I just posted about 150 pictures from when Kelly visited last week. Check them out!
About a week ago, I noticed a sign posted in our elevator that looked like a "wanted" sign for a man. Of course, it was in Chinese so I didn't really know what it was for. It had a picture of him that looked like a mugshot as well as his height, weight, and birthdate. In my apartment, every time our door opens, there's a chime that sounds. However, our neighbors door chimes all the time randomnly and is clearly audible from my room. So after I saw this sign in the elevator, I started to get very paranoid at night when I was in bed, and I repeatedly heard this door chime. I was thinking "oh geeze, this criminal is in my apartment right now and this is not good." After being freaked out for like a week, I walked into the building one day and saw this "wanted" man standing in the lobby with a doorman's uniform on. He's a new doorman in the building and they posted his profile in the elevator. Yep, that's it. I was pretty freaked out for nothing, but it's pretty funny.
Anyway, yesterday was the day that Principal celebrated Halloween. It was a pretty insane and surreal day. The kids were really, really cute. I'll be posting pictures shortly. The highlight was when we took to the streets with the kids to go trick-or-treating. They don't really celebrate Halloween in Taiwan. Just sort of. We toured a hair salon, as well as a Blockbuster, Mos Burger (Taiwan's McD's), and bakery. At each stop, we sang two halloween songs in English. I don't think any of the workers at the places knew what was happening but they gave kids candy anyway. At all of these stops, that's when I had some surreal moments in my head. It was pretty crazy!
Later in the day, we were supposed to play halloween-themed games with the older kids. However, we were given a list of games to play and nothing to play them with. This was a bit of a disaster but luckily the kids had a lot of candy to eat to fill the time. There was also a moment yesterday where I was hanging out with one class, admiring each other's costumes and what not when I got a call from my boss and she told me to go to another classroom. I walked in with my costume on and everything and all of the kids were sitting quietly in their chairs, ready for their science class. I walked in completely unprepared and annoyed that no one warned me about this. Luckily, I was teaching the colors "blue" and "purple" to 3 year old kids so it was pretty easy to whip together a lesson plan. In other words, the day was a whirlwind and it was chaotic and poorly organized and cute and hyped out, but overall, it was a great day and I had a lot of fun!
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Maokong Madness
Yesterday, I was a proud participant of a real humdinger of a Hash in Maokong, right near the Taipei Zoo. The hash was supposed to have a "bonus" race at the beginning from an MRT stop up to the beginning of the hash itself. The organizers promised cash prizes as well as other great gifts for the participants. They promised also that it would start at 1 PM sharp and of course I arrived late, as I often do. But at 1:01, when I did arrive, the lone organizer there told me I was the first one. Then a few minutes later, another guy showed up the race was born. However, no one else after dared to show their face so it was a head to head battle between me and Robert from Germany. His hash name is escaping me right now, but it's really inappropriate so use your imagination. Anyway, we started the "race" off together but a very steep staircase we had to climb for what felt like about 5 minutes proved difficult for my opponent so I took the lead from there. I was able to complete this race in 35 minutes, one minute faster than the guy who had set the course up. Anyway, this race did have a pretty fun route. It ran along a river for the first 10 minutes or so, then ascended a massive staircase, before getting to a stone trail that wound through the jungle until reaching the beginning of the hash. We hung out there before the run began roughly 90 minutes later.
The run started late because two of the hares had gone on their scooter to fix part of the race course and proceeded to crash into a car during this. The owner of the car happened to be a lawyer, so I'm sure they'll be paying for ALL of the damages. Anyway, this delayed the run for like 15 or 20 minutes. Then the madness began. The run was hared by 3 guys who had never hared before. They had co-hared previously with an expert but never by themselves, so that's where things got iffy. The first half of the run went straight through the jungle. The trail was completely bushwacked. Most of the runs we do utilize existing trails and roads but this one, not the case. But yeah, we went through some very cool terrain and did plenty of river tracing. It felt like dusk the whole time we were in the jungle because it was that thick that not much light got in. At the second to last check, things got interesting. About 15 or 20 hashers gathered on a ridge after finding a check, but after searching desperately for 15 or 20 minutes, no one could find the next part of the trail anywhere. This search involved everyone running back and forth on the same trail, but going a little farther at each end each time. I ended up following a guy who said he knew how to get back without flour marking the way. After running about a half mile from the check, we found the next flour marking. In other words, the mark that was supposed to be around 100 meters from the check ended up being 800 meters away, explaining why no one found it. Then, we followed this way down before somehow joining the beginning of the hash again and we started re-tracing our steps. After making a U-turn and cursing, we made our way back to the beginning. The run in all was over 90 minutes long.
