So It's Come to This: A Frank Discussion of Cultural Superiority

So it's come to this: a frank discussion of cultural superiority. The following are things America should import ftom Taiwan:
1. Iced juices on every street corner (if not every three feet)
2. Reasonable movie ticket prices ($3.00)
3. Ability to take food into a theater without deception
4. Reserved seating at theaters
5. 7-11s that are a clean, well-lit and sell tasty meals to go
6. Decent, cheap health care (including dental)

The following are things Taiwan should import from America
1. Sidewalks
2. Drinkable tap water
3. Septic system that can handle toliet paper
4. Level and even stairs (exist only at KFC and McDonalds)
5. Crackers

Well, I hope this honest and open discussion of cultural superiority hasn't grossly offended anyone. (Bonus points for correctly identifying the Simpsons reference, in honor of the movie--a mere 10 days to go!)

Luxxury Liveing on $10000 a Weak

Sorry about the title, but I have just seen too many horrible English signs not to try one of my own. Here are some pics of the apartment. Here's the living room, our bedroom, our bathroom, the kitchen, and our awesome washer and dryer. I've also included a picture of a cool church in Taizhong (clearly not our's). I believe you can see the leaning tower of iced juice cups in the desk picture. It was three taller, but alas, the structural integrity of the cups failed. As you can tell, things are a bit sparsely furnished in our room, so I would like to purchase a decent bookcase or art or something. A new mini-Wal-Mart type store just opened and they were advertising a small (3-shelf) bookcase for $188 NT (US$6.00), so maybe we'll buy one if we can bike it home somehow.

I had the language adventure of the week today, as Paul and I went to 3C (an electronics chain) in an attempt to buy a new cord for my laptop. I went a few rounds with the saleswoman, but eventually we were both able to agree that 1)I had not purchased the cord there, 2)I was not attempting to return the cord, 3)the cord I brought her was broken, 4)I wanted to buy a new one, 5)the store did not have a new one, 6)they could order one, 7)I wanted them to do so, and 8)its price was unknown. You can see how it would take some time, as I have limited computer-related vocabulary and the saleswoman spoke no English whatsoever, yet was desperately trying to ensure I got exactly what I wanted. Round two will come when someone attempts to call me and tell me the part is in.

More Pics

Here are some pictures from our 24th celebration. You should have seen the looks people gave us. Audra's in the red next to Paul in the first picture and Bridget is to the right of Audra. I'd post more, but I'm having some real problems with the laptop's cord (we'll probably need to a get new one soon). Enjoy!

Taiwanese Food

I'm sure this is something you're all wondering about, namely, what do we eat? Honestly, mostly rice. Three of the five days we have lunch at school it is rice. Straight up, not fried, no sauce, just plain white rice. The other two days rotate between noodles, curry rice, fried rice, and dumplings. You'll notice we could easily eat nothing but rice an entire week at lunch. An egg dish (hard to describe, looks like flan), a vegetable dish (cooked cabbage or other greens, maybe beans or, more lately since I mentioned I liked it, pickled cucumbers and garlic). We get meat (usually small spiced sausage) maybe 2 or 3 times a month. As you can tell, our cook is Taiwanese and cooks only Taiwanese dishes, with slight accomandation for American tastes (potatoes in the curry, for example). Breakfast is always toast with jam, hence the request. Dinners we are on our own. Usually we cook or skip dinner one night and go to food street the next. If we cook, it's pancakes, pork steaks, or teriyaki noodles. On food street, we've been favoring pork dumplings, although the lunchbox places are pretty safe too. The dumpling woman is very nice, but she can't help laughing at our Chinese. Paul has gotten pretty good at figuring out what people are asking, even though his Chinese is limited to "I want." And of course, we have our nightly bing shao or iced juice.

We've been lucky, in that Taiwanese candy is surprisingly good, although anyone who complains about American chocolate being waxy needs to try this stuff. Candy bars or wafer cookies with hazelnut cream filling are very popular here and delicious. If I can figure out how to send some without melting, I will. American candies are represented if they are Twix, KitKat(which are NASTY here), or M&Ms. Most imported candies are from Germany (most of the Kinder line, for example) or Turkey (which makes a mean hazelnut bar).

