Visitors

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!

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

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.