Lessons God has been/ is teaching me while in Taiwan

It is impossible to completely and adequately express this in written words. We'll see how close I can get..
First off God taught me, by way of removing me from people to whom I'd "anchored", to only anchor on him. Other people can't hold me up forever. God can. This has probably been the hardest lesson I have learned and I have to keep relearning it unfortunately.
Another thing God keeps reinforcing is to trust daily. Some Mondays I wake up and realize that I have zero experience, zero knowledge whatsoever about teaching English and here I am responsible for 172 kids English speaking abilities. Add to this moments where MY English appears challenged. For example, last week I spelled Caterpillar wrong on 29 first grade projects. whoops. Apparently, just because I say a word one way does not mean it is spelled the way I say it. And naturally our homemade Sowash words do not translate. Amazingly enough these days that start out seeming impossible always turn into the best classes of the week when I pray out loud, " God this day is in your hands and I really am going to need help." It's great because when I pray that I really believe it. I still feel incompetent or tired maybe but I know God is going to do something and that really the worst that can happen is that first grade spells caterpillar "Catapillar". They'll survive. Thanks for reading! More lessons when I learn them.

Easter Event

I am terribly behind in my blogging. So I will start with the Easter event we had at my school. This idea was totally from God and he gave me the energy and desire to carry it out. Usually I get all excited about ideas I have but never get past the planning stage. This event was planned and executed to success! There were a total of 80+ kids from my school who came at 8am on the Saturday before Easter. I had 4 other teachers there to help including Megan Jefferies. Splitting the kids into 4 teams aided with "crowd control". I was the egg decorating station person. Each team went through a rotation of games and Easter egg decorating. The eggs ended up so beautiful and the kids loved making them and taking them home to eat. First time they have ever done this. The most popular game played that morning was the water balloon toss. Thankfully, the weather was hot and sunny after a whole previous week of rain. Megan gave a wonderful Easter story message and everyone was very attentive. Praise God that it went so well. I know the kids had a great time, the parents and teachers had a great time and I had a
great time!

Shoes

I've decided that I definitely couldn't live in Taiwan forever because I would go totally broke buying shoes. Shoe here are like the most wonderful things ever. Generally I try to avoid common "girl- y" things but I must confess that I too (like every other girl in the world) love shoes. Red shoes, blue shoes, yellow flats, silver gladiator sandals, black heels... love 'em. These are of course all described (by me) as accessory shoes- neither practical, or necessarily comfortable, and goodness knows they aren't actually needed so much as wanted. However, having this facination towards shoes has great increased my Chinese vocabulary. Not only can I describe the size, color and style of the shoe I desire to purchase, I can also ask how much they cost. In getting the price of the shoes I usually make a little gasp and shake my head.. " O no. Much too expensive" I say. And then we go back a forth once or twice and then I walk out of the store happily wearing wonderful new shoes for a price equivallent to 6 American dollars. Payless Shoes has nothing on Taiwanese shoe shops. They wouldn't stand a chance. *smile*

I think i'll keep 'em around

I have a fan club of several little 2nd and 3rd graders at my school. They bang on the door to my dorm yelling "teacher Jenna!!" and follow me around all wanting to hold my hand at the same time. If you are ever not feeling beautiful come to taiwan and hand around a bunch of little kids. Even on my worst hair day ever they tell me " O teacher Jenna you are so pretty." I tell them to follow me around anytime they want. *grin* This video was totally spontaneous. I was hanging up laundry in our laundry room and my little fan club came around and was just chattering. I have no idea what they were talking about but it was cute. Then they just started singing and waving their little arms around. HAHA! it was the funniest thing ever and it made me feel so special. It definately made my day. *smile*

On the right is Vivian, middle is Amy and in back is Nina :)

Quiet weekend

This morning I got to sleep in till 7:30am!! Wow! haha It was great. I have a quiet weekend planned compared to the last few weekends. I made a morning walk down to the breakfast stand by the temple to buy breakfast and walked for an hour or so listening to some podcasts on my ipod. A few of the kids from school came around to play and I let them listen to some songs and we all danced around the track together... (well i danced, they watched me) *smile* Then I brought out some orange juice to share with them and we had a little "picnic". We had a good time together. After playing with these kids I been wondering about the concept of the see-saw... They just love sitting on that thing and bouncing up and down, up and down. I get on and it's like " oooh, ahhh. My goodness are we done yet?" haha.
My morning tutor class was canceled so I am free until 3:30 when all the 6th grade girls are coming over to make cookies with Megan and I. Chocolate chip, M&M cookies.. ( the 6th grade boys were jealous they weren't invited.) So I guess even for a quiet saturday I am staying occupied.

Weekend trip #2

This past weekend Jill and I rented mopeds for 2 days and drove around 100 miles along the east coast of Taiwan. I will write more about the trip in the future. For now these pictures pretty much sum it all up. How amazing is that water??!!! I can't believe I was really here!

weekend travels #1

Surprise surprise! A friend of mine showed up in Taipei 2 weekends ago to visit me! And I was so surprised that I didn't even know how to react. She stayed with me at school and on the weekends we ventured out into Taiwan. The first place we visited was Pinxi. We took a train which stopped at several old mining towns and at each place you get out and look around. There were alot of hiking trails that interested us here. So we packed up her backpack with both our stuff for 3 days and set out. To make the trip even more interesting it poured down rain the whole time. Not just sprinkles or mountain mist- DRENCHING rain. Fortunately, we actually managed to stay quite dry ( we had umbrellas and waterproof jackets) while hiking all weekend. The highlight of the weekend was our stop at the Sandiaoling waterfall trail. This was probably the most amazing thing I have ever done in my life. Jill and I hiked an hour on a tiny little trail through the jungle. Over rocks and through some rivers. (we left whatever clothes we didnt want wet and our shoes on one side of the river and continued on) It was a very rugged train and I admit to feeling like a wild, jungle woman. I loved being a wild, jungle woman! haha. It was so great! It was rainy and we were climbing along this path.... And finally we get to this waterfall that was breathtaking. Even better we climbed up the mountain and got directly behind it. Since we were muddy and already wet we just got right in the water and swam around. It was so cold (and the next week we were both sick for 3 days) but there was nothing in the world that could have kept us out of that waterfall. Unfortunately, all our pictures from this day are on Jill's camera so I can't post any yet. They will come as soon and I get them. I would most certainly recomend these hiking trails to any outdoorsie backpackers looking for a jungle jaunt.