newsies.

i'm a horrible person... and i suck at blogging. 
So here's some news on the life in Taiwan. 

1. Chopped the hair off. about a foot. (its sitting in my closet waiting to be sent to locks of love)
2. My parentals came to visit! last month. that was fun.
3. Went to the world's 2nd tallest building.
4. Made TONS of new friends. (aka the neighbor behind us. Amazing lady.) 
5. My tai guy is probably going to be walking when i get home.
6. Made if through 4 months. 
7. My bestie is leaving me for a couple years. Samoa is calling his name. 
8. Dressed up as the COOLEST zombie ever for Halloween. 
9. I can pretty much speak chinese.... kinda.

& that is about all i can think of. Life here is great. I'm alive, learning tons, and missing my family and friends like crazy! only a few weeks left and the goal is to enjoy it like no other! 

"The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead" -sis. Hinkley. 

life is great. 

Love, Nans. 

Thus far.

so we've been here for awhile now. about 2 months. So i attempted to make a video about some of our adventures here. Here it is. my video making skills could use some work.

love nani.

Life Lessons.

hello world,
So things here on this island are pretty good. There's actually a typhoon going on right now, which is why I am actually blogging! This should happen more often. Well over the past few weeks that i've been here i've learned a few things. I'm not quite sure why I tend to learn life lessons when i'm far away from home, but I guess that's the way it works. (i'm sorry about this extremely long post, i've learned a lot. Feel free to stop reading whenever you want.) So here they are:

1. You teach by example, you learn by example. 
• Over the past 5 weeks as I've been teaching these kiddos over here in Taiwan, I've come to realize that they don't really know what i'm saying sometimes, or all the time. Body language, action and example are essential in every single thing I do if I actually want them to understand me. I must do what I want them to do. As I thought about this it has helped me gain a better understanding of WHY Christ came to the Earth and WHY he did all that he did, instead of just having it written in scripture or something. He set the example for us to learn what we need to do to become like him and what we need to do to be the best we can be. It's pretty amazing that someone would care about us enough to do that. Not only do i need to work on teaching others by the way i act, but i also need to follow the example that my savior has set for me. 
2. People are people, not objects. LOVE with your whole heart. 
• So my dad is a bit crazy about this book called The Anatomy of Peace. Everyone in my family is supposed to read it.. according to the parentals, but that's fine with me because it really is a great book. I'm not finished with it yet but i've learned a huge lesson so far and that is that one should not see others as objects, but as people, with real feelings, real struggles, real heartache. You never, ever, ever know what someone else is going through. Don't treat others like they are worth nothing, but rather see each other as celestial beings that they are and love them. Love everyone no matter what the circumstances are. 
3. There is a purpose to everything.
• So the other week at I was sitting in the English lessons held at the church and one of the new elders in the area was teaching some of the non-members about the plan of happiness. He first asked everyone where they thought that they came from and some of them said rocks and such and he asked things like, " why do you think you are here?" and just those usual questions. And then he went to ask, "Why would you even try if there was no purpose in this life? Why try to be better? why learn? why do anything at all?" That really hit me for some reason. THERE IS A REASON THAT WE ARE HERE. We are here to learn and to grow and to reach our potential of one day being able to be like God ourselves. It's crazy how everything works. 
4. Relationships with others > things.
• simple as that. you don't take things with you when you die. you take relationships.
5. God will provide the means by which you can accomplish something, you still have to act. 
•  There's a long story behind this, but i'll spare you the details. Alma 60:21. if you want something to happen, make it happen. Heavenly father will give you whatever you need to accomplish it but you need to do it. 
6. We are here to grow to our ultimate potential. 
• travel, travel, travel. learn, learn, learn. and all the rest.

So yeah. sorry again about the incredibly long post. these are just realizations and things I really, really need to work on. So yes. hope everyone is still doing good. 

Love,

Nani. 

One month down.

So we've been here for almost a month. Only 4 months and 29 days left!  I can't really believe it. TIME FLIES. It's crazy. I'm getting used to this incredibly humid weather and its finally starting to understand that we live here.The teaching is... easier, but still a bit harder than i thought it would be. It just makes me realize how much work every teacher i've ever had in my life had to do to prepare one lesson and i'm truly grateful for the work that they put into it. So if you every taught me anything in your life, THANK YOU! This week in class we actually really fun. We kind of just wing a lot of our classes because we don't ever plan enough material (which we should probably work on). In our class yesterday, we went down with not really any idea what we were going to do so we decided to teach them about how to keep your hair nice and the make up makes you beautiful. and then as clever as we are, we decided to let the kids do teacher nani's hair and teacher "cake"'s make up. It was pretty hilarious! 

 yes... what else is new? umm we made some new friends. Names are Ken and Daniel. They pretty much taught us how to play mah jong, which is so confusing so i'm surprised we actually got it. We also went with them and all the missionaries in the area to play frisbee this morning. it was way fun, or maybe it was just fun because that was the first sport i've played in this country. Gotta love me some asian frisbee!

 Enough about sports though.. We found ourselves a new favorite food... actually two new favorite foods. There are these waffle things here that are filled with some sort of creamy custard stuff and they are soooooo good! We also found these weird sandwich things that are like french toast with a little flap cut open and whatever meat you want inside. pretty much the best sandwich ever. The meat here is just so weird though. I think i might end up becoming a vegetarian. My blog posts are so random, sorry. but that's all for now. 


love nani.

oh, and CONGRATS TO MY BIG SISTER who got married today! wooo! :) So glad katie and I could attend. 

week one: accomplished.

hello all! well all i have to say is I'm alive! This whole teaching thing was A LOT harder than i ever expected but i think were finally getting a hang of it. We were pretty much allowed to do whatever we wanted for the first whole week and we found out that there is only so much to do. (so if anyone has any genius preschool ideas, shout them out!) But once the whole teaching thing for the week was over we actually had fun. SOOO a bit about this lovely city of Hualien, Taiwan; It is really pretty. The area where we live is basically in the middle of some Gardens with HUGE houses everywhere. They are kind of amazing. Then a few blocks over it turns into a city.

There is this thing called the night market where there are tons of little tents set up and different food restaurants serve there food. The smoothies are pretty much the bomb. I've had 8 so far and I haven't even been here for 2 weeks (although it feels like i've been here for 3 months already.) You can get whatever you want in them and they are just over $1. So yes, its almost a daily purchase. All the bread here is so good, the meat is.... interesting, and anything mango is delicious, and everywhere.

The drivers here, well they are just insane. You'll just have to experience it. We did meet this amazing family who took us out all weekend. One of the places they took us to was this amazingly beautiful river where there were spots to cliff jump and slide down rocks. It was probably the coolest outdoor activity i have ever done. The people here are so helpful and nice. Most of them think I'm from here (asian? hmmmm...) so they speak to me in chinese, but good thing i'm always with the WHITE girl who everyone says hello to as we walk down the street. Its pretty funny. OH yeah... so i think there is some sort of creature living inside my bed, and it comes out at night to eat my legs. They are basically terrorized by bug bites right now and they are insanely itchy. (my skins not doing so hot in the country.) but we were able to get some things to kill the bugs and relieve the itching so hopefully it works. There is so much to say, that i don't know where to start. i should probably just blog more often so i wont have to jam it into one post. So yes! thanks for reading this. if i bore you.... well you know what to do. So I hope you are having a splendid day and everything is dandy as ever!

love nani.

Were here!

        so we made it! yippee. it is pretty much awesome here. Here's what has happened so far. We boarded a plane, flew across the ocean, landed in taiwan, exchanged some money, bought a bus pass, hoped on a bus, met a dude at the train station, rode a train for 3 hours, squished 7 bags into a little honda, took it all to the house, ate some dumplings, drank a smoothie, ate some ice cream, went shopping, ate some chicken, ate some bread, ate some shaved ice stuff, went to sleep.That's about it. The food here is pretty dang good, in case you didn't know.

 Here's some interesting facts about this asian island:
 -everybody rides a scooter.
-no one follows the traffic laws (or maybe there are none here, the supposedly have a sixth sense)
-the clothes are cheap.
 -the food is cheaper.
 -it is 100 times more humid than Hawaii, i'm seating because i'm typing.
-smoothies are a dollar -the shaved ice is amazing
 - Chinese is hard to understand, especially when you don't know it.
- all the websites on my computer decided to translate themselves into chinese
 - i love it here!

 so yes, i will keep you posted... whoever is reading this.

 love nans.

Off to that little Chinese island.

ALOHA! So I will soon be departing Utah for that little island over there by china. I think it's called Taiwan. 6 months of some Asian lifestyle and teaching my butt off at the owl preschool. It's going to be an adventure. I don't know if I'm more scared or excited. It hasn't really hit me yet so once I bored that plane on Thursday morning at 1 I guess i'll find out. I just talked to Ms.Amy Schlauder last night and i'm more than prepared to go. My feelings on this whole trip are excitement, nervous, scared, anxious and well any other feeling you get when you're moving to another country. I'm just super excited for the smoothies. I heard they're the bomb. I'm going over with my cousin, Katelin Roper. sooo yes. That is just a little update. Love nani.