Marie and Keith in Taiwan

My Turn

2009-09-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

Now that Keith is gone, I feel some responsibility to keep this thing going. Perhaps I should change the name...

I was contemplating how my experience will change, being here on my own. It's hard to think of improving my Mandarin since I won't be here much longer. But then it can't get worse. I've been here over a year and am still challenged to communicate at all. I do get a little practice every day, mostly ordering tea or food. And still it requires huge patience on the part of whoever I'm talking with. Here I've translated a typical experience:

Me: Please give me a dirty cup of person pork milk tea.

Vendor: umm.... Ah. You want a medium bubble tea?

Me: Right. I don't want soup.

Vendor: No sugar?

Me. right.

Vendor: 25NT

I promptly hand over my 40 NT (because I've misheard), and the vendor kindly hands back my change.

Every once in a while I run into a person who actually refuses to understand me, even when I'm sure I'm saying something correctly, because I'm a westerner and they can't grasp the concept of someone who looks like me speaking in Mandarin.

But more often than not, people are unbelievably patient and understanding. They make suggestions, mime and try their high school English as I mercilessly mangle their ancient and respected language. I won't be able to do it for much longer, so I'll try to get out there a little more.

Well, this's unexpected

2009-09-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

So, to all of our four faithful readers, there's been an unexpected kink in this, our overseas adventure. First, let me 'splain. No, there is too much, let me sum up:

I had reapplied to Eastern Washington's grad program to finally finish my grad degree. I've been accepted; however, a key class they decided was necessary and vital for me to prove I understand before I get the degree is only offered in the fall, every two years. So I either get back to the States by this time next week or I don't go at all.

So, unfortunately, I have to get out of the country with a great deal of alacrity. Marie's going to be here for another couple of months, finishing her classes, clearing out our apartment, finding someone who wants three pounds of raisin bran I just bought at Costco... and I'm packing like mad.

I'm trying to guess what I'll need for a couple months on my own and what I should ship home 'cause it's cheaper than buying it again but it'll take a month to arrive and I don't want Marie to have to struggle with packing a lot of stuff as she's living and leaving on her own... that sound like an overheated microchip would be my brain.

I think my only major regret now is that I just discovered a good way to feel like I'm experiencing Taiwan: hiking and biking around the city. It feels like I'd barely started but I don't have time now to see more. We were even supposed to go on another rafting trip in a few weeks, and Marie and I had talked about going south to Kenting to the national park and beach there for a little vacation. But we don't have time for that either.

And of course, there's the separation. Right now, it doesn't feel like we'll be on opposite ends of the world. We've traveled enough and we have ways of communicating that it might feel like I'm in Cheney and she's in Seattle, I hope. We'll see.

In the process of packing I've come across fleece sweatshirts and jackets I haven't seen for months or longer, and I'm very excited to be going somewhere where I can use them. I did see Seattle is still running high seventies some days, but here, it doesn't get below 85 until three a.m. and then it's already warming up. I've forgotten what it's like to not be sticky. So there are good things ahead.

And of course, there's the language thing.

But now that I have to get out in a hurry, I'm suddenly feeling like Taiwan, like many places where you spend real time, has gone unexplored. In spite of the effort and time it suddenly feels like we've barely seen anything. I think that feeling's a given, between the nostalgia of living in a place for this long and that I've known for months that we haven't done or seen what we wanted, because of class schedules, cost, or heat. But it's still a poignant regret. And this possibly more so because it's not easy to think we could return.

So, last entry from me from Taiwan. I hope it's been worth reading.

The heat of September

2009-09-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

September is Ghost month, it's an oooold tradition of appeasing ghosts and giving gifts to family who have passed on, usually in the form of money, but fake money. You can buy bricks of the fake stuff for next to nothing, but how, you ask, do you get it to the ghosts and family members? Why by burning it, naturally.

It's about 95 degrees and 60 percent humidity so it feels like a hundred and ten so it must be time to burn things!

