HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORIS!!!

Exactly 10 days into 2007 already and I finally get to make my first entry of the year. Started the year with sickness but I recovered very fast. So to me it's actually a good sign. Then I just started my teacher training but I already miss my students that I can't wait to go back to the classroom to be a better teacher. Last but not least I have to say Emilee, you rock! I finally got your YA DVDs which were almost 2 years in the making (or to be more exact, copying & burning, I REALLY REALLY appreciate it though) and I watched them all in one seating! They really made my day and brought back all those memories which all just seem like yesterday. Here are some of my favorites of the tour DVDs:

• I laughed so hard!!! Emilee I do think you did hang out with that Jeromy guy too much. What's up with his "off-color" comments? Haha... :)
• I ALWAYS look stupid on the video... :)
• It's so funny Emilee always makes comments WITH her own face on camera.
• I love the chapter titles: "To what city is this" (YAs, repeat after me, Quanzhou...), "Boo How Xiamen" (whenever you say that word in the video, I'm rolling on the floor), "Howdy Doo Hangzhou", and "Screw You Shanghai"?!
• In the only real interview of Benji he asked why he's like a poodle... I think he's real mad...
• You can see the YAs (including myself) were lipsyncing during the firesides...
• The clip of the rickshaw ride was actually like the show "America (or China) Most Wanted"... not the riders but the rickshaw driver/runner.
• Emilee, you captured parts of the tour that I missed: your bus ride upon arriving Hong Kong (I was on my way home!), you guys ended up teaching English at Nankai University (I was with the coolest group of local students), the train ride (I NEVER left my bed as you all said the "bathroom" was... ), etc.
• Oh, the new meaning of "aim to please"!!! :)

Well it's all bittersweet experience becoming pure joy as I watched them. Those good ol' days. Here it is some more pics as reminders...

Of course there's the dragon song...

First meal in China (with Amy, Libby M., Katie, Jamie, Lee, Forrest, Emilee, and Jason)

Chillin' in Quanzhou (with Erin, Lars, and Chloe)

At the blind & deaf school. Using my very limited Chinese sign language, this kid taught me some more. I was very touched that day by what I saw there. Loved the kids.

The YA girls know how to strike the Chinese picture pose (with Heather, Taylor, Libby F., & Kami)

In Shanghai with Heather, Annalece, Taylor, Chad, Heidi, Stephen, Kevin, and Seidi)

Emilee, the latest spokeperson for NuSkin China... (Emilee, don't hate me for putting this one up but I think it is funny considering the situation at the time)

Matt with his imaginary squatter...

Is Erin drunk or possessed after putting that dress on? Wait a minute, where's Lars?

There he is. Oh, he did pass out in the hotel lobby, no wonder...

The techies at the Pavalion of Ten Thousand Springs

Ran into Big Brandon John (roommates twice on my mission) and his wife at the Beijing fireside. Small world!

THIS is real Korean BBQ!

Last day of tour. Saying goodbye to Matt, Heather, Stephen, Kyle, and Brittny.

For all you faithful readers of my blog (c'mon I know you are out there somewhere :) ), I know you have been starving for my new posts or pictures, haha! It's been almost a month since my last entry, so here are a few pictures of the happenings in the past few weeks since a picture is worth a thousand words...

I was thrilled to make my trip back to Utah for thanksgiving and the Arches is the place I have always wanted to go. Now it is my favorite place on earth.

I stopped by Vegas on the way back to Cali but was stuck on holiday highway traffic for 13 hours which usually should only take 8!!! This past Monday we had an immersion activity for the students in which we all pretended to be in China and it was Chinese only that no English was allowed. It was great! You don't see me in the picture as I was hosting the Chinese Jeopardy (TV game show) game in another room. One question goes "One on the left, one on the right; you can touch them but not in sight." Let me know if you want to know the answer but one student blurted out "buttock" that I almost died laughing in front of everybody...

