Visits

So it seems like everyone came to Taiwan at the same time. Colin's folks, my dad, soon my mom, my friend Geoff and famous Reed prof, Doug. Colin and I did some sight seeing with Colin's parents before letting them trapes off around the island alone and Dad and I have been seeing quite a lot too.

We started out in Taipei on Sat. We went to the Jade market where we bargained for a lovly dark jade pendant and I of course took my dad to the Wisteria house for tea, which was well liked though Dad thought the tea ought to have had sugar. We also saw the Chang Kai Shek memorial which actually, I had never been up to while it was open.

I've done more doing of things I haven't done with my dad here. We tried a new restaurant (eh) the first night in Luodong and then we went down to Taroko. Only problem with new things is that there is a lot of room for problems. I had us go down to Taroko early so we could have a train right to the right stop, figuring we could rent a scooter there. Well, there was one guy with a sign that said he rented scooters but he couldn't seem to figure it out somehow. Maybe the person who really rents the scooters was at church or something early on a Sunday as it was. We asked a few other people and then it was back on a train to Hualian to rent a scooter to drive back to Taroko. It was raining the whole day but it was quite warm so it was still pleasant. We saw more of the gorge than I'd seen before and even climbed up to the top of a temple. The real good thing was is that we were leaving as all of the tour buses were coming. The climb did make us late for the shuttle to the hotel and the shuttle guy kept calling me while I was trying to find the train station to drop off the scooter and find him. I wasn't too great at telling him in Chinese to hold his horses and he just kept talking and saying things I didn't understand while I was pulled over on the side of the road. I finally just hung up and found the train station.

We made it to the Promisedland hotel okay and it was very cool. Dad told the only employee that spoke English that my mom had worked on the project, but he didn't seem impressed. We go a huge upgrade to a room that was more like a house- Prime Minister's Suite. Two rooms, two bathrooms, an entrance way. Funny though, as nice as everything was the buildings hadn't been washed and were covered with mold, the bath wouldn't fill (hot water too slow) and the elevator didn't work. Value engineering as my mom would say. We had a nice evening wandering the grounds and with heavy rains the next day we headed out to go rafting, something else I've wanted to do since I got to Taiwan.

Rafting was fun if not entirely disorganized. We were put in a boat with 5 other people and no guide and sent down the river with a pack of other boats. People in motor boats pushed us away from the rocks and pushed the boat if they thought we were to slow and sprayed water on everyone. Hum... Both dad and I wanted to yell paddling instructions to everyone, but our foreigner status and lingustic abilities prevented that. In the second half, Dad sat in the back and played rutter, which I think was satisfying and kept the boats straight. So straight in fact that we got way ahead of everyone else and the motorboat stopped us. I was ready to be done about halfway though as I was tired of being wet and a little cold, but overall, the overcast day made the hills filled with fog especially beautiful and I didn't get sunburned.

Today has been relaxed, just going up to the xinliao falls and now back up to Taipei to see Colin dragon boat race!

Hot calm afternoon

So I often don't have a lot to do on Friday afternoons. I am at co-school and thus away from my resources and because we have meetings everyother week I have no classes. Someone told me once that I should be interacting with students, which I do a bit, but it's hard to talk to students who don't speak English and laugh at your Chinese for 3 hours. Today I watched the 6th grade practice dragon dancing. That's actually pretty cool kinda like seeing the backstage rehersal of a play, but I teach all the students so I know them. The coach then lectured them and hit one kid in the face. I may have mentioned that hitting kids does not have the definitive no on it the way it does in the US. This wasn't a hard hit, more like batting a cat on the nose. Still very affronting to have someone put their hand in your face.

I then watched art class and tried to talk to kids. Most wouldn't respond, some couldn't stop laughing when I asked how old they were. Pretty funny. Now I'm sitting here contemplating that covering myself in talc has done little good in this heat and humidity and I'm wondering what I will do through the summer. Perhaps I will write more from an air conditioned haven. Perhaps I will have nothing to write because I don't leave my air conditioned haven.

