NOT the last supper

Packing began in earnest today, but I won't bore you with accounts of buying a box and bubble wrap. The real highlight of my day came tonight, when my host family picked me up for dinner. Please note the very deliberate avoidance of the phrase "last dinner," because it absolutely CAN NOT BE. I'm not ready for that.

But, they did bring me some wonderful little going-away presents, all Taiwan themed, including gorgeous earrings, a fun bottle opener shaped like a face, and several nice bookmarks. They're absolutely lovely.

And so was dinner! We went to the Howard Plaza Hotel restaurant, which served up a buffet-style meal with Western options like roast beef (insert happy Bekah), and salad with more than one kind of lettuce (insert VERY happy Bekah), and even blocks of a variety of fancy cheeses, amongst many, many other delicious foodstuffs that put my recent munching habits to shame.

Describing all the deliciousness on this (admittedly not that great-looking picture of a) plate would just make me hungry. But look, pesto-tomato-mozarella salad!!!

Non-iceberg salad!

And of course the best part of all, as always, was the conversation. By the time we left, we'd been at the restaurant for over two hours; all the servers were cleaning up, the food was all put away, and only one group remained seated elsewhere. Lovely. I love these people!

(Host) Mother's Day

母親天快樂! That's a sentence that, prior to this evening, I was not capable of uttering. But now, having been taught it and practiced it many times before a group of 20 or so people, I am well able of saying "Happy Mother's Day!" in Chinese.


Tonight, James, Margaret and Emily picked me up to go to an early celebration of Mother's Day. I grabbed some flowers for Margaret (it is Mother's Day, after all!) and figured I was set for an evening with my wonderful host family.

And I was. What I hadn't realized, though, was that tonight would be my whole host family--that is, James'  mom, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews. (Later explanation revealed that only perhaps 3 or 4 people from the extended family were missing.) We met at a Japanese restaurant, where we were treated to a multi-course, multi-toast meal the likes of which I'd only seen here before at a wedding. 

What the table looked like BEFORE it disappeared beneath a mountain of food

Movies playing on the wall <3

It was a pretty epic restaurant, really...

Eating 米苔目 for the first time: delicious! (or 可口)

The Japanese place's sister restaurant provided the towelettes: yay for Seattle!

Dinner conversation was peppered with various uncles and aunts trying to make their kids talk to me in English--it was cool to hear "我的英文不好" (My English is bad) coming from so many mouths, having uttered the reverse, "我的中文不好," so many times myself--and a rather fun mixture of English, Chinese, and Hakka coming from all sides. 

Filled to bursting, both with food and with new-learned vocabulary, we then relocated to James', Margaret's and Emily's home, where we drank tea, ate corn, and continued our trilingual conversation.


All in all, quite a fun night, though infinitely different from the one I had thought was coming. Being with James' family reminded me of being with my Mom's side of the family, always a fun occasion, and as always I loved being able to simply slide into belonging, not just to my immediate host family, but to my extended one, too. So, to all my mothers, Happy (Host) Mother's Day!

Pictures at last

It's odd how quickly photos can pile up. Even with my diligent posting of most of my March pictures a few weeks ago, I had several hundred still un-posted as of today, just halfway through April. But no longer.

They are now all up: pictures from various outings with my host family, pictures from Alex and Melanie's visit, pictures from dying Easter eggs with my kids, pictures from making Eggs Benedict. And I realized an odd thing about posting pictures today: I'm less likely to do it if I've already blogged about it. See, whenever I post on here, and use select pictures from the day, two things happen:

1.) I upload the pictures from my camera to my computer, thus getting rid of half the work involved. I usually even edit the few I end up using.
2.) I put the best pictures up for all to see.

These two things are unquestionably the least productive things I could do for general photo-posting. See, they make me feel like I've already done it; that all (the important) photos are up and that doing more would be a bonus/extra work for nothing. But, of course, that's not true. I post maybe 15 pictures on here, if I'm feeling indecisive; I post several hundred to my Facebook, even when I'm being picky.

