Tai-what?!

My Final Days in Taiwan

2009-05-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

Originally I had planned to return to Chicago at the end of May/ beginning of June, but the flights were very crowded so it was best for me to get on a flight on May 3rd. I was only able to give my work a week's notice, but since I was only working 5 hours a week anyways, I figured it wouldn't be too hard for them to replace me in my classes.
On the last day of my M1 children's class with 6-8 year olds, I announced to them that I was leaving and that they would have a new teacher. They took it well, and two students came up with parting gifts for me; a crumpled up packet of hot chocolate, and an old pen. I thought it was very nice of them.

Wednesday evening after our classes Carolyn, our friends, and I all went for some Indian food together, and to a swank lounge near the top of the Hotel One building. It's always sad when you have to say farewell to people you think you may never see again. We had a good time though, even though the prices were exorbitant.

Thursday evening was pub quiz. Our team didn't do so well but again it was fun to see some friends and to get out of the apartment where I kept brooding over my eventual departure. I hid a bunch of notes around the apartment for Carolyn to randomly find during the next few months of her stay in Taiwan, so hopefully it will feel like I'm kind of there.

We decided we should do something big together while I was still there, so on Saturday we went to Kaohsiung, a port city in Southern Taiwan, and the second largest city in Taiwan. We took the High Speed Rail, a super-fast train that looks like an airplane inside. What would have taken us 5 hours by bus took us one hour by this train. The tickets were rather expensive ($40U.S. roundtrip) but the time saved was worth it.

The first thing in Kaohsiung we visited was the old British Consulate on a mountain overlooking the port. The view at the top was spectacular, and the building itself was rather interesting. It was built in 1864 as a trade house, and later converted into the consulate. Now it's just a tourist site with a temple built on the grounds. We rested here (because we walked for 30 minutes in the heat to reach the place) and got some tea at the outdoor tea garden. It was nice and relaxing. Nearby we visited the shore and admired the expansive ocean.

Afterwards we walked back to the port and found the ferry to Cijin island, a large island across the bay from Kaohsiung. The ferry was very Taiwanese-esque, crowded, and full of scooters. At least it was cheap. It dropped us off at the tourist part of the island, which opened into a food street. Of course the entire food street smelled like stinky tofu (rotting corpse) so I lost my appetite and we quickly walked to the beach instead. The Lonely Planet guidebook said the beach was alright, but when we got there it was very small and dirty. I definitely wouldn't recommend it to anybody looking for a beach. Carolyn was less discriminating than I so she took off her shoes and walked around in the sand (mud) and put her feet into the water (water and oil mixture). We relaxed here for awhile and then returned to the ferry to go back to Kaohsiung.

Next we stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant. The food was cheap but not great, and it was covered in melted Taiwanese cheese, which kind of just tastes like salt and oil. But it was filling and that's what I was looking for, so I shouldn't complain. We hopped into a cab after eating and took it to the Love River.
The Love River is a canal that runs through Kaohsiung City. It used to be very dirty but the city has started cleaning it up to promote tourism. It's pretty nice and there are biking paths and parks along the shore. There are also some shops and restaurants (we found an Outback Steakhouse). There were also some rental bikes but the machine was broken so we couldn't rent any. We walked along the shore for an hour or so, and saw some dragon boats. At this point we were getting very sunburnt and tired.

We decided to go to the next tourist spot, the Lotus Pond. So we hopped into another cab and went there. It turns out it's not so much a pond as it is a lake. It's pretty big and it has a bunch of pagodas which would have looked nice expect for the circus-themed giant animals littering the area. A bunch of temples lined the streets along the pond and everyone was out and about having a good Sunday afternoon. At the northern tip of the pond was a giant Confucius temple.

By the end of all this we were very exhausted, so we went back to the High Speed Rail station and took the train back to Taichung. We went to dinner at the hot pot restaurant we've been to a few times in the past (once with Bobby and Jennifer, once for a different occasion). The food was good and a nice sendoff as my last real Taiwanese meal in Taiwan.

The next morning we got back on the High Speed Rail, took it to the airport stop, and then took a bus to the airport. Carolyn and I were both very depressed that I was leaving, and it was very hard for me to leave her there, even though I'm sure she will be fine because she is very strong and independent and capable. I'm going to call her every day until she is back to make sure she is okay.

I had no problem getting on to either standby flight. For both flights I was put in business class. The first flight from Taipei to Tokyo I sat next to an old senile Chinese woman who had no idea where she was or what she was doing. The flight attendants kept giving her water, which she kept accidentally knocking over everywhere. One full cup she knocked completely on me. Each time she knocked her cup over she wasn't even aware of it. I was very happy to get off the flight because I didn't want to be completely soaked for my 13 hour flight, and I was worried I wouldn't look neat and clean so the attendants at the Tokyo to Chicago gate wouldn't put me on business.

I waited 3 hours at the Tokyo airport for the connecting flight. I had no problem getting into business on this flight either. This time I had a Chinese man sitting next to me and he was much more aware than my prior placement. The flight was fine and there were some decent movies. In particular I didn't expect to enjoy Yes Man as much as I did. I hated Taken though, it was full of cliche lines and awful script-writing. The action scenes were incredibly dull as well. The one problem I had with this flight though was that for the first 6 hours straight we had turbulence. It was ridiculous. I started feeling nauseous because of the constant bouncing, like we were on a boat in choppy waters. Finally it let up and I was able to relax more and eat. I wasn't able to fall asleep on the flight though so by the time I got off I had been awake for 25 hours. But since it was 2:20pm I had to stay awake until 9 or 10pm if I wanted to beat jet lag. So I was very out of it the whole evening. But I was struck at how clean the air is here, and how nice it smells. Where are all the scooters, the brown skies, the smell of sewers and stinky tofu? Where are the advertisement trucks rolling around shouting Chinese slogans into our ears? And where are all the 7-11s? I am glad all those things are absent. It feels good to be back, even though I'm sad Carolyn couldn't come back with me.

Law School

2009-04-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

So I got into law school! It looks like I will be attending John Marshall Law School in Chicago in August. Orientation starts August 15th to be exact, which means I will be leaving Taiwan earlier than originally intended. But I will need to get back to the U.S. probably a few months earlier, so maybe I will most likely be back in June. The reason for this is twofold: I need to do a lot of administrative stuff (such as get my immunizations from an American doctor), and second I need to earn more than I am here so I will have some money to start with (for transportation, living expenses, etc). So I will most likely see all of you in June!

Hot Springs and All You Can Eat

2009-04-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to the hot spring that you may have read about in Carolyn's blog. It is located in the mountains near Taichung (Dakeng). Supposedly they are natural hot springs, but they are new and I'm not so sure of that claim. The place itself is quite nice. It's a hotel resort and the prices are very reasonable.

The spa has two hot spring jacuzzis, both of which I sat in for awhile but they really burn. I couldn't stay in them too long because they were too hot for me. I did however enjoy the warm water pool with the various fountains. I particularly liked the fountain that felt like a waterfall giving you a back massage. I also tried out the pool with the fish that you stick your feet in and they eat the dead skin off your feet. Unlike Carolyn, I found the fish to be very unpleasant. It's like a tiny biting sensation and it's very startling every time a new fish comes to eat your feet. The bigger fish are downright painful. But the spa did give us free ice cream, which is very nice after having spent 4-5 hours in a hot spring.

Afterwards we went to an all-you-can-eat barbecue. It was similar to a Korean barbecue I visited in Taiwan. In the middle of the table is a barbecue pit where you can cook your food, and they also have a hot pot with soup cooking on the corner of the table. For about $12 US it's all you can eat for 2 hours. We had 4 rounds with about 10 dishes per round, for 4 people. We ate a ton and most of it was good. I still have a boycott on organs but Carolyn tried the chicken hearts and cow tongue. On the other hand I ate the raw beef while she still refuses.

So to sum things up, it was a long day but it was well worth it.

Catharsis

2009-04-04T00:27:00.000-07:00

As of late I’ve been doing a lot more children’s classes because I think I’m on the outs in the adult department. Our managers work on a system of passive aggressive punishment. A couple of weeks ago I received a complaint in the adult’s department that I wasn’t checking their homework to make sure they were doing it correctly. Instead I was going over the answers in the class so they can check it, and the process is more active. However this student didn’t want that, she wanted me to take all of their workbooks home and spend 3 hours each night grading them. I don’t get paid for class preparation, and I don’t get paid for grading homework. For a 3 hour adult class I put in 2 hours of preparation time. Now add to that 3 hours of homework grading a class, and I will be spending 5 hours of my own time for a 3 hour class. The 3 hour class pays about $60 U.S. a day. So in the end if I brought the homework home that means I’d be getting paid $60 for 8 hours of my work time. That comes out to $7.50 an hour. I was making $7.50 an hour 5 years ago as a tuxedo store clerk. When confronted about it by the secretary, I told her there is no way I’m bringing the workbooks home to grade. I suppose this was foolish of me, but I was just being honest. If I wanted to tell her “no” in the Chinese bureaucratic way I should have said “hmmm….. that will be very difficult. I will see what I can do.” Later that day the adult manager called me at home (at 10pm) and also asked me to do it. This time I gave him the second response, but it doesn’t work on him really because he’s not Chinese.

So what is the result of this supposedly little issue? Well as it turns out over this past month I’ve been repeatedly skipped in adult class assignment. Not a single adult class has come my way even though I have the most availability and I ask the manager for classes nonstop. Even Carolyn, who is already at nearly 20 hours a week (Compared to my 14, soon to be 6), was offered a 4 hour Saturday adult class. The time this class is at I also have free, so the manager could have called me, but he gave it to Carolyn, who has way more hours than me. I’m glad at least Carolyn got it because she also needs the money, and she’s an excellent adult teacher, but I find it ridiculous how this management at my school works. The funny thing is that when the manager offered the class to Carolyn he said “See eventually you get enough hours and then get to choose whether to accept classes or not.” Well I have never been given this option. And she really didn’t have the option to accept it or not, because if she rejected it she would never receive another adult class offer again. That’s how passive aggressive they are.

Here’s another funny little tidbit. A co-worker of ours just re-signed a 2nd year contract with our school (It boggles my mind why she would do this because there are much better jobs here in Taiwan for those with experience and the willingness to teach children.) She filled out the application and signed the contract and applied for the ARC. Well she wanted a copy of the contract for her records and when she asked the manager, the manager said she doesn’t think it will be possible.!!! I know it’s illegal in Taiwan to not provide a contract (well technically if you have enough money nothing is illegal in Taiwan), but our stupid manager wouldn’t provide her a copy. I am beginning to suspect she is under orders from the owners not to provide contracts because later on if there is a dispute the employee will have nothing to give his/her attorney, thus putting the school at an advantage.

So now that I’m getting dropped from adult classes I’ve received a few children’s classes. Lately I’ve begun to absolutely loathe teaching children. My older class with teenagers has become pretty awful. They were behaving for the first semester, but now they have started reverting to infancy. Yesterday we were doing a project involving cutting up newspaper pictures to make an advertisement for tourists in Taiwan. Well one group of students instead just decided that it was hilarious to shred all the newspaper into little pieces and throw them about the room. I haven’t encountered this behavior since my dogs got a hold of newspaper. These are teenagers ranging from 12 to 16, not elementary children! What’s worse is that a few children decided to make newspaper balls and start chucking them at girls (who were seriously working on their advertisement). It was beginning to escalate so I told one student to get out of the classroom and go sit with the secretaries. And guess what, he refused to my face! I was very stern, threatening and menacing, and finally he got up and came with me after refusing for like a minute. I brought him downstairs and told the secretaries, and later he came back and helped another student pick up all the newspaper scraps they had produced.

The children here are so disrespectful compared to students from schools I have previously attended (Woodland and Warren). I never ever disobeyed a teacher like that, especially to his/her face. I have a variety of theories that I will share.

First, I believe the Chinese have a penchant for spoiling their sons (it’s every parent’s dream to have a fat pampered son). So half the boys here are really rotten, mean, and cruel, to me and to their classmates.

Second, at my school children come at night after having spent the whole day at another school. So they are stressed out and overworked. They do want to have fun and play. So they often goof off and don’t pay attention. Unfortunately their parents are paying us to teach them English (and to baby-sit them), so we try our hardest to prevent goofing off.

