Happy Moon Festival!

Moon Festival, also known as Mid-Autumn Festival, falls on Sept. 25, so I have Tuesday off of work! I also have Saturday off because the kids have to make up their day of regular school on Saturday. From asking some people and researching it on the internet I've learned that there are several different versions of the myth behind the holiday, but basically the holiday celebrates abundance and family. There are so many versions, I can't even begin to list them here! Anyway, it's the second most important holiday here (next to Chinese New Year). Everyone gets the day off and families gather outside to "bbq" and look at the moon. Another big part of the holiday is the mooncakes, a traditional Chinese pastry which is only available around Moon Festival. I tried some at work and so far my favorites are the ones filled with red bean paste. I know it sounds weird, but it's good!

All is well in Taiwan. I can't believe it's just one week from October! It's going by so fast already. Teaching is good. We're getting another foreign teacher, an American girl, this week. I met her briefly on Friday. I'm glad that I won't be the only western female around the school now. I broke my streak of having no students cry in my classes. I had one student cry on Thursday because she couldn't answer a question and one four year old cry in the little kids class on Friday for no apparent reason. I try not to take it personally. In both cases the TAs pretty much deal with the situation but it's annoying because, especially in the little kids class, the other students get so distracted. In talking to other teachers and my roommates I think it's a pretty common thing to have students cry. Sometimes, though, I just want to be like "grow a backbone, kid!" I had one very interesting experience while teaching my advanced class on Saturday morning. Right now they're learning about nationalities (ie, so-and-so is from Greece, he is Greek, he speaks Greek.) So I was showing them where some of the places on their vocabulary lists were located on a map (U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Spain, Hungary, etc.) Well first I showed them where Taiwan was located and they first words out of their mouths were "So small! So small!" It really seemed as if they'd never seen Taiwan on a map before and that they had no knowledge of just how small it is. And this was my advanced class (mostly 12-14 year olds.) I couldn't believe it!

This past week was my birthday. I went out with friends to a bar downtown which was so much fun! Last night I had my first Taiwan club experience which was interesting. I went to Luxy, a very upscale club downtown. It was a lot of fun, too. The most amusing part of the night was the ridiculously dressed Taiwanese dancers who were on stage some of the time! They were wearing these huge, furry boot-like things! Many people wear boots here...I just don't understand it because it's so hot!

I've done a couple more touristy things since I last wrote. I visited Longshan Temple which is in the city. It was so cool! The colors are very vibrant and it was full of people praying, making offerings, and burning fires and incense. I also went to the "tourist" night market/Snake Alley. It's a huge night market and also a place where people go to eat snake for dinner. (I got that whole thing out of my system last summer in Vietnam when we had our feast of cobra, turtle, etc!) This reminds me, I'm not really sure that I've explained the whole night market concept. There are huge markets throughout the city with food stalls (and other products: clothing, shoes, etc). They open up at night and are filled with people (every single night of the week.) There's one about a 7 min walk from my apt. that I go to a couple of times a week. They have every kind of Chinese food you could want and also amazing fresh fruit juices. (I especially like the mango juice and the watermelon juice...just about $1 US!) I typically eat a beef and vegetable dish at one of the stalls which is about $3 US. The one by my apt. is huge to me but it's not even as big as some others I've been to in the city! It's pretty much what people do at night. I was joking with one of my roommates the other night about where Taiwanese go on dates. I said "What do you do? Go to the night market?!" (I was completely joking.) But he said that is what they do!

In other news...my first visitor is coming! Charlie just bought his plane tickets a few days ago and will be here December 27-January 8. We'll spend some time in Taipei, but will also travel around Taiwan for a few days. Well, that's it for now. I have posted a lot of new pictures on my photo site (photos of everything I talked about in this post, plus photos of my neighborhood!) So take a look!