Housecleaning

I'm back and it's time for a little housecleaning on this blog. It's weird; blogging is something I love to do, but when I let too much time pass between posts it's hard to get started again. I'm sure some people can relate. I also used to think that I should only post if I had something extremely cool and deep and valuable to say, but that was just way too much pressure to act intelligent all the time. So I just decided to say, "Screw it, I'm blogging anyway!" Sometimes I'll be deep, sometimes I'll post pictures, and sometimes I'll just post about whatever nonsense comes to my head. Besides, I've come to appreciate the more lighthearted sort of blogs in my Google reader. The deep stuff is nice and all, but sometimes I'm too tired to really interact with such heady material and I just want to read about someone's weird experience in the frozen food section at the store. Besides, commenting on those sort of posts is so much easier. You can say something completely mundane and stupid and it's okay!

Speaking of comments, and delving further into the housecleaning aspect of this post, who still reads this blog and why don't you comment more? I obviously don't expect loads of comments because I'm a bad blogger and post rather sporadically, but according to my stats a fair amount of people subscribe to this blog. So where are the comments? I do have a theory as to the lack of comments. I'm guessing that about half the people that read this blog are family members of mine that aren't really into blogs anyway (they only read mine because I'm related to them), and the other half are Taiwanese students of mine who aren't confident enough about their English to leave a comment. For those of you that are into blogging though, I've decided to sweeten the deal for you a bit. I've added a "recent comments" widget to my sidebar, so now whoever comments on my blog will get a little more exposure. Currently, most of the comments are mine, which is embarrassing.

As for this a fore mentioned sidebar, I have so many neat goodies for you there! If you're into blogs and interesting internet articles, you'll love my sidebar. While I may not post on my own blog as often as I'd like (which is going to change, for real this time), I'm an avid reader of other people's blogs. I consume massive amounts of info every day (because it's fun) and I post all the extra juicy bits to del.icio.us, Facebook, and sometimes I even tweet about it. The cool thing is that if you're into reading the kind of stuff I read and share (stuff about Christianity, the Church, feminism and gender equality, social justice, social science, Taiwan, doggy love, etc.) then you can just get all the links on my sidebar. I also share awesome blog posts from bloggyland there, as well as a lot of helpful Chinese learning links and pretty pictures of Taiwan.

**Okay, let me refer to my little housecleaning list here. Let's see, complaining about the lack of comments...check. Shameless self promotion of my awesome sidebar...check.**

My next order of business is to tell you about what I've been up to lately. I have to bring you up to speed because I haven't been blogging about these events like I should. I won't go into a lot of details now because it would take too long. What I am going to do is just write them in the form of a list, and if anyone actually finds any of it interesting I might devote a post or two to this stuff later. Here it is:

1. After living in Taiwan for 3 years, I finally have friends who don't know English and only speak Chinese with me. It's awesome!

2. One of those friends is a girl from China (daughter of one of the ladies in Wanhua) who just became a Christian. I'm so happy for her! Please pray that she'll continue to grow in her faith when she heads back to China.

3. I've been instant messaging with people in Pinyin. It's so fun!

4. In addition to volunteering with OMF for the prostitute ministry in Wanhua, I'm also involved in a ministry where I get to help take care of HIV babies at an orphanage (although not all of them have HIV).

5. I'm addicted to Twitter and my new iPod Touch.

6. I feed my dog the BARF diet now. It's beyond awesome, and no I'm not some weird hippie.

7. For the first time in my life, I feel pretty okay with my weight (and no, I haven't lost any weight recently).

8. My husband is still the most wonderful, sexiest man alive, and I love him more and more every day.

9. Ian and I stopped going to the song and lecture club institution of church (although we still have Church with other believers quite often), and I've never grown so much in my faith. This is an incredible journey.

10. Ian's parents are in Taiwan for 3 months and are staying in Danshui because Ian's mom is taking an SBS class. We get to see them about once or twice a week, and it's so much fun!

11. We got a Costco membership. Yippee!

I know I'm forgetting something, but this will have to suffice for now. I leave you with these funny pictures ...


I saw this in a little gift shop in Danshui, and I found it to be incredibly funny because it is so obviously not a real Disney product, yet they felt the need to put a fake copyright logo on it.


The hilarity of the sign should speak for itself. This was also in Danshui.

** I just want to say that I stole that snarky little "song and lecture club" remark from someone else. I'm not that witty on my own!