90 Days and it's byebye Taiwan :( and :)

Plans to return to the US have officially been set.  By officially, I mean we've purchased our plane tickets!!

They are as follows:

Well, first, I should say that my mom will be here to visit at the end of July!! I'm quite excited that she's coming, and although it's at the end of a year of being away, it's still super wonderful!  She'll be here until August 7th, which is when she and Greta shall depart.

Originally we wanted to travel around Asia some more, since you know, we're in Asia.  But getting Visa's to enter the countries and flights are really quite expensive.  And in Europe, you don't need a Visa (if you're American), so it made more sense to travel there.

Anthony and I will be teaching until August 15th.  Then we're in the process of trying to plan a scootering trip around the island with a friend or a few.  It frightens me a bit, as August is heavy typhoon season, and we want to see the East coast.  This means being right on the water, up in the mountainous regions of Taiwan.  Mudslides... no thank you.  But we'll figure it out, and probably just put on our big boy pants and go.

That puts us in Taiwan until August 27th.  Next the two of us are headed to Ireland for 6 days.  Still unsure if we'll book an extended tour, or just explore the country by ourselves.  But we're going.  Mhhhhh  fresh brewed Guinness!  Give me advice if you have it.

Then, we shall continue on to Germany where we'll stay with my grandparents for 10 days.  I'm really happy that they'll get a chance to meet Anthony, and to see them again of course.  I can't wait for my grandma's cooking... and ALL THE CHEESE!  Whilst we're in Germany we'd like to take probably a 2 day trip to Amsterdam or another interesting surrounding city.  So many places to go!

That means we will arrive into the United States of America on  WEDNESDAY  SEPTEMBER 12, 2012 at 6:30 PM!! (Happy Birthday to Bre!)  We're flying in to Minneapolis, and will most likely be spending the weekend in St. Cloud kicking it with our friends who still reside there (Happy Birthday to Mara!)

Next we'll be in Verm for X amount of time, as Anthony and I are both on the look out for jobs, anywhere and everywhere, and hope to know what city we'll be living in and what we'll be doing before we come back... otherwise we'll just have to spend the rest of our lives living in his parent's basement.  So... find me a job, and one for him, too.


What else have I been up to this week?

 Well, I found Shasta Pop!! No Grape Shasta though, which is my fave.

I've been eating a lot of Hami Melon.  It's actually Honey Dew.

I've also turned into an old angry person as I grumbled about this student writing in bright obnoxious colored gel pens.  (Remember when we were banned from using them at school on homework? I should instate that policy here.)

Then Dawn and I played with this awesome huge dog we found at an antique store/ bar.


I tried to stand over him and showcase his height, but he wasn't having it.  I think he was upset about the dog on my shirt.

A Week of Stunnin' with my Love-Glue-Gunnin'

           Yesterday was Thursday, it was time for GAGA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Greta and I went to the concert with two friends, Robin and Victoira, who live in Taipei, which is where the concert was.  First we went to a BBQ restaurant for some yummy eating pre Gaga. 

 We for reals didn't plan this, but we ALL ended up with ridiculous tiger shirts!  Greta and Victoria with the same ones.   

Then we arrived at the Nangang Exhibition Hall, and after getting stocked with some beer from the Hi-Life next door. We were ready.  Getting in to this concert was nothing like entering concerts in the US. Usually they scan your body, check your bags, no liquids.  Well we walked in the door drinking a beer, wandered around, found the entrance to the arena area, they did say we had to finish our libations before entering, but little did they no we had more in our purse, because they didn't check them.  Victoria says "Geeze I could have brought a bomb with me!" The security must not have understood it, because they didn't even glance at her.  Entering the arena was ridiculous.  It was like a high school gym, with folding chairs set up! Am I  at prom or a Lady Gaga concert?!  Our tickets had assigned seats, and the chairs were numbered, but there were no ushers around making sure you didn't steal other's spots.  So we took the closest open places and joined the rest of the crowd standing atop the little tin chairs and danced the night away.  Pretty dangerous to have drunk rowdy fans dancing on folding chairs, and some security did come by a few times telling everyone to get down, but then que her next big hit and we were all right back up there.  