My last piece of exciting news: I got a new video iPod!!! And it's free!!! Woohooh!!! Technically it's given by the school for us to help teaching but guess what I put into the playlist first... ;p

I'm behind on this now. For the past week things have been pretty crazy. Work gets busier each day while I'm still settling in my new apartment. At the same time this place is already transitioning into a condominium with a new name Footprints on the Bay! And they are already persuading us to buy the unit! I wish I could afford it as I'm liking this place each day. I can swim in the pool pretty much any time I want and the laundry room here uses a smart card system which means no saving quarters!!! And I also discovered the sauna room last night! Hooray! The only downside is that animals are everywhere here. It is not that I don't like animals (remember, I was a biology major) but the night I moved in I saw at least three raccoons running around the parking lot which was kinda scary. Then I almost hit a deer while driving. Basically this town is like an open zoo. You see new form of life everyday. Yesterday a hummingbird was lingering around my head on campus for a short while and I thought it was going to attack me!

Another experience I had was that I got a haircut at a national chain salon SxxxxCuts but it cost twice as much as what I would have paid in Utah. When I first talked to my hairdresser I thought "Uh-oh.... I can hardly understand him." It turned out that he was a Vietnamese refugee who lived in Hong Kong for a few years! He told me all those interesting experience he had and even told me how much he paid for hair beauty school to become a stylist! The only other hair stylist in the shop was a Korean lady who spoke even less English and I felt for that poor Caucasian man who came in later and it was quite entertaining to see how they interacted.

This past week I also gave a talk in my ward and my assigned topic was "Enduring Well". I really enjoyed the process of preparing the talk and I have learned a great deal. The script can be read here.

Oh I also taught the EQ lesson today at church and I had been nervous the whole past week! I hardly knew any people in the ward! It turned out pretty good, just too short on time. It was on "agency". And in addition to President Woodruff's quotes from the manual, I found these quotes as I prepared the lesson:

• Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God's greatest gift to man. -David O Mckay
• Every drop of divine blood was payment for a costly plan that provided us with moral agency. -Elder Spencer Condie
• There is little advantage to living in a free country if we are in bondage to personal habits. -Elder Spencer Condie

These were some of the very few pictures I took since I got to Monterey...

The night before I arrived I stayed at Howard Johnson in Vegas and had a nice breakfast buffet ... I needed energy for my long drive! And in the car... notice the wind turbines on the mountain... it looked really cool when you drove up close!














I live within walking distance to the beach... when the weather is good, the view is stunningly great! I love the ocean! And I'm also very close to the very well known Cannery Road. I found that great chocolate/ice cream shop that I loved in San Francisco here... Ghirardelli, Yeah!

Well, nothing special really planned for Halloween, but I did have a rather unusual experience a couple days ago. I was taking a walk along the famous Cannery Row by the Monterey Bay beach and I discovered this Spirit of Monterey Wax Museum and I was curious enough to check it out. The guy who worked there told me he self taught Esperanto, and at that point I couldn't recall what language it was, but now I remember it was one of those "artificial" languages meant to be a world language which never got caught on. Anyways, it was around 7pm but there's NObody inside the museum and it's really dark and seemed like a haunted house. It was designed to be educational but turned out to be just a plain creepy place. The old recording of Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck's voice just made it even more peculiar. One of the wax figures even breathed! Good thing I wasn't scared and thought I should have paid to go to a real haunted house. So I think I have already had my Halloween moment this year.

Just finished a little booklet called 港式翻譯疑難解說 by 李劍雄, and he gives a lot of great tips on Chinese/English translation. I think people who are involved in C/E translation or interpretation should read it. I especially like these quotes:

• "It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech." -Mark Twain (If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear...)
• "Translationese is an artificial formof a receptor language, in violation of normal grammatical and semotactic patterns, caused by an excessive effort toward formal correspondence... Translationese has arisen in many parts of the world... is often accepted, especially by educated nationals, as the only possible medium for communicating materials which have first been expressed in a foreign language... (scholars) not realizing that this banal and artificial form of language fails utterly to do justice to the rich sources of the receptor language." -Nider and Taber (Grammar translation is not THE way to learn a language, that's why I don't like the approach at work a lot of the times...)

