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!

Randomness and Memeness

My blogging has been nonexistent lately! I've actually been tagged for two memes since my last post almost a month ago. Amanda at following an unknown path tagged me for a 7 random things about me meme, and my new friend at Sensuous Wife tagged me for a 6 random things meme. Because I'm not a very interesting person and I don't think I can think of 13 random things, I'm going to squish these two memes into one and just share 7 random things. Is that allowed? Oh well, here goes:

1) I'm having trouble thinking of 7 random things about myself right now -- which in itself is a pretty random bit of information, don't you think?

2) My husband is the hottest man alive! I thought it would be good to share this random fact just for the sake of putting the whole Brad Pitt/George Clooney debate to rest.

3) I actually like chou dofu. The stinkier the better!

4) I baked a cake the other day just because I had recently visited a friend in Tienmu and was so happy that the store had cake mix AND chocolate frosting (which I had to buy of course). Every morning and every night I've been stealthily opening the refrigerator door and guiltily sneaking a few bites. I guess this is more of a confession than a random fact.

5) I like words that end in "ily".

6) I was a pretty wild teenager -- not in a "drink and party" way but in a "loud practical joker" way. I used to go toilet papering with my friends almost every weekend! Wow, I had a lot of free time on my hands back then.

7) I always cut all the hair off of all my Barbie dolls when I was little. I couldn't resist the temptation!

Yeah! I thought of 7 random things! I'm not one to tag, but if you want to participate go right ahead. Hurray for randomness!

New Heart

Isn't it amazing the way life just changes and expands with every passing season? It almost feels as if each day I'm a completely transformed person, and if I were to somehow be transported back about 10 years when I was 14 years old and no doubt on the phone gossiping about boys with one of my girlfriends, I would have absolutely nothing in common with that person. I've been transformed so many times since then, experienced so many things. Am I even the same person that I was then? Maybe this doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it makes sense to me.

I've been so busy studying Chinese, and I've really grown to love my classmates. We're in this together, each and every one of us. I used to be jealous of most of them. This one had better tones than me and that one knew more vocabulary words, but I've transformed enough times since those jealous days to not care anymore. The best part about going to Chinese class is making friends from all over the world. One of my favorite people in the class is a Japanese woman. This girl is model material -- so tall and thin, and she has shiny hair too! The other day she gave me a handwritten recipe for miso soup complete with illustrations and an adorable little disclaimer at the bottom apologizing for her English. I've noticed that she reads a book every morning before class, and today I asked her what she was reading.

Me: 你在看什麼書 (ni kan shenme shu ~ What book are you reading)?

Her: 日本的書 (ribende shu ~ A Japanese book).

Now here's the point where I started to stare blankly because I was trying to figure out the Chinese for what I wanted to say next. Then she said:

Her: 我看Bible (wo kan Bible ~ I'm reading the Bible).

Me: Oh! 我也喜歡看Bible (oh! wo ye xi huan kan Bible ~ Oh! I also like to read the Bible).

Then she looked at me and said, 新的心（Xinde xin ~ New heart).

Did we have a deep theological discussion? No. Our Chinese is still pretty limited, and I certainly don't speak any Japanese (by the way, the reason why I wrote our entire conversation out in Chinese is because I go to school two hours a day, do about 2-3 hours a day of homework a day on top of that, and am just so happy that I am progressing so I'm going to take every chance I get to show it off -- in other words because I can). Neither of us knew how to say anything very "deep" or "spiritual", but we could say "new heart", and that's all that needed to be said. When God transforms me, that's what he gives me -- a new heart. I used to think that everyone just underwent one big transformation when they got "saved". Now I'm not so sure though, mostly because I can't pinpoint any one exact time when I gave my life to God and automatically became a new person. It's been more of a journey that started with a single step, as trite as that sounds. In any case, I'm happy for the newness of things. The newness of each season, the newness of each day, and mostly, the new heart that God so freely gives me.

A little link love, baby!

One of my bloggy friends, Alisun, tagged me for this linky lovefest. What exactly is a linky lovefest, you say? I think Alisun put it quite well when she said...

"This link loving in 2008 came from Not Much More Than This.I have randomly selected 5 of you below to be tagged and I hope that you will similarly publish this post in your blog. You will have to tag 5 other bloggers and just keep adding on to the list. (Do not replace, just keep on adding! Yes we hope it will be a long list!)It’s real easy! Tag others and see your Technorati Authority increase exponentially! The benefits of Viral Linking:- One of the fastest ways to see your technorati authority explode!- Increase your Google PageRank fast- Attract large volume of new traffic to your site- Build your community- Make new friends!"

