A Year in Review

TLDR? My personal favorite parts of 2020:

1.) Won a battle against Taiwan’s education system and was consequently accepted to a university there!

2.) Began doing an English-Mandarin exchange 4Xs a week with my 11-year-old Chinese student.

3.) Got some new, amazing adult Romanian students who’ve been a pleasure to work with. (Every Romanian I’ve worked with has been an ideal student.)

4.) Spent three months in one of my favorite countries: Macedonia.

5.) Made great friends in Mexico and connected with some fun, new online classmates from my university.

(I’m sure my mom’s list for the year would be pretty different. Just speaking for myself atm. XD)

The contrast between the beginning of last year, and where we are now is a bit comical. January 2020 found us cozily tucked away in an upscale area of London: Hampstead Heath. We were housesitting/petsitting a couple cats for a friend of a friend that we made in Malaysia. Before flying to London, we’d just finished zooming around the Balkans (which was super interesting, but also exhausting.)

Having a home to stay in over the holidays was a real treat for us homeless folk.

After the housesit, we rented a car and spent more time exploring England. We also met up with our good friend P.G.. But it was the end of January, and well yeah. England winter weather wasn’t exactly our favorite.

We looked around for the cheapest flights to somewhere warm. Mauritius and Mexico were our choices. My mom favored Mauritius. I was in favor of Mexico. I didn’t really like the idea of being stuck on a relatively small island at that moment. (The Maldives did me in for island claustrophobia lol.)

In the end, my mom was won over to the idea of Mexico. The funny part was that we had to go down to the hostel common area to use wifi to book our flight. In the common area, a family of Mexicans were sitting around the table with us, preparing to head back to CDMX. Kinda ironic, aye?

We first flew over to Cabo San Lucas, near the bottom of the peninsula below California, called, well what do you know: Baja California, “baja” meaning “under/below.”

It was very strange to be back in the Western Hemisphere after 5 years of being on the other side. And Mexico carried such a strong influence from the US. That American feeling shocked me a bit, something like reverse culture shock maybe? I felt weirdly at home, but also very much in a new environment. It was my first time experiencing Latin America. (My mom had already been to Panama.)

We hopped around Mexico somewhat: Cabo to La Paz, to Guadalajara to Guanajato to Queretaro to Cancun. Finally we stopped over in Playa del Carmen. We’d heard it was cheaper and less touristy than Cancun, and apparently had a growing expat and digital nomad population.

One of the most frequent questions we get from other travelers now is: “Did you get stuck during the lockdowns?” Well, yes, we kinda did. We weren’t very impressed with Playa, so a couple days there had been enough. The day before we planned to hop the border, Guatemala closed entry to foreigners. And so, it seemed we’d be getting to know Playa del Carmen a bit better.

In the end, we got to know Playa preetty well as we stayed there for a total of five months, and in Mexico as a whole for seven months. Southern Mexico’s only industry is tourism, and although the border to Mexico never closed, the lack of incoming tourists forced many, many Mexicans out of jobs. It was incredibly sad to see locals struggling to make ends meet. I’d met men fishing to get food for their families since the hotels they had worked in closed down.

Authorities did impose lockdown measures and masks in Playa. But we lived on the side of town that was closer to um, “poorer” neighborhoods.

I never had a problem and found the people to be very friendly in those neighborhoods. But I only mention that area because many of those homes didn’t have actual windows or doors. I assume some families must go to a shelter when the big hurricanes hit? (Actually, I saw people pull tarps over their homes when we got a big storm, now that I think of it.)

Anywho, people in those neighborhoods were basically living outside. You can’t quarantine people who don’t even have doors, so the police seemed to turn a blind eye in those places. Life went on and the little shops over there stayed open, while shops in other areas had to close.

My Filipina classmate and Indonesian classmate said the same thing about their countries. The lockdowns were imposed on the middle and upper classes, but not the poor. Same situations over there.

While many parts were difficult (like Playa ran out of beer for a good while. They’d closed the brewery that supplied the region. Beer is consumed like water there. How to survive! XD lol) three great things, no four!, came out of living in Mexico during that period.

