Small accomplishments

Often, it's the smallest things that determine how I feel about today. The same is true today--I feel like the day went great: I made dinner.

I also taught, of course, giving my past-tense-and-Thailand Powerpoint to the 6th graders at Qingshan, and continued work on my class-by-class seating chart I'm making for myself for all of my classes. And I got/am getting more organized, which always makes me feel accomplished; I made a calendar for cleaning duties in our apartment and am in the process of making a daily schedule for myself which will (or so the theory goes) make me actually go the gym when I plan to go the gym--I hate not doing things that are set in stone, or, you know, written on paper with ink.

But those are not today's triumphs, in my rather illogical mind; no, the triumph was making dinner.

Part of that is because today's dinner was the first I've cooked since the beginning of CNY break a month ago, but the bigger parts come from the fact that, in making this meal, I felt like a local.

No, not in flavor. But in ingredients, and how I got them. The drive back from school found me starving and ambitious, so I took a detour and found a big outdoor vegetable market I'd been to once before a few months ago--yeah, that's right, once--and was able to, not only find parking in the rush hour madness, but communicate with the vegetable vendors in Chinese, seek out the best produce and prices, and buy them without a hitch. (Getting home my creativity was not quite so productive, and involved a somewhat less planned detour, but that's beside the point.)

I ended up with a pair of onions for 30NT (~$1), a  red pepper and a good-sized yellow pepper for 45NT (~$1.50, and the more exciting for having seen my roommates' supermarket-bought peppers priced at 45NT for one), a couple of green onions the guy threw in for free, and a spectacularly massive carrot for 14NT (~$.50).

At home, I already had a chicken breast thawing, but no marinade, so I popped over to the local Taiwanese grocery store, explored their mostly-Chinese-written-and-flavored sauce section, and picked one labeled as BBQ satay which, once I got it home, smelled slightly fishy. I mixed a few teaspoons of that with oil and soy sauce and voila! Marinade. After throwing some rice and bullion in the rice maker, it was time to chop up the veggies, and boy were there a lot of them:

Then it was just a stir frying away from deliciousness and the knowledge that, for ~$2.25US plus the chicken and rice, I'd made at least three or four meals worth of wonderful, healthy food.

It's a small accomplishment, to say the least. But to make this meal, I had to navigate the city successfully to place I didn't know well--in rush hour, nonetheless, use my Chinese to get the vegetables I was after, and experiment in completely unknown sauces to make it all come together nicely. And it did! So yeah, it's small, but it also happens to have made my day.

Food, Lanterns, Books and Indians

Today was full, in every sense of the word. Big meals, and a full 10 hour stretch of fabulous activities in the lovely Kaohsiung.

First off was a gorgeous and sumptuous eight course meal with my wonderful host sister, Emily.

And this was just the salad!

Next up was a movie, which we picked based on the criteria that it a) was in English, b) was playing soon, and c) had seats available, by which complicated logistics we arrived at Contraband, which I give a very sincere rating of "meh, glad I saw it considering our other options, but it's not going to win any Oscars."

Then we went outside and saw that it looked like this.

LOVE.

Then we met up with Margaret and James and headed for the Love River to watch the final day fireworks of the Lantern Festival. They were PHENOMENAL, and went on for a solid six minutes before ending, gloriously, like this:

Yeah those are lanterns. That came out of the fireworks. I really don't even know how that's possible, but it's what happened. There are simply no words for how amazing it was.

Then we looked around at the lantern-designing competition, and, though Hanmin eluded us, we eventually located the one designed my the kids at Qingshan!

Also, it's the year of the dragon now.

Next up was a long walk through the balmy evening and then another delicious meal, this time at a Western-style cafe near Margaret's school. It was great, not just because of the food (yummy tomato risotto and fried fish!) but because of the atmosphere: absolutely perfect for the Lantern Festival.

Still surrounded by lanterns as we ate!

It was 10pm by the time I got home, foot-weary but oh so happy and oh so full.
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So far as one new things go, I'm going to go ahead and pass on all the obvious things, like first lantern festival etc, because I saw two of the most absurdly wonderful things today that I have ever seen. And captured photo evidence that they exist. And they are both, surprise surprise, new! So, here goes.

