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…
Somehow I made it about 3 weeks here, the land that spawned the loved or loathed phenomenon that is bubble tea (aka pearl milk tea aka zhēnzhū nǎichá aka 珍珠奶茶) without sucking up any of those little balls through the big fat straw. Then I hit a streak that lasted like five days. I actually drank two in one day at one point, and felt quite ill afterwards. Yet I pressed on and got another one the next day. I also discovered a bubble tea place just a stroll down our street, which is perhaps not a good thing. Josh and I have both inadvertently had the attitude that we can eat whatever we want here, since we’ve been walking so much. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing and I’ve managed to lose like 5-10 lbs. through no fault of my own, so that attitude has been reinforced. However, I feel I my body may be finally settling in, as has my psyche, and could reverse course, especially if I continue to consume like 500 calories, in tapicoa balls + milk tea, a day. ooops.
Anyway, the other new teachers have arrived in Taipei, they’re pretty cool. Although they seem to be at different — younger, party-ier — stages in their lives than Josh and I are. Yesterday was the big final performance for the school semester, Josh was on curtain duty, I was on Dwight/Ben (toddlers that looove to run) duty. It went okay. I felt slightly disgruntled, as it’s yet one more thing that I’ve done for free for this school. But, I’m finally getting paid next week so I’m just going to let that resentment go. After the performance there was a teacher’s dinner at a fancy buffet place. We played rock paper scissors with the Chinese teachers, Josh lost and had to go take a whole green pepper that was for decorative purposes from the buffet. It just happened to be right next to a huge line of people waiting for duck, who all stared at him, bemused (and probably amused) by the weird foreigner who filled his plate with one giant, ornamental green pepper and sat down. After that silliness we went to a swanky sort of bar that has a secret entrance (no spoilers here), another pub and then Bar Code. Also swanky. I think I was swanked-out by that point cuz I just felt tired and old, so Josh and I went home sorta early.
Which brings me to this morning and feeling sort of hungover and lazy, so I’ll just toss it to the pictures and let them give you their 10,000 words…
So I have a week and a half of training completed and it feels…. goodish. Good that I feel I’m improving, I feel more in control in front of the class, more able to connect with the kids, more able to manage classroom time, etc. “Ish” that that pertains only to the afternoon Tree House class, which are 1ist and 2nd-graders.
The morning baby class however, all I can say is ahhhhhh! Who thought teaching English to two year olds, who barely have any language at all, was a good idea? These kids: do not listen to me; do the opposite of what I say; probably can’t even understand what I’m asking them to do; are sometimes scared of me – especially when they’re upset and crying. It’s pretty disheartening. I mentioned to my boss that I would much prefer to teach regular kindergarten over babies, but I’m not sure my request will be honored. If not, I have a loooong year ahead of me. Ugh.
Anyway, Josh and I are have been quite exhausted at the end of our days so far, so it looks like we’ll have to take full advantage of our weekends. Tonight we’re going to hit up the Shihlin Night Market, which is the biggest in Taipei. We’re also hopefully going to the Taipei Brewery with some other English teachers are some point. A beer is the salve I need after too much running after too many kids in too much sweaty heat.
Picture time! This installment includes TianMu trail, which is not so much a trail as it is an endless amount of stairs up the side of a mountain. We had to turn back after like 20 minutes so as to avoid having heart attacks. Yes, we are out of shape, but, it was like 98 degrees and utterly humid…. so under normal conditions we might have made it, 25, 30 tops. Yeah…. And some other stuff…..
p.s. Josh is making that annoying smile face on purpose. It annoys me but makes me laugh uncontrollably so he keeps doing it. Just thought you might want to know that.
Once again, sorry for the absence. It’s been a busy ole time as I started my training last week. It’s always a bit off-putting to hear other people complain on the internet, so I won’t dwell on the negatives, but I will say it’s not exactly what I expected. Since they took the initiative to start us training well in advance of what was initially told would be our start date, I figured well, at least we’ll get a healthy amount of training in, which is a good thing. The three-week training schedule that was e-mailed to me by my boss seemed to be so, lots of observing classes and a few demo lessons. My first day of training (Wednesday) I was informed that I would be taking over part of the baby class next Monday. Babies, little 2 and 3 year Taiwanese kids that barely speak Chinese, let alone English. Okaaaaaay. That kinda sucks. The next day I was told that after teaching the baby class in the morning I’m going to go to a different branch to substitute teach a Tree House (elementary kids) class in the afternoons, for a teacher that’s going on vacation. Okaaaaaay again, um, which part of just going in and teaching without any assistance is considered training?
