We are home in Three Weeks!!!!!!!

I guess we are going to have to change the title of our blog soon. Man these few weeks seem like forever. We want to get back to Texas soon. We are going to miss everyone here though. We have had some good experiences. I am finally healthy again. I did gain a little weight for a while, but now my pants are all loose. I am happy about that. I haven't seemed to have lost any weight though. I guess its muscle now. We have been exercising like crazy. We swim every other day, and run in between those days. Its great. We go to a local sauna/spa place to do that. They have treadmills and a weight room as well.

A funny thing happened at the spa the other day. I was in the steam room. It was me and one other guy. I was doing some stretches minding my own business, when the guy sitting in the corner let a loud one go. I didn't smell anything, but I had to keep myself from laughing. I didn't burst out of the door because I thought it would be rude, but on reflection I guess he was rude first, but I didn't think about it at the time because I thought it was so funny. He might have gone home embarrassed later to tell his wife, if he has one of course, that he accidently let a loud one go in front of this huge foreign guy. Anyways, my wife tells me he probably just got too comfortable in the room. It was neat I guess.

Well, I have started to tell my kids at school that I am going home. Some of them react big and tell me that they do not want a new teacher. Some students just look at me and grunt. I am telling them a week early because a teacher told me that if I do that, the students might bring me something. Hehehe.

Well, I talk with Mom on MSN sometimes, and that is good. If anyone else wants to talk to me though, try to get online when I am, or you can contact Mom to get my MSN info, then try to get me online. Mom and I have had some good times talking online. Well, love you guys!!!!

Hey You Guys!!!!

Well, I guess its been a long time. I always have the blog in the back of my mind thinking that I will actually get around to doing it. Well, I'm back. A lot has happened since we posted last time. I have had surgery on my back, we've been to a place called Kenting. Its a place with a lot of beaches. We have also been to a place in Taipei with a lot of hot springs. It was great going there, It was very relaxing to sit in the hot springs. They had a guys floor and a girls floor. It was a little uncomfortable hanging out with a bunch of naked guys, but I got used to it and had a good time.

Well, about the trip to Kenting, we rented a scooter and drove along the coast one day stopping at some beaches and just looking around. It was really fun. We took some good pictures, and I got to ride an ATV. That part was really great. When I was tour guiding in Hawaii, we had to be in the front and have the guests follow in a straight line due to safety issues, but over here, they don't care about those issues. They let me go off on my own racing around the ATV area. I really enjoyed it. We spent about three days in Kenting. The first day, Claire's mom and sister were with us. We swam in the hotel pool and stuff, and the food was really good. If any of you make it to Taiwan, Kenting is a pretty good place to visit.

On a diferent note, we have been excercising a lot recently. We go to a swimming pool three days a week, and I do aerobic exercise every other day. Sometimes Claire does it with me. I kind of have a goal to be in really good shape when we go home in March. I don't want to come home all fat. We are excited to go home. We are also hoping that we can find a good job pretty quick, so if anybody hears about anything, please let us know. Thanks.

Well, I bought Claire Twilight for Christmas. I couldn't talk to her for three days. After she was done, she wanted to keep reading. She's finished the first three books, and now we are waiting for the fourth (Thanks for mailing it, Mom). While she was reading those books, it was hard to have long conversations. Now we are back to normal though. Oh and she got me a science fiction book called Spin for Christmas. If any of you guys like science fiction, you might want to try reading it. It was very imaginative. I have the second book, so I am going to start reading that one soon.

The family is doing great over here. We are really enjoying our last two months with Claire's family. We celebrated Christmas together, and tried to watch a Christmas movie. Claire and I were the only ones to stay awake for it, but it was still good. Before that, we opened presents together. Claire got a really small Christmas tree. It was cheap, but festive. The family had a good time. I think it was the first Christmas that they have ever celebrated. Her sister is kind of sad that we are leaving, but she will be okay. Well, love you guys. Talk to you soon.

We are doing good!!!

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!

Hello again!

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.

The Kubrichts Return

Ni Hao (Hello in Chinese),

Like what Bryan talked about earlier, I got a short haircut. I think many of you have already seen it on the webcam. Life is good here. A few weeks ago, we went back to see my grandpa and my mom side of family and show our respect to my grandma. That day was the date she passed away 2 years ago. At that time, I was in Hawaii and didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to her, so this time I had a strong feeling that we should go visit her. I haven't seen them for years. This time we went back to Taipei, I found my grandpa gradually got older. However, he was so happy to see us. He is too old to stand for long, but seeing us back, he stood up many times and asked to take a photo with us. That was a good little family reunion.

