Face of Wax

I had planned on bringing my box of wax with me but for some reason it slipped out of my suitcase and it did not make it here :( Mom was sending me a package of things and so I asked her to put it in with everything else she was sending me, I had a problem with having a very dark mustache that grows in and it comes fairly often and as Taiwanese people don't seem to have a problem with facial hair it was important that I have my wax.

Finally the wax arrived! But it wasn't bad enough that I needed to do it right away and I didn't have the energy to do it quite yet anyway. Last Sunday I decided that it needed to be done and it needed to be done now! I went to the kitchen to heat up my dear friend wax...and the microwave wouldn't work!! Well I wouldn't be deterred, so I put some water to boil, held the little plastic dish over the steam (hot, hot!) and got the wax to soften a little bit so that using a couple of chopsticks was able to dig the whole piece of the dish. I then put the whole chunk of wax in a glass jar and put it in the boiling water.

My creativity doesn't stop there I am afraid, I decided that I would do my mustache AND eyebrows AND chin, the mustache did pretty good and the eyebrows so-so, I think though that I made the chin worse by doing it---but it's a pretty funny picture :D The best part was that I had to run to the kitchen to grab my camera in order to take the picture and right as I walked out Paul (our neighbor) came walking up, I looked at him, smiled and then went running laughing.

Walking= More Fun

The sun and heat are coming!! Friday in my middle class I took the kids on a walk, they were supposed to be listening to the different sounds and seeing the different, colors, shapes, and things in general that they saw. It went really well except it was hot and the kids didn't like that but they said that they had fun.

2 adventures came from our walk...

I was out with the 3 year olds, Teacher Stephanie was at the back and I was at the front. We were getting ready to head back to the school and I started walking forward, I had walked about 10 yards when I looked back, I had about 4 kids with me but the rest was still back with Teacher Stephanie. They were all looking intently over the edge of the road, down onto a garden- I wasn't sure what was going on so I just sat watching them when all of a sudden I saw to streams of water arching through the sky and noticed that two of the boys had there pants down around their ankles and were peeing into the garden. AHHH!!! I have since learned that it seems to be a very common practice in Asia, people (yes even adults sometimes) will just pull down their pants and go wherever they are, I am grateful that I have yet to see an adult do this and hope that I never have to.

Friday evening I scratched my arm for some reason and looked down at my shoulder, I noticed that there was a little bit of color difference, I figured at first that it must have been from when I got really bad sunburnt last summer, but then I looked more closely and realized that nope I had got sunburnt, thankfully not very much but enough so that there was some color difference. I now know that I can't go outside without wearing suntan lotion (and thankfully Andrea brought some with her!)

Birthday Delights!

Wednesday was Andrea's birthday! We hadn't really talked about doing anything for her birthday but I wanted to do something to make it special, I know that sometimes being away from family on birthday's or other major events can be hard. I secretly had the kids make birthday cards for her and asked Yuling if she would be willing to get a cheesecake for Andrea-her favorite (I was going to pay for it but then Yuling just gave it as her gift), I was going to have Yuling get the same kind that Vanessa's mom had given us last month (with the blueberries) but she told me that she would get a different kind, the missionaries told her that it was the best that they had here (it didn't disappoint :D), we saw it at A-Mart yesterday but we were both really good and steered clear of it. Also because Andrea likes to try different crackers, cookies, chips, etc. I bought her a bunch of different stuff to try. It has been an adventure to try things, some we have liked and some not so much :D

Sliding Doors

I seemed to just invite people to watch me yesterday (see HERE), there was the TP episode and then there was the time that I walked into the closing door :D I was talking to Andrea and was trying to walk through the doors, they were closing but I assumed that they would start to open when I walk towards it, yeah well I was wrong it didn't sense me there or something and kept on closing--with me in the door!! It kind of squished me :D There was a couple that was walking through some other doors, some people standing at starbucks and some other people standing right inside the door and they all saw it! The couple didn't know what to do, they just kind of stared at me but the others started to laugh. I started to laugh too, I'm such a dork--only I would walk into a closing door.

