Back "home" and Internet-less

So here's the thing: my apartment no longer has Internet. As I write this, I'm sitting in Brunch across the street, one eye on my battery meter as it drops closer and closer to the point where it will automatically shut down.

The pros of this situation:

• Harder to distract myself while packing;
• Much more likely to spend fewer than 8 hours a day on the computer;
• New time requirements for my blog will mean less late-night typing

The cons of this situation:

• I have no Internet in my apartment. That pretty much sums it up, but if you want more, here:
• I have to buy a coffee/tea whenever I want to check my email;
• I have infinitely fewer opportunities to get in contact with people (internationally and nationally; my phone's almost out of funds, too);
• When I start forcing myself back onto a US time schedule (which I'm thinking of doing starting maybe Monday or Tuesday), I'll be up all night with nothing to do;
• Updates and photos will take longer getting posted.

And that's still the short list. Anyway, since I have yet to finish editing my Australia photos (and my computer's battery is running low), here is, at least, my just-updated "final days in Taiwan" (sniffsniff) album.

As for today, it consisted almost entirely in travel. I was up and out of my hostel by 6am; one local train, one express train, one flight, two buses, an MRT ride and a walk later, at 5:30pm, I arrived back home in Kaohsiung. Along the way, much ado was made about various forms of cash--I was carrying three (AUD, NTD, Japanese yen)--and trying to keep the coolest coins from each. I ended up making a small purchase specifically so I could get more Japanese change--some of their coins, the value of which I haven't been able to determine, have holes in them!

Another, erm, interesting moment came with the appointment of a sign at the entrance of my Osaka-Taipei flight telling me to "enjoy your "safe" and "comfortable" flight"--hardly encouraging.

AND--and if I had more time/wasn't feeling quite so lazy I would have led with this and made it a post of its own--I realized that hearing spoken Chinese and seeing Chinese signs is a comforting, homelike thing for me now. Being in Japan, even for a very short time, made me remember how awkward it is to not know a single word of the language being spoken around you (especially disorienting was the fact that Japan uses some Chinese characters, though mostly of the simplified variety, in its writing), and it let me see how far I've come in this year in Taiwan. The trilingual announcements at the airport (Japanese/Chinese/English) were great for showing me that I can now safely say I'd probably be alright if they had cut out the English--and that was a wonderful realization.

Well, it's about time I pack up and head back to my Internet-free home--and then get to work packing for my return to my other home.

In Thailand!

And writing this from Melanie's computer after a FANTASTIC (and fantastically long) day. In essence, I've been up for 2 days as we traveled here, and then had the best first day in Thailand ever.

So, after our 16 hour bus-and-multiple-flight journey (which involved a cold but swanky bus with a not-so-nice transfer, a very nice EVA plane, a very crappy AirAsia one, and an almost-missed connection in between), we were thrilled to see Melanie, Marissa and their dad, who picked us up from the airport in Chiang Mai, and immediately began being the best hosts ever.

Seriously. After they took us to the best money-changing place in town, telling us the city's history as we drove along, they served us a scrumptious traditional northeast Thai dinner, and then Melanie, Marissa, Karina and I set out for Night Safari, a zoo/wildlife preserve which included a nice walk, two tram rides through animal enclosures, and a laser light show. It was a blast!

So now we're back, it's 10pm local time (11pm Kaohsiung), I've been up for two days (Karina's been up longer), and we're headed out early tomorrow morning for a day with the elephants. All that to say, I'm gonna go catch some long-overdue Zs, uninterrupted by cold bus air or flight attendants bearing food. Good night, Thailand!

劍湖山 and sniffles

When I left my apartment this morning, I knew three things:

1.) I was going on a field trip to an amusement park with my students;
2.) I wasn't feeling well;
3.) I was running inexplicably early.

The first was exciting, if mysterious, since, though I'd been told several times where we were going, I could never manage to remember the name. Still, an amusement park is an amusement park, and time with students outside of school is wonderful even if it didn't involve a free pass to a great Taiwanese attraction.

