It's a funny thing about blogging the morning after you've stayed up all night about the day before: you're pretty well assured that, a) you will have forgotten some of the key points of the day before, and b) you won't be alert enough to make anything new and interesting happen later in the day.
Also, c) your memory will be shot, with less than pleasant circumstances.
So, a!
We were on the news last night! While wandering around Taipei 101, Karina and I spotted a news anchor getting ready to do a live broadcast so, after briefly contemplating photo-bombing, we decided instead to wait off to the side and watch her do her report. She got the go-ahead but, a few sentences in, the camera swung around to show the crowd! AKA, us--the only ones cheering for the camera, as Karina mentioned later. I hadn't noticed, I was just too excited to be on TV.
And, speaking of photo-bombing, that was a massive theme with us. Karina, Brittany, and Rachel will be all over strangers' Facebook profiles soon, likely tagged as "random foreigner who stood behind us, smiling, for the entirety of the timed photo session." Because yes, they did that.
In our stroll to find a way home, we passed Sun Yat Set Memorial Hall, marking another Taipei landmark that I've "visited"! Also, both it and the road for almost the entirety of our walk was absolutely TRASHED. I feel for the poor city workers who must've stayed up all night making it presentable again...and seriously, at the memorial?? Disrespectful in the extreme.
Also, the rest of our day yesterday, since it actually didn't start at 7:30: Karina and I went to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall to check out a carnival which had some sweet break dancing, then went to Tamsui, walked around a bit, had Starbucks at a 4-story store the line for which stretched out the door and down the street, and, of course, hit up an epic photobooth.
b!
Yeah...today, we checked out of our hostel and got on a train. For seven hours (gross!). End of story. Except that...
c!
My complete lack of a brain due to lack of sleep led me to forget my camera at the hostel. I discovered this, of course, not when we were eating right downstairs, and not before we got on the MRT, but after we'd traveled a good 6 or 7 stops to Taipei Main, left the MRT area, walked across the massive terminal to find food, ordered our food to take on the train with us, and only had 40 minutes before the train would leave. Fortunately, a couple phone calls to the hostel owner (thanks, Karina!), a load of panic, and a mass text later, Emily volunteered to stop by and pick it up for me (you're my hero!). And right around then, I realized that...
Due to my camera panic, I hadn't gotten the bagel sandwich I'd ordered and paid for to take on the train. Stupid one-track mind and unfortunately-timed remembering...
Let's recap: it's 12:35pm on January 1st, and I am just now sitting down to write my blog from December 31st. Why, you may ask? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that I got in from the New Years' festivities around 5 hours ago, and I do actually like to sleep on occasion. And it's pretty much official: I'll never be able to top this year's New Year's Eve.
Last night, Karina and I were debating whether we wanted to stay in our hostel and enjoy the view or go out and explore the *real* celebration five blocks away. We chose the latter.
...after we explored the roof, that is.
The door was unlocked, after all!
And that turned out to be the best decision EVER. We wandered over around 7:30pm, so, like 4 1/2 hours until the big event--and the place was practically deserted. Seriously. While places like NYC start packing 'em in--and, for that matter, start closing streets and sending out extra patrols--several days early, when we got there mere hours away it was less crowded than the 4th of July in Harrisburg, Oregon! More people total, of course, but spread out over a much larger space, and overall INFINITELY fewer people than we were imagining.
So, after, you know, traipsing within pretty good sight distance of all the headliner musicians performing next to City Hall (the only time we really had to pay attention to where we were walking, and that only for about 5 minutes), where we stayed for a couple of songs--including this one, which I've heard before and love but only knew as "O A" until just now, thanks to Karina, we made a brief stop at a massive bookstore. Where I found--wait for it--A MINT MOCHA!
Seriously, major discovery. In the States, mint mochas are my exclusive holiday drink; here, I have never seen one for sale, in any store, ever. Until yesterday when, conveniently, I was in need of a constant inflow of caffeine!
Hello, old friend...
