2 Months

I've been in Taiwan now for two months!  Everything is going pretty well, except for the fact that my school has me only teaching one class a week right now, that means I'm teaching 6 hours a week.  My contract guarantees 14 hours/week.  So if I don't get paid for 14hrs this week, dudes are going to get blasted.  This week was good, I taught kindergarden, TH3 (2nd graders) and TH5 (4th graders).  Most of them are really fascinated by my hairy legs, the kindergardeners pet my leg hair!  TH3 and 5 are really easy to deal with b/c they all listen well.  While I was running on Thursday, I ran through a film set or something, I must be living in a really good area!  This weekend, all I really did was go to Maokong Gondola, which was on Saturday.  Jennifer was tired on Friday, so I just listened to music (mostly Doom Metal).  What was interesting about the Gondola was the fact that it is exactly the same as any ski gondola!  It was the exact same size too!  The people in our gondola were freaking out because they were afraid of heights and the little boy that was with them was helping them out either, he was telling them about what was coming up ahead.  Jennifer and I got off at one stop and we went to the monkey trail, which went up to Monkey Mountain.  We were hoping to see some monkeys, but we saw squirrels instead, and everyone knows how much Jennifer likes squirrels :).  We then took the gondola up to the next stop and walked around.  We saw a temple and some tea houses.  We were going to go to the tea museum, but as luck would have it, it was closed by the time we got there.  We went to a tea house, they were really expensive for the local tea.  So I got some of the Japanese green tea.  It was pretty good.  But the thing I wanted most was a good beer.  This is really hard to find in Taiwan.  On the way back home, I wanted to find a bar/club that I had seen on the way back home from Tainan (the place is located around Zhongshan Junior High School MRT) but I couldn't find it.  Jennifer was really tired from walking all day, I was a little bit tired, but I could've looked for awhile.  Oh well.  Yesterday, Jennifer and I didn't do much of anything, we just watched TV and surfed the internet.  It is becoming harder and harder to get tv shows over the internet.  Maybe there are new sites that have popped up.  I did find out that Fender is making a David Gilmour Signature Series Stratocaster.  It debuts September 22nd and comes at a price of $3,999.99.  I'll have to look around to see if it is really worth it.  If it is, I have a lot of saving up to do.  Because this is something I really want.  I might have to start looking for extra work if that's the case.  I am thinking about giving private English lessons to people around my apartment.  I'll just have to send out a flyer.  Tchao

Another photo shoot and a weekend in Tainan

On Friday while I was running, I saw another photo shoot.  But this time the woman was wearing a dress and was standing by a wicked sweet Ferrari.  And there were people taking pictures of her.  Friday night, Jennifer and I went to Tainan by way of the High Speed Train.  It is so expensive $1,415NT per person for a 2 hour train ride, and at that price you didn't receive a reserved seat.  It was a fun ride, we couldn't get the train we wanted b/c it was too full.  So the train people had us line up and we were able to get seats on the next train which came 20 min later.  Jennifer's dad picked us up at the train station and took us to his apartment.  His apartment is so much nicer than ours!!  On Saturday, he drove us around Tainan, I saw some temples, one was really big.  I'll post pictures sometime.  He showed us the beach and then told us how when he was kid, he and his friends were arrested because the coast guard thought that they were from mainland China!  Jennifer was fighting a cold all week and it wasn't getting any better, so her dad took her to the hospital while I napped at the apartment.  Later in the day, he took us to meet a friend of his and his family.  The father is a swim coach and one of his daughters has the fastest time in Taiwan for her age for some event that wasn't important to me, like maybe the 200m Butterfly.  Anyways I told him my best times and then he started calling me Phelps for some reason, by the way I am in no way even remotely close to any of Phelps' times.  I think it was because I am white, an American, and a swimmer.  They took us out to eat dinner as well.  I had sooo much to eat.  I was so full.  I can't describe the food, but it was good.  Then the swim coach said I could come swim with them in the morning and he was going to prepare breakfast for me.  On Sunday, I arrived at his house, and they gave me fried dumplings, other fried asian food, salad, mango and soup.  Probably the worst stuff you can eat before you swim, unless your Phelps.  And he kept calling me Phelps, he said that he needed to make sure Phelps was fed before we swim.  Swim practice was good.  I was slow, remember I haven't had a real swim practice since the end of January.  So I was slow, it was in a 50m pool, too.  But at the end, I wasn't tired.  I wasn't even hungry, because I ate so much for breakfast.  But the coach said he'll call the Taiwan national swim coach, who is in Beijing right now, to see if I can swim with their team!!!  Awesome, that would be sweet!  After that we went with his daughters to get some shiao long bao, which is a steamed dumpling with soup and meat inside.  They were so yummy!!  That is my favorite food so far in Taiwan.  After hanging out with them, Jennifer's dad drove us back up to Taipei, which took around 5 1/2 hours.  It is good to be home, but I am a litte sad that I didn't get to see all that much of Tainan.  But, I know I'll be back again.  I like Tainan a lot, it reminds me a little bit of some European cities that I have seen.  I also want to say that we found out that our company is taking advantage of us by only paying us the hours that we teach, and they don't include the hours that we go in to prep or help out after class.  Jennifer's dad told us that this was normal in Taiwan, but then we talked to some people who came over to her dad's apartment and they said that we were being taken advantage of.  Good thing I have been keeping track of how many hours I've spent at the school.  That's all for now.

