January 30, 2022 Operation Restoration: Why It’s Okay to Not Be Okay When I was little, I remember thinking how amazing it would be to be an adult. Being able to pay for things, make my own decisions, travel, and most importantly, have my place. That was always a creative dream of mine–to design my home with my style, much like I did my room until the age of eighteen.
November 16, 2019 Cleaning House “Ready?” I nodded over to Thomas, who held his wand tightly in his hand. His dark eyes shifted to the rattling door. I gulped. “On three.” “One,” we both paused, hearing more intense rattling, “two…three.” SLAM! One flick of our wrists and the lock turned. The door burst open, slamming open against the wall. Pages upon pages flew out of the attic, causing both of us to hold our hands up. Books toppled to the hallway floor from the stairs, reaching our toes and growing into a large pile.
February 3, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: Learning the Lingo Ah, Mandarin Chinese. I’m sure many of you know that it is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, for speakers of alphabet based languages, that is. Here in Taiwan, Traditional Mandarin Chinese is spoken. It is nearly the same as Simplified Chinese when you hear it spoken, but taking a look at the characters, you notice the difference. Traditional Mandarin Chinese has more strokes and more complexity to it. Taiwan has kept the traditional writing alive despite China’s transition to a simple version of the original language.
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.
January 2, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: The Start It’s a new year, and it’s officially (when you read this, not as I type this) 58 days until I step onto the plane bound for North America. Believe me, I find it hard to believe that my time in Taiwan is coming to an end. It seems that it was only yesterday that I stepped onto the plane to move here, to start working as an English teacher. Honestly, I had no idea of the places and people I would encounter along the way. That is precisely why in honor of my time in Taiwan and all the memories I have collected along the way, this blog post serves as the first in a series I am releasing, titled “Taking on Taiwan”. And there’s no better place to start than right at the beginning, in October of 2015.
November 21, 2018 Travels from the Time Vault: Greece When I was sixth grade, my history teacher introduced us about ancient civilizations. We learned about the rich ancient history in Africa, India, China, Aztec society, Incan society, and then we came to the Romans and the Greeks. I’ve always been fascinated by mythology, and Greek mythology is without a doubt my favorite. It was also around the same time that Rick Riordan released the first of his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which I still love to this day. I could open up one of those books now and feel the same amount of joy reading it as I did the first time I found them. Sixth grade was also the year that I traveled to Greece.
November 18, 2018 Travels from the Time Vault: Paris Growing up in many movies I indulged in as a youngster, so much emphasis was placed upon the city of lights and romance. Paris was like this beacon of romantic expectation. I imagined being proposed to on top of the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the entirety of the metropolis beneath us. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. And I’m certain that I’m not the only one who once pictured sauntering by the banks of the Seine, eating un pain au chocolat and sipping un café, and admiring artwork in museums like the Musée d’Orsay. Needless to say, finally arriving in le Havre gave me goosebumps.
September 19, 2018 Where (And How) to Learn Languages Abroad About a year ago, I began seeing a tutor to learn a fair bit of Mandarin. The whole situation lasted about five months, before things were cut off and we both went separate ways. In that time, I made it through two and a half textbooks. So I like to tell people I learned what I like to call “survival Chinese”. I can order food, drinks, read numbers and basic signs, and ask for help for specific things. I recognize about 40% of what is said, and from what I do know how to say, I say it correctly. Only 50% of the time. Like I said, survival Chinese. I’m proud of it, even if I didn’t get as far as I originally intended to at the beginning of it all.
