Life

Wow, it does NOT feel like 3am. And that is a VERY bad thing for my sleep cycles. But, also, a not-so-bad thing for my blog.

I had a pretty decent day, all considered. Watched most of a Scottish miniseries starring David Tennant--which, obviously, made me want to throw all my stuff in a bag and MOVE THERE NOW, though I resisted. FINALLY turned in my application for what I might do come September--and then accidentally half-way applied to a job in New York, which was odd. And grotesquely ironic: this job was posted on the website for a major publisher, and was one of FOUR fantastic jobs now posted on that site for which I may actually be qualified. Of course, I found them directly after mentally committing to another program. Sigh. Now to determine whether I should apply to them anyway...probably?

But the highlight of my day was easily my dinner plans. I met up with Tiffiany and our Chinese teacher, Mandy, at a great little Western-style restaurant on the Love River called Sandwich Island (and, stupid person that I am, I completely spaced that the dragon boat races going on would mean parking would be impossible--so I was 15 minutes late). The food was scrumptious, of course (fried chicken sandwich--mmm), and Mandy was so sweet--she brought Tiffiany and I some fantastic going away presents! Cue the part where I wish I'd brought more gifts to give away...

So we had our little meal, and then strolled along the Love River with the hordes of other people, watching dragon boat-ers who DIDN'T suck. And Tiffiany utilized her Chinese to ask a very nervous (but adorable) little girl to take our picture:

Extra smiles for our new 小朋友!

 Next up was some continued strolling and a stop by my personal favorite Kaohsiung gelato place--two scoops for 100NT (~3USD) of some of the BEST gelato ever. Tonight, I went for dark cherry and mulberry (2 separate flavors) and they were to DIE for. Then we kept strolling.

It's so PRETTY when you're not being forced down it with paddles in your hands!

Hey look, they're winning by almost as much as we lost by! (butnotreally)

And, thankfully, this ISN'T actually going to be our last hang-out like we'd originally thought. We made plans to go see BRAVE tomorrow (wow, I'm big on the Caps Lock tonight...sorry about that). Brave, for those who don't know, is this:

All I have to say is: Disney/Pixar? Check. Scottish? Check. Archery? Check. COUNT ME IN!

Goodbyes, Tea, Rain, and a Challenge!

Well, from here on out it's pretty much all goodbyes. Just reading over my last week of postings is depressing, and from here on out it's a downward slope. So, to counterbalance what could otherwise be a tidal wave of sadness, I've decided to split today's post (and possibly future posts, pending time and motivation) into two sections: the deep, dark and sad, and the light, bubbly and happy. And yes, they will be in that order, because who wants to end on a frown?

Today was my last day with my 6th graders at Hanmin. Ever. And it wasn't even supposed to be! See, the 6th graders graduate a week before everyone else finishes school, so they took their finals last week, and have graduation this Friday. Which, I thought, would work fine: I'd have one final class period with all of them; get a chance to say goodbye, take pictures, and hand out the little end-of-the-year gifts I had for them. And, today, that's precisely what I did. But tomorrow, when I'm supposed to have my other three sixth grade classes for the last time, they have graduation practice. I've always thought graduation practice was useless, but I've never before resented it quite so much as I do now.

So today was my last day. The kids were pretty checked out about it, as a result of the fact that this week seems to be the officially sanctioed bring-your-DS-or-iPad-to-class and watch-movies-all-day week, and because they knew I'd be at their graduation, but they did appreciate the lollipops and cards I made for each of them--and then mobbed me with their yearbooks to sign. And, of course, we took pictures.

The girls of 6-07 took a picture with me...

...while the boys of 6-07 did this.

Lollipops that had lost their wrappers...pretty, though!

Class 6-08 was more cooperative :)

So was Class 6-02.

In between classes, Alison, Maggie and I went down to the general assembly room we've been using all year for Morning English, and which had, yesterday, been emptied of most of its rows of tables, which had been replaced with white plastic deck furniture labeled and set around the room for teachers to sit at for the 6th Annual  Teacher Appreciation Tea Ceremony.

When I first heard we were having a Teacher Appreciation Tea, I pictured an English-style tea such as those that have made their way to America for special occasions and such among those who want to feel posh. Why this was my first logical conclusion  then is a complete mystery to my now. We are in Taiwan, after all!

