What would YOU put on your scooter?

     
      Yesterday was my LAST day of teaching in Taiwan.  The year went by in such a rush, I can't believe it's over.  I'm really much more sad then I thought I might be, but at the same time I'm very ready to see what's next.. because honestly I have NO IDEA what's next.  Anthony and I will be traveling for the next month, living as homeless wanderers, and we're very excited.  Moving away from the depressing subject of "what do I want to DO with my life?" let's discuss scooters.  I've written a few posts about scooters, and there will be another one coming once we return from our week long scooter excursion around the island of Taiwan.  For now, however, I will stick to scooters from the Taiwanese perspective.  Well, still my perspective, but on how the Taiwanese utilize these majestic motorized mobiles.

      I knew before coming that they were a very common form of transportation.  Although that is indeed extremely true, I was surprised at the number of cars you can also find on the streets.  What's fabulous though, is that the cars know how to drive with all the hundreds of scooters.  Most of them anyways, are respectful of the scooter lane and keep their distance.  No one wants striking and majorly injuring a human on a conscious, I hope.  There is the occasional ass hat that tries to speed around cars on a two lane and does so by driving in the scooter lane, but that's why one must always use caution when driving.  On to scooters.
      After only a few months it became clear that the people will use scooters to transport anything.  Propane, sure!  Strap it on the back, 3 big canisters?  Why not try for 4.  All deliveries for that matter are made via scooter.  Pizza, lunch boxes, tea, errrthang.  Super zippy and quick!  Even the mail men go about on their scooters.  They wear all green, drive on a green scooter, and have a huge orange bin with all the mail strapped on back.  Usually they drive right up on the sidewalks in the shopping areas and just drop the mail right on the shelves or wherever they see space.

      Scooters are also used for managing large recyclables, such as massive amounts of flattened cardboard, huge sacks of plastic bottles, lots of shit they can bring and get money.  People also tote around large amounts of vegetables.  It's not uncommon for me to see old people carrying big bags of cabbage and sprouts dangling around by their legs, and exhaust.  
       People are included in this cramming crap on to the scooter as well.  It's not uncommon to see a family of 5 on 1 scooter.  Mom, dad, brother, sister, and a baby all wedged up in there.  If the whole family doesn't come along, maybe mom just brings the baby along, she slings it over her front in one of those Baby Bjorn things, just bouncing around on the roads with tons of traffic and dirt all over the place.  Suuuuper safe for baby!  Don't forget the dog either. Whether it be a little dog, which is what it tends to be as most Taiwanese are frightened of large dogs, chilling out in the open, or poking out of a purse.  If by rare occasion it's a larger dog, they ride by their feet with ass and head hanging over via wide load.

 Yea.. this guy for sure saw me taking this picture. Big deal. Check out their kid in a little chair at the bottom!

       Aside from things the Taiwanese carry on their scooters, the fashion when riding one is also pretty choice.  As I've said before, they don't like the sun to contact them, so measures must be taken to make sure this doesn't happen.  Well, it's super duper hot right now, but they still need to cover their arms when riding.  Usually they wear the jacket backwards with the zipper left unzipped in the back.  They also sell these sleeves that you slide on up to your shoulders to cover you entire arm.  Finally, there are these things that look like oven mitts that can be sewn on to the handle of the scooter so when you drive your hands are completely covered.  These are multidimensional as they are good to protect your hands from the cold wind and rain as well as the sun!

Even though she's not on a scooter, this lady on the far left is still sporting the removable sleeves to cover herself, because the hat and umbrella are not enough whilst being outside.  

Alright kids, that's it for now.  Stay tuned to the chapters that follow which will include my scooter trip down the East Coast!  That I leave for tomorrow.  At 6 am.  Aaand I haven't packed yet.  Peace!

At the Dentist!

