Taiwan: Things of Note

A short list of peculiar things about Taiwan:

1. There is very little litter in the city, but I can NEVER find a trash can when I need one.
2. The garbage trucks play songs just like the ice-cream man does back in the states! They do it so that people know when the garbage man is there to pick up the garbage. When we told our friends that the garbage man at home doesn't play any music, their (logical) first question was “well then, how do you know when the garbage man is coming?”
3. Our doorbell makes the sound of a bird chirping when someone rings it!
4. In order to make sure that all stores report their sales to the government, there is a receipt lottery. Every receipt has a lottery number printed on it and once a month, or every other month, they have a lottery where you can win up to $10,000NT. I am hoping to be a lucky winner this year!!
5. The food is very sweet. Every time I see something that I think is going to be salty, I am always disappointed to learn that it is sweet. (no, that is not salt on that bread… its sweet bread, and we’re going to dip it in icing!!) ahhhh!!!
6. In my quest for buying some more face moisturizer I realized that all of the face creams are skin lightening creams. Its just amazing to me that half the world spends money and time trying to have lighter skin and here us white people are, paying money for a tan… what a weird world we live in.
7. Burping...burping is cool here. No "excuse me" no muffling or holding it in, just go for it. Burp! It’s no big deal. The other day I was working out next to a woman who was with her trainer and she was burping more than she was talking. It was ridiculous… and totally acceptable behavior. (maybe I do belong here! Haha)
8. Napkins... yeah they don't much use them! Sometimes at a resturant the will bring out a box of what is basically kleenex for you to use as napkins, but thats only about 50% of the time. I usually need to use like 5 tissues for any given meal.

Well, that's all for now, but don't worry, there will be plenty more installments of this type of post!

Thoughts of the day

So, as I mentioned briefly before, Nick and I have rented a scooter until we have our resident visas and can buy our own. This picture is for Brandon who was wondering what Nick looked like on a scooter... pretty badass, huh? Nick has named our "Party 100" scooter "The Pink Panther."

(here, Nick is spreading the word of John Smith on the pink panther!)

For now, only Nick drives it with me sitting on the back. He did let me drive down the block once, but I almost drove it right across the street and into the police station, so for now, he's the only driver!

Anyway, things are going pretty well. Work has its good and its bad moments, but such is life. Tomorrow we get on a plane for Hong Kong to extend our visa. We get to take one paid day from work for it, and Friday and Saturday are our days off, so we have three days there. It should be fun! I'm looking forward to hearing, speaking, and reading english!!!







On another note, I want to write you a list, please read the whole list and try to figure out what these words have in common:
OK
Demon
Whatever
Metal
Fish
Gold
Jelly
Memory (pronounced "mammory" if you have a Chinese accent)
Evolve
Patient
Toro
Candie




Can you thinkof what they are? They are the English names of people we have met here! ahh, some things don't translate well. (we have also come across the names Dick Hung and Peter Pen)

Ok, thats all for now :-) I have to go research Hong Kong! be in touch soon!!!

Shoe Sculpture Unveiled

[i just found this on my computer and realized that I forgot to post is a couple of weeks ago!]

This morning I was reading the January 31st issue of the Taipei Times (an English language paper here in Taiwan) and came across a short little blurb that I thought some people may find interesting.

The article begins by saying “A huge bronze shoe sculpture has been erected in tribute to the Iraqi journalist who grabbed instant fame when he threw his shoes at former US President, George W. Bush last year. The shoe, in which a tree has been planted, stands 3m high and sits atop a white pedestal in Tikrit.”

Who would have thought that hurling your shoe at a world leader would cause a sculpture to be unveiled to your tribute!

Well, as I said before, ½ of the world would line up for the chance to throw a shoe at Bush’s head (including myself!) so maybe the shoe sculpture is appropriate! Ha ha.

Go Obama!!!

******update: the shoe statue has since been dismantled, you can read about it here*******

Lantern Festival

This week, the lantern festival is going on in Taiwan this week. This is a festival that is celebrated in the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar year (the festival goes on for a week ending on the 15th day). According to wikipedia, it is also known as Little New Year since it marks the end of the series of celebrations starting from the Chinese New Year.

Anyway, last week our friends took us to the Taichung Lantern Festival to check it out and it was pretty cool. Since it is the year of the cow, there were tons of cow lanterns up everywhere. The festival had some big elaborate ones that they put together and then they had a bunch of them that people had made at home to enter in a contest for best lantern.

