Sunday, August 19, 2012
Last week Dad and I visited my grandparents in the beautiful, green, slightly cold (only 60 degrees two days we were there!) state of New York. Actually, I had forgotten that I had started this blog post, so the details now might be a little limited, but at least you can see what it is that I have been up to.
We left home at about 4 am Tuesday morning to make our way to the airport. Pretty much all of Tuesday was spent traveling to there, so the adventures didn't really start until Wednesday when we (myself, Dad, Grandma, and Holden) made our way to Niagara Falls. Two years ago we went to the Canadian side, but this time we just stayed in the good ol' US of A. However, you can still see Canada in the background of some of these pictures.
Me and Grandma. Isn't she cute?
Dad aboard the Hurricane Deck. Why, yes, actually we were soaked by the time we made our way back to the top.
The sunset on the way home.
Day the next Dad and I went to Letchworth State Park. Actually we have been here before (two years ago), but decided to go again. This place is sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the Eastern United States. This day was just me and the Dad.
Aren't we vibrant?
And then we saw this deer as we were heading out of the park. Was it afraid of us passing by? Not a bit.
Our next adventure took us to Palmyra to attend a session at the temple and then spend a little bit of time in the Sacred Grove. Grandma came with Dad and I, and it was so nice to go there.
The last full day we were there (last Monday), Dad and I went to Rock City Park. We kind of arrived off the beaten path, but in the end we got there. We spent about an hour trundling along over the rocks and roots.
This is funny because when people think of New York, they always think of Long Island. We do not go to that part of New York ever. We only go to the Upstate part of New York.
A fungus among us!
And thus concludes a week in pictures.
Meanwhile, public school here has started already, and I did manage to land a job at another elementary school for this school year. However, I do not start working there until NEXT Monday. So soon I will be insanely busy working six days a week again, but I think it's OK. Also, I'm still trying to decide where it is I want to go to school next year. And, unrelated, I burned myself giving a dear friend cooking lessons last week, so I'm currently sporting a nasty large, red, blistery sore on my wrist. It's awesome!
Labels: Photography, travel, updates, work
Saturday, June 09, 2012
I found my camera. I know, you didn't realize it was missing, but it was. Now that it's been found, the pictures have been secured to the computer and I can share (some of) them with you!
1. I went on this embroidery spurt. Actually, I made two of them. This one here I did not keep, but gave to my friend who had a baby boy shortly before I came home from Taiwan. Pooh is hard to get just right, I think because he's so large.
2. I had a "surprise" birthday party! There are pictures of my parents in the party hats, which I adore. However, despite what you might believe, I am not stupid, so those pictures will not be going anywhere on the internets. Come to my house, though, and we might have a different story to tell. Drawly "loved" his party hat. Can you see the look of defeat on his face? This is after 20 minutes of trying to get him to hold still while wearing the hat on his head. He kept shaking it off. Violently.
3. There was an eclipse! I'm sure you noticed. Well, at least heard about it. Mom and I drove over to the church where we would have a clear-ish view of the sun. The day before we'd purchased these special glasses so that we could actually look at the sun without doing any damage to our eyes. We got hot pink for Reasons (well, only one, really, and that was to make my dad wear pink, relatively by choice), and we were SO COOL! Dad met us out in the parking lot, and we watched the sun and the moon do their eclipse thing.
4. Finally, the parents and I recently went to Southern California for a little R&R. Actually, I don't know how much R or R we got, but we still enjoyed ourselves (speaking for myself, anyway). We took a day off from the Wonderful Lines of Disney to go to the San Diego Temple and do some family sealings. This was my first time doing sealings, and I loved it. Afterwards, we walked around the temple for a bit and I took some pictures. We were also able to get the cute sister missionaries to take a picture of all three of us together.
Labels: crafts, Drawly, Family, Friends, travel
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Recently I've been experiencing that old archaeology/ghost town/hiking bug. This is fine, except for two things: I don't really know where to go (that I haven't been to before), and it's been bad weather on days (ie today) when I could go and do something (OK, third thing, I'd like to have someone to go with, too).
So, just barely I started to create a list of places that I'd like to explore in Utah. I've realized that a lot of these places aren't quite so close that I could visit them in an afternoon after work, so if you've got any suggestions for places to see that are, you know, closer, I'd love to have them! I am, however, pretty much open to any and all suggestions. My only requirement for this list is that all the sites have to be in UT*.
These sites are in no particular order, other than that in which I thought of them:
- Mountain Meadows
- St. George Temple Quarry
- Milltown
- Silver Reef Cemetery
- Cascade Falls
- Mammoth Cave
- Calf Creek Falls
- Cedar Mesa
- Simpson Springs Station
- Red Cliffs Recreation Site Ruins (Felix, this is near where you almost drowned!)
