Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!

Just a few of the culture's beliefs revolving around the New Year:

-Lady in Red: Wow, I haven't ever seen so many colors. All these bright colored decorations bring good luck but it is the color red that is considered the ultimate luck bringer.

-Play till Late: Go to sleep past midnight on new year’s eve to ensure your parents will have a longer life.

-"I'll Have Some More, Please": The longer it takes you to eat your new year's eve dinner, the longer your life will be.

-Boom, Pow, Crackle: Set off fire crackers to welcome the new year and to chase away evil spirits.

-Balance the Books: Repay all your debts before the new year. Otherwise, you will be owing others all through the year.

-Dirty Doings: Put your feet up and relax. Certainly the most enjoyable of the Chinese New Year superstitions, sweeping and cleaning is strictly forbidden. The Chinese believe cleaning means you'll sweep all of your good luck out the front door.

-Coming Clean: Preceding the prior, you need to give the house a full spring clean, before putting cleaning tools in the cupboard on New Year's Eve.

The Berhan Chinese New Year Show

The entire Berhan Language Institute put on a new year production. Some results from the show:










Below: The kiddies are performing to the most current popular radio song in Taiwan- groovin the moves from the music video.

Attempt to make this not just a travel blog

Glancing quickly at my few posts, one would quickly find there is not much variety. I question what I should do to make this not such a travel blog? Well what are good mormon girls my age blogging about? their weekend trips with hubby, their 'new' style of jewelry, their child's dissipated 1st birthday party, their favorite great-grandmother's sugar cookie recipe, and their crafty beyond craft crazies.

Inspired by them, I baked a cake (from scratch- and loved doing it) for our roommate Callie's birthday and I've decided to post about it!

I'll be first to admit this is not an inherited recipe that's been memorized and perfected, it's google.com born. It was such a quick find that I noticed before putting it in the oven that the directions failed to mention how to include one of the listed ingredients.

With a little help from Megan to fluff up the grainy sugar powder (that's how it comes here) frosting, and Brandon as my 2:00 AM baking and music provider sidekick, the cake turned out excellent and everyone enjoyed it (at least that's what I was told)!

It's not nutritious but really delicious. It has the perfect amount of moisture, spice, and sweetness. Give it a try!

2/3 c. butter
1 1/3 c. sugar
1 c. milk
3 eggs
1 tblsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 c. all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

*Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately. Add the flour mixture slowly (dry) to the wet. Bake for the 30 minutes @ 350 F. Top with your favorite frosting recipe. (I made a buttercream vanilla frosting, baked two cakes separately and placed strawberry jam between the layers, garnished with chocolate shavings, syrup and strawberries)

Feng-Yuan, Taiwan Night Market

Downtown Feng-Yuan

Meet The Kids

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Only some things I’ll never understand

They have no “sense” here. Oh I am sorry, I meant to say “cents”. Their money consists of only dollars. It gets confusing but at least there’s no sales tax to worry about!

Maintaining open windows at all times (and refusing to close them) of an all cement building with no central heating (that’s our house and school) in 30° F winter weather. BRRR! I don’t understand.

Cram schools replacing parents, i.e. Lego Cram School. Come on! Just hang out with the kid and teach him how to build his own lego land.

Don’t know what a Cram school is? Well, the Taiwanese, and many other nationalities from Asia, believe they should send their children to all sorts of “cram” schools in order to compete against other talented Asian children. A parent often works for many hours a day to afford their children’s (usually 2 kids max) academic education. Therefore, students in Taiwan are often attending a plethora of different schools until very late in the evening.

Instead of “there’s an app for that”,

 In Taiwan I prefer “there’s a Cram school for that”.

When you try and carry a tune in Chinese, You can’t really sing pretty and make complete sense of what you are saying. It’s a tonal language.

Since when was putting your entire family on one scooter intelligent?


I have incredulous thoughts about the police driving BMWs. Do they really deserve those vehicles when they are only involved with high-speed freeway chases?

The acrid smell of ‘stinky tofu’ or ‘thousand-year old egg’ would and should deter anyone and everyone. Why did I not realize that before hand?

Is it necessary to think:
bad things will happen to you if you write in red ink?
And does the number four really sound like death in Chinese? –Aha! That could be the reason why they placed the American residents on the fourth floor.

And what is with that pinky fingernail? -huh, wisdom for the family?

Or how about that fountain of mole hairs?

Drinking warm or hot water during the cold winters could actually be somewhat logical.

