Well, once again, I apologize for the horrible job I have done of keeping the blog updated with what is going on in our lives here! I mean....a TON has happened since Christmas. But, when I wait this long....how in the world am I to remember all that should be mentioned!
I honestly feel that one reason we blog less now...is because Taiwan is really just starting to feel like home. Less things stand out as different. More things just seem like the norm. Plus, we are SO busy....our weeks now are just completely filled up with the busyness of life!
I see this as a HUGE blessing! I mean, that the Lord can take us completely out of our comfort zone into the complete unknown and then make you feel comfortable again! Praise Him for that!
So, you may wonder what has been keeping us so busy?? First of all, TEACHING! Boy, it is just never ending OR at least from August through June its never ending :)
We are basically at shool a tad before 7 am every day and we stay until at least 4:30 or 5.......Some nights even later :(
On Monday evenings we teach a tumbling class for two hours after school. I say we because Cam is my assistant during the first class of 3 to 6 year olds. I am SOOO glad he was willing to help out. At first, when I was teaching by myself, I thought I was CRAZY for volunteering to teach two more hours of little kids classes after I already do a full day of it! It has been going MUCH better though. Now I look at it as a fun way to work out and minister :)
We also are part of a Small Group on Monday nights with other foreigners from the church we attend. It makes for a REALLY long day on Mondays...but, it has been so nice to fellowship with other English speakers and have a support group! We really look forward to getting to know the people in our group better (these are all people who do NOT teach at our school with us).
Tuesday is our only completely free night (however lately, Cam has been having science meetings and we both will be playing basketball on Tuesdays for awhile as our school staff is in a basketball tournament in a month or so).
Wednesday nights we tend to have school meetings after school. If not, we tend to stay and get some work done on this night since we dont get a whole lot done any other day after school. However, later in the evening...I have a women's Bible Study. We are going through The Patriarchs by Beth Moore. I REALLY enjoy this time each week. While I am at Bible Study, Cam uses those 2 and 1/2 hours or so to do his masters work each week. So another busy and late night in the Klump house.
Thursday nights we now take two hours of Chinese! YEAH! We are so glad we are finally signed up for this. It is actually quite a bit of fun to learn a new langauge. I almost wish that I could just take a year for language study......I would love to get good at it. But, at this point....learning the basics will make me thrilled!
Weekends are our time. We tend to just relax and enjoy time together (and also spend quite a bit of time on Skype catching up with everyone back in the states)
So, the warm humid weather (or freezing gray weather during rainy season), shopping at fruit and veggie markets, riding bikes everywhere, trash truck songs and loud doorbells, scooters and traffic, eating out at all types of ethnic restaurants, Chinese language, and the sights and smells of the BiG city life........are all becoming more and more part of our lives! Thanks for your prayers as we transitioned into life here and please continue to pray that the LORD will lead and guide our daily lives in Taiwan. We definitely miss you all SOO much.....but we are enjoying this new phase of our lives as well!
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Monday, December 22, 2008
Random Updates....
So, I apologize for all the updates at one time. Its bascially been a month since we had blogged and SOO much has happened since then. It is hard to remember all the great things we could blog about....I should really start making notes as things that happen so that I can remember them!
I am just going to give a little count down of some funny or interesting things that have happened lately:
1. Cameron and I still have no idea how to get anywhere here...we tried to make it to IKEA by ourselves to return our Christmas tree and thought we were doing well until it was time to go home. I have the bus numbers written down so that I remember which ones take us to IKEA. Well it just so happens that we have always just taken one of them. When coming out of IKEA a bus with one of the other numbers on my list was right their so we quickly jumped on (we were trying to do this trip as quickly as possible because we were SOOO tired and it was a week night). After about 10 minutes on the bus though we realized that we had NO idea where we were. We tried to call some people but had no luck. We were lost somewhere in the city and we did not know what to do. We tried to stay on the bus as long as we could to see if we would see something we recongized ...No Luck! As we passed something for the second time...we decided that it was time to get off! We found an MRT station and decided to just take that home. But, we havent really dont that too much alone either so it was interesting.....We did finally make it home ( a few hours later than we hoped) and a little frustrated with our inability to do things alone yet! However, what can we do but laught about it! (oh and while we were lost and getting on the MRT...I had to add money to my bus card. The machine said that I needed to put in bank notes....Cam and I were both like great?? What are bank notes??? We ended up discovering it that it was just money..)
