Hello Everybody! Its been a while since I have gotten on the internet to post something. It looks like my wife beat me to it. We are alive in Taiwan, though. I guess its good we are not dead yet (hehehe). Sometimes we feel like we are a little stagnant here, though. Its because we both are feeling the urge to settle down pretty soon. Claire feels we should go back to America, because we are getting old, and we need to get jobs soon and settle down before I go completely bald. I personally do not want to get a business job in America, because I just don't like selling things to people, so sometimes I am a little worried about what kind of job I can get. I have thought about joining the Air Force. I would try to get in as an intelligence officer. If anyone hears of a good job back at home that you think would be a good job for me, please let me know.
Well, to get back to how we are in Taiwan. Claire mentioned that we went with her mom to pay respects to her grandmother a few weeks ago. It was a really good experience. I got to meet her mother's side of the family and put their minds at ease about the person she married, me of course. Her uncle told me that he feels I am a good man. We also felt a connection to her grandmother, and her grandfather was so happy that we showed up. He speaks English, so we could talk to each other for a little bit. Her mother was also happy. Nobody was going to go with her, but when my wife heard that she was going alone, we both felt we should go support her. I think the experience helped us all grow closer together.
There is one sad experience that has happened here, though. I'll have to start from the beginning. Claire's brother brought home a puppy one day. He found her in a box downstairs. Someone had
abandoned her. We all helped raise the dog, but my sister-in-law's boyfriend did not like the dog because it barked a lot and sometimes played too loudly with our other dog. Well, we named the dog Charlie after my brother of course. We took care of her and loved her, and one day we woke up and the dog was gone. We asked everyone in the house about her, but nobody knew anything about it. The boyfriend said that he saw her at 8:00 in the morning. He lied of course. We checked the security tape, and it showed him taking her out at around 7:30 am. He actually lied a
lot that morning, but I won't go into everything. He told us he
went to the park to let her go, and at that moment an elderly man saw it and said he wanted the dog. We don't know if we believe him, but we hope she has a good home. Now the boyfriend is not allowed to come to the house anymore. Claire forgave him, and I believe I forgave him for what he has done, but sometimes we still feel a little sad. We miss Charlie. We were planning on taking her back to the U.S. with us. Anyways, I wanted to write about her, because she was a good part of our life. We really did love Charlie, and we still do.
Well, other than that things are going well for us. We are still enjoying Taiwan. I will let you guys know more as things happen. We love you guys and miss you a lot. Talk to you soon.
Hello Everybody! I am having a pretty good week. I had Wednesday off so I was able to relax all day. I watched a couple of movies and studied Chinese. It was fun. Today all I have is one class, and its an oral test, so I don't have to prepare. I just take the students out one by one and use my test script to assess their English speaking skills. It is going to be relaxing.
On the subject of studying languages, I have recently been studying Chinese characters. I try to memorize 8 new ones a day. I only started two days ago, so I only have 16 memorized so far. I am going to memorize eight more today. I have also been listening to a language podcost that I discovered on iTunes. It is from chinesepod.com. If anybody reading this is thinking about learning a language and you have an iPod, I would recommend looking for a podcast on iTunes. It has helped me a lot with some grammatical questions I have. My Chinese isn't amazing yet, but I think it will grow.
Tomorrow we are going to celebrate Moon Festival at work, by eating lots of barbeque. I am excited. Everyone knows I love to eat. Next week, we go on vacation to Kenting. It is the place in Taiwan where they have good beaches. We really miss the beach. It is going to be very enjoyable. We'll take lots of pictures. Well, I'll try to get some pictures of me at work and post them later. Bye for now!
