PhotoHunt: Vertical

I took this last time when I taught in Taiwan. I had the treat of having Nathan and Sallee come and visit me during October, around my birthday. They stayed in Taiwan for a week and then we went to Honk Kong for 5 days, unfortunately we didn't get to the Temple until evening when it was almost closing time. But I still love this view of the Temple and the characters that are vertical instead of horizontal.

6 Course Fancy

Two weekends ago Andrea and I were able to go to Taipei with Yuling and Joseph to go to the Temple. After our sessions we had several hours still until our return train so we went exploring around Taipei. We were starting to get hungry when we walked past this fancy place, it was a steak restaurant and Andrea had mentioned wanting steak. It seemed a little on the fancier side but we figured that we were in our Sunday clothes and we weren't going to get much fancier.
There were 6 "courses"

Course 1: Bread (yummy!)

Course 2: Soup (I had sweet corn and Andrea had French Onion)

Course 3: Salad (I had a green salad with a yogurt dressing and Andrea had tomato and asparagus)

Course 4: Main Course (I had a yummy pasta with cheese, meat, and peppers. Andrea had steak)

Course 5: Dessert (Ice cream with fruit cocktail and a dollop of whipped topping)

Course 6: Drinks (I had lemon juice and Andrea had kiwi) (they don't generally drink during their meals which is why the drink is considered a course)

This is what I get for ordering fresh lemon juice, I was thinking lemonade, on the sweet side- yummy and delicious! Nope, I would say that there was absolutely NO SUGAR! added to my "lemon juice" and so you get this lovely

face :D

The meal was really yummy and only like $12, not that bad when you consider all that we had. It was kind of fun to eat at a multiple course restaurant, I have never done that before and it's kind of neat to mark that off on my experiences.

Finger Painting

Two weeks ago we were talking about paper, I had a fun project where we were going to do marbled paper, but for some reason I couldn't get the liquid to work and hold the paint. So with only 15 minutes before class started I decided that we were going to finger paint, I think that the kids had lots of fun.

They came up with many different pictures. And can I just say that I love them in these cute little aprons? I didn't even know that we had these until right before class, I think they were a good choice...if only to get a cute picture :D

Cute little Eva, she started out with her fingers but decided that wasn't working quickly enough for her so used her complete hands :D She came up to me afterwards and was like "look teacher" and showed me her very red hands.

PhotoHunt: Sweet

My Freshman Year Kyle and I were in a cooking class together and part of our final was that we had to make a "magnificent meal" as a group. We had to have at least 5 dishes and it had to be under a certain $ amount. Anyway we made a yummy peach cobbler and green jell-o with mandarin oranges and whip topping (don't you love the cute touch on top?), of course it couldn't have been Utah without jell-o :D

A Mart: An Extreme Adventure

Two field trips in two days! How crazy is that? It was so much fun though, well as fun as it can be going shopping with 50 kids :D We had our regular morning classes and then the craziness started. There were at least 10 cars lined up out front of the school and that many or more parents wandering around, talking with each other and the kids. You know how when you are getting ready to go somewhere you go through in your head like a million times what you need to take with you/do well multiply that several times and you can begin to understand what it was. Finally we would be ready and then a 3 year old was missing, or someone needed to change clothes/shoes, go to the bathroom, basically anything that you can think of.

Finally we started to get in the cars, I was in the first one to leave. I got to ride with Elaine's Mom and 6 bouncy 3 year olds :D

It's amazing how much faster you can get somewhere when going in a car. We were all dropped off at the curb and then the parents went and all parked their cars.

Before going inside, each teacher took a group of 10 kids (except me, I was the lucky one with a microphone and got to be the "tour guide"). We walked in and everyone quickly started grabbing carts, I got the microphone out but wasn't really sure what Yuling wanted me to do with it, after a few minutes we quickly decided that it would be easier just for each teacher to be a tour guide for their groups. We started out all together but that quickly changed and were soon spread out through the store.

We had two hours to explore the store with our groups (I used it as a chance to buy some of the more heavier stuff that we needed but didn't really want to bike back with. AKA- Rice). The kids had tons of fun looking at things and picking out what they were going to buy (each one had been sent with $50-$150 or so). Minds were changed many times, especially on making sure that they had enough money.

