Chinese New Year is from February 15 to 20 this year. If all goes according to plan, we will find ourselves in Hong Kong. So far our itinerary involves hogging down on large amounts of dim sum, taking the gondola to the giant buddha statue, and getting jiggy with the nightlife at Lan Kwai Fong. I do believe we’ll have ourselves a good time.
In the meantime we have a break from teaching our afternoon Tree House classes, freeing up our afternoons for important endeavors like getting bitten by a disgusting wormy bug thing while hiking in the jungle, cleaning the floor, and updating the bloggins. I don’t really know what to say about life here that I haven’t already said. I suppose one thing I haven’t really described is the one biggest thing I was curious about before I came here, that being what it would feel like to live in Taiwan. It’s obviously not something one can ever understand until one just goes and does it. You can imagine yourself in different surroundings, being an extreme racial minority, standing out in any crowd, temples next to KFCs, all the signs and menus in Chinese, not understanding the conversations of strangers, etc etc. But you can’t really know what it’s like, what it feels like to live in very foreign culture until you’re actually there. And now that I’m actually doing it, I’m not sure I can even describe it. I guess the best explanation I can muster is that it is the amalgamation if many disparate feelings into one. Such as, feeling homesick and isolated along with feeling invigorated and stimulated. There’s the incongruous feeling of self-importance by virtue of being an almost a minor celebrity (white english-speaker alert!!), but the discomfort of being ever-conspicuous. And to be awkwardly honest, I’m completely jealous of all the beautiful, willowy, thin, perfectly olive-skinned, long dark satiny haired, well-dressed women that make up a very large percentage of the population here (not complaining about the stylish Asian male eye candy everywhere though). And then, the other day Josh and I were contemplating how much it’s going to suck to go back seeing plain old white folks everywhere everyday. Anyway, it’s shit like that. I guess that’s why a lot of people do this for a couple of years and then go back home. One thing I will definitely take back home with me is a love for Chinese food in its authentic state, who knew dumplings could be so divine. Oh, and an unwillingness to pay more than $5 for an item of clothing. Good lord stuff is cheap here!!!
Anyway, that probably didn’t explain much of anything. So why don’t you just come on over for a visit and see for yourself, eh? So without further ado, here are the pictorial highlights since the last time I did this:
Blog posts all across Taipei are bound to be headed by the two little words you see above. Shit writes itself. Josh, his cousin Sarah visiting from Korea, and I, rung in the new year on the promenade of Sun Yat Sen, surrounded by hordes of extremely polite Taiwanese, few of whom were actually taking advantage of the legality of drinking on the street here. No open container laws for these people. Instead, they just act sensibly and responsibly of their own accord. Shocking! The most unsensible aspect of the evening was the four hours we had to walk before we could find a taxi to pick us up. They had the MRT running at peak operation all night to deal with the crowds, but we opted for an extremely long walk rather than an extremely long stand-in-line. Luckily we had Josh’s drunken antics to entertain us — someone had to finish the disgusting bottle of liquor we bought from 7-11, and that someone was him. Someone, however, did NOT have to sing ‘get back honkey cat’, badly, on a loop for about 3 of the 4 hours of the walk. But, hey, someone did it anyway. But, we did get to see the whole of Taipei 101 light from fireworks being shot off on every floor, and it was a pleasant 60ish degrees, so I think I’m okay with the night as a whole.
Plus, Josh paid for it the next day when we got up sort of early to hike the peak at Yangmingshan, followed by a train ride north to the harbor town of Keelung for tons of fresh seafood. Mmm, whole deepfried crab. He did attempt to pay the misery forward by taking the record for saying “I’m hungover” the most times humanly possible in a 12-hour period. Seriously.
SO, now that it’s 2010 we’re sort of rounding over the peak of the arc of our life teaching english in Taiwan. We still have a good 7 months to go, but it’s bound to go super fast, considering we’re almost half-way and it still feels like we just got here. Right now we’re looking forward to Chinese New Year, which is February 15-20. A whole week of pure, non-school goodness. After much back-and-forth we have ourselves tickets to Hong Kong and a hostel room booked for that week. So, that’s going to be awesome!
Hope everything is well where you are.
On to the visuals, here is a sampling, the rest I’ll upload to the much faster Facebook (click to view).
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- Yo La Tengo played here, there was an earthquake too
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- these fellows know how to make a crepe! many crepes…
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- It’s copyrighted, so don’t even bother
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- Josh and Sarah and decade recap
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- ya see?
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- Van Gogh exhibit, we really got “in” to it, nudge followed by furrow
So, long time no blog, eh? Sorry about that. I will attempt to make amends by introducing you to the handy, all-purpose Chinese phrase “aiyo” that may serve your exclamatory needs at some opportune time. It’s pronounced “eye-yo” (tone-wise the ‘eye’ is rising and the ‘yo’ is falling, if you don’t know about chinese tones, look it up!) and it’s basically an exclamation used when you don’t like something, such as when you taste something disgusting, in place of ‘gross’, say ‘aiyo!’; or, when you drop something you’re carrying, in place of ‘crap’, say ‘aiyo!’; or, when you’re walking along all satisfied with life and you step in a big pile of dog poo, in place of ‘oh shit’, say ‘aiyo!!!’. See how handy that is? It’s not a swear word per se, but for some inexplicable reason it’s just as satisfying an utterance when you need to express extreme dislike. It can also be used when you need to express pain, such as when you’re running around the playground and you trip over some kid’s foot and bump your teeth on some other kid’s head and your front row gets all dented in and bloody (poor James), yes, you can say “AIYOOOOO!!!” Like that. It’s fun, try it.
Speaking of James, and Jerry, and Cheng-Wei, and Howard, and all 13 others, I’m really liking my kindy kids right now. I’m just as put-out as ever as far as teaching and the structure of the school, but I can’t ever hate the kids and their adorable little faces and mannerisms and hugs and lovings, so they’re getting me out of bed every morning. Except when they’re horrible little brats, then I wish I’d stayed in bed, but it’s too late, so ya know. I’ll get around to posting pictures of them one of these days…
Anywayz, the longer I’m here the more I love Taiwan. There’s just so bloody much to do, we’ve decided just to stay here and tour the Southern end of the island over Chinese new year. Josh took a scuba class and got his diving certification so we’re going to this little island off the coast where we can rent scooters and soak in hot springs and I can snorkel and he can dive. I’m also seriously considering taking the class myself. I did have some trepidations, since I’m claustrophobic and I’ve seen shark attack videos, but he said it was amazing and he saw a cuttlefish, and that was enough to sell me.
We’ve also done a lot of hiking and general exploring. Here’s a taste, I’m going to post the rest of them on facebook, feel free to: have a look!
Thanks to every last one of ya who wished me a happy birthday! I’m 30 now. Life is going on as usual, who knew. JPS came and went. We did lots of stuff and had lots of fun times. My actual birthday actually ended up a bit of a goose-chase, searching for that elusive “fun club” that we never quite found. In accordance to my birthday wishes we went to an indie-rock dance club called The Other Side, which who knew at 2 a.m. on a Friday night would be EMPTY. So sad. We actually ended up talking to the girl who does promotions for all the Roxy clubs (of which The Other Side is one), who said that place is closing in 2 weeks because nobody goes there. Apparently rock’n'roll + dancing do not a fun night make, according to the Taiwanese hipsters. They prefer hiphop/techno. Ugh. I guess the throbbing beat goes on, even across the ocean. We did, however discover the sweetness that is Roxy Rocker. It’s a really awesome bar that houses the owners entire, very extensive vinyl collection, which you can look through and request the DJ play whatever jem you may find. So I got to drink beers with my friends, dig through a massive record collection, and hear the Dickies and the Dead Milkmen on my birthday. That, I’m down with.
I’ve also recently discovered a new and alarming sensation, which I do believe is location love. I love it here! I just realized. I mean, since I’ve been here, I’ve liked it for the most part. But, this weekend, after Josh and I took a bus to Yeliu (mars), I realized that this island has so damn much to offer that isn’t immediately apparent. It really takes (what’s it been…) 4 months minimum to truly appreciate all that is at one’s fingertips on this island. For starters, it’s a frickin tropical island. Jungle abounds. We live in a city of 3 million people, but can get on a bus and be walking a jungle-y, waterfall-y trail in 30 or so minutes. There are natural wonders galore. Delicious and cheap as hell food everywhere. Stylish and cheap as hell clothes everywhere. Bubble teas! Stinky tofu is good! Coastline! Mountains! Super friendly people! This is probably getting annoying! Anyway, I have considered staying, but there’s the one big, glaringly misshapen piece of the puzzle — our jobs, they kinda suck. Specifically all the stuff that we HAVE to do that we don’t get paid for. If I was younger I would seriously consider enrolling at one of the universities here and spending a couple years studying Chinese, but alas the clock keeps on ticking and I want to finish grad school before I’m 34. So I will most likely move on. GRE studying will commence.
