Post Taiwan

Home.  After a year spent away from my family it was good to come back home.  I'd been feeling quite like the negligent aunt, sister, and daughter, so it was time to come back home and reconnect for a little while. 

As most of you my time at home is very short, I have less than two weeks left of my two months at home.  Soon I'll be heading onto fulfill the next part of my live.  I'm going to be a missionary for my church, a full time LDS missionary preaching the gospel for 18 months.  (if you are not very familiar with missionary work follow this links LDS Missionaries)

 

 

I have been called to serve in the West Virginia Charleston Mission and will report to the MTC for training on September 12, 2012.

 

Most of my time since I have been home has been spent preparing for or thinking about my mission, but I've also had plenty of time to spend with my family.

 

Since it's summer we spent a lot of time outside and with water. Especially the first week after I arriving home:

 

 

A little bit of softball

 

 

 

I finally spent some time with my dad and our horses.

 

 

 

 

 

I have the best family in the world. 

 

 

Best Job Ever

Everyone has a goal to find the best job.  A job that they will thoroughly enjoy and look forward to attending each day.  Well, I found it. I was an English teacher in Taiwan.  Every morning I looked forward to walking downstairs to see the smiles on my little kindergarteners faces.  It wasn't the easiest job, but all the stress, drained energy, and time was worth it.

 People often ask me, "What was your favorite part of Taiwan?"  Do you want to know what my answer is? My students.  They were the best thing in Taiwan.  Yes, often it was hard teaching them, but I could never get over seeing their cute smiles, hearing their stories, receiving random cards and gifts, or feeling their caring hugs.  I miss them, through and through. 

Oh and I can't forget the great secretaries at Berhan!  They helped make everything work and kept the school running.

Whether I was Miss Kendra, Miss KK, KendraKimber, Miss Kangaroo, Miss Candy Dragon or Miss Can't Draw I knew I was where I needed to be and I made the most of it.

生日快乐 to Me!

In case you didn't know, it was my birthday not too long ago!  I must say being a teacher makes for the best birthday ever.  Seriously.  I was so excited to share my birthday with my students and they were so excited to share it with me.  In one of my Kindergarten classes I had been telling them for quite awhile that my birthday was coming up and they were so excited.  They told me all sorts of things that they were going to bring me: a dinosaur, a picture, candy, a so, so, so big cake, and many other things.

The day before my birthday I celebrated with my afternoon enrichment class and my evening fifth grade class. I brought ice cream to each class and we spent a bit of time playing outside.  I got some weird Taiwan treats from my younger enrichment students and one of my fifth graders gave me a really cute card.  She had hid it in her homework book for me to find when I checked her homework. Throughout the day I had many other students telling me Happy Birthday! and 生日快乐

(Shengri kuaile)! and singing to me in both English and Chinese.

Eason and his so, so, so big smile.

On the day of my birthday things got more exciting. Many of my students excitedly told me "Happy Birthday" as soon as they saw me, or each time they saw me.  One student, Eason, was really sad he couldn't bring me the "so, so, so big cake!" he'd been telling me about for weeks.  His mom had told him it was too much money. Later thought he decided he would buy the cake by himself with his $300. I received so many smiles, hugs, happy birthday wishes, cards, and was sung to many times during Morning Kindergarten.  I love them all so much!!

My class wasn't the only one that I received birthday love from! Miss Kaylee, Miss Sara, and Miss Heather's classes all gave me personalized birthday cards.  They are adorable.

In Taiwan it is tradition to give things to other people for your birthday instead of other people giving you things.  I decided I wanted to try and follow this tradition.  I gave out candy and balloons to my MK'ers and candy to any other students I encountered.  It was so much fun.  Giving things to other people really makes me happy and helped make my birthday even better.

After class I came upstairs and found a scavenger hunt from my good friend Rayne! I was a little confused at first, but was able to figure it out and find this on my pillow with treasure (scarf, ice cream thing, and chocolate egg rolls) underneath!

I haven't even mentioned birthday food yet! For lunch most of the English teachers from Berhan went to a delicious pasta restaurent for lunch.  Mmmm it was soooo good! I'd been to it a few times before and it was just as good as I had remembered.

This was the delicious chocolate banana waffle that I ordered with my pasta.

All day long I had planned to make a chocolate cake that my mom had sent to me in a birthday package.  Well that cake was finally finished around 10:30.

One of the best things I received for my birthday were letters from my family. In the afternoon I took them all to Zen Park to read and enjoy them.  I love and miss my family so much! I look forward to going home and spending time with them for a couple months until I'm off and away from home again.

After reading the letters I took some time to do something else I enjoy.  I got out camera and began shooting the beautiful area around me.

The Only White People on the Island

Xiao Liuqiu!! If you come to Taiwan and you only travel to a few different places then make sure Xiao Liuqiu is at least one of them.  Taiwan is a very busy little country and it can be a bit difficult sometimes to find some quiet, fresh air, and a more relaxed environment, but it was found in Xiao Liuqiu.
On a Friday morning in the middle of May Heather and I left Fengyuan terribly early, 5:30, and after a train, taxi, and ferry found ourselves on the small island around or after 11. We "made" some friends, or should I say a ferry guy introduced us to some people who were about our same age and basically told us to be friends and follow them around. This isn't the first time this has happened.  At the port a guy rented a scooter to us and showed us to our where we'd be camping.
They made us set up our tent right next to some picnic tables to keep us out of the coming rain.  It would have been fine except for when we wanted to go to bed there were people barbecuing and talking next to our tent, but oh well, I was grateful for music and headphones.

Sometimes I have no idea what the signs are trying to say. 

It didn't take us long to drive our scooter around the whole island.  We decided that we were most likely the only white people on the island.  Our first stop turned out to be our favorite spot on the island, Geban Bay.

I called these ghost crabs because you could hardly see them running around on the sand. 

Little and big hermit crabs were also crawling around the beach.  I really wanted to take one home. 

We even caught starfish!

a cute baby one!!

 So I kind of forgot about this blog post and our internet had been in and out so obviously I wasn't working on this. Well from here on out this post will mainly be a picture slideshow thing.  These next photos were taken when it wasn't pouring rain. We kinda got rained out, but it was still a great trip that I'd do over again.

There are more than 80 temples on this small island. When Heather and I learned that we were quite surprised but then  realized how many we'd seen and it kind of made sense.

Classic 7-11 lunch

Look how clear the water was! I was so amazed. 

The lighthouse. The only time I could ever see it was when we were standing next to it.  I even tried to look for it from different points on the island.

Instead of ice cream trucks, how about an ice cream scooter. Perfect.

This was as close to a sunset as we got. There were too many clouds.

The iconic Vase Rock. 

All sorts of cool tide pool finds.

Crabs were everywhere. Big, small, inbetween. On the road, on the beach, by our tent...

I love these girls. Love, love, love them. 

Coming soon... Birthday and Mission Call!! We'll see how soon they really happen...