Merry Christmas!

Christmas greetings from Taiwan! While you all are opening presents by the tree, my Christmas day is just about over. It was a good one! I had lunch at Chili's with some friends (a lot of my friends went home or elsewhere for the holidays, but some were still here). Someone suggested Chili's half jokingly when we were deciding what to do , but we ended up deciding on that. They import all their food from the U.S. so it's fairly expensive by Taiwan standards, but it was completely worth it since it is just like home. After our meal, which lasted several hours since we had several courses, we did some shopping and then went to look at the holiday lights around Taipei 101 (the downtown financial district). We even came upon a nativity scene surrounded by 45 different pictures depicting Jesus' life. Some of the (very simplistic) pictures were very amusing, and we could only imagine how accurate the Chinese captions were.

Charlie arrives in less than 48 hours. I can't wait! We're off to Kenting on New Year's day for a few days. Kenting is a beach town on the very southern tip of Taiwan. It is also a national park, so there's a lot to do. Other than that we'll be in and around Taipei.

Hope everyone had a great holiday! And, as always, check out my "Around Taipei" album for my new pictures from Christmas.

Wedding bells-Taiwanese style and Christmas festivities

It sure has been an eventful couple of weeks for me. The week before last I was sick with a cold I couldn’t get rid of. (As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post, many thanks to extreme changes in weather from one day to the next, as well as kids coming to school sick). So I finally went to the hospital to see a doctor. Health care is very good here and I went to the best hospital in the city, which also happens to be two subway stops from my apartment. The doctors speak English there, thank goodness. So I got myself checked in found where I was supposed to wait and had to wait about an hour for my appointment. The doctor was really good and understood everything I was talking about. He determined that I basically had a bad cold, but that it could get worse if I didn’t take couple days off of work. (So I took last Friday and Saturday off and basically did nothing but sit in bed. It really sucked, but I did finally get better.) He gave me a couple of prescriptions, too, which you pick up at a counter right at the hospital. In total, my doctor visit plus two prescriptions was just under $14US since I get Taiwan national health insurance through my job. I was pretty proud of myself for handling the hospital visit on my own and having no problems.

The Christmas festiveness has started, of course. So far I’ve been to two Christmas events. Some friends and I had a gift exchange last week. We all bought gifts under a certain amount and then did that game where you pick presents based on the number you pick and then you can steal other people’s presents. It was fun and I ended up with some pretty useful gifts. This weekend I went to a Christmas party at a restaurant/bar which was the company party for the school company a lot of my friends work for. It was pretty fancy (white linen table cloths, I’m not used to that anymore.) I had two huge platefuls of amazing western food…Turkey, warm cranberry sauce, potatoes, French bread, vegetables, etc. It was so good!

I also went to a wedding this weekend! My co-worker, Esther, had her wedding banquet which was so much fun! She has actually been technically married for a bit and she and her husband, Scott, have a baby boy. But they had not had their wedding banquet yet. It was at a very nice banquet facility outside the city. I really didn’t know what to expect, but it was pretty much like any western wedding reception, minus the dancing, but with a few different traditions added in.

Tradition #1: Everyone gives the couple cash in red envelopes (red for good luck). There are people at the entrance taking the cash and marking in separate books (one for the bride’s guests and one for the groom’s guests) how much each guest gave. I thought that was a little bit tacky until I was told the reason behind it…that way when the bride and groom go to the weddings of their friends in the future they’re supposed to add on to that amount a little bit more. I like that idea! Too bad I most likely will not be getting married in Taiwan!

Tradition #2: I’m not sure if this is how everyone here does it, but for the opening the bride stood on a little stage in the back of the room while her husband sang a song to her at the front of the room. Halfway through the song he walked back to her and then they entered the room together. Then they did a toast with their parents at the front of the room. They didn’t have a wedding party, but later in the reception a couple of their friends gave speeches.

