Woah, It's April 1st!

     Bollucks, it's already April!  I haven't really gone on any trips or anything for quite some time now.. just a lot of work, and weekend fun, but all in Jhongli.  I guess my birthday happened!  That was exciting.  I suppose I should say "our" birthday, as clearly it was Greta's birthday as well.  We had a good day of happiness, even far away from many of our friends and family.
      One of our Taiwanese friends, Rainy, works at a salon and gave us manicures as a birthday present!  It was very sweet of her, and it was fun to get our nails done, just polish though, no fakies.  Since our real birthday was Friday and everyone has to work Saturday mornings, we didn't do much that night, just went to the bar in the park for a few drinks.  We went out Saturday night, which was also St. Patrick's Day!  Peja, a Taiwanese co-teacher of mine, said he had never heard of this holiday before, but was all up for going out to celebrate with us! First we went to a restaurant with a group of like 15 people.. I didn't even realize I knew that many people here! It was really nice.  Some of our friends from Taipei came down, and Nate from Taoyuan.

Some sides of the table at dinner. 

                                                Balloon people!                                           

        After supper we stopped at The River to have some Guinness and Jameson.  Jinger, the bar-tender gave us some supplies to make balloon... things, so we made some hats and accessories to give us more green.  Then we went to Search where dancing and fun times were had.  There definitely weren't too many people wearing green, but a few other foreigners out that were dressed for the "holiday."

       I was scheduled to have my first Kindy field trip two weeks ago, we were going to visit the park and have a picnic!  I didn't get my hopes up much, because it's always raining, I didn't think it'd be much of a plan to go to the park when it's all wet.  Of course it was raining the morning of our trip, but later in the day it got quite sunny and warm, so we opted to let the kids bring their packed picnic sacks, which were just full of sweets and candies, outside to the play area and eat out there for a while.  I think they enjoyed it?  Now the weather has improved a lot and we've been without cold, rainy days for like a week!  It's obviously because I finally went out and bought some new rain gear... I haven't had to use the full set once since I purchased it, but that's fine with me!  (Please don't rain tomorrow now that I've spoken about it!!)

Here's a part of my class sitting together.  There's 18 kids total that I must chase after each day. We're called the Kangaroos!  

 To the right is Rice.  His parents don't want to change his name to something like Brice, because they say "but he loves to eat rice." As apposed to EVERY other Asian child?  I love that although he lacks the motor skills to do the Asian sign, he's still trying!  

                                                      SO precious!  Sharing his candy :) 

   













      Yesterday afternoon Greta and I decided to go shopping in an area near one of the universities in Jhongli. Helen had taken us in the fall, and we haven't been back since.  We were like "yea, we can remember how to get there, it won't be hard to find."  We set out on my scooter together around 3 pm, and after driving around in every direction where we thought it could be, after ending up in different towns, and after fighting through crazy afternoon traffic, we felt defeated and set back for home.  Oh, then I took a "wrong" turn, and there it was!  It was so simple and right there all along! We shopped for a few hours, I got some jewelry and a "dress" that turns out to fit me as a shirt, as it usually happens when I try to buy dresses here.  You rarely can try the clothes on, and I don't know why I even bother with dresses anymore! What's worse is that it looks just awful as a shirt and I'm sad.  Perhaps I'll just mail it home to my 5 foot friends!
   
       Onto today.  This morning around 10 am Greta and I went to play badminton with a few of my co-workers.  The other foreign teacher at my branch, Daniel, and his wife came, as well as two of my Taiwanese teachers, Helen and Cindy, and then three of their friends.  Helen and Cindy are bad ass badminton players!  They were on the team at university and their skills definitely surpassed mine!  Greta and I were the worst players there, but it was still fun to play.  Then we visited our fruit lady.  She has this fruit stand and makes delicious blended drinks.  She doesn't speak much English.  I think today she was trying to tell us how she thinks Greta and I are sisters.. but I can't be sure.  I don't speak much Chinese.  Then I watched Jurassic Park, for the first time ever, and then we went to see The Lorax!  We had to see it in 3D cause the 2D version was only in Chinese.  The effects were actually pretty good in this one.   I was slightly saddened by the lack of Dr. Suessyness, as in there wasn't all the rhyming and such, but it was a cute movie.  And doesn't he say " I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees," more than once in the book?

