(Belated) Breakthroughs

There are some things I've just had to accept about my experience here in Taiwan. For instance, that I will never be able to remember the names of every one of my students. And that those students will never be able to properly pronounce the letter "z."

Then today happened.

This first thing is embarrassing to admit, but a breakthrough nonetheless: today I realized, after 7 months of teaching them, that my 3rd class of 5th graders on Fridays at Qingshan has four twins from three pairs in it. I already knew that Bess and Kyle were in that class, while their respective twins were in other classes, but I had somehow missed up until today that this class also has Bruce and Chris in it--identical brothers whom I'd failed to notice were, in fact, twins.

I guess I just thought they were the same person or something? Weird.

Pictured here on the right: either Chris or Bruce. Chruce?

The letter "z" has been a major headache for me this year. It's an incredibly difficult sound for Chinese speakers learning English, yet for some unfathomable reason, it features pretty prominently in textbooks. Rachel's told me about her adventures trying to get kids to say the word "zebra," and I have had run-in after run-in with the word "zoo," which invariably comes out as "loo" or "lroo" or "roo."

To me, "l" and "r" bear almost no phonetic similarity to "z"--so why do they always resort to this? Why is this sound so hard? I honestly don't know. But I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that at least Chinese has the initial sound of "在" (tzai), which is admittedly not perfect, with the t sound before the z, but does at least feature a sound that, if said with "oo," would be recognizable as "zoo" (tzoo), not as "bathroom" (loo) or "regret" (roo/rue).

So I mentioned this breakthrough to Patty, who liked it and shared it with the classes via BoPoMoFo (Taiwanese phonetic system). The results? Whereas at the beginning of the class maybe 30% of the students could say their "zoo" correctly, towards the end I'd say about 75% could. Not bad! Now, just to retroactively teach this breakthrough to all of my students...

But it's pointless to "rue" the consequences of being slow on the uptake on this one. Just because I left my brain in the "loo" before doesn't mean its retrieval can't be meaningful--and it is, for Chris, Bruce, and the letter "z"!

Highlights

I'm tired, so now I give you...

Highlights from today:

The 6th graders are learning clothes. For roll call, I told them to tell me one thing they were wearing. These were two responses, both from boys wearing T-shirts and jeans:

"I'm wearing a pink dress."
"I'm wearing a black bikini."

My question for them: oh, is that under your clothes, then? Ok...

Also: the problem of "F-U-C-K" and "shit." I don't know why, but this week I've been noticing kids saying these all the time. And yes, they spell the F word rather than saying it. I feel like if I react in a big way, it'll just encourage them--the reason they're saying these words, in English, is to get attention, after all. Usually I just frown at them and move on. Any hints on better solutions?

Annnd I'm going to bed.

Sleep?

It's not quite 1am. I'm exhausted. Odd as it may seem, that's not a normal state of being for me at 1am. In fact, a big portion of my psyche is telling me I should press through and keep doing stuff like reading. My psyche is even telling me I should pop in a movie.

But I'm going to say no to it. No to my psyche and yes to my underlying--and currently easily felt--NEED for sleep. It's something I don't do enough, really.

So now it's off to bed for me. After I finish booking tickets, that is...

Bullet points

Some days, my life warrants paragraphs. Today, it warrants bullet points.

• The most exciting moment of the day came the second I walked into our teachers' office at Hanmin--and discovered that we have a new foreign teacher! Ingrid, who's from the Netherlands, will be here for 2 months teaching English, and is currently teaching with Fiona. She just graduated college, and is filling the time between her degree and her Master's in what I think is the best way possible--teaching English in Taiwan!
• I spent much of the day figuring out travel plans, because MY BROTHER AND SISTER-IN-LAW come next week!
• I still like the gym, even after a week-long hiatus and when I forget my headphones at home. Woo!
• I put pictures up for the first time in about a month. If you're my friend on Facebook and missed them, here are the links:
• Teaching 'n stuff: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2163914024684.2105389.1451610020&type=1&l=6718d387c3
• Kaitlin's visit!: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2948540759862.2120425.1451610020&type=1&l=dd996d3d21

And that's it for tonight, folks. Later!

Pairings

I don't know why, but I do love it when I come across a pairing of two that seems to suit in some way or another. Maybe it's a subconscious human instinct, to join two things to make a single one complete. In any case, I've been noticing plenty of pairings lately, and thought I'd go ahead and share them with you.

Kids' Names:

The best part here is that I have a pair of pairings, or actually a trio of pairings, taken from both of my schools. I notice paired names most often when kids sitting next to each other have appropriate names, or their names are next to each other on the roll call.

Take, for instance, two of my 5th graders at Hanmin who sit in the same row: Amos and Andy.

And then there's the two 6th grade girls at Qingshan whose names directly follow each other: Penny and Candy.

The best one, though, is a tidbit Maggie passed along to me today on the walk to one of our classrooms. She said that one of the teachers at the school has twins, a boy and a girl. Their family name is Li, and the twins are named Li Ke and Li Le. (李可 and 李樂.) Yes, Chinese speakers, that's right--the kids' names are made of the halves of the word 可樂--cola. According to Maggie, people ask the dad how his drink is, and things of that nature, all the time. And I have to say, he deserves it!


Smaller Pairings:


My most pervasive frustration with traffic here comes out when I am most fully taking advantage of traffic here. It's a perverse pairing. Essentially, when I'm running late and I hit traffic, I get quite annoyed at the cars, scooters, pedestrians, bicyclists and pushcarts--yes, pushcarts--in my way. Stupid Taiwanese traffic, I say, why is this person pushing a cart by hand down the middle of the street? This would never happen in America... 

I then rev my engine and find the best way around the problem, weaving and making marginally legal turns as necessary. That is, I drive in such a way that, if I were in America, would get me in massive trouble. It's a catch-22: the very order I'm longing for is the order I am more than happy to thrown to the wayside to get me to my destination quicker.