When it was our shift (yes, everyone was given a shift), we entered the room with about 20 other teachers, and sat in front of a group of probably 70 or so students, plus the ones massing around the doors, whose purpose I didn't yet know. For tea, each teacher in  had an assigned seat and, after a short speech and with the onset of a musical cue, the masses of our students from around the doors flooded forward, one for each teacher, bearing a cup and saucer for each individual teacher. When they got to us, on another cue, they went down on one knee and waited while we drank our tea. So sweet, and so unexpected! And, as a Westerner, very, very foreign to have a student kneeling and waiting on me.

Maggie getting her tea

After the tea--which Alison sadly missed, since her student was late--they put on a slide show of all the kids from this year, together with a sad, anthem-y song which they invited everyone to sing along to. Very poignant--and then the lady who was announcing began commenting on each slide. My favorite moment was when she called out "BEKAH!"...and then the slide didn't have me on it. The next one did, though, and she was ready with her announcement once again!

I got a (really terrible) video of part of the slide show; maybe it will give more of a sense of setting:

It felt very pomp-and-circumstance-ish, though the sensation was somewhat lost when they released us late to our next class, where, after we escaped the clutches of the textbook salesmen, we just handed out cards and watched movies again.

The last class of the day was when the really interesting stuff began, though. In the middle of handing out cards, an announcement came over the intercom--and the whole room broke out in cheers. I turned to Alison. "School cancelled?" "Yes."

It's been raining torrentially all over Taiwan for days--my commute the last few days has been perpetually horrid, and it's flooding elsewhere--and as of this afternoon, the Kaohsiung government finally decided they had had enough, and shut down schools, so everyone could go home...right as the worst of the rain started again, of course.

Then, while walking back (early) from that last class, one of my sixth graders from last semester stepped out of her classroom to get my signature on her yearbook. The next thing I knew, I had every single kid from two classrooms surrounding me and wanting my signature all at once. This when I felt certain that every second I stayed at school would mean a worse drive home--they had closed the schools for a reason, after all, surely!

But, of course, I signed them. How could I not? And then I drove home, during which drive I discovered that the closure was not limited to Hanmin, as I had thougth before, but was, rather, a city-wide proclamation, which meant that the roads were absolutely packed with parents who had been called to come pick up their kids hours early. In the parking garage at home, I ran into one of my neighbors on her way out, and when I cautioned her about the rain, she just smiled and said she had to go pick up her kids. Everyone did, after all!

In light of buqiban culture, I cannot fully imagine the havoc wreaked on everyone's lives today. I didn't think much of it until I went walking to find lunch, and discovered that the vast majority of restaurants around were abnormally closed. Even after they picked up their kids, people are really just hunkering down for this one--Chialing closed up shop early, since, as she told Rachel, there was no one in the streets. And who can blame them?

And now, the lighter note!

Today, as I found myself sucked once again into the Youtube Wormhole, I began wondering what conclusions someone would draw about me if the only information they had available to them, for some strange reason, was my Youtube history and subscriptions. And no, they aren't allowed to look at the videos I've actually uploaded myself, that would be a MUCH more complete and, therefore, less fun view. So here's what they would learn about me, and what they would subsequently assume to be my entire personality:

1. I like comedy sketches
2. I like British things
3. Specifically, I like British accents
4. I like Doctor Who (which is both British and contains British accents)
5. I like the actors of Doctor Who (who are also British and use British accents)
6. I like watching male vloggers
7. Specifically, I like watching male vloggers WITH British accents
8. Most specifically of all, I like watching male vloggers with British accents TALK about Doctor Who (charlieissocoollike and nerimon)

Annnnnd that's pretty much all my Youtube history and subscriptions could tell you: that I like all things funny, British, male, and related to Doctor Who, and preferably several of those things in some combination with each other. But please, please don't think that's my entire personality. It's not. It just happens to be what I usually watch on Youtube. 

And now I'm curious. Based solely on your Youtube history and subscriptions, what would someone assume YOU to be like? Leave a comment if you're brave enough to reply!

Scooter Pet Peeves

...because it's been a while, and I only have another month (ish) in which to experience (and complain about) Taiwanese traffic. So, what have I been noticing lately? Well...

1. Scooters might just be the reason for the terrible traffic light systems in Taiwan. This was actually a big breakthrough discovery for me. In America, as you may know, traffic lights are triggered in one of two ways: they run on a regular schedule, or they keep the dominant road on green unless a car pulls up to the light on the less-dominant road and triggers a switch. Well, so far as I can tell, this second system does not exist in Taiwan.