This's one of a thousand of these things. Some are quite large. That's one on the right.

Even the companies get in on the act with tables of food offerings and a fire in front of the office to burn "money."

I know we grill hot dogs and hamburgers in the heat of July and August, but just picture walking down the street, any street, on your way to work, dodging from shade to shade 'cause that takes off ten degrees from the feeling of hundred plus heat, and then you walk by a full on fire burning blocks of paper, which as literature has taught us, is 451 degrees. It is, literally, staggering because you will take an involuntary step away from the heat, even if it means stepping into direct sunlight.

Now do it ten more times on your way to work. I am whining. It's hot here. It's just disappointing that we couldn't have these little oases of warmth drawing you nearer in November or March, instead they're driving people away.

But at least I don't have this job.

What d'ya do when you need a park lawn mowed? You get a bunch of guys with gas-powered weedwackers. Really. They get a half-a-dozen guys or so with these things, making noise like mutant yellow jackets taking over the city, and they go to work on whole fields. I've seen it several times and been agog and bewildered every time.

Did I mention I had Friday off? A class I've had for months on Fridays finally dissolved. I'd feel bad about not working and not making money, but I don't. I really didn't like that class.

Teaching 'tween-agers a foreign language until ten on a Friday night does no one any good. They're cranky and difficult and stubborn, not unreasonably but still, so it's hard to enjoy it week after week. So I was really glad to exchange it, even with the lost income, for an afternoon biking down the Xindian river.

I watched this guy work on flying his dragon kite for a few minutes. It seemed like an infuriatingly difficult thing to fly. I watched a couple times as he landed the thing and untwisted the tail. And it seemed to be all tail.

This corner gave me an idea of how crowded things must get on a weekend. There isn't an actual stop sign, but there is a line there so you know where to stop. And they have these road signs, just like for auto traffic. This says, if you're going to Gongguan go left, for Jingmei go right. They're neighborhoods and metro rail stops, and Jingmei is the name of the river you follow, so it's hard to say specifically what they're pointing to.

But the width of these "trails" is amazing. You can see the tip of a double-yellow line there. And they go for miles. Oh, and some places are paved in this great asphalt that gives your tires a whirring, whizzing sound like a high-performance engine revving. Nice touch.

I was really glad I went to the trouble of renting a bike. I haven't been on a bike for more than a year, so having another way to get around was a real treat. And things were nearly deserted. Very few bikes and people on paths and trails made for hundreds... or thousands.

It was quite hot and humid, but biking adds that breeze which makes this time of year tolerable, at least, if you're willing to work for it, so really, you sweat either way, but this way I got to see miles of park and river I'd never seen before, or would any other way.

And I went biking for two-and-a-half hours, for a 100 NT. If I haven't done the exchange enough yet, that's about three bucks. Good deal.

And this was just a riot. I love how signs in this town make as little or less sense than stuff in the States.

I saw this and came to a screeching stop 'cause I knew I had to take a picture. It wasn't that I stopped really fast, but the front disc brake was worn so it shrieked when I used it hard.

And finally, the only way to appreciate this is aurally. Turn your sound WAY up so you too can experience what Marie and I hear when parades and other traditional Chinese events take place in our neighborhood and down our street.

I know it's kinda mean, but can anyone find the beat that guy's clapping?!

This music's a local thing and we haven't gotten used to it. I've seen these lessons before and these are much more tolerable. I can't hear a difference between this and what they play in a parade, but in the parade they come down or near our street and they're electrified. So in the canyons of buildings it's loud, even inside our apartment, five floors up.

I like the hikes I've taken, getting away from the city and such, but biking here's a blast. It's so flat. I'll have to see if I can get Marie out in the heat before we leave.

Sweatin' to the oldies (in Chinese)

2009-08-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

More mountain climbing! Yay! Until you get about two-thirds up and then, phooey.