TP

You know those embarrasing stories about people leaving the bathroom and they have toilet paper stuck to the bottom or their shoe? (or worse sticking out of their dress or pants) Yeah well that almost happened to me yesterday when we were at the A-Mart, luckily it didn't! Beacuse I wouldn't have just been some random person walking around with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of their shoe, I would have been the fat American with Princess Leia buns on the top of my head walking around with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I already get watched by peopel everywhere I go, why not just add that :D
But again luckily that story didn't happen, I was just about to open the bathroom stall when I noticed that floor was littered with toilet paper (for the sake of my ewww factor we are going to pretend that it was unused toilet paper) and that one piece was stuck to the bottom of my shoe. It took me a bit to get it off, but get it off I did and my embarrassment for the day was kept to a minimum!

Hello....Paul?

Since we were gone for 4 days on our adventures to Taipei I am going to break it down into at least 3 different posts so that you (and I) are not completely bogged down with things to read. This is part 1 of our adventures, or Monday.

Our train was supposed to leave at 1pm and we had arranged that if Yuling was available they would pick us up and take us to the train station. She wasn't 100% certain if she would be available so I wanted to be ready to leave earlier in case we needed to. I woke up around 8 and took a shower and did some cleaning of my room and finalized my packing. At 10 was my family phone call that we have every week, it was fun to be able to get on and not have to rush to class after 30 minutes, I ended up staying on for almost 2 hours and was able to talk to 3 of my brothers.

To be sure that we would have enough time to walk if we needed to I called Yuling's house at about 11:15, their cleaner/helper answered the phone and said that they would be able to take us, Joseph (Yuling's husband) would come around 12:30 to get us and if we hadn't seen him by 13:35 to call. Since I wasn't concerned about time I was able to talk some more with my family. I finished my phone call and asked Andrea if she wanted to try calling her family, by the time we were able to get her family on skype and get it all figured out she was only able to talk for 5 minutes but I think that she appreciated being able to hear their voices.

12:30 came and we still hadn't seen Joseph, I tried calling there house but the phone was busy, I tried calling the cell phones- one was turned off and the other no one answered. I was starting to get really frustrated and anxious, I knew that there was no way that we would make it if we had to walk. I kept trying to call the house and finally at about 20 till I got through, I was told that Joseph had been on the phone with his Mom and had lost track of time but that he was on his way now. We were outside waiting for him when he pulled up, he apologized and explained that he had been on the phone, he then proceeded to rush to the train, he was going really fast honking at people and zooming around them. It was quite entertaining to watch as just on Friday night Yuling was telling us how Joseph is not a angry driver, he always lets people go before him and takes his time while driving.

We got there and we still had about 10 minutes before our train was supposed to leave but they were already lining up and getting on, so we quickly got into line and found our seat on the train. Andrea and I talked for probably the first hour or so, it was really nice to just have some sit down time and to talk with each other, the last several weeks we have had some tension building between us, I am not very good at expressing things because I don't want to hurt the other person or to make things awkward between us, but I guess I'm not very good at hiding my feelings even though I wasn't expressing them, so we were able to talk about it and other stuff and just make things a lot better and smoother.

After talking we both fell asleep for awhile until right before we pulled into Taipei. We got off the train and headed towards the other part of the Main Station where the MRT (Taipei Metro System or underground trains)) was, we first need to purchase our MRT cards (electronic cards where you put money on them and just scan to pay for your ride), I needed to pull money out of the ATM before I could get my card but I couldn't get the ATM to work finally I tried doing something different and I was able to get it to work.

