KTV Revelations

...first of all, only when living in Taiwan would I have to double check my old blogs to makes sure I wouldn't have an overlapping name about karaoke. Second of all, karaoke!

Today Fiona, Ingrid, Alison, Alison's niece and I went to KTV--for a good 4 hours or so. It was fantastic! We had a nice mix of English and Chinese songs going on, accentuated by Ingrid and I popping to our feet whenever an English song came on--felt a bit like a Jack-in-the-box after a while, but in the best possible way that that sentence can exist.

In the course of the day we had plenty of wonderful revelations, as I learned the odd waves in which American music apparently crossed, or didn't cross, the ocean to Taiwan. We had a Taiwanese version of "We Will Rock You," for instance (why change Queen? WHY???), and a Taiwanese version of "Lady Marmalade" (of Moulin Rouge fame), as well as a song called "Rumour Has It" which was definitely not Adele.

And, as always, we had our share or lovely "music videos" which featured young models acting ridiculous while draped across various inanimate objects, including that old stand-by of irony, "Colors of the Wind" featuring a cookie-cutter blond chick on a big white sailboat. Kind of missed the point of the whole Pocahontas thing...and, incidentally, Ingrid and I had quite a bit of fun with the old Disney songs.

The most interesting part to me, though, was that apparently N*Sync, and even Justin Timberlake as a solo artist, completely skipped over Taiwan. I somewhat knew this from last week, when Maggie and Alison and I were talking about the Backstreet Boys (for some reason?) and I mentioned that, back in the day, I was more of an N*Sync fan. (True confessions, right here.) They had never heard of them.

Today, though, as Ingrid and I went a little crazy to "Bye Bye Bye" (because we could, that's why!), I realized that, even if they had missed N*Sync as a band, there was no way they could have missed Justin Timberlake. After all, beside his solo career, he's been in a hefty string of high-profile movies lately--The Social Network comes to mind--and I know from walking past innumerable billboards and posters (heck, I walked past one tonight!) that his two most recent, In Time and Friends with Benefits, have been widely publicized here in Taiwan. Surely mentioning his name would grant instant context to the cheesy 90s throwback songs we were belting.

Nope! Fiona and Alison were still stumped; when Ingrid whipped out her smartphone to get a picture on our side, Alison's niece recognized him and Fiona kind of remembered him from The Social Network, but that was it. Perhaps it's America-centric of me, or maybe it was just the age in which I was raised, but it is still absolutely unfathomable to me to not know Justin Timberlake's name!

In other news, some rather embarrassing footage of me singing and dancing to good ol' N*Sync, Mariah Carey and Avril Lavigne songs (amongst others) may or may not now be in existence...

But they, fortunately for everyone, are not on my camera chip. The following photos, on the other hand, ARE!

We were having fun, I promise :)

Yeahhhh KTV!

Anyway, thanks to my multi-hour belting, my throat is now a little worse for wear...but it was totally worth it! Yet another thing I would say only in Taiwan: karaoke is fun!

Wormhole

Some things just disappear into mind-numbing nothingness. Today featured several of those things for several different reasons. Let's just catalog them, shall we?

1. My sleep schedule. Let's just throw this one out there: it's currently 2am. Why am I up? Because I woke up today just before noon. And why did I wake up just before noon? Because I went to bed last night just before 4am. And why did I go to bed just before 4am? Because I took a long nap Friday afternoon. And why did I take a long nap? Because I had to wake up early Friday morning, and I had gone to bed just before 1am. And why did I go to bed just before 1am? Because I had gotten up just before noon.

The end of my week, every week: it's just completely, totally screwed up. Also, it makes Mondays (and Friday), Hell.

2. My work ethic. What did I do today? Ummm.....

3. My decision-making ability. Today, my original planned productivity was to be centered around choosing and booking a hostel for Australia. However, as I've noted before, my ability to choose such a place utterly sucks. I have had it narrowed down to four for over a week now, have asked several people's opinion on the subject, and have still not found a way to pick. It's a wormhole of too much information.

Cue today. I did pick a hostel, sort of--like 85% sure now--but I haven't booked. Why? Well, because I realized that to book a hostel, I need to know what nights I'm staying there, and to know that, I need to know what nights I won't be, and to do that, I need to know when I'll be on a boat at the reef, and to do that, I need to know what company I'll be going through, and to do that, I'll have to pick one.

And, incidentally, the picking may require me to go through my hostel to get the best deal...

4. My evening. Like I said, it's past 2am. The last productive--or even semi productive--thing I did was at least three hours ago. What have I been doing in the meantime? Watching Youtube videos. Several of which did, in fact, involve wormholes as part of their conceits, and which did, themselves, form a wormhole into which my evening was sucked. Here are a few, to illustrate the wormhole effect for you:

 

 

 

No, for those who hear an accent and stop paying attention, those are not the same guy (or rather, the first three are the same and second two are the same), but they are friends, and both quite hilarious and relatively famous Youtube Vloggers. Also, if you haven't watched "Alex reads Twilight" (the last clip), do so immediately if you want to see the horrible deadening effect those books have on actual human readers. Also, it's funny.

So those were the items being sucked into my wormhole of a day. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Or, you know, hope you remember to wave to the time that slowly seeps out of you as you watch them... :)

Astonishment

"...well, you know, it's pretty much our only free weekend left before we leave..."

I'm sorry, what?

It was just an offhanded comment, just something said in a normal little chat in the dining room with Rachel. Our grant is only 10 weeks long, now; of those 10 weeks, five have Fulbright-occupied weekends, and of the rest, nearly all have at least one Fulbright event during the week. We're almost out of time. And just like that, it's all I can think about: my time here is almost gone. Like, really almost gone.

I know my posts on here lately have focused a lot on what I miss about home. A lot of sad-sacking about food, and family, and all the wonderful things in America that aren't available to me here. But just throwing up those posts has created a very skewed picture of my time right now, and now, as a steady rain cascades onto the bricks outside my window in an oh-so-typically-melancholic way, seems like the perfect time to swing things back into balance.

Because, really, two and a half months??? How is it POSSIBLE that we only have two and a half months before all this is over? How is it possible that in a little over two months I will be back in America, just an American among Americans, living a normal life like everyone else?

It seems like this has snuck up on me, which is of course ridiculous given that I've been writing about the passage of time pretty much since I got here, and of course have been answering the question "how long have you been here," with my answer changing monthly, on a regular basis. But with all of that, I focus on the time I've spent here: almost 9 months. I'd actually been planning a post on the topic (maybe it'll still happen), to come out on the last day of April. Nine months is a number I've gotten used to. Its partner, however, is still shocking.