Then here come some more random fun, cute, and even cheesy and corny quotes I found, I think my former boss Dr. Oaks would love these as he has been working on (or has finished?) a book on language ambiguities:

• A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two-tired.
• Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
• With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
• When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
• He broke into a song because he couldn't find the key.
• The short fortune teller who escaped from prison; a small medium at large.
• When you've seen a shopping center you've seen a mall. (so true in america!)
• When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
• Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
• Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
• Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. (I love this one! it's true vice versa as well. I probably am the opposite kind...)

Saw United 93 over the weekend. No stars. No fluff. No gimmick. Sometimes real life events are a lot more dramatic than fictitious drama.

I've been here in Monterey exactly 1 month and over 4 weeks working at the DLI. I started the day with a "bang" that I got picked on vehicle security inspection again on my way to work and I was late to class. It's the same group of students who were affected and they said "poor thing, you always get picked when we are your first class of the day." Then the call from the apartment management came that my apartment will not be ready for another 10 days. I'm so mad that I'm just gonna take my deposit back and move on to find a new place. I will buy the contract from one of the cotenants at the place I'm staying at which will save me lots of effort, headaches, money, and time.

And my log-in and computer at work are finally arriving within this week! Great!

I watched Crash over the weekend and at first I didn't like it and I questioned its being best picture last year. It's too "heavy". Heavy with drama, heavy with "F-bombs", heavy with sensationalisms. The more I thought about it, the more I like it though. I like the allegory between car crash and culture crash. How traffic runs into each other and how lives cross each other. I like movies that make me think. The music is beautiful and the acting is impeccable.

I like my job more each day as it's not really hard work and I'm so glad these days after work I have a lot more time to read, think, and watch movies that I've wanted to for a long time. I've been reading several books concurrently (I do think I have ADDs): including a book of everything about Monterey, 1421 (China's sea voyage before Columbus), a book on translation HK style, as well as the Idiot's Guide to American History which is fascinating to read. I just read about the connections between Asians and the Native Americans (they likely crossed the "land bridge" linking the 2 continents close to Alaska many thousand years ago) and the origin of the name America (from the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci). There's so much to learn and so much I don't know!

Just a couple random "discoveries" that I found on the internet. I was so "busy" at work that I decided to do a google search of myself. Has anyone ever done that? I found an article by Sean Luke who was one of the first missionaries who taught me the discussions and later got me baptized into the church. He talks about his short trip in Hong Kong and mentioned me quite a bit as we did hang out while he's in town. It's interesting to see yourself in someone else's stories.It happened right before I went on my mission in Hong Kong. It's been a long while.

I also found this YA picture on the Church's Hong Kong web site.

Slept a lot over the holiday weekend and still want to rest more because I think my body has been overworked. Yesterday after church I was going to have a walk with a couple friends along the beach at Point Lobos but instead I slept in for a nap and ended up wandering in Carmel-by-the-Sea by myself trying to catch up with them. However the beach and scene in Carmel were stunningly beautiful and heavenly. With the perfect weather and nice art galleries around, this place is just lovely. What I like about the towns here in Monterey County is that it has the real small town USA vibe without the typical chain stores like MckieDs, Walmart, GAP, etc. Ok, there IS a Golden Arches in downtown Monterey, but all fast food chains are not as popular here as in anywhere else. How can one escape from running into the big Ms anywhere in the world? Maybe Antartica? The other night I even saw the Taco Bell in downtown completely... empty during prime time!!! That's incredible.
Last night I saw a wonderful documentary on China on the Discovery Channel. I think it should be a required viewing for all students of Chinese or anyone interested in the current situations in China. I am going to buy a copy from their store.

It's been rather miraculous how I got my housing settled. I was planning to stay at the school lodge for a few more days but I was informed I had to move out because of their overbooking during the holiday weekend. Good thing I was able to get in touch with a Wang Laoshi whom I've never met and she was willing to let me stay at hers for 3 weeks before I move into my new apartment. She's been extremely hospitable and friendly and offered whatever I need. It's just like a mortal guardian angel appearing at the time of need. I wonder if I am doing the same for others when needed and we all need that as well.