I had written down the instructions on how to get to the hostel, they were a little confusing but we were able to figure it out and got there safely and with no real problems. We came to the door and buzzed up that we were there. We went to the 8th floor where the hostel was and walked in, I had made the reservation in my name so I was asked to fill out a little sheet with some information about myself, 1st problem…I didn't have my passport with me ("where did you come from?" oh we are working down in Hualien…oh ok--I think that I freaked her out for a 2nd saying that I didn't have my passport with me), it was ok I could just put my e-mail instead.

I finished filling out the paper and paid her, she said let me show you your room, She walked to this room that 2 sets of bunk beds, and told us that we would be using the top and bottom of that bunk. And then she said the worse words that I could hear "and this is your roommate…Paul" my first thoughts going through my head…please let Paul be a girl who had real mean parents. That thought was quickly dashed as Paul (very much male) got off his bed to say hi. I felt bad but I quickly asked "umm…do you have anything without…boys?" She told us that she was full but that the other dorm room had been reserved by two people and they had reserved the whole room, they were supposed to have already been there, she normally gives them an hour to call but that we could wait and see if they came if not we could have the room.

We both sat down on the couch, probably both silently praying for a solution, something that would not be against our morals and what we believe. After we had been sitting for a few minutes she said "you know Beth I do have one room that is available, why don't you come and look at it" she showed us a very small room with one double bed, we would have to share the bed, we didn't care we both very quickly said "we'll take it!"----Isn't it funny though? When I had first been looking at hostel's this room had been available but then when I went back to reserve like 20 minutes later it wasn't available and now it was again! (but we weren't going to complain, we weren't having to share a room with a guy possibly even two!)

Man after that story the rest of our week is going to look pretty tame :D The rest of the evening we went out and had dinner at the Taipei Main Station, a yummy Indian pita place and then went to watch a movie at the Breeze Center, we watched Valentines Day, we were lucky that it ended up not being R (they didn't have any ratings anywhere so we went in with faith that it wouldn't be rated R or be really bad), it had a lot of big name people and had a cute story line but there were several parts that I could have done without.

After the movie we quickly ran back to the MRT (we weren't sure what time it shut down) to get back to the hostel, we stopped at Family Life to pick up some snacks and something to eat for breakfast and then went home. We played cards on our bed for an hour or so and then went to bed.

Not bad for our first day!

AB Taipei Trip: The Hostel

Stomach Satisfaction

Food? Was there food on our trip? I don't know what you are talking about, in 4 days we couldn't have possibly eaten anything...except for the fact that I felt like almost every time I was turning my camera on it was to take a picture of food, us eating it or it on a plate. In actuality it only ended up being 1/5 of my pictures, but that still is A LOT of food!