   Anyways, Tyler will be here in less than 2 weeks and then some more adventures shall be had!!
 

Here's What's Been Up Lately

      Tuesday in one of my younger classes we were explaining to the kids about the egg hunt/ fun house we're having for Easter.  The kids were like "What's Easter?"  So my Chinese Teacher told them, "Well, it's all about Jesus." The kids then asked "Who's Jesus?"  One of the little girls tells them in Chinese "Oh, he's very famous."  Well yes, I think Jesus is pretty famous.  Good job, Loretta.  Now they think we've got a celebrity coming to the egg hunt, we're hoping for a big turn out!
   
     I've been missing baked beans lately, pretty hard core.  I can find re-fried beans here, and although they're quite hella expensive, I can eat them when I need to.  Chili beans, black beans, gangs all here.  Where are the baked beans!?  And tortilla shells.  I need some tacos in my life.

    I was craving a blizzard, the ice cream, not the wintery storm.  Sadly there are no DQs around.  I saw one in China, but was an id and didn't get any ice cream.  Anthony got me a McFlurry instead,  I was pretty happy, but I miss Dairy Queen.

   Projectile vomit.  I had my first experience with it yesterday.  Luckily, it didn't get on me.  Deacon was eating uncharacteristically slow during snack time, and when it was closing in on 10 am and he still wasn't finished with his oatmmeal, I said "Deacon, why are you so slow today?"  He looked up at me with wide eyes, his spoon in hand, and some oatmeal dripping on his face.  My HRT, Kylie, (the Chinese teacher who teaches the 2nd half of kindy, in Chinese) said "Yea, he's a little sick today."  Hm.. ok. So I started class without him.  Not 2 minutes later, I look to see Kylie pulling Deacon up and rushing to open the bathroom door.  Not... fast.... enough.  Boom. Oatmeal vommed all down the door and on the floor.  Poor Deacon, he really was sick!  If only he had made it INTO the bathroom.  So Kylie mops up the mess... but... not the door?  It was just sliding down the door the rest of the class, and it smelled.  When I had to take the kids to the bathroom I just shoved them in and tried to avoid the area.  Oh, and Deacon continued with the rest of class, and had some dried puke on his shirt.  Why they didn't change his clothes or send him home, I can't tell you.  I mean they have spare clothes for when they pee themselves of puke, maybe this wasn't extreme enough.  I didn't ask questions, just avoided any contact with him.

Sorry.. no pictures this time!

The Lazy Bird

       

      It's time to let you in on the secret of The Lazy Bird.  Anthony first discovered it hidden about 4 blocks down and one block over from our apartment when we were still new to Jhongli.  He was just out walking looking for somewhere to eat, and saw a place called Rebels, they had hamburgers and Mt. Dew, so he got some food.  We he told us about it, he said down the street further was a place called The Lazy Bird that looked similar, and we should try it.  So one day we did.

       The Lazy Bird is fabulous because it has a whole mess of American food items, plus the only place I've ever found Dr. Pepper!!  A wide range of styles of hamburgers, omelets, quesadillas, breakfast foods, and recently added steaks and ribs and salads and such. A favorite of mine is the Mexican Breakfast Burrito. No, it's definitely not traditional Taiwanese food, it's a taste of home!  All week I eat at various local food shops, often places that seem a bit sketch but are recommended to be wonderful, and they usually are, I don't eat at McDonald's every day, though am sometimes tempted, so I look forward to eating here. 

        Not much more than a few weeks after our first experience of The Lazy Bird, Abe mentioned eating at a place with Bird in the name that had really good hamburgers.  We knew they must be one in the same!  Plans were set to eat there the following weekend.  For at least the past 3 or 4 months now it's our Sunday routine to get up and go for "brunch" at The Lazy Bird.  Sometimes just us and Abe, other times many of our other friends come too and we have a table of 10! Sometimes we don't go until 1 pm when we can finally peel ourselves from bed and feel like death from a long night our clubbing at Search and we can all meet to discuss the events from the night before, or other times it's earlier and we feel much more chipper, maybe even catch a movie after.  Everyone loves The Lazy Bird.