Here are a few pictures. I’ll upload the rest to facebook since it takes way less time and link ya there —–>Here.
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- Keelung night market: harbor-town + night market = so much seafood! so much goodness!
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- extremely large Kwan-Yin and her lions
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- big, bright temple
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- Yangmingshan, hiking this national park will never get old, it helps that there’s about 10,000 different trails
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- Maokong, tea-growing mountains, tea-sipping houses
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- we ate frog, it was boney
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- Yeliu, the crowded part
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- Yeliu, the high part
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- Yeliu, the non-crowded part
Just a fly by to say heeeeeeyyyyyyy! I’m so happy my friend Jessica Powell is coming to visit. We pick her up from the airport tonight. I’m sorta bummed that I don’t get any time off when she’s here, especially since one of my coworkers has this whole week off. This is after I was told that we get NO time off, except for Chinese New Year. This teacher has been there for like 10 years though, so I guess it’s a Hess veteran’s perk. But still…. sucks.
No matter. Friday is my birthday and I found a cool bar that’s filled floor to 2nd-story ceiling with vinyl, all the for pickin and the playin, which I plan on celebrating at with Josh and Jessica. Sometimes life is swell!
I pretty much suck at keeping a blog. Sorry about that! And, I changed it again, sorry about that too… Okay, on to the heart of the matter….
As Michigan is transitioning into sweater weather and spicy pumpkin everything, Taiwan is segueing into mid 70s, green oranges and one last bout of typhoons before the season’s over. As you may have heard, a few typhoons have been lurking in the area, but thanks to Taiwan’s super-anti-typhoon force field they have either diverted north or south of us. Yay for that, but sad for the Philippines who have been pummeled and then pummeled again by the swirling rainy menaces.
Teaching continues to be both easier and hard. I sort of actually feel like I have a relationship with my students, although that’s true in almost every aspect of the spectrum – sometimes they frustrate me relentlessly and sometimes they’re just so damn cute and charming I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. One thing is for sure, I’m so glad I decided to do this. I’m finding out that I’m capable of many things I never would have know possible if it weren’t for putting myself in the most uncertain and daunting of positions of taking this job in this foreign land.
Being so far removed from everything that’s easy, known and expected has also helped me to figure out the direction I want my life to go in, which has long been a source of much ambivalence. I’m also really glad that we’re going to get to do lots of traveling after our year, I’m quite sure the wanderlust and restlessness I felt for so long will be alleviated when I finally return to U.S. soil.
Anyway, we’ve seen a few new parts of the city, a tale which I shall rely on a few pictures (and captions) to tell…
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- WuFenPu: amazing shopping district. So much, so cheap, so so so so so!
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- It’s called taro bread and it’s downright delicious!
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- There were stone foot massage paths, we walked on them
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- Coolest library ever!
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- Suspension bridge, it sways and everything
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- Cool-looking tea house
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- it may sway, but it’s quite safe!
Well hello there. Sorry my blogging has been sparse. I’m not sure how interesting my life here is anymore, after almost three months it doesn’t really qualify as new and exciting, does it? In fact, despite living in such a faraway foreign land we’ve almost settled in to something of a routine. I guess workin all week will do that to a gal and a fella. Nevertheless a little record and reflection can’t really hurt. And we still discover something novel and exciting about life in the ‘wan almost daily. Recent examples: yesterday we visited the Grand Hotel and the Martyr’s Shrine and noticed a network of hiking trails in the mountains behind them. We decided to check em out and discovered this crazy little buddhist/hippie/karaoke/kickboxing/mahjong/badmitton world. Hard to picture, I know, but it is as I described it. The stone trails led through a jungley mountainous region dotted with a bunch of little stone hut/court areas where people did the aforementioned. It felt a bit surreal. There were also a couple buddhist temples, one of which saved my life with its water fountain and paper cups (not knowing we were going to end up hiking, we didn’t bring any water with us. Not so good in 90 degree weather + excessive humidity + sun + climbing up a mountain).
Another example is discovering that there is a big huge mountain for climbing right in our own, very urban, neighborhood. It’s technically the Zhishan Cultural and Ecological Garden, and it was closing when we tried to go there, but on our way back we stumbled upon a raised boardwalk that traces all the way around the edge of the garden/mountain that was free for the walkin and beautiful for the lookin. There was also a temple atop a long, paper-lantern lit staircase that we climbed. I love shit like that. There’s a lot about this place that I can already feel I’m going to miss after we’re gone. At the same time I already sometimes look forward to being done with teaching. It is getting marginally easier in that I think I finally have the basics down. But it’s still really challenging for me just because of my personality. I’m a quiet observer by nature, so being up in front of a room of kids, trying to get their attention and keep it long enough to make them learn English, is a daily struggle. But, as hard it is, it feels oddly good to stretch myself, push my limits, ya know, stuff like that.
