Friday night

...is not all that exciting. After a week of Halloween festivities and teaching, when Friday rolls around all I really want to do is sit around, and read, and watch TV, and sleep.

This was called to my attention today with the arrival of Nick, a former Fulbrighter in China whom we met in Taipei, arriving at our apartment for the night. His arrival was the most eventful part of the day (closely rivaled by Skyping with my parents and brother, whom I hadn't seen in months); sitting around our kitchen table and chatting with him, Brittany and Rachel was the biggest social event I've experienced for a while.

Is that weird? Maybe. Is it the truth of my existence here? Yes.

I've mentioned it before, but my social life here is essentially nonexistent. My phone contains 22 names and phone numbers, 11 of whom are my fellow ETAs, 3 of whom are my LETs, 2 of whom are other Fulbright people, and 3 of whom are my host family. When you boil it down, that right there is my social circle: pretty tiny. And teaching is great, but it's tiring, and by the time I get home, I don't really feel like going out again.

It's times like these that I wish there weren't a time difference, so I could at least get in touch with my friends back home; Facebook and email only work up to a certain point, and then only if the friends check as often as I do, which is all but impossible. In truth, most of my friends have never been big Facebook users, a fact I simply forgot when there were other ways to get a hold of them, such as walking down the hallway or calling their cell.

The irony of my writing this post on this particular Friday night is that I do actually have plans tomorrow--an art exhibit with Maggie and another colleague, Fiona, in the morning, and dinner with my host family in the evening.

But right now it's Friday night, and all I want to do is sleep.

...and Repeat

I've been sitting here for a few hours now, intermittently reading, Facebook purging, and debating what to write about for my daily blog post. After much deliberation, I have settled on a theme: repetition.

Today we did more workshops, had more discussions (today with former ETA Dale and the legendary Dr. Wu), heard Dr. Vocke's elevator speeches for the millionth time (he admitted this himself, and asked us how many times we had heard it; Andrew figured it to be six.); and, throughout it all, several undeniably catchy songs played and replayed themselves for my subconscious.

So, for your pleasure, I've decided to reproduce them here.

1.) The Elephant Song: I posted it on here yesterday, but I think it bears repeating--and my subconscious, apparently, agrees.

2.) Friday, by Rebecca Black: It's inevitable. It's that day of the week. Why, oh why, oh WHY does this song title have to be so commonly used in everyday speech?!

3.) Taiwanese Garbage Truck Song: they say it's Fur Elise, but calling it that doesn't even begin to give an idea of what you hear everyday, several times a day around here as the trucks traverse the city. (No standing garbage around here.) Bring out your trash!

After training, we went out to a delicious Western-style multi-course meal with Dr. Vocke, Dr. Tsai (sp? He's the Director of Board of Education), and pretty much everyone from the Fulbright staff. The meal was great, and elaborate--sparkling rose water, duck soup, duck salad with raspberry vinaigrette, sorbet to cleanse the palate, steak, milk tea, brownies, custard, and fruit--and the restaurant overlooked the Love River, which was gorgeous. So that whole experience was quite amazing, and as a bonus, we got to chat with Joanne, one of the Fulbright staffers, on the way to and way from the restaurant.

Here's mah fancy dessert--the color's a bit off, thanks to my inability to edit pictures well, but I thought it might be better than a dark image, which is what I had before I began meddling:

We're going to visit the loner school district tomorrow, so not much sleeping in for us. Should be beautiful at least, though, and hopefully annoying-song free.