Here are some of the best lanterns entered into the contest:







I like the one above because its a cow rock star and his fans! haha! But the best thing of the night was this one:

He was HUGE (maybe about 3 stories) and was sponsored by the Taichung baseball team whose mascot happens to be a cow. He even put on a show once an hour and we were lucky enough to catch it twice. If you can't tell by this clip, he is waiting for the pitch (see the ball moving towards him) and then he hits the ball! its awesome.

While we were there, we also got to see some traditional chinese theater, which was pretty cool. It was a musical (or opera) and a comedy and Eric helped to translate it so Nick and I knew what was happening. It was pretty entertaining! One thing that was kind of interesting about it was that all of the parts were played by females, even the male characters. I found this particularly interesting because in Kabuki (traditional Japanese opera) all of the characters are played by male actors... I'm not sure if the all-female cast is a cultural thing or was unique to this particular show, but I was intrigued by it.

So, all in all, the lantern festival was a good time! Many thanks again to Angel and Eric for taking us out for the night!

Idle minds are the devils playgroud...

....And there are no idle minds here in Taiwan!

I don't want to do put up any sweeping generalizations about Taiwanese culture after only a couple of weeks here, but one thing I have noticed is that these people study A LOT!

From a pretty early age most children are sent to something called a buxiban (pronounced boo-she-ban) or "cram school" after regular school. Basically, they spend the first half of their day at regular school, just like kids all over the world, and then in the evenings they go to a cram school. At the cram school they spend three hours straight working on one subject: math, science, English, etc. And then, they go home around 9:30 and possibly even study more before they go to bed.

Rinse and repeat...

This is not just for wealthy kids or for kids with controlling parents, this is for almost all kids. The amount of time spent studying is just boggling our minds right now. There was one lady in class today who said that she stays up every night until 6am to study her English...6AM! on a regular basis!

As Nick just said, someone needs to tell her "Honey, go to bed two hours earlier, and get two more hours of sleep every night, and I guarantee that you will learn more English than you are right now.”

But, from what we've noticed, this seems to be par for the course over here. On our way home from work today Nick said “You know, if Americans spent as much time studying as the Taiwanese do, we would be the most powerful country in the world times two.” And, at the time I agreed with him, but then I started thinking more about it, and it really brings up the issue of quantity versus quality.

One of my colleagues today was telling me that during the summer break, when regular school is out of session, kids actually spend more hours per day studying (at a buxiban) than when they are in regular school. This is just amazing to me! And its not because the parents want to dump their kids off so that they're not home, it's really because the parents love their children and want the best for them. And that means non-stop education. Its quite an intriguing cultural difference.

I'm really trying not to look at this from the perspective of an American who thinks that their way is better than everyone else's but I can't help to think about what kids miss out on by spending so much time studying. Studying for that amount of time in one day really has to be counter-productive, because our brains cannot focus for that many hours in a day.

I can't help but think how happy I am to have been born in the US for the simple fact that I had time to just be a kid and goof around....

Well, enough on this for now, like I said, I really don't want to be making any sweeping generalizations about a culture that I have only been experiencing for a couple of weeks now, but I'm sure we will revisit this topic again at a later date.

only 2 minutes!

WOW, ok I only have two minutes until my time is up here at the internet cafe! Things have been very busy settling into the working life, but we hope to have internet in our place within a week which should make life (and blogging!) much easier.

This morning we came to the internet cafe before work and while we were sitting her heard LOUD fireworks outside of the cafe. We both looked at each other and said "OK enough with the fireworks already!" They've been going off intermittently for the last week and 1/2 because of Chinese New Year.... at 8am, at 12am, and 11pm.... all hours of the day (depending on the day).

So we go outside and what do we see?? a parade! FUN!!! too bad i didn't have the camera :-(
the fireworks were off the chain.

ok times up!
gotta goo

working life

Our life here has begun in earnest.

Last week was our first full week of work. We have a pretty nice schedule, Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday are full 8-hour days (7 of those hours are teaching, one is lunch). Thursday we work 3 hours and we work 4 hours every-other Tuesday. And the sweet thing about Tuesdays is that there are no classes, we just use the time for a staff meeting (about 15 minutes) and the rest is for prep-time. Then we have Fridays and Saturdays off! Every day starts at 1:30pm, which is kind of nice, but on the long days we don't finish up until after 9:00 so that's kind of a bummer.

The job is pretty good, I don't think its something either of us would want to do as a career, but I think we have a good gig here. One thing that's bad about it though is that pretty much every hour of work (besides on Tuesday) is a teaching hour. So, the days can feel very long and some of the classes can take a lot out of you. It is definitely menally exhausting to teach english for 7 hours in one day.