AB Taipei Trip: Food

Beach Fun

As I mentioned before I left for Taipei Yuling invited Andrea and I to come with her family last weekend to a concert at the beach. It was so much fun, going in we had no clue what to expect, but we were both so glad that we had gone. After school we waited for Teacher Stephanie and Yuling to clean the school and then we hoped on the scooters (Andrea with Yuling and I with Stephanie), this was only my 2nd time riding a scooter and I am not sure if I had mentioned it before but I am sort of terrified of riding them (all right not sort of, they freak me out). Teacher Stephanie knew that I was a little scared and so she went a little bit slower for me and told me where I could put my feet so they would help me balance the most and just told me to wrap my arms around her, not once did I feel really scared or unsafe, after the first little bit it was actually fun. I could definitely see myself having one and enjoying it :D
We went to Yuling's house and Teacher Stephanie left us to go home to get her family. We had to wait for everyone else to finish getting ready and then we were off. The whole way there (about 30 minutes) all we heard from Allie (Yuling's niece) was about Jolin, Allie was so excited to see her, she had even brought a plastic doll and pen in hopes of getting Jolin to sign it for her. We finally got there and man was the place packed, we were pretty close to the beach so it was a little bit cooler, luckily Yuling had told us that it would be cold so we had both worn a sweatshirt and jacket.
Yuling showed us where our meeting place would be, so that we could go look around by ourselves if we wanted and not have to worry about getting lost. We walked around with everyone looking at the different food and game booths, Yuling and her family quickly began buying food--that is one thing that I find funny about watching Taiwanese people at night markets or just eating in general, they can eat and eat and eat and then eat some more. I could be full after the first thing that I eat but they would have to try 3 or 4 other things before they even begin to slow down (my brother-in-law Erick would fit right in :D). Andrea and I split a couple of things but the smell of really strong Stinky Tofu kind of turned us away from food for a little while.
We went back to where we were supposed to meet up and listened to a couple of singers, it was so much fun just dancing, laughing, screaming and feeling like a teenager (I have only been to one concert in my life and this was an outside one with hundreds of people it was so cool and different). We got several looks but we didn't really care, we were having fun! After that Andrea, Allie and I headed back towards the food booths to try and find some food that didn't smell for us. We walked past a cotton candy stand and Allie informed me that she had never had cotton candy, I felt that we needed to fix that very quickly- it's not one of my favorite things in the world but it's just something that you have to experience. In Allie's rush to go back to the stand we lost Andrea but we figured that she would just be back at the meeting place.
On our way back to the meeting place we walked past Teacher Stephanie (we were quite surprised, we didn't think that we would see anyone that we knew or that we would have any luck of finding Teacher Stephanie once we got there). She was trying to find her husband Bob and daughter Eliza but couldn't find them, and she had forgotten her cell phone at home so she couldn't call them. She decided to just stand where she was and wait for them. Finally about 15 minutes later I stood at the spot so she could go and use Joseph's cell phone, we found out that Bob and Eliza had gotten lost and couldn't find Stephanie so they had gone home...Stephanie said oh well but I'm staying :D
We had just gotten back to the meeting spot when Yuling's house keeper came running up to Allie to tell her that they were waiting for Jolin, Allie heard Jolin and she took off, we struggled to keep up with her. We got back behind the stage and we found Yuling and Andrea, they were standing with a bunch of other teenagers waiting to see if Jolin would come through. We stood there for over 30 minutes when they finally told us that she had already come in before the concert had even started, Allie was pretty disappointed :( but then we got to hear her sing, we were pretty close and with Allie on Yuling's or mine shoulders she could see her pretty well. (Yuling said that she feels too old for stuff like this, "I'm not a teenager" but that Allie is the only one that she would do stuff like this for).
Jolin sang 3 or 4 songs and then there was the BIGGEST/BEST firework show that I have ever seen in my life! It was probably 30+ minutes long and it just kept going and going, bigger and better. Beautiful fireworks! (After wards Yuling said "there goes our tax dollars!") Andrea and I were so impressed, of course we couldn't really hear after wards, but that's ok :D I was super happy because I got to play with my camera settings (remember FIREWORK setting!) there are definitely some good ones and some not so good ones, but I haven't had time to go through and delete the ones that aren't really worth keeping.

Beach Concert

Fireworks

Fail?

This is what happens when Beth doesn't do laundry for almost 2 weeks! She has no only 1 pair of pants clean, no clean underwear, 2 clean shirts, and no clean bedding! So she gets to do 3 loads of laundry in one day, get completely soaked every time she goes to take out the load and put in a new one...what a FUN day!

And this is what happens when Beth doesn't go grocery shopping for over a week and comes home from "vacation" and finds that she is lacking in the kitchen (and bathroom) necessities! I would say that my basket is a little overflowing :D

New Year's Gifts

I am not sure if it is traditional to give gifts to others but it seems that whenever a major Chinese/Taiwanese holiday comes around I get lots of gifts (in the disguise as food) given to me, it has happened to me this time and the last time I was here. Not that I am complaining because I love getting given free food (:D), I like it because I am getting free food (who can pass that up?) and I often get to try something that I may not have tried otherwise.