            The show started at 7 30, and there was supposed to be an opener, Zed I think?  Something I'd never heard of.  So we didn't go inside until like 7 45, but she had already started!  So we missed probably a song or two, but oh well.  It ended a little before 10, it didn't go on for as long as I thought it might, but it was pretty spectacular!  Rumor was that since it was such a smallish venue, she couldn't do her full stage set-up and have a very big Monster Pit, but she did bring a full size castle that she weaved around in and out of during the night.  Naturally there was a lot of strange things going on, like before singing Alejandro she came out on a couch saying how it was made from parts of all of her ex-lover boyfriends.  She also wore a meat looking outfit (again) and there was a rotating meat rack in the castle at this point.  She talked to the crowd a lot, which was cool and took about 15 minutes to talk about people who are gay and how to be accepting while tying a rainbow flag together with a Taiwanese flag.  Then later she asked how to say the word "pussy" in Taiwanese.  Also, her butt was exposed about 80 percent of the time.  

       I'm pretty sure there were equal amounts of guys there as girls.  Next to me was a Taiwanese guy, by himself.  But don't feel bad, he was drinking his beer and rocking out and having a good time.  

The Monster Castle.  And look at the alll those glow sticks!

Just a bunch of thugged dudes, with glow stick bunny ears, at a Gaga concert.

This was a weird "magic mirror" of herself and the lips would move and talk, it was kind of scary.   Getting emotional about gay people and Taiwan.  

      Once the concert finished, and it wasn't as late as we had anticipated, we decided to go out for a bit.  I mean, we all had subs for our early morning Kindy classes the next day already.  

A lot of Taiwanese people stopped us and asked to take our pictures, they liked our outfits and said we were cute :)

On the MRT to the Brass Monkey, we were laughing about this guy holding a Hello Kitty bag.  Victoria told him she liked his bag and he was like "ohhhh I LOVE my Hello Kitty!" Then we asked to take a picture.  

Luckily, Thursday night means Ladies Night at the Brass Monkey, a bar in Taipei.  So we went, got in for free, had some free drinks and continued dancing dancing.  Victoria started talking to some guy from Canada who was in town for a friends wedding this weekend.  Around 1 we decided it was probably time to go, and Greta and I still had an hour cab ride back to Jhongli.  This guy was either super wasted or just insanely nice, but before we left he kept trying to give us money to pay for our long cab ride back.  We said no, but he kept shoving it at us, and, well, we ended up with a "free" ride back to Jhongli.

        Now sometimes it's challenging to find drivers in Taipei that will take us all the way to Jhongli.  When it's so late and there isn't much traffic, it only takes like half an hour.  We lucked out and the first cab we tried was willing to, and somehow Victoria managed to tell him that first we needed to go to her apartment, because all of our things were there, and for him to wait outside for us, and then we'd go to Jhongli.  We got our stuff and were headed home.  Greta and I fell asleep once we were out of the city, and I woke up to the driver trying to talk to me and probably saying something about being lost.  He didn't speak any English, I didn't know what to tell him.  Greta and I surveyed the surroundings, we had no clue where we were, or if we were even in Jhongli.  Shit.  Well good thing there was a man standing outside the OK Mart at 2 am, so the driver pulled up and asked him for directions, he just hopped on his scooter and led the way!  We made it hooome!

                                                       My Gaga shirt. 

    

       On Tuesday as I was driving home from work in the afternoon, I went over a larger bump, and began hearing a scrapping noise.  I pulled over, and what do ya know.  My exhaust tail pipe thinger was dragging on the road.  The screw that holds it up clearly fell out.  I tried to continue on just driving slower, in search of a scooter shop, and pulled in to the first thing that resembled a repair shop.  Well they didn't do scooters, but pointed me down the road, then I stopped at the next place, and they pointed me down too, but this guy got on his scooter and led me to the place and then spoke to them.  No one spoke English too well, but it was pretty apparent that my exhaust had detached and needed attention.  When the guy looked at it, he took it completely off and showed me that it was cracked all down the middle, not so repairable.  So he put a new one on, and it cost me 1,000 NT (about 30 US).

My old nasty exhaust, now I have a splendid new shiny one, but not a picture of it at the moment.  

    Wednesday we had another field trip for Kindy.  This time we were going to the hospital/clinic!  It makes sense as our Theme this unit is My Body.  However, we spent a lot of time on the roof of the hospital looking at the garden and learning about the flowers and plants.  Or I can only guess that's what they were saying, they were all talking in Chinese.  So I just hung out, stood around, got paid, helped lift the kids up to the sinks in the adult bathrooms so they could wash their hands.  

Learning about plants and herbs that smell nice.  

 This kid sweats insanely.  He had a towel wrapped around his head to stop it from dripping all over himself.  

