer!

But God heard me. And God came through like I'd never dreamed. From that point on, everything flowed wonderfulling. I could even feel my hands (and it hadn't warmed up any!) I connected with the classes, they connected with me. The bell signaling the end of break became something I hated to hear, bucause I was having so much fun visiting with my students. I ate lunch with one of my 9th grades and then one of my 7th grades invited me to come play basketball with them during PE. Wow! Even working with Teresa was great. I'm so pumped about going back tomorrow!

So Monday night we met in BJ's room again and debriefed (BJ and Ginger had great days too) and then prayed again. This morning I had to get up early to take the boat to Small Kinmen. I have six classes there. I was slightly nervous about teaching there. The Jr. High on Small Kinmen has a very bad reputation. So much so that when the gov. firsted asked the team to take on Jr. High, they were told, "But you don't have to do Small Kinmen!" Almost every teacher I told that I would be teaching in Small Kinmen said "Oh no! They are very naughty!" So I was a little afraid. But God came through again.

When I first showed up, they showed me the desk they had set aside for me in the teachers office area. I was like "wow, that's cool." Then they showed me the teachers break room and said I could use it whenever I wanted. And I was like "wow, that's really cool." But then they totally blew my socks off. They gave me my own dorm room there at the school! I've even got the key to it! WOW!!!!! I'm the first foriegn teacher they've ever had in forty years of being a school and they really are thrilled about having one. My room in Small Kinmen is almost better than my room here! This room is a little larger, but that room has it's own bathroom! Here I have to go down an outdoor walkway to get to the bathroom! Wow!

Ok, so I'm really thrilled about that. Then it's time to start class. The teacher tells me that this class is "very naughty" and that I shouldn't be bothered if they talk a lot. I told her that I wouldn't let them talk alot. And I didn't. At one point a boy was talking while I was talking. So I yelled "Hey!" at him in a rather aggrasive voice. He apparently didn't think I was yelling at him, 'cause he didn't turn around. I walked right in front of him and yelled "HEY!" even louder, and ruder. He turned around and I started shaking my finger in his face, saying "hey, do you want to stand up and talk English? No? Ok, then be quiet! Do not talk when I'm talking, do you understand?" He was rather shocked, but he didn't talk anymore!

All of the classes were awesome (even the "naughty" one). I had trouble getting them to speak English (they were very nervous) but I think once they get a little more comfortable with me it will be alright.

I esp. loved my last class, which is cool, because I've got six classes on Tuesday and so I'm a little worn out by the time number six comes around. But I know I'll love working with them.

My second to last class had several PlayBoy bunnies up on the walls around the room. I was (to say the least) very shocked by this. I asked the teacher why it was allowed in the school. She said that the students said it was from a brand of clothing. I said yes, but that the clothing was advertising PlayBoy and that it was disgusting and shouldn't be allowed (in those very words, none-the-less. I'm not the "Director of Blunt Affairs" for no reason!) She said that maybe it didn't have anything to do with the magazine. I said that yes, it did. She said maybe it did. I told her "No, not maybe. Yes. It does have a lot to do with the magazine!" She finally said it would be coming down in a week or two and I decided not to say anything else. I was very tempted to tear it off the wall and rip it up though.

Then something really funny happened. After classes the principle comes in to meet me. He says he wants me to come to his office and visit until it's time for the to head to the dock to catch the boat back to Big Kinmen. I thought that would be fine. From the way he said it, it sounded like it would just be me and him and the bus driver visiting together. So imagine my shock when we walk into his office and there are five girls there, all in their early 20's. They are dressed very fashionabily, their hair is done very fancily and they each must have spent an hour in front of the mirror that morning. The principle spreads his arms to encompass the girls and declares "Beautiful girls! From Taiwan!"

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, what do you do at that point? I felt like running away. I was fully expecting his next sentance to be "Pick one!" I wanted to find a hole to crawl into.

It wasn't quite that bad, but it was close. It turns out that they are students from Taiwan and they apparently have some sort of tie with the Jr. High on Small Kinmen. I never figured out what it was. But we ended up sitting in his office drinking tea (it tasted horrible! You probably would have like it Dad!) and trying to make conversation. It was somewhat forced conversation, but I did live through it.