        There's a word in Chinese "gwan-chee" which means like the relationship or friendship you have with others.  We definitely have "gwan-chee" with the manager of this place and she knows who we are and is always so friendly.  Her English is pretty great too.  Abe is a man of routine and he always orders the same thing, cheeseburger (don't forget the mustard) with Sprite.  One time he ordered coffee, but they still brought him Sprite!  We went there the Sunday of Abe's birthday and she gave him a free piece of cheesecake, well I guess I'm not sure if that's what they do always for birthdays, so maybe it wasn't special.  This has proved to be a bad thing though because now I know how fantastic the cheesecake is and I always want to get some but must restrain myself.  It reminds of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake!

A bit blurry, but it capture's the joy of Abe opening his birthday gifts at The Lazy Bird.  Plus, you get a small glimpse inside as I haven't any other photo's from in there.  It's decorated really neat, with US License plates scattered around, there's one from Minnesota!!!!!!!!! and some other cool signs.  Plus, this picture shows that the place MUST be good, I mean there's Chinese people eating here (don't you guys watch Friends?!)

          Also, through teaching a number of classes filled with both pre and pubescent boys, I've learned that the word "bird" is slang for penis here.  At first I just thought they liked birds, this one class always wanted to be team "Little Bird" and would laugh when I tried to draw a picture of a small bird.  Then one kid filled me in, by  shouting from the back of the room, "Teacher Annika bird is.... " and pointed it out to me.  Oh great.  Well no more team bird!  The exception is that everyone is really obsessed with Angry Birds here too, the kids don't seem to laugh about that.  I, however, find it funny.  So to sum up, we always eat at The Lazy Bird, and often Abe will either say or send texts like "wanna hit the bird?" Pretty great.  

     Oh, if you're wondering about Rebels, the place that led Anthony to find The Lazy Bird, well none of us besides Anthony have ever eaten there, we'd feel like traders! 

Hey, Hi! Shanghai!

      February 28th is Peace Day in Taiwan, this year it fell on a Tuesday, and our wonderful school decided to give us Monday off as well, making it a long weekend!  For our trip to Beijing we needed to get a double entry visa, which meant we still had one entry to China left.  Although our last trip wasn't aaas wonderful as we had hoped and China had left kinda a stinky memory, we decided to use our last entry and return to China!! Actually we had booked this trip before our first trip, so we were stuck going, regardless.
    I had an open mind though, no biases.  This time we were venturing to Shanghai, south of Beijing the weather would be not as freezing and I'd heard good things, aside from it being one of the largest cities in the world with a population of 23 million!
    We arrived Saturday evening, and immediately found friendlier people than in Beijing. We needed help getting from the Metro to our hotel as our directions didn't pan out.  A group of people were trying to googlemap it on their phone, when that didn't work they called the hotel, got us a taxi and told them where to go in Chinese for us!  So wonderful.  The first evening we went to The Bund, what the waterfront area is referred to.  There's an amazing view of the city and it's really beautiful.  We walked around, found something to eat, that was about it.

      Sunday we set out to see some things.  The first stop was the Jade Buddha Temple, pretty much just another temple, but there's a large white jade statue of Buddha that's neat and a big pond full of huge Koi fish that you can feed and people were touching them, though I'm not sure you're really allowed too.

Not the jade Buddha, but some other interesting statues.

   









      Next was the Yuyuan Gardens.  It was really nice, with a lot of detailed rock sculptures and trees, and absent blooming flowers since it's February.