Bank Accounts and a Photographer in the park

This week, I've done a lot of exploring.  On Monday, I opened up a bank account all by myself.  No help from Jennifer at all, even though they did speak a little English.  I had to open up another account because my school said that I needed to open up a bank account at a certain bank.  Then on Tuesday while I was running, I saw the weirdest thing.  I was running along and I see this guy in a suit and a girl in a bathing suit.  I thought that it was a father taking her daughter to diving practice or swim practice, but still it was a little weird to be seeing a girl in a bathing suit in the park.  But as I got closer, she went back into the car and the guy in the suit was wearing a backwards baseball hat and had a camera around his neck.  Then another girl came out of the car, until then I thought that the girls were young b/c they were short.  But anyways she comes out wearing a regular bathing suit that's got a thong  and is see thru.  Oh and they're standing right by a port-a-potty.  So I'm thinking to myself, this is really weird let's get out of here.  And thats it.  Later that day, I walked wondered around the town and into the Neihu area.  I came across a swimming pool, that will probably let me swim in.  I also came across a bike shop.  I looked at some really sweet bikes.  One weighed only 7kg!!  But it turned out to be way out of my budget, $138,000NT or over $4,000!  The area is really nice too!  The apartments looked to be really expensive too.  After work today, I went to the American Institute (the closest thing the US has to an embassy) where I added more visa pages to my passport b/c I did not have a full empty page left.  I was rather happy with myself for being able to get there on my own, I mean if I had to use the bus and the metro it wouldn't have been anything special, but I had to use the taxi.  I tried giving the name of the metro station which is Zhong Shan Junior Highschool, but I don't know how to say Junior Highschool.  Luckily, I wrote down the name of the metro stop on a piece of paper in Chinese characters and he was able to get me there.  I did have some difficulty in finding the American Institute because they go by sections in the address system here.  So I ended up walking a whole section out of the way.  But I realized what I did wrong and quickly went on the right path.  On my way back home, I was going to try to walk from the metro station back to the apartment, but people are not allowed to walk through the tunnel that goes underneath the river.  I quickly caught a cab and told him in Chinese what road I wanted to go to.  Everything went well.  This weekend, Jennifer and I are planning on going to Tainan for the weekend to see her father.  We will be taking the High Speed Train, I am excited!

Curry!

I have come to the realization that I love curry.  It is so scrumptious!  Jennifer and I have made this for dinner almost at least once a week.  On Friday, after work, Jennifer and I took a train up to Keelung, the total cost for tickets was  only $86NT!  There was a ghost festival going on.  They light up lanterns and let them float away out into the ocean.  It would have been marvelous to see, but they did that on Thursday.  We heard about from the security guard at our apartment.  But we spent a couple hours there walking around the town.  Over the weekend, Jennifer bought some food for an offering to the spirits, because this month is very unlucky in Taiwan - all the bad spirits are roaming around and so people burn fake money and offer food to the spirits.  This weekend I tried infusing some vodka.  Jennifer bought a bottle of Finlandia and so I poured some honey into a bottle and then filled it up with vodka.  It has been a success!  The vodka completely absorbed all of the honey and it is now a golden color.  I can't wait to try it with other things as well.  I found out all about this at: http://www.wikihow.com/Infuse-Vodka-With-Flavor

Right now I'm reading a fantastic book, The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux.  As you can guess he paddles a canoe around the islands of the Pacific.  He starts in New Zealand then to Australia, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, and others.  Oh and Michael Phelps is my hero.  Not only did he get 10 Gold Medals in Beijing but he also eats a whopping 10,000 calories a day!  Read about it here .  Alright time to go.  I'm planning on putting up those pictures of my apartment soon.

Maps!