What can you do in two months? That's no longer a rhetorical question. How much more can you see? What do you not want to leave the country without doing? How much money can you save? What jobs can you apply for? How much time can you realistically spend with your lovely Taiwanese friends without harming your health or teaching in the process?

And here's what I'm coming up against: not enough. Two months is not enough time to see it all; not enough time to put everything perfectly in order; not nearly enough time to spend with my friends. I've written before, many times, about how much has changed since coming here, and about how much I'll miss everyone when I go home; now it's hitting me that that time is soon, and that it will soon be time to actually, really, start saying my goodbyes.

And I'm not ready to think about that.

So maybe our jam-packed last couple of months will be the ultimate blessing: a chance to focus, not on the things we can't do, or the things we will ultimately have to do, but on the things we can do: see a few more local sights, participate in a few more local traditions, spend just a bit more time with the people we will miss. Maybe we'll be able to surprise ourselves into not mourning too deeply as we leave this beautiful island that we've called home. But I doubt it.

This is just to say

This is just to say

I have lived
in Taiwan
for 9 months
together

And that
I'm now missing;
pondering
my homeland.

Believe me
it is not easy
so long
and so far

(This is also just to say that I like William Carlos Williams, and writing imitatios. Here are some others I wrote a year ago now.)

Chinese

I took a huge step today. I--now be ready for this--added Chinese to my languages on Facebook. Phew. Got that out of the way.

Ever since I came to Taiwan, I've been learning Chinese--slowly, surely, and with various levels of discipline, but always learning all the same. To some extent, it's a natural effect of living in a Chinese-speaking country: you pick things up. 現在, for instance--I picked it up watching TV (translation: "now"). But unless you're still part of the under-10 crowd, almost nine months of language acquisition (Am I really coming up on nine months in Taiwan? Unbelievable!) and language study is peanuts when it comes to learning a language like Chinese.

I find it odd, but incredibly telling, that one of the first phrases I learned in Chinese was "一點點," ("a little bit") which became my standard response to the inevitable "你可以講中文嗎?" ("Can you speak Chinese?")--and that, for all these months of study, my response has not changed in the slightest. When I got here, I could, indeed, speak 一點點中文, a little bit almost entirely comprised of set phrases like 你好 (hello), 謝謝 (thank you), and 我的名字是百合 (My name is Baihe).

And now? Well, now, I can tell cab drivers where I live, and give directions and approximate times as needed (從這裡到三多商圈騎摩托車大約十分鐘. / From here to SanDuo Shopping District is 10 minutes by scooter.).

I can usually order food, assuming the waiter/waitress is willing to tell me what's on the menu rather than expecting me to read it (I can read basic meat types, etc., but since when is that actually helpful in knowing what to get?).

I can answer more complex questions in more complex sentence patterns, such as why I want to take a scooter instead of the MRT (因為摩托車比較快也比較方便, 所以我要騎摩托車. / I want to ride a scooter because scooters are faster and more convenient.).

I can engage in structured paragraph-long discourses on select subjects. I can travel without a translator. And, most significantly, I can follow most, though certainly not all, of the conversations happening around me.


It's a long way to come in nine months, but then again, it's also a long way from anything even remotely resembling proficiency. Which is why it seems so strange to add Chinese to my Facebook list of languages spoken. At what point can you claim to speak a language? When you know enough of the language to get around without a guide? When you know enough to join in random conversations? When you can converse on any subject, or when you can read a newspaper? When you know enough to correct other peoples' grammar? 


I'm not even remotely close to most of these markers, and that, combined with the fact that most of my ETA colleagues here in Kaohsiung are at least at the random conversations stage, while I feel accomplished to have grasped survival elements and the general drift of conversations around me, has kept me from claiming, ever, in any capacity, that I can speak Chinese.


But, in my own limited capacity, I can. And it's exciting, though terrifying, to claim it. I live in terror that my apparent understanding will lead people into deeper conversation which I absolutely can't follow (I can parrot words and sentences just fine, but trust me, that means nothing!), but my days are punctuated with joyous moments when I catch a new word I've learned in actual use, and am newly able to understand. Those moments are perfect. They make me want to know more.


Yet, ironically, I'm writing this post on a day I didn't make it to Chinese class. Earlier today I did some recording homework, but apart from that and ordering dinner, this blog post is the most I've used Chinese all day. I feel like an imposter.


I wish Facebook let you write whatever you wanted in the language category--I'd write "一點點中文" and leave it that way forever, if I could. But it doesn't, so I guess now is as good a time as any to claim it--I can speak (some, a little, and in pretty much every way limited) Chinese!

Ice Cream

Wow, four out of my last five posts concern food. Annnnd who can guess what Bekah's missing about America?

Today, though, I feel that I'm justified. For class today, Alison and I taught the 6th graders the past tense, along with a handful of new location words: museum, post office, train station, restaurant--and ice cream shop. For our game, I wrote a bunch of little paragraph-long stories about people, detailing where they go during the day, and then asking "Where was _(person)__  _(time)__?" The first kid to raise their hand and get it right won a point for their team, which was, in this case, illustrated by earning the picture of the people they answered right about.

Here's an example about "Joe":

Today is Monday. In the morning, Joe eats breakfast at home. After breakfast, Joe goes to school. After school, Joe goes to the ice cream shop with his dad. Then, they go home and eat dinner. Where was Joe Monday after school?

 The answer, of course, is "Joe was at the ice cream shop."

And Joe wasn't alone in going to the ice cream shop. He was joined, in these stories, by Isaac, Luke, Isabel, and Chloe. Add to this the fact that "ice cream shop" is part of the new vocabulary we're learning (read: endless repetition), and that, to keep kids' interest, each class today included asking the kids their favorite ice cream flavors. Add to that the fact that today was in the 90s F, but "felt like" 102F, thanks to the oh-so-lovely humidity.

Then maybe it'll make sense as to why I'm writing about ice cream today.

After dinner, I decided I just had to have some. I tried to fight it, tried to remind myself that it's bad for me and expensive here, but it was no use. I did at least talk myself down from my original plan (Coldstone Creamery not far from here!) and decided to "just go and see" what they had at the local grocery store.

And the local grocery store, wow! It's been closed all month for renovations, and man did they renovate! It's like a whole new store, and it definitely feels more Western--larger isles, a greater variety, wider open spaces; though I know it's impossible, it actually feels bigger, too. And they had ice cream. Strawberry ice cream. In a carton. It's not the same, of course (made me suspect this is actually what they used for my shake the other day), but it was cold and it was creamy and it was DELICIOUS on a hot evening.

I can never seem to help myself from getting brainwashed by my own lessons, particularly when they urge me towards what I want anyway. But, really, is that so bad when it means cold ice cream on a 100+ degree day? I think not.