Today, I was being somewhat picky. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are links to the fruits of my uploading labors, in the form of albums named:

"What will you do in March?" "I will wear green in March" (new additions);
April showers... (,,,or sun, or clouds, as the case may be);
Easter! (Dying eggs at 漢民 and 青山, then making Eggs Benedict with friends--not bad for a holiday away from home.)

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.

Full

Living in Taiwan, "full" is a regular part of my daily vocabulary. In a culture whose local language, Taiwanese, says "have you eaten?" for "hello," eating and over-eating are regular occurrences. Today, however, my title doesn't refer to food--or, at least, not principally. No, I mean the day as a whole: SO SO full!

It's 1am now. I woke up this morning at 7am. In the intervening 18 hours, I...

Went to school, where I dyed eggs with the 5th graders at Qingshan amidst what began as chaos and ended in gorgeous colors and very few messes;

Explained to countless students, teachers, and administrators who Alex and Melanie were, and that Melanie was, in fact, American;

Lost the race against Alex and Melanie's taxi driver home;

Revealed the wonderfulness of Ali's burritos and the corner shop's milk tea to Alex and Melanie;

Took advantage of a few hours break from today's drizzle to eat shave ice at Siziwan, take the ferry to Cijin, rent bikes, glimpse the lighthouse, explore the fort, ride bikes, and discover that basically the entire seashore at Cijin is under construction;

Helped Chialing cook some fantastic noodles which Alex and Melanie obviously ADORED;

Took a window-shopping stroll with Melanie that resulted in some cute stationary for her and a nice little conversation with the adorable owner of the adorable Nini store down the street, together with some delicious cake despite my protestations that we were full;

Walked along the Love River with Alex and Melanie;

Found Alex some cold medicine;

Made a brief stopover at Ruifeng Night Market, where we saw some hilarious Angry Bird and "Angry Sponge" shirts, as well as some gorgeous leather bags;

Made plans to hang out with my host family tomorrow, after a stop at another stationary store and Dream Mall, and made tentative plans to KTV afterwards.

So "full" is not an understatement--this is just the outline! In other news, my plans for tomorrow begin at 10am, and I am therefore going to sleep.

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.

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.

Good Exhaustion

I'm exhausted, and I don't think it has as much to do with the fact that it's 1:30am as it does with our itinerary today. Which is, of course, the best source of exhaustion in existence: the satisfied kind.

Today found us, after a sumptuous Western-and-Taiwanese style breakfast and a stop to buy the legendary sun cakes of Taichung, on the outskirts at the Tong Feng bikeway, renting bikes and riding around to see Shih Gang Reservoir, some very pretty scenery, and scores of tourists who were inappropriately dressed for riding bikes but persevering anyway. (My favorite was a lady wearing high-heeled knee-high boots, personally...though not when she was driving in front of me up a hill.) It made my jeans and tennis shoes look like training gear for the Tour de France.

After biking for a good 8 miles or so (I think? The map was a bit confusing and all in kilometers...), we took our bikes back and enjoyed some sweet green bean soup, which was surprisingly good, and a little peanut candy, which was understandably scrumptious.

Then it was off to the amusement park! At Yamay, we ate lunch as a group of apparently Russian dancers performed dressed as pieces of candy and cowboys on the windy platform outside. I couldn't help but feel for them: I doubt that this is what they had in mind when they said they had been offered a job in Taiwan. But I also couldn't help remembering Brittany, Rachel and Karina's assessment of the Russians they met in mainland China--let's just say snobby--and think there's a nice touch of irony in this group's job.

We then meandered through the park, eventually settling on a white water rafting ride, the slightly cold and quite windy weather notwithstanding, and came out fine, thanks to the wonder that is the poncho. Then it was The Pirate for Emily and I (aka the Viking Ship, for US friends' reference), and then I talked Emily into edging her way towards the big ride--the one highlighted here--by trying out the Energy Storm (aka Octopus/Scrambler/whatever).