Another pairing: The Hunger Games and Sour Patch Kids. I like to eat sour candy when I go to the movies. Taiwan has a serious shortage of sour candy. However, Kaitlin brought me some like the gem she is, and so today I got to relive one of my favorite essential pairings from America: candy and a great movie. Nothing not to love!


So those are my pairings from the day. What are yours?

Back to the Basics

I've come to realize that I'm one of those people who love the basics. When I read, I often pick up the classics: basic. When I go shopping, I pick clothes with bold colors and classic styles: basic. When I think of a great day, I think of a day without a schedule, involving such things as sleep, good coffee, good books, good company: basic. In fact, in most things, from daily activities to theology, I'm a big fan of Occam's razor.

It's somewhat of an ironic fact about me, really: I love details, I love finding tiny errors and correcting them--I want to be an editor, after all; yet, at the same time, what I long for is simplicity.

Which means today was lovely. After an early wake-up call and trip to the airport to say goodbye to Kaitlin, who had an unfortunately long trip home ahead of her (it's midnight here and we left for the airport at 6am, but she still has another 6 hours to go, by my count), I slumped home on the MRT and went back to sleep for a few hours. When I awoke, I was met with the happy news that Rachel had waited for me to go to Costco, and at Costco I found some good ol' fashioned American basics like cheese, wheat bread, and chips and salsa. To round out my trip, I couldn't resist going for one of Costco's signature hot dogs. Pork instead of beef here, but still SO good.

I then got home and discovered that my rotisserie chicken had gone back a little too basic, in my own humble opinion:

It had a head still. True reaction.

I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for my first tutoring session tonight, with a young man named Hal whose father is a homeroom teacher at Hanmin. And, by preparing, I mean writing out a general outline of things we should do, and then re-reading the first chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and writing a bunch of reading comprehension questions on the content. Nothing more basic than one of my favorite books of all time!

Except perhaps the tutoring itself. I arrived at the cafe early and grabbed a cup of delicious coffee, and when Hal got there, we got down to work--on his writing and almost solely his writing. It was so much fun! I spent three years in college as a writing tutor, doing what I could for students' full length papers in little half hour segments; working on others' papers is a matter of course for me. But half hour sessions are not nearly enough to fully address all the issues in a paper, as I learned today, as Hal and I took a full hour and a half to pore over his two paragraph practice test essay.

It was glorious: all the skills I've honed over the past few years, but expanded out into a fuller time frame that allowed us to take a piece of writing from draft stage through a full work-up of structure and grammar (subjunctive mood played a key role in today's lesson) to rewrites of specific sentences to re-copying the whole thing in corrected form, allowing Hal to walk away with an example for future works. I loved it: back to the basics of English tutoring, and tutoring itself.

At home, an HBO series of Matt Damon movies (I caught the very strange and confusing second half of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and then the entirety of the also confusing and certainly not basic but, for me, intriguing The Adjustment Bureau, which led to an abortive convoluted theological conversation with Analicia which did, in fact, help to inspire this post) served as a nice break from some of the ridiculousness they've been showing lately, and after it finished I had the treat of listening to a podcast by the great Judah Smith, who always challenges me with his fantastic ability to bring everything back to the utmost basic of Christian faith: Jesus.

I love complex thought; I love teasing out inconsistencies and exploring convoluted new notions. I love experiencing new things. But that's just it: even when I'm delving into extraordinarily complicated notions, I do it with the intent of smoothing out the wrinkles and revealing the bigger picture, clean and pressed through the action of delving. I see complications as a juicy challenge on the way to clarity.

Because, to me, as much fun as labyrinthine experiences are, all those in the maze really have the same goal: to get out of the twists and turns--to get back to the basics.

The Unexpected

Kaitlin and I woke up this morning to discover that our perfect day and balmy night had melted into a gusty, overcast morning in the mid 60s. Bummer.

We quickly abandoned our snorkeling-and-swimming plans, and after a somewhat slim breakfast buffet (the effects of coming down late, I suppose), we rented a scooter and drove off to the Southernmost tip of Taiwan, as the wind and occasional rain drops recalled for me my last trip to Kenting. Fortunately, though, it was not nearly so bad.

Nonetheless, after our little hike we jumped at the sight of a roadside Starbucks, and went in to sit out the worst of it, finding a little enclave of apparently French Westerners there, too, and inadvertently missing a window of clear skies while we sipped. Afterwards we made a short stop at South Bay beach, then gave up utterly and went back to the hotel to check out and return our scooter.

About a half hour, several helpful clerks and several obnoxious hawkers later, we were on our bus back to Kaohsiung, our trip having been cut significantly shorter than was originally planned. Once back, we continued in our unsuccessful quest for a Kaohsiung Starbucks mugs for Kaitlin (seriously, Starbucks? Why stock only Taichung at the Kaohsiung HSR station?), then went home for a chill evening and a dinner of dumplings and milk tea.

And just like that, Kaitlin's last day in Kaohsiung was over. Tomorrow morning she boards a flight home, and I return to my routines.I'll miss her. And hopefully she'll remember the trip not only for the bad unexpected moments, but the good as well!

Sand

There's sand in my bed. There's also sand in Kaitlin's bed, and on the floor of our room, and in a tidy but rather large pile along the wall in the bathroom. Why is there sand everywhere? Because we're in Kenting. And because we had just the most relaxing day ever, lying in the sand.

It began, I grant you, with a few hiccups: we got a late start, my lack of knowledge and indecision made us miss a bus, hawkers for sketchy minibuses would NOT leave us alone, but eventually we made it aboard a regular Kenting-bound bus and, after practicing an old Chinese lesson with the driver (where should I get off?), we disembarked at the right stop and found our hotel. And, not only is is amazing, with the best possible location and easy beach access, but they let us check in early! Seriously, if you're going to Kenting, I highly recommend Mae Toong.

Anyway, we had a lovely Thai lunch which provided us with enough food for dinner, too (a blessing, given prices around here), and then hit the beach for a few hours, walking, wading (signs informed us we were not allowed to swim), sunbathing and reading. It was glorious.