      Then it was time to visit the Oriental Pearl Tower, this is essentially a mix of the Eiffel Tower and the Seattle Space Needle.  Apparently Shanghai is referred to as "The Paris of the East" which..  is I guess believable.  They have a lot of high end stores and luxury things, I guess their fashion is part of what gives it that name.  So this tower is 1,535 ft. high and has a number of observation levels.  Near the top is a revolving restaurant, similar to the one in the space needle.  We decided to be big spenders and eat the buffet up there.  There were tons of different styles of food, including a dessert fondue bar!  After lunch we went down to another level where there's a glass floor that goes out overlooking the city, and you can even see the base of the tower you are standing on!  It was really scary to walk out there.  Part of the floor was wooden, and then it turned to glass, so you could stand on the wood and then jump out and look down like you would just plunge through and it was very frightening!

Eating lunch









                A view from the restaurant

eeee on the glass platform!














   




     After this we went next door to a large aquarium that was full of fun facts and neat creatures! We even got to touch a shark!  Well, a white-spotted Bamboo Shark, I think it may have been dead or asleep, and it felt like a potato.



     
   

I was obsessed with these jellyfish.  I could have stood and watched them all day. They were in a tank that kept changing colors.  It was beautiful.

    Then we went back across the river to The Bund to get a view of the city line during daylight.  Here we got tickets to take an hour boat ride down the main strip.  It left at 6 pm, so we got the very end of daylight and then part of night.  It was a nice scenic ride. Then we went to a shopping district, walked around, ate, and that was Sunday!

City line in day time and the other side of the river on the boat at night.





      Monday was the only day we booked a tour as we wanted to venture to some smaller towns outside of Shanghai.  Our tour guide, named Frank, was very friendly and very interested in us because A. we are Americans, and B. we teach in Taiwan.  He asked a lot of questions about the education systems in both places. There were 6 people on this tour. First up was the city of Suzhou (Sujoh) about an hour and a half outside of Shanghai.  Here we went to the Master of Nets Gardens, renamed from the 10,000 Volumes Gardens.  The guy had a huge library here but renamed it after a fisherman saved his son from the waters.  It looked pretty similar to the Yuyuan Gardens.  Then we got to experience another silk factory.  Now I've been to 3, I know all about silk worms and silk!  Then we ate lunch, where some lady sang at our table then got angry and went bad mouthing us to the other people in the restaurant because we didn't want to pay her.  We also got to see an embroidery factory which was amazing.  We saw the masters at work stitching pictures that take forever to complete!

The Master of Nets Garden

      We then went to another city, Zhujiajiao, or "The Venice of Shanghai."  They like nicknames for their cities.  This is a water town over 1700 years old! We walked around by the water and took a small gondola ride through the streams with a woman navigating the boat.  This lady also wanted to sing for us, but we said no.  Then it was back to Shanghai.  We passed a lot of fields with workers in the cone shaped hats that make me think of China, but I don't think they were harvesting tea.

     Once we were back in the city, Greta and I set off to do some more shopping, but were disappointed in the market we arrived at.  We met up with Anthony back at the hotel and set off together to the Jin Mao Tower.  Another huge building, with the tallest bar in Shanghai on the 88th floor called Cloud 9.  We went there for a drink and a nice view of the city.  We saw a lot of different views of the city on this trip.  I had a classy martini, and it made me miss the martini lounge in St. Cloud.  After this we tried to go to a Snow Bar, where it's -10 C and they give you fur lined North Face parkas to wear and serve over 150 different types of vodka.  Sadly it was closed.
     Our flight left for Taiwan Tuesday afternoon, so we checked out in the morning and went to another shopping market before we needed to leave.  This one was better, and we got some I heart SH shirts! SH standing for my mom, those are her initials, oh and Shanghai too I guess. I also got some jewelry.   And then back to Taiwan!  

Check me out on my scoooooter Crusin' to see my kindy kids!

