Favorite Moments from Christmas in Taiwan

1. Making a Gingerbread house out of wafers. We realized halfway through that it looked like a Taiwanese house (tiles, all right angles, etc.) ,so we tried to make it look even more so by adding a scooter, clothesline, and a banana tree.

2. Dancing with students at our school’s Christmas dance. (…Even though the students were pretty much forced to dance against their will. Secretly most of them liked it, though!)

3. Acting out the Nativity Scene with the Primary kids at church.

4. “Secret Santa” gift exchange with the other teachers here. (As you can see, our gift wrapping supplies were limited… my favorite was the present wrapped in old progress reports!)

5. Running into Santa Claus. We were taking a train to Hualien on Christmas Eve and a Taiwanese Santa (complete with a shaving cream beard) came down the aisle passing out fish flavored candy.

6. Hanging out our stockings. We met up with some the other teachers at the hostel on Christmas Eve and they had us set out our “stockings” which were all filled with mahvelous things in the morning!

7. Christmas dinner!  After arriving in Hualien on Christmas Eve, we were STARVING!   After looking for a place to eat, we finally found some delicious dumplings and steam buns at a little restaurant in Hualien.

8. On Christmas day, we spent most of the day riding on scooters and walking around Taroko Gorge. It was kind of cold & rainy, but Taroko was beautiful, so it was definitely worth it!

Something I've been contemplating lately...

    I have gotten at least 4 itchy mosquito bites in the last 24 hours.  About 30 minutes ago I killed a mosquito that had snuck up on me while I was sitting on my bed.  It made me think. -- That mosquito was probably thinking he was about to have a nice snack (a.k.a.  my blood)  when he was suddenly squished, thus ending his short and creepy life.  That would probably be a lot like a human being smashed by a 300 foot tall hamburger.  One second you're thinking. "Wow!  Look at all that food!  I can't wait!"  The next minute, your food kills you.     If I wasn't so blasted itchy right now, I might actually feel sorry for mosquitos. 

Red Ink

The whiteboard markers that we use in our school are refillable.  When they start to run dry, you just twist the top off and fill them up with ink, rather than throwing them away and buying new ones.  Today I was using one of these markers in my class.  Apparently the marker had been filled up a little too much or something because when I pulled the lid off, red ink came dripping out all over my hand.  Neither I nor my students noticed at first.  Then, just a few seconds later, my eye started to itch, so I reached up and rubbed my eye, unknowingly smearing red ink on my face.  A few students let out gasps and screams, but I didn't know why.  Then I started to smell chemicals and I felt like I had gasses in my eye.  (That seems like a weird way to put it, but that was the first thing that came to my mind.)  I automatically started wiping my eye and that's when one of my students yelled, "Miss Lindsay!  Your hand!"  I looked down to see red ink all over my hand and then realized that I had spread it all over my face.  Of course, at this point I started laughing my head off!  It just really cracked me up to think about how freaky that would be for my students to look up and see what looked like blood dripping out of their teacher's eye.  Once my kids realized that it wasn't blood, they started laughing, too.  My favorite comment came frome Leo who said, "Miss Lindsay!  Who eat-a you?"

