too much time on my hands

Nothing much exciting happened this week. it was nice to hike every day this weekend tho

we had a spelling bee in school. it was done with multiple students at a time. i made a mistake with one of the words and was EMBARRASSED for the rest of the day. i had to get ice cream three times. mcflurries are really cheap

they can spell better than some american kids

i still can't say nuttin in chinese. this language is ridikalus hard

music in chinese still makes me laugh sometimes

real work doesn't start til february 5th. til then i will spend most of the day doing whatever I want. keeping busy is a talent of mine. i'm working on my bucket list, list of places to travel, list of favorite songs, and looking for a job.

the inside of our building in school. all the rooms on the sides are classrooms

highlights from my bucket list:

ride an ostrich

zipline in rainforest

meet mitt romney, uchtdorf, and glozelle

see keane, calvin harris concerts. and see celine dion in vegas

hold a koala bear

own a sloth

ride the tallest coaster in the world

hang glide

ride a segway

attend black baptist church in the south

coachella festival

earn a giant check

Polynesian cultural center

kava ceremony in samoa

oktoberfest in munich

see mayan ruins

this looks pretty fun too

one of the girls in our group is going home early for health reasons. it's sad

bath foam that turns you white!

i read an essay about the chinese in samoa.

This sounded like an accurate description about the samoans -

"It became evident that there was a need to employ labour to work on the plantations, and it was difficult for planters to find a reliable source of labour from the indigenous population. In Westbrook‟s opinion, it became “necessary to import and employ labour, other than Samoans, who were too free and independent to work as contract labour for Europeans”

also it was interesting to read that the chinese were looked down on in samoa in some ways but even so the women wanted to marry chinese men because they were hard working



taiwan's GDP purchasing power parity is the same as germany's. the income distribution isn't that bad either. I don't get it! this place feels like a developing country compared to germany! however, for some reasons lots of people here have new BMWs and Mercedez.

this would be a lawsuit in america

the things that get me most are that bathrooms are a disaster and they have an open sewage system = smells like really rotten eggs everywhere
where is everyone putting their money?!

why are there stank vents in the middle of the school?

there are lots of temples around here. a surprising amount. it's a good thing that some people care about things other than social status and money (that's all the kids care about.) these temples are a mix between buddhist and taoist. i want to learn more

this is a typical temple

some kind of edible offering. i wish someone would make me an edible offering

they take pieces of paper outside and burn them in this

if they need answers to questions they drop these on the ground. the answers can be yes, no, or something in between (i forget) depending on how they land

there's always incense

some gods. i think. i'd ask someone but only old people go to the temple and old people don't speak much english

here is the food/drink of the week. organic black fungus and jujube drink

at least it's organic

tomorrow i go to hong kong! im going to try to get into mainland china too for a couple days! if not, it's ok i'll be back in may

food chronicles

so the luck duck is back in the news. america's news is about international treaties and war in iraq. taiwanese news is about cute ducks

thursday and friday at work i looked for new work. doing some searching for byu alumni on linkedin.

little chinese girl has fun on photobooth

The Taiwanese love white people. when I'm with the white people here (and the white baby) they are so incredibly nice. we were hiking and at a cafe on the mountain this couple bought us drinks and snacks.

this nice lil trail by my house

ive been hanging out way too much! It's so weird not having a lot of work! kinda feel guilty that i'm not being productive

I gave a talk in church about the restoration. I only found out i was talking saturday evening. that's the church outside of utah. It went well. At least I thought so. I never give talks in church because they usually have me play the cello instead. where's my cello?

taipei temple

i want to do one last international stint either this summer or winter. aiming for mexico city or santiago, chile.

I did glamour shots as a chinese king. people walking by said, "hindu king!"

We went to an awesome town in the mountains called jiufen with a cool market

view from the market

Taiwan is known throughout asia for its food. i didn't know that. that's perfect for me.

Awesome dumpling place. 6 for a dollar. the curry and pork ones are my favorite

mmmmmmmm  mmmm mmmmmmm

fancy Chicken

Manapuas at a night market. I don't know how to say this in chinese. This is the most famous place in Taiwan to get them

Elotes. corn that they put lots of layers of sauce on and put in and out of these fire holes

Delicious peanut bars

Stinky tofu. smells awful

everything here is more intense. has that sweatshoppy kinda feel

Famous taiwan milk tea. the bottom has these black rice balls. 

they have a chain of drink shops called cocos that i love. lots of unique flavors. 

this is how they eat hardboiled eggs. always in some kind of interesting brown sauce. the convenience stores always have a pot

they like fruit juices. these are kumquats i think. very good

A salad with chicken, cucumbers, tomato

mango Shaved ice. great texture like utah snow = my face is getting fatter

oreo shaved ice. i enjoyed it as much as ice cream

rice tortillas with egg. i eat them all the time for breakfast

Here's a tradition I thought as interesting. If someone had a baby they have to buy everyone cake. this was good. it was like a brown sugar flavor

Lots of fruit jelly candy

She really wants to eat this crab

orange week at chung hsin high school

Here are some pix from around campus at chung hsin high school

the nice new buidling. why is it so nice?

new building has reflecting pools and a waterfall

the other buildings are from the seventies

in school this week was orange week. many of the students dressed up in costumes and participated in a competition between the classes.

why was this the class performance?

hey that's my middle name!

the kids could bring dogs and cell phones to class all week and could wear whatever they wanted. they were skateboarding in the buildings. chaos!

this is the person in charge of us. Teacher Cindy. She is funny and very nice

Everything was American. the music, the dancing, the costumes....

i noticed all writing on clothes is always in english too

lil stage on campus. notice the american flag jacket

Our department had the girls dress up as little Ke$has and do skanky dancing. almost all the girls in all the performances were skanky

I didn't get accepted into teach for america. it was a sad day. i spent all semester applying for it. at least i got to see this face

liz. the joker. me

 im starting to feel a little like im getting the hang of things.

 directions to get to my school - Left, left at the 7-11, right at the 7-11, left at 7-11, right at the temple.

me in the scooter gang. except im on a bike

 The garbage truck plays ice cream van music and when it comes i run down 4 flights and chase it down

got it just in time

We went to Taipei for the weekend. Good time


We stayed at this awesome lady's house (UMA MA). she has a tiny kitchen with only two burners on the stove. somehow she whipped out all this food.

it was heaven on earth

UMA MA. she laughed hard when i bought her a luck duck hat

glamour shots. people walking by said "hindu king!"

We went to lots of markets. That's just what you do. here's a typical arcade

Asians love their cute little animals. hello kitty, little bears, luck duck, playboy bunnies (kids wear this but i dont think they know what playboy is) ...

i really wanted one of these

they had a giant version of this duck on the lake. It made headlines when it exploded

We went to the palace museum. booooring. i walked through in 30 minutes. too many vases

There you could dress up as mona lisa

haha asian mona lisa

me as mona/professor snape

Food of the week. ice cream wraps with shaved peanut. so good