BTW, we're learning Spanish online (well...actually, I am the one who is learning and Bryan just repeats what I say next to me). Check out this cool website, if you want to study some languages: http://www.livemocha.com/

Love you all lots oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

BTW, why does Bryan wear the same shirt in all the pics?

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY! :)

Its Been a While

Hey everyone. We are doing great here in Taiwan. We are still teaching English. We haven't had a vacation yet, but we are planning on having one in September. We are going to go to the south of Taiwan to hit the beach. We really miss it.

Not much different has happened around here. I did a spelling bee about month or so ago. It was okay, except that they wanted us to say, "Sorry, you're wrong!" everytime a kid mispelled a word. I felt like I was so mean. One kid looked like she was about to cry. I tried to say it as nicely as possible though.

Within this past month, we also did Karaoke. It was a lot of fun. For Karaoke here in Taiwan, people rent rooms and only make fools of themselves in front of their friends and family. Of course we went with the family here. Claire and I were happy because there were more English songs than we thought there would be. A lot of them were pretty old though. She sang "Dancing Queen." I sang "We Will Rock You." We both sang "Hey Jude." Of course we sang others as well, but none were as memorable as these songs. If you guys come here, I recommend us going together. One reason is for the singing, the other is for the buffet that is included in the price. Hehehe.

Well, Claire is turning 27 tomorrow. Now she is going to be an old fart like me. Hehehe. We are excited. We are going to take her to get a hair cut after her next paycheck. I don't know if that is a gift, but she's getting one. She wants to go short. Anyways, I will probably surprise her with something tomorrow.

On another good note, I lost weight recently. I have been running a lot, and have lost over ten pounds. Yeah. Another 8 pounds and I will weigh the same as I did on my mission. Anyways, some clothes I haven't worn for a bit have started fitting again. I am really happy. Well, I will let you guys know if anything exciting happens over here. Bye for now.

We're back

Hey family and friends! We havn't posted for a while so I thought I would drop a line. We have been having a pretty good month. Tonight we just went running and I almost died. I am totally out of shape. I went two miles and then I had to crash in front of a fan for a while. Claire's family has a cute little daschund doggy. For some reason she (the dog, not my wife) loves sweat, so when I took off my sweaty shirt, (the dog followed me to the room) it sarted rubbing up against all my sweat. Then I sat down and the dog jumped in my lap and stayed there. It was kind of gross, but the dog liked it. She also followed me around sniffing me until I was finally cooled down enough to take a shower.

Well, in another interesting note, I had a funny dream the other night. All of you who know me know that I love the show Smallville. Well, in my dream, my bro Charlie and I entered into the world of Smallville through the TV screen. We met Clark and Lana and all the other characters. We told them about real life and how what they were living wasn't real. Then we told them we would take care of the world of Smallville if they wanted to check it out. We had to fist fight all of the crazy monsters and stuff without the Clark Kent powers. Anyways, it was cool.

For my birthday this month, we stayed at home and ate cake with her family. We also rented a nice room as well. It was fun. We had a good old time. The cake we ate was chocolate with white cream and raspberries in it. It was delicious. As for these pictures, the first two were taken when we ate cake, and the last on is the bath tub of the room we rented. It was awesome. One part of the bathtub had jets in the walls. and the other part had several rows of jets coming out of the base of the tub.

As for teaching, this past month I started a business course at an electronics company. The class has sixteen people. It is a good break from teaching kids, so I am enjoying it. All i have to do is focus on conversation, so I don't even need to teach grammar. This week, I am actually going to start another class at that company. I am looking forward to it. Maximum enrollment for the class is sixteen people. By putting a cap on enrollment the class stays managable. With too many people we wouldn't get any one on one speaking time, which is one of the main goals for the course. Anyways, I won't bore people any longer with my work stuff. Love ya guys. Talk to you later.

A Day in Neiwan

We're back postin' again. Well, yesterday was a very interesting day. We rode our moped for an hour to get to a place called Neiwan. It was a cool place. We walked along the river for a little while taking a couple of pictures. We saw a lot of people there as well. Some were barbequing by the river, others were fishing, snd others were swimming. Claire and I both agree that we should have brought our swim suits. We will probably go to that area again. Especially because there is a hot springs over there.

For lunch, Claire had lamb fried rice and I had bacon fried rice at a local restaurant. It actually kind of tasted like Dad's fried rice. At least one of the times he made it. His fried rice tastes a little different every time he makes it. Anyways it tasted really good.