Foot mopping

A woman mopped my feet today. It wasn't a cultural thing- (they're not particulary into 'feet mopping' in Taiwan)- it could have happened anywhere. The fact is, however, that I was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus and a woman came up and mopped my feet. Now, I don't have particularly dirty feet, so I'm pretty sure she didn't think that my feet needed a good mopping, but she did it anyway. There are those who might say that it was an accident, but I beg to differ. I'm pretty sure that her thoughts were something like the following:
"Here I go, mopping the floor again. I would rather be at home, taking a nap...or eating a nice squid on a stick... or riding my scooter with the wind blowing through my hair... shoot, I need to get the scooter fixed. Seriously, though, I am so sick of mopping this floor. Why does my boss want me to mop it in the first place? It's halfway outdoors, for crying out loud! If only there were a way to make this more entertaining for myself......hey!...maybe I can mop someone's feet! Yeah! That sounds like fun! But, who? Oh, look! Foreigners! I bet that blonde girl doesn't speak much Chinese. She might know how to ask how much something costs or tell you where she is from, but I'm sure she doesn't know how to say, "Hey, stop that!"or "Please quit mopping me." And I'm pretty sure her little phrase book won't tell her how to say, "Back up off my feet!" or "Why don't you mop someone your own size?" Yes, she's the perfect victim. Completely defenseless-- and she's wearing sandals! Here, I go! I'll just pretend to be cleaning the floor under the bench. Ha! She fell for it! She's moving her feet out of the way! She can't hold them up forever, though! She doesn't have the stomache muscles! And she can't move cuz I'm right in her way! She'll have to lower them eventually! YES! There she goes! HA! I got the left foot! Woo hoo! Now the right one!!!! Mwahaha! Mopping feet is fun! I love this! I love my job! Life is wonderful!!! Oops! I almost smiled! I have to be careful. I don't want her to know I'm doing this on purpose. Yikes. Close call. Ok, who will my next victim be? Oooh! There's a dog sleeping under that chair! Here I go!"

Now, I am not at all bitter about this incident, I mean, really it turned out to be economically advantageous to me. Since my feet have been freshly mopped, I will not need to wash them when I shower tonight, thus saving money on soap. Really, it was a win-win situation... she got her entertainment, and I saved .0003 cents that I might otherwise have wasted. It's so nice when things work out like that.

Recent Stuffetty Stuff

So, Taiwan is great! The last few months since I last wrote on this little blog-a-ma-bob have been filled with tons of interesting experiences-- scuba diving in Green Island, riding a "hot dog boat" in Kenting, scaring children to tears at Halloween (oops), a kiss on the cheek from a random old man, eating "old cheese" on a stick, a terrifying roller coaster that made me scream so loud & high that I discovered a whole other register in my voice, several cute little monks, etc. There have been lots of other exciting, fun, crazy, awkward, frustrating, enlightening, and hilarious experiences, but since there are too many to catch up on, I'm just going to write about this past weekend.

This Saturday, we went to Guanziling to see the fire-water-mix. It was a pain in the rearsky to get there (trains, busses, taxis, & hiking were all involved), but it was worth it! Basically, it's a little pool of water where natural gasses come up and ignite once they reach the surface. Pretty much- it's water with fire on top of it. According to a sign near the pool, the fire can never be put out. Crazy! Anyway, it was really cool to see. There was one thing kind of weird about it all, though ( I mean aside from the fact that the water was on fire). In the Lonely Planet guidebook for Taiwan, it mentions that Guanziling is famous for two natural oddities; one being the fire-water-mix, and the other being a natural mud-hot-spring or something. I, personally, would have mentioned a third. While standing in front of the water-fire-mix, if you look up, you can see potatoes hanging from the trees directly above your head. Now, I may not know much, but there are a few things that I know for sure: 1. Chocolate is really good. 2. Families are important. 3. If you rearrange the letters in 'dormitory', you can spell 'dirty room'. 4. Potatoes have no business growing on trees.

I don't know who these people in Guanziling think they are, running around defying all laws of nature, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to get on their bad side.

Ok, so when it really comes down to it, I'm assuming that these brown lumpy things hanging from the trees are not actually potatoes, but rather some other thing that I've never heard of. I tried looking it up online, but I couldn't find anything. I'm kind of afraid to know the truth on this matter, though. On the one hand, I might find that the truth is boring and that these hanging anomalies are actually just a very unnatractive type of fruit. (Lame!) On the other hand, I might find out that the people of Guanziling can not only manipulate the elements to allow fire & water to coexist, but they can also grow potatoes anywhere they dang well please and that their children all pop out of heads of cabbage at birth. I bet they all have Xavier's signature on their hineys, too.