Third, these children tend to be a lot more disrespectful to white teachers compared to Chinese teachers. The reason for this may be racism. They don’t see their white teachers as real people or valuable members of society. So they feel that it is alright to disrespect them.

Fourth, as the white teacher who only speaks English, we can’t call their parents and tell them what their children are doing. So the children recognize we have no power of punishment beyond the classroom. If we want to punish outside of the class we have to get the Chinese teacher or secretaries involved.

Last, white teachers come and go constantly, and the quality of teachers is very low. We are not trained as teachers, and they may see as many as 4 different teachers in one semester. Because of this they figure it’s alright to be disrespectful because if it puts them on the teacher’s bad side, the teacher will be gone in a few weeks anyways. Furthermore, a lot of teachers they have had in the past probably have been pushovers, so they expect me to be a pushover as well, and when I punish them they really refuse because they don’t think I will escalate the punishment.

So those are all my problems with the school system in Taiwan and the particular school I work for. It’s truly a mess and I seriously want to get out of it as soon as possible. I’m highly considering going back to law school (because I don’t want to have to do disagreeable jobs like this for the rest of my life) and I already applied for John Marshall with an August start. If I don’t get in for August I will reapply for January. Hopefully I can get back to school soon. In the meantime I’m making plans to move back to Chicago and find some temporary work to hold me over until I start school. Carolyn on the other hand is doing very well here and we both agree she should stay to finish out the contract. She thinks she may want to be a teacher, so this experience, and the references, will be quite valuable. Of course I will miss her a lot and I wish she could come back with me, but we will only be apart for 3 or 4 months, and it’s the best thing for our future.

I want to apologize for spending this whole post complaining. But I really feel some catharsis when typing up all my feelings. I hope to see all of you soon!

Shitou: Not nearly as bad as the name sounds.

2009-03-29T06:06:00.001-07:00

Shi-Tou is a mountainous forest area in the middle of the island of Taiwan. The elevation is quite high and it feels very different from the rest of Taiwan. Our friends (my former students who we have been hanging out with) offered to drive us there and take us around for the day. I am not one to refuse a free, great experience like this so we accepted and met them at 8a.m. this morning (Sunday).

Beforehand Carolyn and I both got breakfast because we were expecting to head straight to Shi-Tou as soon as we met our friends. But instead, they drove us back to one of their houses, where they gave us breakfast, cookies, candy, tea, and coffee. It was very hospitable and I was incredibly full. This house is an awesome house. It's outside of the city near the High Speed Rail station, and it's pretty large. It has 4 stories (and possibly a basement). The main living room on the first floor has this gigantic table made out of a tree trunk, encircled with tree stumps turned into chairs. The table and chairs alone must have cost a fortune. Our friend's family was quite nice to us and after meeting them and eating we were off to Shi-Tou.

The drive probably took 45 minutes there and it was raining and foggy. At first I was worried that it was going to be no fun because of the rain, but once we arrived there I realized the rain was actually making it look quite nice and cool. As you can see from the pictures the place is very alpine. It's a high elevation and the area looks like the Pacific Northwest, perhaps Oregon or Washington-esque. The temperature was cooler but not especially cold.

So we hiked for a couple of hours. We first walked along this elevated walkway that allows you to walk through the tops of the trees. It was a bit scary and I didn't feel that the architecture was sound enough for me to be standing on. Afterwards we came across this old tree there that is supposed to be 2000 years old. We ate some local food there as well : sausage, sticky rice, pork, and mushrooms cooked in bamboo, and bamboo shoot soup.

We were pretty tired from all the hiking so we headed back to the cars, only to discover that one of the drivers left the headlights of their car on so the battery was dead. Someone driving by in the parking lot jumped the car so it was alright in the end.

Our friends took us back to the house we were at in the morning, and this time we were taught how to play mahjongg. It's fun to play, I wouldn't say amazing, but Carolyn really enjoys it. We didn't play for money but I suppose it would be more exciting if we had. We played it for a few hours and then returned home. It was quite an exciting day and once again a good look into the lives of the local Taiwanese.

Random Scenes of Taiwanese Life

2009-03-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty normal here for the past few weeks, which explains my reluctance to post about it. Carolyn and I are taking turns being sick and I recently caught the flu and got bronchitis. I’ve recovered from the flu but I’m still coughing a lot, but my lungs no longer gurgle when I breathe so that’s a plus. I went to the chest doctor and he gave me antibiotics to take. It doesn’t help that this past week has been one of the smokiest, most polluted weeks I have seen in Taichung. I’m hoping my cough doesn’t turn into a lingering cough like Carolyn’s has.

I have a new private one on one student, which I am excited about. She contacted me online through a service that helps Taiwanese find English tutors. We met last Tuesday (when I was extremely sick but I needed the money), and the lesson worked out well. She’s very friendly and easy to get along with. At first I was afraid she would be looking for something more than tutoring lessons (people often set up tutoring lessons here when they are looking for a foreign boyfriend) but it turns out she is legitimately interested in learning English because she uses it at work. Hopefully the lessons last because it’s a nice source of extra income, and I receive cash right away instead of having to wait a month for a paycheck like at my school.

So a Canadian friend of ours who works at our school put in her one month’s notice last week and the school dropped her to 6 hours a week. At this point it’s cheaper for her to go home now instead of finishing the one month. It’s sad that the system our school creates provides an incentive to teachers to be dishonest. She has decided (and rightly so) that she should just stop showing up to work and she got plane tickets for this coming Monday. While it will put a little undue stress on whichever foreign teacher has to substitute her class, it’s better than her having to pay a lot of money to stay for the remaining month while only making $200. I hope she feels no remorse for putting the school in a difficult situation, because they do it to us all the time and I would certainly feel no remorse (perhaps I would even get some pleasure out of making the children’s director scramble to solve the problem). So this is what I have to look forward to during last month of being here in Taiwan.

On the plus side (I don’t know if I already mentioned this), I have received two new children’s classes. Teaching children is so incredibly different from teaching adults. Teaching adult classes are generally much easier because you don’t have to strive to keep them entertained (for the most part, I have a group of college-aged students who still require entertainment). The one children’s class I teach Thursday nights for two hours. These children are young (age 7-8) and for the most part they are very cooperative and happy children. I haven’t had to do any disciplining yet. The only problem I have is that they don’t understand the concept of taking quizzes and tests, so I have a very energetic boy who screams out answers he recognizes. And all the students keep asking me if their answers are correct during the test. I had to have the Chinese teacher explain to them how to take quizzes and tests, but they still were very confused. It’s okay, quizzing and testing 7-8 year olds is pretty ridiculous I think and it really just exists to make the parents feel good about the school.
The other children’s class I received is on Friday nights after my old children’s class. It lasts one hour from 9pm to 10pm. These kids are great and are definitely my favorite class. They are between the ages of 10 and 13. They are a lot of fun, they like to play practical jokes so they put an eraser on top of the door, and my Chinese co-teacher walked in and it fell on her and we all laughed about it. We have to cover a lot of boring material in this hour (mostly bookwork) but they still remain positive and friendly. I’m going to introduce more fun games into the class because it could be a lot of fun for everybody.

Outside of school we haven’t been doing much because doing things costs money. We did celebrate my birthday by getting a ton of delicious Indian food at a local Indian restaurant. Carolyn also got me a cake and new headphones because mine broke. It was quite a nice birthday! The cake is a coffee flavored cake with frosting squirrels and chocolate logs on top. It’s very delicious, we had got a similar one for our friend Michael’s birthday a few months ago. This coming weekend we are going to a tourist forest recreation area in Nantou county with our local Taiwanese friends (they are driving us ☺ ). That should be fun and I will post some pictures on Sunday. We also want to take the High Speed Rail to Kaohsiung sometime soon and go to Kenting as well. Kenting is the tropical beach area in the southern part of the island. I could really use a tropical retreat! Have a great week everybody.

Half-Time Reflection

2009-03-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

So it's just about been 6 months since I left the United States to come to Taiwan. I'm at the halfway mark of my stay (possibly) and I have been reflecting on what I have learned here so far. I have also been considering how it has benefited me to be here (I'm trying to look at things positively since I often find myself being negative about my situation).

So the following is a list of what I have learned:

1. How to drive a scooter.
2. How Chinese businesses are run and managed.
3. How the Taiwanese government operates.
4. How to teach adults (teaching children is still a mystery to me).
5. The basics of the Spanish language (yes I realize I'm in Taiwan and I should be learning Chinese, but I am tone deaf and speaking Mandarin is all about tones. I have lots of free time so I've been listening to a program called Coffee Break Spanish on iTunes, I guess to prepare for my return to North America).
6. The last 400 years of Taiwanese history.
7. Stinky tofu is the worst smell in the entire world.
8. How to make a meal entirely from items purchased at 7-11.
9. How to live on $300 for a month.
10. The probability of surviving a fall off of a cliff while hiking.
11. How to entertain myself for a week with $0 and my 8 year old laptop computer.
12. The importance of having a well-paying job.
13. The probability that I will never find a job that I love, so I should find a job that compensates me handsomely.
14. How to kill and avoid cockroaches.
15. How much I love, appreciate, and understand American culture (absence makes the heart grow fonder!)

So as I reflect I find there are several reasons why it has benefited me to be here. The first is that when I return I will appreciate almost any job I get because compared to the work system here, I will be in heaven. The second benefit is that when I return I will be more appreciative of the environment, because it's wonderful knowing/understanding/ being familiar with everything/everyone you come across. I will also appreciate the simple things such as clean air and clean water (things that are not available to me here). I have also developed leadership skills, such as the ability to motivate adults to perform a difficult task. And I now have much better public speaking skills as well. Also, having a stable work history will work in my benefit when I return to look for new work.

So there you have it, my attempt at keeping a positive outlook on my experiences here thus far. There have been a lot of benefits to my being here, although they aren't necessarily related to Taiwan in particular. If you have any questions you'd like to ask me about particular experiences, go ahead and post a comment and I will try to respond. I hope you have enjoyed this post of self-reflection!

Balderdash

2009-02-26T01:52:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody,
I've been looking for work recently and while I haven't had much luck there have been some promising signs. I've had two interviews/ teaching demos, and while neither of them ended up hiring me, I feel like I did fairly well during them. The reason I didn't get the jobs is that they are both part-time evening positions, which is what I already have (well my job is actually supposed to be full-time but of course it never turns out to be) so they would conflict with my schedule. And I can't quit my current job to work a part-time job because it's technically illegal to be working part-time and so a part-time position would not be able to supply me an Alien Resident Card like my current school does. I've also found some other schools hiring but so far they've all conflicted with my schedule as well. It turns out every school in Taichung wants English teachers to work at night and on Saturday mornings.

I'm hoping to find a part-time morning and afternoon position for maybe 2 hours a day. That would put me up to work about 25 hours a week, which considering the pay rate of $21U.S. an hour and the low cost of living here, I'd be doing pretty well. Carolyn has had more success than I have, she has been substituting in the mornings and she is being considered for a part-time morning job at a local elementary school. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because we could really use some extra work to survive here.

Speaking of extra work, my school gave me a new class to replace my other class that just ended, so I am back to 10 hours per week. In addition, I am being given a children's class (very young, maybe 7-8 years old) to teach on Thursday evenings, putting me at 12 hours per week. Up until now I've been typecast as an adult teacher (from what I've read online women tend to get the jobs teaching children while men are given the jobs teaching teenagers and adults). To be fair, the only reason I was given this class is because every single other white English teacher at my school already has a Thursday evening class. Therefore, I have become a final resort, haha! Not only that, but the full reason I am getting this class is because a fellow teacher friend of ours who works at our school just quit for a real job at an elementary school. So the school was in a pickle and they decided that while they strictly want me to teach only adults they had to grudgingly give me a children's class.

In other news, our school just hired two more white English teachers, completely over-saturating itself and therefore lowering all the current teacher's teaching hours dramatically. They expect teachers to quit so they hire new teachers even when they are unneeded, and thus drive the current teachers to quit! In a way, it's comical to step back and look at the idiocy of this situation and school. In another way, it's depressing that I have to put up with this sort of mismanagement for 7 more months.

Which brings me to another point, I am still applying to jobs back in Chicago, and if I find something decent and it looks promising I would highly consider taking it if I don't find work here soon. So please continue to keep an eye out for any jobs you know of that I am qualified to do.

