Rings, spiders, and a jaguar with no legs.

     Spiders don't usually bother me. Bees- maybe, roaches- definitely (they make me scream like a banshee), but spiders- not so much. In fact, I've had several roommates who would ask me to kill spiders for them because they didn't want to do it & it really didn't bother me. Lately, however, I've had some close encounters that have freaked me out a bit.
     I got back from Taiwan a little over a month ago and stayed with my parents in Vegas for a while. Then I spent a while visiting my sister & her family in California where I had a wonderful time playing games such as, "Space Pirates", "Wii step aerobics", "Throw the kid on the couch", "Did you seriously just punch my butt?" and "Who will the baby barf on next?" After a while, I made it back up Hurricane, Utah, where my car had been waiting patiently for me for the last 7 and a half months. Since I was going to be making a trip up to Provo, I decided to check the oil & whatever other fluids I could identify (brake fluid, wiper fluid, fluidity fluid, you know-the usuals). As soon as I popped the hood, though, I noticed about 20 big daddy long leg spiders hanging out in the guts of my car. Not cool. Now, I'm aware that daddy long legs are not dangerous. Some say they're not poisonous; others say they're oober poisonous, but their mouths are too small to actually bite you or something. Whatever the case may be, I know that a daddy-long-leg is not going to send me into the hospital. This knowledge, however, did not help in my present situation.
     Somebody once asked me if I would rather come home and find 100 poodles all over my front room or 1 legless jaguar on the floor. While the thought of a sharp toothed jaguar (likely ticked off my the fact that his legs are all awol) squirming around the floor doesn't exaclty appeal to me, I'd take it over the 100 poodles any day. 100 of anything is scary. Think about it: 100 poodles. 100 flies. 100 alarm clocks. (sick. I hate those things.) 100 clowns. 100 babies. All scary. The sheer quantity is terrifying. That's kind of how I felt when I encountered the spiders under my car hood. There were 20 spiders all up in the parts of my car where I needed to reach my hand down into in order to check fluids. I don't care if they're harmless, it's not gonna happen.
     I got a broom and tried sweeping out the spiders for a while until a man I didn't know pulled up into our driveway in his truck, got out and said, " That's no way to clean an engine." I explained the embarrassing truth and he explained that he actually thought I was trying to put out a fire. After that guy left, my Dad came out & helped me check the fluids. Somehow he could do it a lot better than I, since he didn't reflexively pull his hand away every 2 seconds like I did. I love my dad.
     Another week went by and the spiders under the hood had been forgotten about. Then a few nights ago, I decided to go through some of the stuff I had stored in my grandparents' garage while I was in Taiwan. My little sister, Haley, and I went out to the garage and began moving around the intimidating mound of boxes. My grandpa had been so kind as to cover my mound with a giant tarp; but tarp or no tarp, if you leave boxes in a garage for 7 and 1/2 months, you will get spiders. I managed to avoid the spiders for most of the time we were out there. I found the things I needed to find and then just as I finished replacing the tarp, Haley pointed to the arm of the sweater I was wearing and yelled, "Oh my gosh! Lindsay! It's on your arm!" I was only mildly freaked out at this point as I yelled, " Get it off! Get it off! What is it? Get it off!" Haley responded with a very convincing, " I can't!!!" I twisted to try and see the back of my arm (you know...the movement you make when you try to lick your elbow...if you haven't done it, please try now & tell me how it goes). On the back of my arm was not one, but 5 big daddy long legs. Once again, not cool. I’m telling you, it’s the sheer quantity that freaks me out. The second I saw them, I screamed and started flapping my arms, trying to fling the spiders off. I flapped my arms so hard that two of my rings flew off of my left hand. The spiders, however, held strong. I was finally able to brush most of them off and destroy the little jerk who was trying to crawl inside my sleeve, but I was still paranoid. Things went as follows:
Me: Haley! Do I have anymore spiders on me???
Haley: No.
Me: Check!!!!! (holding out my arm)
Haley: (giggling) There’s nothing! We need to find your rings!
Me: Who cares about my rings! Check my other arm! (holding it out) Check my legs! Check my hair!
Haley: (laughing uncontrollably) There’s nothing on you!
Me: That was terrible.
Haley: (suddenly serious) Eew! Right by your ear!!!
Me: BWAAAHH!!!
Haley: Gotcha.
Me: Punk!

     After my heart rate returned to normal, we looked around for the rings for a little while. We found one, but the other one never turned up. That’s ok, though, because I wear six rings and that’s possibly too many anyway. Kids always comment on the fact that I wear a lot of rings. All I can say is, at least it’s not 100. 100 of anything is scary. 

