Back stateside

After a long time of traveling, we FINALLY made it back to Birmingham around 9:30pm on Saturday night. Our only set back was that one of RObs suitcases didn't make it to the airport but hopefully they are working on it. We arrived at our hotel in Starkville around 12:30am and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But since then, I have hardley slept and been going non stop. Which is OK. Just exhausting.

Well I have everything moved into my apartment, just not put away. Hhahaha If you have ever seen my room in Huntsville, you can probably imagine the state that it is in. I have entirely too many clothes to fit into this small room. But I consider that a good problem to have. Sunday was a really long day. After my parents helped me get everything up the stairs and into my room, they headed over to Tuscaloser to see my sister, who is officially a college student. I sat around on the computer for about 30 minutes before I went to buy some new running shoes (that are awesome by the way) and I ran to Wal-Mart to get a few groceries. Then I met up with Tina (one of the exchange students from Taiwan that is going to State this year) and her mom, and 2 aunts. I helped them move in and got everything situated. Then I went and picked up about 10 freshman to bring them to our first RUF get together of the year! It was a "freshman come meet people" type of deal and there was a GREAT showing of new faces! So excited about what God has in store on this campus! After running them back to the dorms, I went with my friend Drew (from HSV) to get food and brought it back to my apartment. Then we went upstairs to hang out with a bunch of my friends who conveniently live right above me! I will be spending the majority of my time there, I am sure. After running back upstairs and borrowing an alarm clock from the guys (since i have misplaced mine...) I went to bed around 2:30am.

Monday I woke up around 8:30 because I was supposed to drive to GTR (airport about 15 mins away from campus) to pick up the other exchange student from Taiwan BUT he called and said he missed his flight so I just sat around for a while with one of my roommates and was lazy for most of the morning. Then I headed to the Veranda for Tricia's birthday. After, I went and picked up Tina who was lost on campus and then we drove to pick up Kyle at GTR and then got him all moved in. Then we took a grand tour around campus. Then I skyped with my parents for a few minutes. Then I had to run to the RUF ministry team meeting. After, I came home and ran up to the guys apartment to return the alarm clock and introduce one of my roommates to them. I finally got to bed around 10:45pm. Oh, did I mention that I had a PT test Tuesday morning?

Well, its 7:00am on Tuesday right now. I woke up at 4:30ish this morning and relaxed for a bit then made my way over to the course. I did as good as I can expect after not being able to work out for 6 weeks. Running is still my worst part. But what else is new... Now I am exhausted but can't stop. Today is the day before classes. I have to sign some papers at ROTC, sign up for International Business Boot Camp, bake a cake or 2 and make a few signs for Tina's surprise birthday party we are having for her tonight. She turns 22 today. And she has no friends or anything here so we are going to make her feel right at home and introdce her to a bunch of RUF people. We are also going to celebrate Camerons late birthday. After I run all these errnads today, hopefully I will have time to clean my room and get it functioning as a room instead of a junk hole where I can walk without stepping on everything. Tonight we will take Tina and the other exchange student to dinner and then bring them to her surprise party. Hopefully it will be a sucess!

This week will continue to stay crazy. Tomorrow is the first day of classes, Thursday is my first day of ROTC lab and RUF starts for the first time for the semester. Friday after classes, everyone on Ministry team will leave to go to Philadelphia, MS until Saturday around noon for the Ministry team retreat. Then maybe I will have time to relax and rest. I want to do everything and "go, go, go" as my mom constantly tells me and I just can't do that right now. Just pray for endurance and for me to be able to function with a good attitude through my lack of sleep.

Travel Update.