     After living here for 6 months, I now have a SCOOTER!!! I had originally planned to get one when we first got here as the school I work at is about 20 minutes away in YangMei, but after seeing the crazy traffic and with all the rain, I decided against it.  I liked taking afternoon naps on the bus, and I was able to ride with one of my Taiwanese teachers 3 times a week on the way there.  For the past few months, waiting for the non-scheduled bus was realllly starting to piss my shit. Sometimes I'd stand out on the side of the street in YangMei waiting for over half an hour for a bus to roll up, often at night.  I felt like half of my time in Taiwan was spent waiting for buses and riding on them.
     I had looked at scooters before at a shop, and it looked like the cheapest used one was around 20,000 NT (just under $700 US). I didn't want to spend that much, on top of my fears of driving here.  Then there was a catalyst in making me actually take action.  I was offered my own kindergarten class!! The only issue is that it's at ANOTHER branch of our company in another town, Longtan, about 20 minutes away by car/scooter ( about 45 minutes by bus).  I wanted to take the kindy (the slang for kindergarten that all the cool kids use), but wasn't sure about busing it there in the mornings, back to Jhongli, then out to YangMei. Uhhh so much bus time and waiting! One of the foreign teachers here had a friend that was leaving Taiwan and looking to sell her scooter, and for cheap.  I met her and test drove it, although I really didn't know anything about anything, I've never even driven a scooter back in the states.  I decided to buy it for 10,000 NT ($340 US)! I accepted the kindy class, and my life schedule here in Taiwan has changed quite a bit!
      My kindy class is the youngest class offered, called showban, they are 3 years old!  There are 18 kids in my class and I see them every day from 9-11 30 am, I took this class over from a teacher (Dellie) who still works here but needed mornings off to volunteer to at an orphanage.  She's an excellent teacher and clearly a great person for giving her time to orphaned children, so they have been trained well over the past 6 months with her.  With the start of new semester that took place this week, a few new children joined, so I've been dealing with kids that just sit and cry for their momma's allll day long.  It's great.
    I'm still on my first week of being with the little guys, and it's gonna take some getting used to.  I had subbed some classes before, but they were all older levels, so the level of English with those kids was great and they were very independent.  My class needs to go the bathroom every 20 minutes, they don't know much English at all, and they need to be assisted with everything.  I mean yes, they're only 3, of course they need help with everything!  I just need to get used to their level.  They are so stinkin cute and full of love, that it's easy to be with them.
   
      The schedule of kindy is as follows:
 9-915  Exercise Time.    Do you remember having this in American kindergarten? I think we had something like it. At my branch the foreign teachers take turns making music mixes to dance to and teach the kids their dance.  The whole school is together in the morning for this time and it's unbelievably cute to see these tiny kids strutting around and signing to Lady Gaga, Britney, even some (mild/censored) rap songs.
915-930 Sharing Time.  How do you feel today?  I feel happy.  What's the weather like today?  Today it is rainy. That's that.
930-10 Snack Time.  Might as well be breakfast time.  My kids take ages to eat half of a bun or 7 flakes of cereal.
10-1045 English Time.  This is really the only time I spend actually "teaching" if you can call it that.  A few words and sentence patterns, ABC's, phonics, numbers, songs, tons and tons of games! Not even all on the same day of course.
1045-1130 Fun Time.  This can be whatever you want to do essentially.  Arts and crafts, obstacle courses, PARACHUTE!
1130- Lunch Time, and that's when I go bye-bye.
That's the morning of kindergarten, the afternoon is Chinese since it's bilingual.

So then Monday, Wednesday, Friday I scooter to Longtan in the mornings, then over to YangMei for my class at 130, then home to Jhongli at night.  Tuesday and Thursday I go to Longtan and then back to Jhongli since I don't need to be in YangMei until 440.

     I've had my scooter for like 2 weeks now, and I really love it.  Dellie gave me a lesson on how to drive it, half hour of practicing in back alleys doing turns and such, then out into the streets!  I was freaking out a bit, I felt so nervous, but once you're in it, it's really not that bad and doesn't seem as intense when you're driving through it as walking on the sidewalk seeing it all rush by.  I got a super protective helmet and am really cautious.  The thing is that there are soooo many scooters here, that people grow up knowing how to drive with and around them.  The cars seem to watch out for you.  Of course there are accidents, Dellie has actually been in like a dozen accidents, many because she admits she likes to drive too fast!  There are idiots that don't pay attention, so I try to be as aware of everything around me that I can. While in Helen's car I always saw scooters swerving in and out of cars, around buses, just being crazy.  I don't drive like that.
      Today I needed to get gas, and I learned that the Chinese to say "fill it up" is something like "jah-mahn" Like jammin, yah man Jamaican!  I felt pretty bad ass pulling up to the station and telling them which kind of gas I wanted, just numbers people, and to fill it up all in Chinese!  I probably sounded stupid, but they understood and I now have a full tank!