Eventually, around 8 or 8:30, we settled down into a primo spot facing Taipei 101, where we bought a deck of cards from a hawker and waited for Brittany, Rachel, and Tom to show up to join us. Over the next couple of hours, we played cards and watched the spaces around us gradually fill up until, at around 11pm, when Rachel and I left for a bit and tried to come back, we were practically stepping on people and had people telling us there were no spots left, despite our reassurances that our friends were holding our spot.
A little behind our actual seats, which were maybe 3 blocks from the building itself
The crowd behind us.
And then came the fireworks. I'll let them speak for themselves:
(I can't get it to link to Rachel's video, which is much better than the one below--try clicking here)
It was fabulous. 202 seconds of explosions; it pretty much looked like the building itself should crumble into nothingness though, obviously, it didn't. I honestly can't imagine ever topping this New Year's celebration; even a trip to Times Square might not cut it. It was THAT wonderful.
Then we joined the several thousand people in the streets walking to the next-nearest MRT stop--they closed the closest for traffic purposes--and were treated to a city on the move through deserted streets for a good couple miles, I'd say. The streets weren't technically closed, I don't think, just practically: it's pretty hard to drive when your lane is pulsing with thousands of people walking.
We couldn't even SEE Taipei 101 at this point, which was at least one MRT stop away...
After walking past three separate MRT stops, all of which were so crowded we gave up immediately, we began the even more difficult process of hailing a cab--two actually, since Tom, Karina and I were headed to KTV, while Rachel and Brittany were headed out to their host's home in YanMingShan.
The latter seemed all but impossible. I have NEVER seen so many cabs with their lights off; even when one was available, they asked where you were going and turned down four out of every five requests and, considering how far out of the city Rachel and Brittany were aiming, they were turned down every time. After walking to YET ANOTHER stop and watching some foreigners get in a screaming match with a taxi driver (embarrassing for everyone, including us), we finally found a cab that would take Brittany and Rachel, and Tom, Karina and myself grabbed a second one to take us to KTV.
The rest of the night was spent at KTV, enjoying the "musical" stylings of Tom's amazing friends, and occasionally being coerced into joining. Since most of the songs were in Chinese, it usually wasn't an option, but I'd join in on the 1-in-6 characters I could recognize (我, 你, 天, 不, 大, 太, 的, etc), and whenever an English song came on the microphone was thrust into my hands, so I sang along to Coldplay, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift, too.
Next thing we knew, it was 6am, and our reserved time was up. We hopped a cab back to our hostel and collapsed around 6:45; the plan was to leave at noon so we wouldn't have to pay another day, but when I got up at 11:30 to shower, I discovered that it was self-serve check-out, so when Karina slept through her alarm I let her and came out to the main room to blog.
So that was our New Year's Eve! It more than filled in for the lack of celebration at Christmas by being the single most eventful New Year's Eve of my life--bar none, past or future.
This is the view from our hostel window. Really. See, Karina booked us for a hostel out in the countryside of Taipei because that was what was available, but apparently, they were overbooked, so they offered us an alternative--you know, MERE BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE MAIN EVENT. We didn't say no.
I'm psyched. This will be my first major New Years event I've ever attended--New Years has historically been an understated affair of board games and watching the ball drop for me--AND it just so happens to be one of the first celebrations, too. It had never really occurred to me before, but obviously all the footage shown on New Years Eve is pre-taped; America's actually the last place to get New Years, while Taiwan comes in at around the halfway mark. (Though, major country-wise, it falls behind just Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, and parts of Russia, since it turns out time starts in the middle of the Pacific.)
Tomorrow, I'm sure we'll wander around in the crowd for a while. Karina wants to see if we can get a primo place to stand in the crowd, but I'm skeptical. In my mind, we should just come back to our hostel and hang out with our brilliant view of the focal point of this New Years celebration.
So when the time rolls around in your neck of the woods and they start showing the fireworks, keep an eye out for us, basking in the light of Taipei 101.