Lately for recreation we've had to find cheap or free ways to entertain ourselves. Watching movies and television shows online is one thing we have started to do a lot of. We've also been hanging out with our fellow teachers more often as well. Two weekends ago we spent over 8 hours at our friend's house playing Balderdash. Well we weren't actually playing Balderdash because we didn't have the game itself. Instead, we took turns looking up people, dates, acronyms, words, and movie titles online and we would all write down a lie to convince people our answer was correct. It was great fun and I have learned many new english words such as gimcrack, costive, organza, and canaille. And do you know what the acronym V.O.M.I.T. stands for? Carolyn had the best lie, Victorian Old-school Murderers In Training. In actuality the answer was Victims Of Medical Imaging Technology.

So I've been in Taiwan for over 5 months and by this time I believe the honeymoon stage of living abroad is over, as well as the frustration stage. I am starting to feel more homesick though (I mostly miss family/friends/food/Marge). I've grown to accept living here (although a great many things still frustrate me). But things aren't as interesting to me as they initially were. I suppose if I had more work and I was making more money to use for travel I'd be finding more interesting things. Hopefully I do get some work so I can afford the tourist destinations that I want to visit before I leave in 7 months. Perhaps if I work really really hard over the summer I can even make enough money to visit India for two weeks like I wanted to. It's probably a pipe-dream for now but we will see.

I hope you are all doing well, please leave comments because I like to read what you have to say about what I have to say. Plus it lets me know who is still reading this.
-Michael

The Lantern Festival

2009-02-08T01:40:00.000-08:00

Saturday, February 7th is the Lantern Festival here, so we headed to PingXi with our friends Matt and Kristin where they have an annual celebration. PingXi is in the mountains just east of Taipei, so we had to take a bus to Taipei, then hop on the MRT to the Taipei Zoo area, and then a shuttle bus up the mountain for 45 minutes to the final destination. In total it was 4 hours of travel time each way, so we spent 8 hours traveling and probably 3 hours of actual celebrating.
But the festival was definitely worth it. It is one of those sights you would never see in the United States because of the obvious dangers and lack of appeal to the average American. So we were dropped off on a road with thousands of other people near PingXi, and we had to walk to the city on foot. While we were walking we could already see the lanterns from the distance, and it was quite amazing. If you have ever watched the discovery channel and you have seen when thousands of electric jelly-fish are mating in the ocean, well the sky kind of looked like that. There were thousands of lanterns floating around in the night sky. As we got closer we found that groups of people were releasing lanterns in waves, so all of the sudden a couple hundred lanterns would fly up into the sky and everybody would gasp in awe and cheer. Many people were also setting off lanterns on their own, so the sky was constantly filled with glowing orbs of fire.

The main street in PingXi was the location of the night market which we walked down and grabbed some food to eat. I got a corn dog, which was okay but definitely not authentic. I also bought some mountain pig on a kebob and a banana covered in chocolate with sprinkles. Carolyn got tomatoes and strawberries covered in chocolate which also looked very good. This area was extremely crowded and I was more or less pushed along in the crowd down the street. This celebration was by far the largest gathering of people I have ever seen in my life. There were people everywhere, people stacked on top of people for miles and miles.

We decided to have the full experience so we bought a lantern for ourselves. The lady who sold it to us also helped us set it up. We got to write whatever we wanted on it. Usually people write their wishes for the new year on it and then send it up into the sky. Originally the lanterns were used to warn the townsfolk of invaders but now it's all just for fun and tradition. I wished for a new job. The lady who sold it to us also ran and bought some fireworks for us to attach to it as well. After we finished writing on it she came back and we held it up while she put the fire into it. The lantern quickly filled up with hot air and started floating. The lady attached the fireworks to it and we let go. It took off and then the fireworks exploded right over our heads. It was pretty interesting.

As we walked around we found a ton of these lanterns caught in trees. Luckily it had just rained so it was unlikely any would cause a fire. Some lanterns whose fires went out came crashing down back into the crowds. They usually fall slowly though as they cool down and they don't weigh much so I doubt there were any injuries.
After we had finished eating and sightseeing we decided to get back on the bus to Taipei. The Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall had an exhibition on Andy Warhol that we wanted to see before it closed, and supposedly they had a lantern show there also. So we walked to where we originally got on the bus only to discover the longest line I have ever seen in my life. Forget about the 2 hour lines at Great America. This line stretched forever and for the first 30 minutes it did not move an inch. Luckily it was well organized and they had hundreds of buses so after 30 minutes it started to move quickly and we were back on a bus within an hour and a half. But by this time it was late so we skipped going to the exhibition and just took the bus back to Taichung. It was a great experience though and if you ever find yourself in Taiwan for the next Lantern Festival, I highly recommend going unless you have a phobia of large crowds.

Finally Tainan!

2009-02-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

We finally made it to Tainan! I hate when I plan to do something and I keep pushing it back endlessly, so it was nice to finally go to Tainan and accomplish what I wanted to do. Tainan is the former capital of Taiwan, one of the oldest cities in Taiwan, and currently the fourth largest city. It is about 2 hours south of where we live in Taichung and definitely much warmer. We got up at 7:00a.m. on Tuesday morning and drove our scooter down to the bus station. For some reason the bus company had discounted fares for all, so instead of paying $10 U.S. each way for the bus we only paid $2.50 U.S.

After a 2 hour bus ride we arrived at the Tainan bus station. We have the Lonely Planet Guidebook to Taiwan, and they have a neat walking tour of Tainan in it. Fortunately the bus station is near the start of the walking tour so it was quite convenient. The first stop on the walking tour was the Taiwanese Literary Museum. The museum itself was very boring for me (I think it is designed more for children and teenagers), but the building is a wonderful example of Japanese colonial architecture so I took some photos of it.

We didn't stay at the museum long because I found it boring and since we had limited time to see the entire city I wanted to keep going and find more interesting sights.

Next we found the Confucius Temple. It seems every temple in Taiwan is named either the Confucius Temple or Longshan Temple. This temple was actually used for teaching children and I don't think any religious statues or artifacts were in the place. I believe it was built in the 1700's. There were a lot of steles with rules for the students, as well as lessons of instruction. And there were also a lot of banyon trees that Carolyn was absolutely fascinated with. She took a lot of pictures and I'm sure some will appear on her blog for you to check out.

The next sight I found much more interesting. We walked about a block and came across the Great South Gate of Tainan. It's a wonderfully preserved gate and wall built in the 1600's to keep out the Manchus and Europeans. There was almost nobody at this sight which made it feel even more authentic. This is the beauty of traveling on a Tuesday, everybody has to work but me and Carolyn. We sat here for awhile and just took in the atmosphere. Here is a picture of the gate and the surrounding wall.

Next we stopped at another temple (Wufei Temple) dedicated to the 5 concubines of Koxinga's son, the last leader of the Ming Dynasty. The story goes that when he surrendered to the Manchus his concubines were so loyal they hung themselves to join him in death. This temple is dedicated to their loyalty. It's a very small temple situated in a nice park as you can see from the photo. I didn't want to stay at this sight too long either because I am so incredibly bored of temples and up to this point this temple was the most average one I have come across. So we didn't stay more than 15 minutes before going to the next sight on the tour.

As it turns out, the next sight was yet another temple! Fahua temple to be exact, and now I had finally arrived at the most ho-hum temple imaginable. Needless to say we did not stay long. Instead we continued on to Koxinga's shrine. Koxinga was the Ming general who fled China in the 1600's when the Manchus took over mainland China. His plan, (similar to the KMT's plan to retake Mainland China from the communists) was to regroup in Taiwan and muster forces to retake the mainland from the foreign invaders. Instead (like the KMT), he never made it back to Mainland China and the Manchus held control over China for 300 years. The Manchus also invaded Taiwan and forced Koxinga's son to surrender. Koxinga did develop a lot of infrastructure in Taiwan, and a lot of the schools and temples were built in his time. This particular shrine dedicated to him was originally built long ago, but it was rebuilt by the KMT in the northern Chinese style of architecture and plastered with the KMT logo. It was interesting to see though because Koxinga is looked at with reverence by a lot of Taiwanese. Apparently the day we were visiting there was also a farmer's market taking place inside the shrine. Near the shrine is also a nice garden with a carp pond and dragon fountain, and a large statue of Koxinga himself.

Across the street from Koxinga's shrine is Lady Linshui's temple. At this point I remember begging, "please no more temples! I don't want to see anymore!" So we decided to skip the 4 other temples on the walking tour and head to the more interesting sights. Lady Linshui's temple is mainly for women. Women go there to pray for various womanly interests and when we visited there were actually a lot of women and girls there praying. One thing that interested me with the temple was the lantern display in the front. I have taken a picture of it for you to see.

So since we decided to skip the remaining temples we headed straight to Chihkan Towers, or Fort Proventia as it was called by the Dutch. I was very excited to see Chihkan towers because it was a Dutch fort built in the early 1600's to protect the Netherlands' colonial interests. When Koxinga came to the island and forced the Dutch to surrender, he tore part of the fort down and put up a temple called Hong Mao temple (which translates to the Temple of the Red-haired Barbarians, or something like that). Yes it was funny that I was present at the fort and the Taiwanese visiting it were also intrigued with my presence. At this point we were very hungry so we tried to get some food from the concession stand at the tower. One lone girl was staffing the stand and there were a lot of hungry Taiwanese demanding food from her. I ordered pizza and Carolyn got some waffles. We waited and waited for food, and Carolyn's waffles finally arrived. My pizza however did not come after maybe 20 minutes or so and finally the girl came over and said something like "No time, I give you money. No pizza." She handed me the money I had paid for the pizza and walked away. Apparently she was busy and had refused to serve me food! It happened so quickly I had no idea what was going on. I wonder if she would have refused to serve food to a Taiwanese person. Either way she didn't speak English so I couldn't argue with her, and I can't speak Chinese so we just walked around the fort instead and I went hungry.

The fort was very nice as you can see from the photos. The outer walls of the fort remain, as well as the foundations. The Chinese built a temple on the top of the foundations. They also included 8 stone tablets on top of turtles. And they also erected a statue of a Dutchman surrendering to Koxinga and two attendants. Overall this sight was quite nice, besides the very strange and rude concession girl.

From Chihkan Tower we took a taxi to the second Dutch fort in Tainan called Anping Fort, or Fort Zeelandia by the Dutch. This fort is right near the ocean and was meant to protect against invading ships. It was also built by the Dutch, but it was thoroughly destroyed by the Chinese and Japanese. The Japanese built a mansion inside the walls and the Taiwanese added an observation tower. The sight was still nice though and had some historical relics from the Dutch era. Although the sight was mostly rebuilt in the 1960's it still felt like I was in a real fort being used for protection against marauding ships.

By now we were very tired and so we found some food and rested a bit. Afterwards we just did some random exploring around the city and Carolyn got a sweet dessert from a street vendor. It was a fruit/vegetable kabob glazed in sugar. She really enjoyed it, and oddly enough her favorite part was the cherry tomato glazed in sugar.

To conclude we wandered around looking for the bus station again and finally found it after 40 minutes of walking. We were beat and ready to stop walking, so the two hour bus ride back was a nice respite.