Sooooo.... Rob and I did not sleep last night since our cab was picking us up at 4am. Everything was going smoothly. Drive to the airport was shorter than we thought, check in was easy. My baggage weighed .1 kg less than the max so PTL for that. We slept at the gate for a bit and then boarded the plane. And sat there for an extra 45 minutes due to delays in the computer system which caused us to miss our flight back to America by about 15 minutes. After practically running to the transfer counter to see if there was any way we could make it on the plane and almost breaking down and crying in the middle of the Hong Kong airport, they were able to find another route for us to get home, a few hours later than we were supposed to and an extra connection flight but it is ok. We are just tired and frusterated at this point and definitely ready to get back in America. Right now the sleep count is NO SLEEP FOR 28 hours going on 29. Since we missed our flight, they gave us vouchers to use in one of the 1000 resturants here. We just finished eating a delish hamburger and fries. In some ways this mis hap is a good thing because it breaks up the 14 hour flight. And we are safe so I can't complain. Hong Kong is definitely the place you would want to get stuck for a few hours. On a different note, Hong Kong looked amazing when we flew in. I am definitely going to add another country to my "TO GO" list!!

God is Good.

I don't know how it happened or really any of the details, but they have found another Chinese teacher and classes will resume. What a weight that has been lifted! Needless to say, we are all very relieved to see that Chinese is saved!! In prayer and petition, the Lord will provide.

I am back in Sansia and we have completed the last of our escapades in Taiwan. Let me fill you in on the rest of the trip. Wednesday we went to Kenting Beach where we rode on rafts pulled by jet skis for about an hour. It was probably the most fun I had the whole time. I absolutely love jet skis. And it just makes it all the more fun to be riding them in the middle of the clear blue ocean. If you have never experienced fun like this, you are seriously missing out. After a few near death experiences of almost flying off the rafts and hanging on for dear life, we played in the ocean and relaxed under the warm sun. Now, let me clarify what I mean when I say "relaxing under the warm sun" and let me tell you how Asians and Americans differ. I think I was the only person on the entire beach NOT sitting under a huge umbrella. I was soaking up as much sun as I could to try to get somewhat of a tan unlike every single Asian on the beach. I don't know if I mentioned this before but they do not like to be tan because they say that it makes their skin look dirty. Being completely pale is considered the most beautiful here as opposed to America where girls pay big money to sit in tanning beds to get as dark as possible. Well after we finished at the beach, we headed to Kenting Activity Center which is a youth hostel where we stayed for a night. It was a nice little area near a night market full of delicious food and very beachy stores much like something you would see at Gulf Shores or Panama City. That was a very early night for me because I was burned and completely wiped from all the excitement.

Tuesday I woke up in pain because I was sore from riding the floats the day before. And I'm pretty sure that I had a little whiplash haha We got up and drove to the Hakka Village in Kaohsuing where we ate traditional Hakka food and painted little paper umbrellas! Then we went to the biggest mall in Southeast Asia and then we went to get "ice" which is like a big bowl of shaved ice with a bunch of fruit on it and cream and stuff. Its pretty good! Then we drove to go see "Love River" and see the old British Consulate. Then we drove to our amazing hotel. It is the tallest building in the city. It is called Hotel 85. We were on the 31st floor with a huge window view facing the bay. It was a pretty incredible view! Lily, Tiffany, and I went out of the town for a little while and then came back because we were so tired!

This morning we woke up around 7:15am. We drove to Sun Moon Lake which was BEAUTIFUL! We got on a boat and rode around for a little while to look at the scenery. Then we went to where the aboriginals have shops and things like that. We spent a little time there and then ate some traditional food. After, we headed to a paper mill where we made our own paper and a paper fan. Then we headed to Taizhong to talk around for a bit. Then we headed home.

I think that it is safe to say that we have seen every noteworthy place in this entire country. The people that we have met are amazing and so interesting. People overflow with kindness here. I will miss walking down the street and hearing someone shout "Good afternoon!" because you can tell that they are so excited to be able to try out their English, and hearing a little kid say "Mei guo ren"(American) as they pull on their mothers shirt to get her attention, and the mountains, and the breath taking views from atop roofs in the middle of the city, and the ocean, and the phrase "huan ying guan ling" when you walk into any store or restaurant, and I will miss all of my new friends dearly.