Then it was back to the hotel to clean off (sand....) and eat our leftovers while watching an oddly amusing (and ridiculous) movie from the early 90s called Green Card, then check out the night market right outside our hotel (right outside, yet silent from within...) and grab some dessert before heading back. It's early yet now, but our lovely day deserves repeating tomorrow, and were hoping to get an early start, so it's off to bed now.

Because even with our beds are full of sand, nothing can ruin our day.

Making it work

Can I be honest? I don't really want to blog tonight. But here goes.

Today marks possibly the first time all year that I've gotten up on a Thursday morning with a specific purpose in mind: in this case, to climb Monkey Mountain with Kaitlin.

There were several problems with this plan, the most notable of which being that I had never before been to Monkey Mountain and thus had no idea where we should go to hike. Information gleaned from Rachel (who'd done it twice before but had never driven there) and the Internet (which had surprisingly little to say on the subject other than 'do it') taught me it should be easy enough if I just took Wufu and followed the signs for the zoo, and then the giant yellow banana signs. Of the latter, one oh-so-helpful blogger had this to say: "If you can't follow these, you're a moron."

Well, I am not a moron. But the signs, while large and easy to see, are themselves quite moronic. In essence, they led us on a wild goose chase around the mountain. We first followed them up the mountain and parked somewhere, wandered around and found nothing. So, we returned to a huge grouping of giant yellow banana signs--pointing in two different directions, and with the places they were pointing to written solely in Chinese.

We picked one to follow and ended up at the zoo where, according to some Internet denizens, you can also take a little hike. Except there were no trails in sight. So we headed back to our sign beachhead and went the other way, which eventually led us to a temple--another place where, according to my research, there should be trails. Indeed, inside the complex, there was even a portion marked "hiking trail."

We walked to the back of the temple (so far so good) and found a little trail, which we climbed, and where I did manage to see my first Taiwanese monkeys, lounging on the temple roof. "Great," I thought, "Now let's hike!"

Then the trail ended. We spent a while looking for others, but to no avail--that was destined to be the extent of our hiking experience.

On the plus side, though, that then gave us time to visit the always gorgeous British Consulate Residence, Wu Pao Chen bakery, and try to find a Starbucks selling a Kaohsiung mug (fail).

Then it was time for me to go to school, while Kaitlin got some rest. Highlights at school:

• Patty suggesting I take a little nap because I wasn't feeling well;
• me: "What is Teacher Patty wearing?" (correct answer: pants) 6th grade boy: "Ugly pants!"
• Remedial class begins again--love love LOVE getting to teach a class of 6! Back to being able to say "Howard, what's this word? Teddy, what letter comes next? Jenny, what sound does 'k' make?" Judy, what's this word? Leo, what is this? Evan, what's this word?" It always makes me jealous of those in the county schools with tiny classes....*coughKarinacough*

Great day overall, though! Despite minor geographical failings.

Responsibilities

It was a long day: Morning English, classroom observation, more class, Fulbright workshop, Chinese class...and then finally a bit of fun at Love River. I feel so bad for Kaitlin! Of course, the good news is that this is the last of these horrible long days full of responsibilities--and Kaitlin has been an excellent sport about all of this. I feel so bad that she's had to be, though...

But at least our night was nice! The Love River never fails to provide gorgeousness at night, and this time brought more new things in old places, like some DELICIOUS fresh kiwi gelato and rose grapefruit gelato, and a stroll as far down the river as the Love Pier, which I realized today I'd never seen before.

Also, we had some oh-so-lovely moments hating on Kaohsiung traffic. Great night, though! And tomorrow will be even better. Here's some pictures:

Digging Deeper in Kaohsiung

I've mentioned before that when friends come to visit, I get to play the tourist again and rediscover all the things that make Kaohsiung so great. I've visited all my favorite places again whenever out-of-towners come to visit, showing them what I consider to be the best of Kaohsiung. What I hadn't done before, though, is take the opportunity of their coming to stretch my own knowledge of the area. Until today.

Today, after taking Kaitlin to school with me and enjoying delicious lunch at Ali's and then a quick nap/rest (see, we are Taiwanese!), we went to Cijin and Siziwan. Now, I've been to both of these places often; they are easily among my favorite places in Kaohsiung (though also among the most touristy). Yet, even so, this trip was entirely different, because....

• We took my scooter! Odd though it may seem, I had never before driven to Siziwan. There's an MRT stop nearby, and getting there doesn't even involve a transfer, so it's pretty simple to just go that route. However, it just so happens that Kaitlin, like myself, absolutely loves scootering, so I figured, why not? It turns out it's amazingly easy to get there, and, it being a Tuesday afternoon, parking was a breeze, too. (Unintended pun, given the wind today.)

I don't take pictures while scootering...here's the ferry, though!

• After renting bikes (admittedly at the same place I always do, but with the caveat that it's cheapest there and we did get different types this time...), we set out, not along the sea shore where I usually take people, but to the right, where I had never been. It was absolutely GORGEOUS!...until we were stopped by apparent construction, that is.

Sometimes I forget how gorgeous the ocean is. Then I see places like this. :)

• We went to the lighthouse! Somehow, I had never made it up there before. I've seen it from afar from the ferry, from Cijin beach, from Zhongshan Dashue, from the old British Embassy, but never in person! A call to Fonda that got forwarded to Dr. Sun helped us figure out where to turn off to get there, and we arrived just in time, 5 minutes or so before they kicked us out. But that was okay, because...

 

In other news, it is officially HOT in Kaohsiung again...

• We went to the fortress! I'll be honest, before today I didn't even know there was a fortress on Cijin. It was fantastic. As we walked through the crumbling outskirts, I told Kaitlin it reminded me of the fortress I would have loved to build and never leave when I was 10 years old; when we got to the main building, I thoroughly enjoyed walking around on the roof in the gusting sea wind: adventure and a view!