I went on several runs with kids to find stickers or tattoos that they saw someone else have and they wanted.

When it came time to check-out they opened two check stands just for us, so we wouldn't block other customers and hopefully not frustrate everyone in the store.

When going shopping with 50 kids you would expect to have someone wander off on their own, that happened but it wasn't one of the kids. Yuling disappeared with her group and we didn't see them until the very end when we were getting in line to check out.
It was a long day and everyone was very tired when we were heading home, the kids had fun and loved buying lots and lots of candy (of course that is what most of them bought :D).
Elaine's Mom was nice and bought snacks for everyone in our car to eat on the way back and some how our 6 3 year olds had become 9, all sitting in the back together- with no seat belts :(

Dream Boat

Last night I was tutoring Nemo, we were reading a book about different kinds of boats and I thought to do something different I would have her describe her "dream boat" to me, this is the following list that was given to me:

*Big (as we were reading the book I would ask her which boat was her favorite, she was always pick one and when asked why it was her favorite? "because it's big")

*Cool (now what would be the point of having a boat if it's not cool?)

*Colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple

*100 Levels

*10 bedrooms (those poor bedrooms are going to be pretty far spread out)

*20 bathrooms (it's always important to have the 1 to 2 ratio in bedrooms to bathrooms)

*15 kitchens (and to have enough kitchens so that you fix something different in each one)

*3 Swimming pools

...this reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite movies Bride and Prejudice

This fellow went to America

and bought a huge American house
and built three swimming pools.
So when his father visited from India,
he showed him around his mansion
and three swimming pools.
His father asked,

"But, son, why do you need three pools?"
So he said proudly, "Well, one is filled

with cold water for when I feel hot
. The second is filled with hot water
when I feel cold. "
The father nodded and said,

"But why is the third pool empty?"
He said, "Well, that's when

I don't feel like swimming at all. "

*20 trampolines

*10 cars

*11 jump ropes

*30 TV's

*29 computers

*12 balls

*2 basketball courts

*3 soccer fields

*10 pianos

*5 movies (I'm not sure if this is physical movies or movie theaters)

*2 McDonalds

*8 music boxes

*10 violins

*2 roosters

*2 hens (yep you see those two right, roosters and hens...they raise roosters and hens and when I suggested other animals she didn't want those, just roosters and hens :D)

*50 flowers

*7 BIG clocks

*99 standing lamps (at least we know that each level will have a lamp :D)

It's interesting because as she was making her list I was thinking how very different my dream boat would be, even though I had given her the permission to add anything to her boat her mind couldn't even imagine crazy things. Oh how much longer and complex would be my list :D

If you were designing your dream boat what would it be like?

Time Budget

We had our visiting teacher over today after church. She gave us a wonderful message from the March's Ensign (you can see the VT message here). Sister Goa said something though that has been running through my mind all evening, she said that Satan has realized that he can't tempt us with the bad things like smoking, drugs, and drinking. So instead he has begun to tempt us to do "good." Now at first that doesn't sound very bad, it even sounds like a good thing, hey Satan's on my side! But upon referring to the talk entitled "Good, Better, Best," given by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during the October 2007 General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (you can read it here). You discover that what Satan is doing is not in the best interest of you and I. He is tempting us to be not the "best" of our abilities.

I think that this has been running through my mind over and over this afternoon because I realize that it is very true for me, not that my days are always filled with bad activities, but they aren't filled with the best activities either.

What does this have to do with time budget? One of my areas that I am not doing the best at is time budget, I spend much too much time on facebook, twitter, playing games and other such things. I am starting a new goal, a new rule, every night I can not be on facebook after 9pm and have to turn my computer off at 10pm, unless I am working on my class. I am hoping that by making this new change/goal that I will be able to accomplish 2 things: that I will be able to go to bed earlier and receive the sleep that I need (lately I have been going to bed between midnight and 1, not a good thing when I should be getting up at 7) and I hope that with the time that I am not using my computer that I have been that I will be able to fill my time with more scripture study, pondering, prayer, conference talk reading, and other wholesome activities meant to build my testimony and help me to become the best that I can be.