Southeast Asia!!!

I guess it's time to catch up!  I finished teaching in Taiwan, spent a week traveling to places in Taiwan that I still wanted to see, and then starting on January 1st, came to Thailand for a vacation!  Thailand has been wonderful!  It's absolutely beautiful!  We did a trek through the jungle near Chiang Mai, rode elephants, did some "whitewater" rafting & bamboo rafting, checked out Bangkok, saw more cross-dressers than I've ever seen in my life, (although our trek guide referred to them as "ladyboys"), etc.  After that, we headed to Southern Thailand & spent several days lying on the beach, sleeping in beach bungalows, and scuba diving.  My favorite things I saw while scuba diving were a sea turtle & a black tip reef shark.  Two nights ago we took a sleeper train to Malaysia, where we are now.  We took a nice little jungle walk today through the Cameron Highlands and now I am sitting in a little "internet room" about the size of a bathroom stall trying to hurry and write this because in a few minutes I need to catch a bus to Kuala Lumpur!  I am really loving traveling, and seeing tons of amazing things, but I'm also really happy that in exactly 2 weeks I will finally be home!  I'll try and post pictures soon.  Right now I have to catch that bus! 

Favorite Moments from Christmas in Taiwan

1. Making a Gingerbread house out of wafers. We realized halfway through that it looked like a Taiwanese house (tiles, all right angles, etc.) ,so we tried to make it look even more so by adding a scooter, clothesline, and a banana tree.

2. Dancing with students at our school’s Christmas dance. (…Even though the students were pretty much forced to dance against their will. Secretly most of them liked it, though!)

3. Acting out the Nativity Scene with the Primary kids at church.

4. “Secret Santa” gift exchange with the other teachers here. (As you can see, our gift wrapping supplies were limited… my favorite was the present wrapped in old progress reports!)

5. Running into Santa Claus. We were taking a train to Hualien on Christmas Eve and a Taiwanese Santa (complete with a shaving cream beard) came down the aisle passing out fish flavored candy.

6. Hanging out our stockings. We met up with some the other teachers at the hostel on Christmas Eve and they had us set out our “stockings” which were all filled with mahvelous things in the morning!

7. Christmas dinner!  After arriving in Hualien on Christmas Eve, we were STARVING!   After looking for a place to eat, we finally found some delicious dumplings and steam buns at a little restaurant in Hualien.

8. On Christmas day, we spent most of the day riding on scooters and walking around Taroko Gorge. It was kind of cold & rainy, but Taroko was beautiful, so it was definitely worth it!

Something I've been contemplating lately...

    I have gotten at least 4 itchy mosquito bites in the last 24 hours.  About 30 minutes ago I killed a mosquito that had snuck up on me while I was sitting on my bed.  It made me think. -- That mosquito was probably thinking he was about to have a nice snack (a.k.a.  my blood)  when he was suddenly squished, thus ending his short and creepy life.  That would probably be a lot like a human being smashed by a 300 foot tall hamburger.  One second you're thinking. "Wow!  Look at all that food!  I can't wait!"  The next minute, your food kills you.     If I wasn't so blasted itchy right now, I might actually feel sorry for mosquitos. 

Red Ink

The whiteboard markers that we use in our school are refillable.  When they start to run dry, you just twist the top off and fill them up with ink, rather than throwing them away and buying new ones.  Today I was using one of these markers in my class.  Apparently the marker had been filled up a little too much or something because when I pulled the lid off, red ink came dripping out all over my hand.  Neither I nor my students noticed at first.  Then, just a few seconds later, my eye started to itch, so I reached up and rubbed my eye, unknowingly smearing red ink on my face.  A few students let out gasps and screams, but I didn't know why.  Then I started to smell chemicals and I felt like I had gasses in my eye.  (That seems like a weird way to put it, but that was the first thing that came to my mind.)  I automatically started wiping my eye and that's when one of my students yelled, "Miss Lindsay!  Your hand!"  I looked down to see red ink all over my hand and then realized that I had spread it all over my face.  Of course, at this point I started laughing my head off!  It just really cracked me up to think about how freaky that would be for my students to look up and see what looked like blood dripping out of their teacher's eye.  Once my kids realized that it wasn't blood, they started laughing, too.  My favorite comment came frome Leo who said, "Miss Lindsay!  Who eat-a you?"

