I Clearly Need More Friends

I might go fishing this morning if my lungs hold up. Gotta love summer!

Alright, here's the deal. At some point over the last week, this blog received its first "award." Basically, it's just a fun award to help recognize up-and-coming bloggers. The award that I received is called "The Versatile Blogger Award." Here's the "badge" that comes with it. Please excuse my excessive use of quotation marks. I don't know why my fingers are suddenly attracted to them as I type...

A little girly for my taste, but I'll take what I can get.

Life Goal Achieved: Learn to Read Greek

So I just realized I'm eating some Easter jelly beans and I'm supposed to be working out soon. Don't judge me!

Ah, sweet summer solace. It's so nice to be free. Free from 8 AM classes, deadlines, expectations, responsibility, paying bills... Okay, so not quite that far. But seriously, it's great to be out of school for a few months. I feel bad for people that take classes year-round, honestly. But more power to 'em - they'll be my boss someday, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the freedom that is summer.

This summer is especially freeing, in my mind. This may have something to do with the fact that over the last three summers I have traveled to Sierra Leone, gotten married to the love of my life, and traveled to Taiwan. Ya know, the usual.

Like I said, though, this summer is going to be nice. I mean, all we're doing is completing our internships, which sounds like a lot bigger deal than it is. I promise. Internships got nothin' on airport security in Taiwan. Those beagles don't play!

Scary stuff, right?

Life Goal Completed: Visit Asia

Disclaimer: I want to get off on the right foot here as I begin to post about visiting Asia. In order to do that, I need to address the fact that, although I've spent the last 9 weeks in Asia, I've only been in one country, with basically one type of people group, and heck, I've haven't even been to the mainland; I'm on an island! However, this is still Asia, and I've definitely had a life goal for a while to spend time on every continent, so even though I'll make generalizations about Asia, know that they don't necessarily apply all over the continent, just like any other generalization isn't always true.

Now that we're clear on that...

First of all, I'm blessed that God has allowed me, at the young age of 20, to have already spent time on four continents. I'm especially thankful for the last two months I've been allowed to serve here and fill a need for a time...

More than Just a Life Goal: Visit a Buddhist Temple

A few nights ago, as we were taking care of the babies, Kalyn and I talked about how we were getting cabin fever from not being anywhere outside of THOGL or our apartment here in Taiwan. We were a little frustrated and not sure what to do because, well, we work at night. There aren't a lot of places open around midnight here, we can't just abandon the babies, and let's be honest - nobody wants to pick up a night shift and then work again the next day. We figured out a solution to our "sickness", though. We decided to visit the Buddhist temple that hovers over the lake on the way home in the morning (after our shift was over)...

Ride a Passenger Train: Another Life Goal Completed!

So, as you can see from the picture, I rode my first train! A few days ago we traversed from Luodong, Taiwan to Hualien, Taiwan via train, and I couldn't contain my excitement. Turns out it was pretty awesome!







Entering the train, I wasn't really sure what to do, seeing as how I am in a foreign country and hardly understand 10 words of Chinese. However, our fearless leader, Ted, made sure we found our seats...