The New Year

2009-01-27T23:50:00.000-08:00

Gong hay fat choy (Cantonese)! Xi nian kuai le (Mandarin)! Happy Chinese New Year! Chinese New Year is a big deal here in Taiwan, and most businesses are closed for an entire week. Some people take two weeks off of work. Most of the time is spent eating with family and traveling. Our school has given us a week off, which is nice but at the same time it's tough because we are paid hourly.
We decided we needed to do something for our break because we have no idea how much longer we will be here for, and it would be a shame not to see as much as we can. So on Saturday morning we got up very early and met two other teachers, and we took a bus back up to Taipei. I must say, Taipei is cold compared to Taichung. It was probably around 50 degrees fahrenheit, rainy, windy, and humid (which makes it feel much colder).
We had a good time in Taipei. We were supposed to meet the teacher recruiting agency we used (Reach To Teach) for a hiking trip at Yangmingshan Mountain, but when we arrived at the train station the group was nowhere to be found, so we decided to do our own thing. Since Carolyn and I hadn't been to the National Museum we thought it would be a great time to go. We got on the MRT (Taipei subway, very efficient and nice) and rode it to the nearest stop where we got on a bus that brought us the rest of the way to the museum. The museum is quite nice. Apparently when the KMT were fleeing the communists in China they rescued (or plundered depending on how you look at it) all of the artifacts from the Forbidden City. They have a gigantic collection of ancient Chinese artifacts, jewelry, weapons, furniture, religious statues, and paintings. Supposedly the collection is so huge that they rotate the exhibits frequently so there is always something new to look at.
We ended up spending maybe 3 or 4 hours at the museum so we didn't pursue our planned follow-up activity of hiking. Instead we got back on the MRT and rode it out to Danshui, a suburb of Taipei where the Danshui River meets the ocean. Danshui is a nice town with a boardwalk, plenty of restaurants and stores, and a fishball museum. Yes we decided we should visit the fishball museum, but it wasn't nearly as awesome as I thought it would be. Fishballs here are essentially fish and various other ingredients formed into balls and fried. They use many different types of fish, squid, octopus, lobster, crab, and shrimp. The museum itself was rather empty. It only had some pictures, some old equipment used to make fishballs, and some scale models of fishing boats. There were some lonely fishballs in a freezer. I was hoping we could see fishballs being made and on display, but no such luck. It's OK though, I don't like fishballs. Carolyn however was sad.
After the museum we bought some piping hot sausage on the street which was nice considering the temperature. We strolled down to the boardwalk area where our friends played the carnival games for a bit, and then we took some pictures along the river. We were getting very cold by this point so we got back on the MRT and took it all the way back to Taipei. We then got on a shuttle bus and rode to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (though I think one somewhere in Dubai may be taller now). We were going to ride the elevator to the top of the building to see the view but we decided against it because it was expensive and dark out so we wouldn't be able to see much. Instead we ate dinner at the food court, got some ice cream, and checked out a nice bookstore.
It was a long day, so by 10p.m. we got back on the bus to Taichung. Since it was Chinese New Year's Eve every city we passed on the way back to Taichung was shooting off fireworks. It was pretty cool to see fireworks at night constantly on the bus ride home.
We don't have much else planned for the week but we are considering going to Tainan, the old capital of Taiwan. We will probably go hiking in Dakeng again and visit a hot spring to relax. I start working again on Monday, February 1st. My Tuesday/Thursday evening class ended so tentatively I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday morning for a total of 10 hours :( . I'm still looking for a job in Chicago though and I am still looking for work here so hopefully I find something!
Our friends Matt and Kristin are on a road trip/camping trip in Southern Taiwan for the week, so we are watching their dog. It's technically not their dog, they found it abandoned and are fostering it until they find a home for it. It's a small little white fluffy lap dog that you can imagine Taiwanese women love. It's personality is nice enough, but it smells awful and it must have been trained to urinate on newspaper in an apartment because after every walk when it gets back into our apartment it urinates on the floor. It's not a dog I would want to have but it's fine watching it for just a week (and Carolyn gets to clean up the urine because it was her decision to watch it!).

One Foot From a Scooter Accident

2009-01-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

Sorry I have not written a blog post in awhile! Here is a new one that I hope is interesting.
This Saturday (1/18), Carolyn and I decided to drive our scooter down to another part of Taichung City that is rather far from where we live. I wanted to go there because I have an interview for a part-time English job at a school in the area and because Tunghai University is there which supposedly has a very nice campus. The drive down there was nice, although it takes awhile and I am having second thoughts about doing this commute every day if I get this job. We parked at the university and looked around the campus. The buildings are all very nice and seem to be Japanese inspired. In the middle of the campus is a landmark building in Taichung called Luce Chapel. It's a giant Christian Chapel that was designed to look like an upside down boat.

It's a pretty neat building and I bet it looks cool at night when all the spotlights are on it. It was nice walking around Tunghai because it was a lot quieter than the downtown where we live, and it smelled like grass and trees (a smell I only experience here when I go hiking). The smell where we live is predominantly car exhaust/sewage/stinky tofu. I am afraid of what the pollution here is doing to my lungs.
After walking around Tunghai we drove to a promenade with a bunch of shops nearby. It was here that I found the only Yoshinoya I have seen in Taichung City. If you have read my first post you will see that I ate at Yoshinoya my first full day in Taiwan. Yoshinoya is my favorite fast-food Japanese restaurant. The food is good, quick, fresh tasting, and cheap.
We were both getting pretty tired and it was starting to get dark so we decided to head back to our apartment. Since I drove to the university (with Carolyn sitting in the back), we agreed that Carolyn would drive us home. At this point in the day, around 5:30, the streets were starting to get packed. I realize driving here in Taiwan you have to assume that every motorist will make the least safe maneuver possible in every situation. Halfway home we had a prime example of a scooter driver doing something completely stupid. We were waiting at a stoplight with a pack of scooters and cars and the light changed to green. A guy from the other side on his scooter decides to zip out in front of the traffic and make it across before us scooters pulled into the intersection. Unfortunately we couldn't see him because cars were blocking our view and so all the scooters pulled out. We were in the front of the line along with a guy to our right who was also on a scooter. Well as we started into the middle of the intersection this guy zips across at a very fast speed and just plows into the left side of the guy to our right. Their scooters collided within 1 foot of us and it was scary. The guy zipping across making the stupid maneuver must not have had his helmet on all the way because it popped right off him as soon as he hit the other guy. Their scooters were really banged up but they both seemed alive fortunately. We did not stop to help because we were in the middle of the intersection and the people behind us were not stopping. Accidents must be so commonplace here that people just continue driving around without stopping or trying to make the scene safe.
That was the third accident I have personally seen occur here. The first one I saw was when a car making a left turn in an intersection pulled out in front of a scooter coming the opposite way. The guy on the scooter did a faceplant right into the car door. He had a helmet on so he got up and was blindly stumbling around. Luckily he did not die traveling at that speed, but I'm sure he had a concussion and possibly some broken bones. His scooter was smashed up and the car was also severely dented.
The large amount of accidents here makes me think twice about getting a job that requires me to commute by scooter. I would have to travel around during rush hour on a scooter with thousands of maniacs 4 days a week. I suppose I'd rather be broke and alive than dead with some money.
Today however was brighter. The weather was very nice, maybe 75 degrees and sunny with a cool breeze. We ate lunch at the park and then walked to the art museum. The art museum is nice but the exhibits kind of bored me. They were mostly modern art which I just don't find interesting. Afterwards we walked back to People's Park and looked at all the dogs people brought out to play. Later we went to PJ's Cafe which is a cool little cafe/pub with a very friendly owner named PJ. We had been there once before for Thanksgiving dinner. The food is pretty good and not too expensive. We got burritos and they were delicious.
So I want to tell everybody reading this that I am looking for a full time job back in the U.S. If you or anybody you know knows of such a position please please please e-mail me and let me know. The economy is so bad in Taiwan that people aren't signing up for English classes so I only work 12 hours a week average and Carolyn the same. I'm not rushing back without a job because at least I have an income here, and if things pick up here I will stay here for the full year like I planned. But at this point I'm not going to hold out hope that the economy will improve and more people will want to learn English. Please keep your eyes open and be sure to let me know if you see anything. I really appreciate it!

Living Life Dangerously... In The Streets of Taiwan

2008-12-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Carolyn and I purchased a scooter from a reliable shop that our friends bought their scooters at. The shop is quite nice, they sell mostly new motorcycles and scooters but they have a few used ones that they will sell if they are in good shape. So I test-drove the scooter because Carolyn was too scared to. It took some getting used to, but I think I will get the hang of it. We bought it for $12000NTD which is around $400U.S. We also picked up two helmets that are the full head ones. Too many people drive here with stupid helmets like the ones that just cover the top of your head (what good is the top of your head if you are missing the bottom part?), baseball helmets, and construction helmets. Very few people have helmets as nice and protective as mine and Carolyn's.
So after we bought the scooter they said they had to get it inspected with the government so we could come back later to pick it up. When we came back later that night it turns out that the scooter was full of stolen parts so they wouldn't sell it to us. (Stolen scooters are very common here. Another common practice is that organized gangs will steal your car or scooter and ransom it back to you for money. The usual tactic to prevent this is to buy the ugliest and cheapest scooter possible, so it won't be targeted.)
They gave us our money back, paid for our taxi fares, and called a few local scooter shops and found another scooter that we would be interested in. They brought that scooter in today and Carolyn and I went back there and checked it out. It was nice as well, though the plastic body is not the cleanest or newest. I test-drove it again and we decided to buy it for $15,000NTD ($500US). We will go pick it up tomorrow and bring it home. We have a few nice back-roads near our apartment that would be good for practicing on before we start taking it on major thoroughfares.
Tonight for Christmas Eve we are going out with some American friends to an Indian restaurant called Bollywood. It's a nice restaurant and I like Indian food a lot, so it should be a good time. Tomorrow for Christmas Carolyn and I may go get a real Christmas dinner at a local restaurant called Finga's. That is still up in the air though. I will make another post tomorrow for Christmas and I will upload some pictures of our new scooter. Merry Christmas everybody!
Also: If your name is Bob, Luke, Joe, or Rithy, I fully expect that you will make plans to come visit me in the early summer. Tokyo--->Taipei--->Singapore--->???

Thanksgiving and Bowling

2008-12-08T20:39:00.001-08:00

I haven't updated my blog in a few weeks so I figured now is a pretty good time. Work has been busy on and off. My children's class just ended so I had to administer final exams. An adult class of mine is also ending so we had final exams yesterday. The result of all of my classes ending is that this week and next week I may have a lot of time off and less income. Overall I am still enjoying work, I really like teaching adults. Children are alright, but they can be really frustrating sometimes. My biggest problem with work right now is that my teaching hours fluctuate between 22 hours per week and 9 hours per week. So I am definitely not making the money I want to, and legally I can't get a second job. But on the plus side I now have plenty of time to learn Mandarin Chinese so I am going to try and find some tutors and I will teach them English if they teach me Mandarin Chinese. I need to do something productive anyways.
Two weekends ago some of my adult students took me and Carolyn out bowling at an entertainment place called Tiger. It was very fun. We first played a basketball game and it turns out the Taiwanese love this game so they destroyed me. Afterwards we bowled 2 games, and while I wasn't doing the best, I definitely wasn't doing the worst (Carolyn). My average score was probably 30 points below what it would be in the United States, so either I got really bad at bowling or there is something different about bowling here that is affecting my score.
After bowling we went to a famous Taiwanese tea-house called Chun Tsui Tang. They invented this type of tea called Bubble Tea, which is just tea with tapioca balls floating in the bottom. It sounds gross, and it definitely took me awhile to try it, but now that I've had it I kind of like it. There is something satisfying about drinking tea with a texture. Whenever I took a sip and didn't get a pearl I felt unsatisfied. We also had some traditional Taiwanese food and some Hong Kong food, and this odd fried thing with cheese and beef in it that tasted like a taco. As we were leaving this tea-house we were up in the car park area and Carolyn shouted, "Oh No, I left my camera at the tea-house!" It was 10:30pm and the tea-house had closed so we ran back downstairs to see if we could find it. One of my students ran back to the tea-house and was asking the employees if they had seen a camera when Carolyn discovered it was in her pocket! Needless to say she was quite embarrassed.
It was really nice having a chance to hang out with local Taiwanese. I feel like it's an opportunity a lot of foreigners in Taiwan don't ever get. In Taichung and Taipei there is a large foreigner population so we usually just hang out with each other, but by doing this we don't really understand the local culture as well. Having some native Chinese speakers around is also quite useful, and we tried a lot of food we would have never been able to order had we gone with foreigners. I'm excited because these same students (whose class is ending this Wednesday), are planning on taking me and Carolyn out to a famous traditional Chinese family-style restaurant. It should be fun and I will try to take pictures of the food to post on my blog.
For Thanksgiving we went to our friend Michael's house. He ordered 3 Peking Ducks from a famous restaurant nearby, and all the guests brought more food as sort of a pot-luck. Carolyn brought wine and french bread and I brought an awesome cake. The food was very good and the place was packed. I met a lot of foreign teachers and a few local Taiwanese so it was very nice. But knowing that duck would be served at this Thanksgiving party, two days before we went to a restaurant called PJ's and had a proper Thanksgiving meal there. It came complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, cranberry sauce, and some wine. It was very good and only about $7 US dollars.
This coming weekend I want to go to Tainan, the old capital of Taiwan. It has a lot of historical buildings including two Dutch forts from when Taiwan was a Dutch colony in the 1600s. I will try to take a lot of pictures as well, it should be fun.

