I bought some flowers for 10 NT (about 30 US cents) for my dinning room table.
They have lasted over 2.5 weeks now. And, they are now more beautiful than when I bought them (most of them opened up at my home).
My buying of fresh flowers is thanks to be flywashed by Flylady!!
I was reading about cravings the other day. For example, when you crave chocolate what your body really wants is magnesium, so you should eat raw nuts and seeds or fruit.
So, I wanna know what a ginger candy craving means. Recently, I have been craving this! It is great! But, you can't eat too much of it at one time cuz your mouth will be on fire!!
Today, in my erhu lesson*, I had some trouble. I kept messing up with where my fingers should be, but if I got the fingering correct I would be on the wrong string.
Why? Why was I just not getting it this week? Last week was great! This week? Oh, I wanted to throw the thing!
I'll tell you why I had trouble this week. Every time I had trouble my mind was on something else. Sometimes I was just thinking about technique: "pull. push. pull. am i off? should I be pushing or puling now?" Sometimes I was thinking about the song: "oh, I like this song. it sounds really good on the erhu." Sometimes I was thinking about my own inadequacy, "my teacher makes it sound so pretty, when I play the same song it sounds so ugly." And, once it was on what I am writing about right now: "amanda, if you think about anything, if your mind is filled with thoughts, then you can't play right at all. stop it. now focus."
There are very few times in my life where I have had to have the discipline to have a completely thought-free thinker. My thinker loves to think. It is hard to make it think of nothing--to just let my brain tell my hands what to do without thinking about it.
But, habits are just this: things we do without thinking about them.
And, while I want to stop thinking while I play my erhu, I want to start thinking about my habits--to decide which ones to keep and which ones to declutter from my life. And to decide which ones I want to add to make my life more simple and focused.
* The erhu (pictured above) is a two-stringed traditional Chinese instrument. I have been learning to play it for about 8 months now.
Heather from Mom 2 Mom Connection wrote for the Carnival of Beauty this week about seeing "the boundaries of time as a blessing in order to keep [her] balanced."
I too have learned to love a timer recently. I use them both at home and at school.
My students got used to me using them in the classroom, but they think it is funny that I also use them at home. I have three in my house--one on my fridge, one by my computer, and one in a central location in my home--and thanks to flylady.net they are all set to 15 minutes.
But, using a timer has been such a blessing for me. Here is why:
--a timer lets me feel successful. It tells me "yea! you did it! you can stop now." otherwise, as a perfectionist, I can't stop till it is perfect.
--it lets me focus completely on my task. I don't have to keep looking at the clock to see how much time has passed. (In class this means, I can say 20 min to finish this and then spend all my energy helping students without worrying about really using 30 or 40 min on the task--allowing me to follow my lesson plans for successfully.)
--it lets me do things I never would do otherwise. I often think things take longer than they really do. But doing it for 15 min is do-able--I am always surprised just how much really can be done in 15 min.
--helps me manage my day. There are times--like today--when I have "15 min days." I have a list of things that need to be done and take 15 min to spend on each task; after 15 min, I switch and do something else.
When I first found flylady, I ignored her advice about a timer. Now, I wish I had not--it is the best thing I have found for manging my time and being productive. Like Heather, my timer and setting time boundaries have truly been a blessing.
The one I use at school is really cool--it is like a stoplight (the pic for this blog). It lets us visually see how much more time we have left. I got it from a company called Learning Resources.
For 2006, I want to make Scripture an important part of my life.
First, I would like to memorize whole sections of the Bible, not just a verse here and a verse there. I am praying now about what to memorize first. I found this list of articles on scrpture memory.
Another thing I would like to do in 2006 is read through the Bible in one year. I began tonight by looking for reading plans. I found one site that details and links to the various sites with different “though the Bible in a year” plans. I downloaded the pdf file from the Discipleship Journal site. Will print it out tomorrow.
I have a nice recording of The New Living Version on CD. Maybe I should rip it and add parts of it to my ipod.
This has been a great Christmas weekend!!
I spent the weekend with the Minnich family--we opened presents on Christmas Eve, and had "Christmas Dinner" on Friday and Saturday night! Then today, Christmas Day, we worshipped in the park. I got to hold the Minnich's youngest son while he slept. I think that truly might have been the best Christmas I got this year. What a blessing!!
When I came home this afternoon, I waited for Gilby (he was being doggy-watched by a student), and then we took some pictures and opened our gifts from NeeNee and PawPaw. :) He loves his new mini-kong.
Then, I called my family and Ellen to tell them Merry Christmas!! It was great to hear their voices. Just wish I could have joined them for pancakes.
All in all . . . it was a nice weekend! :)
p.s. will post some pics from the weekend tomorrow.
My camera had a bad fall today. It was attached to a tripod that got knocked over. :(
Immediately, I noticed the battery/memory stick door was a little loose (both popped out upon impact) and a chip on the corner. My heart started to flip-flop at this point. The camera turned on and could still take pictures; however, the flash was broke.
So, I have dropped it off at a repair shop, and it should take 2-3 weeks to hear back from them. If the repair is less than 500 NT, they will just fix it. However, I seriously doubt that will be the case. So, I have already started thinking about its replacement.
This camera was excellent to me. I've had it less than 3 years, but have taken nearly 7000 great pictures with it. It stayed in my purse every day of those three years! My purse feels empty without it. :(
There was a time when I actually started to put the library of congress numbers on the spines of my books and arrange them in that order. Rumor has it, the First Lady kept her books arranged like this too.
It was too time consuming for me to continue that project, but using librarything sounds like something I would benefit from and could do easily.
Currently all books in my bedroom and living room have been added. Now to do my study . . . uh that will take awhile!
To click this goal off, I will have all books that i own in taiwan on my librarything. Not sure if I have more than 200 books (excluding sample textbooks) here in Taiwan or not—it is free up to 200 books.
However, adding tags, comments and ratings . . . don’t know if or when that will be done. And about all my books in the States—hmmm don’t know if that will ever happen either.
However, he still has no name.
Isn't he just the cutest??
Here is the door to my apartment:
When I came home today, it made me think of my "milkshake-ness" -- a little American and a little Taiwanese at the same time! For those of you who can't read Chinese, the red paper says "peace and joy."
You know living in a foreign country presents all kinds of interesting problems. And, these problems are only compounded if you are illiterate in the native language.
Well, I am not exactly illiterate. I can read maybe a thousand Chinese characters (of the appox. 8000 a college grad in Taiwan knows). So, my mere thousand characters do not qualify me to understand the directions on the back of a bottle of Drano. Heck, it doesn't even qualify me to be able to pick out the product I need off of the "cleaning supply shelf" at the local "everything for sale" store.
But, thankfully, Taiwan is kind to their illiterate. The bottle of Drano has great graphics on the front to let me know it is Drano (it even has the English word, of course that is partly under the price tag). And, there are nice, easy to understand line drawings on the back of the bottle telling me how to use the product. And, I do know enough Chinese to be able to read the "1/2 bottle" and "1 hour" and other stuff like that.
So, I am grateful for the people at Drano thinking about me and my illiteracy when they wrote the directions for how to use the stuff. I don't remember there being little pictures that go along with directions on stuff in the States, but it has been awhile since I looked. So, this summer I will look and see if I just remember wrong or not.
Oh . . . and I did successfully get my tub's drain un-clogged! :)
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