Foot mopping

A woman mopped my feet today. It wasn't a cultural thing- (they're not particulary into 'feet mopping' in Taiwan)- it could have happened anywhere. The fact is, however, that I was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus and a woman came up and mopped my feet. Now, I don't have particularly dirty feet, so I'm pretty sure she didn't think that my feet needed a good mopping, but she did it anyway. There are those who might say that it was an accident, but I beg to differ. I'm pretty sure that her thoughts were something like the following:
"Here I go, mopping the floor again. I would rather be at home, taking a nap...or eating a nice squid on a stick... or riding my scooter with the wind blowing through my hair... shoot, I need to get the scooter fixed. Seriously, though, I am so sick of mopping this floor. Why does my boss want me to mop it in the first place? It's halfway outdoors, for crying out loud! If only there were a way to make this more entertaining for myself......hey!...maybe I can mop someone's feet! Yeah! That sounds like fun! But, who? Oh, look! Foreigners! I bet that blonde girl doesn't speak much Chinese. She might know how to ask how much something costs or tell you where she is from, but I'm sure she doesn't know how to say, "Hey, stop that!"or "Please quit mopping me." And I'm pretty sure her little phrase book won't tell her how to say, "Back up off my feet!" or "Why don't you mop someone your own size?" Yes, she's the perfect victim. Completely defenseless-- and she's wearing sandals! Here, I go! I'll just pretend to be cleaning the floor under the bench. Ha! She fell for it! She's moving her feet out of the way! She can't hold them up forever, though! She doesn't have the stomache muscles! And she can't move cuz I'm right in her way! She'll have to lower them eventually! YES! There she goes! HA! I got the left foot! Woo hoo! Now the right one!!!! Mwahaha! Mopping feet is fun! I love this! I love my job! Life is wonderful!!! Oops! I almost smiled! I have to be careful. I don't want her to know I'm doing this on purpose. Yikes. Close call. Ok, who will my next victim be? Oooh! There's a dog sleeping under that chair! Here I go!"

Now, I am not at all bitter about this incident, I mean, really it turned out to be economically advantageous to me. Since my feet have been freshly mopped, I will not need to wash them when I shower tonight, thus saving money on soap. Really, it was a win-win situation... she got her entertainment, and I saved .0003 cents that I might otherwise have wasted. It's so nice when things work out like that.

Recent Stuffetty Stuff

So, Taiwan is great! The last few months since I last wrote on this little blog-a-ma-bob have been filled with tons of interesting experiences-- scuba diving in Green Island, riding a "hot dog boat" in Kenting, scaring children to tears at Halloween (oops), a kiss on the cheek from a random old man, eating "old cheese" on a stick, a terrifying roller coaster that made me scream so loud & high that I discovered a whole other register in my voice, several cute little monks, etc. There have been lots of other exciting, fun, crazy, awkward, frustrating, enlightening, and hilarious experiences, but since there are too many to catch up on, I'm just going to write about this past weekend.

This Saturday, we went to Guanziling to see the fire-water-mix. It was a pain in the rearsky to get there (trains, busses, taxis, & hiking were all involved), but it was worth it! Basically, it's a little pool of water where natural gasses come up and ignite once they reach the surface. Pretty much- it's water with fire on top of it. According to a sign near the pool, the fire can never be put out. Crazy! Anyway, it was really cool to see. There was one thing kind of weird about it all, though ( I mean aside from the fact that the water was on fire). In the Lonely Planet guidebook for Taiwan, it mentions that Guanziling is famous for two natural oddities; one being the fire-water-mix, and the other being a natural mud-hot-spring or something. I, personally, would have mentioned a third. While standing in front of the water-fire-mix, if you look up, you can see potatoes hanging from the trees directly above your head. Now, I may not know much, but there are a few things that I know for sure: 1. Chocolate is really good. 2. Families are important. 3. If you rearrange the letters in 'dormitory', you can spell 'dirty room'. 4. Potatoes have no business growing on trees.

I don't know who these people in Guanziling think they are, running around defying all laws of nature, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to get on their bad side.

Ok, so when it really comes down to it, I'm assuming that these brown lumpy things hanging from the trees are not actually potatoes, but rather some other thing that I've never heard of. I tried looking it up online, but I couldn't find anything. I'm kind of afraid to know the truth on this matter, though. On the one hand, I might find that the truth is boring and that these hanging anomalies are actually just a very unnatractive type of fruit. (Lame!) On the other hand, I might find out that the people of Guanziling can not only manipulate the elements to allow fire & water to coexist, but they can also grow potatoes anywhere they dang well please and that their children all pop out of heads of cabbage at birth. I bet they all have Xavier's signature on their hineys, too.

Creepy, creepy, creepy.