She asked me where I graduated from and as I mentioned BYU she just beamed and said "I love your song and dance group!" She was referring to the Young Ambassador's performance she saw in Beijing (where she's from) during the early 80's. I told her I was part of the group last year and traveled to China as well. What a conincidence.

I took a bunch of pictures with my cell phone but haven't got to load them to my computer yet. Stay tuned... and happy Moon Festival! I want moon cakes!

Thanks to Amy's notice, I was able to watch the Young Ambassador's TV special "Journey Through China" on the internet at the MIIS library. I thought that program was not going to make it on TV at all and it's surprising it's being broadcast rather frequently on BYUTV. As I watched it, those bittersweet experience of the 30-day tour all came back along with some of my fondest memories. Good times.

Right before I got to the library, I was curious to see one of the main streets in downtown was completely blocked off and a huge crowd was all over. It was a weekly farmer's market right at the center of the city and I loved the atmosphere and the fun stuff that they have. Fresh produce, food stalls with items from all over the world, handicrafts, live music, etc. This town is not as boring as I once thought. I even ran into Sara and Sophia there.

As I get acquainted with the 30 army students and the fellow teachers more, teaching is not as nerve-wrecking any more. Some of them are amazingly good, especially the ones who are pro-active and have a positive learning attitude. It does seem to show that there is a correlation between attitude and outcome in learning. And I finally got my housing issue resolved. Yay! I'm excited!

Moving to the Navy Postgraduate School and hopefully will be able to move in my OWN place within a week. I'm tired of the nomadic life. Pretty much settled down in my new office and started practice interviewing the graduating class. It's very interesting to get to know a bit of the army students' personal lives. It's hard to contemplate what they have to go through while putting their own lives behind. Also their ability to communicate in Chinese talking about current affairs and politics after studying Chinese for a little more than a year is just awe-inspiring.

In between work, I saw a deer family wandering on campus and I wish I had my camera with me to capture the moment. The scene highly resembles this picture though.

P.S. If any of you are reading this (my blog), you know there's a comment section under each entry, don't you? You know what I mean... :)

Finally got my new ID and I don't have to walk all the way downhill (and uphill back) for internet access. My legs are still sore from this. Work kind of started and things are going pretty crazy. All the waiting, rules-abiding, waiting, background checking, and more waiting pretty much filled my schedule of the day. Yesterday I got to walk along the sidewalk by the sea with a few newly acquainted friends. It's amazing to see all those sea animals (sea lions, seals, and otters) lying around. I definitely have to come walk more often.

All is well here in Monterey, California. It's a whole new world and an adventure for me. I'm here at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) using the internet since I don't have internet access yet and even a permanent place to live!!! The weather and the view is spectacular and it's strange to live in a place guarded and protected by the army 24-7. I've gained so much respect to the military already seeing them walk around everywhere. I guess I will even learn more when I officially start working next week.

I've been hiding my head either behind the screen or at the Church translating booth doing translation these days. I got assigned to translate a BYU Ed Week talk on the Da Vinci Code (over 30 pages and 40K words!!!) and I almost didn't sleep last night. I haven't been this stressed out since I finished my thesis. In the midst of the craze I still somehow managed to watch 2 movies (DVD) Hoodwinked and the Sentinel. They are both okay only and they are both a little forced drama. However I think Keifer Sutherland is a rather awesome actor though.

5 years passed. Things changed. Nothing stayed the same.

It's sad that this summer is pretty much over. Fall weather is here and I started Fall with a bang! No, I mean a sneeze and a cold. Well, I can't complain much that I had a great summer: finished my thesis, walked for graduation, had fun on birthday, camped in Yellowstone, moved to new apartment, traveled with family, and got a job offer! Yeah! Here it is some of the highlights from this summer (thanks to Carrie & Doris for some of the pictures)...