Rather, it is on a rigidly regular schedule which aligns all roads facing one direction--which is a bit eerie, at first, since it means that you'll be driving along, and suddenly see the traffic lights for every block within your sight-line turn yellow at once. It also is insanely obnoxious, since it absolutely guarantees that you will stop every X number of blocks, with X being determined by the schedule, how fast you're going, and how many slow-moving vehicles pull out in front of you along the way (but we'll get to that in a minute). The lights are so reliable that, at this point, I can pretty well tell you exactly where I'll have to stop every time I drive to school--and I know exactly how fast I have to go to get to where. (Woo, made it to Yisin this morning! Or: gaaah, Ersheng, I'm going to be late. Stupid tour bus!)

Now, granted, I've been out of the Stateside driving routine for almost a year now, so please correct me if I'm remembering it incorrectly. But aren't the scheduled lights there rigged so that, if you hit a green, you usually hit all greens; if you hit a red, you usually hit only one, followed by a string of greens? I don't think it' even something you usually notice, I just have a distinct memory of many, MANY trips where I hit all yellows, like four lights in a row's worth of just-long-enough lights--until eventually I hit one that I couldn't help but stop for unless I wanted a ticket and/or an accident.

Besides that, greens are more prevalent on major roads because the minor roads are almost all run on pressure sensors, which means that those roads only get the green if they're actually needed. And, after 10 months here in Taiwan, where the number of vacant alleyways with green lights as I sit at a red, coupled with a general lack of traffic law enforcement, has led me to routinely determining if I am at a "necessary" (stop and wait) or "non-necessary" (look and go!) red light, green-lighting major roads at the expense of smaller ones seems like a great idea.

A few days ago, though, while reading this Cracked.com article, I realized why they can't have them here: scooters can't trigger pressure-based lights! And since the vast majority of Taiwan's (or, at least, Kaohsiung's) motorists sit perched not in cars or trucks but on scooters or motorcycles, a lights system that caters to larger vehicles while stranding smaller ones just wouldn't make sense.

Still, it seems like they should be able to just develop a more sensitive sensor...or at least make the schedule according to actual traffic patterns, rather than an arbitrary grid!

2. Dear Car-drivers of Kaohsiung: We'll get out of your lanes as soon as you stop using ours as a parking lot. Sincerely, Scooter-drivers of Kaohsiung.

Most major Kaohsiung roads have one of two set-ups: either several car lanes, a barrier, and a scooter lane, or several car lanes, a line, and a scooter lane/road shoulder. It should be noted that, on the outside corner of every scooter lane and/or road shoulder, there are usually parking spaces. If there is no space for parking spaces, there is a solid red line along the curb.

But see, here's the problem: no one cares. Remember earlier when I mentioned traffic laws rarely get enforced here? Well, that applies to parking laws, too, to some extent. (I do see roving parking ticket-givers, but it doesn't seem to do much to deter illegal parking.) On any given road, with or without space to park, let alone actual parking spaces, there will be two rows of parked or parking cars. Double-parking is not just common, it's absolutely the norm.

But wait, you say, you just said there's no room for them to park! Ah, yes, but you forget, there's a whole scooter lane/ shoulder of the road to be used! Because, CLEARLY, that's what that extra space is there for, right? It's not like it's legally set aside for scooters or anything! No, this must be extra parking space. Obviously.

As a scooter-driver, this is absolutely infuriating.  I'll be driving along, minding my own business, when I see that the double row of parked cars up ahead has completely filled up my lane. Obviously, I safely swerve left, into the car lane--doing my best to avoid the bottleneck of other scooters all also trying to avoid a collision--and get honked at. I'm sorry, but what? We're in your way, you say? We're in your lane, you say? AND WHY DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT BE???

So sorry, car-drivers of Kaohsiung. I will not stay out of your lane--and, until you clean out mine, please refrain from asking me to. But, sadly, that's not even the only way cars abuse the scooter lane, which brings me to...

3. It's a scooter lane, not the pick-up/drop-off lane.

This one only really applies to the really big roads, i.e. those with a barrier and real separate scooter lane. Most of the roads I take to get to work fall into this category. And, on this one, I'm willing to shift the primary blame from the car-drivers to the civil engineers who designed the roads. They designed them terribly.