Today was complicated. After the others in our hostel woke us up all night (and turned the lights on twice!!!), we started out the day tired. We soon found ourselves, Starbucks in hand, in a cab with an extremely talkative Chinese driver who pushed me to the limits of my Chinese conversational skills (I said 好 a lot, and he knew enough to end many of his monologues with 你聽不懂, not that it kept him from trying.) headed towards the National Palace museum.
The morning of looking at ancient artifacts was great; next, we hopped a bus and, several MRT transfers later, had lunch back near the hostel and retrieved our bags.
That's when the trouble began. We couldn't find an MRT entrance with an escalator or elevator; when we finally lugged my mom's big bag and our two smaller ones to the train and made it to our stop, we discovered that the directions the hotel had given us were crap. Seriously.
An hour and a half later, we admitted defeat and hailed a cab to take us to our hotel--which ended up being maybe five blocks away. Fail. But that didn't begin to cover our charming discovery once we got here that our reservation was for the wrong night. Last night, to be specific. EPIC fail. Fortunately they had an open room, but at this point we were both so frustrated and stressed that we proceeded to waste the next hour or so just sitting and recuperating.
We finally rallied ourselves enough to venture to Taipei 101, and we explored the observation deck for a while, and I then discovered my new favorite place in Taiwan, Page One. AKA the home of the largest selection of English books in Taiwan. Heavenly.
We were both too tired for our planned night market adventure at Shilin (sadly...) so we went back to our hotel, bought food on the way and planted ourselves on the bed to watch It's a Wonderful Life. Couldn't make it all the way through, though--after all, we leave the hotel at 5:30am tomorrow morning!
Annnd, on that note, I'm going to bed. Tomorrow should be easier, but also much sadder, as I have to say goodbye to my mom and send her back to America...it's been a fun trip!
Again with the two-days thing. Today was actually worse--Wednesdays in general are going to be rough, really. My brain is fried.
My day today began with Morning English at Hanmin at 8am, meaning I had to be out the door here by no later than 7:15 or so. After that I had (and always will have) an hour break (in which I get coffee; this morning Maggie and I went out and brought back some for Alison, too), and then taught from 9:30-noon. Then, after eating lunch, I lesson planned with Alison and Maggie, then set out for Sanmin for our biweekly Fulbright meeting, which began at 2pm. It was interesting at times, but the general mood of teachers (LETs and ETAs alike) was exhaustion. When that finished (10 minutes late), the ETAs had a chat with Alex and Fonda, then had about a half hour to go grab a snack (奶茶--milk tea--and 7-11 garlic bread for me) before Chinese classes started at 5:10. Then we had class for 2 hours. When I got home, around 7:45 (after a brief detour to Chialing's with Emily and Lydia, where we were disappointed to find her closing up already), I took the opportunity to run some errands: pick up flashcards from the stationary store (more on that later), buy pineapple and nectarines from a fruit stand (dinner), and pick up some milk.
So around 8:30, just over 13 hours after I left the house, I sat down to a nice relaxing evening of painstakingly copying foreign characters and building a stack of unknown words the height of Taipei 101.
Why, you may ask?
Well, the title refers to more than just my present inability to think straight, or my inability to remember the first part of my day--on the drive from Hanmin to Sanmin I decided I was going to write my scooter rant today--traffic inspired me--but that rant is lost now--though that does of course play a part.
But it also refers to Chinese class. Maybe it was a function of the long day, but today in class I was absolutely worthless in anything related to Chinese. Usually pronunciation can be my saving grace, even when my memory fails (often), but tonight, I couldn't even get that right. When we met up with Chialing, she asked me what we learned today, and I couldn't remember a single thing to tell her. The word "zai" (4th tone--在/ 再) popped into my head--it means either "located" or "then," depending on context/character--but that was it. One word, from an entire lesson which included pretty much everything about how to ask for/give directions.
Crap.
The kicker was that I had spent all of my breaks at school today studying--going over old vocabulary, studying the dialogues we would be doing tonight--all for nothing. This may seem like the most self-evident statement in the history of the world, but Chinese is hard!