The whiter the skin, the better! If only everyone could universally agree that was true than I would believe it too. I am sporting the natural skin color this winter season, not that you can ever tell but I usually don’t do that.

Well if I were in love I would like both… Taiwanese don’t usually say they love each other like Americans do. They show their love by their actions.

Much to my chagrin, live turtles and fish are played with for a night market game and children’s wrists are wacked with disciplinary sticks in school.


scooter scooter scooter scooter scooter, scooter, scooter, bus, scooter, scooter, scooter, oh a car, scooter, scooter, scooter, an American on a rusty bike (me), scooter, scooter, train, scooter, scooter, scooter, scooter

Did you ever think cleaning up your own dine-out table was a pain? Well, in Taiwan you must separate all foods, plastics, papers, etc. into five or so different garbage cans before you leave the area.

On the subject of garbage! How bout that musical garbage truck that we first mistook for the ice cream man. Boy were we disappointed.

No need for wit, just be extremely silly and you’ll get them rolling for quite some time.

If you know me well enough, you know that I wish all toilets were replaced with these squat toilets.

Mom, you would love this. The swimming pools here have over 30 different spa pools in one room with different jets for almost every part of the body. You name it they’ve got a jet for it… and I mean anything.

Instead of a glass of water the drink accompaniment is usually soup.

Women here will do anything to avoid muscle definition on their legs.

Did you know tofu, taro, and other vegetables could resemble so many different types of meat? Taste, look, color, you wouldn’t believe what they could make at the many vegetarian restaurants dotting the streets.

Ummm…I can’t be for certain but did I see that the third level of McDonalds has a floor dedicated for merely studying and nibbling on food?

In aggregate, this is a very short list of the observations I've noticed in my 2 1/2 weeks. I'm sure there will be more to come!

Still on an island far from you

I have been asked to be project lead over adobe stoves and women’s groups. The women’s groups have always been an interest to me because I find it very important to empower the women here. The Fijian and Indo-Fijian women have been somewhat emancipated from their traditional subordinate lifestyles, but many still suffer. For many women they have enjoyed taking a break from their daily rituals but some still find it hard to escape their many responsibilities. For those that come to listen, the lesson’s focus on all aspects of health (spiritual, mental, physical, emotional and intellectual). Last week I was excited teach one of our women’s group a lesson about physical activity and end it with aerobics. My American counterparts loved the workout but unfortunately only one Fijian was able to enjoy it too, which seemed arbitrary to the excitement the Fijians had the prior week. So, we are attempting the lesson again this week in hope it’s successful!


The stoves involve a lot of manual labor and we hope the Fijians are willing to work hard every time we come. The Fijians are in charge of getting clay from the river bed, sand, banana stock and rebar. We provide them a frame and a chimney for the smoke to escape. Both of those items can be made or paid for by the locals when we can’t provide it after we leave.

We have a lot of stoves to build, hopefully just oversee, before we leave in 2 ½ weeks. Our hope is to educate as many villagers about the process of making adobe stoves, which will one day lead to the abolishment of all open fires in Fiji. Okay, that probably won’t be happening any time soon or ever, but we are making improvements in at least some individuals or family’s lives. We had a reminder from our country director last night that we, as volunteers, can’t walk away frustrated because it is so difficult to see the change we are making. I may never see any result from the hard work we’ve done but hopefully we’ve planted a seed that will soon start to blossom.


This last weekend I planned a vacation trip with the new volunteers to whitewater river raft the Upper Navua River which has been nominated, as so our tour guide says, as one of the most beautiful river rafting trips in the world. I am not going to lie and I will probably have to just show you pictures, but the narrow canyon river was shrouded in lush rainforest fed by countless waterfalls. Supposedly, you can just watch the movie Anaconda to see what we experienced. And then you will also understand why we never wanted to fall out of the raft.

We spent the rest of our weekend in the capital Suva where we visited the Fijian museum (gotta love the fact that cannibalism only ended a little over 100 years ago, luckily only a few Fijians have asked, but not acted upon, about eating me). After being complimented a thousand times as a business tactic, we contributed to the Fijian economy by walking out of the local handicraft market with things we (or the people we give them to) will probably never use. We finished the evening by partying with Indians as we watched a real Bollywood movie. If you haven’t seen one of these movies, I highly recommend you see (a good) one. You, like me, might be lucky enough to pick up some new dance moves. Unlike me, the Indians were inhibited to be doing these moves as they walked out of the theatre. Remind me to show you when I get home : )