Tradition #3: Instead of the western tradition of tossing the bouquet, the bride gathers single friends (male and female) around her bouquet and each person grabs a ribbon attached to it. At one time everyone pulls at their ribbon and whosever ribbon remains attached is supposedly the next one to get married. That person turned out to be the toddler next to me who my friend was holding. It was cute because she gave a little message of good luck to the bride and groom in front of everyone.

Tradition #4: The bride changes dresses three, yes three!, times during the banquet. She wears one for the opening, one for the main part, and one for saying goodbye to the guests. Also, the brides friends traditionally get a box of cookies at the coupe’s engagement party. They did not have an engagement party, so the boxes of cookies were given out today. I got one and it’s really elaborate…I’ll be eating cookies for a while!

And of course the big thing was the food, ridiculous amounts of it! Fourteen different types of dishes and soups were brought to our table. They had everything from lintel soup, to shrimp, chicken, cod fish, other types of seafood, to different pastries and desserts. I was so full, I couldn’t eat everything I wanted but I attempted to at least try everything. So all in all my first Taiwanese wedding was such a fun experience! And as always, I have a lot of pictures posted from the wedding on my photo site in my “Around Taipei” album.

Charlie arrives next Thursday, Dec. 27. I can’t believe it’s almost here, I am so excited! I’m working on finalizing plans for our trip. My mom is coming for about two weeks at the beginning of February. I have just finalized plans for that trip. We’ll be going to Hong Kong for about five days during the time I have off for Chinese New Year. Well, that’s it for now. Merry (almost) Christmas!

80 degrees in December?!

You’d never know it was December in Taiwan, today at least. It’s nearly 80 degrees and sunny. I went on a nice run by the river park near my apartment. People were out biking, fishing and playing baseball. I’ve been thinking on and off about buying a bicycle. Recently I’ve been kind of off of the idea, but today makes me want to buy one again. Tonight I went to a barbecue with some friends. It was such a great evening for it! I am trying to get over a cold though because of the ridiculous weather. One day it will be 80 degrees and sunny and the next day it will be 60 degrees and rainy. So because of the variation in weather, probably not helped by the fact that I’m around little kids all the time, I’ve gotten a cold a couple of times already. And I never get sick at home, so it’s annoying!

We have a new roommate in the apartment as of last week. The guy who was living here moved to a different part of the city, and a girl, Kaitlyn, has moved in. She’s another American teacher, from California. So now we have all girls in the apartment…Liz from Kansas (teaching English and studying Chinese), Judy from the Dominican Republic (studying Chinese), Kaitlyn and I.

We got a Christmas tree for our living room. The Taiwanese go crazy for Christmas, so there are Christmas decorations in many stores. I even saw an entire store dedicated to Christmas downtown last weekend , complete with life-sized Santas and blow up decorations. Our tree cost about $4US. All the decorations are extremely tacky here. So we got the basic lights (they’re colored and blink) and Christmas balls. It’s not the classiest tree ever, but it makes it a big more like home and Christmas-like.

Charlie comes in just about three and a half weeks. I can’t wait! He’ll be here Dec. 27-Jan. 8. We are going to take a four day trip down the island. First we’ll go to Tarako Gorge in the central part of the island. It’s really beautiful and one of the most visited places in Taiwan. We’ll rent a car (which is super cheap) and just drive around, and probably do some hiking if the weather is nice. Then we’ll go down to a town at the southern tip of Taiwan called Kenting. It’s on the beach and another of Taiwan’s most popular destinations. I’m not expecting to be able to lay out on the beach, but it will be warmer than it is in the north. It’s actually a national park, so there’s a lot to see and do.

