Chinatrust Hotel Taichung

... then cools off at night. It is a welcomed change after the HOT summer! <br><br>I am beginning the planning for my first big trip. I am going to be going to Thailand with another teacher. I think we are going in the middle of November....very soon! We are going to start planning and booking tickets this week! I am so excited to get out and start exploring! I also have a couple busy weekends ahead. I will be going to Taipei this weekend for ...

... with the movie I got home to welcome my roommate back from her month at home. Now our house is full, all 5 of us are in the house for good. It is nice having everyone back but it will be a full house! I am a little nervous 5 girls in one house sounds like drama to me! :) Good thing we all get along and everything is good so far! On Saturday night one of the teachers was having a poker night but I was so tired I decided to pass and just go to ...

... goodies! For the party we tried to make a cake. Here in Taiwan they don't have normal ovens, just toaster ovens. We decided to give it a shot and try to make the cake anyways. My roommate Emily was in charge of the baking. She put the cake in and continued to check on it. After almost 3 hours of the cake in the toaster oven it was established that it was no longer cooking and that we had burnt out our toaster oven. We were left with a pan of 1/2 cooked ...

... on any ladders! <br><br>4. We were doing a writing assignment in class and I asked my student what kinds of things his mom cooked at home and he responded that his mom doesn't cook! It blows my mind that they eat out for all their meals! There are street vendors selling food everywhere though!<br><br>5. It is so humid here and we don't keep the air in the rooms unless we are in them so our rooms get hot and humid. To prevent our clothes from molding we ...

... some teachers got together at one of the houses and just hung out. I was able to experience trying to drive a scooter in a mini skirt....much more difficult than you would guess!! haha My roommate got a good laugh at watching me try to do that. <br><br>Saturday was an exciting day. A group of us took our scooters to a waterfall. It took us about 40 mins to scoot there. It was funny because we went through some more rural areas and there were 12 scooters that made the trip ...

... from South Africa whose wife did not attend the movie screening). But it was still a lot of fun. The evening began with a few cold beverages at our apartment. It was then followed by a trip to the local batting cages, which were extremely impressive. The batting cage facility had state-of-the-art pitching machines with computer pitches that acted like they were throwing the ball right at you. In addition, they had a machine that allowed you to pitch to ...

... by six or seven ushers who escorted us up the stairs to the banquet hall. We first had to say hello to April's parents, where we were given small wedding pictures of the soon-to-be bride and groom (similar to a baseball card size senior picture). We also had to sign the guest book, which was actually a very fancy scroll. We found our seats and made our way into the back room where we all said hello to April and had our picture taken with her. She had on a very ...

The Olympics started with a bang this evening just across the ocean in Beijing. To celebrate, we teachers threw an Olympics Party at one of the teacher residency buildings. It was a lot of fun as it was required that all in attendance dress in some sort of Olympic theme. Participants ranged from track stars, to swimmers, and weight lifters. The author of this blog chose to dress as an official to ensure that the party did not get too out of hand ;) I ...

... television when weather reporters are standing in the middle of a hurricane. However, I couldn't resist the urge to stick my camera out of my balcony and video tape the sounds that Kalmegi was bringing to our 19th floor apartment. It's an anti-climactic video, but check it out if you would like. Again, thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers, but things are back to normal here in Taiwan.

... from the sidelines. It was an upset of mammoth proportions. However, that did not stop me from losing the dream. I knew we had a long afternoon ahead of us, and I would not let one race knock me out of the championship. We all lined up for teams in the tug-of-war competition. I took the role as 'captain" of one of the teams, to which I immediately began coaching them with high fives and encouraging them to talk trash. We lined up for the best-of-three ...