Seconds before Kaitlin was attacked by a fire ant...true story.

That's about it for original explorations on this trip; the standards of buying delicious fresh fruit juice on Cijin and then delicious mixed fruit shave ice back at Siziwan were the same (though I did spring for the sweetened condensed milk variety, which was new and DELICIOUS), because you just can't lose on some things.

Like this.

And also this. :)

Whenever I travel with visitors here (or alone, for that matter), I find myself stretching my Chinese skills in fun new ways, but I honestly hadn't thought about the similar possibilities of stretching, or rather deepening, my knowledge of known sites. Today proved to me, however, that there are few things more rewarding than finding a new gem in an already known treasure.

(Bonus: cooking with Chialing!)

Simple Twists, Great Day

Today was a great mix of new and established, and Western and Taiwanese. It was my ordinary routine, with a few necessary tweaks that simultaneously confirmed and utterly transformed my day.

To begin with, I started the day on the couch (Kaitlin's still jet lagged and I have a twin bed), awakened by the unfamiliar sounds of Brittany's alarm clock and Analicia asking if I needed to shower any time soon. I then got ready for the day in the living room and bathroom, and went down to 7-11 for a very Taiwanese breakfast at the counter.

Then I went to school. After what began as a hectic morning--until this morning I had forgotten to prepare some pictures of people wearing different items of clothing for an in-class game, so I came to school with blank pages, a fistful of markers and sheer determination--classes went wonderfully, and I was even able to nail down the details for tutoring the son of a home room teacher at Hanmin. Just a great day, really, as my memory lapse taught me the (perhaps not so great) lesson that I am still capable of pulling things through at the last second, if need be.

Also at school, I was the very grateful recipient of my very own set of wedding cake! See, in Taiwan, that's the tradition: when a woman gets engaged, she gives all the women she knows a box of cake. (Incidentally, the groom is the one paying for this, yet his friends get nothing...) And, since Hanmin's principal's daughter got formally engaged this weekend, I was somehow included on the list! And it was quite the box of cake:

The box is probably 10" x 10" by 5" or so.

And the contents: candy, cookies, and a large "cake" which seems to contain some sort of meat/seafood and onions, based on Rachel's label-reading...

At home, I met up with Kaitlin, who'd had a great recovery day and even ventured out into the city unarmed to explore and buy coffee, and we took a stroll down to Wu Pao Chun bakery (the line was too long, though, so we left), then grabbed some delicious tea (Kaitlin's first real Taiwanese bubble tea!) and set out for Chialing's for sumptuous noodles.

Then came Chinese class where Kaitlin, good sport that she is, was willing to sit with us for 2 hours before we set out for the night market.

An hour later, we found it. A combination of miscommunications--my mistaking which market would be open tonight, and a wrong turn on Zhonghua--took us nearly to Zuoying, then back to our starting point at Sanmin, then to Zhongshan as far north as Kaohsiung Arena. Eventually, I found the night market I had meant, Rueifong--and discovered that it was closed. By a marvelous stroke of luck, though, our ride home took us straight past Liouhe--aka the market my teacher had tried to direct me to, the biggest in Kaohsiung and one that was actually open on a Monday night.

So, fail-fail, win-win. All in the course of an hour. And at least Kaitlin got a nice little tour out of it!

Forgotten Race, Forgotten Day

My alarm went off this morning at 5:40, but Kaitlin and I had been up, off and on, for most of the night, thanks to the joy that is a hostel full of late-night incomers who are not so great at keeping quiet. We were not exactly awake.

We packed up our stuff in the dark, discovered we couldn't actually check out early like we'd thought we could, so we left our stuff at the back of the main room and left one set of keys and a note on the front desk, then headed towards the MRT. The plan was to try to make it in time for the last shuttle bus to Brittany's race at 6:30am or, failing that, to just go ahead and take MRT all the way there.

After all, I reasoned, the race was at Tamsui Gate 6, so all I would have to do was go to the Tamsui MRT station and then just follow the crowd. At Jiantian, we saw a white guy in running shoes get off and I wondered if he was going to the race. But that couldn't be, I reasoned--the shuttle was at Shilin! We got to Shilin a few minutes later, just as the last shuttle bus would certainly be pulling away. No problem, we thought, we'll just shoot for the backup plan!

About 20 minutes later, we pulled up to Tamsui and got off. There, we discovered precisely one thing: there was no race there. It was utterly deserted, and even the Starbucks was closed. Not only that, but no one there had ever heard of a race--a race which was being held on a closed-off portion of the number 1 expressway.

How was this possible? I do not know. But when I asked information, at the MRT station, where the race was, she directed me to the footpath by the river. "If you want to, you can race there..." she said. When I assured her that Kaitlin and I had not, in fact, come to Tamsui with the intention of finding a good racetrack to see who was faster, she tried to direct me to a gym. I gave up.

After a call to Rachel that revealed that, not only were we at the wrong stop, but that even if we'd gotten off at Shilin we would have been at the wrong stop--Jiantian had the shuttle, after all, meaning both that the guy with the running shoes had likely been going to the race and that we could have made the last shuttle easily.

Instead, we got to explore Tamsui a little bit, then we were the first people in the door at Starbucks before we headed back to Jiantian. Once there, we flagged down a taxi--who had no idea about the race. Seriously?? The expressway was closed! This guy was a taxi driver, working less than 10 minutes from the race, and he somehow had no idea what was going on.

The next cabbie, fortunately, did.

(Did I mention yet that this trip stretched my Chinese abilities further than they've ever been stretched before? Because it totally did.)

We got to Brittany's race around the time she'd estimated she'd get in, and waited with Analicia, Rachel, and Rakitia (a friend of Brittany's who lives in Taipei) until Brittany crossed the finish line. She made it!

A convoluted getting-back-and-making-plans process followed, but soon enough Kaitlin and I were heading on MRT to meet Brittany and Rachel for brunch at a Western breakfast place. It was easy enough, just one stop away.