- Fort Pearce (Petroglyphs)
- Nine Mile Canyon
- Buckhorn Wash Rock Art
- Sego Canyon
- Potash Road Rock Art
- Kane Gulch
- Mule Canyon
- Butler Wash
- Sand Island Petroglyphs
- Newspaper Rock
- Hovenweep
- Frisco Cemetery (I have been to Frisco, but we never found the cemetery. I have since contacted someone that's been to the cemetery, and they've told me how to get there. Need 4-wheel drive, most likely.)
Volunteers for tour guides/explorations buddies are also being accepted. Just sayin'.
You can view my updated list by clicking
HERE (you know, for when I actually update it).
*We're counting the Arizona Strip as part of Utah here.
Labels: Exploring, travel
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
I've finally done it. All my pictures from Taiwan have, at long last, been uploaded to my computer. I know. Took me long enough, right? Next goal: print off hard copies. That'll probably set me back $100-$200 (there are literally thousands of pictures), but then I can scrapbook them and look at them every single day of my life and shed tears on them instead of on my computer.
So, my official last day in Taiwan was January 5th (we flew out early on the 6th). That night, Dad and I went into Taipei City to see Taipei 101. Even though I had been outside of the building before, I had never actually gone inside. Dad treated me to a trip up to the observatory; unfortunately, due to inclement weather, the outside part of the "tour" was closed, but it was still pretty amazing. Anyway, most of these pictures are either on the way to the tower or from, but there are a few that were taken inside.
These next few were taken inside Taipei 101:
Jade, guys. Amazing? I think yes.
The ginormous damper
The equally ginormous, golden cable that holds the damper
Learning from the Damper Babies
Gold orchid. TO DIE FOR! (And, trust me, the price on this thing would make me die.)
Dad with one of the Damper Babies and the Damper in the background
This Damper Baby was my favorite.
There were some really amazing jewelry and sculpture stores on the observation floors. The skill that went into creating these is incredible!
OK. The rest of these photos were taken on our way back to the MRT. We did stop at Star Bucks for a nutricious dinner of hot chocolate and cookies before hand, but that didn't really seem like it needed to be photographed. We were going to go to Chili's, but I couldn't remember exactly where it was. Oh, well.
I seriously
love Taipei. I wish I could have spent a few more days there (and a few more months in Taiwan in general), but it just was not possible at the time. I hope that soon I can go back!
Finally, the flight home. Taoyuan Airport, as I have mentioned before, is amazing. Waiting for a flight was a few hours long, so I wandered around for a bit. I found these remarkable
puppets that I would love to add to one of my collections.
Aren't they
gorgeous?
Well, that completes the Taiwan series of posts. I cannot express in words how happy I am that I had the opportunity to go and live in Taiwan and to teach some of the children there. I made many life-long friends and learned so many different things about myself, others, and service. The Taiwanese are the most self-giving, kindest, hardest working people that I have ever met. I don't know how anyone could ever go to Taiwan and
not love it! Taiwan truly will touch your heart!
In the meantime, for those of you who are unaware, about a month and a half ago I finally found myself a job! Actually,
two jobs! I consider myself to be extremely blessed, especially when you consider the job market today. I am working as a part-time floral designer, which is great because I can use my skills in that field and improve upon them. The only true downside to working with flowers is allergies, but I guess that's what allergy medication is for. I am also working at one of the local elementary schools. I think that, legally, I cannot say much about this being that there is a lot more of the whole privacy thing involved in America than there ever was in Taiwan. Suffice it to say, though, that the 12 children I work with right now are at least helping to fill the void in my heart from when I left Berhan. In addition to this, I must add that I also appreciate ILP's/Berhan's method of teaching English to English Language Learners even more now. My contract at the school only goes until the end of this school year, which means I've got just barely over a month left. I am hoping to have my contract renewed, but no one is really too sure of what's going to happen right now because the school is soon to get a new principal. I have faith that whatever happens will be for the best, though, so I'm not really worried about it much. There are also rumors going around about a Chinese dual-language school starting up in the district. I need to do some more research on this, as well as find a way to become more fluent in the Chinese language! Wouldn't it be awesome to work there? I think yes!
So, between my two jobs I am working a few hours more than full-time and am being kept pretty busy. I've also been able to continue to enjoy my most expensive souvenir from Taiwan: an ear infection (and I'm pretty sure it's from Immy, because she was constantly complaining about her ears hurting and was quite sick that last week of the semester). Hopefully this antibiotic will kick it to the curb this time around, because I'm getting quite sick of being, well, sick, if you know what I mean. I suppose it serves me right, though, for waiting so long to see a doctor about it.
OK! Forever-long blog post complete! If you've read all the way to the end, reward yourself with a high-five or a cookie or something.
Labels: Family, Holiday, Taiwan, travel, work