Oh and one more example: taro bread!
Anywayz. This Saturday I have to work at the Parent’s Night. I have to do a half hour teaching demo with the kids, with all the parents watching, then talk to them about their kids. That’s going to suck. After that we have a barbeque and possibly KTV (aka karaoke). That’s going to be fun. I’ll let ya know. And now, picture time:
There’s more, but I think I’ll upload them to facebook, it takes way less time! Thanks for readin.
Looks a little different around here. It will probably look a little different again tomorrow, I’m very annoyed that I can’t upload my own theme, and I don’t feel like investing a ton of time into coding the whole thing from scratch, so I’ll probably keep changing and tweaking and changing and tweaking until I’m sort of satisfied. Might be a while. Sorry if it’s annoying, but my inner web designer will never die.
Okay so, it’s been a while. Josh and I have been sick, Josh more so than I. It comes in waves too, one day we’re feeling better, the next it’s all fevers and sore throats. I think the combination of kids with their unbridled snot machines (aka noses) spreading their foreign germs have been rough on our immune systems. Hopefully we’ll build up some tolerance soon.
Today, at least, is a good day for me. As you may or may not know, teaching kindy here is technically illegal. It’s the sort of thing that everyone does and everyone knows everyone does it, but they like to maintain some semblance of enforcement, so they occasionally “raid” the kindys in an effort to “catch” foreigners teaching English to kids. And by “catch” I mean they tell the school: ‘we’re coming to catch your foreign teachers so get them out of here because we don’t really want to catch them.’ At Josh’s school they just have to run upstairs since the Tree House (elementary school) on the top floor is legal. At my school the Tree House is also technically illegal (I know, but who am I to….) so we either have to escape out a little window in the back, or they tell us to just stay home. Today I got to stay home, ah sweet relaxation! I’m spending my time looking for something fun for us to do either on the New Year’s (we get New Year’s Day off) or perhaps Chinese New Year. We didn’t think we’d be able to afford to go anywhere for CNY since prices just so happen to go way up around then, but through a bit of internet sleuthin I think I may have found cheapish tickets to Thailand — $150 USD roundtrip into Bangkok — that sound quite appealing. Add that to the list of awesome things about this here teaching venture — cheap, close travel to places I never thought I would be able to afford.
Also on that list: Yangmingshan National Park. Practically right outside our doorstep. We hiked the peak there last week, and though my scale for appreciating natural beauty is admittedly skewed since I haven’t been to very many exotic places, I was completely amazed by the beauty and serenity. Tall grasses, cool winds, smoking volcanoes, shrouding mists. It gave me a feeling of well-being that was thoroughly saturating. I felt like I had stepped inside a Myst world, dork that I am. Of course there was the stinking sulfur, but ya know, even that was sort of stinkingly beautiful, or something. Oh, and as a footnote to our journey, we were saved by an immensely kind Indian family, who upon seeing that we were stranded at the top of the mountain (who knew the buses stopped running at 5:30 p.m.!?) gave us a ride to the bottom. Thank you Indian family! Anyway, pictures for viewing pleasure:
p.s. How are YOU? I want to know. I miss people, you’re probably one of them, so let me know how you’re doing! Also, if you’ve been to Thailand and know of anything fun/cheap to do or a good place to stay that’s around Bangkok let us know! Thanks.
Weird thing: Josh’s iPod totally vanished. He last had it in our apartment a couple weeks ago, and hasn’t taken it out of the apartment since. Yet it’s gone without a trace, strange eh? I’ve heard that some iPhone 3GS have been randomly exploding, perhaps some iPods have been randomly vanishing without a trace?
So what else is new, perhaps you wonder? School is… school. Right now I’m feeling really frustrated at the large amount of stuff that I’m supposed to do, and the fact that it was never really explained to me in any sort of logical manner. There are ABC books, theme books, communication books, library books, assessment books, treasure boxes, and on and on. I feel like I’m barely scraping by getting the kids settled enough to listen to what I’m saying, let alone know what it is I’m supposed to be saying. I’m hoping another month or so and I’ll be fully versed in all the materials and able to finally take a breath and enjoy teaching these kids.