Silpancho, take 2

This time, with ALL the scrumptious ingredients--so so SO much better, and more filling! It'd been too long, potatoes, it'd been too long...

In other news, I booked my hostel for my layover in Osaka this summer! (After, you know, FAR too many hours of agonizing for what will be, at most, a 10 hour stay.) Now, about the six nights in Australia when I'm currently homeless...but who knows how long THAT will take me.

What do you eat?

For some reason, this question never fails to stump me. I've gotten it a lot since living in Taiwan, in different variations--"What do you eat for dinner here?" "What did you eat at home?" "What do Americans usually eat?"--and I never know how to answer.

I had the same problem at home--I would say I cooked for myself, and when people asked what, I would answer with an oh-so-dignified "Uhhhhh...." followed by something equally inane, like "chicken?"

Obviously, I eat. I would even go so far as to say that I eat pretty well, with a decent, though not chef-worthy, level of variety of meats and veggies and cuisines. But what are they, exactly? That, I couldn't say.

Some categories are easy: spaghetti, stir fry, meat and potatoes, salads, breads, tacos, soups, sandwiches. Beyond that, I often rely on a few steady cuisines: Italian, Thai, Mexican, some sort of "fusion" American (though I'll be the first to admit I have no idea what that means).

The problem, especially here, is that when I'm asked what I eat at home and the first things that come to mind are spaghetti and stir fry (which, in all honesty, I eat maybe once every two weeks), I'm then hard-pressed to explain to my Taiwanese friends why, exactly, I miss food from home. After all, most brunch shops here offer spaghetti, as do numerous other Western restaurants; as for stir fry, you'd be hard-pressed to go more than a few blocks here without hitting a dedicated restaurant. So why, they ask, and rightly so, do I miss food from home?

And that's where I get stuck. Why is it so hard to explain that everything, from the raw materials to the seasonings to the preparation methods, are different here? Or to mention how vastly the absence of things like convection ovens and non-American cheese (ironically the local favorite) affect one's ability to cook? Even now, I have a Taiwanese chocolate pudding in my fridge--a "pudding" the preparation for which required only water, not milk, and whose final consistency is closer to that of strawberry Jell-O than real, American-style pudding.

And what do Americans eat at home? As I tell my questioners, the answer to that is simply too vast for me to touch on. Americans eat everything. Every cuisine, tweaked a bit and catered to the American palate, shows up on American plates on a regular basis. Sure, here people may frequently treat themselves to other cuisines, but I don't think they realize just how prevalent other cuisines are in American foods.

One reason for this, of course, is that without other cuisines America doesn't have one--we have, after all, defined ourselves as a nation of internal immigrants, each of whom brought their own unique flavors with them when they moved. It's what makes American cuisine so nebulous and hard to pin down as anything other than diverse--and what makes answering "what do you eat?" such a ticklish task.

Unless, of course, you narrow it down to a simpler question, like "what did you eat today?" And that one, today, was a fun one for me to answer, as well as one that highlights America's culinary diversity. Today, I celebrated my aunt and uncle's family by cooking a dish that originated in their adoptive country of Bolivia. I didn't have potatoes today to round out the dish, but I did have the other component parts (beef, rice, eggs, salsa) that make up the wonderfulness that is SILPANCHO!

(The rice is under the meat patty, which is under the egg)

So yes, I miss the deliciously bad for you and fantastically diverse cuisine of America. And what do I eat? Well, today, I eat silpancho!

Cinderella

...but not really. "Cinderella" just happens to be the most imaginative way I could think of to describe how I spent my day today--essentially, with housework.

And well, that's not entirely true, either, unless you count sitting on my bed and editing  as "housework," and even by that definition I doubt you'd consider the prolonged breaks I took to talk to friends and read articles online as "work."

(Also, as I did my housework without the help of magical mice and of my own volition, sans the orders of an evil stepmother, and as it's past midnight now and I haven't had any magical transformations or lost any shoes, let alone found a Prince Charming, I really can't claim the title.)

So...I should have called this post "Cinderella and lies," apparently.

But on the plus side, I did complete all but one of the items on my to-do list today! The final item is choosing the hostels for my trip this summer: one where I'll spend the bulk of my time, in Cairns, Australia, and one in Osaka, Japan, which I'm flying through at night on my way home. (Special considerations for the Japanese hostel: how can I squeeze as much out of Japan as possible in a single night, while still making my flight the next morning?) So, if anyone knows of a good place to stay in Cairns or Osaka...hit me up!

Side Notes with "Th":
(because they are not enough to write a lot about, but I feel like sharing)

Thunder. It has woken me up two mornings in a row, now, and this morning did so so loudly that I practically shot out of bed, my subconscious evidently under the impression that I would be murdered if I stayed where I was. Thunder itself isn't too odd, I guess, but what is is that, by the time I've gotten up for real, both yesterday and today, it was not only no longer stormy, it was not even raining, and, apart from the water on the roads, I would never have guessed the thunder was anything other than a particularly vivid part of my dream. We'll see if the pattern holds tomorrow; hopefully not, for my subconscious paranoia's sake...

Things I will miss about Taiwan. The following is an exchange I had with the sweet, motherly woman who works downstairs at the local 7-11:

Me: (give her the money for the eggs and bread I'm buying)

Her: 謝謝.

*I smile. A pause.*

Her: “很漂亮” “so beautiful” 是不是?

Me: 對!

Her: (to me) So beautiful!

 Me: Aww, 謝謝!

It absolutely made my night! (Even though I answered incorrectly...oh well, the point was served. :) )

Food blog

Today, that's what you get. Because today is Friday at the end of a week during which I've slept little and not well, and today also happened to feature some particularly wonderful food. Food like...

The Tuna Fish

 

This little buddy was waiting for me at Shakespeare's Boulangerie, aware, as I was not, that the bagels I craved would not be there waiting for me. He was simply too adorable not to buy, and it wasn't until I got him home and took a bite that I realized that his oh-so-wonderful dough was filled with tuna salad. Unexpected (silly me--it is a fish, after all), but quite good!

Burger and fries

 

I know--of all the food things I could write about in Taiwan, I'm writing about a burger and fries??? Yes. Yes I am. It'd been too long since I'd had one, and this particular one came from Sandwich Islands, a place on the Love River that I've wanted to try out ever since I first noticed it existed several months ago. And, right when I was missing home, and home-style food, it hit the spot. As did...

a Strawberry milkshake

More like a very creamy smoothie than a milkshake, if you ask me--I'd guess it was made with yogurt instead of ice cream--but still so so good! And, given how small it looked when I got it, it lasted for quite a while and filled me up with creamy strawberry-y goodness. And it even looked pretty, with a mint leaf on top.