I already mentioned that most roads have parking spots along the far outside edge. What I didn't mention, though, is that those spots are almost always filled, being filled, or being vacated, thus creating a near-constant, yet unpredictable and largely blinker-free flow of very slow moving vehicles into and out of the scooter lane. There are no parking spaces or places to stop along the main car lanes. So, to get its passengers anywhere near the businesses/homes they're trying to get to, car driver must pull out of their lane and merge with the scooters, then find a parking space and pull into it. Not surprisingly, this is a very slow process--slow merge into the oncoming scooters, slow crawl lest you miss a spot; absolute dead stop when you realize there are no spots to be taken.

All this in the midst of normal-speed scooters just trying to make it to wherever they're going on time. It's insanity. Once, on the way to the gym, I found myself in a cluster of scooters who had to come to a complete, lane-wide stop because a tour bus had parked itself smack-dab in the middle of the lane and was disembarking its passengers. Eventually, a few people discovered we could still squeeze around the corner of the bus next to the barrier (barely!), while most just took the Taiwan-ordinary (yet also insane) option of taking to the sidewalk.

Civil engineers, here's a thought: car parking spaces along the side of the car lanes; scooter lanes exclusively for scooters. You'd have less double-parking AND, I'd wager, fewer accidents (no more unexpected merges; no more sudden car doors!). So, please? All you'd have to do is move the barrier and re-cast the sidewalk...

4. If you're going to cut me off, please have the decency to keep going afterwards.

This one's short, but I cannot stress enough how annoying it is. At this point, I know how fast I drive comparative to others; I can usually tell, at a glance, whom I should be ahead of and behind at a given stoplight if I want to avoid the annoying-for-everybody dance of passing and being passed. But others, apparently, either don't know or don't care about this.

This pet peeve manifests itself in two ways. In the first, as I'm stopped at a light, someone pulls around me and stops directly in front, cutting me off from moving until they do--which invariably takes ages and is ridiculously slow. My best guess for a reason behind this is that they don't want to breathe in exhaust fumes, which is fair enough, though a bit selfish, since they're directly funneling their fumes at me as a result. In the second, while driving, someone zooms around me and immediately slows down--usually so that they can coast at a good 10km/hr for a good block or so before the actual upcoming stoplight, which they will not actually make it to because they're aiming for the patch of shade 50ft back. I've been told that stopping back from the light in order to be in shade is illegal--it's dangerous, at any rate: you're intentionally stopping in the middle of the road!--but it's absurdly prevalent here, thanks to the desire to avoid getting tan.

And look, I get it: you don't want to breathe in exhaust, or you don't want to shoot your breaks, and you want to stop back from the light, or you don't want to get tan. Okay. That's fine. But please, PLEASE don't pass people if you're planning on doing it! Again, it's unsafe, selfish, and just flat out rude.

So those are my pet peeves of the day. And if you're ever in Taiwan...please remember: scooter-ers are people too!

Badminton and BBQs

I looked up to see the flickering underbelly of an airplane cross the night sky, headed West.

I turned to Maggie. "Planes make me homesick these days."

"You'll be going home soon," she said. "And we'll miss you!" added Fiona.

I turned to see Ingrid walking back towards the steep metal stairs that had brought us here, to Teacher Penguin's rooftop.

"I'll miss you, too," I said. "I wish everyone could just live in one place!"

It was hard not to think like that. We were at a BBQ at Teacher Penguin's gigantic family home--a BBQ designed as a going-away party for Ingrid.

It had been a lovely day, really. I had gotten an early start with plenty of work done; my 6th grade classes at Qingshan were happily engaged in their work of putting together their final plays; the weather was hot, but not oppressive.

After classes finished, I drove over to Hanmin, and we enacted what felt like the quintessential lazy summer day: Ingrid, Fiona and I joined Teacher Penguin and a plethora of other Hanmin teachers on the 4th floor to play badminton (NOT just a recreational sport here, as my glances to other courts confirmed). It was Ingrid and Fiona against Teacher Penguin and I, and we managed to win despite my many missed shots--Teacher Penguin is a great badminton player--and then we all sat down by a fan to cool down and chat. It was sunset, but still warm, and the camaraderie and empty school halls gave me the distinct impression of a late August evening with friends, or a particularly good afternoon at summer camp when I was a kid.