That turned out not to be a good idea. See, next we headed for the Gravity Max, which she was hesitant about. When we reached the top of the very, very long waiting area, she told me she would be right back and vanished, leaving me attempting to communicate to the three non-English-speaking employees that I was waiting for my friend but that they should go ahead with the ride (nonexistent line=you wait for people, apparently). About 15 minutes later, she came back to say the Energy Storm ride had done her in--and then we left, undoubtedly leaving the employees scratching their heads about the odd foreign girl who stood at the entrance for 15 minutes and then didn't go on the ride. Oh well.

Then it was time to head back, but not before a stop along the way at Dong Shan service area for a delicious dinner of turkey rice and wonton soup.

When they dropped me off at my front door, this exhaustion settled on me, reminding me of all the wonders of the day.

Oh hey there, Taichung!

Absolutely wonderful. As I type this, I'm laying on my bed at the gorgeous Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Taichung, as my host sister Emily checks her Facebook on her phone on the other bed. What a glorious day!

As is usually the case when I had a great day of sightseeing, I don't particularly want to describe it in full detail, but, unlike most of those days, I have my memory chip already in my computer and ready to pull pictures at will, so even with minimal description, this post should give you a good idea of my day.

To begin with, of course, I had school, where Patty and I taught food-related words to the 5th graders, repeating "Coca-Cola" enough times to brainwash myself into buying one after class (true story), and engaging each class in a debate as to whether soup is a drink or a food (Taiwanese say drink, Americans say food!).

Then I came home, and had the treat of being able to talk to both my cousin, Julia, and my Mom and Dad, before throwing some clothes in an overnight bag and running downstairs to meet James, Margaret, and Emily.

And then it was off for Taichung! But not, of course, without a stop at the whimsical Ceramics Art Village in Chiayi. It was charming with everything made of ceramics and with benches of every ilk:

A cow...

A basketball...

Yes, that's a full-sized ceramic TREE!

Different sort of ceramic cow--way more fun to sit on :)

It's a ceramic phoenix!

...and a real, live rooster that came out of nowhere.

 A quick car ride away, we stopped at a Taiwanese antique attraction, which also featured...a turkey. With territorial issues.

James had some fun with it :)

There, we snacked on roasted (smoked? Not quite sure, actually) yams/sweet potatoes (also not sure on that one...) before moving on towards Taichung. A quick service area stop and a delicious IRISH CREAM (first time I've ever seen that flavor here) latte for me later, we hit our destination, and I took in my first impressions of the heart of Taichung, which oddly reminded me more of its larger neighbor Taipei than of  closer-sized Kaohsiung.

On arriving at our hotel, I discovered that it is GORGEOUS! I mean really, truly, absolutely gorgeous, and one of the nicest hotel's I've ever stayed at. I am so grateful to be here now.

Emily's and my room tonight--yeah, that's a full-on sitting area at the end, and this isn't the whole room :)

 Perhaps as a result of that gorgeousness, we found that our fellow residents are largely foreign, of the Western-and-Japanese variety. Looking around the hotel lobby, I was met by face after white face. It was eery. You don't notice it while it's happening, but living in a country where you stick out like a sore thumb brings you to the point where something seems wrong if you don't. Seeing foreigner after foreigner after foreigner is just too weird to me now! I don't know what I'll do when I make it back to America.

Pictured: pizza in a cone, going into a cone-shaped hole in an oven

Anyway. We settled in and headed to Feng Chia night market, the largest in Taiwan with 1,600 stands, for dinner. We had pizza--in a cone. Quite good. And then, after Emily and Margaret ate a local delicacy consisting of a hot dog inside a sausage, and Emily got a delicious-smelling chicken-and-cheese concoction--I was too full to partake, this time anyway--I grabbed a five-fruit juice and then Margaret and I each got hot sweet soup with sticky rice. Lovely!



So that was my wonderful day. On the agenda for tomorrow: more amazing times with my host family.

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.
---
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.