I've got a ton more to tell you (some really cool stuff happened today in the drop-out class and afterwards) but I don't have time. It's 11 now and I still need to get with BJ and Ginger (if she's still awake...she's feeling under the weather) and do a little bit of lesson planning. And I'm feeling really hungry...I need some more instant noddles. BTW, Mom, thanks so much for the cerel...you've saved me from instant noddles for breakfast!

Love you guys! God bless you! Emails are always a good thing (Larry and Russel, I'll reply to yours soon!) jugglingjesusfreak@gmail.com

Hi there. I love DSL. I downloaded some awesome clips from a sabaki (sp?) type fighting video: there were some really good fights. I've also been reading a little bit of stuff written by Mas Oyama (founder of my style of karate). Good heavens, talk about a big head! He was great, and he knew it, and he didn't mind telling other people about it! One thing that was very interesting was him talking about tightening your pinky while punching. I've never focused on that before. I've done a little bit of punching since I read that, but not enough to really get an idea of what he was talking about.

I know there's a ton of stuff to write about, yet for some reason I can't seem to think of anything. I start Jr. High on Monday. I'll be doing the school on small Kinmen on Tuesday and then Monday, Wednesday and Thrusday will all be here at this school. That's really cool. I will be the only person from our team doing Jr. High on small Kinmen.

I think I will go to Lucy's tomorrow. Lucy is a hair stylist who has kinda a "waiting room" in the back of her shop that is a really good place to sit and work on your Chinese. And Lucy and her assistant Show-way are both really cool.

Tomorrow BonnieJean, Andrew and Megan will all be going to Hong Kong, so they can get their visas renewed. No fair! I really wish I could go: it will probably be a while before I'm this close to Hong Kong again!

But I am saving up for a trip to Taipei later this year. Shawn and I might go together. When I flew over here I did land in Taipei, but from there we drove directly to Nantou and I didn't get to see anything. In Nantou I did get to go to a night market...but there was no night market there that night! The only thing that was there was a guy selling strawberry candies.

I stayed up really late last night visiting with Shawn and getting some games ready for today's class. Then it turned out that we didn't need the games. That's always annoying.

Shawn and I went walking down the beach the other day and found some really, really cool abandoned bunkers. I'm going to take some pictures and video of them sometime soon and post the pictures on here.

The other day I went down to the beach and found a crab. I am such a land-luber. I was so excited by finding a live crab, I called BonnieJean on her cell phone and told her all about it. Hey, it was the first time I'd ever seen a crab in the wild, so give me a break!

Shawn is standing next to me right now, using our excuse for a trash can (a bag from the bakery down the street) trying to sharpen a pencil with his pocketknife. He's muttering "Come on, where's the lead? Show me the lead."

BonnieJean and Ginger and I went out to the beach on Tuesday night and did nunchuck and kata. I showed BonnieJean Sandan (her next text kata) and Godan and Maza Kazi (my next test katas: I have two). Then Ginger went to bed and Bonnie and I walked around the track some. That was really cool. I love being with BJ again!

Ok, I just went to borrow a CD from BJ and ended up spending like half an hour talking to her.

James, the fellow the goverment has assigned to take care of us, is SOOOO cool! I'll have to post more about him later. Bye for now!

Lookie what I bought!

Alright, I must admit it. I'm in love. I've been in love since Saturday. It was love at first sight. I love Kinmen! I love the people who drive by and yell "Hello, how are you?" just to say something in English to the Amarican. I love the Kinmen team. I love the little old man in the junk shop who smiles so sweetly at you. I even love watching the pick-pocket try to steal Shawn's cell phone (more on that to come!) I love going to Lucy's and drinking tea while figuring out my new phone. I love almost being run over by a mo-ped as you both race around the corner. I love the abandoned pill boxes on the beach. I love Easy Way. I even love my roommate's computer!

Ok, I probably ought to back up now and start where I left on from my last post. Our TA's during camp were the most amazing, most dedicated, wonderful people on earth. The did SO much to make the camps run. And they were always ready to help. At the first camp my TA was Sherry, who was wonderful. The second camp I had Cathy, who was also wonderful. Here's a picture of us together.

Sherry, me and Cathy.


"Blue Sandy", a student from the Ying-pan camp (the first camp). She was a really sweet girl. On her left is Rose, a really crazy, fun student and her right is Vivian, a rather crazy one as well.


Tina, our team leader for camps. We were the smallest team, with only three English teachers.