It is 12:30am here right now and in about 3 and a half hours, I will leave NTPU and head for the airport for my 6:30am flight. After about 24 hours of traveling, I will be back in Starkville! But my life will continue to fly at about a million miles a minute probably for the next month. But I could not be more excited about it. I have committed to probably way more things than I can handle all at once but I will somehow find a way to manage. Here is a rough sketch of how this next week will look for me: I will arrive Saturday to Birmingham around 4:30pm then I will drive straight to Starkville that night. The next morning I will move into my new apartment!! :) That night I have an RUF get together to go to. The next day I have meetings! The next day I take my PT test for extra scholarship at 5:30am and I will celebrate my new friend's birthday who is a Taiwanese exchange student! Then classes start the very next day. That weekend I have leadership retreat for ministry team for RUF. Then real class starts. Please continue to pray for my and my safety traveling home and for the safety of my friends who are traveling separate from Rob and I. Also please pray that I will quickly recover from jet leg since I have no time to be "out of it" at all! And I have started to get a cold. This is not good. Pray that this will be a quick sickness and that it will pass very soon!

Even though I am finished with my trip, I still plan on updating my blog to keep everyone updated on my life. Feel free to read it if you would like!

Since I am not sleeping tonight, I have found that I have had a lot of free time to catch up on a few things. Since I know that I have been slacking on adding pictures to my blog and if you don't have facebook and were unable to see the pictures on my facebook, I have put all of my photos on Photo Bucket. Click on this sentence for the link!! :)

I would update right now BUT...

I'm too mad.

We just found out that Chinese class was cancelled this semester due to low enrollment. The dean cut funding for it. This does not sit well after having just completed a very expensive study abroad revolving around the Chinese language. Don't worry though, we have just started a plan of action. Already made several phone calls to officials at MSU and contacted others taking Chinese. We are meeting with the Dean of Arts and Sciences hopefully sometime early next week. I will keep you posted on the current situation.

I used to say that I hate the beach except for Cancun...

But you can't hate this:

Well, Saturday and Sunday did not turn out like I had planned, but were relaxing and much needed, to say the least. I slept for til basically 5pm on Saturday and got up long enough to run, eat, and spend a little time on facebook. Sunday I slept in and then did laundry. We also ventured into the Carrefore(chain sort of like Wal-Mart). Daniel Spencer got a $100NT haircut which is about $3 US. What this $100NT haircut includes is 10 minutes of a hairdresser snipping at your hair hahaha Needless to say, I had to leave the room for a minute while he was getting it cut because I was afraid of how it was going to turn out. It actually ended up looking much better than we all thought!

Basically, these next 5 days we are taking a road trip around the island. We are on a tour bus that is going to take us all over the place. I love roadtrips! This is like the best kind of road trip though because we are on a spaceous bus with TVs, karaoke, and we make stops at all of the noteworthy places of Taiwan. What more could you want?!

Monday morning we got on a bus and headed to Hualien to go to Tarokos Gorge. It took about 4 hours and then some to get there. We drove through the mountains and next to the Pacific Ocean. Its absolutely breathtaking here. It is amazing to see God's creation untouched by humans. Tarokos Gorge is this HUGE gap in between these two mountains that was carved by water thousands of years ago. It is a pretty cool thing to see. After walking around there for a little while, we went to another place about 2 hours away to make bandanas or "toujin" as they are pronounced in Chinese. This time I actually made different designs on mine. They dyed them different colors. I picked olive green. It turned out so good! Pics to come later. Then we went to a small restaurant in the middle of no where to have dinner. It was Chinese buffet style where they bring out many different dished continuously. After that we went to our "homestay" which is basically like a little house with small rooms. We had a mattress on the floor(which is a step up from what we are used to, but still hard as a rock) and a bathroom in each room. It was a very quaint little place! I liked it! We were supposed to go look at lightening bugs by the river last night but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out so I missed that little adventure.