Blessings and pain...and a party

I've been looking back through my photos from this year, and realizing just how much I've been blessed lately.

I know that probably looks bizarre and/or egotistical in print, but please don't take it that way. That's not my intention at all. It's just that,  going along my merry business here in Taiwan, exploring the countryside, getting to know my host family and co-teachers, celebrating the holidays (all of them, Western and Taiwanese) here, and puddle-jumping over to Thailand for a bit, I caught myself losing sight of what an enormous privilege it is for me to be here in the stress and little details--and that is completely unacceptable. Day-to-day life can sometimes obscure the fact by its sheer inanity, but the truth is that I am enormously blessed to be here, and I don't want to forget that. It's humbling.

So, rather than yammer on about the minutiae of my daily life, I thought I'd offer up this blog as a thank-you. Because, ultimately, the navel-gazing that this blog sometimes (unfortunately) becomes has no place in the midst of all these blessings. They have nothing to do with me, and I am not in the slightest bit worthy of them. All I can do is look back at them and be grateful for the opportunities I have been given.

If you've made it this far in the blog, you've realized that I'm in a contemplative mood; that means that, even when looking at my blessings here, I can't help but look at the things (or, more accurately, people) missing. Like my brothers. And my parents. And my friends in Corvallis and Seattle and Eugene--and Chicago and DC and everywhere else they've scattered to that I don't even know about, thanks to my own round-the-globe move. I miss them acutely tonight, for no apparent reason other than that I do.

So there it is: the two-edged sword of my existence here. Humblingly great experiences coupled with the neverending knowledge of something missing. I wish they could be separated, but they can't.

...

Lest you think I'm getting too emo on you, though, here it is, today's one new thing!

Thing 12:
I went to a party at Professor Spring's house! This was new on several levels, really:

• I am on a party-attending, first-name-using, almost-peer basis with a professor;
• I attended a party hosted by a Taiwanese person who is not a member of my host family;
• I rode in an elevator with a dog (Spring has 3; 2 were there, and we wanted to see the roof!);
• I saw fireworks over the Love River (from a distance, of course);
• There are probably several more reasons but I'm too tired to think of them right now.

The party was great! Spring cooked for us, a massive Taiwanese meal rich with crispy veggies (a rarity here; I feasted on a fresh stir-fryed carrot, green bean and snap pea mix!), sumptuous duck, Zuoying specialty dumplings, a delicious cabbage-and-pork dish, and far too many other things to describe in any detail. The point was, it was lovely. After we ate, as I described earlier, we went up to the roof and watched the nightly fireworks they shoot over the Love River for the Lantern Festival, then came down and chatted with Spring about her life, her dogs, and various controversial things supplied by Brittany and Steven. (Actual recreated exchange: Brittany: "Let's talk about something controversial!" Steven: "I'm ready. Say something controversial!")

So yeah. Pretty great evening.

Halfway

As of today, I am halfway through my time here in Kaohsiung. I didn't figure this out on my own; rather, fellow Taiwan ETA Elaine posted about it on her Facebook and made me do a double take.

She said: "Today marks the halfway point of my time in Taiwan. It's been an amazing 5 and a half months and I'm sure the next 5 and a half will be even better."

Wait, it's been 5 and a half months? And I only get 5 and a half more months here? Both of those statements seem impossible to me.

Did I really not know Fonda, or Maggie, or Alison, or Patty, or Fiona, or Chialing, or Tom, or any of my other Taiwanese friends before 5 months ago? Did I really not know Margaret, James, and Emily, or Bunny and Jenny? Did I really not know my students? Had I really only met Karina, and Rachel, and Brittany, and Analacia, and Tiffiany, Emily, Lydia, Samia, Esther, Andrew and Steven only once, at a conference? Had I really never driven a scooter, or taught an English class, or planned a trip to Taipei (or anywhere else, independently), or grown to love tea, or tried stinky tofu, or had a conversation in Mandarin?

Have I really not seen my family or US friends, or driven a car, or stepped foot in America for five months?

It seems unfathomable.