2. Our Chinese is not improving at all!!! We feel hopeless. I am glad that we at least understand numbers now....We can shop at markets and stuff and ask how much and understand (most of the time) what they say. However, I was reminded that I have no idea what I am doing when I was at the veggie market a few days back. I pointed to the ones I wanted and the lady was just chattering away to me loudly and I just stood their like a dummy. I had no idea.....Boy, do we need to learn quickly!
3. I went to an all girls christmas party last night at a friends house from church! It was alot of fun but I went not knowing most of the people there. My friend who invited me is a missionary here. She is very invovled with alot of the ministries at church adn most of the people there were Taiwanese ladies that are part of her ministry. Most of them speak some English...but mostly Chinese. I tried hard to socialize as much as I could at the party. It was good to meet new people. However, there were many times where I was completely lost during conversation.
At the beginning of the party, we all went around the circle and introduced ourselves. They all introduced themselves by saying their English name and then their Chinese name. It came around to me and I had to sheepishly say...Hi, I am Elisa and I do not even know how to pronounce my Chinese name. I am not sure what tones it is. They all laughed!!
We also took part in a White Elephant Gift Exchange ....in which at number 10 I had to be the first mean one and show them all how to steal a gift from someone else :)
4. Cam and I went out to some markets this weekend.....and quickly discovered that we were a little under dressed. I had on capris and a t shirt and Cam was in shorts and a t shirt. However, in Taiwan....they dress for the season not for the weather. So even though it was a warm high 70's.....most people had on two or three layers or even their puffy winter coats. We got lots of stares.....
5. At the night market we just recently went to we got stopped a few times by locals who wanted to take pictures with us! Its a little odd...but a compliment as well when they say "Can I take my picture with you because you are so beautiful". Makes me remember we are definitely foreigners and we still stick out..... :)
I am sure there are lots of more funny (or embarrasing) cultural experiences we could blog about ...but my mind is blank at the moment. Sorry! I will try to do a better job of keeping them a little more recent!
I am just going to give a little count down of some funny or interesting things that have happened lately:
1. Cameron and I still have no idea how to get anywhere here...we tried to make it to IKEA by ourselves to return our Christmas tree and thought we were doing well until it was time to go home. I have the bus numbers written down so that I remember which ones take us to IKEA. Well it just so happens that we have always just taken one of them. When coming out of IKEA a bus with one of the other numbers on my list was right their so we quickly jumped on (we were trying to do this trip as quickly as possible because we were SOOO tired and it was a week night). After about 10 minutes on the bus though we realized that we had NO idea where we were. We tried to call some people but had no luck. We were lost somewhere in the city and we did not know what to do. We tried to stay on the bus as long as we could to see if we would see something we recongized ...No Luck! As we passed something for the second time...we decided that it was time to get off! We found an MRT station and decided to just take that home. But, we havent really dont that too much alone either so it was interesting.....We did finally make it home ( a few hours later than we hoped) and a little frustrated with our inability to do things alone yet! However, what can we do but laught about it! (oh and while we were lost and getting on the MRT...I had to add money to my bus card. The machine said that I needed to put in bank notes....Cam and I were both like great?? What are bank notes??? We ended up discovering it that it was just money..)
2. Our Chinese is not improving at all!!! We feel hopeless. I am glad that we at least understand numbers now....We can shop at markets and stuff and ask how much and understand (most of the time) what they say. However, I was reminded that I have no idea what I am doing when I was at the veggie market a few days back. I pointed to the ones I wanted and the lady was just chattering away to me loudly and I just stood their like a dummy. I had no idea.....Boy, do we need to learn quickly!
3. I went to an all girls christmas party last night at a friends house from church! It was alot of fun but I went not knowing most of the people there. My friend who invited me is a missionary here. She is very invovled with alot of the ministries at church adn most of the people there were Taiwanese ladies that are part of her ministry. Most of them speak some English...but mostly Chinese. I tried hard to socialize as much as I could at the party. It was good to meet new people. However, there were many times where I was completely lost during conversation.