This morning we ate breakfast at the homestay and then drove about an hour to get to a river where we rafter for about 4 hours. Everything here is so scenic. On our rafting adventure, we were in between all of the mountains. Everywhere we looked was covered with vegetation and trees. At one point, we turned the corner and there were 3 huge water oxen just drinking water out of the river. It was like we were on a safari or something haha. After lots of fun on the river, we drove for about 2 and a half hours to get to our restaurant and then headed to our hotel by the hot springs. The hotel is pretty nice and we are excited to have our own actual beds. Tonight, Tiffany and Queenie(our guide from NTPU who is a student here) spent the evening relaxing in the hot spring pools which consist of 3 different pools that are like a sauna. One pool is freezing cold, the next one is warm, and the last one is burning up. It was so nice. I enjoyed every second of it. Then we headed to the convenient store down the street to get a few snacks. Today was pretty tiring but extremely fun. Tonight I will continue to enjoy internet and a night in my nice bed.

Oh also, SIDE NOTE: Today, after rafting and a long bus ride, Lily, Tiffany and I were delirious I think (or at least we will blame this on that reason). Well we were at the restaurant and the bathrooms were outside. Now, the bathrooms here are different to begin with. And they are not so private. Well, we walked right into the bathroom with this sign on it:

and then we all remembered that we weren't carrying any toilet paper with us. Tiffany dug through her bag and luckily found some. As she was handing it out to us, a man walked in and started using the urinal without any hesitation. Lily made the comment of "Oh, I didn't know that guys use this bathroom too." We didn't think anything of it. Well, after we got out of the bathroom I saw a woman walk right past the door we were standing in front of and into another door. With a pink sign. As we were noticing this, a woman walked past us and heard us laughing and talking about how we went into the wrong bathroom and stopped and laughed at us hahaha Oh it was funny.

Tomorrow starts a whole new adventure. Stay tuned!!! 3 more days left in Taiwan!

Just As Freeeeeeeeee, Free As We'll Ever Be

haha You have got to have a cheesy lyrics title whenever anything of great significance happens. These were the only words that popped into my head when we walked out of the restaurant after out final presentation today. This is from The Zac Brown Band song called "Free." Love it.

Anyways, I ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep last night. Woke up just in time to change clothes and make it to where we were supposed to meet for our presentation on time. We walked into the conference room and just had to laugh. Our Chinese caligraphy that we had done, random pictures taken on various trips, and some artwork with Taiwanese idioms and pictures we had drawn, as well as a diary entry about going to the zoo and tea farms were hanging on the walls all around the room. They expected us to have 3 hours total of things to present, different skits, songs, conversations, etc. We thought that we had no chance of even getting close to that. We ended up not having enough time and actually enjoyed the presentations. We all did a really great job, and I think that our teachers could tell how much time and effort we put into them. Our teachers each gave little speaches after and each gave us various gifts like a bag of Chinese candy, costume shoes that I am wearing right now that I will definitely be wearing all of the time this year, a few CDs of traditional Chinese music, a scarf, happiness charms, and my sweet new friend, Cloud, gave us a very small little bottle with red beans in them. These mean that someone is missing you. After a few surprise presentations and revisiting a few embarrassing sound recordings from the beginning of these 5 weeks, we went to a little cafe called Mr. Pumpkin where we had our ending ceremony. It was good food and good company. We all sat with the TAs and teachers and had a wonderful time. After taking about 1000 pictures, we walked back to campus. Little did we realize that we would have to say goodbye to our new Chinese friends so soon. It was very sad saying goodbye to them. We have spent everyday together for the past 5 weeks and have gotten to know them. Our time here would not have been near as fun without them. Sad :(

This is a picture of all of our TAs and all of the MSU students at lunch


Some of the girl TAs: Kelby, Helen, Stella, and Cloud and I

Our Chinese class with our teacher Lan Laoshi( laoshi means teacher)

Well, we have about 2 and a half days left here until we take our trip around the island. Which means that anything that we wanted to do and haven't will probably get crammed into the next 72 hours.