I will definitely be going back for more at Sandwich Islands--at it's pretty cheap, too! My delish meal was just 198NT, or just under $6US. Mmmm....

a poem, lost; inspiration, lost

Today's one of those days when I have neither anything important to report nor any inspiration to write anything else compelling.

And, in fact, even the poem I wanted to share with you, a lovely little gem called "Poem," by Douglas Goetsch, seems to exist only behind the firewall of the New Yorker website. It's great, beginning with an apparently casual discussion of finding the poem's theme (which he 'fails' to do, and says as much) and ends with a note made all the more poignant by the fact that you don't even see him building towards it.

But now, I can't even show it to you. I can just describe it, and urge you to try and find it on your own.

So, again, I find myself with nothing to say. So I'll stop throwing useless words into the void and let you get back to the rest of your lives.

Juice

For a few weeks now, I've been excited. What have I been excited about, you ask? A huge orange-and-green sign hung across the street from my gym. It read, in huge, white, English letters:

Coming soon!
 Actually, you know what, that doesn't really do the sign justice. See, it really looked more like this:

  ...except the lemon was an orange, there was a bunch of Chinese writing at the top, and the Jamba Juice logo was nowhere to be seen. Still, it sparked a fire within me: same font, same graphics--and then Issac told me the unreadable (to me) Chinese part said "American-style..." something he didn't know how to translate but which involved fruit and ice, and so which I instantly put down to SMOOTHIES! Could it be? Could Jamba Juice be opening a store in Kaohsiung?

For those of you who don't know, this is not just your run-of-the-mill smoothie love we're talking about here. Jamba Juice and I have a history. See, I worked there, over breaks, from the end of my senior year of high school till about halfway through my college career. I had a lot of good times at Jamba Juice, in addition to having a lot of good smoothies and, as I learned while researching this post, imprinting the Jamba recipes permanently into my brain. (Peach perfection, anyone? Or how about a Pomegranate paradise?) So a Jamba Juice here in Kaohsiung isn't just another smoothie place: it's HOME, in smoothie-shop form.

Well, the giant "opening" sign finally came down a few days ago, and I spent most of my training session with Issac yesterday obsessing with the shop, forcing myself to work out with the temptation of a smoothie to follow.

So, I finished working out. And I walked over to the shop. Only to discover that it is the single most copy-catty smoothie store I have ever seen! No, it's not Jamba Juice. It's Costa Juice. But let me just give you a quick side-by-side of their brochures:

Look familiar?

Yeah, let's look at this. Color scheme: check. Whirl of colors in logo: check. Banana and other drink-related items colored outside the lines: check. I really had to do a double take, and even asked the girl working there, to see if Costa Juice was actually just a Jamba subsidiary that had changed its name to make it easier to say. (It's not.)

And, lest you think this is just a coincidence, that Costa just happened upon a brochure pattern that looked similar, it's not. I can prove it to you. How, you ask? First of all, this:

Publishing date: Dec. 25, 2003

This is the essence of Jamba, written by the founder and published over eight years ago. Note the artwork. It's exactly the same as everything else at Jamba from a few years ago (I should know, that's when I was working), and it also matches--that's right! Costa Juice.

Reason number 2: in faltering Chinese to match her faltering English, I told the girl working there that, in America, I had worked for a similar company. "Jamba Juice?!" she blurted, in English, before I could get to the name. haHA! Exposed.

But, you know, I'm not going to knock them for it. Walking into Costa Juice made me instantly homesick, as I looked around at the bright colors, the light woodgrain, and, yes, the familiar fonts and graphics. Then I ordered, something called the "Tropical Hawaii," which contained, from what I could gather, pineapple, mango, passion fruit, some sort of sherbet, and more ice than  we would have EVER sanctioned at Jamba. (How do I know this? Because, like at Jamba, they assemble the smoothie behind a glass half-wall. Unfortunately, UNlike Jamba, their blenders had issues and it took easily 10 minutes to get my drink.)

Anyway, I eventually got my smoothie, which was DELICIOUS, and which cost me a grand total of ~$1.75USD. So I'm not complaining. Just pining for the real thing, which I know will be ready for me when I get home. But in the meantime...

COSTA JUICE!

Down by the banks

Remember that? Down by the banks of the hanky-panky, where the bullfrog jumps from bank to banky...

Well, I have to admit, it had been a while since I'd thought about it, that little, simple, hand-clap game we used to play at Camp Crestview while waiting in line for meals. Until today.

Today, Hanmin kids had 3 midterms in the morning, meaning I taught a grand total of one class, and by "taught," I of course mean "played down by the banks" for an entire class period. And they loved it! We played one giant round, working from the 30+ kid class down to the champion, and the rules were that, once you got out, you helped sing. And they did! Which, from talking to other ETAs who've taught hand-clap games, is not a common outcome.

Of course, when you repeat four lines 30+ times...

Squirrel! and other stories

As usual when I put a lot of effort into a post (see below), I find myself the next day wondering how on earth I will follow it, short of welding myself to my computer for another couple of hours and pounding out another Tolstoy-length treatise on my life here.

And, also as usual when I reach this point, my answer is the same: I can't. I'm all treatise-d out for the moment. But what do have, and happen to have in spades today, is fun little stories of how wonderful life is here. So let's do that, instead!

Squirrel!
 
This morning found me all but sprinting down the 3rd floor hallway at Hanmin in my typical attempt to avoid being late. (For the record, so far, so good.) Now, my first class of the day on Mondays is actually my students' second or third. (Because, clearly, elementary schoolers were meant to be in school from 8am til 4pm, then hit the cram schools for hours afterward. But I digress.) And, since Hanmin, like most (maybe all?) schools in Taiwan, is built up rather than out, with wide covered breezeways serving as most kids' between-class play area, my path from the elevator to my office involved ducking and weaving between 2nd graders jumping rope, then taking a blind corner in the hope that this would be the one time that the 5th grade boys playing tag would think to look in front of them, rather than behind, as they took rounded the edge at a full gallop.

But while I was disappointed in that last hope--though thankfully he turned just in time to see me and avoid the collision--that little mishap was almost instantly forgotten in the discovery of something far more interesting and strange: a squirrel.

That's right, there, scurrying its way along the stone floor beside the banister, was a scawny black squirrel--that looked absolutely scared out of its mind. Of course, so would you if you had a horde of hyperactive giants closing in around you from all sides, trying to cut off your every escape route.