Also, today while ordering 奶茶 with Karina today, she told me I've been saying "you" (有) instead of "yao" (搖) when ordering recently--telling everyone that I have whatever I'm ordering, instead of saying that I want it. The one phrase I thought I had down. And the worst part is that I know the difference between those two words! Yet even this failed me today.
So now I have a freakishly tall stack of cards with the Chinese character and a picture on one side, and the pinyin (phonetic Chinese) and English translation written on the back. I'll be staring hard at these puppies on a daily basis, and adding to them, too, which my writers' cramp-y hands are not looking forward to right now.
On a positive note, I received my official invitation to the 10/10 celebration in Taipei next month. It's kind of a big deal.
You can tell by the envelope. And, you know, the return address: "Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
So yeah, all the Fulbright scholars this year are invited to celebrate the Republic of China's 100th Anniversary, in the capital, with the president, as the guests of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The invitation states that "national dress or western style dress" is required (time to break out my silk from China!), and "guest pass is enclosed and required for entry."
Of course, ours didn't have the guest passes--Vivian, a Fulbright coordinator in Taipei took them for us so we don't forget them--but the prestige of the invitation still oozes forth. I am so excited, humbled, and blessed to be in Taiwan at such a great moment in its history!
If you were curious, here's the invitation itself.
Perhaps I should have mentioned at the beginning of this post that I don't have school tomorrow, thanks to Cing-Shan's students' 6th grade trip. This is, after all, the only reason I'm still up at 3am local time: no set time frame tomorrow. Which means that I will (try to remember to) hit up the gym and then shut myself up at Brunch Cafe to finish my application, which is due Friday, Seattle time.
So I guess I should go to bed now. Time to let my brain recover.
It's been a while now since I've donned the hat of 'tourist' in Taiwan. But, as it turns out, a weekend in Taipei with scheduled and guided activities does that to a person! All the tourist-ing has tired me out, so I'll keep this short (again--I'm noticing a pattern in my blogs from Taipei...), so I can sleep.
SO.
We began the day early--too early, given our 1:30am bedtime--and headed out to FSE. Once there, we were loaded into two buses (Jr. and Sr. Fellows in one; Kaohsiung and Yilan ETAs in the other--the segregation was just beginning), and headed off to the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines.
At the museum, I got up my courage and struck up a conversation with one of the senior fellows, Linda Alper, who is studying "Shakespeare as a Second Language" here, and who has been a leading actress at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival for years. (When I asked her what roles she has played, she said she'd done just about everything; if I'd been to a play at Ashland in the last 25 years, she said, I'd probably seen her; looking at her resume, she's been Olivia in Twelfth Night and Rosalind in As You Like It, amongst many other roles. She also attended Julliard.) In any case, I had a great time chatting with her and with her husband, who grew up in Eugene and who attended Marist, my alma mater, for a year back when it was still run by the brothers! Small world.
After a brief, untranslated and gratuitously 3D film, we got a guided tour of the museum, in our individuated groups--Jr & Sr. Fellows, Yilan ETAs, Kaohsiung ETAs. It was really interesting, though I wish we weren't forced into the groups where we already knew people well--all that time spent mixing at the reception and no chance to follow up!
After that came a delicious lunch at the Silk Palace by the National Palace Museum, served family style and with way too much food for anyone at our small table to finish.
By the time our guided tour rolled around, we were exhausted--and our well-intentioned guide gave us headphones to hear her with, which just meant our group of 12 (Kaohsiung ETAs again!) were left to wander within hearing range, and/or collapse on every bench and nearly fall asleep. A real shame, given the priceless treasures we were seeing.
After that, Karina, Rachel, Brittany and I checked into our hostel (FSE only paid for the first night at a hotel), and then Karina and I headed out for delicious burgers and pear iced tea at a restaurant across the street before meeting up with Tom and heading to Taipei 101, where we stayed for a couple of hours, chatting. It was fun.
And now we're back, and still drooping from exhaustion--so that's it for tonight. Maybe later I'll reopen this post and add pictures--plenty today, really. But for now, this tourist is going to go try to catch some sleep on a hard mat in a room full of strangers. But it's cheap! :)