Here I am in my rain gear, a necessity as it's alllways raining at some point in the day.

Ready to go!

 Look out I'm coming!

 There she is!  That little bar thing is a makeshift tripod to screw your camera into so you can take video whilst driving! I shall document my trips to work some time, if it's ever not raining in the mornings.

   

Playboy Bunny, Tea, and Tights = Taiwan

         When I first arrived in Taiwan I put up a post about some things Taiwanese people are quite in to.  Over the past 6 months of living here, I've definitely noticed a large list of items and trends they are very excited about.  I'll let you in on a few of them now.

1. Tea

This is one obsession I am also obsessed with.  I love tea!  Tea shops fill the streets here, so many different vendors and stores.  Now, I'm not only talking about the traditional hot water and tea bag/tea leaf tea, Taiwan is famous for it's Pearl Milk Tea.  This delicious beverage consists of the obvious tea and milk, but the pearl's- they are the secret.  No, not real pearls.  The pearls in Pearl Milk Tea are little bubble shaped tapioca balls.  Sounds a bit.. yucky? Yes, it does.  But it tastes wonderful.  You know tapioca, like tapioca pudding, I guess I can't say I've eaten it much actually.  Anyways this tea, it's great.  I order it without extra sugar added, I don't want to get diabetes from drinking too much!  Milk Tea in general is excellent, and you can order it in a variety of flavors.  My recent favorite is Peppermint Milk Tea, both hot or cold is divine!

This tea shop is right around the corner from our apartment.  I frequent it often.  

2. 7-11/Family Mart
In Taiwan you can find a 7-11 or Family Mart on for realsies every block.  More abundant than Starbucks.  Often times you can come across a 7-11, and then you turn the corner, and whatdoyaknow, another 7-11.  Family Mart is the same thing, just another convenient store.  These convenient stores are special though.  you can do much more than purchase coke, chips, or beer there.  I pay my bills there, they have hot ovens to heat up meals that they sell, you can buy tickets to concerts or sporting events, send faxes or mail, print pictures.  There are around 4,790 7-11's on this little island. If I ever need anything, at any time, I've got my options of a 7 across the street, or a Family Mart right around the corner from my home!

3.  Tea Eggs

Here's a pot roaring away at the 7-11

See, more with the tea!  Tea eggs are hard boiled eggs, boiled in tea rather than water.  This turns the outside shell to a murky brown color, and inside the egg is infused with the elements and flavor of tea.  You can find them bubbling away in a pot at all hours inside one of the ever-open 7-11's, but also many "lunch box" restaurants carry them to pop inside the meals.  I find them quite delightful, and request them with my meals whenever I spot them.  I have to yet to try one from the convenient stores though, they appear a bit scary.


4. Tights and shorts
Fashion.  Tights are seen on many legs day after day, but generally they aren't paired with skirts or dresses, it's shorts the girls choose.  They also are big in to patterned tights, anything from polka dots, squares, laces, colors.  Lots of fun things! If I had to describe Taiwanese fashion, tights and shorts is what first comes to mind.  Of course, maybe it was Japanese fashion first, whatever, I don't know, but it's very popular here.

5.  Bean
I said before that jelly is everywhere.  As is the friend to jelly- bean.  Ha, I didn't even mean to do that!  Seriously though, you've got to watch out for it.  When we were in China, I ordered some ice cream thinking it was strawberry, no, it was red bean.  It actually wasn't bad though, I didn't really notice until I saw it on the receipt. You see the same thing in Taiwan, too.  Frozen bean paste bars, matcha bean lattes (this is a green bean, that fools you into thinking it's a green tea latte, until you take a sip), and they smear bean into a lot of desserts, often mixed with the jelly.  So red bean I think is maybe ok, I'm not certain of all of the different types of bean, but there's a lot of it out there, and most of it repulses me.  Usually if I find it in something, I try to nibble at it a bit, and can handle it in small doses.