So, the last five people on the list are the ones I'm adding, and if they want to participate, they can each add five of their friends. For the people that I'm tagging, I'm sorry if you've already been tagged for this and I just don't know it yet -- it took me a while to respond to this tag.

The Strategist Notebook Link Addiction Ardour of the Heart When Life Becomes a Book The Malaysian Life Yogatta.com What goes under the sun Roshidan’s Cyber Station Sasha says Arts of Physics And the legend lives My View, My Life A Simple Life What Women REALLY Think Not Much More Than This Jayedee Jenn Beth Christie Marla Cailin Simone FlipFlopMom Katrina Gill’s Jottings Work of a Poet WakelaModern Day GoddessLivin With Me A Simple Life Verb Random Thoughts I’m Running to Win Two Regina’s Family Seasons Lifesong The Laughs Will Go On Military Mom TheVasquez3 Brik-See-Us And Then There Were Four Common Mom Kentucky Woman Sit With Me Awhile The World: Through The Eyes Of Me Living With Me Shore Stories Riding Free With Deb Overflow Of A Forgiven Soul A Brooke In A Forest Praise and Coffee In His Footsteps Penless Writer Quiet Reflections Another Day In Paradise Over the Moon with Joy Sandy's Neipu Notebook following an unknown path Always and Adventure The Next Step

Happy linking, everyone!

My Husband is Not a Woman

Hows that for a catchy title? Believe it or not though, this is something that has taken me nearly a year of marriage to learn. I love my husband, and I want to share everything with him. However, try as I might, I just can't make him interested in every aspect of my life. Quite frankly, I may be worried if he were. For example, what if I went up to my husband and asked him which brand of sports bras he thought were best for high impact exercise? If he actually answered me, thus proving that he had indeed thought about the matter before, wouldn't it be a little odd? So why do so many newly married couples, myself included, go into marriage wanting their spouse to be EVERYTHING to them?

Being everything to someone is a tall order, and it only leaves both parties disappointed in the end. Many couples become confused and disillusioned when they realize that their spouse can never fill the space in their heart that is meant for God only. Your spouse doesn't complete you, as they say. God does, and until one realizes that they will always be disappointed by all the ways in which their spouse is imperfect, is human. There's another danger though -- one that I illustrated in the first paragraph of this post.

Many women (and men) start their marriage being so excited that they get to finally live with their best friend (assuming they haven't lived together beforehand). But what a best friend means to a man and woman may be two entirely different things. My best girl friends and I talk about EVERYTHING, and we talk quite often at that. To be honest, I don't know what exactly my husband does with his friends, but I know they aren't chatting over lattes about the environmental benefits of the DivaCup. The problem though, is that newlyweds often find that they have become disconnected with their best friends -- especially when they move halfway around the world like we did! This of course is because you're in love and want to spend every second together counting the ways in which you're perfectly suited for each other. This is great fun at first ... until your husband starts saying things like "Can't you talk to your girlfriend's about that?" or worse -- starts getting that glassy-eyed look and answers all of your questions with "Uh huh."

When you get to this point, you have two choices. You can freak out and assume that your husband is no longer interested in you because he doesn't want to hear about every tiny detail of your day, or you can come to terms with the fact that your husband is NOT a woman, and that he can't and shouldn't take the place of solid, female friendship in your life. This isn't to say that my husband and I don't love to talk about our lives with each other, and we do share pretty much everything with each other. I'm talking more about little things -- things that your husband can't help you much with anyway. My husband has no interest in learning how to make haystack cookies, so why should I force him in the name of "marital togetherness"? This may seem like a no-brainer to couples who have been married a long time, but for someone who just completed their first year of marriage like I did, it's often a slow-to-come realization.

The main thing that brought this realization on for me was the simple fact that I miss having girl friends. My husband is a good sport and tries his best to appear interested when I talk about female things, but he gives me the worst advice and it just isn't the same as talking about it with another woman. Last night, I went out to dinner with one of my girl friends, and I had the most fabulous time. Oh, to spend hours chatting with another woman again! It was pure bliss. To look at a piece of chocolate cake and then look at each other as if to say, "Do we dare eat this sinfully sweet, calorie-laden piece of heaven on the plate before us?" and then eating it anyway and feeling equally guilty about it. My husband would just say "Well, eat it if you want. Or don't eat it. What's the big deal?" It's nice to have someone to share all of those little internal feminine (I know some men out there struggle with things like this too, but it has been my experience that women tend to analyze the experience more) struggles with -- and to not think you're crazy for it.

So to all my girl friends out there -- thank you for being women, and not men! And to my husband -- thank you for being the wonderful man that I love.