My Kangaroo's chillin' in the clinic. Deacon looks like he's not doing so well.. haha 

    Now today is Friday, and the only really interesting thing that's happened to me is that I forgot all of my rain gear in my apartment.  Usually I keep it in the seat of my scooter, but it was really pouring Thursday morning when I got home, so I brought it inside to dry.  I left this afternoon without thinking about it, and was like "uhhhhhhh" when I realized it once I got to my scooter.  I didn't want to walk back to the building and go upstairs to get it, so I just hoped I would be lucky.  The sky was dark and cloudy, it wasn't looking good, but I made it to work still dry.  Then an hour later the torrential rains started.  This season is called Plum Rain Season.  I decided this is because it will be nice out, and then BAM heavy heavy rains for just a little while, and then it's fine again.  But really it's because this is the season that the plums are growing, and the rain helps them.  Anyways, the huge Plum Rains had started, and I was not looking forward to driving home in it.  I figured I'd have to stop at a 7-11 and get a little plastic poncho.  BUT when I got done with class, it wasn't raining anymore! Yippee. 

Tequila and Fireflies

If you know me, you know that I love Cinco de Mayo. Sombreros are funny, tequila is great, and it's completely obscure that we should be celebrating it in America.  And this year I celebrated it in Taiwan.  Lucky for me, one of my good friends that I work with happens to be Mexican!  With his cultural background, and my desire to bring everyone together and make margaritas (though sadly there were no margaritas to be had, however we succeeded at pina coladas that didn't taste quite right), the Cinco de Mayo festivities were put together!  Abe planned the menu, and cooked everything, but it was held at my apartment because we have a larger kitchen and more space.  About 15 people came, and we all ate a lot, and there were still leftovers!  We didn't get any complaints about having so many people over, and Anthony even offered some food to the mean night doorman, he tried a bit of an enchilada and said it tasted like pizza.  Ha! We caught him speaking English, he always tries to pretend he doesn't understand us, such an snarky man.

Abe constructed flowers out of tomatoes.  I have no  idea how.  There he is cooking, probably yelling at us to get out of the kitchen.  

 The enchiladas!

 Abe also made a fruit basket, out of fruit.

Tequila!  Don't be fooled by there smiles, I had to practically force everyone to have a shot of tequila together.  It just wouldn't be Cinco de Mayo without it!


Right now it's Firefly season in Taiwan.  I didn't know such a season existed!  Apparently it's mating time for the fireflies, so they all group up and flash immensely bright out in the woods.  We decided to scooter and check them out.  We went to  a "town"/area called Neiwan, a little over an hour drive from Jhongli.  We were hesitant to go due to all the surprise rains, but left around 6 pm on Saturday evening.  Also, Peja, a Taiwanese friend, couldn't come with us, so we would have no one to help us in case we got lost.  Oh, and we were following a hand drawn map... BUT, we found Neiwan, or at least I think we did.  We walked around the street markets for a while, getting some food and seeing what kind of trinkets they were selling. I had some fried taro I think?  I'm actually not sure what it was, but it was good.  And I had some Egg Pudding Ice Cream!  It was fabulous, I may consider making the hour drive again just to get some! 

The map to lead you to the fireflies?  Maybe, but we found them by some (most likely) drunken Taiwanese man that was really excited about speaking English and kept shouting "fiiuh fly! dis way!" Then he'd wiggle around and should "fiiuh fly!" again.  We decided to follow his direction, and made it there.  It was a nice walkway a bit up in the mountains with no lights, so a bit spooky, but really peaceful and quiet.  There were other people there, but not mass amounts.  The number of fireflies wasn't as high as I was anticipating, but still pretty neat to see.  Guess they weren't out doing it too much on Saturday night.

Oh, and there was this giant roast pig chillin on the table in the streets.  

some things I enjoy, and some other things

Wanna know what I like?  Coming home from work and feeling kinda ehh about the day.  A small Taiwanese boy holds the door open for me, he was just dropped off by his school bus and is all alone.  I thank him in Chinese, and he continues to try speaking with me.  I try to tell him (in Chinese) that I'm sorry but I don't speak Chinese.  Or more accurately I said, "Sorry, English."  because I can't make many full sentences in Chinese.  I can pick out that he calls me "foreigner."  The elevator arrives and we get in.  I ask him what floor and he tells me "7" in Chinese, but hops to reach the button by himself. He's still jabbering away, but I don't know what he's saying.  He's very loud and happy.  I ask him what his name is, and he says "my name is Iiiian" "Hi, Ian.  My name is Annika."  (I almost said Teacher Annika! ahh) He looked at me and got a big smile and started laughing saying something about me being a foreigner and English again.  The ride to the 7th floor had come to an end and he said "bye-bye" to me, but I dazzled him and said goodbye in Chinese.  Before the doors closed I heard him run into his apartment and start talking really excitedly.  He was such a cute, happy boy! How have I never ran into him before?