Then it was off to Teacher Penguin's home. We stopped by the house only briefly, though, before winding our way up "Penguin Mountain," a fully rural-looking hill complete with pineapple farms and banana trees JUST outside the Xiaogang area I thought I knew so well. It was gorgeous, and reminded me that I haven't been out in nature for ages, and I miss it. It felt like a camping trip back home.


And, of course, then there was the delicious--though vegetarian--BBQ that Teacher Penguin's mom had prepared for us. We sat around--a handful of Hanmin teachers and their kids and spouses, and as Teacher Penguin cracked jokes with Ingrid and everyone laughed, I thought of how amazing this community was, and how sad I was that it would soon no longer exist.

(Let's play a game called "spot the American...")

Teacher Penguin took Fiona and I back to our scooters, and I realized it was actually time to say goodbye to Ingrid. I hate goodbyes--so, so, so much. A hug, a few words, and then--Ingrid walked home, and I got on my scooter, hating that she wouldn't be at school on Monday and hating that, in a month, neither would I.

Today was indeed a glorious day--a glorious last day. Still, at the moment I can't help but hate airplanes...

Sweat, etc.

It's back, and in full force. Today, the high was 30C (~87*F), plus a balmy 80% humidity and sunlight the brightness of which could definitely burn through any sunblock you dared to set up against it. The heat. It's here.

And it's not come alone: it's brought its faithful companion, sweat. What joy is ours.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. We don't get a lot of days above the 80s (F) there, and no one really talks about humidity because there's never enough of it to matter. As a result, sweat was a pretty foreign concept to me before I came here. Sure, people sweat, but usually just a little, and usually just when they've been working out or something.

Not so here. It took less than a month here for me to buy a little washrag to take with me everywhere; a little more than a month to realize wearing makeup was a futile waste of money. Then the heat waned; Kaohsiung's pleasant Fall and Winter approached, and I even had to don a coat a few times. But no more. Now the heat's returned, and, with it, the sweat.

Why am I writing about sweat? It's simple, really: it's the closest thing I have to a uniting force of my day today. It was certainly ever-present, anyway.

This morning, I arrived at school with my hair in low pigtails--a response to its newly cropped length which doesn't allow for any other sort of hairstyle that would simultaneously fit under my helmet and keep my hair off my neck. I didn't want to sweat. But what had I unfortunately forgotten as I styled my hair? Oh yeah: the interview.

Today, my LETs applied for the Fulbright program for next year. Seeing as how the interview fell in the middle of a school day, and involved all of the people that I usually share classes with, Hanmin asked if I would accompany them to the interview. Which I did--IN PIGTAILS. So much for professionalism.

The interview went fine--I mostly just sat there as moral support, though I did manage to throw in a quick plug for my schools right before we left--and then we went out to lunch at a local duck noodle shop. There, I had a bit of a problem with my chopsticks--they were slipping out of my fingers. No, not because I don't know how to use chopsticks--believe me, it's second nature at this point--it was because of sweat. And that's when I realized: it's back!

Thankfully, my heat annoyance was soon relieved by a SCRUMPTIOUS visit to a shave ice place with Hanmin's principal, academic director, and Maggie (a visit which meant we were 20 minutes late to our next class, but hey! We had the principal's and the academic director's explicit permission!)

The heat continued to plague my day in various forms which, thankfully, had less to do with sweat. My shoes began to fall apart and blister my feet, which sucked, and I got really thirsty, which also sucked.

It also impacted my favorite moment of the day: the moment a gaggle of 6th grade girls stretched my birthday into a second week, crowding my desk and handing me notes written on paper shaped like Facebook "like"s, a box of cute chocolate (like what Analicia got me!), some almond cookies, and a big ol' chocolate bar. It was so nice of them, and they were so wonderful, yet what was I worried about? The heat. And the chocolate.

Thanks for the likes, Mandy, Anna, Lillian, Natasha, and Cindy!

Favorite parts: "Fo" Bekah Teacher and the squares bottom left--each with a different design and different type of chocolate inside!

All I can say is "Thank goodness for refrigerators!"...And AC. It's the one surefire way to get out of the heat, and so to avoid melting--whether chocolate or self.

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!

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!

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.

Goodbye

Today was Alex and Melanie's last in Taiwan and, all things considered, we managed to squeeze in a decent amount of culture before they left. The morning found Melanie and I at the HUGE local stationary store buying all sorts of cute Asian stationary. At noon, my lovely host family came to pick us up and took us to a DELICIOUS hot pot lunch, and then Alex, Melanie, Emily and I went to KTV for a few hours before I rushed them off to the HSR station and said goodbye.

