Now we’re back and it time for real winter. Multiple feet of snow in Michigan, temperatures hitting the -40 mark meeting of Fahrenheit and Celsius in Saskatchewan, and the occasional ice storm. Of course, we’re in the most insulated houses we’ve been in in this season in eight years, so that’s a bit of a balance. We have sweaters and coats made for the weather – that’s nice too.

I don’t like being cold. I never have. I agreed with my friend Ben when he used to say that freezing to death is better than cooking to death and you can always add another layer but you’ll get arrested eventually if you keep taking them off, but in the end I still liked being warm. Sure, Taiwan summers were sweaty and you didn’t want to touch anyone, but there was no shivering and air conditioning could be found almost anywhere. Driving around on the scooter was quite pleasant as well. In fact, being home this past summer, I rarely found it warm enough to wear shorts, and I LOVE wearing shorts. Suffice to say, I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors wearing sweaters this winter. When I do go out, there’s no tough-guy attitude here – I’m bundled up, scarf and all. I’m dying to dig out my snowmobiler’s mitts, but they’re packed for the move. It still may be worth it.

One thing I found is that it takes one season to adjust. My first summer in Taiwan was barely bearable. After that, it wasn’t a problem. This first winter has been baby steps, but by next November (aided by the fact that we’ll be in Vancouver), I be back in fair shape. Still bundled up, though – I’m not teenager anymore.

We’re just finishing week five out of six. How is it? Well, out of the three, I would definitely say that the push-ups are the hardest. I was able to do a fair number of push-ups at the start (40 on the initial test), and even more back when I was doing kung fu. I’ve managed to get that up to 55 without stopping, which I’m quite proud of, though I don’t see how I’ll be able to jump from there to 100 in a week, unless breaks are allowed while still holding oneself up.

Squats follow (for me) – I’ve always had pretty good legs, and while these make me sweat, they’re doable. I’m pretty hopeful on doing the 200 next week. Sit-ups are my easiest (#2 for Chris)  – for both of us, it’s more of a question of neck strength before ab strength. Is this a common problem with sit-ups? Are we doing something wrong? Mine has subsided greatly, but it still bothers Chris. Still, 200 should be OK.

The program is really nice because it’s got built-in understanding that not everyone’s the same and it is a rather tough program. In fact, it encourages you to redo a week if you’re feeling beat by it. Really, it’s just nice to have a routine, especially repetitions slowly growing and all laid out for you instead of trying to do a big batch of 200 in one go off the start. Chris doesn’t like a lot of repetitive exercise, she prefers to be learning or having fun while exercising, but she likes this because it has that definition and a goal always in sight.

What will we do when we’re done? There are suggestions to try it again with variations for some of the exercises. I’d like to just keep up the final week, if possible – it’s a decent work out and will at least keep up the muscles. Only time will tell, but we’re both committed to staying healthy, so we should be able to fit it in somewhere!

Having taught English and having tried to lay out rules for punctuation, I know how hard it is to try and define these ethereal concepts. My Taiwanese students, most of whom didn’t read English books outside of their English class, had a very hard time with assigning proper positioning to anything outside of periods and trying to give them rules proved much harder than I thought it would. I can completely understand that it would be hard to get students to even catch up to where they’re supposed to be, never mind have them move beyond that. That’s a lot of reading to catch up on.

Really, I think most of the problems could be fixed by having these students (or future students) read more. When you see enough examples of how it should be, you start doing it yourself. Trust me. In these days of libraries closing due to budget cuts, it’s getting harder and harder to encourage. I speak from experience here – when we were living abroad in places with no public libraries (luckily, we had access to book swaps and private libraries), it was difficult – you have to love books to spend lots of money on them.

Unfortunately, that love of books that I will nurture often starts at a young age, and TV is slowly eating away at that base. It’s a hard battle to fight these days, but I know people who have done it successfully. Like so much else, it just takes time and effort.

I’ve been meaning to document about how coming back to North America has affected me for some time. I’ve talked about it a fair amount with friends and especially with Christine: we’ve had some adjustments together and apart from each other. There are so many aspects that I’m going to start with one that’s been pretty easy for us to confront, as we encounter it at least three times a day: food.

The first thing I noticed coming back was salt and how much of it seemed to be in so many things. I was raised in a household with high blood pressure, so salt was not added to a lot of things and I noticed it fairly easily. This did not deter me from using it when I started cooking on my own: I discovered how well it brought out tastes when used properly.

