Cultivating a Thankful Spirit...

There are days in Taiwan when it would be very easy to be unthankful about things that are inconvenient.

-My "kitchen" is a table and there's not much room for food prep!
-I have no oven.
-Things like to burn and stick on the hot plate...
-It's hard to find known ingredients at the grocery.
-Known ingredients are hard to pick due to the fact that it's all written in Chinese. (Do I want tun with Japanese sauce or a tuna spread?) grr...
- I teach on Friday nights and on Saturday mornings now (I was just assigned a Saturday morning class from 10:30-12:30)

But when I have days when I want to complain or be unthankful, I remember how blessed I am to have running water. How blessed I am to have transportation to the grocery store, how blessed I am to have a job to be able to buy groceries. I want to have a heart that's thankful; the turns to God in the moments when I am tempted to complain and that thanks Him for his blessings in my life. I know that there is always something in life that I will be tempted to complain about - and I don't want to be "a complainer." My hope is that this amazing experience of living in Taiwan will help me to become a thankful person!

Updates on goals: I have been following this running program.

I am currently on Week 2 of this program. I ran 3 minutes and walked one minutes repeatedly today repeatedly. It's slow moving but if I'm dedicated I'm hoping it will pay off! I think some of the people like to watch me run - the foreigner running in the park. I would probably seem more normal if I were stretching on the monkey bars or slapping my body and stretching. ;) On another funny note - in the grocery store people look at my cart a lot! They slowly stop and try to see what the foreigner is buying. You just have to smile and keep going! :)

Ok - today we have Taco Potatoes for lunch. I'm trying to decide whether to boil and put the taco stuff on the boiled potato or if I should boil and mash and then put the stuff on the mashed potatoes. Hmmmm... How I look forward to my toaster oven.. that's our next purchase... which will happen before next Friday. :)