My cool roommate!
Posted by Hello

Good picture of BJ.

Posted by Hello

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!

Ok, this will probably be boring for most of y'all and you don't have to read it. But I went to all the trouble of writing it down for an email: why not go ahead and post it on my blogger as well? That way it looks like my blogger is active, even though it isn't really!

Below is what BonnieJean wrote on her blogger. After that is the email that I wrote in reply.


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Ginger called Ben a little before lunch and got his permission for us to put on pants and do a little self-defense stuff in one of the empty classrooms here at the school! Of course, not all of the girls were interested, and Jo is currently under doctor's orders not to use her arms, but Ginger and I were pleasantly surprised to have 5 very enthusiastic students. We all did a lot of laughing and stuff, of course, but each one of them were serious about learning and would actually torque their hips, etc., and throw everything into their moves. It was so fun and refreshing! We had them all warm up and stretch first, and then we went over some choke-hold defenses, grab defenses, basic weak spots, rules of self-defense, how to make a good fist/punch, etc.. And then Ginger and I got to do some sparring on a nice wooden floor with no washer or hot water heater to watch out for. :-) We all loved it, and the five girls are hoping for a chance to do it again with us sometime this week. :-D

One girl in particular -- Sarah -- really surprised me. I had assumed until our karate time that she was anther girly-girl. Not so! She's pretty tall and got me from behind with her arm crushing my throat, (after warning me that she was going to do it, of course). She wanted to see if I could get out of it, and told me to honestly fight her. I was uncertain as to whether or not she was really willing to get hurt, but I managed to get my chin tucked and my fingers in between it and her arm. And then...I began to alternate between totally dropping my weight on her and shoving backwards as hard as I could, like Mr. Burnette taught us for breaking out of a bear-hug. She really did hold on, though, and didn't let go until I knocked her into the wall/floor with me partially on top of her. I was even more pleasantly surprised when she got back up and asked if we could do it again! She liked the technique and wanted to see it one more time. That next time she started to really crush down on my throat, and scared me for a second, but I broke out of it again and I'm sure now that she wouldn't have actually hurt me. Then, she wanted to try it, but I'm afraid that I didn't attack her as seriously as she'd wanted me to. I didn't want to be responsible for anyone or anything getting damaged, (and I also had some real trouble reaching her throat). Still, she was serious in her defense. Now I'm really curious about the best way to get out of a choke-hold like the one she used. I'll have to see if I can manage to get the idea across to the family on the phone, then if they can communicate it to a teacher at the dojo, then if they can learn a good defense from that teacher, and then if they can manage to get it back across to me on the phone. :-P


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Hey, sounds like you handled it really well. Obviously the most important thing is to keep your air, and tucking the chin and grabbing the arm are probably the best ways to do it. (NOTE: for the email below I assume that you have grabbed her arm with your opposite arm. For example, if she has her left arm choking you, then you grab with your right arm. If you've grabbed her differently, then your on your own!:) )


The problem is that you can't REALLY do anything to the girl that you might actually do on the street (breaking ribs, fingers, shoulder). You'll need to explain this to her next time, so that you can do something and then tell her to loosen her grib, because you just broke a rib (or whatever).


Dropping and throwing around your weight is good, but I've found that it works mostly with a bear hug and with somebody your size or smaller. (of course, the best thing to do with that you couldn't have done: dropping so her head comes down and then throwing your head backwards into her face). So while it worked, you wasted some time when you could have gotten out sooner.


First of all, if it's a guy, simply snake your hand behind your back and grab his groin, HARD. He WILL let go. Problem solved.


If it's a girl, you've got a couple options. The most simple one is to start ripping the fingers off the hand that is choking you. If she is double jointed and you can pull them all the way back to her watch, then grab the pinky and pull it down to the striking area for a shuto. Did you ever learn the pinky joint lock from Mr. Burnett? If not, don't worry about it: it's hard to describe and I can show you when I get there. At any rate, break a few fingers and she'll start to reconsider grabbing you.


