Big Winner

   My hike at the park

 it had stairs

 and more stairs

but a wonderful view

 my winning  lottery  ticket

One one with her mouth open is Angel. She is one of my kids that  would make a grate cake.(HAHAHA Angel's Food Cake! I'm too much)
My roommate Mary and I are reading the same book,: "The Brothers Karamazov." She is the intellectual and I'm the want-a-be.
Lunch from last week in Tiachung, crazy shrimp.
Dinner, or what is left of, My IGIF's mexican meal.
I'm the god of demolished bathrooms. This is what caused all the jackhammering last week.

Though this week has left me literally sick and tired it was not without its joys.  This last week we put the final touches on our trip for Chinese New Year. I am so excited to get out of my school. This last week I realized that in two day I hadn't even gone down below the second floor of my school, as I work on the 2nd and the 3rd and live on the 4th.  Any other time I would have gone a bike ride or hike but being sick, and teaching kindergarten that consists of jump around and being silly for 3 hours, has sapped all liveliness out of me.  But the good news that after restful weekend I can almost breath out of my nose again.  Another bit of good news is that I won the Taiwan lottery! All 200NT of it. That ends up being about 6 USD. A explanation: In an effort to get merchants to keep things on the books, the government came up with the Receipt Lottery. The theory being, with millions in winnings on the line, customer would start demanding receipts with every purchase  and merchants would wind up with all their income on the books. So I won money that doesn't even cover the cost of the thing I purchased on my winning receipt, but hey, its like eating out twice.

On Friday I made fortune cookies with my older classes, as it was one our last classes before brake.  When planing this lesson I realized that fortune cookies are not actually Chinese, but figured that it would be just as fun.  After doing it though I would not call this experience with the cookie making "fun".  The kids  obviously had a very good incentive to be  good, as there was going to be food. So the kids were not the problem, but I had forgotten that the kitchen did not have a oven.  But that was quickly solved with a toaster oven. But perhaps I should have actually tried to make them before doing it with a good of 7-9 year olds.  The whole concept of putting the fortune in the cookies was left behind when I released that you had to grab the cookie out of a hot oven and fold it before it got cold with the fortune inside.  While there are times when I'm teaching, when the idea to throwing my kids into a 274C degree oven sounds perfect, this was not the time to live out my fantasy.  So I opted for the flat fortune cookie which is sadly no longer a fortune cookie but a very thin, crispy, thing.  But even after having to alter the outcome so it was no longer  what we had set out to do, they,the kids left happy with a half of a rather doughy cookie in hand.  But do not let this culinary disaster make you second guess my skills, I'm still as good as I once was ( If you know that song I'm quoting good for you and please continue to humm as you continue reading). 

This weekend as I have said was very restful. No jackhammering, or trips, just pajamas, and movie watching.  I cut Steve's hair, as he is a little wary of the Taiwanese barbers. For the first time I cut boys hair it looks good, and well, even if he didn't like it, in two weeks he wouldn't be able to tell what I did wrong anyways.  I did however add some excitement to my life when I, with the other teachers that had helped me the day before with the cookie mess, made fortune cookies.  They  looked like the real thing  with fortunes inside and everything.  Even before the first batch was out of the oven I had a team assembled to fold and bend. They look very similar to the real thing, but some of the batches where a bit gooey but they still tasted grate. We made them for a potluck at church today, but unfortunately(get it unfortunately, if not it's ok, I'm really cheesy) the Taiwan humidity took its tole on them. They were no longer crunchy, but bendy.  But other then the other few Americans that are in our ward, no one knew that it was to be different.  As I am leaving for my vacation this week I'll be a bit slow to post again. But feel free to Email me.