If squirrels think, I imagine this particular one's thought process went something like this:

"Oh, look, a giant white thing to climb. I like to climb. Let's climb the giant white thing and see if I can find food." (it climbs up the school building and stops at the third floor) "This looks nice. But it smells weird--lots of different sm--some food, some dirt, some anim- AHHHHHHH!!!!! They're coming! They're coming! THEY'RE COMING AFTER MEEEEE!!!!! Must get away, must get a--AH! WHERE DID THIS GIANT FOOT COME FROM?! I'll go--OH NO ANOTHER ONE! SAVE MEEEE!!!!"

All things considered, our little squirrel friend was making pretty good time down the hallway, flocked by a dozen or so kids doing their best to corral him  so they could play. Fortunately (for the squirrel, anyway), I don't think they succeeded.

Although, later in the day, I did come across a stuffed squirrel, lying on its back in the middle of the hallway as if begging for mercy from a horde of giants....nah, must have been a coincidence.

Mr. 7 and Mr. 8

I think I've mentioned it before, but at Hanmin, we don't have an English classroom; rather, myself and Maggie or Alison (depending on the day's schedule) are the roving English duo, taking our cue from the bell just like our students and setting forth to whichever classroom is expecting us next. Or not expecting us next, as the case may be, if we've lost track of what period it is, but they're usually pretty quick at setting us straight with a big laugh and a chorus of "hellos."

Anyway. On the way to class today with Maggie, we were accompanied, as is usual here in Taiwan, by our classroom helpers--ie, those kids who'd decided to voluntarily come down and help us carry our stuff. (Gotta love Taiwan!) Also behind us as we walked were Ingrid and Fiona, another English co-teaching pair who commute to their classrooms, along with their helpers. A few other kids scurried about, too, rushing towards their appropriate home rooms.

I mention all this to say that I don't really know who's responsible for what happened next.

Out of the corner of my ear, I heard what I thought was "七月," (qi yue), which translates as 7th month, or July. July? I thought, Why is he talking about July?

Partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to check my Chinese listening comprehension skills, I asked Maggie about what I'd heard. Turns out that my Chinese listening comprehension skills suck (or, half suck, anyway--I had the 七 part right), and the student had actually said "qi ye"--I have no idea how it's actually written--which was a reference to a Chinese fable.

In the fable, apparently, there are two men, Mister Seven and Mister Eight, who lead people to Hell. Mister Seven is very tall, and Mister Eight is very short.

Hm. Have I mentioned that Maggie is probably about 4'11", and I'm a whopping (in Taiwan) 5'6"? No? Oh, well then I should probably just spell it out that they were talking about us. As the two who lead people down to Hell. Good to know they have such a good impression of English class...

Well, that's it for the night. It's no lengthy tome, but some days just don't need that sort of post. Some days just need a little shot of the small glories of life--a reminder that terrified squirrels and backhanded Chinese insults can, many times, make your day.

6 Ways Living in a Foreign Country Changes Your POV

I'm noted on here before that I enjoy occasionally delving into the ridiculous, but funny, annals of Cracked.com. For those who don't share my hobby (if you visit, be warned: its humor can get dirty), one of the hallmarks of their website is their list-format articles. For instance, the two stories currently leading on their homepage are "The 7 Most Insane Ways People Legally Avoided Paying Taxes" and "5 Things Flight Safety Presentations Should Mention."

I like this format. And, just now, I feel inspired to try it out. So, apart from the literal change in view that comes from being on a different side of the globe, how does living in a foreign country change your POV? Well...

1. All your holidays become multi-day events

I've written about this, I believe, at every holiday I've experienced here in Taiwan. Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter, rolls around. "Aw," I think, "Another holiday away from home! Time to have a search for a turkey meal/Christmas Eve service/Eggs Benedict-making fest to compensate." I have said festivities, miss my family, but do the best I can to have a good holiday. Then I go to sleep.

And the next morning, surprise! It's still Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter! Yep, due to the wonder of time zones and the fact that my hometown is a solid 15 or 16 hours (depending on Daylight Savings Time) behind Taiwan, my family is usually having their big celebration right around the time I'm eating breakfast and driving to school the next day.

Let's take Easter for our first example, since it happened most recently and my family was disappointed because I (whoops!) forgot to Skype in with them for the holiday. But, as I figured out afterwards, there was a reason for that. See, my family celebrates Easter in the early afternoon, like, say 1pm-4pm or so. Which, in Taiwan, would be 4am-7am. And, on any given Monday, my alarm goes off at 8am. So...yeah.

On the more successful Skype holidays, say, Christmas, for example, I Skyped my family three times over the course of two days: noon on Christmas (Christmas Eve at home), late at night on Christmas (Christmas morning), and afternoon on Boxing Day (Christmas night). Or, take Thanksgiving, which found me Skyping in the next day at lunchtime, with my Subway turkey sandwich, as my family cleaned off their Thanksgiving late-night snacks. It's bizarre, but it's something you eventually adjust to: holidays are as fluid as time zones when it comes to when they're celebrated. And you'd better be there for all of them.

2. Everyone's online at the wrong time.

All this talk about time zones brings me to my second point: you know all those people who've hassled you your whole life about not staying up too late? You know, the early birds who consider staying up past 11pm or sleeping past 9am to be some sort of freakish abnormality, not to be tolerated under any circumstances? Well---they are now your most reliable contacts.

On the flip side, never have I felt more rewarded to keep an abnormal sleeping schedule than I have since I moved here. Want to talk to someone? Better be okay with staying up till 2am. Want a lot of people to read your blog? Well then forget about posting before midnight, it's best if you wait till at least 3am to maximize readership. (True numbers there: Google Analytics tells all.)

And, really, developing dual communities on opposite sides of the globe just means you have twice as much stuff to do online, and doing it in sync with the local community necessitates more and more hours spent there. At this point, just about every time I open my Facebook I have a notification or four waiting--after all, while I'm sleeping or teaching, my friends back home are in their late-night Facebook mode! And then, on top of that, once I'm in my late-night Facebook mode, so are my friends here in Taiwan.

So I'm not actually complaining about this shift. It really works out pretty well for a night owl/online addict like me. But still, time zone shifts can be confusing, especially when you're dealing with facts like...

3. You have to re-memorize all publication schedules

This may not be a big deal for other people. And, truthfully, it's not *that* big of a deal for me, most of the time, since I had no functioning television in my house last year and so relied exclusively on Internet versions of shows, which always come out later to begin with. But. You still get used to certain release dates; you still (if you're me) know *exactly* when Bones will be up, and *exactly* when The Office will be. You also have to get used to the fact that none of the reputable sites you know and love are licensed for use where you are.

And there are websites that get updated on a time schedule, too--usually something like Monday/Wednesday/Friday, yet now rendered Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Or, if it's a daily site, perhaps it will seem to be updated twice-daily, since it posts directly in the middle of your viewing session.