I couldn't follow ...

We used to run outside barefoot at the sound of the ice cream truck tooling down the street to the tune of "It's a Small World." Lips and tongue blue, fingers sticky, and happy to live in that moment -- not wanting anything but that.

A few years later, we were making big plans. You took my hand in yours and pretended you knew my future. First kiss by 13 (it seemed an appropriate age at the time), we would buy adjoining houses and have our babies at exactly the same time (if they were a boy and a girl they would later marry and make us officially related). Never mind the fact that men were required for this undertaking -- as long as we were best friends, in our minds the men who would come later were secondary. We laid on the grass under a tree, and looked up at the leaves being moved by the wind -- so peaceful. We were so young, we had nothing else to do or worry about that day. The sun felt good on our legs and the grass felt cool and soft. I remember your favorite name for a girl was Faline (Bambi's deer girlfriend), and you said that this was what you would call your daughter.

We walked together, and our steps were synchronized. I wouldn't walk where you couldn't. You wouldn't enter a room if the door was closed to me -- lest we be forced to loosen our grasp on one another. We spent our time dressing up in your grandmother's good negligees and reciting the lines to Dirty Dancing as we watched the movie one more time. I always let you be Baby.

But we were too young, too young to know that sooner or later you would go where I couldn't follow; experience things that couldn't be shared even with a best friend. First it was the trip to the special doctor that did something we couldn't pronounce unless we said it slowly. That big building had so many doors that I couldn't walk through with you! Sometimes I got to sit on the fun bed with you that moved up and down with the touch of a button, but you couldn't run after the ice cream truck with me anymore with all of those tubes going into you. You couldn't run barefoot through the sprinklers with me anymore on a hot summer's day. But we still made plans. Why wouldn't we? We were too young to know any better. We would still decorate our adjoining houses in hues of pink. Soon, a few days at most, we would run barefoot in the grass again.

I'm sorry I couldn't follow. Oh, how I tried! When you couldn't play outside anymore, I stayed inside with you and watched Dirty Dancing and Pretty Woman. I said your lines for you when you couldn't, and I still always let you be Baby. When you couldn't eat or move a lot anymore, I lied still beside you and held your hand. But you left, and this time I couldn't follow. The last time I saw you, lying perfectly still in your waxen, made-up form in a bed of white satin, you were already gone. And I couldn't follow ...

MIRLy MIRL MIRL!

Yes, more MIRLing (meet in real life) went on last weekend. Amanda, Char, and Sandy were in Taipei for an English teacher's conference, and although I wasn't able to join them at the conference, I got to meet up with them afterwards. What fun!



Please try and ignore the fact that my bangs are formed in some kind of weird elfin point on my forehead. By the way, all of these ladies are just as lovely in real life as they are on their blog!

My First Blog Award

I just received my first blog award ever. Yippee! It was given to me by Sharon, who is a just one of the sweetest women I have come to know through blogging. She has a very refreshing, uplifting blog. Drop by and check her out for yourself. Thanks, Sharon!

"MIRL" in Taipei

Okay, so now it's my turn to write about my MIRL (meet in real life) experience. I'm not sure if the phrase was actually coined by her or not, but I first heard of this acronym from Amanda (who I hope to MIRL with soon at the ETA conference in Taipei). The people I got to MIRL with are Sandy and her husband Michael, whose blogs I thoroughly enjoy! Here's some pictures of the great event:




Thanks, Sandy and Michael, for a lovely time last Sunday!

Moonstruck -- My Moon Festival Photos

A bit late, but here they are. My photos of our Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as Moon Festival) festivities! This is a holiday filled with BBQ, deliciously fattening mooncakes (that sit like a rock in your stomach after eating just one), and family reunions. Click on the wikipedia link above to get the more factual, less artsy explanation.


My ridiculously good-looking husband trying his hand at the BBQ. Wow ... he's a man's man!


Typical Taiwanese BBQ. Doesn't that squid look yummy?


This is 雞心 (chicken heart) and 雞屁股 (chicken butt) on a stick. Taiwanese people are adamant that chicken butt is good for the skin.


Look! I know how to BBQ!


Pomelos are in season during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and are often given as a gift along with mooncakes. My friend, Ali, is wearing the peel of one on her head. According to Taiwanese tradition, this is good luck.


How could I not fall in love with this man?


Our beautiful hostesses BBQing. Notice how the BBQs are very low to the ground, making it necessary to squat or sit on a low stool to cook. The BBQs here are somewhat disposable. You usually use them a few times and then throw them away.


BBQ bamboo. This is actually quite tasty!