      Have I said before how outlandishly cheap health care is in Taiwan?  Well, health care is outlandishly cheap in Taiwan.  All forms of it.  Today I went to the dentist.  I figured I'd get my yearly check up done before going back to the States where it'll cost over a hundred dollars.  Instead, I paid $5 dollars.  FIVE. DOLLARS. to go to the dentist!!!

     Another teacher recommended a dentist, Dr. Green's, located just a few blocks from where we live, and Greta went there a few months ago.  I had been badgering Anthony about going to get his teeth checked, but he has super sensitive gums so he despises visiting the dentist.  Finally, we both went to make appointments.  Anthony had his last Tuesday, and he was in and out in like 10 minutes.  Not too painful.  Mine was supposed to be last Tuesday as well, but since my mom was here I decided to change it to this week.  It was set for Wednesday morning at 930 am.  Well, the night before we went to Trivia night, and when my alarm went off at 830 am on Wednesday I must have turned it off because the next time I woke up it was 10.  They had my number, but didn't call to see if I was coming.  

      SO, I decided that instead of going in later that day to reschedule and feel bad about being a lazy bitch and missing my appointment and not calling to tell them I overslept, I had an idea.  I went in at 930am Thursday morning, "I'm here for my appointment!"  The receptionist looked through the computer for my name, said something to the other lady in Chinese and continued clicking.  Pretty sure she found my name from the day before, but didn't mention anything about having missed my actual appointment.  She just asked for my health card and gave me a form to fill out, with a smile!  

      I waited about 2 minutes, in a full waiting room, and someone was there to get me for x-rays.  I think they were shocked by my nose ring, and didn't really know how to ask me to take it out before snapping x-rays.  She looked quite interested when I removed it.  My x-rays were done, and I went straight to a larger room with just a bunch of the dental chairs and equipment around them.  I sat down, they put up my pictures, and the dentist was there to see me.  Her English seemed very fluent, and she was super friendly.  

      From there it was a pretty typical trip to the dentist.  She said my teeth looked great, shoved a mirror around in my mouth, the usual.  The big difference is that they don't really do the whole cleaning series as in they don't do fluoride or polish, just use the electric tool to scrap around the teeth and gum area.  They also covered my entire face with this towel except for a little hole over my mouth, there was water splashing around all over the place!   

    I was out by 945 am!  With no appointment, really, and I still spent about zero time waiting around to be seen by the dentist!  Holla. 

Mastering Douliou. Stinky Tofou. Return to SML.

     The second weekend spent with my mom we went to Douliou, located in the southern area, but not as far as Kaohsiung, and a little further in east.  My mom has a Taiwanese friend who used to be an international student at USD, the college in my hometown, who moved back to Taiwan and we went to see her.  Her name is Jane and we had a fabulous time.  It also turns out that Jane is now married to a guy from Vermillion, named Ryan, that happens to be the brother of Anthony's sister's roommate.  Pretty crazy!

    We took the train to Chiayi and Jane and Ryan came to collect us from the station.  Then we went to eat some goose!  I don't think I'd ever had goose before... apparently the area is popular for its goose and every shop was a goose restaurant.  Then we drove to a temple that Jane's family frequents and she was our little tour guide explaining a lot of things about the temple to us.  One section of the temple is for relationships, and they have some red string there that if you tie it in front of that God statue and put it around your wrist it will bring you good luck in relationships.  We had our mom do one, so let's see!  Outside the temple there was a parade going on, complete with guys wearing the costumes, and ya know sexy dancer girls with their butts hanging out, all dancing to pop Taiwanese music.  It was quite the show.  

      

Work it girl, while the guys take a rest next to their costumes.  

      Next we drove to Jane and Ryan's apartment.  They both teach at the University and live on campus in faculty apartments.  They have 3 cats that I wanted to play with, but they don't really like people :(   We relaxed a bit, watched some Olympics, and then went to make soap!  Jane has a student whose mom has this little shop where she makes and sells soap.  It was a lot of fun and really neat to make and see how she does everything.  We got to choose what scents and colors we wanted to use and even put some little flower type petals in to make it beautiful.  The shop is out in the country and it was so quiet and beautiful there, a really nice place.  Next to it were many pineapple fields.  Yes, fields!  Why did I always think pineapples grew on trees?  

Jane giving some soap making advice.  

She's a veteran in the soap making game.  

Greta chopping the coconut oil before

 it's boiled to be poured into the molds.  

                               

All of our new soaps!  Mine are the red and green at the lower left.   And the soap shop.  They all smell amazing!

   Then we continued on up in the countryside mountains to a coffee shop where Jane gets coffee from.  I tried some brown rice coffee, they put the rice right into the coffee and you can taste it.  It was a bit thicker, really good.

             

         

 Betel nut grows on these trees at the very top!

   From here we went to a bar where Jane and Ryan are friends with the owner and had supper there.  We also popped over the night market to try some other foods     

like wild boar, and finally.... stinky tofo!!                             

        Although it took me a year to get around to it, I finally tried one of Taiwan's most famous dishes.  Stinky tofu is tofu that is literally rotten.  They ferment it for months in some sort of broth of milk or vegetable juices.  The Taiwanese love it, of course not everyone. It was super stinky, but not as terrible when it was just a few pieces on my plate, the smell wasn't so strong.  They served it with a type of kimchi on the side and some brown sauce on top.  I go the fried stinky tofu, and it tasted like normal tofu, like nothing really, but it was much drier and did have a little different after taste.  I made it through 3 bites actually, before calling it quits.  Greta and my mom also had a taste, they only did 1 bite.  

 The tofu fermenting away in the tub, then it's fried to "enjoy."  

        Jane explaining what else it came with. 

Before leaving they played some games of Majong Bingo!  My mom even won a prize, but didn't take it due to suitcases and traveling.  Then we went to our hotel, conveniently right across from the train station, and tried to go to bed a little early as we would then embark for Sun Moon Lake at 645 the next morning.

        

     I visited Sun Moon Lake before when Tyler was here in April, but our original plans of taking my mom to Green Island cold not be fulfilled, so we went here instead.  Anthony didn't get to come when Tyler was here, and Abe still hadn't been either, so he and Abe left early from Jhongli to meet us in Taichung where we then all got on the bus to SML. From Douliou it took us an hour and 15 min. on the train to Taichung, then about an hour and half on the bus to the lake.  When we first arrived it was a little gray and cloudy, but the sun came out eventually.  We went to the temples, took a little boat ride, ate at an Aboriginal restaurant, saw what there was the see.  

 A great group shot where nearly everyone's eyes are closed.  Fantastic.  

 Temples and temples

 The typhoon took out a statue, and a tree!

 So beautiful, so peaceful. 

My Mom, Monkeys and a Monastery

      My mom has arrived in Taiwan!!!  She got here Thursday night, and this weekend we took her to southern Taiwan for her first adventures, to Kaohsiung!  As I've been here over a year now (and 3 days!) this trip really took its toll on me and my frustrations of traveling around an Asian country with very limited Chinese for so long.  Trying to find proper buses to take us to our desired locations sent us on multiple wild goose hunts, and after zigzaging around train stations and bus stations, we had to move down our list of attractions.
      Our first stop on Saturday was Monkey Mountain.  This is essentially a mountain right along the coast, with a stop along the way to the top that is littered with monkeys.  They are everywhere running free and wild.  It was a little scary, I didn't want any limbs to get torn off, and most people kept their distance.  One man was throwing something that looked like popcorn to the monkeys and they ate it up.  He was also hand feeding one in a tree, he would reach out to it and the monkey would take the food directly from his hand.  Then the pack of wild dogs came and started chasing the monkeys around and barking like crazy.  It was quite the show.  One monkey was trapezing on the light post wires over our heads!  There were even 2 little babies with mothers protecting them, very cute.

 Mr. Monkey wanted to go for a drive. 

But he just settled for this cup he snatched from the scooter. 

View from Monkey Mountain       5 little monkeys sitting in a tree..

       Sunday we visited Confucius Temple.  It was said to be pretty popular, the largest Confucian temple in Taiwan.  When we finally go there, two other people were there and on the way out, so we were for real the ONLY people there.  It was soo strange!  I said to Greta "this is so weird, I can't believe there's no one here."  She replied, "yea, I wish I weren't even here." This was due to our wonderful mother being here, and already starting to drive us nuts after only a few days of being reunited! All in good fun though.

        Next we bused to the Fo Guang Shan Monastery.  This is the largest monastery in Taiwan, and was just finished in 2011, so very new as well.  It hosts a few huge Buddhas (though not at large as the one at Emei Lake that I scootered to a few weeks ago) and a very pretty and serene place.  There were tons of large tourist groups, but didn't seem too crowded outdoors and walking around, just inside the buildings.  There was a neat museum with a lot of information about how Buddha came to be, and a 4D movie that we missed out on because of the showing times :(  From the main monastery area we took a little golf cart up a hill and off to the side to see even more temple places and another big gold Buddha!

 Big Buddha surrounded by 8 Pagoda's of Enlightenment.  

A giant shimmer rooster at the monastery... makes sense?  Tons of statues, some are fist pumping, see them? 

There's 480 little gold Buddha's all leading up the gigantor.  

        Later, we took our mom to see Lotus Pond with the Tiger and Dragon Pagodas.  She's been very amused with, oh everything here, and taking just an outlandish amount of photos.  I feel extremely touristy traveling with her, and it's opening my eyes to some of the things I've started to become so accustomed to over the year, perhaps more on this later.  I'm very glad that she's enjoying being here and interested in everything!
        Sunday evening we took a short ferry ride from the harbor to a small island called Cijin.  Here we had a fantastic supper of fresh seafood and all very cheap.  There's also a beach area here, but it was around 9pm when we were done eating, so we couldn't see it too well, but it looked like a cool place to swim and relax during the day, unless of course it would have been crowded with people, which is probably the case.

         Monday we made a stop at Central Park because I wanted to see the grass labyrinth, but it was pretty overgrown and not very tall.  It was a nice park with interesting sculptures floating in the water.  Then it was time to return north and get back to work Monday late afternoon!

Oh, and today before going to work after we got back, I finally tried this Tuna Waffle from a tea shop I love, and it was fabulous!! Looks a little.... eh, but trust me. Tuna waffle, try one if you get the chance. 

Open House: A journey to find new students and make the white girl feel weird

       Something I never got around to explaining more of:  Open Houses.  You hear the words, I think of a retailer showing a house to the public, getting to meet your new 5th grade teacher, and now McDonald's.  HESS is big about open houses because it's a great way to recruit potential new students.  Many branches hold the events right at the school, it makes sense.  My branch has a variety of locations it chooses to put me on display.  The primary one being McDonald's.  Yes, I must go to an extremely crowded, 3-story McDonald's, and sing the rainbow song on Saturday afternoons.  Not the highest point in my life.  And we wear these awesome hats! 

This picture is from my first ever open house, almost a year ago.  Outside the MD's in YangMei.

Sometimes we sing a song about animals.  I searched for it on YouTube and found the exact HESS version that we have, and what do you know... little Asian girls singing it!  They probably came to my open house, their dance moves are almost identical to the ones I do!       

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xldN5zhG0XA

      When we go to McDonald's I have a group of 10-20 kids and teach them some vocabulary, a sentence pattern, song, play games, and then I must "read" giant storyboards to them.  I say "read" because there are no words on the boards.  There's an outline of what the story is supposed to be that I can see before we get there, but really I just memorize/make up a story to go along with all of the pictures.  One is about Lily Mouse and her battle to get dressed according to the ever changing weather.  The other is about Orville the sheep who wants to build an airplane.  Exciting stuff!  I'm always the only WHY-GORE-EN (foreigner) there, so even older people sometimes stop to watch, and of course there's the tons of other people there just trying to eat in peace. 

      The 2nd venue is the library in YangMei.  The best part about doing open houses here, is that they're on Sunday morning.  Yes, I am so lucky that sometimes I get to work every day of the week!  At least these ones are only once a month.  I'm surprised they still want me to do them, as the first one was after my friend, Dawn's, birthday.  I misplaced my phone, didn't wake up to an alarm... oh but good thing the manager had Anthony's number as well so I could wake up to him shaking me saying Grace was outside our building to pick me up!  A lovely experience that was.  Now I know not to let things get too out of hand when I need to go prance around in front of small children and their parents on Sunday mornings.  This location generally yields the largest amount of kids, and their parents all sit in the room with us watching and encouraging them not to be afraid of me.  

     And then of course very rarely do we hold open house at the actual school.  I think this is because my branch is rather small, and it's more fun to put me on display publicly.  These open houses are on Wednesday nights, and the worst because the largest amount of kids to ever show up was 4.  The parents leave them there, so I must entertain them for an hour, then once the parents return they talk to the secretaries for awhile about prices and things.  I run out of ideas, and lately enthusiasm.  

      I had an open house yesterday, which was Saturday, so that means McDonald's!  While we were setting up one of the secretaries that comes along to help asked me if I liked doing these things.  I said "not really, it makes me feel weird."  She thought that was pretty funny.  I can only hope this may have been my last one as my weeks of being Teacher Annika are coming to a close, and my mom will arrive on Thursday and we'll be traveling on the weekends.  

      HESS is apparently a big advocate tor McDonald's because not only do I perform open houses there, but this past Wednesday I took my kindy kids on a field trip to a McDonald's.  I'm not even entirely sure why, the Theme is fun places to go, but they're learning about the beach and post office, not fast food!  The school ordered a large batch of chicken nuggets and french fries and some tea so that each child got to eat one nugget, about 5 fries, and a small dose of tea.  Abe and I both have small class, so we went together.   While there he said to me, "Well this is good, it's every kindergarten teacher's job to teach the kids about the basic things in life, we're showing them great eating habits!"  It was an excellent time, I got paid to sit at McDonald's for 2 hours and watch the kids eat.   

 Poor Jimmy was naughty and not allowed to eat any McDonald's.. it made me so sad to see him sit there and watch the other kids :(   Hopefully he learned his lesson!

 Yum, yum, they said. 

1...2...3 Don't Mess Up!!

       If you've talked to me in the past few months, you've probably heard a lot about preparation for performances.  The Taiwanese go ape shit for these things, and you begin practicing for them months and months in advance.  I was a lucky duck and ended up with 3 performances all within 10 days of each other.  That meant a lot of cram rehearsals and prop making all at the same time.  There is an incredible amount of pressure put on the kids, especially for kindergarten, which is a little sad as they are just chidlren, and aren't performances supposed to be for fun?  No, not in Taiwan.  They are stressful and a lot of (unpaid) extra work. 
     Performance Number One was for the end of my Tree House 2 class.  It was on the 4th of July, and I mentioned before that we did Snow White and the Four Dwarfs.  We began practicing for it at the start of April.  I had to make a script for them that would be 30 minutes long, as well as include some songs and dances, and then play a game with the parents at the end.  Oh, and give out a special award to each student for something they're good at, and give a speech telling them how I'm leaving and won't be their teacher for Tree House 3.  My Taiwanese co-teacher made a 10 minute video with clips and pictures from over the semseter and showed it at the beginning of the performance, so overall the show lasted about 45 minutes.  The school rented costumes for the kids, but I made the backdrop and a few other props for them.

 The kids goofing around before show time.

     
        Performance Number Two was a graduation.  The main set of English classes here are called Step Ahead.  They start at level 1 and go through to 16, it takes about 4 years to complete the series.  I got this class at level 13, and now they graduated.  This one took place on July 12, and didn't involve as much work as the kids are so much older and able to make most of the props themselves.  They were also supossed to be able to write the scripts themselves, but it was a bit of a disaster, so they chose what they wanted to do, gave me the "script" and then I rewrote it so that it made sense and had enough characters for everyone.  There were 2 plays, and for some unknown reason one group really wanted to do "The Little Match Girl," only they changed it to "The Little Match Boy."  The other group wanted to do a news story about Jeremy Lin.  I had to write a conflict between him and Kobe Bryant.  Yeah.. that was interesting.  They also performed two songs, "Lollipop," no, of course not the Lil' Wayne rap version, the one by Mika, and "Golden Age" by.. I'm not sure, but it's that catchy song from the Heineken commercials.  I had to help choreograph a little, but the Taiwanese teacher was more involved for this.  This show lasted about an hour, and I also had to give a speech.  We began teaching these kids the songs in like Novemeber, so it was a slow and gradual process of learning everything, and they all did a good job.  No pictures from here because, well, the kids are older and didn't have costumes and not so cute, and I felt weird taking pictures of 13 year olds.

        Performance 3 took place on July 14.  It was kindergarten graduation.  There are 3 levels of kindy:  small, middle and big. At my branch there are 2 small classes, 1 middle, and 2 big.  Although it's mainly about graduation, it's also a chance to put on an all school performance.  Soo many shows to prepare.  The small and middle classes each did an English show, a Chinese show, and a music show.  The big classes did an English show, a music show, and a Japanese show.  So in total there were 15 shows.  For each show there was a costume change.  I had to get 20 three-year-olds into 3 different little oufits!  At least the order of performances was varied, so it wasn't too rushed.  The foreign teachers had to put on a little skit, so I was dressed as the Evil Queen of Hearts.  There was a Snow White, Alice, the Mad Hadder, and the White Rabbit.  For some reason the Taiwanese staff ordered these outfits for us, and then we had to make up a play for how they all came to be together.
       For my class, I had the kindy kids do "The 3 Little Pigs."  There were wolves and pigs and they were super cute.  I painted 3 different houses for backdrops, and worked with the kids a lot for them to be able to move around the stage and not get lost wandering about.  The wolves moved from house to house, howling!  They also sang 2 songs with little dances.  I didn't have to do much preparation for the other 2 shows, as the Taiwanese teachers took care of that, and they have a music teacher who did that show.
      We had to arrive at the venue by 1130 am, it started at 1, and ended around 4, then clean up til 5, and it was all finally over!  Since April we've been taking time and even full days out of teaching to practice, so it will be weird not having to do that anymore.  It's a pretty glorious feeling not having to worry about it.  It would have been even worse had I had a big class, because they were graduating from kindy and the teachers had to give speeches, put on longer performances, hand out diplomas, all sorts of stuff.

Costume Change number 1:  Music Show
       

Costume Change number 2:  English Show

Costume Change number 3:  Chinese Show

The Chinese Show was about forest plants and animals and then some evil people (in the witch hats and capes) that wanted to turn them all to stone! 

And the final outfit change was normal clothes, after it was over, some got very dressed up! 

        The manager of the branch was so kind and had arranged to take allll of us out to supper afterwards.  Foreign teachers and Taiwanese teachers, totaling around 25 people!  It was a very nice place, 5 courses and we were stuffed to the max.  Now, Tree House classes ended on Friday, Kindy ends in 2 weeks, and I'll be done as a teacher in 4 weeks!  Oh sherbert.. where has the time gone!?   

 The Kindy Foreign Teachers, being awesome!

 All of the LongTan Taiwanese Staff together. 

Before supper we had an hour to kill, so we went with the Japanese teacher, Neko, to get some drinks.