I feel its about time I document this chapter in my life, since it's worth documenting and I think it'll give you a better understanding of where I'm coming from.
It was around this time; give about a month, last year (holy crap) that I decided to go to Taiwan with my friends Kim and Christina to teach English for a year. Before that decision was made, the three of us were meeting together on an inconsistent weekly basis to get our TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate, to make themselves more competitive when they go to Taiwan to find jobs, and to make myself more competitive as I was applying to the Peace Corps at the time.
So it was during one of our many, MANY fellowship conferences that Kim told me that she doesn't think I should do Peace Corps, thinking that I wouldn't be able to commit to the 2 years that it called for, a concern I already had and it quickly spread to the rest of my friends. Knowing that their concern had a lot of merit, and was out of love, I decided to stop pursuing the Peace Corps. It was also towards the end of the conference that Kim asked me if I wanted to come to Taiwan with her and Christina. About time she asked! I've been wanting to visit Taiwan ever since I ate Taiwanese food (that same year), and what better opportunity to do so by tagging along!
We finished our TEFL cerficate and I took an intensive Chinese course during the summer that squeezed a year's worth of Chinese into 9 weeks to prepare myself. I'll mention that this is probably one of the best summers of my life and my favorite semester at UCLA, despite the 4 hours of sleep I was getting every night because of Chinese. I think it had to do with the fact that I had a super sweet desk that was FREE and also that we were playing Bang!™ almost every night, and also I loved my roommate, whos name was Green. Me, Kim, and Christina were also meeting up nightly to pray for one another as we were preparing for Taiwan. It was a great summer, comparable to the summer that I spent in Fresno and Southeast Asia. I feel very bless that God was able to end my time at UCLA with a Bang! see what I did there?
Come September, we left for Taiwan. Each of us had seperate flights. I admit, I was crying like a freaking girl when I was waiting at the gate. It was pretty embarassing, but I was feeling very very lonely. Mostly because I was at the airport by myself heading to a foreign land and I won't be back for a year. Or so I thought, apparently God had bigger plans for me. I will conclude this story for you in my next post. I'll tell you about my experiences in Taiwan, and why I'm back.
