One year in Taiwan

So today is the first. I have been in Taiwan one whole year. Infact, next year's Fulbright group is arriving today and I will go down to Yilan to talk to them next week. Hum... Strangely fitting, my schooling has trained me to see things in year long chunks and I am consiquentially ready to get going and start something new. I have felt a little purposeless these past few weeks, and this past week that felling compounded with worrying about my Aunt Susan's health was a lot for me.

i guess I figured I would have a lot to do these to months, with travels and the wedding and all. It's turned out that it's really not that much. We are leaving a lot of our time around Asia free and relatively open. We bought tickets and have the Trans-mongolian part planned. Yesterday I looked into Thai cooking schools since Colin has gotten really into cooking and I love food too. Plus I love activities. Really though, I could leave tomorrow without much fear oof things not being ready.

Now the wedding is a different story. I've done everything I can do, designed a wedding dress, chosen flower colors, worked on ring designs. Now all I have to do is wait for Bonnie, our wedding planner to pull things together, and give us some options, after that all I have to do is say yes or no, this one or that one.

I managed to get some more tutoring on accident yesterday. I guess I didn't realize we were talking about adding another tutoree. Oh well, I guess I can use the money. It's a little far away and in the evening, but I don't know how to get out of it now and it will be less then a month of classes.

What I'm trying to get at with all of this is that I am planning on focusing on my art and photography these next few weeks. I'll get closer to mastering my camera for the trip (color adds a lot of problems for me). I'm having fun with Barb's drawings and I just got a gridded sketchbook for drawing/writing on our trip. It's amazing how quickly I get back into the drawing swing if I do it regularly. I could certainly improve my drawing, but for now just doing it is the best way. I joined a flickr phot group a few weeks ago that I get weekly assignments for. I am having a really good time and you could say I have internet friends, very international group of active members. Anyway, I won last week's assignment (group vote) on public transportation with this photo:


I have another photo tip website that I'm paying attention to to. Now all I need is photoshop and a computer that can handle that. That will wait for when I get home and probalby when I have a job.

That's about it. I'll try to do something interesting that I can write about soon. I'm going to the library today. I think that is exciting, but I can't really write about it.