lantern festival

Taiwan has a really low fertility rate - 1.11. That ranks at the lowest in the world along with Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau. That's even lower than Japan and mainland China's birth rates. The schools are competing hard for students

That's a lot of only child's. and a lot of pressure for that one kid to be perfect

I'm trying to make education and career decisions. why that gotta be all difficult? o and can someone lend me $50,000? maybe ill have to ask my buddy B rock for some obama bucks

Barak obama change gon' come-a

church was so cold i left and went outside to walk around.

highs of 55 degrees. that's freezing when nobody has heating
we americans are high maintenance compared to everywhere else in the world i've been

freezing at work! i'm wearing 5 layers

Our school had a parade for lantern festival (the last day of new year's celebrations).



i found out our school is the best school in the region and the students are very wealthy. i never would have guessed.

welcoming stage

cultural insight - east asians love to make a big deal out of everything. everything's a spectacle

the whole parade was just our school of 4,000 students. we walked for almost 2 hours. the police had to redirect traffic throughout the city for us.

"kill the beast!"

we had multiple floats, musical groups, an entire fireworks show, an outdoor stage and more

i wondered where they got all these floats from

it was a paparazzi moment for us teachers because we're americans. nonstop pictures all night. and i'm pretty sure we're in the news

look how fat i look! i have on three jackets underneath

people were going nuts over the cute white baby (name is milo).

for the women he was the most exciting attraction. it's rare to see white babies

i was sitting on a bench talking with my friend. on the other bench was this old guy. in the middle of our conversation he let out the biggest, longest fart. we stopped talking for a few seconds and then got back to our conversation

cutesy poo haha

I walked into class. The students said... "uh, teacher, we have test. all day." I said, "See ya!" and walked out. Two free hours for me! I think we will only teach this class like 7 times by the end of the year.

happy pink and blue horses

life motto - it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. They're pretty chill here about everything so I think my motto works



...so i basically do what i want in class.
hey, at least they're learning lots of English!
I love doing what I want to do.



 i do the "textbook" for part of the class and the other part is my own curriculum. i teach self-improvement principles based on the book "the 7 habits of highly effective teens."


This week they learned how to base your life around principles (Ex. peace, balance, helping others...) rather than people or things.

For class I wrote a story about a lady named Starla. I had a hard time saying that one without laughing. Starla is a workaholic

sweet peas

They randomly decided they wanted more people to audition for the play. a couple of the boys auditioned in high girl voices. i had to look down at the paper to not laugh.

also in some of the auditioning pairs the girl played the guy part and the boy played the girl part.

what happens when you ask an asian to take your picture

I finally got to teach  my high school class for english majors! they are so good i loved teaching the class. a relief from those middle schoolers! some of them are a nightmare

my first erhu class was fun. i just played by ear and had no clue what they were saying

my erhu class

someone asked me to teach their kids a couple cello lessons. I taught my lesson with very few words. mostly gestures, examples, and singing notes.

foods to drool over... and for mom to cook

authentic japanese ramen soup 

thousand layer cake. so soft. so smooth

egg tart thing with brown sugar mocci ball

back to reality (kind of)

in a couple weeks i have another week long break! they didn't tell us we were even going to a have a break at all.

more time to party with these guys

so i spent all day planning a trip to thailand (skymiles work with vietnam air) but figured it would be slightly out of my budget. so close. sad day. next time.

this is how i felt inside when i learned couldn't go to thailand

I'm seriously considering living in shanghai or beijing for a few months. there's lots of jobs and there's other English-speaking YSAs

nunnery + garden. what is a nunnery anyway? i thought that was catholic

We started auditions for Shakespeare's 12th night. i thought it was so funny when the students got over dramatic in the audition. even tho it was bad acting i gave them higher points just for some comic entertainment.

recordings to come

i also thought this horse was funny

I went to costco! it's expensive here. it's much cheaper to just eat out. 

costco is like a tourist attraction here in taiwan. 

if they want to see a real tourist attraction they should go to costco in utah. now that's a real cultural experience

look at the trash sorting! i bet half of these end up going to the same place anyway

My first day back at regular teaching was a surprise (it came a day early.) Our school is so disorganized! You really can't plan anything in advance. Even with that, the students must be getting high math and science scores because the parents pay a lot for them to be there

this is beautiful.

So they change the schedules and rooms all the time and have random activities without telling us. like today in class the students were playing with bloody machetes and giant lobster claws in the back of the room. they also decided to change the textbook without telling us.

looks like they are building a hipster community

Some of the students are hilarious. they say the funniest things and make me laugh a lot

not 1, not 2, not 3,  but 6D

In my new classes class we spent like 20 minutes discussing the principle of agency and how they can choose to disbehave and suffer consequences or behave well and have fun in class. It was very Lehi-like

why is he breathing in a sheep?

I have a point system that is very rewarding to students who behave well and very harsh to students who misbehave. I pretty much have the flexibility to give them the grades I want, so I'm going to give anyone who behaves well and participates a good grade no matter what they score on tests. the good students will also get all sorts of free time and privileges

the fish eat the dead skin off your feet!

I think I'm going to sneak in a bunch of self-improvement/TED talk kinda things into each of my classes. just cuz i can! These kids need to see that there's more to life than school and American pop culture.

he picks the lettuce. she picks his ear

Our lil group of byu teachers here does everything together. it's funny. we work, play, have all church functions and eat every meal together.

eating out takes a significant amount of our time. it's an event. i haven't had time to do my laundry all week!

