My Heart is Full

 Last night was one of the rare nights where I woke up in the middle of the night and had trouble falling back to sleep. The reason was lame... I was looking forward to read more comments from my former students on my teacher appreciation related post from earlier today 😖😖😖 I guess what kept me up was the multiple conflicting emotions that is coming at my 3am brain from all directions. There was pride (the bad ego kind) - as the comments start to come and I found myself being a modern teenager being overly concerned about how many more comments I would get. There was concern - as I ponder over how I should respond to each comment from my former student so that they know they are all valued. Last but not least, it was a very full heart, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of joy and satisfaction to hear back from the kiddos from my past almost 13 years of teaching that they have been doing well. I guess this last part answers one of my constant lingering faith questions - Why did God create us? It is for His joy and satisfaction to see us grow in His image. If He were to create a race of robots programmed to do exactly as He wanted, with no free-will, with no innate desire to find our who the creator is, there would be a lot less joy and satisfaction. 

What have I been up to since the last post 

To sum it up, I've been consumed with the busyness of life. I guess I'll sum things up in my favorite method of writing - bullet points

• weekly weekend brunch with my kids - Taiwanese breakfast is easily one of the top 10 of my favorite things since moving to Taiwan. Some of my favorite childhood memories is getting McD breakfast with my parents. Hopefully this weekly tradition with my kids is something they will remember fondly and continue with their own kids in the future
• maintaining my health - I've started becoming more cautious of my health at least in terms of diet (still unhealthy, but better), less carbs, more vegetables, less late night snacks. And thanks to Taiwan's universal health care, all my poor blood test numbers have been improving
• Kenting in back to back months - the first time is March with my 9th grade students as we went on our annual mountain ocean week without walls - hiking the mountains in nantou and snorkeling in the oceans in kenting. Then again in April with the family to Tainan, Kaohsiung then Kenting, thiswas our first time back in Kenting in almost 2 years. It was great to be there and hang out with old and new friends

• Nathanael is going to school next year! It has been a LONG 11 years and after this summer, all our kids will be in school. Excited for the wife even though she's not as excited 
  
• Adele become an aquarium enthusiast - we took in some goldfish at the annual school junior carnival in November, in an attempt to keep them alive, we went to the pet store to get a fish tank and while we are there, I checked-in and received some free guppy fry... somehow half a year later, all those goldfish died (within a week), the guppies had multiple pregnancies and now we have 4 fish tanks (3 at home, 1 in my classroom), multiple sea animals - fishes, shrimps, sea snails, clams, etc. I guess this is the perk of having an obsessive/perfectionist wife, hobbies never stay basic 😅
• We've decided that only I'll be flying back to LA this summer. It has been 3 long years since we've been back to US. But with covid cases exploding in TW, the fear of us catching it before leaving TW or coming back from LA and the need to test negative to fly, the required quarantine on the way back.... we've decided that it will be only me this year. I am excited but also sad. Sad to be apart from my wife and kids for the longest period of time ever, missing my daughter's birthday and my anniversary (my daughter is not happy about it). Meanwhile I'm looking forward to catching up with my friends and family that I have no seen for years. 
• 4 more weeks go to until the end of the school year... 加油!