The last thing we did before we went home is go-cart racing. They had double seated go-carts that we wanted to try, but my legs wouldn't fit in it. I thought it would be okay because I saw a lot of other adults in the double seaters, but they wern't as tall as me. We then had to ride in the single seaters. Claire got scared because she doesn't know how to drive, but she ended up being okay. I had a need for speed though, so I was weaving through people, passing them right and left. I even actually got the scooter on two wheels for a second. It was fun.

Throughout the day though, our moped developed a rattling sound, like metal hitting metal. We took it back to the dealer in the evening, and the showed us where a screw had fallen out that helps keep the exaust on the bike. They put a new one in for free, and then fixed our kick stand for free, and then washed it for free. I am actually amazed. Anytime we have had a small problem with our moped, they've fixed it for free. One of my co-workers told me that the dealer he got his moped from followed him home and put a screw in his exaust (or at least that is what he thinks), and then the day after he bought it, when he brought it back to the dealer, he tried to tell him that he had to replace the whole exaust for 300 dollars. I have heard horror stories from other people as well. I think we got our moped at a good place. If anyone who reads this ever moves to Hsinchu, let me know, so I can recommend these guys to you. Well, I guess this post is getting a little long. Talk to you guys later.

Three day Weekend

What's up! Lucky us. We got a three-day vacation this week. Today is April 4th which is Children's Day. It sounds strange for us to celebrate this holiday, but since we are teaching kids, we have to celebrate with them (sweet...I couldn't stop screaming).

And tomorrow is the national holiday of sweeping ancester's graves. A lot of people will go to the cemetory, top of the mountains or whereever they burried their family to sweep the graves tomorrow. I have to say there is something in our family traits: we hate going to crowdy places. In my family, they don't like to do things with all those people so they chose a day earlier to clean. Unfortunately, only my dad had free time today, rest of my family had to work. Therefore, he represented us to worship and show respect to our ancestors.

Hehehe....you're probabely thinking why Bryan and I didn't go since we had the day off. Well....we were planing to go back to my grandparents' house with my dad today, but due to the early departure, Bryan and I decided to stay at home and went to Tiebanshao instead. Hehehe....you know how late I sleep in ususally. Tomorrow we are going to Taipei and spending our MULA!!!

Tiebanshao

Hello everybody!!! I went out to eat at a tiebanshao place today. They cook your food on a huge hot plate. At least that is the best I can do to describe it. It tasted great. I had the pork dish and Claire had beef. It was pretty spicy and good. They do put a lot of garlic on the food, so not many people will enjoy talking to me later tonight.

On a funny note. Last night I had a dream that I was a rapper. I thought it was kind of funny. The rap even seemed good in the dream. However, I tried to remember it today, but I couldn't. My creative genuis will be lost in that dream. Oh well. Maybe I will have that dream again sometime.

In other news, I have contracted an in and out Taiwanese cold. Just when I think it is gone, it appears again and I start coughing up a storm. Its okay though. The other teachers at my school tell me that this is the season where they get those types of colds as well. Claire and I went to buy some medicine today, but I am a little scared to take it. I am not used to foreign medicines. Claire says it is okay, so I will take my chances.

Well, I thought I would add this picture into the blog as well. We told the guy we were about to take the picture. He said okay, but avoided looking at us. Now his picture is on our website. hehehe. He doesn't know he is on an English site.

Well, I hope things are going great for you guys. I will post again later. Have a most excellent day. hehe.

Rainy Day

Hey! It is the finish of a long day. We had a lot of rain today. We travel on mopeds, so we have to wear raincoats on days like this. The bottom of my pants and my shoes did not stay dry. It was okay though. They dried out while I was teaching.

I had a good time teaching today. The kids were very involved in the games. We also sang "Skidamarinky Dink." If you guys knew the song you would probably laugh just imagining me dance to the song in front of a lot of kids.

Well, I put a picture of Claire and I in Hawaii. One reason is because we don't have many pictures of Taiwan. Another reason is to brighten our rainy day. Well, talk to you guys later.

What's up, everyone!?!

As you know, I'm teaching English just like Bryan. It's fun sometimes and drives me crazy other times. I enjoy it SO FAR and I think this experience will help me to handle my own kids in the future. Well, life is good here, but I miss Hawaii so much. Hope I can go back there soon. That's all for today. Peace out!!

I just learned how to do this

Hey people who know me. I just learned how to blog. I guess I am behind everyone else, but that's okay.

I am currently teaching English in Taiwan. It is fun. I do have some down days. I teach kids, so on some days they are a little crazy. Well, I guess I will add more later. Bye for now.