Me and "Striped Wayne", so named because we had two Wayne's in the class, and on the first day, this guy wore a striped shirt. We also had "Blue Wayne", as well as "Red Amy" and "Pink Amy". Striped Wayne seemed to really like me...he was always following me around and he gave me a really cool card at the end of camp. From the second camp.


Making cookies! This group of girls was SO much fun! Second camp.


Not exactly sure why they had this sign up...but I thought it very funny. Second camp.


Me and Tony. Tony was a local kid who hung around the school at the second camp and team C kinda adopted him. I'm not sure what was wrong with him...there was obviously something odd about him physically, but I think something wasn't right in his head either. Some days he spoke pretty good English, others he would just talk non-sense, and seemed to think he was making sense. He's actually 19, although he acted more like 10. He came to our BBQ and had a total blast. In fact this picture is from the BBQ. Second camp.


Chris, the other member of our team. This is her telling the clay spot story on the last day of second camp.


Tina, telling the muddy glove story. She was a hoot!


Motercycle Angel and Hedy. Totally, completely awesome students, in every sense of the word. I told team C that I was going to take them to Kinmen with me. At one point they asked me if I really meant it. *sniff* If only! Second camp.


Really good picture of Motercycle Angel.


Team C! The best-ist ever!


The Ying-pan and Gigi team! Start left top: Chris: very quiet but fun non-the-less. I would yell "Lungs! They are a good thing!" at her several times each day, because she was talking to quiet I could hear her. Alvin: totally awesome guy. He was the wistle blower: he blew his wistle every time a break was over, or it was time to go to break, or time for large group. I hit him in the eye by mistake once. Poor fellow. Tina...our amazing team leader! Leslie, a super cool, soft spoken guy. He's the fellow who told one of his students, "if you get hurt, minus one point!" Remind me to tell y'all the pushing garrbage story later. Sherry: number 1! All the girls at Ying-pan loved her. Which was good, 'cause then she could make them behave! Samuel...the one and only! Then we have Thomas, the son of the principle at Gigi. He helped with team C. He was kinda quiet, but cool none-the-less. Bottom left. A girl from team B. No idea who she is. Vivian: a total hoot! Julia: quiet but sharp witted. Cathy: my wonderful TA for the second camp! She kinda balanced my crazyness. Amy, she only helped us with the Gigi camp: she's a teacher who was doing an internship at the school. Her dad also teaches there. A really, really cool girl. And that's everybody! I'm already planning a weekend trip to the main island to visit them!


Me and Cindy, one of the kids who lived near Yung-lu (where we stayed). Possibly the cutest little girl ever. One night I did a bunch of juggling with her and her siblings (who are all so cool!). Another night we played a couple hours of Uno. What fun.


The bags, going to Kinmen!


Totally random picture, but I like it. Me and Jay at Tad's dojo.

Ok, one last thing before I get off (it's 11 o'clock and I still have to plan our Sunday school lesson with BonnieJean and take a shower). Today Shawn and Ginger and I were walking down the street and this guy, pretending to be drunk, walks up and puts his hand on Shawn's shoulder and says something in Chinese. Shawn looks at him kinda oddly. But then the guy starts working his hand down to Shawns belt, where his (very nice) cell phone is clipped. So Shawn pushed him away. He comes right back, trying to put his hand on Shawn again. Shawn pushes him again and says "You can go now...THAT way!" We then jumped inside a shop and he didn't follow us. Very interesting experiance.

I'm going to try and get a picture of the little fellow at the junk shop and post it for y'all. He is soooo cute! (Ahh...Ginger, it's rubbing off!--inside joke, don't ask!)

Love y'all! I've still got SOOOO much more to write, but it will have to wait until later.

Howdy there. I am in Jiji, waiting for lunch to be ready. We're having "hot pot", which is really good...I just hope it's done in time for us to eat it before it's time to start class again.

We started the Jiji camp on Monday. After everybody was signed in, Chris and Tina and I tested them. I wasn't totally sure what I was doing, but it turned out to be pretty easy. Then we had an hour with our class. I have group C, which is the highest English level. They are awesome. They are so well behaved! I started out by introducing myself and my family (including the dog and 22 chickens!) and then I got out a US map and showed them where I lived and what route I had taken to get to Taiwan. From that point on everything kinda becomes a blur...we are really busy and my bed is like a hard board with a quarter inch of mattress on it...I can't wait to get to Kinmen! On Tuesday I laid out the rules for the class....

1 Obey the rules!
2 DO NOT eat your socks!

I told them that if they ate their socks, they could not be in my class anymore!