Thing 13:
This is one part new thing, one part thing I just don't understand about Taiwan: book covers. Walk into any bookstore in Taiwan, and you'll find, amongst the other offerings, table upon table of New York Times Best Seller list titles. "Great," you'll think to yourself, "They have English books here!"

So you walk over, pick up the nearest book and go to flip it open, only to discover that it opens on the wrong side. This should be your first clue. "O...k...." you say, "That's weird..." Then you look down. And discover that, English cover notwithstanding, it's written entirely in Chinese. And you don't speak Chinese.

"But Bekah," you say, "That makes sense! The books are in Taiwan, and they are originally famous in English, so it's logical to advertise them in English but actually sell them in Chinese. Right?"

And maybe you have a point. But I just can't say the same about the book I saw today, perched among at least three other similar covers to the same book:

One Hundred Years of Solitude. Wait, isn't that a Spanish book? Yep, good ol' Gabriel Garcia Marquez was 100% Colombian, amigo, meaning that this book was originally written and published--in Spanish--as Cien Años de Soledad. So why exactly is it titled here only in Chinese and English, with no glimpse whatsoever of the original title or language?


No one knows for sure. It's one of the unsolved mysteries of Taiwan.


Thing 14/Unsolved Mystery of Taiwan 2:
Tonight, as I mentioned previously, I went to the last night of the Lantern Festival at the Love River here in Kaohsiung. There, I saw a strange sight. A very strange sight.

This strange sight.

There I was, strolling along the Taiwanese riverside, which was all decked out for the last bit of celebration of the Lantern Festival, itself the end of the celebration of Chinese New Year, when I hear the oddly familiar sound of traditional Native American music. I look up, and see three people dressed in stereotypical Sioux Indian full dress--which is odd in itself, as I can't determine if they're actually Native American, just your run-of-your-mill Caucasians, or Taiwanese. In full Sioux get-up.

Another track came on over their little boom box, and I realized that wasn't the only thing that was off: their "traditional" music was in Spanish. Say what? Compensating for the Garcia Marquez title above, I guess. But really, I would have been slightly disappointed if the non-Native American Native Americans hawking their wares at a Chinese festival in Taiwan hadn't been singing in Spanish. You know, for continuity's sake.

Headed for Thailand

In approximately 2 hours, I will board a bus headed for Taoyuan. About 8 hours after that, I will board a plane headed for Thailand. I'm beyond excited! I get to meet up with Melanie and Marissa, and of course explore the gorgeous southern beaches, too. It will be glorious. I am beyond thrilled.

But my computer will not make the journey.

That's right, my daily blog will stall, and maybe cease. Temporarily. See, my bag looks like this:

And that's me being a minimalist. Which I aim to be. Thus, for a while, no blog.

But rest assured, I will use any Internet access I can get my hands on to post whenever I can, and I'll be purchasing a notebook tomorrow so I can post retroactively, but still somewhat in real time. Just because I'm stubborn and can't possibly give up on 6 months of hard daily work just because I don't happen to have a computer nearby.

Also of note, I'll be suspending my one new thing thing while I'm gone since, you know, EVERYthing will be a new thing.

In the meantime, though, here's today's one new thing.

Thing 5:
I WENT TO PINGTUNG TODAY! It was absolutely phenomenal. Maggie invited me to come have dinner with her family, and it was lovely. Maggie and her dad picked me up from Zuoying and drove me out to their family home, where we had delicious hot pot and wax apples, I met two of Maggie's sisters, her parents, and her dog (who was entirely too terrified of me to let me photograph him), and we took bikes to see Maggie's family's old shrimp farm.

There was just too much wonderfulness happening to write about it all in the brief one-hour window I have now, so here are some of the great, but unedited, photos.

 Thing 6:
I bought a towel. Sounds uninteresting, I know, but that's before you see it, and hear my rationale. See, here it is:

That's right, Paul Frank. And I bought it over Hello Kitty, Spongebob and Doraemon. Because my current towels aren't good enough, because they're too good. See that backpack up there? Yeah, that's all I'm bringing. And I needed THIN. And CRAPPY. And CHEAP. And voila! Paul Frank fits the bill.

Empty Streets

Thing 5:
The streets of Kaohsiung are deserted. Truly, truly deserted. As in, I went for a walk at 6pm, and it could have just as easily been 2am--all the shops are closed, the lights are off, and there's next to no one in the streets, either walking or driving.