Except it wasn't. We hopped on the train, got off at the next stop, and then realized something: we were in the wrong place. My first thought was we hadn't gone far enough, so I pushed my way back through the crowd and the closing doors to see---Kaitlin on the other side.

After some frantic gesturing and an anxious wait at the next stop, Kaitlin and I were reunited, and we found a train going back to where we went wrong. Right around then, we got a call from Rachel--saying she and Brittany had also taken the wrong train. Lack of sleep is never great for things like navigation...

It was a day of forgetting and having things forgotten, things that had no cause to be forgotten. But, as a result of them, today won't be!

Taipei Today

After a 5 hour train ride which did not, as I had hoped, go up the East coast of Taiwan,  but rather just grazed the West, Kaitlin and I arrived in Taipei!

The rest of the day was a fight against jet lag, but a winning one as Kaitlin proved her mettle and powered through a VERY long day--it's now near midnight; we got up at 6am after a mere 6 hours of sleep following her 26-plus-hour journey.

Today, we:

ate at Rabbit Rabbit.

went to Taipei 101.

killed a few hours watching street permormers.

had a lovely but VERY late and kind of spendy Japanese barbeque dinner at a restaurant Tom chose, and then got to witness Brittany make a waiter there VERY uncomfortable by asking to kiss him. Repeatedly.  (To be fair, that was the restaurant gimmick: kiss someone for 10 seconds and get a free dish.)

And now it's off to bed, in preparation for Brittany's VERY EARLY race tomorrow!

Kaitlin is coming!

As of now, my friend Kaitlin is in the air somewhere between Japan and Kaohsiung, in the last leg of her flight from DC to here to visit. And I'm so excited!

This week will bring a trip to Taipei, a shortened week of teaching, and a trip to Kenting, which will--fingers crossed--be better than my last trip. In short, the briefest of brief introductions to the island for her. I've been planning, both her trip now and my brother and sister-in-law's trip in April, for a few months now, and I'm excited to see how it plays out now!

So now, the house is clean, the tickets are purchased, the reservations are made, and I'm eagerly awaiting the time to go pick her up from the airport. First thing tomorrow will find us on a train and Taipei-bound. It'll be epic!

Average

Today was average--ie, for the purpose of blogging, it was boring. I taught. I came home. I went to the gym. I wasted time online, and reaffirmed my suspicion that even the Internet is getting boring from too much use.

The only things of note, as always, were points of human connection. Before classes, I was able to chat briefly with my mom and my older brother, Alex, and at greater length with my younger brother, Scott. It had been too long, and it was great to catch up on his life and tell him about mine. I've said it before, but I do love Skype!

Tonight was nice, too, as I got to chat with a couple of guy friends from Seattle, both of whom happened to be on way late--it was 3am there when we started talking; near 5am when we stopped--and so were on in time to chat with me at normal time, while none of my non-time-zone-restricted friends were on. I love the backwardness of how being far away sometimes actually facilitates conversations.

And that was it! Pretty average day; I won't waste any more of your time with it.

Haha point

I'm no comic. I'm well aware of the fact that, my frequent attempts to the contrary, I will never be the next big thing in the world of comedic writing.

But I am a foreigner. And an English teacher. And that, as it turns out, is all you need to be qualified to judge an English language joke competition in Kaohsiung!

It was brilliant. After a week of others wondering what sort of horrible butchering of jokes I'd gotten myself into, I found instead a group of marvelous performers who, for the most part, could tell a decent joke!

One of my favorite moments from the evening:

The first performer stands up and begins to speak. In a near flawless British accent! I must say, it actually threw me off for a bit, considering that one of the things I was evaluating was pronunciation, and I'm just not well-versed enough in British accents to know if some of the words he said were said wrong, or said in a British accent. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he did a great job with his anecdotal joke of bad husband "Bobby" (easily the most British-pronounced word in the whole bit) who forgets his wedding anniversary. His wife says "When I wake up tomorrow morning, there better be a gift sitting in the driveway that can go from 0 to 200 in 6 seconds." And what does she find the next morning? A bathroom scale. And, as the young comedian went on to note, Bobby had not been heard from since.

For that little gem, he got third place.

The remainder of the (actually pretty short) evening consisted of some hilarious voices, some wonderfully physical comedy, some great comedic timing--and yes, a little nervousness and a few mispronounced words, but generally just great performance after great performance after great performance.

And they did come right on like that: one after the other, many lasting no more than about 45 seconds, and the next person ascending the stage long before I'd finished scoring the person before, let alone making the more detailed notes I was supposed to give each team. I wrote like mad, but even so, when the time came to give notes, I found myself with a gaping hole where my notes for Team 6 should be.

"That's okay," I thought. "I'm sure they'll come up one group at a time for feedback, and when I see who it is I'll remember what I was going to say."

Then the other judge, a professor at NKNU, stood up to say a few words.

"Great!" I thought. "She'll jog my memory and I can go from there."

Then she sat down, having given no more than a few sentences, and all in Chinese. Wait, she isn't giving individual feedback? My turn? Gulp.

I managed something, though, and then the results were tallied, awarding my faux-British friend third, a girl with absolutely flawless English and a pretty good joke to boot in second, and a group of three with a high production quality and even higher energy levels scoring the top spot with their simple, yet well-executed sketch about a tourist and an old man's dog.

And me? Well, I got a doctorate, apparently. No, really:

Easiest 4 years of my life!

Yes, that certificate is thanking me, Professor Rebekah (and I finally learned to doctor pictures for privacy's sake, woo!) for serving as a judge. I like the looks of that! What's better, it reminds me of a favorite college professor of mine who refused to let us call her "doctor" because she technically didn't have her doctorate. Having now been on the receiving end, I say, why not? It's a great thing to be artificially honored!

So no, I'm still not a humor writer. But now, with a full 40 minutes of experience now behind me, I am apparently a full Professor of Comedy! How very appropriate that my title also be a joke...