Last week (while we were still teaching at Yingpan) we went out and had "hot pot" for dinner. Basically you are given a gas fire, and a cast iron bowl and a big plate of raw stuff. And you make whatever you want! It was very good.

God is so cool. You know how the Bible says that God hears our prayers before we ask them? Tina, Chris and I were having a meeting in the library and we were in the middle of talking about how we needed to pray that we would be able to connect better with our TA's. Well, right in the middle of that in walks Vivian, and suddenly we're talking and laughing together and half an hour goes by! It was so cool! Since then we've been doing a lot of stuff together. Last night we all ate lunch in our "living room" and they stayed for an hour playing silly games.

I have to go now. Time to eat! Love y'all!

Good heaven's. I hate these strait keyboards!

Hello there. I'm in Nantou right now and we just got back from teaching at Ingpan. Today was my first day of teaching...it was...interesting. The first small group started out very poorly. I was supposed to tell the Christmas story. Everybody had told me that it was best to use some of the kids and act it out. Ha! Not when you get a Mary who refuses to move or even look at you, a Joseph who freaks out when he learns he's Mary's husband or a sheppard that turns into a sheep and starts "baa-ing" at the top of this voice! I fought my way through the shepards telling the good news and then cut it short there. So much for the wisemen, because by now half of the class wasn't even looking at me and I couldn't get their attention.

So then I came up with a game on the spot. We split the class into two teams. I was the leader for one and my translator for the other. I would pull out an Uno card and then the first team to think of that many English words would win (like if I pulled a 7, the first team with 7 english words won). that was a huge hit. A couple of the kids woulnd't join in, but otherwise everybody loved it.

Then in the second small group time I talked about my family and then about family Christmas tradition. It went pretty good.

Goodness, there is so much to tell, I don't know where to start and my wrists are starting to hurt from this keyboard. I'll write one more thing. We were outside playing a game when I yellow truck drove by, playing music loudly. I couldn't tell why, so I asked my TA (teacher assistant) what it was. I was expecting it to be something deeply important, a big part of Taiwanese culture. Maybe it's Budist monks on a pilgramage. Or maybe an offering to the dead. So what huge thing of importance did I learn?

It was a trash truck. And the music was to tell people to put their trash out. lol

Oh my goodness.

wow.

My stars.

And the strange thing is, I don't even know exactly what it is that I'm so "wowed" about. I just know that within five hours I will be driving away from the house, on my way to Taiwan.

The last few days have been awesome. Monday morning I went with Anna to her World view class. Those are some really neat people. We all remembered that exactly two years ago we had been standing outside the RSU campus holding signs and protesting. What a hoot!

Monday night Mr. Murry had the karate class lay hands on me (a scary thing when it's at karate!) and pray for me. That was so neat. Then I got to spar a little bit with him...but it was cut short by a very hard meeting of knee and shin. I haven't done that in a LONG time and now I remember why I hated it so much! My leg hurt for several days!

Tuesday night I went to Mr. Burnett's. I got to teach four white belts, two of them brand new. That was a hoot. It was also interesting, because everybody else I've taught in karate has some sort of foundation that I'm building on. Here I was having to lay that foundation: they didn't know anything. Very interesting. But they were good students, so it was great.

Wednesday was (you guessed it!) more karate. Jason performed the Heian kata's and Maza Kazi for me and I got them on film, so I can have a refference while away. We also filmed me doing Heian Godan and Maza Kazi. I was actually pleasently supprised at how well I did them.

Thursday was (drum roll): Karate! Said goodbye to everybody at Bolen's dojo. What a cool group. They laid hands on me and prayed over me too.

Friday I got everything together that I needed to pack. Then that night Anna, Ethan and I went to the Murry's for Twilight Prayer and Praise. What an awesome night. God was there and moving. Keep a young lady named Kim in your prayers: she is really close to coming to the Lord.

We stayed at the Murry's until 3 in the morning. Mr. Murry got out an old video from about 15 years ago of some fighting and kata he had done. It was interesting to see how his fighting has improved over the years. We also saw a film of him doing a kata that was totally unreal. There was just an amazing amount of power in every single strike and block: you have to see it to beleive it. He also watched the film from Wednesday and gave me some advice. Cool.

Saturday we went and played paintball with Josiah for his birthday. There was a large group and we had a blast. I was on red team the first two games and Anna was on white. I got her out both times! Then they changed me to white and we worked together, which was also fun.