Once a paycheck, we do go wild and go to American restaurants like McDonalds. We haven't been to KFC yet, but we plan to go on Thursday. Our roomies described it as "the food of the gods," so we're excited to try it. It seems like every week we find a new place to eat, which is nice.

Finally, I would like to give a belated birthday shout-out to my dad, who is now 53 yrs old. Tressa told me all about the birthday dinner and I was very envious. Beef is all imported, so it's really expensive and can be harder to find here. Plus, I just miss American food.

Random Roommate Story

So, Paul and I live with three other girls. One of them is named Audra, and apparently she hung out with Paul's cousins in Bountiful back in the day. Anyway, Audra has a ne'er-do-well (she prefers "scandalous") brother. He is constantly coming up with new illegal activities to participate in, but he tends to be rather inept and not think his escapades through all the way. (For example, his way to avoid paying back his credit card debt was to move to China. Really.)Anyway, one day he was grossly speeding along I-15 and was stopped by the highway patrol. The cop ran his plates and he was arrested on an outstanding warrant for failing to pay for a ticket. He swore he had paid the ticket and when the cops investigated, it turned out to be a clerical error. As it happened, the city police's secretary had died and left behind quite a messy desk. That's only mildly funny at best. What's funny is that it took the cops some time to investigate. In the meantime, he was held in the Bingham County Jail. So he uses his one call to call home collect. Audra answers the phone and hears "This is the Bingham County Correctional Facility. You have a call from inmate _______. Will you accept the call?" Audra realizes that its her brother as soon as she hears the word "correctional" and begins to laugh, wondering what her idiot brother has been arrested for this time. In fact, she is laughing so hard at his misfortune that she cannot accept the call. That's right, he uses his one call and hears his little sister laughing and his call isn't accepted. The next call was also from the Bingham County Correctional Facility, only this time it was from inmate "Take the @#$@ call or I'll kill you!" This only provided Audra with further ammunition, pointing out in the most loving of manners that it is not wise to make threats, in jest or no, while incarcerated. It is also not wise to threaten the only person who might be willing to come bail you out. Anyway, I found this story to be pretty amusing, maybe you will too. If not, it's because you need to hear more stories about Audra's stupid brother or have no sense of humor.

Sightseeing: Ba Gua Shan

Yesterday, all of the ILP teachers in Taiwan hiked Ba Gua Shan to see the Big Buddha. We chose to go up the back way, which is close to our apartment. Turns out the back way is a series of very steep, narrow, and sloping steps in the midst of a rainforest. We went at one in the afternoon and I thought we would all die before we made it to the top. The humidity has been really variable for the last week or so thanks to typhoons, but even with maybe only 75% humidity and 85-90 degrees, it's still really hot and sticky. Here are some pictures. The first is Paul near a fountain for children at the top of the mountain (more like tall hill). The second is of a gorgeous waterfall, fountains, and reflecting pool. The third is the entrance to the Buddhist temple that houses the Buddha, the fourth is the buddha itself, and the fifth is me with one of the Temple guardians. You can go inside the buddha. The entrance level houses a small library and a large shrine with images of the Buddha, Guanyin, and some other deities. There's an altar for leaving prayer candles and a stand for burning incense. Mostly it was just tourists looking around, but there were a few women who were worshiping when we were there. There are three upper levels were you can view various scenes of the Buddha's life for the Jakata Tales. They were really unique (the Lonely Planet guidebook prefers "garish"), but the signs were unclear as to whether pictures were allowed, so there are no pictures of inside the buddha.

Some Pictures

Picture two is me on food street the second day we were here. The "Orange" is on the left.

Picture two is food street at night.