It was an amazing experience though. Although the organization and marking could've been better, it was a great day overall. The weather was perfect and it was great to be so secluded in the jungle. There were about 90 people who showed up to the run. Oh, I almost forgot. During Down-Downs, the hares brought up me and Robert to collect our awards for the "race" we did at the beginning. They gave me $1000 NT which was nice, as well as a pretty cool photo of a big bridge in Danshui. Robert, being the biggest loser as the hares so kindly put it, gave him a bottle of vodka to ease his sorrows. We also got certificates proving our participation in this massive race.
The run started late because two of the hares had gone on their scooter to fix part of the race course and proceeded to crash into a car during this. The owner of the car happened to be a lawyer, so I'm sure they'll be paying for ALL of the damages. Anyway, this delayed the run for like 15 or 20 minutes. Then the madness began. The run was hared by 3 guys who had never hared before. They had co-hared previously with an expert but never by themselves, so that's where things got iffy. The first half of the run went straight through the jungle. The trail was completely bushwacked. Most of the runs we do utilize existing trails and roads but this one, not the case. But yeah, we went through some very cool terrain and did plenty of river tracing. It felt like dusk the whole time we were in the jungle because it was that thick that not much light got in. At the second to last check, things got interesting. About 15 or 20 hashers gathered on a ridge after finding a check, but after searching desperately for 15 or 20 minutes, no one could find the next part of the trail anywhere. This search involved everyone running back and forth on the same trail, but going a little farther at each end each time. I ended up following a guy who said he knew how to get back without flour marking the way. After running about a half mile from the check, we found the next flour marking. In other words, the mark that was supposed to be around 100 meters from the check ended up being 800 meters away, explaining why no one found it. Then, we followed this way down before somehow joining the beginning of the hash again and we started re-tracing our steps. After making a U-turn and cursing, we made our way back to the beginning. The run in all was over 90 minutes long.
It was an amazing experience though. Although the organization and marking could've been better, it was a great day overall. The weather was perfect and it was great to be so secluded in the jungle. There were about 90 people who showed up to the run. Oh, I almost forgot. During Down-Downs, the hares brought up me and Robert to collect our awards for the "race" we did at the beginning. They gave me $1000 NT which was nice, as well as a pretty cool photo of a big bridge in Danshui. Robert, being the biggest loser as the hares so kindly put it, gave him a bottle of vodka to ease his sorrows. We also got certificates proving our participation in this massive race.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
High-Speed Trains and Turbo-Prop Planes
It's been a few weeks since I've posted anything but I've been busy. Kelly was in Taiwan visiting me for the last week or so. She left last night and now I'm definitely experiencing some post-trip blues. But I'm not here to tell you about that. I'm here to tell you that our trip started with Kelly coming to Principal for the day to meet some kids. They had a lot of fun with her there, even though they mostly just stared and were confused by her presence. The highlight was when she sat to Catherine, a 5 year old girl, who spoke Chinese to her the whole class. That was pretty funny and cute. She had food on her face and everything. That night, we went out to sushi with all the other teachers from my school. Good eats!
The next day, we went to yoga which happened to start that day with like 30 minutes of dancing which was pretty fun and goofy. After, we got lunch with little Brian and his family. Afterwards, they took us to Taipei 101 and we went to the top. We also went to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei which was pretty striking. There was a large festival of some sort going on there with a huge parade which was a lot of fun to see!
That night, we hopped on a turbo-prop plane and headed for the Peng Hu islands, which is an archipelago off the west coast of Taiwan. The flight was only about 50 minutes long. Once we arrived, we stood out front of the airport waiting for out pick-up from the "Dream Homestay". After about 15 minutes of wondering if anyone was actually showing up, a van pulled up and a woman ran out with the name Ryan scrawled on a lid from lunch box. We nodded that we were indeed the only foreigners on the whole island and they rushed us off to their home. I had been expecting to go to a big hotel, but that's the moment that I found out what "homestay" means. The owners names were Ken and May and they were really nice and accommodating. We stayed in their house that had 5 guest rooms total, although no one else was staying there when we were. We went to a little restaurant nearby that night where we had fried rice and a whole fish that was cut into pieces and floating around in soup.
The next morning, we were driven to the local pier, where we hopped on a boat for an all-day boat tour of the surrounding islands. This was a lot of fun although we were definitely ready to get off the boat by the end of it. We toured Chimei island, and we were supposed to rent a scooter and cruise around. However, we thought we'd be able to handle the challenge of driving a scooter, but after failing to make it out of the parking lot, we were told to get on the tour bus with everyone else. We also toured Wangan island, and two others I can't remember the name of. One thing that was strange that both Kelly and I noticed was how mellow the islands were. We hardly saw anyone the entire time. Not sure what everyone does there...
