It's been a whirlwind last few days. Yesterday, I took two teachers from my school, Chris and Kelly, to the hash. They really liked it! It was a pretty awesome run that ended on Fulong Beach on the east coast of Taiwan. At the end of the run, everyone took off their shoes and jumped into the ocean for a swim. Very refreshing! Before the run, I guy came up to me and said "hey, I heard you're the new fast guy." He was an ex-hasher back in town for a few days so he was reliving his times of glory. Apparently, another hasher had been talking me up to him for the last few months. Unfortunately, during the run I had some "intestinal" problems that hindered my performance greatly and thus, put out quite the lackluster showing. Oh well. It's only a hash. Still, I felt disappointed I hadn't put on a bigger show for this guy. I was clearly over-hyped, much like a lot of big-budget movies. The point of the story is that Chris and Kelly said they wanted to do another Hash, so it was a successful Hash overall!
This past Saturday was my K3B class graduation. This was pretty cute/comical, and I'll post some pictures and videos to give you a better idea of what it was like! The highlight of the show was definitely when they started playing "My Happy Ending" by Avril Lavigne. I am not sure where they found ANY of the music that they did for the show, but that was part of the fun. The ceremony itself took almost 3 hours. Remember this is for kids graduating from kindergarten at like the age of 8. The earliest graduation I can remember was from high school and even that wasn't 3 hours long. It was a little over the top in that sense. Each class performed a 15-minute long skit, followed by a group song. Then they handed out awards to each student. Then all of the teachers at the school said a few words about the students, followed by another group song. The picture taking/gift exchanging after was the highlight. Each class participating came up and gave their teachers bouquets and gifts. I ended up with about 6 bouquets of flowers and multiple stuffed teddy bears. I proceeded to pawn most of my gifts off, realizing that most of the gifts would go to waste inside my bachelor pad.
Other than that, no real big news. I saw Indiana Jones 4 on Saturday and was fairly entertained. It was not quite as good as the original ones but still pretty entertaining. I watched it with two other teachers from school, Dan and Lauren. I'm potentially going to be changing apartments in the next month or two. More on that later. I'm getting excited about my return home to the US in less than two weeks. It's gonna be great!
Oh, last thing...the title of my blog refers to a funny incident on Saturday. After running on the treadmill, I went into the courtyard of my building and my doorman Mr. Sen was talking to a woman who is apparently my neighbor. While I attempted to have a conversation with her in Chinese, another woman came down who looked like her mother or aunt or something, and she was carrying a clear bag with a clear liquid inside and a straw sticking out. I asked Mr. Sen what it was and he said "whiskey". Then the woman handed me the bag and said "for you." I was thinking "oh great, this should be interesting." I took the bag from her and took a sip through the straw. It turned out to be warm soup broth, not whiskey at all. Then I tried to hand the bag back to the woman and she insisted that I drink the whole thing. I didn't particularly enjoy the soup but I had to oblige because it was a gift. So there I was, sitting in the courtyard in my tiny running shorts attempting to speak Chinese to 3 Taiwanese people while drinking soup out of a bag with a straw. It was just one of those moments....
Now that I've been here for almost 6 months, a lot of the culture shock has worn off, but there are still moments like this that make you realize that you're living in a foreign country.
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