Visitors

2008-11-24T21:53:00.000-08:00

We had quite an exciting weekend this weekend. Bob and Jennifer came to visit us so we had the opportunity to show them around. They arrived Friday night and were tired after a long flight and a day in Taipei so we just went to a pub called FM for the evening and then came back to get some sleep. Saturday morning we went to a great American breakfast place in Taichung called The Early Bird and got some excellent breakfast. Afterwards I had to go to work until noon so they just hung around until then.
At noon we all went to Dakeng Scenic Area to do some hiking. The weather was very nice, probably in the mid to high 70's. We climbed partly up but as it turned out Bob and Jennifer both had allergic reactions to something in the air so we had to climb slower the higher we got up. We didn't plan for this and I was worried that we wouldn't get down before it got dark or that we might miss the last bus. Well we made it down by 5:10, and the last bus was supposed to come at 5:25. It did come, but it came going the opposite way and it wouldn't stop and it didn't come back. So there we were, at the bottom of the mountain with almost no one else around, in the darkness, and howling dogs off in the distance. Our next plan was to call our Taiwanese school director and have her call us a cab (since we can't speak Mandarin). Well we got her number from a co-worker, but then my phone started flashing the low battery sign and no one else thought to bring their phone. So that option was out as well. Bob started walking towards a few people off in the distance and was going to try and convince them to call a cab for us. Instead, they motioned for him to get in the van, and he did. Then they stopped near us and I could tell that it was a family so I wasn't really worried that anything bad would go down. We got into the van and they agreed to take us to Taichung City, although they didn't speak English really so most of it was done through broken English/Mandarin and pantomime.
The van ride was very interesting and pleasant. The mother kept trying to have a conversation with me but she didn't speak English. I gave her my map and as we drove through Taichung she would point out the various tourist sites we came across. We also randomly stopped to take a picture of a streetlight. At first I thought they were pulling over to have us get out, but oddly enough they just wanted a picture of the streetlight. Afterwards, they turned on some music and the father started singing to it, and then the mother started watching a LCD built into the dash with the song lyrics so she could sing along as well. I was thinking we should maybe pay them for gas and the ride, but then I thought it may be rude because they are trying to do us a favor. So I decided against it. But when we did stop Carolyn tried to give them money but they refused 3 times, so she gave up also.
They dropped us off right in front of Sogo Department Store near our house and we were exhausted so we rested for it a bit. After our brief rest we went to find some food on a popular restaurant street called Gung-Yi. We ended up at an awesome hot pot restaurant (a hot pot restaurant has a large pot filled with broth in the middle and a fire underneath it, and they give you raw food and you put it into the pot to cook it yourself). We chose two different broths, one spicy and one rather bland (the spicy one tasted like Mexican food and Christmas), and we got beef, mutton, vegetables, and noodles. The food was very very tasty and it only came out to about $8 US a person. Then we went and got Cold Stone to finish the night, which is very expensive and in my opinion not worth it.
On Sunday we decided to go to Sun Moon Lake. We got up very early and stopped at McDonald's to get some breakfast, and then we went to the bus depot to catch the 9am bus to Sun Moon Lake. The ride itself is 2 hours and rather boring. We made it to Sun Moon Lake around 11am and the weather was perfect. It was probably in the mid 70's with blue skies and a nice breeze. We caught the around the lake bus right away and got off at Wenwu temple. I liked this temple much better this time because when it's sunny the temple looks a lot more colorful. Last time we went it was very polluted out so the colors of the temple weren't as dramatic. We took a lot of photos here and Bob and I got some hot dogs on a stick, which weren't bad but I wasn't a huge fan of the cinnamon and other various spices sweet sauce.
We caught the around the lake bus again and this time rode it to Syuezyang Temple (my favorite of the 3). It was again very peaceful and quiet. We looked around and took some pictures, and then we climbed up to see Cihen Pagoda again. Jennifer was having allergy-breathing problems again so she waited at the bottom for us while we walked up. Bob also had allergy issues so we had to take the walk up slowly. The pagoda was very nice and secluded, although a group of teenagers came up behind us so they kind of detracted from the solitude (each one of them had to ring the gong at the top, and there were like 15 of them). Bob also rang the gong at the top and had one of these teenagers take a picture of him doing it. After checking out the pagoda and surrounding area we walked back down, got Jennifer, and walked the path to the last temple. This last temple as I mentioned before is really nondescript so we stayed for a few minutes and then caught the bus back to Shuishe village.
We ate a late lunch in Shuishe pier at a touristy restaurant. The food was really not good and it was very expensive. I stopped at 7-11 to get a snack for the ride home because the meal left me unsatisfied. We waited around a bit for the bus back to Taichung. It came at 5:30pm and it was definitely a bumpy, shaky, fast ride. I thought the bus was going to fall apart. We kept hitting potholes at super-fast speeds and it would bounce people into the air. But somehow the bus stayed together and I am happy for that.
When we got back we checked out Sogo and Bob bought a souvenir. We then went to a Japanese Steakhouse because Bob wanted to go somewhere Japanese since he wasn't going to go to Tokyo like he planned. We went to The Rock, a steakhouse we've been to before. This time I ordered steak without sauce and it was much better. We got Ice Monster afterwards to top off the unhealthy meal. We then returned to our apartment because they had to get up early Monday for their flight.
As it turns out they were bumped from their return flight so they stayed the evening yesterday in Taipei. I haven't heard from them today so hopefully they made it on the return flight this afternoon (Tuesday).

Lukang/ Finish Him!

2008-11-17T08:12:00.001-08:00

I haven't written a blog post in almost 2 weeks now so here is one to keep you updated on how I am doing.
I've been working a lot (almost like having a full time job!). I teach a 1 on 1 class from 3pm to 4:30pm, then I have to run to a different school here in Taichung and make my lesson plans from 5 until 7pm, and then I teach from 7pm until 9:40pm daily. And I work Saturday morning from 10:30am until 12:00pm . It's nice to be busy and have something to do, and it's nice to have money, but it will take awhile for me to get used to this work schedule.
Carolyn and I finally got around to getting a Blockbuster card so we've been watching a lot of movies and television shows. Last weekend we went to the final day of the Taichung film festival to see a Taiwanese film on domestic violence. It was most certainly a downer, but it was interesting nonetheless. After the film was over the theater had a question and answer forum with the Director, which was conducted entirely in Mandarin Chinese, so I felt pretty awkward just sitting there staring at everybody talk without being able to understand what they were saying. But I couldn't just get up and leave because I didn't want to be rude.
Last Thursday we went to pub quiz night at a place called The Londoner. For the most part it was fun, and the questions were interesting. It turns out I'm not too bad at anagrams, but I am very bad at music. The prices at the Londoner aren't too bad either and the guy who runs it is pretty nice.
On Sunday we decided to go on a day-trip to an old port city called Lukang (Lugang). We took a cab to the bus station (shack) where we were told to sit and wait for the bus. The bus appeared and the guy motioned for us to get on it, so we were on our way! The bus ride was a bit confusing because we didn't know where to get off, but as it turns out Lukang is the last stop on the route so we made it to exactly where we wanted to go on our first try (Not speaking Mandarin Chinese and having almost no signage in English makes our travels a lot harder than it should).
Lukang itself for the most part is an ordinary ugly, run-down Taiwanese city. However, the old part of town is quite nice. The old part of town felt like I was in Beijing, not Taiwan where they usually bulldoze historical buildings and put up corrugated aluminum tenements. We walked down this nice street called 9 Turn Alley, which housed many neat shops selling all sorts of random items. There were also a lot of people selling food in stalls along the way. And there is also a nice old temple sitting along the alley. This experience made up for the rest of the city, and while Lukang is not worth visiting unless you are living in Taiwan, we certainly had a nice time. One other interesting side-note, we ran into a small bus stop in Lukang with a minibus sitting outside of it and the words "Sogo Taichung" painted on the side. We ended up taking this bus home because it runs direct with almost no additional stops, and Sogo is the department store right next to our apartment building, so it was really really convenient.
Also, the weather is finally starting to cool off a bit. So instead of a humid 90 degrees it's been somewhere between the mid 80's and low 70's depending on the day. I can't argue with those temperatures! But I do miss snow, and I hear a lot of the Great Lakes States are receiving lake effect snow :( I will have to wait for next year, or perhaps if I make it out to Mongolia to visit Garrett there will still be some left.

Bank Robbing, Sun Moon Lake, and Massages

2008-11-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

Here goes another post, I wonder how many people are still reading?
I have received even more work this week so I now teach 22 hours a week, which definitely helps financially. I have a one on one class with a 16 year old who is going to New Zealand presumably to study. It meets 1.5 hours every day, Monday through Friday, until January.
Every Tuesday night we go out with our co-workers to various locations to hang out and socialize. Last Tuesday we went to a very "unique" bar called The Party Animal. It had "interesting" paintings on the wall which I won't comment on, but maybe Carolyn's blog will. It has live music which was pretty fun, we got the band to sing Nirvana's Smell's Like Teen Spirit. They had the music down but the vocals were hilarious because they aren't very fluent in English and it's hard to figure out what is actually said in the song as it is. It was a fun night, very low-key and rather relaxing.
Friday was Halloween, and I was required to dress up for children's classes. Actually teachers were required to dress up for any children's class from Wednesday through Friday, but luckily my only children's class was on Friday. I went as a bank robber because I didn't have to pay anything for the outfit and it was very easy. None of the children in my class dressed up because they were rather old for it, so I felt even more ridiculous wearing a costume, but at least I wasn't wearing a giant popcorn outfit like a certain co-teacher of mine.
Taichung is having yet another festival, this time an international documentary film festival. I'm very excited about this because I like documentaries and it lasts for 9 days and the tickets are only $1 U.S. On Saturday Carolyn and I saw a documentary called Yasakuni Shrine, which is a very interesting film about this war shrine that is very controversial in Japan. Every year the Japanese Prime Minister visits the shrine, and because of this there are always protests in China/Taiwan/Korea, because there are war criminals buried there who committed atrocities in those countries during World War II. An equivalent (for Chinese and Koreans) would be if Hitler was buried in a church and every year the German Prime Minister would go to the church and pray there. The Japanese see it though as a sacred part of their religious/cultural heritage that also honors legitimate war heroes, and as a symbol that war should never occur again. Another reason why it's very problematic for Taiwanese is that during World War II a lot of native Taiwanese were forced by the Japanese to fight for them. Some of these Taiwanese were actually enshrined at Yasakuni as Japanese heroes, and for the families of these Taiwanese (where burial location is very sacred) there is a lot of outrage that the bodies weren't returned to Taiwan. Some groups of Taiwanese descendants go to Tokyo every year to protest that these bodies be returned to them. So far the Japanese government has done nothing to help them or clean up it's image.
On Sunday we went to Sun Moon Lake via a 2 hour bus ride on a bus that sounded like it was dragging a scooter underneath it. Sun Moon Lake is nice, though I'm not sure it should be treated as a national tourist attraction. It's more like a Lake Geneva where it's nice but you shouldn't go there if it's out of the way. When we first arrived in the late morning the weather was pretty nice. There wasn't a ton of pollution or fog and it was hot, but not too hot yet. We looked around the little town called Shuishe village at the northern part of the lake, and we took some photos in a little garden alongside the lake. Afterwards we went to eat lunch at a restaurant and then we caught the around-the-lake bus. The original plan was to take it to the first stop, Wunwu temple, but the bus went past it and we realized we had to ask the driver to stop whenever we wanted to get off. So we took it to the next biggest attractions, Syuenguang Temple, Syuentzang Temple, and Cihen Pagoda. We first stopped in Syuentzang Temple which was very beautiful and peaceful. This was far enough away from Shuishe village that there weren't too many people at it. This is also where I saw a giant spider in a tree but it was too far away for me to photograph it.This is me at Sun Moon Lake. In the background is Great Mount Shuishe. As you can see the weather is pretty clear at this time in the morning.
This is a section of Syuentzang Temple. It was very beautiful and peaceful.