Dad comes in tomorrow. We have a lot planned with the help of my teacher. I must say though, this country would not be very accesible if I didn't have Taiwanese friends to help. It took Roxanna and I nearly all afternoon to book a room at the promisedland, a hotel my mum was project manager on (after I tried on my own) and a rafting trip, and Roxanna is Taiwanese! Hopefully everything will go fine and my Dad will get from the airport without mishap.

There are pluses to Living in the tropics

Okay so there is only one plus and I'm not sure if it outways the sweat pouring down my back, the air so humid you can feel it and it leaves you aching with cold at 50 degrees and dying at 80, heat headaches and bug bites, but it's pretty good.

Fruit! Fruit is wonderful in the tropics. I just had a small green Taiwan mango. I hadn't tried it before because, well, it was green so I thought it must not be ripe. Wrong, it was sweet and tasty and overall, simply wonderful. My only grip is that it is small. I also have had my share of wonderful (and cheap) papaya, pineapple, starfruit, things I don't really know the name of in English and other yumminess.

I do really think that I am adventurous foodwise, I've tried the dorean and the stinky tofu, but sometimes I get stuck in a stupid rut. Mangoes are about 30-60 cents cheaper than apples. The apples, even the New Zealand apples, ain't so hot anymore as they are really out of season and have to go a long way. I still buy them over mangoes for some stupid habitual reason. I will overcome and then be sad when I'm in the states and starfruit are 4 bucks a shot.

How big groups cause time management issues or Why I have no friends

On Friday, a group of the Fulbright girls planned to hike out to a natural hot springs near one of Katherine's schools in Datong. I was so excited about this prospect that I forgot my time learned addage- more than three people going someplace together is likely to be logisticly problematic, especially in the Fulbright ETA setting. Annalily, Katie and I arrived only 5 minutes late at 5:20 in Datong. We found Katherine but no one else. After waiting a little while we found out that we were only waiting for 2 people and the rest would come later. Since the hotsprings were sort of off trail on a riverbed, I wasn't sure how they would meet us, but I didn't ask. After attempting to call the two missing people we decided to divert ourselves walking over to the corner store. On the way we ran into a pile of first grade students. They were more enthusiastic than almost any students I've met in Taiwan, they clung to Katherine and after a few minutes to me too. They loved having their pictures taken and practically preformed for the camera. It was certainly a diversion, but we decided after waiting an hour that we would just go to the hot springs the four of us. At that moment the 2 missing girls called to tell us that they were with the others who were coming late. Thanks for calling folks.

We made it to the trail and it was starting to get turn to dusk. Katie was particurally worried about this aspect and given that the trail was a rather dangerous path over a rocky riverbed with a river fording in the middle, she may have been right, but we moved ahead anyway. When we were close to fording the river, the other girls called from the head of the trail. At that moment a major 4wheel drive vehicle comes down a road we didn't know about and fords the river. Katherine stops him and gets him to give the 3 of us a ride while she goes back to get the others. He and his girlfriend say okay, but they are obviously not happy. I don't think they wanted anyone else at their hot springs and they certainly didn't want to help disturb their romance by driving us. I tried to make small talk saying "Ni de che hen bang"- Your car is great. After a long pause he answered slowly in English "My car is small." It was true, we were scrunched, but that ended the conversation.

When we arrived where they thought the springs were, they left us in the back to get out and call a friend to see if they were right. Finally we were able to get out, but not knowing which dark puddle of water we were supposed to get in without Katherine we just sat on the rocks of the riverbed and watched the couple, who were not accknowledging our exsistance, move their car, flashing and strobing from all directions to a place where they could set up their living room for the evening. Katie was ready to leave and we realized just how stranded we were if Katherine didn't come back, they had the flash lights, we didn't, we hadn't forded the river on foot so we didn't know the best spot. I had just said "Well, worse comes to worse, we can sleep on the warm rocks by the hotsprings and go back in the morning, we'll be hungry and thirsty but we'll be okay," when the other's arrived.