1.) I got to practice Spanish every night for a month. There was a very kind woman who worked at the first hotel we stayed at in Playa. She knew I wanted to practice Spanish, so she volunteered to help me. Each night, I went down to the reception and chatted with her. I learned so much from her, and she was super patient with my Spanish. (I wrote a post about her and what I learned about Playa del Carmen and its massive changes over the years in a post here.) We even played scrabble in Spanish, and I won! Haha not that that means anything, but whatever. XD

2.) I made some amazing new friends who were wonderful to explore and hang out with while there: Carolyn, Rosie, and Hannah. <3

3.) I won a legal battle with the education system of Taiwan and was accepted to university there!

Although I do love nomading and it has very much shaped who I am, about 2.5 years ago I became a new level of exhausted from traveling. So I more seriously played around with the idea of spending an extended period of time in one country while studying and/or working. (I almost took a job in Hong Kong, and came close to working in Spain before finding the online option, so not the first time playing with the idea.)

I’d been banking on studying Mandarin in Taiwan, as that’s an easy way to get your visa continuously extended, and I wanted to learn Mandarin anyway. But I thought I’d hit two birds with one stone if I went ahead and got a degree in Taiwan and try to pick up the language while living there. Poland, Romania, and Spain were other countries whose universities I seriously considered applying to. But in Taiwan my mom could go the studying Mandarin route and get Grace placed on her visa as a dependent. Woo! Everyone accounted for!

However, after looking into all the requirements for applying, I ran into an obstacle. Apparently high school diplomas from homeschools were not accepted. I emailed some universities in Taiwan to inquire about it.

I had gone to a public high school for freshman year, but switched to homeschooling my sophomore year so I could, surprise surprise, travel through South Africa with my best friend and her family. I continued with home school until graduation since the quality of education was leaps and bounds better than the public schools.

The university email replies I received were a standard, inflexible: “Sorry, we don’t accept non-public or non-private school diplomas.”

The battle had begun. lol xD I remember reading that email just before I started teaching my classes for the day. I was so ready to immediately start doing everything in power to challenge that “no,” (which is actually pretty uncharacteristic of me, usually I’m more like, ‘oh okay, can’t do that, let’s find other options,’) but I had to put on a big smile and be happy-go-lucky for my students, haha. As soon as the classes were over though, I got to work.

I prayed about the situation and God stuck the story of Moses and Pharaoh in my mind. The worldly power/leader said he would not allow God’s people to go. Yet God broke through that authority with His sovereign plan to free the Israelites. Pharaoh said no. God said yes. And the people went free. It was that testimony that kept me going for the months to come.

It’s a very long story, as bureaucracy in Taiwan is an absolute nightmare. (All the expats there make jokes about it.) I had to get my high school homeschool diploma verified by a Taiwan representative office in the USA. The lady I had to deal with to do that didn’t even know what homeschooling was. And when she finally understood what it was, she said “I don’t know what to do.” XD Talk about a headache! I pretty much did her job for her.

In the end, thanks very much to HSLDA, a US homeschool advocacy group, I was given a free lawyer who wrote up a document for me, and then HSLDA let the Taiwan office process my papers through them as a “stand-in” authority or something (none of it made sense, but as long as they were happy and would authorize my papers, lol.) It was also thanks to my amazing neighbor, Mary Roach, for being the person who received and mailed and notarized paperwork for me in the US.

And when everything was finally finalized and I had applied to the schools, the head of a homeschool advocacy group in Taiwan called and explained my paperwork to one of the universities who didn’t understand it. XD And thanks to him, I was accepted to both of the schools I applied to!

(Btw, there was a glaring difference between dealing with people from the homeschool advocacy groups and people from the universities. The homeschool advocates were competent, intelligent, knowledgeable and kind in the extreme. Couldn’t find better people. The university staff? Wow. Just wow. And that’s why I decided against uni in the US. Everything I’ve experienced from uni so far has only validified all the reasons that kept me from going as an 18-year-old. But anywho, I’m having fun doing it just for the experience, lol.)

When I first spoke with the Taiwanese man in charge of Taiwan’s homeschool advocacy group, he told me he thought it would take an act of God to win that fight against Taiwan’s university application rules. And an act of God it was!

4.) My 11-year-old student and I began doing a language exchange.

After many months of classes, one of my students told me he’d have to stop his English lessons. It was too expensive and his mom needed to get several surgeries. He was a studious student and was sad about it though.