Then there's the other side of children which is not so pleasant.  Enter my Treehouse 2 class.  They've come a long way from when I first started with them, but are still a quite devilish.  A lot of them come about half an hour before class actually starts, and since we've been running the AC in the classroom I usually go sit in there with them.  They've been trying to teach me a slew of Chinese words and phrases lately, but really half the time I think they're just trying to get me to say naughty things.  They like to make fun of me and try to poke my butt and pull out my nose ring and touch my hair, I tell myself they tease me out of affection (I can only hope).  They kept badgering me about a Chinese name and my lack of one, so they took it upon themselves to name me.  (No, they didn't drop a set of car keys!)  They were throwing ideas back and forth, I'm sure trying to pick a good one.  Chinese names are names in the sense that really it's objects or words put together and that's your "name."  That's why many of the parent's give the kids English names like Apple.  They finally agreed and told me my Chinese name would be "Pangzi."  "It means fat man!," they squealed at me.  Meet Teacher Annika's Taiwanese alias.  Fat Man!

But wait!  The TH2 kids redeemed themselves, but deciding to name me once more a week later.  Perhaps they had forgotten of the first name bestowed upon me, but they were bickering again about what my Chinese name should be. This time they gave me some options, telling me what each one "means."  They've now named me "WhenDowHwha"  which means something like when flowers smell good.  I was sure it was probably the exact opposite of smelling good, but I asked one of the Chinese Teachers and she told me the same meaning, so unless they've roped her into their taunting games, I guess now my "name" isn't so mean.  

Now, I shall show you my specialty of team name drawings.  In most classes each side of the room is a team, so they get to pick their team name, and then you draw it on the board.  Well, I don't like getting requests for lions and tigers because dammit they're difficult to draw!  My TH has been obsessed with "fire" anything for the past few months.  Mainly "fire ghost" is what they always want to be, but sometimes I get sick of that and make them choose other fire objects.  Sometimes it's "fire Teacher Annika"  or "fire snake," on Wednesday they wanted "fire superman"  I was pretty proud of him.  The other is my signature "fire ghost."  Sometimes I make it a girl ghost with a bow on top.  I didn't plan to get any kids in the picture, but I brought out my camera and they jumped in front and then begged for me to take more!

Onto something that I neither like, nor dislike.  I'm not sure what to think about this subject matter.  My kindy classroom received some new books for the kids to "read."  They're 3, so it's more like looking at the pictures and asking lots of questions. "Teacher Annika look! Teacher Annika look!  What's this? Teacher Annika look!"  The old books were about different animals, baby kittens, frogs, one about pigs with it's head in a yellow bucket that they would laugh at every day and say "crazy pig!"  It never got old (to them).  The new books are more.. informative?  They're in Chinese (they can't read in Chinese yet, either) so I'm really unsure of what the messages are, but the pictures are pretty redic.  Enter a book about a semi-cartoonish boy floating through clouds with fish, naked, then he's in a bathtub waist deep in water with a girl with their butts to the front, they're standing with their heads twisted over their shoulders looking at the bubbles coming up out of their ass. "Teacher Annika what's this?!"  Uhh.. that's what happens you fart underwater, children.  We still have a book about animals, but this one's all about their poo.  One page displays an array of animals all with their rears to the front showing how different their shit looks as they drop it, at the end of the line is a person, squatting over a bucket.  Then there's one that shows the journey of a large nose.  It plays the piano, goes to sleep, runs around the park, grows a mustache.  They like to point at this one and say "Teacher Annika, aachooo."  They know what a nose is good for.  Then the last one that sticks out to me is about a see through man and you can see his heart and the course of blood flowing through his body.  He falls and cuts his knee and it squirts out everywhere.  

I've posted before how I've grown to love all the variety of teas and drinks that Taiwan offers.  Not all, but many.  This is a drink that actually Anthony is addicted to at the moment.  Oddly enough it was a co-workers birthday on Wednesday and she brought these in for everyone.  Usually they just get Pearl Milk Tea, so I was surprised to see this.  I think it's passion fruit juice with green tea and seeds and bubbles and jelly bits.  Sounds and looks a bit repulsive.  But it's divine.  I got the drink right before my TH class and the kids were all jealous of it and trying to teach me how to say it in Chinese.  It's a really long name and quite challenging, so I don't think I'll be attempting to order it in Chinese anytime soon.