We got a lot of apologies, which I'm sorry to say I'm not great at taking. I would have told everyone that if they couldn't arrive at 5:15 then they just shouldn't come, but I'm not as nice as Katherine is. We enjoyed the hotsprings for about an hour. I mostly just soaked up the heat and tried to avoid those whose prior lack of presence had annoyed me as much as their current presence. They had brought mantou to eat, alliviating hunger and all was relatively good. The hot springs was like the one I remember in Steamboat by the river,really hot is some places where the springs flowed from the rocks and much cooler in others where the river water mixed in. After about an hour I realized that I was ready to leave, but I also realized that I was bound by darkness to leave with everyone else. Luckily Annalily thought it was starting to rain and a few minutes later it actually started to mist. That was enough to get everyone back on the trail in a hurry.

We saw tons of frogs on the way back and one even landed on Annalily's toe. I drove the long way home and was back by 10 pm.

Moral of the story, if you value time not wasted, you will probably have less friends.

Classical literature in Modern Music

I feel I have run into numerous lamentations about the decline of reading, especially literature in our culture. I am happy to report then that while I was running this morning I was listening to Kate Bush (awesome artist, thanks Eben for the introduction) I tuned into the lyrics for a moment and heard the words Wuthering Heights. I am reading the book of the same title so I started the song over. It is an entire piece of contemporary music based on the book and in particular Catherine's relationship with Heathcliff. Well, well, well, one point for Kate Bush and one point for Classical literature.

More stories of my depraved morality

This morning I'm checking my e-mails and my co-teacher tells me we might not (she means won't) have our first class. Why? Because Ronald McDonald is coming to our school to teach children how to wash their hands. I am immediately amused and hop out of my seat when she says that although we won't have class I have to watch the performance. We are standing around waiting for the event to begin so I take the opportunity to try and explain that this would probably not happen in America as it would be considered a conflict of interest, like free advertising of bad health to children who are probably already hooked on fast food in public school. I don't know if she got it. Her response was "Taiwanese parents like to take their children to McDonalds if they can afford it."

The show begins with 6 women dressed in McDonald's server uniforms dancing around the stage and trying to get the kids to follow. The 6th graders I'm with are acting to cool and I mimic them. Then Ronald himself jumps out and low and behold he speaks Chinese. I am slightly irked by this as I can't speak Chinese and I'm sure Ronald can speak the language of every country he has a store in.

He does magic tricks and gives kids McDonald's CDs and finally gets around to the washing hands part. The principal and 1 student put on giant fake hands and 3 more children wear foam soup, tap and tissue costumes. The spray water at the kids and bubbles. Apparently this is the solution Taiwan came up with when a bunch of kids died of hand foot and mouth disiese a few years ago. Get them to wash their hands and they won't get sick. Get Ronald McDonald to show them how to wash their hands and they will actually do it.

The last part of the whole thing was getting a bunch of kids and teachers up on the stage dancing with Ronald. I tried to disappear, act like I couldn', but nothing worked. I danced with Ronald and got a stuffed hamburger on a string for my efforts (I told you free advertising). I have now helped indoctrinate my kids with McDonalds mania and they will be more likely to be like the 1 1/2 year old I saw on the metro, who when offered food by her parents, pointed at a Mcdonald's burger box that a woman near by was holding.

At least I got to practice last week's sentence pattern with the 6th grade "May I help you?" "I want a hamburger."

Going over to the dark side

I don't go to Starbucks. I never have and although I went to Reed and have an obligation to hate them, my reason stems from their proliferation of bad coffee more than anything else. I prefer well roasted well brewed coffee that I find in Portland, but out of Portland I will choose a different bad coffee place over Starbucks, because, well, they are not setting the standard that makes people accept and even like bad, expensive coffee.

