Just another weekend in Taipei

Well I had another eventful weekend in Taipei. I went to my school company's "Summer Appreciation Party" at the Ambassador Hotel (a really, really nice hotel downtown). It was quite an interesting experience especially because I had no idea what to expect! Luckily I was dressed appropriately even though all I was told by my Chinese co-workers was was "no jeans" and that some of the girls there will be dressed like "hoochie mamas." All of the Taiwanese completely overdress, it was kind of funny to see. A party on Sunday afternoon and many of them look like they're going to a formal evening event (and the younger ones look like they're about to go out to a club). And they take pictures obsessively which is also kind of ridiculous! (I've added some pictures from the party to my photo site.) The food was awesome (mostly western, thank goodness) and the entertainment was okay. People from the different schools around the city performed. I had no idea our company had a branch that teaches Japanese, but those women did a traditional Japanese song and dance. And there were some singers and some other random stuff. But our table was towards the back so no one was really paying attention to what was going on anyway, all they cared about was socializing!

The other adventure of my weekend was riding the Maokong Gondola for the first time. It's a new cable car system that runs up some mountains in the outskirts of the city, near the Taipei Zoo. It just opened on July 4th of this year, so they're still working out all the "kinks." I knew this before I went (apparently it's been known to stop for 2 hours, lose A/C, etc), but I wanted to go anyway. So my roommate and I went with a group of teachers at night. Going at night for the first time was probably a good way to do it because I'm not so good with heights. The most amusing part of the ride was this
incident where our door didn't close after we went through one of the stops on the way up. Luckily we didn't get too far from the stop before they noticed what had happened but we were suspended there with a completely open door for quite a few minutes while they figured out what to do. It was especially amusing when the one worker who knew a bit of English yelled to us "There's a problem! Your door didn't close!" We thinking to ourselves "Seriously? we hadn't noticed." Well, after the workers ran around freaking out for a few minutes and even pulled the emergency button, they were eventually able to "rewind" us back to the stop we'd just passed. They whole thing was quite funny and we were laughing hysterically (probably both out of amusement and nervousness). Well, they weren't able to close our door, so we waited about 15 minutes for an empty car to come along. The most exciting part of that wait, besides all of the Taiwanese looking at us silly westerners with complete confusion, was when our broken car circled back down and a man jumped on top and tried to fix it as it was zooming through the station. Finally we got on another car and made it to the top! At the very highest point there are a bunch of traditional tea houses, so we had tea and dinner up there on the rooftop of one. It was really cool and the food was good (chicken, shrimp, squid, etc). The ride down was a lot less eventful. I can wait to go during the day and take some awesome pictures of the city!

I'm really thinking it's a good thing that I have good insurance...I've been here just barely one month and already I've survived a typhoon, an earthquake, and this gondola "incident." I think it's all downhill from here, right? :)

In other news, teaching is continuing to go well. It's definitely keeping me busy during the week! To all those who consider someone going to teach abroad for a year as "taking a year off," that's certainly not the case here! Yes, I teach 4 hours a day, but the lesson planning and grading makes for many additional hours! Teaching is definitely not something I would consider doing at home, but it's such a good experience here.

Well, don't forget to take a look at my newest photos. Enjoy!