Little Moments

I feel like I've used that title before, but I don't care. All days are made up of little moments, and today they were all happy ones, dozens of little gems strung along in particular order. Each one stands alone, like a Facebook status, without any apparent connection to the others. And, as it's past midnight, I can't be bothered to forge one, so here they are, in their individual glories:

I discovered that both of the kids sitting in the far front of my 6th grade classrooms are named "Tim." Gotta love mnemonics!

Alison and my hybrid drawing game for phonics went off beautifully, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it in every class. Yeah multi-sensory engagement!

I came home to the delivery of a package from the States, containing my new Kindle cover (so cute!) and new headphones to replace the ones that didn't quite survive their recent trip through the wash. Official day count to ship home to here: 11 days.

I spent my afternoon in Sunnyday Cafe, making real progress on the first short story I've seriously attempted in a while. I like where it's going.

I stopped in at Watson's and bought mouthwash, an uninteresting tidbit but for the fact that, in addition to its being half off and buy one get one, my purchase somehow earned me a smallish, heart-shaped, pink fleece  pillow. Only in Taiwan. <3

Seen here in its natural habitat.

Parking at the gym was easy! Always a bonus, since it's right behind a major department store...

My workout was great. I'm going to be so sore tomorrow, and that's the best thing I can think of at the moment. I've finally reached the point where (knock on wood) I actually enjoy working out!

I came home ravenous, and a single touch of the knife was enough to make my watermelon burst open of its own accord. You know it's a good melon (and it was!) when...

Finally, I found this, a great little spoof on The Hunger Games called The Hunger Pains. Definitely worth checking it out.

And that was my day!

Endorphins

...are nice. They put a positive spin on everything and, as I just got back from a pretty great workout, they're making my day look pretty amazing. Not that it needed any help.

I mean, really. My day today consisted of playing the clothes relay race over and over again, this time with an entirely different group of 5th graders at Hanmin. And they, must like their comrades at Qingshan and around the world, absolutely loved it. My favorite, though it was undoubtedly also the most dangerous, was playing the game in those classrooms which ban shoes in favor of socks and/or slippers. Nothing like a good old fashioned socks-on-tile floor slide to make your day more amazing.

Also wonderful were the "hats" we used for the game, ie newspapers I folded into sailor hats and held together with lots of tape after the first class's attempt left us with a crumpled, torn mess. The kids absolutely loved them, despite their designed lack of aerodynamics (hence all the head-holding); when I asked my last class of the day who wanted them, hands shot up all over before I had even finished my question--and that's with me asking in English.

LOVE this picture.

So that was great. Then, after a brief hiatus at home, my apartment (and most of the other ETAs in Kaohsiung, for that matter) headed out to Pier 2, where we met up with Dr. Vocke, Fonda, Kelly (coordinator for ETA programs in Yilan and Kaohsiung), and our guest of honor, Tori Augustine, Program Officer for East Asia and Pacific Fulbright Programs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State (wow, her title's a mouthful) for dinner at Pasadena. 

The dinner itself was wonderful, of course (salmon with dill sauce, yum!), but just as wonderful was the conversation we got to have with Tori, about anything and everything we've been doing. She wanted to know what we thought about everything, from how the program was run this year to how we feel in our schools to suggestions or concerns we have for future years. She asked great questions and was fully engaged; she is extremely good at her job, and it was great to feel that our opinions were valuable, both to her and to the program as a whole. It was great to be, not just listened to, but actually sought out by someone with the power to act on what we said. (Not that we had complaints, of course--we are all absolutely loving our time here, and that's not me sugarcoating, that's me listening attentively all night to my colleagues' conversation--but we all have some suggestions about how to make things even better in the future, and she was really listening.)

And after that wonderfulness, I hit the gym, to encouraging results all around, and a fantastic (and funny) greeting by Kody, the front desk person at the gym, saying "you look pretty today! Why?" I really love how straightforward people here are, haha. But I got to tell her that I had just gotten back from a dinner with my bosses, and it was great!

So yeah, I have endorphins flowing through my system now. But even if I didn't, I'd have to conclude that today was pretty much amazing.

Also, I just found this. Sometimes you've just gotta smile.

Or was that "haha point"...?

 

Timing

Today, I read an article (sorry, it's only an abstract online unless you're a subscriber...) in the most recent issue of The New Yorker about Christian Marclay, an artist who created a 24-hour video collage illustrating each minute with a visual and audio reference taken from different movies. He called it "The Clock." It was a colossal work, and one the results of which I'd love to see in person.

And the point--or rather one of the points--of the work was to draw the viewer's attention to how much attention we give to time; to reverse the standard tendency to lose track of time in the watching of a movie and to rather accentuate precisely how much time you have irrevocably lost from watching. In explaining this, the author of the article mentions that, ordinarily, people look at a clock in order to bind themselves more closely to an ironclad schedule; the act of looking at a clock, he says, is often accompanied by worry and apprehension.

I found this particularly telling as a descriptor of my day today. While I looked at the clock significantly less than on a usual day--it was a Sunday, after all, so I had no ironclad schedule to adhere to--I have rarely been more aware of the absolute and stringent rule of time, and timing, over my life.

I wrote a few days ago about the choices I face in my life going forward; what I failed to mention, though, was the absolute and unknowable time lines that guide each choice. Today, I felt the full weight of these. I spent several hours perusing various job boards, drooling over the eight or so positions currently open for which I may actually be qualified, yet with the full knowledge that I can't apply for them. (To make myself feel better I amped up my resume, but it's just not the same if it's still just stored on you computer.)

I know, logically, that four months is far too long to expect anyone to keep a job for me. I know that looking at jobs now will do little more than depress me that all the great jobs I see now will never be mine because they will be long filled by the time I can apply. Yet I can't shake the time-illogical sense that I should still look, now, just in case. Sigh.