Creepy, creepy, creepy.

Typhoon

I've heard that the news coverage in America has been pretty big on this, but for anyone who doesn't know, Taiwan had a pretty big typhoon come through last week. In some parts of the island, the damage was really bad. Some villages were were basically wiped out, a lot of people died, buildings were destroyed, and there are still people trapped under tons of mud and wreckage, from what I understand. Typhoons generally don't have as bad of an effect on our side of the island (the west side) since most typhoons come in from the east side and there are mountains in the middle that kind of protect us from the typhoons. Anyway, we still had tons of rain and wind. School was cancelled for two days and then on Sunday, church was even cancelled.

The following pictures pretty much explain what I did during those few days of mainly being stuck indoors (with a few exceptions involving a trip to Taichung and playing in the rain on the roof):

Ate and drank too much. Including a ridiculously cute bottle of Sprite.

Went to Taichung on one of the calmest days of the typhoon & saw a restaurant with a cute name.

Also saw a three-wheeled recycling truck. Also cute.

Got bored and drew this cute man. Just kidding, he's not cute. I'm just lovin' that word right now.

Put on some red lips and posed for kissy face pictures with my cute roommates. (When church is cancelled at 8:15, when you're already ready to go, there is a natural inclination to put on red lipstick, take pictures, and go back to bed.)

Messed with my aunt's cute face...

messed with my mom's cute face...

messed with my sister's cute face...

cute.

Pictures!

This is a typical street in my city. I love that lady's hat. I want to turn it upside down and spin it on a table.

Pretty fish and squid at the indoor meat market.

Cute little flower shop on the corner. Makes me so happy!

A few of my students and I. The peace sign is like a reflex. Camera comes out...BAM!..fingers are up.

Taipei 101- the largest building in the world for now. (There's a building in Dubai that's taller, but it's still under construction, so it doesn't count yet.)

These are some boys in my class showing their block-version of Taipei 101. As you can see by the face of the boy on the left, little boys here are just as strange as they are in the U.S.

What the? I guess that's really all I have to say about this one.

Pig junk in an indoor meat market. The fact that there are 3 pig legs here means that someone bought the fourth one!!!! AAaaahhhh!

Sarah and I spent all morning wandering around some little street markets the other day. Marvelous!

We went to the temple in Taipei last weekend. I would say it was raining cats and dogs, but that would be an understatement. I'm pretty sure it was raining cats, dogs, gorillas, rhinos, and large men named Earl.