If you can't get her fingers (it's possible she may be big enough that her arm goes around your throat and behind you again), then you've got your elbows. Clear the way with your hips (in other words, get your hips out of the way) and start having fun with her ribs. Once she has loosened up, you've got all sorts of stuff you can do. Personally, I like to duck underneath their arm (right arm going underneath her left armpit or left arm under right arm pit) and pull the arm that was choking me up on her back in a shoulder lock. From there it can be anything you want: elbow to the spine, shuto to the neck, knee to the tailbone (hey, they won't be able to chase you!) or whatever.


One final note about elbowing the ribs. If she's a lot taller than you this won't work, but when I did it to Ethan (who is just a tad bit taller than me) it worked very well. As you clear your hips, pull down with the arm that's saving your air and up with the shoulder that is connected to the elbow that's about to wreck havoc (am I making any sense?) What your doing is pressing your shoulder up into the soft underside of the arm that is choking you. If your lucky you'll get a nerve center: if your not lucky you simply cut off the blood flow to her arm. Either way it's a good thing. And once you've got that pressure on you can go ahead and start to elbow at the same time.


Anything from behind is harder than from in front, because you don't have all those basic week points of the body availible to you. Try to think creatively. Is she bare foot, or in sandles? Stomp on her toes. Heal kick to the shins, or put the bottom of your foot on her shin and rack down. Can you step to the side and throw her around your hip? Get together with Ginger and have her hold you loosely in the choke hold: just experiment some and come up with ideas.

Oh, good heaven, where to start? I'm mad, and tired and happy and excited and lonely and nervous and...and...and a complete basket case, I guess.
Ok, I'm mad at the author of the book I just finished reading, 'cause I hated the way she finished it. I'm mad at Dad for being so emotion-based and his seeming inability to get anything done these past few days. I'm tired from six days of re-roofing that seems to be getting nowhere. I'm happy because I finally got to talk to BonnieJean again today, although only for a short time. I'm excited about going to Kinmen. I'm lonely because Mom took Anna and the little boys down to Archer for the family reunion and we had to stay here and work on the roof. I haven't seen most of the relatives in...I don't know...a long time. And I'm nervous because I'm testing for my purple belt in less than two weeks and I have to break three boards with a knife hand strike, and I haven't had time to condition my hand, and I'm going to be doing the fighting for my purple belt in less than a week and I haven't been able to run since we started the re-roofing, so I'm probably going to loose my wind halfway through the fights...
Ah, yes, the re-roofing. We started on Friday. Getting the shingles off the back side of the house took about a day and a half...not great, but not bad. Then we started on repairing a couple places where the wood was rotten. It's a very strait forward thing to do. Yet between the rain and Dad's amazing slowness we still haven't laid a single peice of tar paper. We hope to start tomorrow, but we've still got some stuff to do first.
Do you realize that we had been remodeling our garrage for over three years? In that time we've had friend build entire houses for their families. Those of you who haven't worked with him do not really understand how mind-numbingly slow he is. He does good work, yes, but it takes him more than double (and often more than triple) the time it would take a normal handyman. I'm almost to the point of yelling at him when I see him staring at the work that needs to be done, spending over half his time figuring out exactly every little detail before he'll do anything. I want to scream "GET IT DONE! STOP WORRYING ABOUT MAKING IT LAST FOR THREE THOUSAND YEARS AND GET THE ROOF UP!" After supper today I tried to talked to him about it, but he kept changing the subject and when I finally nailed him down to it, he kept telling me "what I've found that works" and I'm telling him "It doens't work! I've never worked with somebody as slow as you!" but I don't think anything is going to change. Dad is expected back at work on Monday and we've only got the roll-away dumpster for a week and we are rapidly running out of time, but he just wants to keep doing everything like he's always done.
I need to go to bed now. Sorry this turned into a long rant against Dad...maybe I'll feel a little nicer tomorrow.