But before you go hiking, gotta have a healthy breakfast.

These are called "chicken paws" in the menu. They just gave them to Marie at a fried chicken place she goes to. She says they must like her to give her free food. I shouldn't disagree but I wonder if this isn't the fast food version of the horse head in your bed.

We chucked the whole bucket. Marie said we should leave 'em out for the local dogs, but I'm worried about local rats and cockroaches.

Speaking of: I've recently learned that window cleaner makes a surprisingly effective roach killer. Part of life in the tropics, you have to deal with the occasional roach. They get in through the AC. I've never seen Marie hide under the covers until a roach flew in the bedroom one morning. She said she heard it go "oooph" when it hit the far wall. I went for the cleaner while she left the room, somehow without touching the floor....

Really cleaner works 'cause we've only seen a couple this entire summer, tho' we still have a lot of summer to go, here. Something about drowning them in ammonia. At least the area's clean after it's dead, which's a plus when it greets you on the kitchen counter. And I should be grateful it just walked out in the light and found me and not Marie.

But who cares!

The educational part of my hike yesterday was how I had a map and a guide book and I still ended up on the wrong mountain. I think I was one mountain west of Yangming mountain. I was definately on Zhongzheng mountain but I must've made a wrong turn at Albuquerque, so to speak.

I was really glad to find these trail signs, even if they took me to the wrong mountain they were rather comforting. Tho' it's pretty funny to see them while you're still in town.

I love how people will build a row of three and four story apartments across the road from nothing. Sure, everyone wants the view, but I'm used to it being out the back of the apartment-house-condo.

I was aiming at "the tallest mountain north of Taipei" Yangming mountain. At not quite 1,200 meters I thought it'd be okay. I keep forgetting to convert. So I set out to walk up instead of taking the bus to a trailhead.

In my defense, I did get to see some really great scenery like this tower.

And this temple or something like it. And it was a really nice day. The high point was about 94 so with the humidity it felt like 111 (so says weather.com). But I had a lot of fluids and a hat and lightweight clothing. I spent my day dodging from shade to shade and I was fine.

I don't know what this building is, but it was amazingly yellow. It's like a like detergent ad. As in, "gee Marge, how do you keep your building colors so bright?"

I'm still working on getting details of what this place is, 'cause I want to know. It was just on the side of this suburban road on the side of the mountain. Obviously, it's not little, but it wasn't as eye-popping as most temples are with the bright colors and dragons. More like a hotel, but it's not in a good place for that.

This's how I spent most of the afternoon. Some group had cut and placed more of the footpath stones through this bamboo grove. It was kinda stifling in there, but it was shaded, so there was a trade off. And every few hundred feet the trail would cross a road and I could get a breeze.

The road for cars and scooters, which was not made for two cars to pass each other, weaved back and forth, while the hiking trail shot straight up the side. It was a great physical example of switchbacks versus straight-up-the-mountain hiking.

I kinda like the straight-up idea, but I found myself considering each stairway and if I wanted to go slower and longer. I took a couple short curves on the road. Fortunately, the park at the top was the only destination and Tuesday afternoon wasn't a big hiking time, and I could hear everything coming.

This's an example of how confused this city and country is about pedestrians, or how comfortable people are with traffic, I haven't figured it out, myself. I'm just really careful when I hike these places.

You can see next to that black-on-yellow arrow in the middle, there's a railing. There are benches there and even a trashcan (which's really unusual for Taipei) and the view is great, terrific even. So they want people to come and rest and look, but you can see the shoulders of the road... there aren't any. Weirdos.

I did finally make it to the parking lot at the top of the mountain. At the time I still thought it was Yangming and I thought a bus would stop there and carry me home. So I decided to dig in and climb just another five hundred meters for the view, even tho' the parking lot was pleasant and pleasantly breezy after an hour or more in bamboo groves.

But I did learn that when they say .5 km, they almost certainly mean, straight up. I found this sign after what felt like a half mile. It says, you have only walked .2 km, weenie.