Here's some pie I had (on accident) with some bean of the bottom, covered in a jelly layer, and something sponge-like on top.


6. KTV
This stand for Karaoke T.V, or so I'm told by Rachel.  The Taiwanese are HUGE into this.  There are huge KTV buildings all over, I walk by 3 almost every day.  Well, 2 for sure, 1 is quite shady and the Taiwanese teachers say to never go there.  I think it's a prosty-shop.  The only time I've done KTV was on the last night of training in Taipei with a group of like 40 people all shoved into one room.  Last Tuesday night, however, this changed.  Some of us had planned on going to a trivia night at a small restaurant (yes, conducted in English) but when we got there, found that it was on hiatus due to the Chinese New Year holiday.  Well, we were all together and decided to check out a KTV.  The deal is you pay for a private room with a big couch and table and tv and share it with your friends and pick your songs and sing away!  Around 30 US for the room, split by 6 people, so $5 a person.  Kind of takes away the appeal of karaoke back home, being able to listen to awful strangers sing loud songs, but this way is pretty fun too.  They cater beer to you as well, which naturally aids in the enjoyment :)

Rachel, Ben, Mike, Abe, and Greta ready to sing






Ben and Abe signing... some Jason Mraz, I believe!

7. The Playboy Bunny
Yes... it's super popular here. I don't know about the magazine, but the brand name. The label is on everything. Glasses, suitcases, shoes, bags, notebooks, and these are all items that my students tote around!  I have little kids walking around with backpacks sporting the playboy bunny.  I'll just go ahead and guess they don't really know what it represents. Otherwise they are being raised to become absolutely scandalous. They bedazzle it and use flashy colors. I can see it's appeal though,  just a cute little bunny.  How can they resist the cuteness!?

La La Lanterns

        Lantern festivals are very popular in Taiwan, particularly during Chinese New Year.  One of the most famous festivals is held in the tiny town of Pingxi.  (If you watched last season of The Bachelorette, during their stay in Taiwan, they go on a date to this town to light off their own lanterns on the railroad tracks.)  It's one of the biggest lantern festivals, and crowds of around 80,000 people invaded this little place to take part in it all.  I decided to make myself part of that number! 

     It was a hectic attempt to make it in time, as we had to work on Saturday afternoon, Anthony and I until 4:30, others were off earlier.  During lunch time we were discussing possible transportation routes with some of the Chinese staff at school.  They said we were nuts; not only would it be insanely crowded but getting their alone would be quite the challenge, not to mention our time constraint.   A Chinese teacher, Peja, said there was no way we would make it with traffic, that we should just go and spend the day on Sunday when we could send up our own lanterns.  But then we would miss the night time release of hundreds of lanterns as that was only going on this Saturday night, that was the main thing I wanted to see! 

        We decided that Abe, Greta, and Mike would take off earlier on a bus to Taipei where they would find where we take another bus to the little town of Pingxi.  Then they could tell Anthony and I exactly where to go since we would be running behind.  Later in the day, though, Peja told me that he had decided to make the trip to Pingxi as well!  He's from Taiwan and had never experienced the festival there, large crowds aren't his thing, but he thought that now he wanted to see it for himself.  This worked out really well as he would be driving his car with a friend, and there was room for Anthony and I to ride with!  We drove to Taipei and he knew where we could hop on a bus to Pingxi, another 45 minutes. 

       Getting off the bus it didn't seem so bad, there was an outrageous amount of buses running back and forth.  We didn't need to walk very far before hitting the masses of people, though.  It was immensely packed, like so you couldn't move sometimes.  Good thing for cellphones, we were able to find Greta, Abe and Mike quickly.  Apparently the President of Taiwan had been there and given a speech shortly before we arrived.  Abe thinks he bumped into him and the security gave him a nasty look!

   Pictures just can't show how awesome the lanterns being released were. It was really foggy which caused a lot of blur. 