Then there's the issue of travel. I'm looking at taking a little trip before heading back to America in July, and I've been monitoring flight prices for a few weeks now, hoping they'll go down around the (supposedly) magical 2-month-out point. Instead, I checked today to discover that the heretofore frontrunner in cheapness had sold out, apparently leaving me with an unaffordable $700USD hike in prices. Talk about discouraging.

I later found more flights that are at least in the same arena as my previous low price, but I'm now stuck in an unknowable conundrum of timing: should I buy now, and so avoid the possibility of more sell-outs, or hold out in expectations that prices will drop? I don't know, and have no way of knowing, yet if I make the wrong choice, I may find myself unable to afford the journey. Again, sigh.

Whether we pay attention to it or not, time rules our lives. And somehow, even on the day that I give it least heed, timing rules mine. I can watch the second hand move or smash the clock and look away, but either way, my life is being eaten by it as surely as those of the movie-goers in "The Clock." Now the question is what to do with my time until the minute hand moves forward to the next scene.

Good Food, Good Company

Here I am again, posting about food. But it deserves it--and, besides, the next-most exciting thing I did today was cleaning. So...onward with the food!

I'll be honest. After last night's dinner with my host family, I didn't know if I would eat again, ever. Which was slightly problematic, in that I knew that I had dinner plans tonight--so I ate next to nothing today in preparation. And, by 7pm, when Rachel and I set out, I had finally succeeded: I was hungry!

Rachel and I met up with Issac (our trainer from the gym) and his friend Juna at Foster Hewitt's, a Canadian-run restaurant in Zuoying where I had happened to go for Thanksgiving on my unsuccessful quest for turkey. Then, I settled for steak.

Today, however, was different. I ordered the BBQ beef burger, and then Rachel, Issac, Juna and I entered into a wonderful and several hours long conversation, mostly in English but with Chinese and even some Taiwanese thrown in for good measure, in which we discovered things like that "haha point" is the direct translation of "punchline"; why many Taiwanese people don't eat beef; that "all guys are alike" (from Issac), "yeah, all guys are ***holes" (from Rachel); and that Issac is a major lightweight.

Also in debate were whether or not Asian girls have butts (Issac said some do; Rachel said they don't), whether it's "study aboard" (Issac) or "study abroad" (the rest of us), and which of the many foreign guys in the busy restaurant was most attractive (question from Issac to Rachel and I).

So many other wonderful moments; far too many to tell. And the food--fabulous. Wish I had pictures to show for it. All in all a great night, and one I'm still full from now, four hours later...might necessitate another fast tomorrow.

Kimchi and Snowflake Ice

I wonder how many of my blog posts are named for food items. I would speculate at least a good 10 percent...Anyway, just a random thought. Expect plenty of those from me tonight, as it is currently 1am on a Friday night and I am afflicted by three things: end-of-week exhaustion, planning-ahead befuddlement, and food-induced coma.

So let's talk about that last one.

Tonight, my lovely host family took me out to dinner. It'd been planned a few days ago, as Emily Facebooked me and invited me to go eat Italian food with them. "Great!" I thought. "Italian food!" Tonight, they picked me up, as promised, at 6pm, and announced that we were not, in fact, going to Italian food, but would rather be sampling Korean fare, a first for all of us.

And it was great! We went to a Korean BBQ Buffet at Dream Mall (largely patronized by Koreans tonight, Margaret pointed out to me, which may have explained the stares), and had essentially a DIY BBQ/hotpot device in the middle of the table which I promptly filled with beef and veggies--yummm. Kimchi was soon summoned and found to be a most willing compatriot to the beef, and side dishes of kimchi pancake and (very spicy) hot rock rice followed.

Cooking in progress

Kimchi pancake

This was 太辣的 for me...

Despite the epic fullness this meal produced, Emily, James and I cured our burning mouths with some ice cream, and then we moved on--to get more food, of course!

We set out for Yangchengpu, to eat at Kaohsiung's most popular shave ice place--popular, as I learned tonight, for a reason. It's absolutely scrumptious. Emily and I split a strawberry milk ice, done snowflake style (wispy bits of ice, just like snow), while James grabbed a red bean one and Margaret, as always, opted for a hot option of jelly and sweet glutinous rice ball soup.

Before we ate, we also paid a little visit to the gold street--so called for its vendors and, based on this picture, anyway, its lighting. :)

Yummmmm

So now, with all that food resting lovingly in my tummy, it's time to give in to the forces at work against me and sleep off all that good food.

I won the lottery!

Well, sort of. I mean, I did, but I won't be going out and buying a yacht with my winnings anytime soon. I might, however, go out and buy a pair of workout pants or something.

Remember when I said the Taiwanese are obsessed with receipts? Well, I decided it was an obsession worth hopping on board with, once I realized that the lottery it is based on can yield as much as 10 million NT (~$338644USD). Of course, that's if your receipt happens to match all 8 digits of their chosen number, and the chances of that happening are infinitesimally small, but it's still a possibility.

As is the chance of winning smaller amounts. And I did! On Dec. 11 at 8:17pm, I bought something for 80NT and unknowingly won myself some money. (For the life of me, I have no idea what I was buying--我看不懂--but it's still cool.)

Whereas the big prizes go to a full 8-digit match, I won on the "bonus" numbers, two series of three numbers that they give you 200NT for matching at the end of your receipt. So, in this case, 680 won me 200NT!

My reaction if I had won 10 million NT with this receipt...

...and my reaction having won 200 NT with it.

So that was cool. Now I just need to fill in the back and take it to the local post office/bank (they're combined here) to redeem it! Now, to pray that my odds of winning big in the future aren't hurt by my previous winnings...

Dishwashers

I promise this is not a rant against hand washing dishes. Nor is it some spoiled American throwing a hissy fit because her apartment doesn't have a dish washer. If I were prone to that sort of thing, which I like to think I'm not, it would have come out when I first moved here, not seven months in.

But it just so happens that seven months is the perfect amount of time for little irritations to grow, filling a glass drip by slow drip until it overflows into the sink.

Which is, incidentally, exactly what I'm talking about: our sink.

