The Life of Rachel: "Wake Me Up When September Ends"

September crawled by slower than a turtle. Seriously, I do not know how I made it through this month but I am so glad I did. It was fun, it wasn't a bad month, but it just went so slow and I wanted it to be over! I wanted it to cool down and be the holidays already. But as always I had fun with the kids.

with Nancy

with Jean

Charis and Marshmallows

Isn't this guy a stud?

My bangs finally grew out

with Linda
haha Mia in the back picking her nose

At the local watering hole
(taken by Ashley)

The first Saturday in September we went to Sun Moon Lake with one of our secretaries, Emma and her daughter Stone, and a student Venus and her mom. We drove up in two separate cars. Kayla and I were with Venus. Her mom played the school CD the whole time. By the end of the day we had heard all they songs like 30 times and were annoyed by the girls voice on it. But as we were pulling up we were actually singing all the songs with it! Every week we teach our kids a new song and someone recorded all of them for the kids to take home and listen at home. At least I know them all now.. Ashley and Logan went with Emma and Stone, they ended up getting lost on the way and we had to wait for them their and Logan was so car sick by the time he got there. So while we waited for them to get there we went to this cool castle thing. I'm not sure exactly what it is or what is is for but it looked really cool and there was a giant chess set in the front of it! Then when they got there we went to lunch, a typical Taiwanese place, family style with a lazy Susan in the middle. The Taiwanese ladies ordered it all but it ended up so good! I even like fish here because it is so fresh, I just don't know how to order sea food yet, I will always pick beef first. Then we went to the Lake and looked around, there were shops around that we looked at. We took a boat across to different parts of the lake. We walked up to a temple that was by the lake. After that we went on a gondola ride. I guess there is a theme park up in the mountains that the gondola takes you to. It was too late for us to go in and see it but the gondola ride showed us the lake and mountains and it was beautiful!

On the way to Sun Moon Lake

Venus is so cute!

It was safe

Giant Chess Set

A carriage

Random castle

lunch

My bowl

Eating seafood

Flower soup

Yummy

Sun moon Lake

Parrot

Gondola Ride

Aboriginal entrance to the
theme park

Thanks for these cute pics Ashley

The group

This guy was real and he hit me on
the head as I walked by

Boat Ride

Food this month!! A lot of good food. The local ward had a Mexican party that we went to. That was fun, we got a little bit of Mexican food and a nice break from the normal. One night we went and got burgers for dinner with the missionaries to say goodbye to a missionary that had been in our area for a long time. Every Monday we have FHE with the missionaries, elders and sisters, in our local area. Its been fun getting to know new people as a lot of them have been American. Then one night my student Kitty took Kayla and I out to dinner. Logan and Ashley didn't go because Logan was in the hospital with a hole in his lung. At dinner I didn't like my dessert so they brought me out another one with writing on it. It was cute! And then one afternoon we went to Ikea to eat. It was so delicious to have potatoes and meatballs. The Ikea had just opened so it was packed! At the end of September was Logan's birthday so we went to Outback Steakhouse in Taichung to celebrate his birthday. It was delicious! But I think my stomach is starting to not be able to handle American food anymore :( It hurt my tummy pretty bad.

Hamburger

September 16th marked a 100 days left for me in Taiwan! I was pretty excited about this. I stayed up until midnight to capture a photo at exactly 100 days. I'm a nerd.

Logan making some salsa at the Mexican party

Good Dessert

Ikea was hoppin!

At my favorite Tepanyaki place

Yummy!

Sprouts, cabbage, rice and soup

Steak!!

These two pictures were taken by Ashley at
Logan's birthday dinner

So the highlight of September, and of this second half of the year, was supposed to be a vacation to Green Island, an island off the coast of Taiwan that is supposedly beautiful and tropical and great. I was looking forward to being on the beach, in a salt water hot spring (one of the only on the planet), scuba diving, and just getting darker (I'm beginning to be more than a little pale). However, that was not the plan of the typhoon god. And our trip was cancelled when the biggest storm of the year hit Taiwan. Thanks typhoon. And it wasn't even that bad, at least do some damage if your cancelling my vacation. Instead I spent most of the four day weekend in Taipei. Which was fun too.

We had Thursday and Friday off school. Thursday I relaxed at home and that night our home teacher Jesse took us to celebrate Moon Festival with some friends of his. We had a BBQ at their house and the kids set off fireworks. It was fun! Taiwanese BBQ's are a little different than ours, the food is different but it was still good. And a lot of fun to see how the Taiwanese celebrate Moon Festival with their families - They BBQ the whole weekend.

Moon on Moon Festival!

Taiwanese BBQ

Me and Thomas, Jesse's son

The group! This picture was taken by Ashley

Ashley took this picture too

Ashley took this lovely photo :)

The group at dinner

Fireworks!

BBQ!

BBQ Squid

Most of the weekend was spent just chilling. A much needed break from school and the small towns we live in. I went with two girls, Lauren and Ellie, from the other ILP school in Taiwan. We treated ourselves to a nice hotel, with big soft fluffy beds and comforters and a breakfast buffet. It was so nice to be somewhere clean and modern. There was a promised bathtub that we did not receive though which was disappointing.
Friday we went to Taipei 101 and went up to the top. Because of the typhoon we couldn't go all the way to the outside observation deck but it was still cool to be up there. At one point it was the tallest building in the world and it has one of the fastest elevators in the world.

On the bus to Taipei on Friday

On Saturday we went to the Palace Museum which has a lot of artifacts from mainland China. I guess China destroyed a lot of that kind of stuff when it became communist so this is one of the only places you can see some of China's history. It actually ended up being not as cool as we thought it was going to be. That could be because there was sooo many people there. And a lot of them were Mainland Chinese tourists, who are really loud and not very nice. They push you and go in front of you to look at things. Overall it was not a very fun experience in that museum. We were not even allowed to bring our bags inside let alone cameras so I couldn't take any pictures inside. That night we went to some night markets and got reflexology foot messages. It was so nice. And hilarious. The man that massaged Lauren told her to shave her legs, and didn't use gloves while he massages her and everyone else wore gloves while they massaged. She was so grossed out.
On Sunday we slept in and relaxed. Then we left the hotel and did a little shopping. We found a See's Candies. I was so excited! It was sooo expensive compared to America but it was so delicious I bought a little bit. I cannot wait until Christmas for See's! Santa always brings my family See's every year. :) After that we went home to our separate towns. It was such a nice weekend away from everything.
September was the longest month of the year for me so far. We did a ton of fun things but for some reason it lasted as long as three or four months in my head. I guess because nothing really exciting happens in September to look forward to, and with Logan going into the hospital it made work a little harder. But I got through it. Eventually it ended and October began.