These are the rules for this tagging thing, which I'm supposed to post as well:We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog telling them they’re tagged, and you read their blog.I was tagged by Bob... here it goes….
1. My favorite thing to do for probably the past 7 years or more is to research nutrition and health, alternative medicine etc. I used to wonder if I were strange when I sat in a library devouring a book on dental health, nutrition and disease, or anything to do with health when I could spare a little time. Now I’m hoping to get my Ph.D. in Holistic Nutrition by a well-accredited correspondence school (CCNH) after finishing my M.A. in Applied Linguistics and earning money to pay the tuition fee. And I want to add a concentration in Herbology to that. I love herbs and pure essential oils, too (but not aromatherapy or fragrance oils cause those are synthetic).
2. I also love to read classics and books about psychology. Some of my favorite classics are A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Macbeth by Shakespeare, and Crime and Punishment. I used to think that the characters in classics were really odd until my Grandma pointed out that, if you observe closely, real people can be just as odd. I learn much about human nature from classics because part of the reason they became classics was because the authors knew human nature exceptionally well. I also like to read books on psychology because I learn about human nature from them, too, as long as I read them with a grain of salt cause I know not every psychological theory is true or good. I absolutely loved the books by Scott Peck, especially The Road Less Traveled and People Of the Lie, but, of course, didn’t agree with absolutely everything he said.
3. I love tea! Loose leaf tea is the best. My very favorite is Japanese green tea, but Chinese green tea is good, too. I don’t care for black tea. I once shocked some of my classmates at the Canadian Institute of Linguistics. Three of them came over to my basement suite for a dinner, movie, and a do an assignment while talking and getting distracted time, and were really surprised when I opened up both sides of one of my big cupboards and the all of the shelves were stocked with different kinds of tea from Japan, China, Greece, Argentina, Slovania, Korea etc. I don’t have as much tea around as before, but sometimes I’ll get a strong urge to look for tea. If that happens when I’m out with my husband, he’ll say, “Why do you want to look at tea? We already have a lot at home.” Specialteas.com has excellent tea. I wish it weren’t too ridiculously expensive to ship to the Philippines. I especially love their Japanese Fine Sencha! I’m glad my Dad was able to bring a pound of it over here when he came.J
4. I like to learn about other cultures and how people in them think, and how people in my own culture (including myself) think. In fact, learning about outer cultures can help me to identify the way that people in my culture think. In undergraduate school, I sat in the library reading books about American culture, and was surprised to see our normal activities described as a culture, as well as reasons behind the thinking that produces them. I’ve seen many times that when a foreigner gets the reasons wrong for what we do, they get very offended. It’s the same for me and other international students overseas. We tend to misjudge the reason that people do something because the same thing would be done for an entirely different reason in our own culture….and our thinking is so foreign to them that they probably wouldn’t know why we were offended…. And if we don’t know our own culture, we might just agree and say that our culture is bad when the reason that caused what they were offended about was good. It’s worse when you believe stereotypes, cause if you believe even the most believable of them, you can miss seeing how things really are in your own or another culture.
5. As a Biblical Studies major at Moody Bible Institute, I and four other girls, including an older lady with her granddaughter, went on a two-week study tour of Greece with our Old Testament professor. (I arrived in Italy about five weeks earlier and met them in Rome, but that’s beside the point.) Now, because many of the beaches in Greece are nude beaches, our professor took care to read his travel guide before choosing a campsite beside a beach. When we got to Mykonos, we reserved a place at a campsite by a “family” beach for two nights, and were warmly welcomed by the staff when we arrived. Then our professor went to take a nap, and the five of us decided to go to the beach. At the beach, we noticed that people kept staring at us more than usual, and were shy to look back at them. When we had walked about half-way across, it suddenly dawned on us that all of the people basking in the sun were completely naked:-(! Being already in the middle of the nude people, we decided to keep going until we got to the deserted part at the end (past the gay part) and enjoyed sitting on the beach and swimming, then found a different route back to the campsite. We determined that the people must have been staring at us cause we were all fully clothed, and they were waiting for us to strip:-). We had a good laugh about the Old Testament professor who took some of his Bible school students to a nude beach:-).
6. I eat and enjoy most things (not pork or raw liver). I liked the raw eggs (even in cold broth) that we ate in Japan and the cooked Balut we eat in the Philippines. I enjoy eating raw fish, seaweed, santols, liver, intestines, and even the blood soup with organ meat tasted okay (but I don’t usually eat it cause I'm not a vampire:-)). But I’m not sure how I would do eating bugs. One of my classmates at CanIL who grew up in another country told stories about how they would go out and pick up grubs and stuff and eat them raw, and he really enjoyed them. Fortunately, bug eating isn’t that common in the Philippines, and they always cook them first.
7. Almost six months ago, I got married to the cutest, most handsome Filipino with huge eyes and a nose that looks like it could belong to a puppy dog:-). For those who say it’s hard to be married to a foreigner, I don’t think we have any more problems than people who are both from the same culture, though occasionally we’ll have a misunderstanding because of cultural differences. I think the real difficulties arise when one or both of the spouses are not willing to share their feelings or explain the real reason they are upset (and it was often not at all obvious to me why my husband was upset). Since Bob and I have always been able to talk about things honestly, we understand each other better than even six months ago, and have fewer misunderstandings and disagreements now cause we understand each other’s feelings and actions better than we did at first.
8. I used to have a garden, and, along with the normal vegetables, liked to plant unusual things in it when I could find them. I planted blue corn one summer, and it really came out purple. Now I miss my garden. I suggested to Bob that we could have a garden when we go to the province, and he just about died laughing. He said he couldn’t imagine a white person working in a garden. Then he said that if it’s really small, it wouldn’t be too funny. I was really confused cause it’s common to have a garden where I’m from, and some have very large gardens and just give away the extra veggies. It’s true they usually don’t till the soil by hand like they might in the village, but everything else is done by hand….