Last Thursday I had tutor group and when I walked in Kristy walked up and handed me this box, last time I was here she or someone else gave me a box of these Anka crackers, I didn't like them the first time that I tried them they were a little different but I quickly did like them. They make a great snack cracker, not too sweet, and not too dry.

It's a good thing I liked them as that big box came with 12! of these boxes and then each box has 6 of these packets. Because they are rather small I generally end up eating more than one at a time (good thing I have lots of them) :D

It is tradition for Chinese New Year that you give a red envelope (I think generally it's parents to children, bosses to employees, etc.) and inside I was told that you give new money. Yuling came in after our afternoon classes last Friday and handed these out to each kid in the class and then gave Andrea and I one also. She said Happy New Year and then told us not to open it until the New Year.

Inside I found these chocolates, sadly they weren't very good :( and I only ate one but they still looked really cool. This boat looking thing plays a big part of the New Year, I am not quite sure what it means--that is something I need to ask as soon as I see people that would know again.

Thursday Andrea and I went to another computer district (more about that later) and when we walked in this guy walked up and handed us these red envelopes. I didn't think that it would be polite to open it there so I waited until I got home...
Inside I found a shiny new $1NT, yeah for free money!

Chinese Concert!

Friday we went to this super awesome concert at the beach with Yuling and her family. I felt like a teenager cheering, jumping up and down, and standing behind the stage in hopes of getting an autograph from the singers. There were about 5 that sang, two that we liked the most. I just wanted to share the videos of our favorite songs, I will write more when I return from Taipei.


We loved this song, it was so catchy and it had English in it :D He was fun and brought tons of energy to the stage. His English (well his name translated is Harlem Yu)


This is another one of Harlem Yu's, I am not 100% sure if this is the slow song that he sang, but I liked it anyway.


Yuling's niece Allie was soooooooo excited to see Jolin! I am sure that I heard her name at least 50x on the way to the beach. Her name is Jolin Tsai and I guess she studied English. This song just makes me laugh, but still the music is very catchy.

Embarrassment

This is what my desk looked like a couple of hours ago, the sad part is that I had already cleaned up some when I took this picture...how pathetic is that? I don't get how I can clean every night and by the next evening my room is already a disaster zone again...but at least I am being good and clean every night or every other night :D

Going Fishing

Saturday we were using these little fish guys to build with, when it was time for the five year olds to clean up they decided to bury me with them, Rain decided that it would be funny to shove some down my shirt (don't worry I was wearing two shirts). I told them to stop putting them down my shirt so some of the others rushed to get them all out, they patted me down and I thought for sure that we had got them all out. But Saturday night when I was getting undressed I heard clank, clank, clank, clank and I looked down to see 4 plastic fishes on the ground, I started to laugh.
Oh the adventures you have when working with preschoolers :D

Food Adventures

Last week sometime Andrea and I decided to be adventurous and try something new at the night market...first when we went to get our fruit drinks Donald suggested that we try what he called House of Leek, he said that it was really good for when our bodies were hot and that it would cool it down, we both got one (I have labeled it as Green Slime :D). It actually turned out to be pretty good and the last several times that I have gone to get juice that is what I have ended up getting.
Next we had to try something different for our main entree...we decided to try one of stands where you take a bowl and pick what you want and they will cook it for you, well we discovered that there are several different types of those and we went to one that did just deep fat frying. We both got some chicken and potatoes, Andrea got what ended up being fish and I got for us to split some sweet (wasn't very sweet but a little weird being deep fat fried). It was all really yummy but way too much fatty foods to eat together, when we were done Andrea and I both felt a little sick- we rushed to get some fruit and vegetables to help us feel a little healthier :D
It wasn't a bad adventure but we will be a little more prepared next time to try a different kind of booth or to just pick one item that we want to try.