Then I came to Taiwan. All of Taiwan's coffee is pretty bad and most people when they offer you coffee are offering you nescafe with more sugar than a candy bar. There are coffeshops though, it's the new chic. Almost all of them are chains- Ikari, from Japan, Dante's, Barista, Detour and of course Starbucks. I went almost exclusively to the first two until I learned how to ask for non-fat milk. Given this linguistic freedom a whole new set of options was open to me, or so I thought. But then I started asking for my non-fat milk and discovered that it was a strange request. Not at Starbucks, however. They in the worldwide American corporation way are happy to provide me with my choice of milk. So for the fist time last week it happened. Colin asked "Where do you want to get coffee, Ikari or Dante's? and I said "How about Starbucks." So I've gone over to the dark side. And I must say it has it's perks- the milk of course, the all too familiar wavy curved design and the soft comfy chairs. Granted they are not as comfy as the torn up couches of my favorite places, but the tables aren't too high to comfortably write at either.

But don't worry, the tenure of my evilness will be short, I will move back to the states with an eye-opening stop in Italy or I will go broke.

Shots, a little late

I finally got a Japanese Encephalitis shot on Tuesday. This was the shot for the disese that kills half of the people who get it and half of the survivors are braindead. Well to get the shot in the states is $300-500 dollars. Here they give it to every child and adults can get it for $10. Trick is you have to navagate the Taiwanese health system. I was really worried about it when I came, seeing the statistics and knowing that although all of the people are vaccinated you can still get it from mosquitos who bit infected pigs. But, then I got here and we were past the high season and I was really busy, so it wasn't until I decided to go to Thailand, where they have more incidents of this that I went to get the shot. I also wanted the second Hep A shot as you need a booster after a year. I spent a lot of time with the doctor because he couldn't find the code for Japanese Encephalitis and he kept telling me in Chinese stuff about finishing the whole series before going to a 3rd world country. He would talk and talk and I would turn to my Taiwanese friend and ask, "what did he say?" and she would answer "Nothing important." I didn't find out anything important until we got downstairs to get the shot and I decided it would be good to see how many shots I needed. That's when I found out that I will get 3, 2 two weeks apart and one after 6 months. That's when Annalily came in because she wanted the shot to.

I had no clue what the best course of action was, but Annalily had a lot of questions for the doctor. He had no answers. He didn't know if we would have any protection between the second and third shots (when we will both be in the zone) and refused to offer any course of action other than "I suggest you complete the series here. But that is impossible." Uh yeah, so what should we do? No answer. At one point he suggested we shouldn't have left America without getting all these shots. We opted to get the shot anyway with the presumption that the one after 6 months is more like a booster, but that they don't explain it that way. So I got a huge needle full of vaccine in my arm making it sore, even two days later and leaving a red patch. And I get to go again in two weeks.

I have yet to do good research on the vaccine they used though I asked for the drug information (mostly Chinese). I don't readily trust doctors in the States. Taiwan is definately a first world country, but I really really don't trust doctors here.

Busy little worker bee

I keep thinking I have something to say and then forgeting to write and then forgeting what I had to say. So I will valently move forward anyway. I've been working hard at school, I stayed 40 min. late today. I'm making a portfolio of the year, a somewhat pointless project, but it gives me a chance to say good things about myself and harbor illusions that some future employer will want to look at this information. I'm also helping kids get ready for the super big English competition. I some how got stuck with the shitty part even though I rejected it before. There is a dictionary looking up competions (my kids think it's really fun- shows how boring their lives are), a spelling competition, a song and dance competition and a speech competition. I declined to do the speech competition, because it is not fun to sit with a kid and watch them struggle to memorize something, but I wrote the speech. Then the student teacher who was going to train the girl coped out so I ended up doing that job instead of any of the other way cooler competitions. The girl is very sweet and she tries hard, in fact she was the only one who volunteered to memorize two pages of words in a language she doesn't really know and say them in front of a big group of people. She's not that good at it though, so she is even harder to prepare. Ah well, all this will be made up for by the fact that I get to be incharge of the English play which is an adapted version, by yours truely, of my favorite children's book ever, "Leo the Late Bloomer."

See how productive I can be.