There are both positives and negatives about the job (as with any job). On the plus side, we have complete freedom with what we do during our teaching time, and they are very small classes. Every class is a self-contained 45 minute lesson. The clients sign a contract, for example they may sign a one year contract for 100 classes, and then they can come as often as they want and whenever they want. So we never really know who we'll see. The clients are broken into 6 different levels of ability and every consultant teaches every level according to the need on any given day. So each day we're teaching different people in different levels every hour.

One of the things Nick really doesn't like about the job is that we aren't teaching the same group of people every day, so there isn't very much continuity to it. We miss out on reaping the rewards of teaching and watching our students progress on a daily basis. As he put it "it takes all of the good things out of teaching."

At the beginning of every class, there is a period when we have to kind of figure out where people are and what will work best for them. As time goes on, I'm sure that we will get to know our clients and have a better idea of where each one is, but you never know who you will have in any given class until 15 minutes before it starts, so it's a bit difficult in that respect.

I do like the job, and hey...it’s a job, and it's getting us a visa, so this is good.

Tonight is the end of the year party for the company, so Nick and I had to buy some clothes to wear to it (it's a formal event). It sounds like it could be a good time and hopefully we'll get to know our colleagues and maybe form some friendships tonight... we'll see.

Anyway time to get ready for the party!

Going to the Market

Saturday was a fantastic day. Nick and I went to our new gym and I had one of my 3 free personal trainer sessions. After that we stopped by the Internet café and then went to have lunch with Angel, her daughters, and her friend Eric.

Then, before going to spend the afternoon at Angel's house, we stopped by our place so that they could show us how to use the washing machine! (my first load is in now, so I'll let you know how that goes!)

At Angel's house, Lucy helped us translate the menu from a restaurant close to where we live, so we are pretty excited to order ourselves dinner armed with this new knowledge!! Next Eric showed us how to play Mahjong and then Nick and I showed him how to play Texas Hold 'em. (Eric had seen it in the movies and wanted to know how to play!)

Next, it was time to go shopping for food for dinner. Angel took us to a market that is close to where we both live (we're practically neighbors) and skillfully picked out some food for dinner.

This market is only open from 4pm to 7pm and mostly sells is very fresh meat, fish, and vegetables for you to take home and cook.

The first thing she chose were some live shrimp (I'm getting pretty used to this one) and a next a handful of very small cooked (and I think dried) shrimp.

We moved from one stall to the next, picking out so white fish at this place:

Which also had a great collection of squid for sale (although we did not buy any)

Next, Angel picked out some meat beef from this butcher.

We also stopped somewhere to get some goose meat (which I have to say, I'm not a big fan of) but when you buy the goose meat, you get some soup stock made from the goose bone (like ham bone soup) for free. Angel used that to make some soup with white carrots and various meat balls purchased from this stand.

They even had some "meat balls" made from fish that were in the shape of hello kitty! Angel got those for her 10 year old daughter to eat.

It was a pretty neat market, filled with all kinds of things that we don't normally see or eat at home, including the black chicken below:

And these:

And after the market, we got home and Angel made this whole dinner in less than two hours! She's pretty amazing. This woman has got to teach me to cook!

Wo De Sheng Ri (My Birthday!)

What a fantastic birthday!

January 27th was not only my birthday but also the second day of the Chinese New Year, when traditionally families go to the mother's side of the family. This worked out perfectly because Angel invited Nick and I to her father's house for my birthday.

Including Nick and I there were 10 people at the feast, Angel and her husband and two daughters, Natalie (10) and Lucy (17) and Chris and Rachel and Angels father and his wife.

Angel's dad is 89 years old and he's awesome. He's in very good shape (although he may have a bit of a memory problem). The whole night he was telling us his stories from when he was in the Taiwanese Air force. He was a fighter jet crew chief and he inspected planes before they took off. He learned all of his English from American soldiers during WWII.

He was Nick's new BFF and kept raising his glass of whisky for Nick to drink with him! Finally, Nick had to stop drinking whisky because he wanted to make sure that he didn't get the old man too drunk! Haha.

Dinner was fantastic, the BEST meal by far that we've had yet. There were more than 10 different dishes, three kinds of fish, amazing dumplings (or pot stickers as we call them at home), soup, beef stir fry, some potato dish that I've never had before, shrimp... It was fantastic. Their dinner table was a big round table with a Lazy Susan in the middle that all of the food was on. So throughout the meal, you just turn the platform in the middle of the table and pick what you want out of the dishes. I think their family style of eating here is awesome, it's a much more communal experience than western dining. Plus, I think it helps you to eat less.

Chatting at dinner was also quite the cultural exchange. Chris speaks pretty good English, but the rest of the family has trouble expressing themselves (still almost everyone at the table speaks more English than either of us speak Chinese), so conversations that would probably be pretty short at home, were long and drawn out as the whole family worked together to find the English words for what they wanted to say. Throughout we were teaching them English and they were teaching us some Chinese. It was really fun; I was laughing and smiling the whole dinner.