I started my language exchange this week. (I think I mentioned it before.) The girl I’m doing it with is a co-worker of a friend of mine. They work at Sony here in Taipei designing video games. Her English is good, she just wants to practice some conversation. She has a book with different conversation topics which we’ll go through, but we always have good conversation, so I don’t think thinking of things to talk about will be hard. I also told her I would try to find some articles on some of the newspaper sites I read (Washington Post, NY Times, etc) related to art, which she is interested in. So we can read an article and then discuss it when we meet. For my end, I just want to learn some basic phrases and simple conversation. I bought two basic Chinese books, so that way I can pick and choose some of the things I want to learn. Learning languages is not my forte, but I’d really like to be able to communicate better than I can right now! The other night I saw something in a store window and couldn’t find it in the store, so I pointed to it in the window and said “where” in Chinese, and that’s pretty much what my Chinese currently consists of (in addition to “hello,” “yes,” “thank you,” some numbers, and some terms in yoga class.) I'll let you all know how my Chinese is progressing! That's all for now!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My weekend was filled with Thanksgiving. Since we’ll all be working in the evening of actual Thanksgiving I celebrated with friends this weekend. It began with a trip to…where else? Costco. I was tasked with pie and wine given my very limited culinary abilities. So thank goodness for Costco Pumpkin Pie! It was my first trip there since I’ve been here (there are three in Taipei, and one not too far from my apartment). It’s just like home, from the one hour photo, to the free samples, to the made to order birthday cakes. For Thanksgiving dinner #1 on Saturday night dinner we had a group of about 10 of us at a friend’s apartment. We were actually able to order a pre-cooked turkey, and had pretty much everything you could ask for in a Thanksgiving dinner (stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc). And of course, pumpkin pie! We actually sat around a real table and ate. It was so much fun! I even have some leftovers which I will look forward to later in the week. Thanksgiving dinner #2 was Sunday night with some other friends and was also a lot of fun! So it was a whole weekend of good food and Thanksgiving.

In an effort to improve my Chinese a bit, I am starting a language exchange with a girl this week. She is a friend’s co-worker. She’s known English for about 15 years, so it’s pretty good, but she just wants to practice everyday conversation. I told her that I would like to learn some basics: how to ask for what I want in a store/restaurant, and be able to make some polite conversation with people. So we’ll meet one night a week for dinner and practice both languages. Language exchanges are very common here and I’ve been thinking about doing one for a while, but was always hesitant to just find someone online. So I am glad I found someone through a friend. I will definitely write later about how it goes and what I’m learning.

Last weekend I went to a friend’s going away party at KTV (karaoke). It was so much fun! There are several places throughout the city where you can go to do it. They’re all basically set up like hotels, so your group gets their own party room with room service, and your own karaoke setup. The Taiwanese are obsessed with karaoke, and it’s often how they spend their Friday and Saturday nights. It’s only $30US (total for the entire group) for the room for however long you want it!

Photos from Thanksgiving and KTV are on my photo site in my “Around Taipei” album. Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m turning Taiwanese, I think I’m turning Taiwanese, I really think so…

Ok, so if you don’t get the title, I just changed the words of The Vapors’ song titled “Turning Japanese.” The subjects of this post are yoga and acupuncture afterall, so I thought the lyrics were appropriate. I have just started taking yoga classes at a little gym/yoga studio in my neighborhood. Right now I have an introductory membership for 10 classes, but I’m pretty sure that I will continue it throughout my time here. It’s all in Chinese, of course. And I’m the only foreigner. I kind of get the feeling that they’ve never had a foreigner take classes there, ever! But that’s fine with me. They’re all nice and try to explain things the best way that they can with limited to no English speaking abilities. I didn’t want to go to one of the big gyms downtown because I wanted the experience to be in Chinese and with all Chinese people. So I’m really excited about it and I think it will be a good experience for me. They have basic classes and advanced classes. So far I’ve been to one basic and two advanced. The advanced is more my speed (I did take one semester of yoga in college.) But I am still no where near as flexible as the other women in the class! I did, however, do one crazy back bend that I never thought I could do in the last class! So I am going to try to go to the advanced class more often, but will probably also benefit from the basic class on the days I can’t make it to the advanced one. Classes are in the morning so it works perfectly with my late afternoon/evening work schedule. I will be going a few times a week. I have also been running some. Running in the streets is nearly impossible, so I have been going to Chiang Kai-Sheck Memorial which has a huge plaza and is two subway stops from my apartment. I have also been running at an area called Peace Park which is three subway stops from my house. It’s like a very miniature Central Park with ponds and fountains, places to sit and relax, playgrounds and some small temples. Running is a bit difficult with the awful air quality due to pollution, but I'm trying to keep up with it. Running for exercise is a fairly foreign concept here, especially for females (gain muscle? what?!), so you can imagine the stares I get as I run. As a Taiwanese co-worker told me last week: “Taiwanese girls get their exercise from shopping.” Enough said.