Let me just put this in perspective: there's no one. On the streets. In downtown Kaohsiung, which, beside being a large city, is one based on a night-market culture. (In a hot climate, it just makes sense.) But all that to say, I've rarely been on the street and seen few people there; I've never been on the street when there was no one there.

Until today. Honestly, the street looked more alive the other day when I got in after midnight; I hadn't realized how much light the various storefronts emitted until tonight, when they were all, unceremoniously, gone.

And why? The answer is simple: 新年快樂! Today is Chinese New Year's Eve, meaning that everyone is home with their families, celebrating. It's odd: it's not a holiday I've ever celebrated before, but it feels much stranger to not be with family today than it did on, say, Thanksgiving. It's amazing what cultural pressure will do.

On the flip side, it's been a pretty nice day for me. Plenty of time to hang out, work on my Fulbright midyear report (ugh), go to the gym, and get ready for my trip to Thailand, which begins in *gasp* a mere two days! So there's that.

But it's odd, looking out at a Kaohsiung in which only the 7-11s of the world are open--a truly deserted place, indeed.

School's Out

Today was my last day of the semester, meaning I am now officially on break! This may seem odd to all of you who just finished Christmas break and are heading into your second quarter/semester/term but, as I've mentioned before, Christmas isn't the big deal here. Chinese New Year is.

So, in the weeks before and after the actual lunar new year, which this year falls on January 23rd, all the schools get time off. Quite a bit of time, actually: their last day is this coming Wednesday (I'll be at the Fulbright midyear conference), and school doesn't begin again until February 7th, giving the students--and us teachers--a solid three weeks in which to rolick and play and rest.

And I plan to take full advantage of it. First off, CNY break is pretty much the only time we Fulbrighters are okay-ed to leave the country, so Karina and I will be hitting Thailand for about a week, visiting my lovely friends Marissa and Melanie in Chiang Mai and checking out the beaches for a bit. Then there's been some speculation that we'll do a bit more exploring in Taiwan with Tom and Amanda, though nothing's set yet. And, of course, there's the inevitable conference, which will give us a glimpse of Xitou (溪頭).

Aside from that, I think I'll take the "break" thing as literally as possible without going dormant. Explore the parts of the city that I haven't seen at a leisurely pace. Eat at new restaurants. Hang out with my co-teachers, colleagues, host family, fellow ETAs and friends. Play Mahjiang. Visit wherever I'm invited. Rediscover the gym. Sleep. Basically, get in all the things I know I won't have time to do once school starts again, and hopefully form some better habits for myself to keep following once it does.

I'm so ready for this break. It's really quite amazing how exhausting it can be to live in another culture and to teach 5th and 6th graders. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it. But this break is good news--and for some reason, all I can think of is this song, inaccurate though it may be:

Hibernation:

It's not just for bears anymore. And, for that matter, it's not just for places with actual seasons anymore.

See, hibernation is really the only way to explain my current lethargy: it's winter! It's natural! No matter that it's in the 60s and 70s outside (Fahrenheit), no matter that S.A.D. positively CANNOT come into the conversation here, it's still winter, and my West Coast-bred body knows it simply must curl up with hot chocolate and a good book, then take a long nap, whether or not the weather confirms it.

In Seattle, I'd be sitting home with a blanket and something hot to drink and reading or watching TV, so here I sit home with a blanket and something hot to drink and read or watch TV. In Eugene I'd begin each day wrapped in several layers, so here I start the day in several (admittedly much thinner) layers. It's just the way it works, I guess: in a temperate climate, winter is our natural time to take things slowly; even here, where there's no need for that to be the case, I can't stop my natural urges.

And who'd want to, really? They're such lovely urges, though they are at odds with my semi-pronounced New Year's resolutions. Still, it's timed up quite nicely with our upcoming Chinese New Year break, and so long as I'm able to get my fill of hibernation when I'm actually able, maybe my body will realize that it's in a tropical climate now, and the weather has never been better.

And maybe then I'll leave hibernation to the bears.

What I did tonight instead of blogging or sleeping

My mom is a teacher. And if there's one thing she's taught me, it's that you should always begin an over-ambitious project at midnight the night before it has to be finished...so, at 3:30am, 130 Chinese New Year's cards later and about that many to go (at least 20 to finish tomorrow), I'm still not finished, but I AM going to sleep now. At least I'll have something productive to do tomorrow in our epically long lunch!