The next day, we spent lounging around on the beach basically all day, as well as biking around for a few hours. This was a lot of fun. Check the pics! The next phase of our Taiwanese adventure was going to Tainan, which is on the southwest coast of Taiwan. The plan had originally been to go to Haulien and visit Taroko Gorge, which is one of Taiwan's premier travel destinations, but an impending typhoon changed our plans. We had the pleasure of taking the high-speed train to Tainan which was a lot of fun. We were actually both a little nauseous initially because of how fast it went. It covers the entire length of the island in about 90 minutes. In Tainan, we stayed in a really nice hotel and checked out some of the local temples and what-not. I feel like that pretty much sums up that last week. It was a whirlwind but we had a great time and got to see a lot of Taiwan. I'll post pics soon. Ta ta for now!
The next day, we went to yoga which happened to start that day with like 30 minutes of dancing which was pretty fun and goofy. After, we got lunch with little Brian and his family. Afterwards, they took us to Taipei 101 and we went to the top. We also went to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei which was pretty striking. There was a large festival of some sort going on there with a huge parade which was a lot of fun to see!
That night, we hopped on a turbo-prop plane and headed for the Peng Hu islands, which is an archipelago off the west coast of Taiwan. The flight was only about 50 minutes long. Once we arrived, we stood out front of the airport waiting for out pick-up from the "Dream Homestay". After about 15 minutes of wondering if anyone was actually showing up, a van pulled up and a woman ran out with the name Ryan scrawled on a lid from lunch box. We nodded that we were indeed the only foreigners on the whole island and they rushed us off to their home. I had been expecting to go to a big hotel, but that's the moment that I found out what "homestay" means. The owners names were Ken and May and they were really nice and accommodating. We stayed in their house that had 5 guest rooms total, although no one else was staying there when we were. We went to a little restaurant nearby that night where we had fried rice and a whole fish that was cut into pieces and floating around in soup.
The next morning, we were driven to the local pier, where we hopped on a boat for an all-day boat tour of the surrounding islands. This was a lot of fun although we were definitely ready to get off the boat by the end of it. We toured Chimei island, and we were supposed to rent a scooter and cruise around. However, we thought we'd be able to handle the challenge of driving a scooter, but after failing to make it out of the parking lot, we were told to get on the tour bus with everyone else. We also toured Wangan island, and two others I can't remember the name of. One thing that was strange that both Kelly and I noticed was how mellow the islands were. We hardly saw anyone the entire time. Not sure what everyone does there...
The next day, we spent lounging around on the beach basically all day, as well as biking around for a few hours. This was a lot of fun. Check the pics! The next phase of our Taiwanese adventure was going to Tainan, which is on the southwest coast of Taiwan. The plan had originally been to go to Haulien and visit Taroko Gorge, which is one of Taiwan's premier travel destinations, but an impending typhoon changed our plans. We had the pleasure of taking the high-speed train to Tainan which was a lot of fun. We were actually both a little nauseous initially because of how fast it went. It covers the entire length of the island in about 90 minutes. In Tainan, we stayed in a really nice hotel and checked out some of the local temples and what-not. I feel like that pretty much sums up that last week. It was a whirlwind but we had a great time and got to see a lot of Taiwan. I'll post pics soon. Ta ta for now!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
It's so cold! It's glacial!
I spent this whole last weekend with Brian and his family celebrating Taiwan's Moon Festival. It's basically equivalent to our July 4th. One thing that's really popular to eat are moon cakes, which are apparently what fortune cookies are based on. I've been told that fortune cookies are an American invention. Moon cakes are similar in the sense that they're sweet, but they don't have paper inside. They usually have a bean paste or rice filling. They're pretty good. Anyway, the Taiwanese people celebrate the Moon Festival by barbecuing a lot and shooting off a lot of fireworks. So on Saturday, very very early, Brian and his family picked me up to head toward Frank's parents' house. Frank is Brian's dad. On our drive down, we stopped by Sun Moon Lake. It was gorgeous! It's the most well-known lake in Northern Taiwan and a very popular destination for tourists as well as the locals. I couldn't quite figure out what you're supposed to do there exactly, like if you spend a few days there, but it was at least fun for the few hours we spent there. I posted a bunch of pictures of it so check those out to get a better idea of what it's like. We had breakfast there, and then did a short hike. Then we drove to the other side of the lake where we did a half-hour long hike to a really cool temple/pagoda on top of a mountain overlooking the lake. This was very cool! Again, check the pics!