The second was just obnoxious. I made a quick trip down to 7-11 to pick up hospital masks, in case that was proper protocol for coming to school with a cold here (you never know) and two bags of what I know as cough drops, but which are here apparently considered candy--Ricola lemon mint drops (aka "herb candy").

The third is inexplicable still: I had been told to be at school by 7:24, so I was shooting for 7:20, and yet somehow managed to arrive at 7:05, after stalling and more than one convenience store stop. I met up with Maggie and we immediately began waiting, as the scheduled leave time of 7:30 came and went; when we finally boarded our bus at 8:00am, I had had ample time to wish I had bought breakfast in all my free time, rather than wait it out for the breakfast they provided, which turned out to be shredded dry pork sandwiches. (Not as bad as they sound, but there are still plenty of things I would have chosen over them.)

As the bus got moving, I asked Maggie, yet again, where we were going, and she told me 劍湖山世界, which is translated on their signs as Janfusun Fancyworld, though the characters should make it--and it is actually pronounced, from what I can tell--Jianhushan. So I guess I'm not the only one with problems with the name.

When we got there (after a beautiful drive through the Taiwanese countryside and a rest area reminiscent of those complexes found on toll roads on the East coast, complete with a Starbucks which Maggie and I took full advantage of!), I learned that this is not just a great theme park, but one located on a lush green mountain surrounded by lush green mountains. Absolutely gorgeous.

No photo-shopping necessary

Definitely one of the greenest theme parks I've ever seen

LOVE that view

The set-up reminded me at first of Enchanted Forest, in Albany, Oregon, but on a much grander school--if Albany looked like that (^), that is, which it doesn't. But it's the only other place I know of to so seamlessly integrate the natural environment--and geography--into the more modern buildings and rides. It was brilliant in this regard.

Maggie informed me that the first thing the teachers must do is have coffee/tea with the owner of the tour bus company who took us there. (Oh, there's another cultural difference for ya: no school buses here, and they use double-decker tour buses for just about everything that requires moving large groups of people! Much nicer than the States.) That's one tradition I was more than happy to take part in! Especially when we arrived at the place where we were going to drink the coffee, and found that it was...

Love at first sight. World's largest!

Inside, the different rooms--all part of a cafe--featured decor from all different parts of the world. So cool! Wish I'd gotten to explore it more.

Our table: Maggie with her rose milk tea (and leftover Starbucks from the road) and 2 of the home room teachers with their iced caramel lattes

Maggie and I! Our part of the cafe was decorated like the UK, from what I could tell...

Once we finished our drinks, we set out for the haunted theater attraction--never my favorite, but everyone else wanted to go, so I joined. It ended up being pretty tame: rather than reinvent the wheel, they had opted to recreate scenes from famous horror movies in each corner of a mid-sized maze. Also, Maggie and I were at the end of the group going through, so mostly we'd just hear screams up ahead and turn the corner in time to see the actor go back to his corner, or the animatronic monster shrink back to its starting position.

Then it was off to the rides! I think I may have earned myself a reputation as something of a daredevil as, in quick succession, I went on the Diving Machine G5 (not my video), the Sky Jet (where I had an audience of maybe forty or so of my students watching me) and the Crazy Coaster. All were a lot of fun, and all involved fairly quiet waits, seeing as how Maggie doesn't do roller coasters and the other teachers didn't speak English. Still a lot of fun, though!

the G5

Just caught it in time

Annnd JUST because they're adorable, I give you Fred and Brian. Twin brothers, and they're in the same class. And then I wonder why I can't remember names...

Not long after lunch--which we were late to, thanks to our roller coaster antics--it was time to head home. We piled back into the buses, turned back on our illegal copy of "Real Steel" (Hugh Jackman fighting robots movie), and headed home.

It was a great day, and it solved my first and third tidbits along the way: I now know that I went to j...n.shn....hm. Curse that name. Okay, it solved my third tidbit along the way: .....because...I...umm....huh. Not even going to try on the second one: my throat still aches, ricola notwithstanding. It didn't keep my from enjoying myself, but it does seem to be impacting my memory and sense of time! So I'm going to bed.