By Popular Request: A Typical Day

A typical day goes roughly like this:

7:20 am Get up
7:25 Shower
7:35 Get dressed
7:40-8:00 Make and eat toast. (We have neither toaster nor oven, but a toaster oven, which fulfills the functions of both in triple the amount of time.)
8:00-8:15 Brush teeth, put on shoes, laugh at the idea of makeup.
8:15 Leave for work
8:30 Arrive at work having cheated death for another 10 hours. Wipe off the approximately 2 liters of sweat running down my face. (Actually, there was a typhoon off the coast for the last few days, which makes it considerably drier and windier. Very nice.) Review lesson plans, knowing that the plans and the actual activity never match.
9:00-11:00 Teach small (4-6 yr olds)kids English. Half of them will not speak and the other half will have been doing the class for a year and be bored. One of the children will cry and another will have his mother sitting in the back, which will prove to be a big distraction. If I can keep their attention on a single activity for 25 mins, it is a MAJOR victory.
11:00-12:00 pm Plan for afternoon classes or be in meetings with the principal.
Noon Lunch. It is usually rice with a meat and vegatable sauce. Sometimes tofu and carrots, sometimes goat meat and potatoes. Occasionally, it is curry (mild) or chicken dumplings.
12:30 to 1:30 More meetings or prep.
1:30 to 3:30 Teach more small kids.
3:30 to 4:30 More prep time.
4:45 to 7:00 Tues--go home. MWF--Teach 3rd grade. The kids are very well-behaved and I like them a lot. Next week I will teach them cursive. Th--Teach first grade. The kids are hellions, but the principal lectured them today, so maybe they'll be better.
7:00-9:00 More prep.
9:00 Go home
9:15 Drop off bike and walk to iced juice place. (I will try to take a picture of it, BTW. It is run by 3 sisters and the youngest is Tressa's age. She reminds me of her.) Maybe buy some ramen noodles from 7-11 or the corner market or buy dinner on food street.
9:30 Watch a movie or X-Files with roommates.
10:30 Watch Simpsons in bed with Paul.
11:00 pm Go to sleep.

It seems like I have tons of prep and I do, but I have random blocks of free time each day within the general prep hours and a lot of prep time is taken up giving placement tests to new students.

Taiwan: Where People Do Kung Fu on the Street

Dear all,
Sorry I haven't posted for a while. Turns out moving to another country, starting a new job, and waiting for the Internet man to fix our connection at home limited my blogging time. Life in Taiwan is good. The title comes from my roommate Audra, who was joking about the apparent popularity of kung fu movies. (There's a all kung fu channel here. It's something else.) We live in a nice, very safe building on the west(?) side of town, just two blocks from the University. Living near the University is good because it means 7-11s are extra frequent (one at each end of the street--really) and there's an entire street devoted to food stalls/restaurants. Most of the food is cheap (35-40 kuai or $1-1.30)and, since they cater to the university, open late. Paul and I particularly enjoy patronizing the "Orange," an iced tea and juice place. After a long day of teaching/bureaucracy, nothing is more refreshing than iced passionfruit juice, especially if it's only 9 kuai for 10 oz. For unclear reasons, the Taiwanese don't have cold beverages. You can buy refridgerated juices, milk or water, but tap water and water coolers (like at the school or church) only have warm and hot options. Ice is also non-existent outside of McDonalds and the iced tea/juice stalls.

Yesterday we took the physical exam for our work visas. It was pretty painless. They verified we a)aren't blind, b)have no serious heart conditions or c)TB or d)abnormally high blood pressure. (I had to do that twice because the blood pressure station was next to the blood drawing station, a source of considerable anxiety) The also drew blood, to test for HIV/AIDS, I think. I was quite scared, but the technician assured me (in very good English) that his technique was "very good." It was. I barely felt a thing and what I did feel was very mild. It only took one try and maybe 30 secs. Less than ten hours later, you would have never known I had some blood drawn. No bruising, no hole, nothing. If I wasn't married, I would have married him on the spot. I am still in awe of his "very good" technique. I have to go to bed, but I'll try to write more and post pictures of our street at night, the Buddhist temple/convent (Sorry to those who I told it was a Daoist temple. I had only seen the building from the side and when I finally saw it from the front, I realized there's a giant swastika on the top, which is a Buddhist symbol. It also explains why I had been seeing Buddhist nuns about town.) and the building we attend church in on Tuesday evening.