After dinner it was time for Karaoke (or KTV as they call it here. Short for Karaoke TV). Angel and her daughter Lucy are both very good singers, so I was a little embarrassed by my singing, but it was good times. I even did a duet with Angel (My Endless Love) and one with Chris (You Give Love a Bad Name, by Bon Jovi) and Angel's dad sang a couple songs including one A'Capella version of an old Chinese opera song. It was fantastic.

Finally about 5 ½ hours after we arrived, it was time for the last event of the night: Singing Happy Birthday to ME!! Angel bought a cake and some candles and they all sang to me in Chinese and then in English and I blew out the candles. Chris and Rachel even gave me a Chinese-English dictionary for a present.

I hope they invite us back again! It was the best night in Taiwan thus far.

Fishing for Shrimp on New Years Day

Day one of the year of the Ox was pretty good for us. Chris (Nancy's cousin) and Rachel (his fiance) invited us to go fishing for shrimp with them.

I had no idea what to expect for this event, but I have to admit, I was pretty excited. Angel picked us up around 2 in the afternoon and drove us to the fishing spot: a big building connected to a shopping mall in down town Taichung! There she left us to go fishing w/ Chris and Rachel while she went shopping.

Inside of the building was something that looked kind of like a swimming pool with a bunch of people sitting around it fishing. It cost $100NT (about $3 US) an hour to partake in the fishing. This fee included a pole, some chicken liver and some shrimp (for bait), and some hooks. Every hour the pool is re-stocked with new shrimp and you can catch as many as you want while you are there.

Almost right away, Rachel caught our first (and her only shrimp). It definitely took some patience, but between the four of us we caught 8 shrimp in 3 hours (I caught 4 of them!!). I have to say it was lots of fun and definitely requires some skill and patience. I had quite a few nibblers that got away. You have to wait for about a minute after they first start nibbling until you're sure that they're hooked and you won't loose them, then you pull them quickly out of the water and they're yours to keep!

One thing I definitely had a problem with was getting the hook out of the shrimp's mouth. I just could not do it. First of all, the live shrimp completely grossed me out (it's just like a huge water bug...GROSS!) and you really have to work to get the hook out. I felt like I was torturing this big, fleshy bug, so I had to have Chris help me every time. (Nick wouldn't help because he thought it was funny to make me suffer through getting the hook out myself).

After we were done catching them, it was time to eat them! First you rinse them off (because the water that you catch them in is pretty gross). Next you cut off their tentacles and legs (while they're still alive) and salt them to taste.

Next, you skewer them (or impale them) so that they’re easy to handle. After they’re firmly placed on the skewer, you stick them into the grill (mind you, they are still alive at this point and while they cook you can see their legs squirming!!) And once they turn pink all over they are ready to eat. It's the freshest thing I've ever eaten.
They were delicious, but I wouldn't be able to go there without someone who was willing to do the dirty work for me (i.e. impaling them, and getting the hook out).

Chris even showed us how to eat their eggs: You carefully rip the head off and then suck out the red and yellow liquid that in the head cavity. It's actually very tasty.

They have a pretty good business model going on. Between the three of us we paid about $25USD for only 8 shrimp and then they also serve dinner, so on top of the $800NT for fishing we spent more money there to eat dinner, I'm sure its very profitable and it makes for a great afternoon activity!

Here are some more pictures of my fishing experience!

My first shrimp!

Me trying to get the shrimp off of the hook!



oops! I dropped it in the garbage can!!

To Do List

get a job... check
get an apartment... check
gym membership... check
scooter... check

figure out how to order food....
learn Chinese...
get Internet at our place...
finalize visa...
find some additional income sources (aka tutoring)...
find a mattress pad for our hard-as-a-rock bed...

but the most pressing of all right now:

learn how to wash our clothes....

(i'm quickly running out of underwear!!)

And I'm Back!

YAY!!!

Well, today was a very exciting day. 1st, Nick and I got a scooter (we rented one for a month and hopefully by the end of the rental period we will have our Alien Resident Cards and be able to buy our own scooters)!! and 2nd, I found an Internet cafe (thanks to cruising on our scooter) where I can use my flash drive, so now I can post some fun stuff.

So, for now I'm just going to back-date the couple of posts that I have written so they'll appear below this one and you can read them at your leisure!

I'll be in touch hopefully a little more often now, I have all kinds of fun things to share with you. Most likely my next post will be on how CRAZY driving around here is! AHHHHHHHHH!!!