On the flip side, will I really only be in Taiwan for 5 and a half more months? Will I really just be a plain old American living in America, then, just another of the horde of college graduates looking for a real job? Will I really be able to call up or stop by my family's place, or hang out with American friends, at will? Will I really just slip back into my old routines, old activities, old mindsets, as if I'd never left?

I'm determined that that last one, at least, won't happen: my year as a Fulbright ETA in Taiwan will never be reduced to just a line on my resume that I have to explain to every potential employer for the rest of my life. Even now, there are aspects of my thought processes which are irrevocably changed for the better. But some of it is irresistible: I will leave Taiwan. I will no longer drive a scooter, and there will no longer be tea shops on every corner to cater to my craving for grapefruit green tea, or fresh milk tea, and of course a weekend trip to Taipei will be out of the question.

I will be overjoyed to return to all my American loved ones. But I can't even think about the people I'll leave behind yet. That's the hardest part about building multiple home bases across the world from each other: you never get to have everyone you love in the same place at the same time. I have 5 and a half more months with my loved ones here, and I refuse to confront how short a time that is until I absolutely have to.

Wow, this post has taken a turn toward the depressing. But halfway does also mean that I still have half of my time to spend here, and 5 and a half months is still a pretty long time to squeeze in as much of the amazingness of life here in Taiwan as possible. And I will certainly try. After all, I'm only halfway.

Dumplings on Election Day

Tonight, incumbent Ma Ying-jeou beat out challenger Tsai Ying-wen to win a second term as President of Taiwan. (Note: I don't know enough to claim an opinion on this.) But, while I received updates of the race in real time from the TV, I have to admit my attention wasn't fully fixed on the screen, since I was spending the evening with my extended host family, making dumplings and learning Chinese out of a first grade Chinese textbook.

It was glorious.

Seriously, I've said it before, but I really REALLY love my host family and extended host family. There's a whole new level of comfort and amazingness with just hanging out at a three-generational gathering that counts you as one of them, whether you are biologically or not. 

This time we went to my host cousins' house, which happens to be across the street from Margaret's parents' house, and when we got there they weren't home, leading to a search of the grandparents' house and several phone calls by Bunny, who was over visiting, to her parents. And all of this just served to confirm the wonderfulness of being part of a close-knit family, running back and forth and being comfortable enough to take off for tea when they're coming, and not mind in the slightest that you have to wait for a few minutes to get in.

And then we made dumplings. Mine weren't beautiful like my host aunt's were--of course, she does have a bit more practice, and had made several hundred this morning before we came--but they did at least beat out Jenny's, which tended to be flat and semi-circular, rather than rounded and crescent-shaped. Bunny taught me how to make them and then set me loose, and I had a ball, sitting around the kitchen table with all the women and girls in the family (momentarily distracted by all the international gender norms going on as the men sat in the room next door watching the election unfold) and shoving a mixture of pork, leek, onion and mushroom into little pre-made dough squares and folding and crimping the edges.

Finished!

As we crimped the edges on the final dumpling, Jenny hauled us back into the living room, where we debated Monopoly or Uno for a while before choosing the latter, which we played until it was time to actually cook the dumplings, which we did (just plopped them in boiling water and put the lid on--so easy!) before resuming our game.

Dinner itself was scrumptious, and included not just our homemade dumplings, but some yummy curry Margaret had made, seafood pizza and roasted chicken from Costco (baby Mumu particularly enjoyed just putting her face down and gnawing on the chicken before it was served, seeing as it was positioned just so perfectly at her height), some soup which I was too full to taste, and vanilla pudding.

After our meal (and some initial prodding by her parents), Jenny set about to teach me Chinese. At first it was a group effort, with Margaret, Bunny, Jenny and their mom all drawing characters on both Bunny's Asus tablet and Mumu's play table (it has a magnetic drawing board with one of those slide erasers on it--and yes, I loved the vast gap between the technologies being used), as everyone shouted out various words or phrases for me to learn. Then, at Margaret's request, Jenny (who's 9, by the way) got out her old 1st grade Chinese book, and the lesson began in earnest.