I did meet this guy on the way up. He was very happy to sit and have me scratch him. He didn't want me to leave, but he didn't want to come up with me. I guess he'd seen the view plenty of times.

And it'd become a mantra for the day, "and what did I find when I got there? More stairs!" It was staggering after the afternoon, but it was worth it.

I did an entire 360 pan. The mountains behind this one are obviously larger. That was disappointing, especially how big they still looked. I had to save those for another day. Obviously it doesn't do as much in this small frame, but it's overlooking the entire Taipei basin and as the camera pans it goes from east to west. You can see all the way from downtown Taipei and 101 to Danshuei and the Taiwan Strait.

The amazing part is, I'm on the wrong mountain. This's only about 650 meters up. It sounds better when I say it's a little more than 2,000 feet, but until I got to the parking lot, I thought I'd climbed almost 4,000 feet. Talk about a let down, or a didn't-go-so-high.

But it was still a lot of fun. I did discover that by not being on the right mountain, there was no bus to take me back. I had to walk down a half hour before I found a bus stop, which took me to the metro, which took me home.

Oh, in the video, technically, I think you can see our neighborhood, if not our house.

And I saw this and I remembered mom telling me I needed to take pictures with people in them. So, there you go, ready-made self-portrait opportunity.

Up the mountain

2009-08-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

The typhoon thing has been really weird. It did so much flooding damage in the south but Marie and I went to the mall that weekend. There's a place called Miramar with a movie theater and shops and an arcade and so on. It's got a stop on the new MRT line, so we went to see the new route, which's an elevated train so it's like a really smooth, double-decker bus ride, instead of riding a fast earthworm.

It was rainy but it was only about 30 C (85 ish) after all the typhoon rain, so it was much more comfortable. Ironically, the 80 percent humidity made you want to move so you'd have a breeze.

We had lunch there, which was a little disappointing, only 'cause it was rather bland. Usually the steamed potstickers are tastier than that. Go figure. And we saw the ferris wheel, which's big enough they light it at night and can be easily seen from Taipei 101. It's like the Eye in London.

In retrospect, since there was a typhoon in the area, it made sense we didn't go for a ride (I'm pretty sure I saw a few people on it, but not many). But we were looking at it and Marie said, "I'll bet they aren't air-conditioned." And that's where we left it.

On our way back, we got donuts. Have I mentioned that donuts are a dessert or snack, here? Like, in the evening? They are. You want donuts for breakfast, you gotta plan ahead, and then not eat 'em when you get home. (That's the hard part.)

I haven't tried this–'cause Mochi rings are really chewy and I don't care for 'em; they're practically gum, there's nothing like 'em in food Americana–so I don't know if it's corn-flakes kinda corn or corn corn, but they do love corn here. And, you could be forgiven if you thought they like to misspell things (it says "Corn Curmb").

And this we saw when Marie was trying to find a keyboard for a friend . I've seen these pink guitars in lots of guitar stores, but I didn't have a camera. Mostly this's for my dad. I'm sorry he didn't get to see this while he was here.

Really, the best Hello Kitty is the Hello Kitty wine (I am not making this up) but this's a pretty good second.

But I finally went hiking again on my day off! Ha! I went to the same area I went last month. So in the photo of the trail in the woods, I came from the direction the photo was looking.

This was particularly entertaining 'cause I forgot to look at a map before I left home, so I wasn't even sure what stop I should get off at. I did find the stop, but the map in the station didn't have any details about where to find the other end of the trail (so I could do it backwards to make it seem different). So I just wandered up to where it said the trailhead was and I took the right fork of the trail instead of the left I took last time.

It worked out very well. The trails are marked, but really, once you get away from the city, which's pretty sudden, there isn't a whole lot you can do but follow the trail.

So after following a canal out of the urban area–chasing herons all the way–and going up the trail and lots of stairs and more trail but mostly lots more stairs. I found something that looked promising.