Goodbyes are always hard. Today's was a rolling hardness: we were rushed to get to the station, rushed to buy tickets, and rushed to get Alex and Melanie to the train. All of a sudden we were at the gate, and it was just a quick hug for each, a last bit of yelled instruction and a wave, and they were gone. I turned and walked away. It took a few minutes, but with each passing step I missed them more. After being in constant company for the last few days, it felt odd to be suddenly alone.

It made me want to do something--activity gives my mind something to do other than dwell on my brother and sister-in-law moving steadily away from where I am. So I went grocery shopping for tomorrow's makeshift Easter brunch, successfully snagging some English muffins and ham from the store next to HSR.

Then it was home and alone yet more. Having Alex and Mel leave reminded me of how short and yet how long I have until I, too, will leave Taiwan. They were gracious enough to take a bag back for me, and as I packed it I realized that it will be just a few months before all of my stuff will be bagged up and plane-ready. Saying goodbye made me wish I were going with them, yet re-exploring Kaohsiung made me remember why I don't want to leave.

Lots of complicated emotions, today was. I drowned them in getting backlogged work done, sending emails, working on my resume, etc. But tomorrow is Easter, and despite my planned celebration with Karina and Grace, a friend we met in Chiang Mai who just moved to Tainan a few months ago, it will be yet another holiday spent away from my family. Yet I know it won't be long before I'm saying the same thing, from the banks of another continent.

*Sigh* Goodbye...such a loaded word.

Despite

Today featured an odd but lovely mixture of emotions and experiences. Discipline played a key role, yet I felt calm, not stressed. Homesickness made a cameo appearance, yet today I lived thoroughly like a local. I got a lot done, and yet it felt relaxing.

In other words, it was a good day despite and because of itself.

I made my way back to church this morning, and discovered that large groups of foreigners makes me genuinely anxious now--they were pooling on the sidewalk outside the church as I drove up, and it felt so so wrong for absolutely no reason. Also on the way, I realized that the shave ice place I visited last night with my host family is literally just a few blocks from my church.

In church, my love for being there was offset by my longing to be back at City Church, and the (sorry) horrible music during worship made me miss my bass, which I hadn't thought about playing in ages. For some bizarre reason, I also developed an intense craving for a  pulled pork or BBQ beef sandwich, which of course I can't fulfill here.

Post-church was a stream of errands and duties: I stopped by a Starbucks in a (failed) search for a mug, located and scoured the local 小北 store for a cheap lightweight bag (to send back with my oh-so-wonderful brother who's now in Taipei :) ) and vinegar, then making a second stop at a cooking store when I couldn't find food coloring at 小北. (On a side note, between my stops and Rachel's generosity, we're set to dye eggs at school this week!)

Then it was home to research, plan for and design worksheets for my tutoring session tonight. (Special practice tonight: conditional statements like "If I had a million dollars, I would travel more.") And, once tutoring was over (much earlier than usual, since we both happened to be early to the coffee shop), Rachel and I cornered the 7-11 staff into helping us retrieve our train tickets for this week, with some success, and then were cornered ourselves by a Taiwanese photography teacher asking us to be her models!

So yeah, it was a full day, and one in which nothing, neither my emotions nor my physical self, stayed stagnant for long... and apparently, that's the best way to make an average day great!

Happy Panda

I had a thoroughly wonderful day, complete with plenty of sleep, a little LOTR party with the roommates, a day of my favorite Seattle radio streamed live, the knowledge that my brother and sister-in-law are currently en route to Taiwan, some good work put in on my budget/resume/travel plans, and a great night eating Indian food and shave ice with my always-lovely host family.

This place was school themed--we ate at old desks!

And if that wasn't enough, tonight featured a steady stream of Words with Friends, quite a few free books downloaded on my Kindle, and some lovely, if random, exploration in the world of pandas.

It stemmed from this picture, which I found on a friend's Facebook:

And then led to some good ol' fashioned Wikipedia-ing, which turned up this, and inspired me to search for these lovely little guys and then their pictures.

Here's just a sampling:

I'm a panda, too! What are you, racist?

So that happened. And was just wonderful. Happy panda.

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!

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:

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!

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.