The pictures are...my dinner-potatoes and fried chicken, the green slime (yummy house of leek with pineapple I believe), and the sweet fried stuff (the lady kept on trying to tell us that it was good but we weren't going to jump at something that we couldn't even begin to identify, so finally she called a friend and told us that it was "sweet" and that was all that she told us, but we were brave and went for it :D)
I was adventurous and tried something else this past week, while Andrea was tutoring Vanessa's sister I was going to run down to the night market and get us dinner, Vanessa's Mom offered to drive me over, it was fun to have her walk around with me and explain what things were--- I tried what she called a spring roll, it was more like a soft burrito, it wasn't my favorite and it probably wont be something that I will try again, but hey I tried it once!

Chinese New Year

(This guy popped up outside what we call the "stuff store" last week sometime, lots of red decorations are coming up :D)

Chinese New Year starts next Sunday and then lasts for 2 weeks. Part of the celebration is that everyone goes home to their hometowns, as such we will only be meeting for an hour next week for church. Andrea and I have been trying to ask people what we should do but we still weren't really sure what we were going to do with a whole week off, Yuling suggested that we go to Taipei as most people aren't from there so the town would be a lot emptier than normal, we talked about it and decided that, that was what we were going to do. Yesterday we bought our train tickets, we will leave Monday afternoon and come back Thursday evening! Now just to find where we are going to stay!

First Birthday

Had the first birthday party since I've arrived and it turned out to be a double! It's always a bit of a struggle because they don't generally tell us until part way through the day that we will be having a party in the afternoon class so to allow 15-20 minutes for it, we then always have to re-arrange what we were planning on doing...but this time it worked out perfect! Meggy's Mom walked in and was the gift fairy--she had a balloon for each child, some candy, toys AND they got a cupcake too! It was raining so they were stuck inside with all of their energy from naps and candy!
Ryan is a 3 year old and his Mom is pregnant with twin boys, I am not sure if they knew about doing something for birthday's but I was still glad to see that Yuling made him part of it and had a birthday candle for him and that we sang to him.

Freezer Down

A couple of weeks ago we realized that our food in the fridge wasn't very cold so we turned the dial up about 2/3 of the way up, then it started being really noisy whenever the doors were closed. Last week again the food was not cold at all, so we turned the dial up as far as it would go, but it still didn't do anything and the fridge really started to smell bad (I mean BAD) so we decided to talk to Yuling. The day we meant to go to talk to Yuling we forgot and hadn't gotten to it yet when a repair guy walked in and started working on it, we were a little confused as we hadn't talked to her yet but we weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.




It turns out that for some reason the fan or something was blocked and so it wasn't defrosting correctly so the fan/engine was running too much and went kaploop! (or something like that :D), anyway the guy replaced the part and everything was back to normal (except he left about 2 gallons of dirty water spilled on the floor and didn't put EVERYTHING back in the freezer--grrr!).


It also took us a day or so to realize that he had not turned down the dial in the fridge so it was still as cold as it could go, we finally realized it was still high when we were going to have fried eggs and we went to crack it and it looked like this :( Kind of funny but I wasn't too excited about eating a frozen egg, so I completely melted in the sink---kind of fun but your hands feel gross when you are done :D

(But I guess we know that it works :D)

Double Piering

Yuling's niece Allie often likes to come visit during our lunch break, she will sometimes just sit on my bed and watch what I am doing, other times she will try to play with my computer (while I am using it mind you). Wednesday afternoon she came to visit, for some reason she had stickers with her decided to apply them to my ears, so for awhile I had a double piercing...the funny thing is that I forgot they were there until I reached up to itch my ear and when I looked in the mirror it almost looked like I really had a double piercing.

Sorry Baby!

Andrea’s sweet new bike has a baby car seat attached on the back (I guess that bikes with car seats are designed different and supposed to be a little more balanced than others, Yuling said that it is supposed to be a little like training wheels—we are hoping that they will help Andrea). Because of all the stuff that we had bought we had “buckled” one of my bags into her car seat thing. I was riding her bike after mine when “kaplunk” when I hit a pothole, I could hear the bag in the car seat rattle and move a little bit so I said “sorry baby.” So after that every time I hit a ditch (I may or may not have purposely searched for potholes after this :D) I would apologize to the baby.