Afterwards we hiked up part of the mountain to Cihen Pagoda. It is great that you have to hike to it, because when we got there it was almost completely empty. It's pretty tall and when I was at the top I wasn't feeling very comfortable, and of course Carolyn picked on my fear of heights. I took some photographs from the top, and by this time in the day all of the pollution/smog had rolled in making the lake almost completely invisible. We hiked back down and went to Syuenguang Temple, where supposedly the remains of the monk from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West is buried. I didn't get to see his remains or his tomb, and the Temple was more like a small building with not much going on inside or outside. So we caught the bus back and this time got off at Wunwu Temple. Wunwu temple is incredibly garish, with huge buildings and giant lions in front playing with large balls. I know this is not a fair comparison, but it wasn't an awe-inspiring building like the Temple of Heaven in Beijing or the Forbidden City. It was more like a recently built tourist-trap (packed full of tourists). Out of the three buildings I definitely preferred the subtlety of Syuentzang Temple the best. So we took the bus back to Shuishe village and waited around until the other bus was ready to bring us back to Taichung.Here is a photo I took of Cihen Pagoda. I loved how nobody was there. It was a pretty secluded atmosphere.This is a photo I took from the top of Cihen Pagoda looking down at Sun Moon Lake. As you can see during the afternoon the fog/smog rolled in obscuring the beautiful views.

Today I decided to get my haircut because it was getting way too long, so I went to a barbershop. Well it wasn't actually a barbershop, more like a salon. I have yet to see a barbershop, although I have seen barber poles (they are used to signal that the building is a strip club). So I told the woman that I needed a haircut, stupidly forgetting to ask how much one would be (the place looked very expensive/upscale), and she had me sit down in a chair. She put on the customary haircut cape and then proceeded to massage my head/neck/shoulders. I was very freaked out because I didn't expect it, but I didn't want to say anything because I had no idea whether this was normal or not. But then more customers came in and they all received massages as well, so I realized this was legitimate (though I was getting very worried about cost at this point). The biggest problem was that nobody spoke English there so this whole transaction was occurring in pantomime. The massage lasted a good 5 minutes, and then they washed my hair and proceeded to massage my scalp for another 10 minutes. The haircut itself came later and it was pretty normal, but at this point I was freaked out for many reasons. When it was over though the bill only came out to around $12 U.S., much to my relief and disbelief.
If you are reading this please continue to leave comments as it's the only way that I hear from some of you and I would also like to see who exactly is still reading this. I hope I am keeping it interesting enough to at least amuse the more patient (read "brain-dead") readers. :)
Just kidding.

Dakeng pt. 2

2008-10-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted to my blog in over a week now because nothing really interesting has been happening here. Last weekend Carolyn and I briefly went to the Jazz festival here in Taichung but I really don't like jazz so we didn't stick around too long. We did go to this nice park called Feng-Le sculpture park at night, and all the sculptures were lit up and they had live music.

This past week I've been mostly working or just hanging out. We opened bank accounts here, which was rather annoying. We waited at the bank for almost an hour until they finally called our number, and then the bank teller filled out these long forms for us and after being there for an hour and fifteen minutes we finally had bank accounts. But it felt like we sat there forever.
I've been assigned a children's class (13-17 years old), and another adult's class, so that puts me at 2 adult classes, 1 children's class, and a one on one. But I only work about 15 hours a week so I'm still not making what I want to, but hopefully I will soon get more classes.
Today Carolyn and I went hiking at Dakeng again. This time we went on trails 2, 3, and part of 5. We got much better views but it was really hazy out so we couldn't see very far into the distance. Trail 3 was very very long and by the time we were done we were very exhausted. What makes me feel worse is that we passed 3 dogs climbing up the mountain as well, 1 being a pug making grunting noises, and they all seemed to do it easily. Maybe they practice and train for it.Here is a view from high up. It's a great view except for the haze. If it wasn't hazy today we probably could have seen the city where we live.
What's this? Another collapsed bridge. Every trail we have been on has a collapsed bridge due to landslides. That is actually a very steep drop by the way, although the picture doesn't make it look like it is.

Bobby, Jennifer, and Tricia will probably be coming here in November so when we do some sightseeing I will have more interesting things to post about.

Items of Interest
5. We live on a fairly large road so now again and again we hear parades going by in the evening. Well recently a parade came rolling through with people in large Chinese general outfits, and they were carrying what I presume to be a neon strobe-light religious statue (though Carolyn at first thought maybe they were parading around a pinball machine). They were setting off loud fireworks in the street (the exploding ones on the ground), and what was very strange was that they were shooting off Roman Candles in the streets. We were on our deck on the 11th floor and we thought we were going to get hit. The building across from us got buzzed with one. The following video is of that parade, but I didn't capture any of the roman candles in it. Sorry for the picture being sideways, I forgot that you can't rotate video easily.

I Climb

2008-10-12T05:05:00.001-07:00

Here I am taking a picture break on the way up Dakeng Hiking Trail Number 2. This is when the trail is still easy enough to take pictures.

Be Careful Monkey.

2008-10-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

Today (Sunday), Carolyn and I decided to make another attempt at hiking in Dakeng. Although we slept in later than we wanted to, we still made it to the bus stop by 11:15am which would give us enough time to make it to Dakeng and still leave time for hiking. After waiting for the bus for 35 minutes, the bus we needed finally showed up. But when I boarded the bus the driver told me to get off because I assume his bus was no longer in service. He turned the bus off and pointed at the next bus stop (so we assumed he meant we should wait at that stop for the bus). So we went there and after 45 minutes and still no bus we gave up and took a cab.
While we went pretty far, the cab only cost us about $11 U.S. Dollars, and it brought us all the way up to the base where the entrances to the hiking trails are (This was the most frightening cab ride I've ever been on by the way. He kept speeding around mountainous corners on one lane roads with no rails, we almost knocked a car off a cliff...). So we started hiking on Dakeng Trail Number 2, and the first sight we saw was the giant spiders hanging above our heads. Luckily we did not run into any spiders along the trail afterwards, but they were pretty disturbing nonetheless. At first the trail was pretty easy, and we ran into an interesting sign.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we did not run into any monkeys. The trail started getting steeper and steeper as we went up, with increasingly slippery wooden poles to walk on.At this point the trail was at about a 45 degree angle, not too bad considering that higher up we were often climbing at about 70-80 degrees, and a few parts were almost like climbing a ladder. I have a mild phobia of heights and I was okay for the most part. I was worried though about the shoddiness of some of the path construction, at some parts I felt that the bridge may collapse at any moment and I might plummet to my death.
About 3/4ths the way up the trail we ran into something very interesting. Apparently there was a massive landslide that took out part of the bridge. The bridge wasn't fully out, but the left support beams were definitely not there. The bridge was leaning to the left, overlooking a giant gorge. Someone had taken down the "do not walk" sign and the tape. We stopped at this point to consider what we should do. We let two people pass us, and they managed to make it across. So we also went for it as well. Carolyn made it across ok, and so I attempted to cross after her (we went one at a time for fear our combined weight would collapse the whole bridge and send us to the bottom of the gorge). While I was walking across clutching to the right handrail, the floor-beams were giving way to the left and my feet were slipping from under me.
Pulling myself with my right arm however I made it across and did not die. Needless to say I was sweating a ton and was very terrified for my life.
We made it the rest of the way up with no problem, and stopped to rest at the little tent at the top of the mountain. There were no good views at the top though because it was covered in trees. I was disappointed because I wanted to take an excellent panoramic picture, but it was rather hazy out anyways so it wouldn't have been the best picture. At the tent we bought some power drink and some weird lentil type beans in a cold sweet soup. It was kind of refreshing, but I didn't have a lot of it because at this point I wasn't feeling very hungry. We decided it was best to take one of the other trails down because of the broken bridge problem.
So we took trail number 1 down, which definitely felt a lot longer than number 2, but possibly because I was very exhausted from trail number 2. 1/3rd of the way down we ran into a familiar problem.
It may be hard to tell from this picture, but yes that is another bridge that has collapsed due to a massive landslide. This trail luckily had a makeshift trail branching off at this point so we didn't have to navigate another collapsed bridge. Halfway down I snagged this picture which allows you to see the haze, and just how high up we are. Keep in mind this is only halfway up, so at the top we were much much higher.
We made it all the way down with no problems (except exhaustion) and found a bus stop to bring us back to Dakeng City. While waiting for the bus we noticed these very small gnats attacking us. For the most part they didn't hurt, but once in awhile one would bite a little too hard and sort of pinch me. I kept having to brush them off me. Carolyn also had the same problem, except she must be allergic to them as well because all of her bites became swollen for a few hours. Luckily they were just on the back of her arms and parts of her back for the most part.
Overall the hike was very fun and we had a good time. It was quite scary at parts and while the pictures make the trail seem rather tame, it was actually quite hard to get up. I found myself holding onto rope constantly so that in the event I should trip, I wouldn't fall down 200 stairs. What is interesting is that the two trails we used, Trails 1 and 2, are supposed to be the easy ones. Next time we will try 3 and 4, and perhaps 5.

Pictures 10/11/2008

2008-10-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of the celebration for Taiwan's National Day on October 10th.

And this is the night view from our apartment's deck. We have a pretty nice view.

Being a Mute

2008-10-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

So I have been told by an anonymous source that I should make my blog posts shorter and more frequent instead of larger and rarer. I feel this is probably a good idea because I know that when I read long posts I get bored of them myself, even when it is my own post.
My life the past few days has been pretty boring, so I just want to elaborate more on my current perspective of Taiwan and teaching. I cannot downplay how hard it is to live in a country and not speak the local language. I find that I can't perform simple tasks such as asking the apartment security guard where to put our garbage, or ordering food at a restaurant without picture menus, or even following signposts that direct one to local tourist attractions. Yesterday Carolyn and I tried to go hiking in the mountains near Taichung. We made it to the base of the mountain by taking a bus (we got on the right bus on our first try!), but figuring out where to find the hiking trails proved to be beyond our ability. After walking for about 45 minutes up a road that had some signposts in English and some not in English, and even after asking a security guard we found on the way up, we still failed to find the trails and headed back because we wouldn't have enough time for hiking before it got dark. This was partly our fault that we didn't get there early enough. But it was also due to the fact that the only signs in English were at the base of the road, and then afterwards all of the remaining signs were in Chinese only. So walking up this road that lead up the mountain turned out to be the only hiking we were able to do yesterday.
The signs at restaurants, street signs, addresses, menus, and product descriptions are rarely translated into English here. In Hong Kong almost everything was at least poorly translated, but here it is quite tough getting what you want or where you want if you don't know the language.
Teaching so far has been a mixed experience. I have some great students and some downright awful students. Some students goof off in class, are disrespectful, and so forth, while other students try very hard to please me. However, in my adult class all the students are pretty awesome. I assume it is because they want to be there and aren't being coerced by their parents. This is why I hope I get more adult classes and less children's classes. It's not that I don't like teaching children, it's just that I don't like teaching very bratty children. I have substituted a few children's classes that are completely filled with very cooperative and fun kids. But the other classes are mixed and when I finish teaching them at night I am burned-out.
Carolyn and I visited this gigantic shopping complex the other night called Shin Kong Mitsukoshi or something like that ( I think it's Japanese). It is like a very large shopping mall with a movie theatre on the top floor, fast food one floor under that, a food court with Taiwanese food one floor under that, and fancy restaurants one floor under those. And under the fancy restaurants are 12 floors of fancy stores like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. So we just took the elevator to the food court and we bought Hakka food (the Hakka are the aborigines of the island, but they also live in mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and some other southeast Asian countries). I had some great chicken in a very spicy red pepper sauce with vegetables. It also came with an awful soup that tasted like really funky gym socks, something that I believe was chopped intestine still containing the contents of the intestine, and delicious steamed white rice. I didn't really dig into the soup or intestine, but the rest of the meal I would have to say was the most enjoyable local food I have had here so far. One strange thing that really frustrates me though (perhaps because I am an American and I like the convenience that American restaurants provide), is that almost every restaurant does not sell drinks. You have to either go to a restaurant that specializes in drinks, or find the KFC or McDonalds and buy drinks from them. So effectively you must wait in line twice, which in this crowded food court took forever.

Longshan Temple and Our Apartment

2008-10-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

This is me in front of Longshan Temple in Taipei. It's over a week old but I thought it was worth posting.
This is a picture of our living room. It actually looks nicer in real life. We have 2 loveseats and a nice half-fridge which will provide enough space for us. Anybody looking to crash at our apartment while visiting can take the 4 cushions from the loveseats, and the 4 backpillows and make a pretty decent bed.

I'm a Teacher!......