I taught him the word “trade” and told him we could continue classes if someone, anyone, would be willing to give me Mandarin classes in exchange. His mom informed me that she liked the idea and her son would be my teacher! So, twice a week I give him 30-minute English lessons and twice a week he gives me Chinese lessons! This has been going on now since about July 2020. I’ve been loving it! And the mom tells me her son is so happy after each Mandarin class he teaches. 😀 He’s really good at it too! (And he copies the way I praise him in English class to praise me in Chinese class, lol. So cute.)

We couldn’t leave Mexico for 7 months mainly due to the insanely high flight prices. We’re talking $6,000 for an economy one-way ticket to Europe. Our flight to MX from London had been $250 each with bags. We knew most Americans were flocking to Serbia at that time. Turkey, Albania, and Macedonia were options as well.

We were about to extend our rental for another month in Mexico when there was a seriously ugly encounter that landed my mom in the hospital. (The hospital was completely empty, btw.) After that, we knew it was time to leave. My mom found great flights that were actually affordable to London, with a stop in Chicago.

Our connecting flight got delayed, so we ended up getting a full 24-hour stay in Chicago! My mom was scared of missing our flight, but I was determined to see the Bean, haha, so we took the train from the airport to downtown. And guys! Chicago is gorgeous! It was literally the best and most beautiful place we’ve been traveling. XD I don’t blame Americans for not traveling, really. Honestly we have an incredibly beautiful country. And people were SO nice!

We had just enough time to see the Bean, eat in the park, and then 45 minutes to RUN through TJ Maxx and buy everything our hands touched, haha. Believe it or not, no where in the world has the great quality for low prices that the US has. So we tried our best to get some things that we just couldn’t buy anywhere else. It was the best store everrrr. Americans, we so spoiled, fo realz. XD

And then we got on our very empty flight to London (flight to Chicago had been completely full.)

After a few days in London, we caught a $40 flight to Skopje, Macedonia. We visited a few new places in the country that we hadn’t seen the last time, then ended up back at Lake Ohrid. It’s just so beautiful there. We found our monthly accommodation while walking around, as usual. The family who owned the accommodation were the absolute friendliest people. They shared fresh grapes and rose buds from their garden with us.

We found that accommodation just a day or two before I began my university classes online. Taiwan was one of only 9 or so countries in the world who allowed their international students (but not exchange students) to enter the country to study. But while I could enter, my mom and sister could not, so I chose the online option.

I spent the next three months studying and teaching online, and going for runs, walks, and hikes. My mom loved the local farmers market, where the food was incredibly fresh from local gardens and it was like a game or riddle to understand the sellers sometimes without English. The farmers at those markets were the kind of people who throw in extra apples with your purchase, just because. Macedonia is an absolute gem of a place. Highly recommend. Especially the Ohrid area.

As Americans, we get three months in Macedonia, and those three months quickly came to an end. But winter was coming anyway. Eastern Europe and much of the Balkans, including Macedonia, often use coal and wood to heat their homes in winter, creating some of the most polluted cities and areas in the world in that season.

We had been planning to do an easy border crossing to Albania (literally only like 10 miles down the street from Ohrid.) But after talking to an American expat there, (thanks Andrea!) it sounded like Albanians believed there was a second wave and were wary of foreigners. Also restrictions, such as curfews and opening times were becoming more rigid. We don’t like to go anywhere we aren’t welcome. And if it sounded like foreigners were being viewed negatively at that time, then it would be best for us to fly elsewhere.

We chose Turkey. It was a simple, very cheap flight to a country we were quite familiar with. I’ll write about the situation in Turkey another time. As usual, Grace was treated like a queen there. No one has been as kind to Grace as Turkish people. Many cultures don’t know how to act around the handicapped. But it’s as if everyone was trained to know what to do in Turkey. Wherever we walk, Turks talk to Grace, give her hugs, pull out chairs for her, etc. The receptionist at our hotel told Grace that he loved her several times, making her smile shyly, haha.

We stayed in Istanbul for 9 days while waiting for our flight to our final destination for the year: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

And it has been a rollercoaster of an adventure here in Tanzania ever since we landed. Just think the opposite of a tranquil homesit in London. 😀