After Sun Moon Lake, we drove through some various Taiwanese towns I had never heard of. On our drive, we went by a large river where the big typhoon last month did some serious damage. A quarter-mile long section of road had completely collapsed into the river. That was pretty crazy to see. After that, we drove through the city of Jiji which was struck very hard by a large earthquake in Taiwan about 10 years ago. We saw a temple that had completely collapsed during that earthquake and it has yet to be re-built. There's a picture of that too on Flickr. Anyway, after a bunch of driving, we finally arrived in Changhua, where Frank's parents live. His parents were really nice and lived in a pretty cool 4-story house, one floor of which I had to myself for our night's stay. We had a nice dinner consisting of traditional Taiwanese foods. After, we sang some KTV as a family, which was really family. They are all obsessed with Michael Jackson here. It's really funny. After that, we went to a night market and played little arcade games which the kids really enjoyed. I did too! The go-carts were the highlight. They had part of a parking lot blocked off with little go-carts inside that you put a 10NT coin in and they drove around for about 90 seconds. It was pretty unsafe, especially for little kids, but oh well. Our group made it out unscathed. That night, after we got back, I was sitting and watching TV when the mother came in and said "ok, here's your towel and soap for your shower." I was thinking, "um, ok, I didn't ask to take one but what the heck..."...so I learned another thing about Taiwanese culture at that moment...they bathe right before they go to bed every night. When I do that, I wake up and have a huge afro.
The next morning, we went on 12-km bike ride which was a lot of fun. We went to a little farmer's market where they clearly hadn't seen a foreigner in a long time and I had all the salesman coming up to me and giving me free fruit. Now that I think about it, I only saw 3 foreigners the whole weekend. We went to some pretty remote places farther South where English teaching is not nearly as common and thus, foreigners aren't really necessary in those parts. Anyway, the bike ride was a lot of fun. We went back and had another big meal before hitting the road to Lugang. This is a famous town in Central Taiwan that plays hosts to a massive temple that's at least 100 years old. It was the most ornate and detailed temple I've seen so far in Taiwan. There were a ton of people there worshipping away and this was a real joy to see. See pics! Then we drove back to Linkou via frontage roads that took a long, long time but we made it back safe. The main highway was completely backed up, probably for the entire length of Taiwan, due to the Moon Festival. It was quite the weekend!
After Sun Moon Lake, we drove through some various Taiwanese towns I had never heard of. On our drive, we went by a large river where the big typhoon last month did some serious damage. A quarter-mile long section of road had completely collapsed into the river. That was pretty crazy to see. After that, we drove through the city of Jiji which was struck very hard by a large earthquake in Taiwan about 10 years ago. We saw a temple that had completely collapsed during that earthquake and it has yet to be re-built. There's a picture of that too on Flickr. Anyway, after a bunch of driving, we finally arrived in Changhua, where Frank's parents live. His parents were really nice and lived in a pretty cool 4-story house, one floor of which I had to myself for our night's stay. We had a nice dinner consisting of traditional Taiwanese foods. After, we sang some KTV as a family, which was really family. They are all obsessed with Michael Jackson here. It's really funny. After that, we went to a night market and played little arcade games which the kids really enjoyed. I did too! The go-carts were the highlight. They had part of a parking lot blocked off with little go-carts inside that you put a 10NT coin in and they drove around for about 90 seconds. It was pretty unsafe, especially for little kids, but oh well. Our group made it out unscathed. That night, after we got back, I was sitting and watching TV when the mother came in and said "ok, here's your towel and soap for your shower." I was thinking, "um, ok, I didn't ask to take one but what the heck..."...so I learned another thing about Taiwanese culture at that moment...they bathe right before they go to bed every night. When I do that, I wake up and have a huge afro.
The next morning, we went on 12-km bike ride which was a lot of fun. We went to a little farmer's market where they clearly hadn't seen a foreigner in a long time and I had all the salesman coming up to me and giving me free fruit. Now that I think about it, I only saw 3 foreigners the whole weekend. We went to some pretty remote places farther South where English teaching is not nearly as common and thus, foreigners aren't really necessary in those parts. Anyway, the bike ride was a lot of fun. We went back and had another big meal before hitting the road to Lugang. This is a famous town in Central Taiwan that plays hosts to a massive temple that's at least 100 years old. It was the most ornate and detailed temple I've seen so far in Taiwan. There were a ton of people there worshipping away and this was a real joy to see. See pics! Then we drove back to Linkou via frontage roads that took a long, long time but we made it back safe. The main highway was completely backed up, probably for the entire length of Taiwan, due to the Moon Festival. It was quite the weekend!
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