In other news, I got acupuncture for the first time ever last week. I went with a friend who speaks very good Chinese and gets acupuncture often. With the Taiwan health insurance card I have through work I paid the equivalent of $3US for acupuncture and a visit to the “chiropractor” at a modern medical facility. It was quite an experience. I didn’t go for any particular reason, just wanted to try it. I had four needles in my right shoulder and two in my upper neck. You sit there with the needles, under a heat lamp for about 20 minutes. (No privacy in medical facilities here, so I was in the front window, facing the street. So again, imagine the stares. A white girl getting acupuncture?!) It didn’t hurt at all and was actually a really cool experience. They say it’s supposed to relieve pain, but I didn’t really have too much pain other than tightness in my shoulder. So I’m not really certain about how it affected me, but I definitely want to go and try it again! Then saw the “chiropractor” who kept insisting on cracking my neck (by whipping my head to one side). I declined and he was mad and kept insisting, but I didn’t give in. (My friend translated through all of this, of course.) And he told me my back was very tight, asked me what time I went to bed and said that was too late, that if I went to bed earlier my back would be better. Anyway, he gave me a good shoulder massage which was painful, but I know it did some good. All the Chinese people were laughing at me because they knew I was in pain! The “chiropractor” kept telling me to “suck it up.”

Other random things…School is going well. The Halloween activities were fun. The office staff came to each class for “trick or treating” with the students. I added a bunch of pictures to my photo site under the new “School” album. I went to a really cool (and free!) art festival called the Open Air International Arts Festival which was held at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall this past weekend. I saw an awesome acrobatics show on Sunday night. It was amazing! I am always adding to my “Around Taipei” album on my photo site, as well. There are some photos from the art festival on there, as well as some other stuff. So take a look! This weekend I’m going to have my first KTV (aka karaoke) experience in Taiwan. It’s a HUGE thing here. They have these super nice facilities where the lobby looks like you’re in a five star hotel. You rent out a room (with a stage, catwalk, etc) for your group. Should be an experience!

Finally, it's fall...a much needed update

It’s been way too long since I’ve written! Things have been busy. The weather is cooling off which is a very nice thing! I am no longer sweating all the time. The temperature has been in the lower 70’s during the day and the 60’s at night. You would think some of these people were in the Arctic because of how they dress though. Everywhere I see people in full winter clothing, winter coat and all. It’s pretty ridiculous. I think it’s not about them actually being cold, but having an excuse to wear different clothing.

Last weekend I went to a little town about one hour outside the city called Jiufen. It’s in the mountains and also right on the northeast coast. A long time ago it was a very small town with very few people, but when gold was discovered there in the late 1800s the population increased and by the 1930’s was known as “Little Shanghai.” For many years the town supplied gold to the Japanese empire. Now it’s a pretty touristy town with old teahouse and narrow streets and alleys. We were going to hike the main mountain in the town, Mount Jilong, but the weather was very rainy, so we decided against that. There’s a very long alleyway, Jishan Street, filled with shops, food stalls, and teahouses. It was so crowded due to the rain (because the street is somewhat enclosed). But the shops were really cool. We went to the Jiufen teahouse for traditional tea. The woman who served us was really nice and also explained how they make the tea, etc. The teahouse itself was really quaint and pretty and the courtyard of the teahouse had amazing views of the water. When we were doing in Jiufen we walked to the next town over, Jinguashi, which was about 2km down the road. It also has amazing views of the water. By the time we finally reached the town it was getting dark, so we didn’t get to see the Golden Waterfall. I really want to go back to both towns, however. The area was one of best places I’ve been to so far. Of course I posted photos and they’re in my album called “Jiufen & Jinguashi.”