There are just so many things to say about our sink, and I have had plenty of time--far too much time, really--to think of them. It stinks. (Unsolvable problem, our landlord says--it's in the pipes.) It's constantly full of dishes. (Our problem, really, but we're all working on it with various degrees of commitment.) And--and this is the beef that inspired the post--it is absolutely impossible to wash dishes in it without soaking yourself.

Let me recap: we have no dishwasher. We are the dishwashers. Yet the instant you step up to do your civil duty and wash your dishes, the sink opens fire. If, for some reason, it can't reach your pants directly, not to worry, it'll find a nice dish to splash off of. If by some miracle you've mastered the art of having every surface of every dish constantly angled away from you (read: impossible), the water will just splash onto the front portion of the sink, which you will undoubtedly brush up against in the course of your dish cleaning. You want to wash dishes? Better be prepared for a day at the water park.

You know, maybe this is why our sink is always full. Having an attack-faucet attached to your lone method of cleaning the kitchen does not bode well for kitchen cleanliness. I don't mind washing dishes. I do mind having to change clothes three times a day to accommodate my need to eat off of clean dishes.

It's probably worth noting at this point that, when I write blog posts about things like dish washing, it's because I genuinely think it may be the most entertaining thing I can tell you at the moment. It's the dark side of posting daily, but I find topics where I can. And at this point, there aren't many topics left. After all, I've already thrown in everything...but the kitchen sink.

*badum tch!*

Possibilities

In a little over four months, I will no longer be living in Taiwan. July 11 is my official departure date; I'll be boarding a plane here in Kaohsiung at 9pm and, through the magic of airplanes and time zones, arriving back home just before midnight on the same day. And I've processed that, to the extent that I can this far in advance. What I haven't processed, however, is that I have no idea what I'm going back to--or even where.

Now, my first few weeks are covered: home with my wonderful family who I haven't seen in a year. I'll also be catching up with all the friends I haven't seen in ages, which will certainly include at least one trip to Seattle. But after that? A giant looming question mark with the terrifying label of "unemployed."

That's not the goal, of course. The goal is to get a job, preferably before I even board the plane at this end. But where? The more I think about it, the more I realize the possibilities are truly endless. Seattle? New York? London? Redding? Each of these places holds at least one very good reason I should move/move back there; each involves a unique process by which I should proceed; each of them is, in its own way, terrifying.

Really, the very prospect of choosing is terrifying.

Of course, the real choice will be wherever I get a job. But now, four months out, before it's really feasible to ask any company to wait for me, all I can do is stew in the terrifying state of uncertainty which is choice.

Note to Self.

Things I Should Never Do:

1. Put my browser on full screen mode when I know I should be keeping an eye on the time;
2. Click into a Youtube stream of Hunger Games promotional material when my computer is in said mode;
3.  Ignore both my hearty to-do list and my desperate need for sleep in favor of reading random Cracked articles, watching random Youtube videos, and playing Words with Friends;
4. Begin Skype conversations late at night when I have to work the next morning.

Things I did today: see above list.

When Fantasies Disappoint

*Be advised: this post is about to get real nerdy, real fast.*

When I was 13 years old, The Lord of the Rings movies had just come out, and they were the best things. Ever. My brother, Alex, got the first one on DVD for Christmas--our family's first DVD, as a matter of fact--and I was hooked. The story, the visual details, the music, and everything else caught a hold of my imagination. And, on said DVDs, I learned of the existence of Lord of the Rings concert productions which consisted of a screening of the film together with a live orchestra performing the score.

And I wanted to go to one. Oh, how I wanted to go to one.

Flash forward to now, almost a decade later. Tonight, I went to one!  And here's what I learned: it's never a great idea to spend 10 years building anticipation for something. No matter how objectively amazing it is, it just won't be able to compare.

The first half of the show truly was spectacular: the orchestra performed beautifully and, after a momentary glitch at the beginning, the film played right along; they even included some fantastic special effects, in the form of real fireworks to complement Gandalf's famous ones at Bilbo's birthday party. There were a few slightly odd moments for me--I realized tonight that I've only ever seen the extended version of the film, for instance, since I didn't see it until my brother got the DVD, so big portions were missing--but I nonetheless couldn't get a smile off my face.

The intermission came, and proved to be the longest, most disappointing intermission of all time. 20 minutes, they announced. That benchmark came and went. Then 30. Around 40 they began stalling, polling the audience and having various competitions to appease the masses. It had been nearly an hour by the time the producers and director came out and announced, in Chinese and English, respectively, that the film synchronization between the conductor's screen and the big screen had failed, and that consequently the rest of the concert would be just that: a concert.

The conductor tried to play it off by focusing on the amazingness of the music and dedicating the second half to the composer, Howard Shore, but you know what? Howard Shore wrote that music for the movie, with the express and sole intention that they be played together. Around then, a good chunk of the audience decided it wasn't worth being a half hour late when they had work/school tomorrow, and left. We stuck around, and Brittany and I amused ourselves by trying to figure out what would be happening on the screen if the movie was still playing. She ended up leaving early, as did droves of other people; Rachel, Chialing, Samia and I stuck around until the end, after they'd performed the songs over the credit to perfection.

Seriously, the last two songs were brilliant: one soloist from America who'd been singing all along and had a fabulous range, then a Taiwanese lady who had an absolutely wonderful voice that came out of nowhere. Other highlights included being able to locate the lady playing chains for the Isengard scenes and (on a somewhat funny note, for me at least) hearing the Taiwanese men attempt to sing the portion of Moria that was recorded by a Samoan men's choir (yes, I know too much about this movie, but the Samoan men just had a very guttural tone to their voices which is hard to mimic!). They did a good job, don't get me wrong, just very different and less scary than the original.

And that's the biggest problem with a decade-long gestation period for something you really want to do/see: you build expectations based on what you do know, in this case, the original movie/score. And you really just can't compare the original to a live performance, no matter how amazing it is.