Sadly, we’ve discovered that we don’t actually get a vacation of our choosing. We get a week off at Chinese New Year and that’s it. So much for the 2-weeks vacation that was advertised. Another day, another broken promise in ESL land. Also sadly, we might not even get to go anywhere during CNY, since we’re competing with oh, everyone else in pretty much all of Asia. And I looked up tickets to Japan, which just so happen to quadruple in price around that time. Perhaps it will have to get pushed back to our post-teaching travel itinerary and we’ll just go camping or something. There is a plethora of natural beauty on this island, after all. Last Sunday we experienced some of it on our first HASH run. If you’ve ever gone on one, you’ll know it’s something to be experienced rather than described. It’s better that way, really. Then when you find yourself thigh-deep in a jungle river, scurrying over a rickety little plank bridge, sprinting across an expansive Taiwanese farmer’s field, retracing your steps cuz you’re on a decoy trail, or downing endless amounts of beer afterward, you’ll stop for two seconds and think ‘holy f*ck where am I and what am I doing’ since you’d have no notion of ever ending up on your own little eco-challenge. That happened a couple times on the run. I would totally do it again though, it’s a good way to see the amazing countryside and fraternize with some rowdy ex-pats, if you’re in to that sort of thing. Which I think I am — about once a month or less though, ha.
Yesterday we were going to go to Maokong to do some hiking and sipping at some teahouses, but we got about halfway there and discovered that the brown line of the MRT was shut down for maintenance for the weekend and we would have to wait forever to get on an insanely crowded shuttlebus so we decided to eff that and go to the ocean. We went to Bashiwan beach on the north of the island. You can see from the pictures that it greatly resembles Lake Michigan, sandy beaches and all, except that it’s surrounded by giant green mountains rather than sand dunes, and it was far from crowded considering it was a Saturday afternoon. And, of course, the saltiness. Sort of slimy, yet most buoyant.
Perhaps you would now enjoy some pictures….
It’s called “Word Warp” and it’s an app I downloaded on my iphone like forever ago, however its brilliantly addictive magic has only recently enchanted us. We’ve been playing it a lot. Tooo much. Almost at the expense of other, more important things. Things like living our lives outside of the game.
Anyway, truthfully it is a nice little stress-reliever/distracter, something we’ve been in great need of since school has jumped into full gear. I have one more week of teaching summer camp, although it will be my toughest week yet. I’m teaching the baby kindy class combined with the middle class alone, since apparently there’s not enough teachers and my co-teacher has to go work at another school. I won’t even get into describing the incredibly challenging/irritating dynamic of a class that ranges in ages from 2 years old to 6 years old, but I’m sure you can imagine it’s near impossible to create a lesson that engages all of them equally. Alas, it’s only for one more week, and having my regular kindy class will seem comparably easy and manageable after this one, so silver lining lemonade or whatever.
In case you didn’t hear, a tyhpoon rolled on over the island this weekend. It came in Friday, prompting a “typhoon day”, which basically means everything shuts down and everyone gets a day off to hang out at home and relax. It was brilliant. We stayed in, watched TV on the internet, ate food and watched the wind and the rain do its blowing and its dropping outside our window. It wasn’t too severe up here in Taipei, but I heard that the south of the island got hit pretty hard with really high winds and flooding, so that sucks. We had planned to do something outside of the city with our fellow teachers but that wasn’t so much possible, whatwith the whole typhoon thing, so we went to a movie and Josh made me ride the huge and very scary ferris wheel (which in retrospect isn’t that scary and I’ll totally do it again despite my declaration about 3 minutes in that I would never, ever ride it again).
Other than that, we’ve been working diligently on lesson planning and classroom decorating and crunching numbers for our budget so that we can afford to do some traveling on our time off. We’ve also been (not completely unrelated) scheming to either write best-selling romance and/or sci-fi novels, or come up with a brilliantly stupid website idea that will go viral, so that we can make a ton of money super fast and then not have to work and just be able to hang out and travel. Seems feasible. Oh, we also recently found out that the receipts we’ve been getting for every single purchase, no matter how small, are lottery tickets. Apparently the gov’t was having a problem with businesses not recording all their sales and so they developed this lottery scheme so that people would demand their potentially valuable receipts, business would keep track of their sales and therefore pay their taxes. I don’t know if that’s worked out for them, but I just collected all our receipts in neat little piles in anticipation of the numbers that come out every other month. The prizes range from NT$200 (about $6 U.S.) to NT$2 million (about $61,000 U.S.), so perhaps our dreams of independent wealth will come true with or without Josh having to pen book of best-selling sci-fi poetry… or whatever.
Sure, why not. Until then, pictures…