More stairs!

That's the city below (that's how far up I'd already hiked) and these stairs run up into the foliage and they keep going.

After these stairs, I found this edge just away from the trail, so you get an idea of how high I'd hiked. It took a little effort to get to, and I wasn't very close to the edge, mom. I stuck the camera out.

My best guess, with a little help from Google, I was somewhere from four to five hundred meters up. It's hard to be sure, but it seemed like even more.

I found this marker a little farther along. It says 4K+0M, but I don't know from where. I was really confused when I found this one five meters farther on.

So, I really don't know how far I went, but it took a couple of hours and 32 ounces of water.

Unfortunately, I didn't remember to bring any dry clothes for the 95 degree, sixty percent humidity day, but there was a breeze and shade, tho' that didn't stop profuse sweating.

But this's the amusing part of Taiwan. Almost 500 meters up a steep hillside, there's a Chinese inspired pavilion. Surprisingly, it's not painted bright red.

But! Because it's Taipei (second most people per square mile on earth, look out Calcutta!) there's a couple of guys there reading and napping on a Tuesday afternoon.

Just a little farther up the trail (it was mostly level at this stage) I found this shelter. The unexpected thing is it's completely made of concrete. Maybe some kind of plaster, but it's really solid. No water, insect, or mold damage on this thing.

There's also a little temple on the other side. I was going to take a picture, but it felt awkward 'cause, yes, someone had either come up the 500 meters from the city or from the town a kilometer on the other side of the hill to pray. And no, this's not accessible by car, scooter, or bus. If you own a goat, that might work.

But this's why I came up here. Babbling brook and no city noises or concrete walls. The little old lady (you can hear her humming) almost bumped into me as I was standing on the bridge. I guess not that many people come through. But she was funny 'cause she was up the trail, above me on the stairs, and she starts offering me some kinda juice box, a beer (no joke), and fruit. I'd have taken a video of the exchange but the end of that video was when my 2 gig chip filled up.

I'd have considered taking something, just to be polite (I think) and maybe make her feel better (I hope) but I was really afraid the juice box looked like it was asparagus (yes, asparagus juice, in a kiddie box, with a tiny little straw, bleeeech), and I've been kinda ill on beer lately (like an allergy, thank you very much), and the fruit, well, my bag was already kinda icky. I didn't think the fruit would be edible when it got home. Accepting anything felt kinda wasteful.

I kept thanking her and telling her I (politely) didn't want any, but I almost had to beat her off with a stick.

It wasn't hard with her, but we say "bu yong" a lot, which's the polite way to say "I don't want it" and I notice it's easier in a foreign language to be polite when someone's shoving a flyer in your face 'cause you don't really understand what you're saying. You just know this's what you're supposed to say.

I headed on down the trail towards the Outdoor Classroom of Water and Soil Conservation of Guizikeng. Incidentally, Guizikeng is the name of the trail and the area and the mountain.

There were a zillion gecko-salamander things that kept running underfoot, but way too fast to photograph. But this frog sat still.

For a moment I wondered if he was dead, 'cause I kept getting closer and closer but he didn't move or even blink. Then I nudged him with my toe and nothing. Then I brushed him with a leaf and nothing. Then I tapped him with my finger and POW! Like he'd been spring-loaded and just trying not to laugh. He jumped a couple feet up and a couple across, tho' he was going downhill. I went the other way, also pretty quick.

This's pretty funny. After being in Nebraska for a couple of months last summer and seeing a few more backroads than I remember, seeing a sign for a town pointing down this dirt path, it just made me think that there are still plenty of places where even Nebraska infrastructure seems pretty well done.

And really, this was just a path 'cause it was leading away from the hiking trail. It goes a hundred yards across these kinda peapatch gardens to an asphalt road that leads to the town Xiaopingding. Not like you'd ride your scooter over this narrow dirt road a mile or something.