So it's a mixed bag of good and bad, and it makes Internet content completely unpredictable until you master its patterns (which I haven't), and unfortunate fact given that, living in another country, you are 100% dependent on the Internet for everything, from translations to communications to media to procrastination. Take your normal dependence, multiply it by 100, and you've got a rough idea.

Now take into consideration that you don't know when stuff will be available. Of course, 'not knowing' is a normal state of being while living abroad, which leads us to how...

4. You acquire a deep empathy with all immigrants, ever.


This is actually the number 1 reason why I truly believe that EVERYONE should be required to live somewhere they can't communicate at some point in their lives. Preferably while they're young, since it's easier then and it avoids years of misunderstandings.

See, if there's one thing I've realized since moving to Taiwan, it's that living in a foreign country is hard! You don't know your way around, you don't know the culture, you know next to no one, and, to top it off (in my case, at least), you can't even find the answers to these things because you don't know the language.

Let me give you an example. When I was in high school/the beginning of college, I worked for Jamba Juice. And I remember, some of our best customers were foreigners from Asian countries. They would come in, looking earnest, and spend what seemed like hours studying the menu before coming to the front and ordering, pretty invariably, an orange-carrot juice. Asking size was a struggle, and when they had finished ordering and paying--usually in cash, with a $20 bill, you could see the look of relief on their faces as they stepped back to wait for their juice.

I'm not going to lie, as employees, we hated this: orange juice and carrot juice come from two massive, hard-to-clean machines which would sometimes otherwise go a day without being used; beside that, these customers always seemed to come right after we'd finished cleaning both machines for the night. It was pretty annoying.

Well...I'm pretty sure I now am that person. I think of them every time I step foot inside a coffee shop, or a juice shop, or a restaurant of any kind, and stare unknowing at the massive menu of indistinguishable words which must, I know, be the dishes I'm supposed to be ordering. I'll stare, and stare, pick out the few words I recognize, and then, usually, place one of my stock orders--drinks: latte (hot or cold; hazelnut or almond), watermelon juice, or milk tea, and meals: beef noodles, hamburger (if it's a Western place) or, more frequently, "this one," with a point at the menu. I feel accomplished, and happy, if I can pull this trick off without a hitch. Anything beyond it is unthinkably hard.

I then pay--always in cash, and quite frequently in the local equivalent of a $20 bill (ie the one most ATMs use), a 1,000NT (~$30USD) note, because that's how my money comes to me. Hopefully I'm not inconveniencing the employees with a notoriously hard order, but truth be told, if I were I would have no way of knowing, and they would have no way of telling me.

In another side story, I remember foreigners U-picking at the orchards I also worked at in high school. They would frequently come back with fruit they weren't supposed to have picked, and I remember one of my co-workers in particular getting very frustrated over the fact. Sometimes it was an honest mistake, but sometimes--and you could tell the difference--they were just playing the "I don't understand" card.

Now, I know that card. I love that card. It really is true, too: not knowing the dominant language in the country you're living in (or not knowing it well enough) is a HUGE get-out-of-jail-free card. Not literally, of course, but the fact is you can get away with quite a lot when you really don't know the rules, or have any way of finding them out. Playing the foreigner card can come in quite handy and, previous frustrations about it aside, it's actually pretty wonderful.

See, all these little things bundle together to make you know, in pretty good anagram, exactly how immigrants feel in YOUR country. And, while it's easy to write people off who can't speak your language at home (You're in America! Learn the language!), it's much more difficult to do so when the situation's been reversed, and you see firsthand exactly how difficult it is, and, more importantly, how long it takes, to do so.

This also applies to ethnic enclaves, another phenomenon I never quite understood until I moved here, and realized that, while living abroad...


5. You develop a sudden, simultaneous love for and mistrust of all things 'foreign'--aka, from home.

I've written about this before: whenever I go to church here, or, really, whenever I see a foreigner here, a little alarm goes off in my head. What is going on? What is/are he/she/they doing here? Why are there so many foreigners in one place? Something is not right!!!

See, when you're living in a country where you stick out like a sore thumb, you go through a couple of phases. 1: WOW I am seriously the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now. 2: Well obviously I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, this is TAIWAN. 3: Yes, I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, move along, folks.

Right around when you hit that third stage, it becomes absolutely shocking whenever you're proven wrong. It happens occasionally that I'll draw some stares when I'm out on my scooter or on the MRT (I learned to ignore it sometime around stage 2 above), but when I see a white person in a similar context, I full-on stare. I can't seem to help myself. All memories of how much I dislike being stared at go out the window as I grapple with the unnerving realization that there's more than one of us here! It actually makes me quite uncomfortable, a fact which bodes interestingly for when I go back home in July...

And of course alongside this is the sudden idolization of all things American. We're going out to Western food? Fantastic! There's a Starbucks on that corner? Hooray! They serve red meat there? My day is made!

It's an odd juxtaposition, really, this love-hate relationship you develop with 'home,' and one which I suppose reinforces somewhat the idea that...

6. The whole world suddenly seems like it's just a whim (and a few saved paychecks) away

Obviously, moving across the world is a huge step, and one that involves a TON of planning, paying, and travel time. But, once you've done it, it becomes remarkably apparent just how feasible it is to do. Pick up and move to another country? Sure, why not!

As an outgrowth of that, then, travel becomes the most natural thing in the world. Want go to Thailand for a week? Sure, why not! How about Australia? Why yes I would, sign me up!

I've yet to determine whether these impulses come solely, or just primarily, from living abroad, or if they're more a product of having a full-time job (and salary) for the first time. But, for me, at least, I can't help but think it's probably largely because I'm living abroad. I mean, really, my wages are pretty low by US standards, and flight prices don't vary based on local cost of living (a bum deal, really), but even so it seems 100% natural and easy to travel widely while I'm here.

At the core of it is the realization that long plane rides really aren't that long, and that international travel, if you can keep a cool head about it, is pretty easy. And, especially once you've adjusted to living in a culture in an infantile state of non-knowing, it doesn't really matter where you display your ignorance; beyond that, you've developed the very specific skill-set necessary to navigate an unknown location using only hand signals and whatever level of English whoever you're talking to happens to know.

It's liberating, really: when you known nothing, and know you know nothing, you can go anywhere. Now that's a sentence I never would have written before moving here...oh, the joys of a fresh POV.

Wedding in Taiwan!

Since I got here, I've been seeing post after post pop up on my fellow ETAs' walls, proclaiming that they've been at a Taiwanese wedding feast. Some have liked it, some haven't, and all have come away talking about the lavishness of the food and traditions accompanying it. Several people have been to more than one. Yet, eight and a half months into my stay here, I had yet to experience one myself.