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

This is NOT an Update

This is purely an observation, unfortunately, of my own self.

NOTE TO THE FUTURE STUDY ABROAD STUDENTS: There is no possible way for anyone to eat healthy while out of the country. I don't care who you are. You just can't do it. The food is wierd, you can't read nutrition labels, and your schedule (if it is like mine is) is too crazy and hectic and tiring to even have time to work out.

Unfortunately for me, the government does not care how impossible this is. Even though I am out of shape, will be experiencing crazy jetlag, lack of sleep, and an insane case of nerves, I will be taking yet another PT test on Augst 17th. But this time its not just for kicks. I am competing against the other incoming freshman for an extra $2,000 a semester. Terrible timing. Can anyone say, "Welcome back, Stephanie"?

Fun at the beach

Lunch. Can you imagine my excitement?

The view outside my window at 6am on my sleepless night

Oh well. such is life. I think that I will go ahead and update you all on my exciting life right now. Well, I think my last post was Sunday night. It has been a long week for sure. Sunday night I did not sleep due to the fact that I had a test Monday and ended up spending most of my night talking to friends on facebook. Hey, it happens when your friends are halfway across the world with completely opposite schedules! Needless to say, I was dragging in the morning but it paid off because I made a 99 on my test. Be proud, Mom and Daddy haha. After class, the others went on a bike ride. I opted for a nap which ended up being a much needed 17 hour nap. I woke up for class the next morning fresh as a daisy. Tuesday in the evening after class we went to Formosa Fun Coast which is a water park. It was pretty fun. It had several big slides and other activities to do. The next day we got on the bus at 8:30 and road to the north coast of Taiwan. We walked around this geology park right on the ocean. Anyone ever heard of the rock called "The Queens Head"? Well, we saw it. Then we went to the beach!! It was SO hot on Wednesday. When we got there, there were 2 people there. Just 2. It was awesome to have the beach all to ourselves! We had fun playing around in the water and sand for about 2 hours. We all got burnt. It was wonderful. It made me miss the pool. Daniel Cook and I are/were both lifeguards and some of our TAs and Tiffany were getting us to teach them how to float and swim. It made me miss lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons. Lifeguard class may be in my future yet again... After the beach, we went to a place called Jiofen. It has several old streets with shops in them. We spent about an hour and a half there. By then, we were completely wiped and ended up napping on the bus ride back home. We are all exhausted at this point. I think our teachers know that. Chinese class today was very easy and laid back. It was our LAST class here. Tomorrow we have to give this huge presentation. We each have to give a 10 minute speech in Chinese. Then we each have a partner and have to have a conversation with them in front of everyone. Then We are split into 2 groups and each group has to come up with something to do. perform. hahaha Basically we have all been working on this all afternoon and probably will until late into the night. The president of NTPU is going to be there. But everything will go smoothly and then we will be done. And then we will take off on our adventure around Taiwan! So excited!! Oh I also went running tonight. I'll update later on how our presentation went!

Reality Check?

Friday night I went to dinner by myself. Then I went running. Now, usually when I go running I watch the ground for uneven concrete and what not. Well, Friday I was enjoying the weather and scenery too much to pay that close attention. It just so happens that I was running in a small area with a little bit of construction and consequently tripped over an invisible hose or pipe that seemed to blend into the sidewalk thus giving you the lovely image you will see below:

I also passed a man on campus who, with very broken English, very excitedly said "Good Afternoon!" to me. Its things like that that just make me so glad to be here. So Saturday I slept in and went to lunch, by myself, but its funny because now when we walk into restaurants around campus, they recognize us and since I order the same thing every time and they smile and walk up to me after I sit down and tell me what me usually get. On Thursday I ate beef noodle with Tiffany and added a bowl of rice to it for the first time. When I went to eat this particular day, the sweet lady who owns the beef noodle place gave me the extra bowl of rice for free. This seems to happen quite frequently here. I am still stunned by the generosity and kindness here. A few weeks ago we went to a nicer cafe style restaurant where the owner happened to know our Chinese teacher. Our teacher mentioned us to her. Well the owner brought us this delicious bread that was on the house. We went to a Japanese restaurant and the owner gave us free dessert. Our Chinese friend who owns the American food restaurant never lets me pay for the orange Fanta's that I order and even when I don't order them, he still brings them up to my table for me to have. This would NEVER happen in America. We are too stingy with our money, always wanting more, and not taking the opportunity to appreciate what we have and share it with others. I can say that I will come back to America with a better understanding of what the word "necessity" actually means. I didn't realize how much material possessions that I have that I don't actually need until I have gone 4 weeks with about 6 shirts and 5 pairs of shorts. If people in America took on the attitude of people here, things would be so different. Anyways, more on this later....

Today(Sunday), I had lunch by myself., no big deal, I kind of like it now. Then Daniel, Daniel, and I met up with Elle, a girl who is 24, has lived here for 6 months and is from Wisconsin and teaches English to children here in a school. We met her a few weeks ago and she came to karaoke with us when we met her for the first time. She is very nice. We took the MRT to meet up with her friend, Scott, who was going to take us on a hiking trail that overlooks the city. We got to see his apartment which was very nice! Its so interesting to see peoples homes here because their definition of big is very small compared to what we are used to. In addition to seeing his apartment, we got to go onto the roof where we got to see an awesome view of the city from inside of the city! It was a very cool experience! Then we ventured off into the city to climb the mountain. The view from atop the mountain was beautiful as ever. We got there around 5pm or so and decided to wait around to watch the sunset and see the lights turn on in the city which is a pretty spectacular sight. Also, I didn't know if you all knew, and I just found this out today, but Taipei 101 is like the 2nd tallest building in the world.

After, our hike, we went to a restaurant where Scott's friend Logan met us. Logan is 23 and has studied Chinese for about 5 year. If I can speak half as much Chinese in 5 years, I will be happy. The Americans that we meet here are so interesting. They have all lived in one place or another and are now in Taiwan for either work or teaching English. Hearing everything that they have done makes me want to explore more... maybe an internship in Shanghai?!? Maybe Beijing? A year in mainland China would do my language learning some good. Or maybe we'll just stick with Rosetta Stone for now... With my major, I realize that I literally could be anywhere in the world in the future. This makes me think of a passage in my devotional book that I posted on facebook a while back:

Leave outcomes up to me. Follow Me wherever I lead, without worryiing about how it will all turn out. Think of your life as an adventure, with Me as your Guide and Companion. Live in the NOW, concentration on staying in step with me. When our path leads to a cliff, be willing to climb it with My help. When we come to a resting place, take time to be refreshed in My Presence. Enjoy the rhythm of life lived close to me.

You already know the ultimate destination of your journey; your entrance into heaven. So keep your focus on the path just before you, leaving outcomes up to Me.

"In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling." Exodus 15:13

You are on the path of My choosing. There is no randomness about your life. Here and Now comprise the coordinates of your daily life. Most peple let their moments slip through their fingers, half- lived. They avoid the present by worrying about the future or longing for a better time and place. They forget that they are creatures who are subject to the limitations of time and space. They forget their Creator, who walks with them only in the present.

Every moment is alive with My glorious Presence, to those whose hearts are intimately connected with mine. As you give yourself more and more to a life of constant communion with Mr, you will find that you simply have no time for worry. Thus, you are freed to let My Spirit direct your steps, enabling you to walk along the path of Peace.


"Then Jesus said to his disciples: 'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens; they do not sow or reap, they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?'" Luke 12:22-26

Oh the possibilities are endless! Now that I have made my parents unhappy with the thought of my future plans, I'll end this post. Its 2:30am here and I still have an essay to write and a test in the morning! Being out of the country has definitely had no effect of my procrastination or drive to do my homework. Bike ride in the afternoon around the city tomorrow! Last week of class then our trip around the island! Sorry its so long again!!! :)