So almost another week has gone by.  Time flies rather fast on this side of the world.  This week I started teaching a Kindergarden class that has 14 boys and 4 girls.  It hasn't been too bad, because they behave most of the time.  But I am only a sub for that class b/c the teacher is on vacation.  I starting teaching 4 graders in two weeks.  I have to decorate the classroom.  Maybe I'll use some ski posters?  Probably not.  That definitely won't fly.  Also in the news, the Russo-Georgian Conflict is concluding/at an end.  We won't know for a couple days.  But in all honesty, Georgia got pwned!  They attacked South Ossetia and when you attack a bear's cub you should expect to hear from the mother.  One of the reasons why Russia moved into Georgia is b/c they are still mad over Kosovo's independence from Serbia.  Abkhazia and South Ossetia deserve their independence more than Kosovo did.  Anyways back to what I am doing.  I've been running these past two weeks and I've noticed that I've gotten a lot slower.  I think the heat and the humidity have a big effect on how I run.  Or maybe I've just gotten out of shape.  Today after I ran, I used Google Earth to find a pool.  I found an outdoor pool in what looked to be a university campus.  I was right.  So I walked over a klick (that's 1Km) to get there.  And it was indeed a pool and it looked like I didn't have to pay.  So I looked at the sign just to be sure, however, it said that I needed to show my student ID.  Well, I have 2 student IDs.  So I looked around just be sure and then proceeded to walk into that pool.  One lady looked at me as if I was supposed to give her something, so I quickly pretended that I didn't see her.  Then a guy walked by me and I did the same thing.  I jumped into the water and swam a couple laps, it felt great to be in the water again.  After watching Phelps and the rest of 4x100 meter relay I was so psyched up to swim.  Ten minutes after I jumped into the pool I saw some white people!  I get a little bit excited when I see white people outside of work.  Yesterday, when I opened a bank account (in the wrong bank for some reason), I saw some white people and said to them, "Hey, what's going on guys?"  All I got was a "hey."  But the white people who showed up were German and I didn't really want to start a conversation with them, it would've probably started out like this: "Sprachen zie Englische?"  But I did see them show their id cards or something to that lady.  So after I finished swimming, I was toweling off and that women comes up to me and draws a rectangle in front of me with her finger in the air.  I say "Ok" and proceed to take out my 2 student ids (my International Student ID and my St. Olaf one) and she looks at me and I say "alright" and put them away.  I take it that I just made her really confused and I was probably intimidating.  And the whole language barrier worked to my advantage.  See in Taiwan they assume you do not speak the language.  But I should probably find another pool.

Anyway about the map.  Jennifer and I bought a world map on Sunday and then placed it on my wall in my room.  I then underlined every country that I want to go to, and then I started marking out the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Caspian, Trans-Aral, Trans-Mongolian, Turkestan-Siberia, and the North Caucus Railways.  I came to the realization that I could take a train from Vladivostok all the way to London if I wanted to.  Well it wouldn't be direct.  I would have to buy a train ticket in Moscow to Paris and then from Paris to London.  But it is possible.  I have pictures of the apartment now.  I will put them up a little bit later.  

Olympics

Well, I can't really watch them b/c Taiwan has awful coverage.  Uber Lame!  And the internet isn't helping me too much either.  This week went pretty well.  I got paid, I was hoping for more but little did I know that in Taiwan they only pay you for what you were scheduled to teach.  So the punch card is absolutely useless.  The Kindergarten class that I taught this week was awesome, but there were times when they weren't listening to me.  I also taught a 1st grade class this week, that was ok, I didn't like them very much because they did not listen at all.  It was pointless to yell at them b/c they still continued talking.  I even made them stand in the corner.  But I did learn some card tricks this week.  I had to for my 1st grade class.  This week I'll be teaching only kindergarten, but my class will be huge, 18 kids!  14 of them are boys, so I need to lay down the law.  Thursday was Valentine's Day in Taiwan.  Go figure.  So Jennifer and I went to a Russian restaurant, well it was a Russian themed restaurant.  It was expensive and but it was really good.  They even had some Russian beer, Балтика.  It was good to drink, reminded me of Russia.  I even took the beer mug that it came in because it was a Балтика one.  On Friday, Jennifer, some of our coworkers, and me went to the only Latin Club in Taipei maybe even Taiwan.  It was a bubble theme.  Open Bar.  Cost = $300NT or $10.  We got there pretty early around 10ish, we left around 1ish but it people weren't even dancing yet and we went to get some food.  I don't understand why people have to start dancing so late.  I mean the bus system shuts down at 11PM!  And the metro shuts down at midnight.  On Saturday, Jennifer, the teachers, and I all went out for lunch.  The company paid for lunch and a couple of the female Chinese Teachers are pregnant so they kept ordering food that is good for pregnant women, which is evidently fish and shrimp.  We have made friends with a couple of the teachers.  So far there is Sam, he is a new teacher like us, he is from Seattle.  Decided he needed a break from working at a drug rehab place.  Then there is Francesca, she is from CA, just graduated college.  I really wish I could watch the swimming events.  This is so lame.  Today we went to go to the gondola but it was stopped b/c of the weather.  I tried squid.  It is ok, tasted like fish.