Today our church prayed over me and I told everybody a little bit about what I'm going to be doing in Kinmen. Then we came home and packed. Beleive it or not, but we actually had enough room: the only thing I'm having to mail is the sparring gear!

Before evening Bible reading we broke boards. Anna did a round house break and broke it very cleanly on her second try. Very good. Ethan broke with a punch and really put some power in it. Isaac broke for the first time and only had to hit each board once! He was SOOOO thrilled! Caleb tried it too, but I had to help him a bit to break it. Naomi had a really tough board and had some trouble, but broke it anyway.

After Bible reading everybody laid hands on me and prayed. Wow. Then Anna and I went to QuickTrip and made coppies of my passport and then I got on here and wrote this!

Bye now! Don't know when I'll be updating, but hopefully it will be soon!

Hi, this is a short, totally meaningless post. I hope to get on later today and post something a little more informative. Bye!

Hi there. It's been over a week since I've updated...and so much has happened since then! Let's see...I guess I'll start with last Thursday. That was an interesting day.

Ok, so I go to work on Thursday morning and they put me in really, really old file. Ok, let me explain some...when the client gives the company a long list of phone numbers, they are placed in files. For example, aol4lk (that happened to be the one I was in). You then open that file from your computer and it starts making calls for you. When a file has been in use for a long time, it becomes basically worthless. For example, in about three hours of being in that file, I only was able to talk to 1.3% of the calls I made (the rest were answering machines or not available.

So the long short of it is that I'm getting rather annoyed by the time I come back from lunch. After lunch that put me in a CBSI file (selling a product to CitiBank cardmembers). It wasn't the best of files, but it wasn't that bad. But then they tell us that unless it's a sale, we are to put down every call for a callback in one or two hours. So if John Doe says "I don't want it, you've called me before, I don't want it!!!!!!!" I say "goodbye" and then call him back in an hour. Not exactly a nice thing to do. And pretty soon after that I start getting a lot of people complaining of being called six or more times already that day. Which is illegal. So I logged off my computer and quit. Didn't figure it was worth it to stick around for another week.

So Friday morning we left for Archer City, TX. We got there about 2 pm. I had hurt my foot Thursday night, so I went running to get some blood flowing through it and then we played dutch blizt until Aunt Von and her grand daughter Misty and her three kids showed up. Then Catherine showed up. And then Jack and Maria and Craig and Jacob showed up and we had a hoot! Not too much to say: we just talked about what all the family was up to.

Saturday morning we drove to Bowie for the ABKA black belt testing. That was a blast. Other than plurral fights and quick kill, I only got to fight two fights. One was a fellow going for his black belt. It was a really fun fight, even though I got my lip cut in the process. My other fight was against Jane S. who was going for her first degree brown. She's always a hoot to fight, because she's one of the few girls who will take and give hard hits without making a big deal out of it. Mr. Henderson, one of our black belt, got his second degree black belt. He did a jump three sixty back kick that was awesome.

So after the testing we drove home and not too much interesting has happened since then. I got my purple belt on Monday, as did Anna and Ethan. That was cool.

Well good evening. I've had an interesting day.

In fact, it kinda started in an interesting way at about 4 something this morning. I had a rather odd dream...somewhat disturbing. Kinda made me wonder what I'm really like. But first a little background. I don't like certain things, and I tend to try and avoid them whenever I can. Dead bugs, for example. I hate dead bugs. So whenever I hear somebody say something about finding a dead bug, I stay away, even if it's one of the little kids who wants me to take care of it for them. Or throw up. I hate dealing with it, so whenever somebody hurls, I tend to kinda sit where I'm at, hoping that I'll turn invisible and that somebody else will take care of it. I know this is selfish, but I do it anyway.

I hate pain. Not feeling it, but being around people who are in pain. I can take pain pretty well myself, but being around somebody who is hurting is horrible for me. Not that that is a bad thing. But I tend to do the same thing as with the throw up. If one of the little guys gets hurt, for instance, I tend to wait, hoping that somebody else will take care of them. It's probably only a five second wait, at the most, but it still is very selfish of me.