So I signed up for erhu lessons. it's a chinese stringed instrument. the master told me, "if you give me three months, I'll give you the world." I was sold

Yesterday as we were leaving, our boss said, "no work tomorrow afternoon and we're in a parade friday." it's gonna be fun. we get costumes!

Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guilin

left for hong kong. Bless you taiwan airport for these amazing chairs! on all forms of transportation i always fall asleep and wake up magically right when it's time to go. always. its a natural talent


I arrived in Hong Kong and immediately applied for a visa to mainland china. the visa ended up costing $260! geez. then i went to the national records office to find grandpa's ship.  no luck. i spent a lot of time searching and went to a bunch of places but didn't get anything good.

cool ship in victoria harbor

Hong kong is much bigger than I thought! there's little space and lots of people so land is expensive. the result is lots of skyscrapers. it was a very exciting city and had a cool feel. it was also clean! thanks brits

many many asians

they don't need street lights cuz the signs are so bright and hang over the street!

My hostel was cheap and ghetto and far from the city center. lesson learned - going for the cheapest price takes more time and usually costs more money in the long run (i would have to have gotten taxis to get there at night) At the hostel there was a spanish guy who did consulting for large travel companies. he had to leave because spain's economy is a mess. 

need to put this sign up at sarah's house

i think that sounds like an awesome job for me. but not in spain

my hostel was behind big buddha

next day I went to the midlevels. This is huge escalator that goes up and up the side of the mountain. There are streets with cool restaurants all alongside the way. fun fun

went to the temple looking for the family history center. the internet sent me to the wrong place. i called them a week before to get help but nobody spoke english.



The buildings in hong kong harbor have a really cool light show every night.



I got my passport to mainland china on wednesday.  traveling in mainland china was a challenge. everything was really crowed because of chinese new year and spring festival. many people work in the modern cities in the east and travel west to their home for the holidays. i traveled west at the wrong time!

red packages filled with fruits and candies were being sold all over for chinese new year

When I crossed the border into china I spent a half hour trying to figure out how to get to shenzhen. Then I realized I was already in shenzhen.

should i?

I was surprised how nice the city was. i thought china was supposed ghetto. shenzhen is one of China's most advanced cities even tho they only started building it up twenty years ago. ever since the economic reforms, china has invested tons of money on its eastern cities but has neglected the other places.

I spent the night at a park. There was all sorts of things going on, including some people doing sword stuff

family playing a hackysack kinda game but this was way cooler. the thing had feathers

I realized that not all chinese people are robots like you see on tv or in the news. they are intense about getting ahead in terms of education and career tho.

water buffalo!

because all of china was returning home, the trains were full and everything was more expensive. on top of that i had problems with my debit card, my skype was blocked, everything was in chinese, and i had to move hostels every night to get the best price. i did it. im good

I was getting concerned when these were the only buildings i saw on the way to my hostel




Then I accidentally bought a train ticket back go hong kong for the wrong month! i had to delay my flight a day (free of charge!)

sun and moon pagodas. they looks so much cooler in real life

I stayed with a family on the train for the first night of the new year celebration. it was fun. they gave me food and a red envelope with money. we played card games and did tricks. they didn't speak english and i didn't speak chinese. i taught them how to play BS with just gestures.

I arrived in Guilin before the hostel opened up so i sat outside. i jumped when this huge thing of firecrackers went off right behind me. i thought it was gunshots. in the morning for chinese new year the people set off firecrackers outside their front doors.



chinese people are so loud and pushy and are not shy about any bodily functions. it was annoying!

this is a bathroom

an hour after arriving i went on a cruise to yangshuo. there was an awesome karst landscape. ive always wanted to go here since seeing pictures of it my first days at the chinese buffets



we saw a guy that uses cormorants to catch his fish for him. the bird gets fish from the water and returns to the guy. the guy opens the birds mouth and takes the fish out!
 next i went on a tour of a little town and went on lil bamboo boats.



I spent the dinner with a german group. they were kind of quiet. i think they need beer to have fun

next day i saw the Longsheng rice terraces. it was cool but i wish i had seen it when they flood the fields. I spent all day with spaniards and argentinians. they were cool.






I traveled to some ancient town. didnt know the name of it then and i don't know it now. It was pretty lame but it was fun to go exploring on the way there.


it was weird that people still live in these really ancient buildings. they are historical landmarks



I was so excited to see walmart! they have huge tubs of rice


I rented a bike and biked around all day. I was pretty much lost the whole time but it was fun.

I got a sleeper bus back to shenzhen. tight space! i was so happy i had biked all day because i was able to sleep through most of that ride

the trees were all covered along this highway. modern art?

i went back to hong kong and saw some more touristy things. i was glad to be able to go back for another day cuz i thought i wasnt going to see all the major attractions in hong kong. i saw stars for bruce lee, jet li, and jackie chan. and more importantly...

her name is miranda you can call her miranda!

From the grove to hong kong!

I went way way way over budget on my travel so i tried to limit my eating. there are mcdonald's everywhere in china. i ate there alot because i got sick of ordering food and finding out it has seafood (i couldn't read the menus)

but i had to have famous hong kong dim sum. this was a great experience minus the avril lavine album playing in the background

china = sanitation nightmare!!!! i was so happy to be back in my apartment in my sanitary bubble

i was in a nice grocery store and this huge rat came out. the worker stepped on it and everything was back to normal. business as usual.

here's part of the kitchen of the restaurant i ate at. she gave me a humungous plate of a freshly picked vegetable ( i don't know what it was but it was good)

and i'm back in taiwan!