2008-10-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

Today, October 1st 2008, I am finally a teacher. I was extremely nervous for my first two classes scheduled today. Last night I had a nasty bout of insomnia and I couldn't fall asleep until 6a.m. I even wandered to 7-11 at 4a.m. hoping they would have Nyquil or some form of sleep aid, but apparently the 7-11s here in Taiwan have everything but medicine. I finally managed to fall asleep and I slept until a 2pm meeting with my school's director who helped me go over my lesson plans for my adult class.
I am beginning to sense how easy the adult classes are compared to children's classes. I prepared lesson plans for both a children's class and an adult's class and the children's class took a lot longer to prepare for. After my 2pm meeting I went home and took a 30 minute nap, had some food, and waited around until 6pm when I went back to school and spent an hour preparing for the children's class that I had at 7pm. At this point I was still very exhausted from not sleeping well, but I was still full of energy from being so nervous about finally teaching.
The children's class went alright, they were very little kids, probably around 7 and 8 years old. We played a lot of games and I was told to make a lesson plan based off of 1 page in the textbook. So I did, and then halfway through class my teacher's assistant informed me I was also supposed to make a lesson plan for the previous page as review. Needless to say, I am getting mixed information on how and what to teach in children's classes. So with the help of the TA I improvised and added more games as review, and while I didn't do as good of a job as I hoped, I don't think it went so bad for my first teaching experience.
The kids themselves were full of energy, a lot more energy than I could ever possess. They love to play games, so creating games that involve English is an excellent way to get them to learn the language. We played a few different games, such as one where I split the class (9 students) into two teams and then gave each student on a team a number 1 through 5. Then I would say an English word and call a number, and both the kids from each team with that number would have to run to the board, write the word, and sit back down and repeat it loudly before their opponent did so. The kids get very into it, and generally their teammates will run to the board with them and they will all shout to each other on how to spell the word. It's great because they end up teaching each other which reinforces what they are learning. The kids did get a bit rowdy though and because I was only a substitute for the real teacher I didn't know exactly how to discipline them. Luckily the TA was there and she knew exactly what to do. Overall the class went well and I did much better than I thought I would.
Afterwards I had to teach an adult class. I was only teaching this class for 30 minutes (they stayed after their previous class to join my 30 minute trial class). The lesson plans for adults at my school are all very well thought out and documented, so it's very easy to figure out exactly what to do each class. This class involved a lot of interaction between me and the students, and I had the students do some "mingling" where they are given questions and they walk around and talk to other students in English and ask them questions that pertain to the material. This is great because it gets all of the students talking in English and thinking about how to form sentences as well as gives them an opportunity to use the vocabulary and figure out new vocabulary. My director sat in on this class and gave me great feedback, and now I am pretty confident for my real adult class that I start tomorrow. It runs for 8 weeks and is 4 hours a week, so hopefully they enjoy my classes and learn some English from them.
Yesterday Carolyn and I left the Honeydew Fashion Hotel and got ourselves an apartment. We actually found the apartment two days ago, but we were having trouble with our bank accounts. Apparently both of our ATMs have a maximum daily withdrawal amount on them of $500. So we couldn't get enough money out for the deposit and rent, and food and other things that we needed, so we had to wait a day until we could get more money out. It was frustrating but it's understandable because if someone steals my ATM card I would rather have them only be able to withdraw that $500 maximum instead of more.
Our apartment is in a fancy high-rise on the main drag in Taichung. We live in an area called "Little Europe" apparently because it is where all the westerners live. It is in a great location with lots of good restaurants, shopping, and grocery stores. And we are only an 8 minute walk from our work, which will be very convenient when it is raining, and we wont have to get a scooter or bicycle. It is a studio apartment, but it is large with a decent sized bed, a nice western bathroom, a desk and armoire, a half kitchen (sink and pantry, but no stove), a living room area with 2 love seats and a table, and it has a small deck (we have a great 11th floor view of downtown) with a washing machine on it. I am very satisfied with the apartment. We only pay about $350 U.S. Dollars a month for it, which is actually kind of a lot for Taichung. The reason why it is overpriced is because we are in a great area. I am fine paying a bit more to be in a nicer area with a very clean apartment. And I justify it by telling myself that our 2 bedroom apartment in Chicago was $1175 a month, so comparatively this is a steal.
There is also a cool night market down the street from our place that we visited last night with some coworkers/friends. There was some crazy food there, but I stuck with the more conservative fried chicken kabobs and I tried some spicy squid as well. Carolyn went even more conservative with beef fried rice. Some other teachers we were with though ate various food such as chicken anus, duck's blood gelatin, and deep fried ritz cracker sandwiches filled with mystery substance. I had a pretty fun time and I look forward to going more often and trying some of the other food that I found to look appetizing. No chicken anus for me though.

Pictures from Taipei and Taichung

2008-09-26T09:02:00.001-07:00

This is the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. I think it was built during the Japanese rule of the island. You can't see the army of security guards in this picture, but they are definitely there.This picture is of Taichung Park. It's a nice pleasant park but the weather was very gloomy and I think you can tell in the picture. Maybe we will visit it again and get better pictures.

I like my pizza with clams, how about you??

2008-09-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was officially our last day in Taipei. I'm going to miss it for many reasons, but for many reasons I am glad I will be living in Taichung. Our air conditioner started working again (we thought maybe the repair guy came to fix it while we were out sightseeing, which wasn't the case, it actually fixed itself) so that helps a lot in this awful humidity. In the morning we did some sightseeing at the Presidential Office Building. It was nice but we couldn't enter; the place was completely surrounded by armed guards and secret service members. I heard tourists could enter the main lobby and there would be an exhibition, but we couldn't find it.
In the evening we had even more classroom shadowing at a third school location and this time we were disappointed in the skill of the teachers and the participation of the students. The first few shadowing sessions were helpful, but we have scheduled for us +8 days of shadowing and it's getting very redundant. One teacher I shadowed was not enthusiastic and even verbally abused the children in English. The other teacher I shadowed who was teaching adults did a good job though, but I had a bad taste in my mouth from the first teacher.
After shadowing we searched for dinner, hoping to finally take in some local Taiwanese cuisine. Unfortunately, it's incredibly difficult to find actual Taiwanese restaurants. I am pretty sure I have not seen one yet. After an hour of searching we decided to eat at a Japanese fast food chain called Mos Burger. We both ordered hamburgers, and to my surprise it came topped with this sauce that is brownish in color and sort of tastes like curry. If Chef-Boyardee made curry for hamburgers it would taste like this. It was pretty awful and ruined the hamburger, but I was starving so I ate it anyways. Afterwards we went back to our apartment to pack and watch our Back to the Future VCD.
The next day we were to go to Taichung. We packed up our stuff and went to our school's headquarters where we met with the personnel director. She brought us to the bus station where for $4 U.S. we boarded a very nice coach bus headed for Taichung. Since all of the signs are in Chinese and the driver didn't speak English, we were told to watch for a store called "Sogo." The bus ride itself was pleasant. The landscape reminded me of Vietnam because it was a bit poorer and more rural than Hong Kong and Taipei. The bus took two and a half hours to get to our destination (apparently the high speed rail train takes 45 minutes, but our school wouldn't spring for the extra cost). We were confused on where to get off the bus but a friendly passenger helped us figure out which stop we needed. We then took a cab with all of our luggage to our school in Taichung where we met with the adult director (one of our two bosses) who is very nice. He was from Great Britain where he received his degree from Oxford. Afterwards he taught in Saudi Arabia, but then he came to Taiwan ten years ago and started working for our present school where he has taught ever since. He gave us a tour and pointed out some local restaurants, told us about the Frog (a mexican restaurant/pub), gave us tips on local culture and finding apartments, and explained what some of our job would entail. We also met the children's director of our school who was also very nice. She is a local Taiwanese woman who was much less talkative about her background, but equally helpful in telling us tricks about the local culture and helping us with apartments.
After this introduction we took a cab to our school's second (and older) location on the other side of town. This side of town is not nearly as nice, but still not bad. The hotel we are currently staying at (the Honeydew Fashion Hotel) is attached to our school and has pretty decent rooms and free breakfast (and as far as I know it is not a love hotel). After checking in we decided to look for local Taiwanese food for dinner. After searching for 30 minutes we were pretty hungry so we gave up and ate at McDonald's. After dinner we had a shadowing session for an adult's class at the old school connected to our hotel, which went alright. We were pretty tired so we didn't do much and went to sleep shortly thereafter.
The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel. The one thing I really miss and always miss when I am away from the United States is breakfast. The breakfast here is either Congee (rice that has been sitting in water longer than normal and has turned into a semi-porridge) or normal Chinese food which I am not fond of eating for breakfast. So I just had some toast with butter that tasted eerily similar to popcorn butter, and some coffee. We then left to do some sightseeing at a park called Taichung Park (see picture). The park was alright but the weather outside was gloomy so I was not feeling the sightseeing.
After walking through the park we were headed to a place called The Martyr's Shrine and Confucius Temple, but we had a really awful map and we never ended up finding these two sights. Our map was from a magazine called Compass, and it decided to leave half the streets of Taichung out, and then it misplaced a quarter of the streets it had included. Having walked for a long time in the sweltering heat without finding what we were looking for, we turned back to find a place for lunch. We ended up at a Japanese restaurant (apparently only Japanese restaurants are available in Taiwan) where we ordered some noodle soup. It was alright, on par with a package of Ramen. Unfortunately the price was not on par with Ramen.
Later on we went back to the new school where we did more shadowing (boo..) but we did get to talk with a lot of our co-workers which was pretty cool to finally meet them. They all seem pretty nice, which is a relief considering the mixed bag of teachers we met in Taipei. We were given several leads on where to find apartments so tomorrow (Saturday) we are going to make some phone calls inbetween classes and hopefully see some apartments.
Thursday evening we went to a Mexican restaurant/Pub called The Frog. It's supposedly a big hangout place for expats, but I only saw local Taiwanese there. Perhaps the large amount of foreigners visiting it has made it popular in the local Taiwanese community, or perhaps it is their tasty pizza. We ordered pepperoni pizza ourselves, which comes with onions. On the subject of pizza, there is a local pizza place down the street from our hotel that includes clams as a topping for pizza. Now when I say clams, I mean the clam meat still inside the shell. So the pizza comes with full clams on top of it, and apparently you just pull the clam shells off and eat the clam meat, and then the pizza? Anyway, the Frog was good, but it was also very overpriced.
Today (Friday) we actually had work other than shadowing. We did demo classes for our boss, and she gave us feedback on how it went. We were very confused on what we were supposed to do but after we finished our boss said we both did a good job. In-between the demo and our planned shadowing at night we had an hour for dinner. We walked to a restaurant that specializes in noodles and dumplings. I ordered the noodles, Carolyn ordered the dumplings. Carolyn really liked the dumplings, and I absolutely hated the noodles. I am not ready to give up on local cuisine yet (although it often smells like rotting trash), but my experience so far has been very unfortunate. It's strange because I am not the pickiest eater. I have standards of course, but I am open-minded when it comes to food. I loved almost everything I ate in Hong Kong. I love Indian food, Mexican food, Thai food, Korean food, Chinese food, and European food. But so far everything I've eaten in Taiwan (besides McDonald's), has been mediocre or downright awful. Now to be fair I still have yet to find an actual Taiwanese restaurant (I'm beginning to think they don't exist), but the types of food I have seen the Taiwanese eating, food that I myself have tried, makes me feel sick just thinking about. Perhaps I just need to start going to restaurants with the locals so they can help me pick out food that I might enjoy.
So we did more shadowing (wow I'm sick of shadowing) and we also had a bit of training on grammar and how to teach it. After work Carolyn got ice cream at Cold Stone, which apparently has a location right across from our school. I didn't know they existed outside of the Midwest. Tomorrow we have more work, and we are going to look at some apartments and try to get cell phones. On Sunday we have been invited by a co-worker to do some sightseeing, which will be nice to make more acquaintances here.
I suppose Carolyn and I are both officially teachers now. I start teaching Monday as a trial run, and Tuesday I begin teaching my very own first adult English education course. I have other classes starting the following week, and probably some children's classes later on. They are starting Carolyn with teaching children. My theory is that Carolyn comes off much more friendly and warm then I do, so they figure she will be better with kids while my seriousness will be more fully appreciated by the adults. Maybe I'm completely wrong.
Now I'm starting a running list of cultural acts or habits or sights here in Taiwan that I personally find very odd, and I suspect you will as well. Let me know what you think about them in the comments section.