Until tonight, that is! My principal's daughter got married (as I noted here, I recently got wedding cake for the occasion), and as a part of the (many, many) ceremonies attending that, the principal invited all of the teachers at 漢民 (Hanmin) to the wedding feast. Let me be clear: Hamin's a big school--something between 2 and 3,000 students big. Hanmin teachers easily took up 16 or so 12-person tables.

Yet even so, our numbers were dwarfed by the assembly as a whole. According to Fiona, there were 130 12-person tables set for the wedding, which makes for a whopping 1,560 attendees! Even taking into consideration the fact that some people didn't come, there were definitely at least 1,200 people in the assembly room.

One very small portion of the hall. You can kind of see the front wall/stage area next to the no smoking sign...

Opulence was definitely the name of the game. Oh, and did I mention that the assembly room in question was in the downstairs portion of the Bao-an Temple by Golden Lion Lake, a famous (and HUGE) Kaohsiung Daoist temple?

This also can't convey scale, but see how it's got a special bridge leading directly and specifically to it? Yeah.

 (Here's a link to a more comprehensive view of how huge and elaborately decorated this place is.)

We were early (Fiona picked Ingrid and I up at my place and drove ), and spent the first couple hours chit-chatting and talking about the many many things involved in making a successful Taiwanese wedding and all the things people do to ensure good luck for the married couple. At some point, music started; at some later point, a video stream showing the wedding party taking part in all the traditions began on the several TVs around the room. Also at some point, it became all but impossible for us to hear one another.

Ingrid discovering that the cups at our first table had Coca-Cola insignias on them :)

Fiona waiting with the Academic Director's son (dressed all in green plaid, poor boy) concentrating on his video games.

Each row is another course: count 'em up, 12!

Soon, everyone was there--Alison and Maggie joined us to form a whole row of English teachers, and eventually a few other people, starting with the music teacher who shares our office, took courage to sit with us--and the feasting began! SO much seafood, ranging from lobster to an angry-looking (but delicious-tasting) fish to shrimp-flavored rice.

Oh yeah, and a black chicken soup! Because why not?

Final course: ice cream bars. We made it!

Between dishes, we had such lovely little experiences as Teacher Penguin thrusting vegetarian dishes onto our plates (I guess he didn't want them or something?), my tutoree Hal coming over for a chat (odd out-of-context encounter I should have thought about, since his dad's a Hanmin teacher), more than a few completely missed main events (we could hear a muffled version of what was going on, but could only see if they turned on the video cameras, something they failed to do for, for instance, a dance routine some group did).

Also, of course, we got to see the beautiful bride and bridal procession, which paraded around the hall for everyone to see. :)

The bride with her dad: blurry but still beautiful!

By the time we were ready to pack up and head home, my stomach felt like it would pop and I felt fully initiated into the rites of a Taiwanese wedding banquet. On the way out the bride (in at least her 3rd dress of the evening; possibly 4th) and her family gave everyone candies as they exited.

An exhausting, but wonderful experience! And now I, too, can add my post on a Taiwanese wedding to the pantheon of ETA postings; I, too, have experienced the largesse of a Taiwanese wedding, and I, too, have the bloated belly to prove it. Quite the night!

Cafe Logic

I don't know what it is, whether my PNW upbringing or college experience or just my categorizing nature, but it never fails that I get more work done in coffee shops than anywhere else. It doesn't really matter how badly something needs to get done, if I sit down to work on it at home--itself a big "if"--I will inevitably be crippled by a wave of procrastination, obstinacy, and not-caring. If, on the other hand, I step out of the house and to the nearest coffee shop, what I have to do suddenly becomes the most important thing in the world to me, and I finish it in no time whatsoever.

Let's take today for example. I woke up lazy. I ate breakfast. I hauled out my computer and stared at it for a while.

Then I had an epiphany. "Wait," I thought, "I have those coupons to Starbucks that Maggie sent me! Let's go try those out!"

I packed my computer, planner, two notebooks, headphones, and a pen into my trusty Thai bag (it never ceases to amaze me how much I need to be productive--or how much that bag will hold), and set off down the street to the local Starbucks. (Yes, I have a local Starbucks. Two within walking distance, actually--what else would I move halfway around the world from Seattle to find?) There, I discovered that, miracle of miracles, the person working there (her name tag said her English name was "Lacey") spoke great English! (Though I've been told that Starbucks employees here are all required to know all the drink names in English, in my experience that's not always the case, and since in Chinese my ability to order drops to about 4 drinks, it's always a pleasure to find someone who can understand me in English.)

So, armed with a (free!!!) tall caramel macchiatto and a (not free) cookie, I found an open table and sat down to work. And work I did! All afternoon, on all the projects which had repulsed me over the past few days whenever I tried to work on them at home. Yet, within just a few hours, they were all either done or mostly done, pending information I'd left at home (or left online, since the Starbucks Internet was not agreeing with my computer).

It's amazing, really. And, for my wallet's sake (once these coupons run out, that is) I wish it weren't true. But it is. My brain runs on cafe logic, and without a cafe, it's useless, adrift without motivation. So, who wants another coffee?

Pictures at last

It's odd how quickly photos can pile up. Even with my diligent posting of most of my March pictures a few weeks ago, I had several hundred still un-posted as of today, just halfway through April. But no longer.

They are now all up: pictures from various outings with my host family, pictures from Alex and Melanie's visit, pictures from dying Easter eggs with my kids, pictures from making Eggs Benedict. And I realized an odd thing about posting pictures today: I'm less likely to do it if I've already blogged about it. See, whenever I post on here, and use select pictures from the day, two things happen:

1.) I upload the pictures from my camera to my computer, thus getting rid of half the work involved. I usually even edit the few I end up using.
2.) I put the best pictures up for all to see.

These two things are unquestionably the least productive things I could do for general photo-posting. See, they make me feel like I've already done it; that all (the important) photos are up and that doing more would be a bonus/extra work for nothing. But, of course, that's not true. I post maybe 15 pictures on here, if I'm feeling indecisive; I post several hundred to my Facebook, even when I'm being picky.

Today, I was being somewhat picky. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are links to the fruits of my uploading labors, in the form of albums named:

"What will you do in March?" "I will wear green in March" (new additions);
April showers... (,,,or sun, or clouds, as the case may be);
Easter! (Dying eggs at 漢民 and 青山, then making Eggs Benedict with friends--not bad for a holiday away from home.)

Actually...

So, about that whole "real post" thing...yeah, that's not happening.

Why? Well, because mostly what happened today is I felt crummy. Woke up with some sort of virus--to be more specific, that something woke me up an hour before my alarm, bowepfiasdjfpokj--but was at least able to make it through the day, though I pretty closely resembled a pile of sludge for energy level.

