Kinmen

This is a picture taken from the top of Mount Taiwu in Kinmen - a little island off the coast of the main island of Taiwan. I spent two weeks there and just returned home on Sunday. I loved it there and it was very hard to leave! It's a beautiful island but the people we met were even more beautiful.

Apple is a sophmore at Kinmen Institute of Technology. She is always smiling and has a great sense of humor. She's a beautiful girl even if she always told us that she wasn't!

Frank was the self-proclaimed "handsome man." He is a very good basketball player and I heard that he was great with the kids during English classes.

Jill has a very quiet, sweet personality and I loved being around her. Her English is very good, but she is very modest about it. She is constantly trying to learn new things. She wants to become a vegetarian and told me that she eats cockroaches for protein. Ha!

Brenda loves to surf and has some awesome sunglasses. She is a joy to be around and has an awesome smile. She also has very good English! I think she's going to pass the TOEFL.

Kory is a really smart guy - he's studied in Australia! He is really fun to talk to and he was really helpful and informative on tours. He took me to the funeral I had to play at the first day I was in Kinmen and I would have been lost without him. It was the first funeral he'd ever been to. Haha

Cherry is Kory's awesome girlfriend. She has a really funny sense of humor and I wish I could have gotten to know her better. She was always wanting to know more about English and always wanting to learn.

Crystal was one of the assistants in the 1st-3rd grade English class until she got in a scooter accident. I heard that she hurt her ankle but she was ok. We missed her!

Mark is one of the seniors at KMIT. He was an amazing tour guide on the first couple days when they were showing us the island. One thing I noticed about him is that no matter what he did - playing ultimate frisbee, translating for the tour guide, being a TA, studying for the TOEFL - he did it as well as he possibly could. I can learn a lot from him!

Giant was actually NOT a giant...she was very short and cute. Her Chinese name is awesome but she doesn't want me to tell everyone what it is. Her nickname is Bird ("Niao" in pinyin - but if you say it the wrong way, you're really saying something about peepee. So be careful). She loved the story of David and Goliath from the Bible. She was a great hostess, very welcoming, and a lot of fun to be around. While we were there, she had her 22nd birthday and we had a huge party for her!

Becky is my sister from another mister. Her nickname is Chicken ("Ji"). She was really good at chocolate chocolate milkshake and she's going to be America's next top model. She loves to roar and always has a midnight snack handy. We almost walked all the way to China one night! Seriously, she's awesome and I absolutely loved being around her. She is always smiling and has a hilarious sense of humor, and she is really good at sports.

Kris is my other sister from another mister. She always makes fun of me for wearing diapers (because my nickname was Grandma and of course all grannies wear diapers). She's a total changster and is so talented at so many things - break dancing, singing, basketball, ultimate frisbee, etc. She's super smart and was really good with the kids in our English class. She's going to China tomorrow!

I miss all of you guys and love all of you so much. I hope and pray I'll see you all again!