Angela, the Aussie! This is one of the YW girls that I taught at church. She learned English in Australia and has an Aussie accent! She is a doll and always made sure that I got on the right bus/train headed home from church. She is dedicated to her studies and oftentimes would stump me with vocab questions: the girl is S-M-R-T, smart!
I met Charles right after moving here and have been finding excuses to see him ever since. He is busy with his PhD program in Kaohsiung but always made the time to see us when we were in town. What a gentleman, that one. One night, our train got in late and we tried to stop him from carrying all of our bags to which he replied 'I'm a man...' In other words, back off ladies and let me show you how it's done! He's adorable and forthright. We quickly named him Charles in Charge because anytime we traveled with him, he handled everything. I love this guy..
Emily, how do I put to words how grateful I am for your help the last 6 months! Emily is one of the secretaries at our school. My all-time favorite memory of Emily was driving go carts in Jiji. I still don't know why but I lapsed her 10-15 times. There's no such thing as SAFE go-karting, she needed to push the pedal to the medal! The poor thing has been bombarded with requests since I arrived 6 months ago:
"Hey Emily---
-Come here, I need you!
-I went to the store and couldn't figure out conditioner vs. lotion...help!
-I wanna run a race in Taipei but the website is in chinese....help!?
-How do you say ______(brown sugar, buddha, pagoda, flour, curry dumpling)_____ in Chinese? Can you write it here?"
Penny is also a secretary at my school. She's a lot of fun and sometimes sits in on my classes and 'plays' that she's one of the students. This picture was taken right before I lapsed her 15-20 times go-karting. You'd have thought she was going for a sunday drive with Miss Daisy. PENNY-it's a race, DRIVE FASTER!! Oh man, my gut hurt from laughing that day! Pen Pen, thanks for everything. You're the sweetest and I hope that Wayne takes care of you in our absence.
Andre took us the Fengjia Night Market in Taichung several times. That place is a ZOO and he herded us like cattle through the streets, ordered for us, translated, picked us up and drove us all the way back home. He's helpful, resourceful and he can cook!
Julia's family lives in my city but she attends high school 3 hours south so we didn't see her as much as we would've liked. They call high school 'college' here so it took me months to realize that she was only 17! Woman age well here, it must be tricky for guys because 17 year olds look 30 and 50 year olds look 30! Her English is AMAZING and she is so easy to be around. Taiwan became home for me when I started running into friends like her on the street...I took this picture when we ran into her at the Train Station.
Molly lived in my city in Taiwan but moved to Australia in September. We have missed her immensely since she's been gone. Every time I saw her ride her scooter around, it reminded me of Peach/Princess on Mariokart. Molly-thanks a million for all you did to help us out. We'll be your Taiwanese kids if you'll stay our American child ;)
1 comment:
it looks like you've made some great friends out there! that's essential when you don't know your way around and don't really know the language all that well. Penny is my favorite. She sounds like a hoot! :) Any friend that makes me laugh is a keeper. I like the goobers!:)
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