      We also quickly lost Peja and his friend, they were off to find some other people they knew, too.  We made our way through the streets, it was full of typical food vendors and trinket shops, as well as many places selling big lanterns you could buy, write on with a blank ink paintbrush, and then light off into the night sky! We bought some lanterns and got to work decorating them!  You are supposed to write your wishes for the new year on the lantern and then send them up.  

People who could write real Chinese wishes! 

 Our not so Chinese messages.

      Abe, Victoria, Robin, and Mike with their lanterns! 

    We were now ready to send off our lanterns.  With the help of the old man who sold them to us, we had the proper materials to set fire underneath and away it went!  It was pretty neat. Naturally there was also an ass load of fireworks going off at every moment, some pretty large ones that rained down around us. 

             There's our lantern somewhere up in the sky!

     The festival only went until 9, an early night right?  This is the time they stopped have huge releases of lanterns, you could still send off your own, and all the vendors shut down.  This is also the time all of the thousands of people wanted to get back on the buses that brought them to Pingxi and go into the city.  This equals massive lines with lots of waiting.  We weren't even sure when the end was, and there was a lot of security with those glowing sticks directing people this way and that.  We saw a gap and tried to jump in, but then some Chinese lady started bitching about us cutting in line.  She called the security over and we pretended to be stupid foreigners, cause really we are and we didn't even know where to go.  She pointed us in the direction of the end.  About a mile later we had reached the end, seriously! It was out of control.  There were 2 lines actually, one for if you wanted to sit on the bus, and one for if your just wanted to be crammed into a bus soon like a herd of cattle.  We chose the cattle option. 

         Almost exactly 2 hours later, we were finally on a bus back into Taipei.  It was 11 20, the MRT closes at midnight, usually, and the last train home to Jhongli left at 11.  Poopsick. We made it back to the Zoo MRT line where they drop you off, it was midnight, and figured we'd just grab a taxi here and cab it back to Jhongli.  Only a few minutes had passed of us waving around trying to flag down a cab before a woman informed us that the only taxi's that came to this area were by phone call only. "Would we like her to call one for us," she asked?  Well that would be simply lovely! (See, people in Taiwan really are nice!)  "Where are you going?" she wondered. "Jhongli."  Her arm went up to her heart like she was having an attack, "Aiiyo! So far!" She exclaimed!  Yes, yes, but it's our only option.  Well it turns out ALLLLLLLL the cabs in the city of Taipei were busy, or none wanted to drive to Jhongli, because she didn't have any luck on the phone. 

        We were in luck though, that the MRT was still running from where we were, the Zoo is on the outskirts of town, and since getting a taxi was clearly an issue, they were letting people take the MRT.  We got on, had in mind where we needed to get off. Ok. 

         Not ok, a few stops down, Abe realizes we should get off at the current stop.  We make a dash to hop off the subway. The doors start closing.  Mike slides through.  Greta is left behind. AH! (She says everyone rushed over to her on the subway after seeing what happened and was like "ohhh you will find your friend, here, call them, oh no!" They were very caring.) We left Greta on the MRT, it's now 12 30 am, and we don't speak Chinese! Greta is reasonably quite upset, and we call her and make a plan, we'll just take another line to meet up with her at a different stop.  Wellll no other lines are running. We call her back and tell her to get off at the next stop, we find some workers and get a map with the Chinese of that MRT stop, find a taxi, and we're off to rescue Greta!  

       WE FOUND HER! Good, we're already in a taxi, she'll just hop in and he'll drive us to Jhongli.  No, he doesn't want to go there.  We offer him 2,000 for the trip (about 60 US, over double the normal price). No go.  We get out and see a sign proclaiming, TAXI STAND.  Hooray! And there's an SUV taxi already sitting there, (there are 5 of us, remember) Double hooray!  The driver wasn't paying attention, he was just chillin' in the taxi reading a book.  We walk over and he looks up after we're all surrounding the vehicle and I thought he was gonna lock the doors and drive away, his face was really scared!  Good thing he rolled down the window, and said Ok when we told him we wanted to go to Jhongli! 

         Back in Jhongli around  1:45 am, who knew it only takes 25 minutes without any traffic on the highway!