So in my dream, I was driving BonnieJean's car down a four lane divided highway. I was by myself in the car and seemed to be driving in the mountains. There was a large group of cars about a mile or so behind me, and an old brown car driving behind and to the right of me. On my left, on the other side of the road, I saw three semi trucks crashed along the highway. They didn't have trailers on them. A short way further down the road two more where wrecked trucks, just like the first three. I slowed down, looking at them. Before I could speed up again, I went down a rather sudden drop. Driving along, you couldn't really see what was on the road down that hill until you were almost on top of it. And to top it off, you couldn't really swerve, because the road at that point had been blasted through a hill, and so there were rock walls twenty feet high on either side. So it was a very good thing that I had been going slow, because right there in the middle of the road where three semi trailers, piled on top of each other and totally blocking the road. I slammed on the brakes and just barely avoided hitting them. The brown car behind me also stopped in time. I sat there for a moment, stunned and then realized that if I had barely had time to stop, it wouldn't take long for all those cars behind me to create a milti-car wreck. I jumped out of the car and ran to the rock wall on the side of the road and started to climb. I found a ledge and turned around to look down. The brown car had turned around and was going back the way it had come (to the try and stop the other cars, I guess). It was just about to get out of the dip where the trailers were when a red F-350 double cab came over the hill at 75 miles an hour and hit him head on. The brown car was pushed all the way back to the trailers and squished there. Then car after car came over the hill and crashed into the one before it. It was horrible. I knew that there where people down there who were hurt bad and needed help. But I didn't want to see them in pain. That would make me too uncomfortable. I wasn't afraid of getting hurt myself, but of seeing other people hurt. And so I turned and ran down the ledge and away from the pile up.

Now I know that what you do in dreams isn't always what you would do in real life. Dreams can be really strange at times. And yet I have this horrible feeling that in that situation I might do that. That I would turn my back and hope that somebody else would help them. Would I do that? I don't know. But it's a sobering thought.

At any rate, other than that my day has been pretty normal. I just want to say that Tulsa drivers have no idea how to drive in ice and they are reckless and insane. How low does your IQ have to be for you not to realize that you should not pass somebody while on a bridge when it's 15 degrees and has been raining all day?

I'm leaving for Taiwan in three weeks. I can't believe it. I've got one more week of working as a tele-marketer. I'm glad of that. They've put me on a new program the past couple days, selling AOL to people who used to use it. It's actually a pretty good deal, so long as you'll be using dial-up. I've been making a lot more sales in this program too, which is a good thing.

Last night we watched Hamlet. I'd never seen it before. The acting was pretty good, but there's some things you just can't overcome with good acting: like a bad story. I'm sorry, but classic or no classic, it's a pathetic story.

Man, but it's cold outside. I hope I can make it to work tomorrow morning.

I need to get some other stuff done now. Bye!

I have started a new blog. Check it out.

Hey there! It's Christmas Eve and I've already got one of my presents! Yup, it's a 3 hour battery for my camcorder. Which is nice, because the one that came with the camcorder is only a little bit over an hour, and I've missed several things because of running out of battery life. The only thing is that it looks kinda funny to have such a large battery on my small camera.

I'm downloading the new Trillian version right now. It's been years since we've updated it and I got tired of clicking "Ignore" every time I open it and the window pops up telling me that an update is available.

BonnieJean sent us a video file last night that the Kinmen team did for Christmas. It was a hoot. It also reminded me how much I wish we had DSL...it took 5 hours to download! BTW, BonnieJean seems to be the only one on the Kinmen team with any acting ability at all. She's quite good in fact.

Last Saturday we had a Christmas party at our house. It was a hoot. We had mostly people from either our home school group or karate show up. It was a nice sized crowd: not quite too many people, but enough to crowd the walk ways. We played a couple rounds of Mafia, which was a hoot. I was the mafia and Ethan figured it out and was loudly telling everybody about it, and I managed to turn it on him and get him lynched instead! Yea! Then the sheriff checked me out and declared I was a bad guy, and even though I was lynched because of it, I thought I managed to give a really good defense and even convinced one person to vote for me! (for those of you who don't know, the sheriff is not allowed to lie, so if he says somebody is the Mafia, they're dead.)

I got all the kids "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" for Christmas. Last night I installed it and played it some...I'm not sure if I like it or not. I still haven't figured out all of the commands yet.

I'm back to tele-marketing now. Made two sales yesterday. The annoying thing is you have to average about six a day to make commission. So I'm not making any more than $6.50/hr. There's one guy there who makes an average of 3 sales an hour...that's $21.50 an hour!

