February 17, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: It’s Time to Chase By the time you read this, it is long past the new year’s resolutions and the hype fading away from us, even if we try to help it. It’s inevitable: all around the world, whenever December ends and January arrives, people set aside their bad habits, their fears, and they do their best to make new goals, plans, and resolutions. But why is it that we often fail to follow through on what we set out to do?
January 20, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: The Unexpected Bonuses For those of you who keep up regularly with my blog, you’re probably familiar with my fun experience in the ER a little while back. I’ve never been a fan of the doctor–as I am sure not many people are–but honestly, visiting the doctor in Taiwan is one of the many bonuses to living here. As an expat, I definitely have a different experience than the locals when it comes to daily life, but there are bonuses to living in Taiwan, and perhaps living in Asia in general. So let’s break down just a few of the pros to moving to this island:
January 16, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: My Lizzie Moment Growing up as a late 90s to early 2000s kid, Lizzie McGuire and Disney were all the craze. Honestly, I think everyone wanted to be Lizzie McGuire at some point in their childhood. She had Gordo and Miranda, and then she even got a movie where she met a handsome Italian pop singer (who turned out to be terrible in the end, unfortunately) and she sang in front of thousands of people, and still got Gordo in the end. But mostly, I wanted to be Lizzie McGuire for one solid reason: that Vespa ride in The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
January 9, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: The Buzz About Buxibans Not less than twenty-four hours after touching down in Taipei the second time, I was sitting in a lecture hall among forty other men and women. Some of them were the same age as I was, while others were older with far more teaching credentials than I had. Exhaustion filled me, mostly because I’d spent much of the night chatting with my roommate and one of my now good friends, Rona, after she arrived as well. We awaited our training leaders to start what would be a week’s worth of learning how to teach and more about the HESS curriculum.
December 30, 2018 New Year, Same Me 2018 flew by in the blink of an eye. It honestly feels like I woke up and it was January, blinked a couple of times, and here we are in December, right before New Years’ Eve. I’m so grateful for all that has happened in the last year. I started a fitness routine and kept up with it, I wrote three books and published two of them before the end of the year, I visited home and saw most of my family and friends, decided to move home, and now, as you are reading this, I will be preparing for my NYE celebration in Hsinchu with two of my best friends.
December 23, 2018 What Happens After Your Last Game I remember the first time I stepped foot on the ice in hockey skates. At nine years old, I had donned figure skates for six years leading up to that, but nothing could prepare me for the dozens of bruises and bumps I had all over my body as I got used to life without toe picks. But yet, despite every fall and a few stifled laughs from my teammates that summer, I kept on trying. Thirteen years later, I would step on the ice for the last time, wearing my collegiate uniform and equipment way larger than the first set of pads I wore way back when.
December 9, 2018 Culture Kids Recently, a coworker of mine lent me the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. For those of you who don’t know, it was on the U.S. Bestseller list and it’s a highly acclaimed book, and rightfully so. Without giving too much away, the contents of the story are pretty simple: it’s about a teacher reconnecting with his student and their very last class together: a class all about life, and how to be a good human. And as you may guess, it only took place on Tuesdays.
December 5, 2018 Tattooed Back in May 2013, I went in for my first tattoo ever. I was terrified, but I spent a lot of my days back then in a constant state of anxiety. So, in an effort to push myself past my comfort zone, I sat under the needle for about an hour. I got my first tattoo, and one that would cause me a lot of controversy for a couple of years: a girl breaking out of chains.
December 2, 2018 Travels from the Time Vault: Czech Republic Growing up, my parents were adamant about exposing us to our heritage. Both of my parents come from diverse backgrounds. My mother is English, Irish, Scottish, and Polish, while my father hails from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and England. Any family gathering we went to was complete with delicacies from every side of our heritage. They spared no expense when time proved available and there was a chance to explore uncharted territory. I was very blessed with a lot of chances to see England, Germany, and other parts of Europe before reaching adolescence. Among those as I reached my teenage years, Czech Republic made it onto my list of places visited.
November 14, 2018 Travels from the Time Vault: London I don’t remember the first time I traveled to London, mostly because I was only an infant when my parents first took me. My father used to travel a lot with his business, so we went there frequently, as well as other places in Europe. We continued to go there when I was younger, until our family grew a little bit more and things busied up enough where we didn’t have the time. But we had our fair share of family adventures, most of the time accompanied by our favorite cab driver, Charles. It wasn’t until I was eleven that I ventured there on my own with a student group.
