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--->???
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Thanksgiving and Bowling
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.
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.
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