The First Month

So, I realized that I've been here almost a month. Weird. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. So, I guess I'll just give a little rundown of how everything has been going. For the first 11 days I had a dreadful headache that made me feel really crummy. The after that I got a really bad sore throat for about a week. Unfortunately my thought process at that time was, "I came to Taiwan and now I feel crummy, therefore Taiwan is terrible." After I started feeling better, however, I realized that I really kinda like this place! I love the food, I love the kids, I love the humidity, and I love the trees! Ok, so I love most of the food... And most of the kids... And the humidity makes me want to rip my hair out... but the trees really are amazing! Our backyard neighbors have a banana tree that hangs over our wall and I just adore it!
When it comes to food, there has been a lot of trial and error. The errors include rice that tasted exaclty like the smell of fireworks; warm, pink salad dressing that tasted like hand lotion; something black and jiggly which is yet to be identified; and some kind of orange liquid that was probably a concentrate and should have been watered down. Oops. The food successes include delicious "cookies", which are really like crepes with bacon, egg, and cheese on them; rose flavored soda; garlic bread cubes that are buttered on three different sides (why didn't I think of that?!?!); and bing shas (basically fruit icees...or the occasional oreo icee if you have a sweet tooth...which I do.). I also had a delicious Australian steak and some kind of pumpkin mushroom goodness of love that was served over rice. Just this morning I was tricked into trying mushroom oyster sauce on my "cookie" and I am ashamed to say that I loved it. Weird. I don't usually love anything that comes out of the sea. Unless, of course, it's a family member who just happened to be scuba diving or frolicking with the dolphins, in which case I do love it. (The family member, not the dolphin.)
While I am on the topic of food, (which seems to be all I can think about right now) I want to say that there are a few things that I will never again take for granted. Namely, salt and ketchup. Remember the last time you went to McDonald's? You politely declined their offer to upgrade the size of your order of fries and they still gave you twenty seven packets of ketchup. Not here, my friend. Not here. I went to McDonald's and received one packet of ketchup that was supposed to cover both my Big Mac and my fries. Devastated by the fact that I wanted more ketchup, I started making strange caveman gestures in an attempt to communicate my dilemna. The poor Taiwanese cashier looked frightened at first, but must have finally recognized the look of a soul in need because she finally clued in and gave me...... one more packet. Not that I wasn't grateful, but really... one more packet? I usually need to have at least a 1:3 ratio. One packet of ketchup to every three fries. Exhausted and defeated, I went upstairs (yes, you read that right- the McDonald's here is 3 stories high) and ate my meal. It was good, but I missed my dear, sweet ketchup.
This post is probably too long, so I won't go into all the details about salt, but I do leave you all with one last wish. Please, I beg of you, next time you go to eat out, look at the salt shakers on the tables, or the tiny paper packets of salt that are impossible to open without spilling, and say to yourself, "My life is good" because there are people out there (myself included) who would kill for some tiny salt packets........ If only they knew who to kill.

So, I was going to end my post there, but something about closing with the word "kill" was very disturbing to me, so, umm, I think I will end with a happier word, such as "chocolate". Here it goes: chocolate.

Woo Hoo! I'm in Taiwan!!!

Yay!!! I'm here and I'm lovin' it! After the 16 hour flight (on which they served food that tasted like burps) and the 2 hour bus ride, I arrived in Feng Yuan with the rest of my group. It's super hot and humid... SUPER hot and humid, and I have a wee bit of jet lag, but I love the awesome trees here and I get a kick out of the fact that I can't understand a word out of anyone's mouth. What a hoot!

Uh-oh. I have a blog.

Ok, let's get one thing straight from the beginning. This blog might be really boring. I'm not going to pretend like I have anything brilliant to say or any amazing new insights to share with anyone. So, if you want to stop reading right now and never come back to this blog, I totally understand and I don't blame you at all. In fact, I would encourage you to do so. Go. Be free. Spend your time on the internet doing something cooler...like Googling your own name or poking people on facebook. I won't be offended at all.
Still reading? Then you are a sucker and I will gladly waste some of your time by telling you why I decided to make a blog.
Basically, I'm going to Taiwan for 6 months to teach English. I leave on Sunday and I am WAY EXCITED!!! Since I will not have a cell phone with which to talk everyone's ear off, I decided to yack at everyone by way of blog and pretend that someone is actually reading. Maybe everyone will have taken my advice from the first paragraph and is now finding out via Google that they have the same name as some random journalist in LA, so maybe there isn't actually anyone reading, but like I said, I'll pretend.
Anyway, here are the basic answers to a few FAQ's about this Taiwan thing:
1. How did this happen?
- My friend Sarah and I had both looked into ILP (International Language Programs) and one day we discussed it on the way back from a camping trip and BAM!!! We decided to go!
2. How the heck are those kids supposed to learn English if I don't speak Mandarin?
- The best answer I can give is, "How the heck did you learn English if your parents didn't speak crazy baby talk?" (Although, who are we kidding? We've all heard the weird noises that come out of people as soon as you put a baby in their face. Totally creepy.)
3. If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?
- No.

Anyway, I hope this clears some things up for you. If you are still reading, I now promote you to Grade A Sucker and I beg you to get a hobbie.