Seriously, I've never had a more determined teacher. Together, we plowed through four complete lessons in the course of about an hour, and as I repeatedly mistook similar characters for each other (在 and 左, for instance), she would stop the lesson, pull out Mumu's table, and write each one in turn: "What's this? (writes 左)" "Zai?" "No." "Zuo?" "Yes." (draws 在) "What's this?" "Zai." "Yes." (repeats process several more times, pointing out the specific points where the characters vary and connecting their various radicals to other characters which I should, in theory, know).

And she's nine. Born teacher if I've ever seen one!

 Both her mom and Margaret helped her along, making her translate the little chants she was teaching me into English and say them for me to follow, so she could practice her English at the same time. And whenever I would forget a part of the chant--as I routinely did, given that I knew very few of the vocabulary words before this little lesson--she would frown and say "no English!" before launching into yet another explanation of what word I should be saying.  "坐下来," for instance, not "something 下来." After a while, Margaret and her mom started urging her to leave off with the lesson, since there was no way I'd remember everything she was teaching me (truth), but she would not be deterred. Even when she was finally satisfied with my ability to recite lesson 4 without help, it took some persuading to keep her from going on to lesson 5, and she continued quizzing me on other things as we moved on to Wii.

The rest of the evening was spent losing various video games to Bunny and Jenny, with the whole family looking on. That, and a lot of fun family self-portraits.

Bunny has bunny ears. :)

So yes, Taiwan re-elected a president today, as the world looked on. But for me, good or bad, that was hardly the highlight of the evening.

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:

Christmas Eve

This has been the most unconventional Christmas Eve of my life, bar none. But it was wonderful.

See, I slept in. Then went to Dream Mall with my lovely host sister Emily, finished my Christmas shopping, and went to go see Mission Impossible 4 (surprisingly good for a fourth installment).

And then my marvelous host parents Margaret and James came, and we had delicious beef noodles for dinner.

And then I was able to find all of the ingredients for Nanaimo bars--the culmination of a many-day search--at Carrefour and the baking store on the way home.

And then I got home and found Brittany and Chialing making preparations for our evening together with Rachel, Fonda, Chialing, Chialing's nephew and a friend. And now we're going to watch Sherlock Holmes 2.

Not what I would normally be doing on Christmas Eve. AT ALL. But still lots of fun. :)

Melancholy Christmas

You know, it's amazing how many Christmas songs adopt a melancholy tone in wishing people 'Merry Christmas.' As I write this, even, I'm listening to Michael Buble sing "The Christmas Song" in a slow, almost mournful voice; moments ago, he was singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas," a song which I've all but sworn off this holiday season.

Even without it, though, I feel the melancholy of Christmas this year more than ever, my excited students and festive decorations notwithstanding. I've always loved Christmas, and I've always been a huge one for keeping traditions alive (just ask my mom and anyone else who's ever tried to change our family Christmas; they'll tell you that my cousin Mollie and I are an unstoppable force for tradition!), but even so I've always seen myself as a Christmas moderate in America. I've even been called a Grinch on occasion, usually due to my refusal to start celebrating Christmas (and this includes with music) before Thanksgiving.

Being in a country like Taiwan for the holiday puts this in perspective rather quickly, though. Our apartment building is the sole Christmas light-bedecked building in our entire neighborhood; I feel lucky this year that Christmas falls on a weekend, because if it didn't, I would spend the day teaching just like on any other day. Our apartment building had a Christmas party, but you could scarcely tell what it was celebrating: they were eating typical Taiwanese food, and though they began by blasting Christmas music, it soon turned into Taiwanese karaoke, and went on in that fashion for HOURS, with no crevice of the apartment building safe from the loud, off-key sounds.

Tomorrow (or, since it's almost 1am, today) is Christmas Eve, and I'm doing my best not to think too hard about that fact. I'll spend the first part of the day with my host sister, Emily, and the evening with my roommates. I think as long as I keep busy it should be okay...