Black belt testing is being held in Bowie, TX this year. We're going to be going down on Thursday night, spend the night at Aunt 'Rie's trailer, visit relatives on Friday, spend the night at the trailer again and then go to the testing on Saturday. I've been to the last two and they are always really, REALLY fun to go to. You get to visit with a lot of karate friends from other dojos, you see some really good kata, some really good breaks and of course a lot of fighting. This time Mr. Murry is letting me actually help out with the fighting, which is really cool. I just hope I don't get killed! Mr. Henderson, one of our black belts, is going for his second degree black. Steven, Philip and Taylor, three of our brown belts, will all be going for their 1st degree brown (one level below black).

Well, I've got to go make lunch now. Talk to y'all later! God bless!

Here's a recent picture of me. I'm on the right. Notice the perfect low block.

Well, well, well. Why did I just write the word "well" three times in a row? Who knows. I don't even know, and I'm the one that did it!

However, I've got some really cool news. I am now a purple belt! Yay-who! We tested Monday night and I didn't score anything below a 4 (out of 5). My breaking went very well. I did three boards with a knife hand strike (the "karate chop") and broke them on my first try. I also did three boards with a side kick and broke on the first try. That means that I've made it all the way to purple without ever having to it a board twice during testing. Ethan tried breaking three boards with a ridge hand, but wasn't able to do it. I think that must have something to do with him being sick, because he has a ridge hand that would stop a bull. So he did a round elbow instead and broke them quite nicely. Anna, poor dear, ended up with some horrible boards (don't blame me, she picked them out herself!) She literally hit those baords for five minutes. She was able to break her foot boards with a front kick (after several tries), and finally broke her hand boards after we found some replacement boards for her. She bruised her hand up really good, but impressed everybody there by the way she wouldn't let anything stop her from breaking, no matter how much it hurt. She says her hand didn't actually start hurting until after the boards were broke!

Saturday was the ABKA Missions Tournament. I did Wansai Sho again, and took first! That was pretty cool. Then I was beat in fighting. :( But it was only by one point. And the guy who beat me went on to take first. Still, I think I could have beaten him if I had been a little looser and lighter on my feet. This was Isaac's first tournament and he took first in kata and in sparring! Yay! Because of that he got one of only six Outstanding competitor trophies. He was the youngest person and the lowest belt rank to get one of those!

It took us two weeks to re-roof our house. And it was not fun. But we've finally got it (almost) done. All that remains is to cut a few shingles so we have a strait line and to put the ridge caps on (something we haven't done because we still haven't got it totally figured out). We've got all the big piles of shingles picked up from off the ground, but it will be months before we really have it all up. Bits of shingle and tar paper and nails are everywhere.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do about my car while I'm gone. Any thoughts? I had a random idea that I might loan it to a ministry while I'm gone, but I really need to have a car when I get back and I'm not sure who I could trust not to run it into the ground.

I'm telling you, having a miniDV camcorder and a DVD burner is cool. I can burn high quality DVD's of our home movies right here and we won't have to worry about the tape wearing out. Pretty spiffy, huh?

Did you know that nail guns are some of the coolest things around? Can you imagine trying to put down 80 million shingles by hand nailing them? That would be tough.

I read an interesting article about walking on hot coals on HowStuffWorks.com. I'd never thought much about how that was done, but it's cool to know.

Am I the only one who gets really annoyed with people who don't want to know stuff unless they have to? People who don't see learning as a pleasure in and of itself? Like the Dreyfus Affair in France at the turn of the century (if you don't know what that is, look it up. Very interesting). Not exactly something you need to know, but it's interesting and fun to learn about non-the-less. And most people don't even want to use the mental enegry to learn about those types of things. They are mentally lazy! I just don't understand it.

What annoys me even more are people who refuse to learn about things that do affect you life. Like politics and economics. The number of people who simply don't care simply astound me. How can you not care about those things?
And as long as we on the topic of annoying things, how about brown belts that refuse to act their rank? We've got two of those at our dojo. One is a total know-it-all and a pretty poor martial artist. The other is a total wimp. She won't fight, she won't lead, she won't act like a brown belt.

And while we're at it, how about love songs that try to sound so sweet, but really they are totally self centered? Like "I want to be your everything". It's supposed to be such a sweet and moving love song, and it boils down to a guy telling his girlfriend "I want to be the center of your universe".

Oh, and then there's the "I'm sinning and I'm singing about it" type song. I hate those!

And on that wonderful note I shall leave you. Bye!