I don’t remember noticing an especial saltiness to food while I was abroad, or at least, in any place that I didn’t expect it. Of course, soy sauce made its presence known in Taiwan, and the Argentines did salt their beef before grilling it (made it worth it), as well as nearly everything, but, I don’t know, it seemed to be in the right place. Back here, I find things to be overly salty, to the point that I have stopped eating things due to excessive saltiness, especially in restaurants.

Nowadays, I find processed foods to be mildly unpleasant. I much prefer cooking using whole foods and really look forward to being able to prepare a lot of our own stuff and even preserving through canning and dehydration. The recent report that Canadians eat way too much salt didn’t surprise me at all. I take inspiration from veteran blogger and friend Andrea who tries to show that eating healthily isn’t a hard habit to adopt, even if you have a family. Here’s hoping that the gospel of healthy spreads quickly these days.

I figured the return might as well be something fun, and Andrea had a Christmas day challenge that fit the bill: a photo each hour on the hour of Christmas day. Go and check out her results. They make a great Christmas day.

Sun’s just coming up at 8:00!

We headed off to the juvenile detention facility that Chris’s dad volunteers at every second week. There was a prayer service, but we also brought cookies and sung (religious) carols. The kids seemed like good kids – most of them were there for truancy. No photos inside, however.

Leaving the facility.

Presents!

Stockings! Doing opening later and slower really draws out Christmas nicely.

Whew! Gift opening is hard. Time for a rest with the pup.

Chocolates! A definite must-have for this household at Christmas. (We’re still resting. Hard morning.)

This little nativity is also a tradition in this household. It’s called a creche set, which I didn’t know before today.

Turkey’s almost done!

Finally getting around to carving. Bacon is seriously hoping for droppings.

Bwoooooo I am full. What an awesome dinner.

Homemade egg nog and spiced rum. I never enjoyed egg nog until I started making it myself in Argentina. Now it’s a tradition I intend to keep.

Time for dessert! After being tempted by these for a week, it’s time to dig in and really enjoy the Christmas cookies.

Last photos of the night, as the rest would’ve looked the same: games. Apples to apples for a couple of hours, then we tried Things, which isn’t so fun when everyone’s tired.

This was a lot of fun and I hope to try it again for other events.

1. The World Games came and went. It was a bit of a fiasco in terms of organization (at least, according to the foreign community) because so much of it was only in Chinese – ticket sales, commentary, the opening and closing ceremonies, most of the volunteers. Get this: there was one native Russian speaker for the entire event. One! A couple of beginner Taiwanese students, but anything more than, “Can I help you?” and “Please stand over here,” and they were shaking with nerves. It didn’t help that the Russians were rather surly – they reduced a number of Taiwanese women to tears. Everything finished fine, but I think Kaohsiung will not get the international reputation it desired. People will talk about the fun they had and how nice the people of Taiwan are, but they will also laugh about the Chinglish and the frustration they felt when no one could answer their questions. Christine was a volunteer for Spanish-speakers, but all of the foreign-language volunteers were confined to helping people deal with insurance – not one was allowed to help anyone at a venue, even if the team spoke neither Chinese nor English. There was a lot of that sort of thing going on.
2. I enjoyed the games a lot, hitting 12 events in all and wishing I had seen more. Korfball was by far my favourite – it’s like basketball and ultimate put together. You can check out some pics on flickr.
3. I drove by a pet store the other day with a brand of dog food for sale called V-1 DOG JISM. Ew.
4. There have been three discernible earthquakes and the worst typhoon/flooding to hit the south in fifty years in the last month. It’s been OK in the city here, but outlying counties have been hit hard by the typhoon (the earthquakes have not cause any damage, luckily). Chris and I have been out a wee bit helping and both of us just constantly shake our heads and wonder what we would do if this happened to us. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a humanitarian tragedy and it’s….hard. And I’m not even affected! The people of Taiwan have been so good to us, I just feel that it’s unfair. Is it ever fair?
5. We went to Penghu this summer, as well as a trip down south to the beach town of Hengchun, and I did a big hike to an area that probably won’t be accessible for some months or even years now (due to the aforementioned flooding and typhoon). The hike is up on flickr, as are the beach town pictures (sadly without any beach, it was a rainy weekend) and the Penghu pics will be up very soon. All were very enjoyable in their own ways. I’m enjoying seeing the island more this time back.
6. I’ve had two photography exhibitions this summer. Both had a fair number of people come by, one had mild financial success (and would’ve been better if a tropical storm hadn’t blown through opening night) and the other faired pretty poorly. Ah, win some lose some.

Alright, that’ll do for now. I hope to get back here more, even short little posts more often instead of big, long, highly irregular ones.

Brappers Care

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EARTH

There is little we can do sometimes

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Sometimes, you just have to sigh and laugh.