I then came home, almost forgot about a Skype date with Lindsey, DIDN'T forget the Skype date with Lindsey, and then had the Skype date with Lindsey. Which was wonderful, of course.

I then fell into a semi-conscious state for several hours which ended with a phone call from Tiffiany asking if I was coming to Chinese class--which had started 20 minutes previous. Whoops. So apparently it's a memory-devouring virus? I don't know.

In any case, I've decided it'd be best to take a sick day tomorrow, which is somewhat of an odd coincidence given that Patty, who I would be teaching with, is also gone for the week, though for a decidedly more serious reason: the wind slammed a door into her face. Very painful, and I'm so glad she's taking some time to recover--she deserves a break! I hope she feels better soon!

By comparison, I should really not even be allowed to call myself "sick." Really, the English language should have another, less serious word for use. But it doesn't, and I'm certainly not feeling Shakespearean enough right now to come up with one for posterity. So, I feel "sick," but not nearly so bad as poor Patty.

Nonetheless, sleep can't hurt in making me feel better...

Well...

My plan for today's post was simple: upload all my photos and pull the (admittedly cheap) "I didn't have time to blog today, but here's a link to my newest album" trick.

But then I failed to upload my pictures.

What I did succeed in doing today was book plane tickets and obtain a visitors visa for my trip to Australia this summer! It's official, I will spend a week this summer in (or on my way to and from) Cairns, Australia, basking on the beaches, learning to SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef, and hopefully taking a day trip into the Outback. I've been putting off buying the tickets out of a mixture of fear and apprehension--afraid my money situation would change and apprehensive that ticket prices would go down later if I bought now (Murphy's Law and all that)--but it feels ever-so-nice to have that no longer weighing me down, but rather as a carrot leading me toward the end of June and a lovely little vacation. Now to book the hostel, etc...

The other thing the day taught me, though, is that I may be coming down with something. Which is why I'm writing this post now, at 11pm, and then shutting out the light and going to sleep for as long as my schedule will permit. Plans for tomorrow: a better post, perhaps?

Teach till you drop

I tried to nap today. Twice, in fact. The first time was most-unheard-of, as it involved me trying quite futilely to take advantage of Taiwanese elementary schools' naptime by putting my face down on my desk while trying not to slide away on my rolling chair; the second was just too short, given the amount of time between when I get home from school and go to Chinese class on Mondays.

So, I'm tired. I've traced it to an essential lack of a weekend--last week was teach, travel, teach, explore Kaohsiung, do Easter, tutor--and a correlating lack of sleep. Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely wonderful, but it was also absolutely exhausting.

But that's not to say it wasn't a good day! At school I had lots of fun teaching the 5th graders pictionary and talking to my colleagues, and when I got home, I found a letter from Maggie (Isabel and Sophia's mom) waiting for me--and full of Starbucks coupons for free drinks, redeemable only in Taiwan! Starbucks is a rare luxury for me here (they don't scale prices to the local economy), and one I've been cutting back on to save for travel and "real life" back home, so these little coupons are a real blessing. I can't wait to try them out. Thanks Maggie!

Yes, I was tired today. Yes, I'm still tired now. But life in Kaohsiung carries on, in its lovely and irresistible wonderfulness.

Alternative Easter

Easter: another holiday away from home. *Sigh*

BUT, as with my other such holidays, I found a way to celebrate and stick as close to my normal holiday traditions as possible. And, along the way this time, I discovered that I am growing more and more like my Mom's side of the family.

A few days ago, Karina and I got in contact with Grace, a friend of Melanie and Marissa's whom we'd met in Chiang Mai when we visited in February, and made plans. See, Grace's in Tainan right now for a study-abroad type opportunity, and we wanted to hang out. And, as three displaced English-speaking Christians in Taiwan on Easter, the idea came easy: we should celebrate Easter together!

So, after a few days of ironing out details, it was decided that Grace would take a train to Zuoying, meet up with Karina there, and then they'd both take MRT to Kaohsiung Arena, where I'd be waiting with my scooter to shuttle them both to the church down the road. Afterwards, we'd all head back to my place to make--and, of course, eat, Eggs Benedict.

Church was fun in that it marked the first time I've seen people I know in service, apart from those I go with, as we ran into first Annie (an LET at Samia's school) and then--amazingly--the couple from Kinmen and Taitung! I really need to start remembering their names, if we're going to keep running into them all the time...it was a fun surprise, for sure!

After playing shuttle again, I jetted back to grab some last second groceries (hm, perhaps eggs might be a good thing to have for Eggs Benedict?) before Karina and Grace met me back at the apartment. Then commenced my first solo attempt at my family's classic Easter food, complete with the notoriously difficult-to-make Hollandaise sauce.

And the sauce...well, it failed, honestly. I had been excited to try, since we do actually have a double boiler here, but as it turns out, that pro doesn't quite balance out the fact that our gas-burning stove doesn't do "low" well, or at all. I turned it low, then lower, then lower--and it turned off just as the eggs transformed themselves into a scrambled puree. Luckily, a Taste of Oregon recipe for blender Hollandaise came to the rescue, and as I worked on that, Karina toasted the English muffins I'd found at a Western bakery (it turns out they were filled with cheese, which, while not perfectly authentic, was a much nicer filling surprise than it could have been), and Grace experimented, quite successfully, in egg poaching.

The results, while not exactly pretty, were at least quite delicious, and Karina, Grace, Analicia and I had a nice little Easter brunch of make-do Taiwanese innovation.

"Karina, smile!" yields this result, every time. :)

Family traits coming out: it isn't really a holiday unless I'm making food and serving it to a group of people!

Aftermath...

All in all, a pretty successful venture in holiday meal-making. Also quite successful in revealing to myself that holiday meal-making is an absolutely important and ingrained concept to my idea of celebrating. It felt slightly like Easter today because I was running around cooking (and later, cleaning) like a crazy person, and serving the results of my labors to friends. I really am turning into my mom!

Also helpful in making today feel like Easter was the wonderful gifts brought me "by the Easter bunny" via Alex and Melanie--including Cadbury eggs and jelly beans. Yumm!!!

Of all my holidays away from home thus far, this one has done the most to make me realize how much of home I've brought with me, in the form of traditions and of mindsets.Though today did not feature a massive feast and Easter egg hunt with my dozens of cousins or a lovely cooking session with my Aunt Christy and Uncle Pat, it did stay true to the core concepts of Easter at home: celebrating Jesus' resurrection, making special food, and sharing that special food with others. So even without my family's presence, I had a lovely alternative family Easter this year.