And The Rose Goes To...

Lately we have had some free time at night after tutoring is over and we haven’t had anything to do (because that happens all the time right :D) and Andrea and I have got hooked on finding out who Jake is going to chose on The Bachelor. Really we are not impressed with any of the girls but we just HAVE TO KNOW! Saturday night when we finished our latest episode I got a burst of energy and decided to mimic each of the girls and then I decided that I was going to try out for the show…something like how I would be the obvious winner because I’m not a super skinny, blonde who uses cusses words every other word and how I DON’T check my hair and make-up every 5 seconds. I really think that I have a chance…don’t you?

Oh yeah...these are going to be my application photos :D

Shopping We Will Go

Saturday afternoon Andrea and I went on an adventure to another part of town, we went down to the Church and then went right, last time I was here I went that direction a couple of times (there is a sweet bakery, stuff store, grocery store, and McDonalds that direction), but not enough that I can say that I am super comfortable in that area.

We drove by a Buddhist Temple that is only about a block or so away from Church and it is quiet big, I wanted to check with someone before I go through there taking pictures because I don’t want to be disrespectful but as soon as I find out if that is ok I will be sure to go back and take pictures! We have been told that during Chinese New Year we should go there and see a dragon dance (super excited to see that!). We also passed what looked like a floral shop and a nail salon (Andrea and I have made a “list” of things to do before we go home, one is get our hair done here-not cut mind you (we’re not brave enough for that :D), a pedicure, and a manicure- just to say that we did :D), but when we were on our way back I couldn’t find them again.

We stopped and parked our bikes at the grocery store because we figured that it was the most central place and that we would be going there last in case we wanted to buy cold food items. We started walk towards the stuff store and I got a little confused at how to get there, we went part way up the road and I forgot that we needed to go a little further so we went back, went up another road and then passed where we had stopped and reached the stuff store (so basically I made us walk a whole extra circle…oops!). The stuff store was fun, in between getting ran over by ten year old girls and little old ladies wanting to get pass when there was no room we were each able to find some goodies to take home.

I left with a set of markers, some birthday cards, and more socks (I found these super cute stripped ones that I really like and they fit a lot better than the ones that I brought from home—how does that even make sense when everything else about their feet are tinier than mine?).

Next stop…McDonalds! Because you can’t be American without going to McDonalds once? We figured that because we were down that way and there didn’t really seem to be any other kind of restaurants that we wanted to try by our self so we went there (Andrea figured that she wouldn’t be able to have a hamburger until she went home…she doesn’t realize how much they love anything American), Andrea got a hamburger while I got the chicken burger—Yummy! While we were there I figured that I had better visit the bathroom before we left, you will be happy to know that this particular McDonalds only has squatter toilets and so I had to use them, I am getting “better” and “faster” at using them :D

Next and final stop? Blue grocery store, we weren’t there very long and I was kind of feeling tired and couldn’t really settle on needing/wanting anything so I only bought a couple of things and then we headed home.

I was in the middle of crossing the last major intersection before home when all of a sudden my bike made a clanking noise and the chain was no longer working. I tried pedaling but it did not do anything, so I hopped off my bike as fast as I could and finished crossing the street. I was just going to walk home the rest of the way but Andrea was already walking hers so she suggested that we switch and I ride hers home, so I did that.

Family Photos

Can I just say how much I love my job and getting to work with these kids? Some days they make me want to strangle their necks and pull out my hair but then I look at pictures like these and I can't stop smiling/laughing. Last week we were talking about families and one thing that we did was take "family photos" in the 2nd class we had a boy picture and a girl picture and each person got to pick their own props...love that Jimmy has a pink headband on and that Max is holding a red fan, plus you've also got an awesome Ruby Monkey!