But still melancholy. There's just no getting around that aspect of the season, when you're sitting in a foreign country with most of your friends and all of your family on a different continent, celebrating traditionally almost a full day later. I guess I'm just experiencing a different element of the season, but it's not one I would have necessarily sought out had I been home for Christmas.

Meinong Hometown

Today, I had the privilege to explore Meinong as a hybrid cross of tourist and native.

How, you may ask? Through the wonderful perspective that comes from being an American with a lovely Taiwanese host family, and whose mother just so happens to be visiting.

First of all, some perspective. My mom and I got into Kaohsiung this morning after 29 and 10 hours of travel, respectively, at around 5am and, as my mom settled into my bed and I settled onto the floor, we managed a fitful 5 hours of sleep before the alarm rang at 10am.

At 11am, my host family came to pick us up, and, a short 7-11 trip for coffee later, we set out for Meinong.

Let me just say, I love my host family. My host mom, Margaret, had prepared a dual-language itinerary  which she gave to both my mom and I, complete with a note at the bottom welcoming my mom to the country. We all had a wonderful chat as we drove out of the city and the towering buildings gave way to greenery-enfolded hills and long stretches of banana, coconut, and betel nut trees. The Portuguese were really onto something when they named this island Ilha Formosa, which translates as "the beautiful island."

First off, we went to the Meinong folk village, an adorable cluster of buildings built in traditional style and boasting a paint-your-own umbrella station, koi pond, traditional Hakka house and furnishings, a tea shop, where we drank traditional lei (ground rice) tea, and a glorious view of the surrounding mountains.

...and also this ADORABLE baby on an old-fashioned rocking horse.

Then it was off to the paper umbrella making shop, where we did a little souvenir shopping, the end results of which for secret reasons we cannot display here now. ;)

Next was a SCRUMPTIOUS lunch of Hakka-style noodles, lotus stems, Fu vegetable, pig knuckles, peanut tofu, and stewed cabbage. Hakka-style cuisine remains my favorite I've tasted in Taiwan, for sure.

Then we went to James's house! Yes, that's right, turns out James is pretty much related to all of Meinong; we drove past his old school and through dozens of houses they announced were inhabited by distant relatives to get to where his mom still lives on their old family farm, a gorgeous space awash with greenery which has, over the years, grown over old tobacco buildings and other out-buildings to create a gorgeous contrast of wild and domestic.

We met James's mom, brother, sister-in-law, and several other relatives, and got to stroll through their garden, plucking orange cherry tomatoes off the vine as we went. Before we left, she insisted on giving us a bag full of tomatoes, fresh green dates, bananas, wax apples, and papayas. Her generosity was as overwhelming and beautiful as her garden itself.

By the time we pulled ourselves away from my host family's home, I felt like I had entered a new level of host family-hood. I now have not just a host nuclear family, but a host extended family, now on both sides (I met Margaret's family a while ago). It was lovely.

A soft rain began as we headed past a quick stop at a lotus growing field and to our final destination, in Margaret's family's hometown of Chishan, where we visited Chishan's traditional street and ate delicious iterations of banana shaved ice. (Mine was also lemon; my Mom's was red bean, pineapple and plum; James's was just red bean; Emily's was red bean and some other unidentified fruit and ice cream; Margaret had hot sticky rice, instead.)

Soooooo good.

After that, it was time to load our (very weary, in my mom's and my cases) selves back into the car and head back to Kaohsiung to await an hour at which it was normal to pass out for the night. (Easier for me than for my mom, for obvious reasons--hence I'm finishing this blog at 11pm as she's been asleep for an hour.)

Driving back, sitting in the middle seat with my mom on one side and my host sister on the other, I was reminded just how blessed I am to have two such great families supporting me as I live here in Kaohsiung. I left with a bag weighed down with goodies from my host family's hometown, and headed inside to enjoy them alongside goodies from my hometown. Hybridity can be a very good thing.