Passing the Time Van Gogh Style

I need to update about last weekend, I'll do that in another post. I went to Taichung Folk Park on the Sat and Hotsprings in Guguan on the Sunday.
But this weekend was also awesome! It was Dave's birthday yesterday, so he invited his friends out for dinner. It was a great meal at a Taiwanese fish restaurant. Then we went to Corner Cafe, it is a really cool lounge cigar bar. I loved that place. I will definitely go back there with a good book. We then went to a friends housewarming party. It was a late night but I had fun.

Today I went for lunch with Tanya and Dave, then I treated myself to some art supplies. I finally checked out an art store on the outskirts of Taichung (technically in Dali City) to see what they had. It is an Aladdin's cave. Wow! I had such a great time wandering around. I bought myself some palette knives, oil paints, oil, a canvas, two bits of wood and random bits to use in my paintings.

So I spent my evening relaxing and painting. Here is a pic of the one piece I finished, I painted it on the smaller piece of pine wood. The pic doesn't show it well, so I'll try again once it has dried. I've started something else, but the first layer needs to dry. If you click on the picture you can zoom in and see it better.

Pretty Pictures from the Chia Yi trip

Here are a few of my favourite pictures from Sunday.

Chia Yi

At the weekend, my head NST Dawnine has some awesome friends, invited me to join a group to Cha Yi. I'm not sure about the spelling. We went to a resort that has various activities on offer. It was such good fun! It was a brilliant day, I had so much fun! :D On the coach ride there we introduced ourselves to each other by use of the microphone.
The pictures go in reverse order, as that just happened to be the way it happened when I uploaded them. It'll take too long to sort through and organise the other way around. So enjoy my trip going backwards in time :D

I shot some paintballs, went frog fishing (didn't catch anything), made a fish out of a piece of grass, had an awesome lunch, and saw some beautiful (if somewhat slow) butterflies.

The Vacation of Greatness

I have finally managed to book my flights. And it is a wonder that I have booked them so early :D All thanks to having the extra pay from the Kindy job!! Haha :D

I will be flying back into the UK on the 24th Feb, spending a couple of nights in London with a friend and then i'll hop it up to Scotland. Spend a couple of weeks in 蘇格蘭 (Sūgélán- Scotland), and then fly over to Ireland for a few days before heading out back to Taiwan.

It will be a whirlwind vacation but it will be amazing! I really hope to fit in a day trip to Paris because I have never been, and if I can book the eurostar early enough it will be much cheaper than usual. Take a packed lunch and Bob's your uncle, a cheap day in Paris.

I'm so excited to have the flights booked! It won't be long now. Haha :D

Ode to the Guava

One of the things that I truly love about Taiwan is that I found out about the wonderful fruit that is the guava. Yum!

Vacation, woohoo!

So I officially have time off for March, well around that time. I have to transfer cash to the UK tomorrow and then I can find some cheap flights (hopefully cheap). Haha. I will let you all know what the actual dates are after i've booked the flights. Yay.

I have also booked time off work for my birthday, i'm taking the 16/17 and 18th off. I have no plans, which is excellent. I have no idea what I will do, but it will be nice to have time for myself.

Thanksgiving

My boss invited me to the annual HESS Thanksgiving dinner. I of course accepted, it's invitation only. I know I was only taking the place of the Head NST of my branch who had just resigned, but I think it will be great to go to it.

The only thing, a couple of days later my boss asked if I would give a speech. Eek! Now I have to give a 2-3 min speech about Thanksgiving. So I have to write it. haha. I need to get something write tomorrow. I'll post it here if it's any good :) Wish me luck.

Not 100%

The past couple of weeks i've not been feeling well. More like a lingering cold. It started as a pretty nasty cold and calmed down and has come back as nausea this weekend. Eek. I will be so happy to be back to 100% again.

I'm going to ask for some vacation time at my birthday. I could do with a couple of days to do nothing and maybe get away somewhere.

Halloween Festivities

For my Kindy class I dressed up last week. I was going to do it for every day of the week but I only managed Monday (witch), Tuesday (cat), Friday (pirate). It was good fun. We had a Halloween party on the Friday. The branch had made a haunted house in a spare classroom. Auntie (the all round cleaning lady) was a scary monster inside. She even gave me a fright. haha.

For my evening branch had a Halloween party on the Tuesday (so I was a pirate for that) and I had a party on the Friday for my Treehouse class. We dressed up and had a party. We worked for the first hour and went trick or treating in the second. It was good fun. We had a great activity where the kids had to dress two teachers as mummies (I was one). The kids had so much fun.

Good conversation

This weekend was spent mostly in bars and eating out with friends. Not a good thing to be done on a regular basis, but I decided on medicinal drinking. I was quite sick on Friday and i'm feeling a lot better than I did then.

I actually managed to get a hot toddy in a bar here on Friday. It was great!

I was out with friends last night, well one I know well, and two I didn't. I ended up being stuck in the middle of a situation I would rather not be. 'A' liked 'B' but 'B' liked 'C'. I hate being involved in situations like that all because I was there on the night and 'B' is a girl and my being the only other girl there, she talked to me about it. It will teach me to be more observant and duck out early if I see something like that happening again.

So that was my soap drama of the weekend. I managed to get a bit of work done today which was nice. Now the start of another full week. I think I need a vacation soon. I'm going to try and get a few days off around my birthday so I can relax. I need a break.

Long awaited post

Sorry about the lack of posts. I have been super busy at work at the moment and my internet is a nightmare when trying to post photographs. So I groan when thinking about it, it takes a long time and so I think 'i'll do that tomorrow', but I never have the time. When the weekend arrives I prefer to head out and enjoy the time out of work, or curl up and read a book.

I'm doing well. Work is hectic but should settle down in a couple of weeks. I have a parents day for my morning school in November, so a little stressed at that. And apparently we have a Christmas show to put on as well. eek. I'm looking forward to the weekend. I don't have a class on Saturday. I would love to get up at the crack of dawn and go for a long drive to somewhere pretty, but I shall see what happens :) I may just enjoy a lie-in. haha.

I am definitely in need of a vacation. Speaking of which. I have submitted vacation forms for February. As part of my contract I get a month off, so I've applied to have Feb off and a little bit of March. I won't know if it will get approved yet, as my main Boss is on vacation at the moment. So it won't be another couple of weeks until I know. But I will let you guys know as soon as I do. Then there will be the task of finding flights :) Hunting around to get a good deal.

Love to all
xxx

Cingjing Farm

To mark the turning of another yearly cycle of Geoff's life we went to Cingjing farm. It was so good! It was cold, and there were sheep and cows. I loved it there. Apparently you can carry on the road that took us there and it will eventually take you to the other side of the Island to Hualien. I'm thinking of a great vacation week of driving over there :) (more pictures to follow)
































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