1. People drive Mopeds/Scooters/Motorcycles on the sidewalk. I guess they figure because they park them on the sidewalk, why not drive them on the sidewalk? You have to get used to walking and jumping out of the way of a motorcycle zooming past you while walking on the sidewalk.
2. Stray dogs are everywhere. I think people feed these dogs communally as communal pets. It's probably not a healthy habit, but since most of the dogs aren't large they aren't as much of a threat to small children.
3. Garbage Trucks. The garbage man here does not pick up your trash for you. Instead, he drives by in his truck playing Fer Elise, similar to the ice cream man, and you have to run out of your house or business with your trash bags and throw it in his truck before he leaves your street. It is pretty ridiculous. Don't get him confused with the ice cream man.
4. The use of "byebye" by adults in Taiwan and Hong Kong. they say it when they are leaving their friends or relatives, even when they are speaking Mandarin. Boy I would love to wring the neck of the guy who first brought them that phrase.

(That is all for now. I will soon add more as I come across them).

Taipei 101 and Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Pictures

2008-09-22T19:51:00.001-07:00

This is me in front of the Taipei 101 building. We were still at a distance from it so it doesn't look like the tallest building in the world, but it is.
This is me at a park next to the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. In the background is the main hall for the memorial. It is quite enormous.

Here is the CKS Memorial Hall up close. Inside is a gigantic bronze statue of Chiang-Kai Shek along with an exhibition of his belongings.

Broken Air Conditioner = Love Hotel ??

2008-09-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

Because of work I am a few days behind in my blog post. Therefore I will summarize what I have done from Saturday until tonight (Monday night).
Saturday morning Carolyn and I were up early due to jetlag. We first went to Mr. Brown's Coffee, which is a coffee chain that I've only seen in Taipei and Hanoi. It's a pretty nice little cafe with good coffee and free internet. After uploading my last blog post we headed to Da'an park (the center of the city, and the biggest park in Taipei) and walked around watching people do Tai Chi. The park is quiet and peaceful, there are a lot of trees so we could hide from the scorching sun and relentless humidity. We also did a bit of shopping at a local grocery store, and we spotted a very out of place Sizzler, perhaps the last Sizzler in existence. We went back to our dorms after this amazing find and rested until our 11:45am work.
At 11:45am we had our first chance to shadow teachers at our school. We got a pretty good view of what our jobs entail, along with the working conditions and the hours. We sat in on two classes, and both classes I would say were a learning experience. What is interesting is that the students (some as young as 5) attend classes on Saturday from the afternoon until the early evening. In addition to their classes during the week, they also attend night classes at least twice a week, and sometimes every night during the week. Because this is very exhausting for the children one of the main skills an English teacher at a private school like ours must have is to be entertaining. The classes mostly involved games and semi-entertaining CD's, and depending on the skill of the teacher the children were either entertained or bored out of their minds.
After class we decided to travel to Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building in the world), where we walked around the mall it has on the lower floors and ate in the food court. We passed on the skydeck because we know that when anybody else comes to visit us we will end up doing it, and we don't want to pay $20 each time. The mall in Taipei 101 looks a lot like malls in Hong Kong and me and Carolyn were feeling very underdressed for most of the stores this mall had. After Taipei 101 we went to a sport's bar called Tavern nearby where we tried a beer called Taiwan Beer. Carolyn was indifferent to it, I found that it was too sweet for me. It tasted almost like beer soda pop, like they added sugar to it or something. Afterwards we took a cab home and passed out from exhaustion/jet lag.
Sunday we had the entire day off for sightseeing, and we did end up doing a lot. We were given our first ride in the MRT subway on our way to the Chaing-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Taipei's subway is much nicer than the L, it's cleaner, it's wider, it's smooth-riding, it doesn't smell like urine, and you aren't nearly as likely to get stabbed on it. As far as Subways go, it's the second best I've been on (Hong Kong's is the nicest/newest, Japan's is 3rd, Beijing 4th, every other city somewhere in between, Chicago last). You also get a cool little plastic token that looks sort of like a miniature poker chip. It is used as a ticket, it must have an electronic sensor in it because you put it against a reader in order to enter the subway, and you put it into a slot in order to exit the subway.
So we took the MRT to the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall, which is pretty gigantic and imposing (see picture). Surrounding it are two large Chinese style buildings, one is a concert hall and I don't remember what the other is, and there is a large courtyard for military parades, and a large gate at the end to top it off. Inside the CKS Hall sits a giant statue of the Generalissimo himself in bronze, along with old artifacts from his life, including some bullet-proof Cadillac Fleetwoods, his chairs, his clothing, and pictures of him with various dignitaries. There was also a nice art exhibition on two of the floors with some excellent paintings.
Our next stop along the MRT was the Longshan Temple, a very nice multi-denominational temple built in the 1700's. The neighborhood it sits in is pretty seedy, very near the night market called "Snake Alley." I am starting to get bored of seeing temples however because while they are all interesting to look at, after seeing so many they lose their appeal. We walked to the botanical garden from the temple and toured it as well. I have nothing interesting to say about it, which I suppose in itself speaks to it's quality.
Afterwards we took the MRT north to a restaurant called "Green Leaf" which the Lonely Planet recommended. I also have nothing interesting to say about this restaurant, except that like a lot of Chinese restaurants, when you order meat, expect most of it to be bone and gristle.
We made plans to visit the Shilin Night Market, which is supposed to be the biggest tourist attraction in Taipei. After dinner we travelled to it and I must say it was definitely not what I expected. The markets I visited in Hong Kong sold items of some worth that one may be interested in purchasing. Here the market was mainly composed of carnival games, restaurant stalls (I must mention this nasty nasty food smell I can't put my finger on, but has haunted me throughout my travels in China. It made it's presence quite clear at this night market, presumably coming from a food stall somewhere), and small stands selling items no one would ever want to purchase. Perhaps I am upset because I was expecting the market to be something that it was not, but when your expectation is that it'll be at least semi-interesting, and then it turns out not to meet that expectation, I think you have a legitimate right to be upset. After looking around the original market location we walked down some small streets where all the people were streaming. This was a mistake because one could barely walk it was so crowded. There was nothing to look at except people. And of course the only people at this night market were teenagers, making the whole experience that much more frustrating. It is odd that in such an overpopulated city, the best thing teenagers can think to do on a Sunday night is to go shove themselves into the cramped, smelly streets of the Shilin Night Market.
Luckily we escaped this place as soon as we could and travelled back to our apartment. However, the worst experience of the evening was just around the corner, for as we entered our steamy 90 degree apartment I tried turning on the air conditioner, and of course it wouldn't turn on! It broke on us, and we had no one to call to come fix it. So the only thing we could do to fall asleep was to go rent a hotel. The Lonely Planet recommended a very affordable hotel a few blocks away from where our apartment was, so we booked a room and showed up there within 30 minutes. As we were getting our room key a young couple came down the elevator and paid for their room and turned their keys in. At the time I was thinking, hey that's odd, it's like 10pm, why are they checking out now? Then on the way up the elevator I began to think, hey maybe this is a love hotel (a hotel used for one night stands). Well the picture of semi-nude women on our hotel room wall was a telling sign that this was indeed a love hotel. But it had air conditioning and was actually very clean (cleaner than our dorm) so we still stayed the night.
On Monday we again visited Mr. Brown's in the morning, called our boss to get the air conditioning fixed (which did get fixed, but not until Monday Night), and had lunch at KFC. We spent the afternoon at an electronics bazaar where I found a digital camera for less than $100 (hopefully it doesn't break).
We then shadowed again at 4:45pm and this time the shadowing went much better. All the teachers I shadowed were excellent and very informative. All of the students were very fun and entertaining as well. One teacher said I will definitely like Taichung because it is much cleaner, it has more trees, it is cheaper, and it is less polluted. Hopefully he is right.

Initial Pictures in Taipei 9-18-08

2008-09-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

This is the Xingtian Temple in Taipei. It looks empty on the outside but it's packed on the inside.And here is me in front of it. I look pretty washed out because it is so bright outside.

Mercedes and AIDS

2008-09-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

So I am sitting here at 3am, wide awake, finally having a chance to write something for my blog. Getting on the flight was quite easy, although watching everybody else board before you makes one quite nervous. The United employee at the baggage check said I shouldn't have a problem getting on the flight, but during the entire 20 minutes Carolyn and I sat there it kept running through my head "we won't make it on! We won't make it on!" Well we did make it on the flight, and the flight itself was not so bad. I have to say it was the smoothest flight I've ever been on with minimal turbulence. We had two meals with pretty good food and 7 movies to choose from. But by the end of the flight the combination of being stuffed, bad movies, lack of sleep, and being on an airplane started to make me feel pretty nauseous. It was nice to get off the plane in Tokyo's Narita airport, although by that point I was feeling very sick. Carolyn wasn't feeling well either, so we both took turns watching the baggage while the other got up and walked around. The second flight from Tokyo to Taipei was very crowded but we still managed to make it on. (Although Bobby was under the impression that we wouldn't, and thought we had to wait a day in Tokyo). It actually would not have been so bad having to spend a day in Tokyo, we could have done some sightseeing, but at that point I just wanted to find a bed to sleep in because I hadn't slept for 18 hours.
Landing in Taipei was also easy and getting through customs did not take long. We were picked up by a woman from our school driving a black Mercedes-Benz (it turns out 90% of cars at the airport I am pretty sure were Mercedes-Benz, it must be the car to pick people up at the airport here in Taipei). She brought us to our dorm where we were shown around the apartment. Nobody else was living in the dorms, although we could tell it was recently inhabited by a group of messy foreigners. Our room itself is not so bad, it has 2 beds, a large closet, and a separate bathroom. But the communal living area is very messy (we found a dead cockroach on the floor), and the bathrooms with the showers are wet bathrooms, so when we shower half of the bathroom gets soaked. Even though I was completely exhausted and ready for sleep when I reached the dormitory, I decided to shower because I smelled awful and the insufferable heat was not helping (when we stepped out of the airport we were engulfed in the heat and humidity, it was like jumping into a 90 degree pool). After I showered I did fall asleep right away and I managed to sleep until 6am.
We didn't have anywhere to be until 10am so we both got ready and went for breakfast. We had McDonald's, which is embarassing when there is so much good Chinese food around, but we were in a hurry because we needed to find a place to get small passport sized photos so we figured McDonald's would be the fastest. We did find the passport photo booth and arrived at our work destination an hour early, so we surfed the internet there until our meeting with the manager of personnel. The manager was very nice and knowledgeable. It turns out her family was from Shanghai, she was born in Hong Kong, she was raised in New York City, and now she lives and works in Taipei. We were given a 2 hour lunch so we ate at Carolyn's favorite Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya. The food was very good and very cheap.
Afterwards we went to a temple called Xingtian temple in Taipei. It was a very nice place, very large and crowded. In mainland China you rarely see people at the temples because it is either not allowed by the government, or the people do not show their religious beliefs because they are either afraid of persecution or because it is not fashionable to do so. Or perhaps Chairman Mao's crusade to turn the people into atheists was actually effective (Probably not). After visiting the temple we walked past the headquarters of our rival school "Hess" and finally glimpsed more foreigners in Taipei, presumably teachers.
We returned to our school's headquarters where we met with the manager of personnel again. She brought us to the hospital for our mandatory health check (you cannot teach children in Taiwan if you have TB or Aids). I was a bit worried about getting my blood drawn in a foreign country, but it was reassuring seeing the nurse remove the needle from it's wrapper in front of me.
After the health exam we took a cab back to our dorm where I decided to lay down for 10 minutes before we went out and did some sightseeing. This was not the best idea because it turns out I was much more tired and jetlagged than I originally thought. I fell asleep until now (3am) and now that I'm awake I am feeling very awake. Carolyn seems to have fallen back asleep luckily, but my sleep is much more finicky than hers. I probably wont be able to sleep until tonight, so it looks like I will spend another day completely exhausted.

Fresh New Blog

2008-09-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, I am setting up this blog so everyone can see what I am doing instead of me having to e-mail everyone individually. My flight leaves Chicago on Wednesday, so I should be in Taiwan Thursday night. After I settle in there and take some pictures I will add more posts to this otherwise empty blog. I am not looking forward to the long flight but I am very excited about traveling again!