At the beginning of the party, we all went around the circle and introduced ourselves. They all introduced themselves by saying their English name and then their Chinese name. It came around to me and I had to sheepishly say...Hi, I am Elisa and I do not even know how to pronounce my Chinese name. I am not sure what tones it is. They all laughed!!
We also took part in a White Elephant Gift Exchange ....in which at number 10 I had to be the first mean one and show them all how to steal a gift from someone else :)
4. Cam and I went out to some markets this weekend.....and quickly discovered that we were a little under dressed. I had on capris and a t shirt and Cam was in shorts and a t shirt. However, in Taiwan....they dress for the season not for the weather. So even though it was a warm high 70's.....most people had on two or three layers or even their puffy winter coats. We got lots of stares.....
5. At the night market we just recently went to we got stopped a few times by locals who wanted to take pictures with us! Its a little odd...but a compliment as well when they say "Can I take my picture with you because you are so beautiful". Makes me remember we are definitely foreigners and we still stick out..... :)
I am sure there are lots of more funny (or embarrasing) cultural experiences we could blog about ...but my mind is blank at the moment. Sorry! I will try to do a better job of keeping them a little more recent!
What it is all about!!!
So, I got a chance to experience what teaching is all about a few weeks ago. I am sorry that I have not updated with this exciting news earlier!
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to ask my students if any of them would like to pray to ask God to forgive them from their sins and come and live in their hearts. I had two students who right away said they wanted to. I told them if they really wanted to that I would like them to stay in at recess time to talk to me about it. I didn't want to do it right there in front of the whole group because then the majority of my class would have played monkey see monkey do and want to do it just because so and so was doing it. Plus, I really wanted to make sure their little hearts knew what it was all about.
I was quite surprised by the response I got from them during our little conversation during recess time. I found a wonderful website that uses lots of visuals to help students understand the steps of salvation. I asked SO many questions because my fear was that they didn't understand enough. However, God proved to me that little 5 year old hearts can be SOO ready. They gave great explanations of what sin was, what sin does to us, what God does to sin, who Jesus is and what he did for us, and what happens when we ask God to come and live in our hearts! It was reassuring that God has been truly using me to teach the truth to these little kiddos who never even heard about Jesus before coming to Kindergarten.
After hearing their wise and innocent explanations....I knew they were ready! So, we all closed our eyes and folded our hands and innocently prayed the sinners prayer. Praise God for times like this.......I mean this is what we are here for!
After we finished praying, we made sure to tell lots of teachers about our great news....they went around saying "Mr. ____, I am a Christian". It was too cute!
However, my uplifted spirits only lasted so long as I quickly remembered that most of the students face lots of spiritual trials when they go home with their new found faith. So many students become believers while they are a Morrison...but family members are still often opposed to it or apprehensive to it! I knew that I could not write a wonderful and exciting note home to the parents of my two littles ones because I knew that the parents would probably not be too excited. So, I just prayed for them and told them to tell their families the great news!
The next day....one of my little ones told me first thing in the morning...my mom says that I am not Christian. My heart sunk...Later that day I was actually confronted by this mother ...boy, was that one of the most ackward and difficult conversations of my life. To make a long story short...this little one is Indian and comes from a family of Hindus. She was very adimate that he was not a Christian. I tried to explain what makes someone a Christian....but she wanted nothing to do with it! So, we ended the conversation with mutual respect for one another ....but my heart was SO sad.
I realized we have a great opportunity each day to teach God's word and love to our students (kids who have never heard about Jesus before) and who have grown up in an idol workshipping, polythesistic culture. However, we also have a large responsibility in praying for them and preparing them for the spiritual warfare that they will face even with their closest family members.
I hope that you are able to take joy in this news and that your hearts will also be burdened for our students and their families. We definitely live in a lost and searching nation now....may God continue to work through us (even if it is in one 5 year olds heart at a time).
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to ask my students if any of them would like to pray to ask God to forgive them from their sins and come and live in their hearts. I had two students who right away said they wanted to. I told them if they really wanted to that I would like them to stay in at recess time to talk to me about it. I didn't want to do it right there in front of the whole group because then the majority of my class would have played monkey see monkey do and want to do it just because so and so was doing it. Plus, I really wanted to make sure their little hearts knew what it was all about.
I was quite surprised by the response I got from them during our little conversation during recess time. I found a wonderful website that uses lots of visuals to help students understand the steps of salvation. I asked SO many questions because my fear was that they didn't understand enough. However, God proved to me that little 5 year old hearts can be SOO ready. They gave great explanations of what sin was, what sin does to us, what God does to sin, who Jesus is and what he did for us, and what happens when we ask God to come and live in our hearts! It was reassuring that God has been truly using me to teach the truth to these little kiddos who never even heard about Jesus before coming to Kindergarten.
After hearing their wise and innocent explanations....I knew they were ready! So, we all closed our eyes and folded our hands and innocently prayed the sinners prayer. Praise God for times like this.......I mean this is what we are here for!
After we finished praying, we made sure to tell lots of teachers about our great news....they went around saying "Mr. ____, I am a Christian". It was too cute!
However, my uplifted spirits only lasted so long as I quickly remembered that most of the students face lots of spiritual trials when they go home with their new found faith. So many students become believers while they are a Morrison...but family members are still often opposed to it or apprehensive to it! I knew that I could not write a wonderful and exciting note home to the parents of my two littles ones because I knew that the parents would probably not be too excited. So, I just prayed for them and told them to tell their families the great news!
The next day....one of my little ones told me first thing in the morning...my mom says that I am not Christian. My heart sunk...Later that day I was actually confronted by this mother ...boy, was that one of the most ackward and difficult conversations of my life. To make a long story short...this little one is Indian and comes from a family of Hindus. She was very adimate that he was not a Christian. I tried to explain what makes someone a Christian....but she wanted nothing to do with it! So, we ended the conversation with mutual respect for one another ....but my heart was SO sad.
I realized we have a great opportunity each day to teach God's word and love to our students (kids who have never heard about Jesus before) and who have grown up in an idol workshipping, polythesistic culture. However, we also have a large responsibility in praying for them and preparing them for the spiritual warfare that they will face even with their closest family members.
I hope that you are able to take joy in this news and that your hearts will also be burdened for our students and their families. We definitely live in a lost and searching nation now....may God continue to work through us (even if it is in one 5 year olds heart at a time).
Christmas at Bethany
The last few weeks at Bethany have been quite eventful! Cam and I just tried to hang in there as we became more and more exhausted every day. Each day seemed to be so full and the students energy level just kept rising and rising!
After returning from Thanksgiving break, our annual school Christmas Project was announced. This year our school raised money for ChristAid Academy in Uganda. The students really got into the spirit of giving and it was neat to see them understand the reasoning behind all of our fun activities and fundraisers!
My class (the Kindergartners) decided to do a pie in the face contest. People paid to vote for who they would like to pie in the face from a selected group of teachers. The Kindergarten students colored signs, explained the process to all the big kids, and then helped collect votes every day after school for about a week. It cost 10 NT for one vote. We ended up with close to 7000 NT by the end of the event! Cameron, along with two other male teachers, and Uwe (our principal) all got pied! It was quite the controversial fundraiser (not sure I would do it again). Cultural differences about respect and wasting food (since they thought it was real pies) ended up causing some problems. However, the actual pieing was a big hit and the students LOVED it!
Cameron's class decided to have a paper chain contest. They had people pay 10 NT for a link in a paper chain. The grade that had the most links in the chain by the end of the contest won a class party. Cam's class was winning by a land slide....So, needless to say....they won their own party. They enjoyed making brownies together and eating them while watching Polar Express.
Other fundraisers that we all took part in over the past few weeks were: Bowling winter Olympics, Mock Snowball fight, Narnival, candy grams, raffles, bake sales, etc....
We also got to experience our first school Christmas concert a few weeks ago. What a cultural experience!!!! The students ended up doing a really good job, but needless to say I left quite frustrated when leaving! I guess concert ettiquite is non exsistent here! Parents letting student run around the whole time (even up in front where the performance is taking place), lots of parents talking to each other and on their cell phones during the performance, and major paparazzi groups each time a new group came up to perform. It was probably no wonder that people talked when they were sitting in the audience because they could not see the group of kids performing if they wanted to. Parents actually flood to the front to take pictures and record (pushing, shoving, standing up in front of everyone) just to get a good shot. I tried to get a picture of a dad who was all the way up front trying to get a good video shot while talking loudly on his cell phone the whole time. Oh, boy!
But like I said...the kids did look cute and what you could hear of them....they did a great job! I guess next time I know what to expect though!
After returning from Thanksgiving break, our annual school Christmas Project was announced. This year our school raised money for ChristAid Academy in Uganda. The students really got into the spirit of giving and it was neat to see them understand the reasoning behind all of our fun activities and fundraisers!
My class (the Kindergartners) decided to do a pie in the face contest. People paid to vote for who they would like to pie in the face from a selected group of teachers. The Kindergarten students colored signs, explained the process to all the big kids, and then helped collect votes every day after school for about a week. It cost 10 NT for one vote. We ended up with close to 7000 NT by the end of the event! Cameron, along with two other male teachers, and Uwe (our principal) all got pied! It was quite the controversial fundraiser (not sure I would do it again). Cultural differences about respect and wasting food (since they thought it was real pies) ended up causing some problems. However, the actual pieing was a big hit and the students LOVED it!
Cameron's class decided to have a paper chain contest. They had people pay 10 NT for a link in a paper chain. The grade that had the most links in the chain by the end of the contest won a class party. Cam's class was winning by a land slide....So, needless to say....they won their own party. They enjoyed making brownies together and eating them while watching Polar Express.
Other fundraisers that we all took part in over the past few weeks were: Bowling winter Olympics, Mock Snowball fight, Narnival, candy grams, raffles, bake sales, etc....
We also got to experience our first school Christmas concert a few weeks ago. What a cultural experience!!!! The students ended up doing a really good job, but needless to say I left quite frustrated when leaving! I guess concert ettiquite is non exsistent here! Parents letting student run around the whole time (even up in front where the performance is taking place), lots of parents talking to each other and on their cell phones during the performance, and major paparazzi groups each time a new group came up to perform. It was probably no wonder that people talked when they were sitting in the audience because they could not see the group of kids performing if they wanted to. Parents actually flood to the front to take pictures and record (pushing, shoving, standing up in front of everyone) just to get a good shot. I tried to get a picture of a dad who was all the way up front trying to get a good video shot while talking loudly on his cell phone the whole time. Oh, boy!But like I said...the kids did look cute and what you could hear of them....they did a great job! I guess next time I know what to expect though!
Thanksgiving in Hong Kong
Thanksgiving was not filled with football, fall leaves, pies galore, and sleep......instead, after a bit of turkey and mashed potatoes at the school Thanksgiving feast we flew to Hong Kong for the entire Thanksgiving break. We went to attend the ICEC conference (International Christian Educators Conference). So, needless to say our Thanksgiving was anything but traditional. We flew in to Hong Kong on Wednesday morning and had the day to sight see. Thursday-Saturday we spent all day at the conference (about 6:30 am until 4:30 pm). However, in the evenings we had time to go out and see Hong Kong. We thought it was an absolutley beautiful city. We went to Stanley Market, The Peak, ate some dim sum, shopped at a Christian calligraphy store, ate at Outback steak house with Katie and Brian Spata (I went to highschool with Katie....crazy) and just walked around and rode the MTR all over Hong Kong.
It definitely did not feel like break, but it was nice to get out of Taipei and see something different (plus we got another stamp in our passport :))
I loved going up the tram to the Peak and getting some great pictures of the night skyline......
To see more pictures of Hong Kong...check out our picasa web page!
It definitely did not feel like break, but it was nice to get out of Taipei and see something different (plus we got another stamp in our passport :))
I loved going up the tram to the Peak and getting some great pictures of the night skyline......
To see more pictures of Hong Kong...check out our picasa web page!
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