Curry!

Sunday was rather relaxing, we did not leave the apartment until 5PM.  I talked to my good friend Abraham on skype for a good 1.5 hours and then watched some tv.  In the afternoon our real estate agent, Rock, came in and helped us set up a password for the wireless internet so no one can steal it.  Later, Jennifer and I went to Taipei Main Station because it is almost Valentine's Day in Taiwan, yeah Taiwan is weird like that, and the Taipei Metro Authority or Transit Authority whatever it's called has a deal where if you give them a picture of you and your partner and $1500NT then you get four $500NT metro passes!  And the picture of you and your partner will be on the pass.  So we did that and around 7, we met Jennifer's cousin Kevin and his girlfriend Candy.  She was not able to pick her English name, she wanted Ambrosia.  They took us out to eat curry!  For $270NT we got a salad, soup, main course, and a drink at the end.  I had an omelet with rice and beef along with the curry sauce.  It was really yummy, but next time, I'm going to go for the fried chicken in the curry.  Kevin and Candy are really nice and cool.  After dinner they showed us around the area a bit, (for awhile we didn't get home until 11) they showed us the old American Embassy.  It is now a bookstore/coffee shop/movie theatre.  At the coffee shop there was some Russian written in the comment book, so my hopes are up as I am still looking for the ever elusive Russians in Taiwan.  The great thing about the movie theatre is that it is free!  Quick history lesson, the United States stopped having an embassy in Taiwan (ROC) when Taiwan had to leave the UN and the "One China Policy" was adapted.  So now that embassy is in Beijing.  I found out from Candy that she is an airline stewardess for Thai airlines and so she is based out of Bangkok.  So we have a place to stay if we ever go there and she also told us that we have a place to stay if we go to Beijing or Hong Kong b/c her sister has places there.  We also have a place to stay in Tokyo b/c Jennifer's uncle has a place there.  Jennifer and I have been thinking about going to Tokyo around Thanksgiving b/c that is when her uncle will be there.  Now I must go to bed because I have to work tomorrow morning.

A relaxing Saturday in Danshui

Today, Jennifer and I went to Danshui to be touristy and check out the Fisherman's Wharf and a Portuguese Fort, named Fort San Domingo.  It was really interesting to read about the different countries that were trying to take over Taiwan (named Formosa by the Portuguese).  

We also went to the former British Consulate building that was conveniently located next door.  On a weird note, there was a band playing in the courtyard between the fort and the consulate building.  They were mostly foreigners and I think that they were a ska band.  The fort was really cool except for the passageways were a little bit low.  After messing around with the fort we went to the Fisherman's Wharf.  While we were there, we saw a couple signs that were pretty funny.  The men's bathroom did not say men at all, it said Gentle.  There was a sign for a fire hydrant, but there was a mop there.  While we were walking up and down the wharf, I found a Belgian beer to drink, Duvel, it was pretty good and at 8,5% alcohol, I felt pretty good too!  For dinner we went to a fried chicken place.  For $50NT you get a piece of fried chicken that is about bigger than your face!  It is really good but after eating all of it, I don't really want to eat chicken for awhile.

So I started my blog late....

This is me at the zoo.

yeah I am finally starting this thing.  So I have been in Taiwan for 1 month and 3 days and it has been getting better and better.  Today I received my Alien Resident Card (ARC) which means that I can live in Taiwan legally until next July.  I can also come and go as I please.  I also am entitled to health insurance and I might even be able to vote!  The teaching situation is a little weird.  I'll get back to that later on.  So far I have survived my first month and my first typhoon.  The typhoon was rather disappointing, it was windy and little bit rainy.  That's it.  But I did have the day off.  On Tuesday, I did have to hide from the government.  I was teaching my class and the Chinese teacher (CT) comes into to tell me that I have to go hide.  So my fellow teacher, Sam, and I go hide in the stairwell of the adjacent apartment, which so happens to be conveniently connected to the school.  We hid so well that the teachers had to call us on our cell phones to find us.  They told us to hide.  Apparently, it wasn't a big deal.  It was only the fire department checking in on the building.  I have an apartment, which has a chandelier for some odd reason.  But everything is good.  Pay day is next week and the Olympics start next week!