Yesterday I went on a hike up the Tienmu Trail which is in the ritzy part of town, north of downtown. There are some teahouses at the top, so we had dinner at one of them. The place we ate at was so nice and had some fabulous views of the city. The food was also excellent. My photos didn’t come out too well because it was dark, but I’ve posted some in my “Around Taipei” album.

My school has decorated a lot for Halloween. And I get the vibe that dressing up is encouraged. Apparently teachers are already supposed to dress up at the end of this week since the kids don't all come to class on the actual day of Halloween. So I'm off to a costume shop with a co-worker friend tomorrow to try to find something. It's not really my cup of tea, but I don't want to be the anti-fun teacher and hopefully it can double as my costume for when I got out for Halloween on Saturday night! Pictures of Halloween at school to follow in the near future I'm sure. In the meantime take a look at the pictures I've added.

Happy Double Tenth Day!

October 10 (10/10) is Taiwan’s National Day. So I had yet another day off yesterday. We got last Saturday off, too, for another typhoon (the other typhoons have been kind of lame, but this one was really bad). Anyway, everyone has the day off on 10/10 and they celebrate it kind of like our July 4 with fireworks, etc. Some military planes have been flying over our apartment in the past few weeks (waking me up at 7am, I might add) practicing for the air show. So yesterday at 10am they all flew over. I was only able to get one okay photo. And last night as I was walking through the city we saw the fireworks show start.

For the day off some friends and I went to a town half an hour south of the city, Yingge (pronounced Inga), which is famous for ceramics. We also visited the next town over, Sansia, famous for the Tzushr temple. Yingge has a really nice and very modern ceramics museum. In fact, the ceramics festival is going on this month in the town so that was interesting to see, as well. The museum had some amazing pieces and was really interesting to walk through (and luckily all the information was in English, too.) Other than the museum we just did a lot of walking around the town. It has stores and stores and stores of ceramics. The best place was Yingge Old Street ,which despite it’s name was pretty modern and clean. That’s where most of the ceramics stores were. I got a set of beautiful plates for $9US!! (I keep saying I’m going to be SO cheap when I get back to the US!) I also bought a couple of really pretty vases for $3US each. My roommate got a beautiful tea set for just $18US. I think I am going to have to make it back there before my year is over!

When we (finally) found a taxi in Yingge we went over to Sansia. The Lonely Planet guide told us that if you visit just one temple in all of Taiwan, you should visit the Tzushr temple. At first glance we weren’t too impressed. The outside is kind of lame (not so colorful, maybe it’s just dirty, I don’t know) and the inside was much like Longshan Temple here in the city, except Longshan is bigger and brighter. So we were trying to figure out why the LP guide had steered us in that direction. (For my non-world traveling friends: The Lonely Planet guidebooks are, hands down, the best guidebooks ever and I buy one for every place I visit and they’ve never done me wrong.) We soon realized the reason they make such a big deal about it is for all of the traditional and very intricate carving and relief. It was amazing! All of the pillars have really beautiful carvings of birds, flowers, etc. The temple was originally built in 1769 and has been rebuilt three times. The last time was under the supervision of Professor Li Mei-shu, a Western-trained painter. You can see this and everything I’ve mentioned in this post on my photo site, of course!

We had another earthquake today at 11am. It was 5.5 on the scale and it’s center was near Taipei. I was sitting at my computer and definitely felt it! No damage or anything though so not too big of a deal, although there were some news reports about it. (I never thought I’d say an earthquake wasn’t a big deal!) So for those who are keeping track, it’s 3 typhoons and 2 earthquakes so far. Can’t believe it’s been 2 months already. Time is flying by! I keep forgetting to mention this in my posts but I’m learning a very tiny bit more Chinese. I now know how to count to 10, ask how much something costs, ask where something is, and some other really random words here and there. And it’s really exciting when someone actually understands me!