Taking the Good with the Bad

I've been pretty stressed for a while now and as you can tell it has been built up. That last post was right after a breakdown I had (PMS also played a BIG part in that as well). I have been an absolute SUPER bitch these past two weeks to EVERYONE and am surprised I still have friends and a boyfriend left!

Anyways, last week was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. On Sunday, I went to Ming Chia Mei and went on a cleaning supply shopping spree(Well...not really, but bought a few things). I FINALLY found a product that cleans the bathroom tiles so Hino helped me on Sunday to do that. He was AWESOME! He cleaned my bathroom of ALMOST all the mold and yucky stuff while I organized my closet, cleaned the mold off the NON-bathroom walls and arranged some things. the reason why he cleaned almost and not all was because I told him to stop. The product is basically bleach and even with my little window open, he was starting to feel dizzy so I made him stop.

During that time I got an SMS from a friend that Géant was having a sale on Flat Screen TVs and there was a 32" for only NT$9998 (€230) so while were waiting for the bathroom to dry, Hino took me there and I ended up finding a nice Ben Q 32" HDMI for about NT$14,000 (€320). I was trying to decide which one to buy and thought since I'm here and want to stay here at least a couple years, the Ben Q would be nicer. Plus, the TV that came with the apartment was blurry and hard to read and when it's cold blurs even more and frosts over..haha! Sooo...the TV came yesterday and it is sooo nice! I even stayed up to watch Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech on CNN and watching it on the flat screen was amazing!!

Buying a flat screen might sound odd for someone who is "just" an English teacher, but I am going to move out soon and since my horoscope is Cancer I NEED to have a comfy home...if I don't have a comfy home, then I usually have breakdowns like the one last week. I don't get out at all during the week and come home at like 21:30-22:00 from work almost every night and when I come home, I just want to veg out.

I also ended up buying a heater for my apartment which should come today. In Holland, it is cold from October to May pretty much and sometimes year round so central heating is necessary. But in Taiwan it is only cold for a couple months so places don't have central heating. But the past couple weeks have been REALLY cold at night..like 6 degrees celsius and like I said in my last post, there seems to be a lot of moisture in my apartment and I think a heater will dry things out and maybe keep me from being sick the ENTIRE winter..like me last year and like my colleagues now..ALWAYS sick!

Speaking of sick, I went to an ENT doctor last Friday because I had probably the worst sinus headache I had ever had. I've had sinus problems my whole life and Taiwan has made them worse!! He told me I have Acute Sinusitis and gave me antibiotics. Guess what the two of many contributions to Sinusitis are: Pollution and Mold...Gee! Not like I come in contact with those EVERY DAY!! So, my mom bought me a Neti Pot in the States and will be sending it to me.

What is a neti pot you ask? Well it's basically a teapot/genie lamp used for nasal irrigation for..well..Sinusitis. It's an Ayurvedic method and I've been wanting to get in to more Ayurvedic methods and cooking for a while now. Here's a link:

http://www.himalayaninstitute.org/store/product/d0e29a4e-507c-417e-86d0-f5c05320fbbe.aspx

Here's some possibly disgusting but perfect demonstration images of what it does:

http://images.google.com/images?q=neti+pot+images&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title


Last thing I wanted to mention before I go relax with my cup of Vanilla Chai Tea is something that dawned on me yesterday...
Yesterday after my first shift, I raced home from work cursing and swearing at the Taiwanese drivers thinking how I wanted to have EVERYONE banned from the road. I went to go park my scooter at my apartment and walk to my other school and along the way saw a dead rabbit in the middle of the road. There was no one around and I couldn't see any damage, but I could tell it wasn't breathing. I poked it ever so softly with my foot in case it was just sleeping...HOPING it would wake up and hop off...but it didn't. I am OVER-emotional and seeing something like that always makes me feel sooooooo bad! It didn't look run over...but it still made me really upset.

I began thinking that maybe someone was cruel and threw it out or abused it for fun and then I got so angry. I began thinking "What the hell am I doing here, if these people have ABSOLUTELY NO REGARD for anything...ESPECIALLY animals and their OWN children!!!!" The way they treat dogs and cats is horrendous. They cut off shark fins just to make a fancy soup and let the shark (which is endangered) die off to extinction. "Why am I here?!?!"

Then it hit me. I remembered that fortune I got from the Buddhist Temple in Amsterdam about how I was to feel welcome in Buddha's land and etc. and how when I got that fortune it was my destiny to come to Taiwan. Some higher force has directed me here so that I CAN help and make a difference!

These people emulate and worship Guanyin, but they don't seem to see that she was the Goddess of Mercy. She helped and saved people and I assume other living things. They talk the talk, but do they walk the walk?

So maybe I am here for selfish reasons: Learn Chinese, settle down, get my Masters, etc... But being an English teacher and a Taichung PAWS volunteer gives me that chance to teach appreciation of other things and living creatures in this world. I may not be good at it, but I need to try!

I can't give up!! Jiayo!