I don’t know, I guess it’s baptism by fire, as was suggested to me. I’ll figure things out fast or not at all, I suppose. But still, this is not what I hoped for or nor expected. Especially since it’s all considered training, it’s completely unpaid.
Anyway, is that enough whining? Yes, I think so. Other than that, The Josh and Jessica Taiwan Exploratory Committee has gotten a few things done. We accidentally took the longest bus ride in the world. After we got off the MRT we got on our normal bus on the other side of the road. We figured it would loop around a few blocks before going back up our normal route. No. It went south, straight south, then souther, crossed some bridges, more south. Things became very unfamiliar and apprehensive. Yet we wouldn’t give up on the notion that the bus would have to loop around at some point. It didn’t. People started getting off the bus one-by-one, steadily, ominously. Finally we were the last two on the bus, and the bus driver yelled something at us in Chinese, he pulled over and we had to assume it was the end of the line. We got off in an, of course, dark and foreboding neighborhood. We debated taking a cab (we don’t know our address in Chinese so there’s always some hesitation there), getting on any old random bus, or buying cigarettes and smoking our way out of the problem. Alas our bus eventually came back around the corner while we were still debating and we rode it all the way back home. We had first gotten on what should have been a 10 minute bus ride at around 6 p.m. I don’t think we got home until around 10 p.m. It was long. Yeah.
Anyway, I just spent way too long describing that. Sorry, cuz now I’m just going to be lazy and tell you some good and bad things about this city in list form:
GOOD: Excellent and cheap public transportation. It feels like a right here, as it should be everywhere. The lack of zoning, which sounds like it could be annoying, but it is very convenient to walk outside your door and be able to go out to eat, get coffee, grocery shop, see a movie, go to a pub, buy some clothes, pretty much anything you would have to drive multiple places to do/aquire in G.R. The cheapness, if you eat and shop like a local it’s cheap as hell. The problem is learning to communicate with people who work at these establishments, as they don’t cater to foreigners, probably with good reason…. must learn Chinese! Probably goes without saying, but the amazing amount of stuff to do. I guess it’s a natural by-product of living in any big city. But I’ve never lived in a big city before, so it’s going on my list, damnit. Hiking like 2 feet outside of the city. We’re going today, I will post some pictures later. Okay, there are more, but I’m getting sick of this and I still have to list all the bad.
BAD: (Not really the city’s fault, but) getting stared at a lot. I anticipated it, and it’s actually not nearly as bad as it could be, since we’re in the big city. But it still happens a lot, and it feels weird. Also, it’s always accompanied by a completely stoic and inscrutable look, so naturally I assume everyone who stares at me hates me. It’s probably just in my head, but I wish it would get out, cuz it’s not a good feeling. The stinky, stinky tofu. Perhaps I will adjust, but I really don’t care for the smell of it. Damn stinky! Which leads me to, unidentifiable food, particularly meats. After many years as a vegetarian I’ve retained a natural squeamishness about meat that does not serve me well here. Yesterday we bought some egg roll things from the grocery store that had some weird meat in them, they had the distinct flavor of stinky tofu, which really grossed me out. Josh ate 3 of them, then kept burping stinky tofu smell. Sorry if that’s too gross, but at least you didn’t have to suffer through it! Roaches, big HUUUGE ones, way bigger than I’ve ever seen before in my life. We’ve had two in our apartment so far, we set roach traps and have only seen one little dead one since. But, I see them outside on the sidewalks and they’re extremely nasty. Oh, the trash system. I guess this shouldn’t really be a BAD thing, since it’s presumably designed this way to prevent roaches, but you can’t just set your trash out. The garbage truck comes by at a certain time each night, blaring an ice cream truck-like tune and you have to run out there and throw your trash in the truck. If you’re not home at that time, you’re S.O.L., if you have any recycleables in your trash you can get fined. You have to buy special bags for different stuff. At this moment it’s annoying and confusing, but perhaps I’ll appreciate it when we figure it all out.
Okay, sorry about all the trivial ramblings. Perhaps some pictures will make up for it:
