Taipei below 70 degrees and Veteran's Day

It's been awhile, I know, but I've been really busy working and watching the Lost series.  Honestly, I don't know how people could've waited an entire week to see the next episode, the suspense is unbelievable.  Anyways, Happy Veteran's Day!  Yesterday was the first time it has been below 70 degrees during the daytime and I saw some crazy things.  Everyone is all bundled up as if it's 40 degrees, but it's only 68.  Yesterday, I had kids wearing fleece to school and a couple kids were wearing three layers!  But, what definately to the cake was a girl who had brought in gloves, GLOVES!  HA!  I immediately had to ask my kids if it was cold, most of them said yes.  So, I explained to them, that they don't know what cold is.  I told them that -30 Celsius (-22F) is cold.  But, they gave me a good reason, they said, "Teacher, you're from a cold place."  Touche students, touche.  In other news, my school is going to have a Christmas play, so it can be more American.  My class is doing Frosty the Snowman, while Jennifer's class is going to narrate the story.  That should be interesting to watch, but unfortunately, I won't be there because I'll be skiing with my family at Whistler!  I cannot wait.

      These last couple weeks have been pretty crazy, for example: 2 weekends ago Jennifer and I crashed a Taiwanese wedding.  Well, not really crash because Jennifer's mom took us, but I definately felt like I was crashing it when I am the only white person there and I have no idea what's going on but I had fun anyways.  That weekend I ate a lot of seafood.  I had sushi, raw salmon, abalone and some other things.  Couldn't really taste the fishyness of it because I smothered them in soy sauce and wasabi.  I also tried eel, crab, shark fin soup and maybe some other things as well.

     See the wedding was located in Taichung, a 2 hour train ride (not highspeed train) from Taipei, that Jennifer and I had to stand for most of it, but the scenery was really cool!  After the wedding was over, Jennifer and I went on a roadtrip with her mom, her grandma, her grandma's younger brother and her grandma's younger brother's wife!! HA!  It was awesome!  We drove to Sun Moon Lake, the biggest lake in Taiwan.  The brother thought that it would only take 30 minutes to get there, but instead it took almost 2 hours!  Oh, well no worries.  Again the scenery was amazing!  Unfortunately, when we arrived, there was a layer of fog over the lake, but it still looked beautiful.  There was also a temple nearby.  Grandma didn't want to stay and she wanted the front seat because her back was in pain, so I moved to the back seat.  They were worried that I wouldn't fit.  But, instead of going back, we drove around the lake some more and went to a harbor area for tourists and walked up and down.  It was lovely to say the least.  Then we drove back to Taichung where we ate and took the train back to Taipei.  It was a lot of travelling for one day, especially when we got home around 1am.

   This past weekend, Jennifer and I went out with our friends Andrew, Andrew, Andrew and Graeme.  We had such a great, crazy time.  We had dinner at a restaurant and then we went to a club, called Posol.  We bought a table, it was about $1000NT/per person except for Jennifer, she got in for free because she's a girl.  Ah sexism, why can't I get in for free?  It was a fun night to say the least.  I talked with Alberto from San Salvador, he's really cool.  We had a few laughs about saying puta because he asked me if I could speak Spanish.  I told him that I could only say puta.  It was a good time, but I had to call it a night pretty early (around 2:30amish).  On Friday, I took the Foreign Service Exam at the American Institute in Taiwan.  It wasn't bad, I won't know for 8-10 weeks if I failed or not.  I was the youngest person in the room of 6 people and a cool thing was that there was another David Mitchell from somewhere in Pennsylvania was also registered.  He didn't show up though.  I am interested to see how I do.  Thats all I have for now.  I am still looking for someone who speaks Russian to hang out with.  We'll see.  Tchao!