Finally, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. There's like a cottage industry here of people seem to survive on recycling everything (except glass, which has to be done industrially). So I wonder if this pile is a garbage dump (there's a golf course around the corner), a recycle center (leave it and someone will haul it away eventually), or someone's drop site before they sort it and take it to exchange for cash.

So that was my day off.

I didn't mention the ants who seemed out in force, or how pleased I am that I don't seem to be tasty to mosquitoes or ticks and I don't think there are ticks, here. And I didn't mention the huge spider I saw silhouetted against the city at a distance of twenty feet but I could still tell he was missing a leg. But that's how busy the day was, too many other things.

Weather the weather

2009-08-10T23:22:00.000-07:00

To everyone who pays attention to the weather in this corner of the world: we're fine. We got two days off out of the the typhoon last weekend, which means a lot of money, but it was really great to have a three day weekend.

I got the impression that they don't like to shut down for two days because of the weather. I don't understand what it means when the city shuts down, 'cause the garbage trucks still came through. But that's when Kojen cancels classes: when the city says they're closed due to inclement weather (but in Chinese).

But I think the typhoon fooled people, 'cause it really looked on radar like the thing hit the island and squished into a big rainstorm. So it was pretty easy to just enjoy the cooler weather (80-85 and 80 percent humidity, don't ask me why it wasn't a hundred, that's what our little gauge said). We went out shopping on Saturday and saw a movie with friends on Sunday and found a great tex-mex place called Yuma.

But here's a little look at our experience.

Day down... for the count

2009-07-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

One of our faithful readers asked if, with a day off, we would be writing more regularly. I would say emphatically, "yes" but....

I had intended and expected and was excited to go see more of the trail system I'd found last week. Photos of the city from a safe distance, seeing people instead of crowds, more plants than buildings. I was and am excited by the idea and sorry I hadn't made time before. But on Monday I came down with a massive cold or something. I managed to get through my one class on Monday (and be grateful most of my work happened on Saturday when I was a little more coherent) and then fell into a feverish delirium that night, probably 'cause I knew I had the next day off.

I'll skip the details, but it brings up a point about traveling abroad. Yes, it is a complaint but it's part of the adventure or the trials, however you label it. In Taipei I'm quite sure there's a higher instance of respiratory diseases.

I don't know frequency from a local's perspective, but I know I used to get sick maybe once a year in the States. Once every two or three years I'd get something bad enough to be memorable. Here, I've been sick four or five times in a year, regardless of season and several have been tough to forget.

A lot of this is because I don't have an immunity to the local diseases. I'm sure I'd be sick more just by being here. I think I've mentioned before how this's starting to feel like disease-vacation, catching bugs from other parts of the world so you're better equipped for the coming pandemic. If this's true, I feel I'm well equipped now: stop the ride, I'd like to get off... and throw up.

It also doesn't help to work in a school, where every disease to sniffle a nose in I-don't-know-how-many elementary schools, will be run past me. I might even be this sick in the States if I had this job. So between those two major changes in my situation, there are more opportunities to try the local fare, so to speak.

I'm confident that these are respiratory diseases because one: I can taste the air. Two: many people wear masks here, some are to protect others from their disease but many scooter-riders wear them so I think much of the population has suspicions about the air-quality. Three: I've had at least two, maybe three sicknesses where I spent time coughing icky stuff out of my lungs.

One illness actually robbed me of most of my vocal ability for nearly a week. This's particularly notable, for me, because while I've lost my voice for a day or so after screaming for hours at a state basketball tournament or something, I've never lost my voice to a bug.

And it was added irony to the frustration because after ten years or so of editing-writing jobs where speaking wasn't much more than a convenience, I lost my voice on a job when I needed my voice.

Coming face-to-face with some of these realities hasn't really been fun. I mean, it's not the army where you can get, along with job-related injuries, meningitis. But it's been an education to learn just how reliant disease prevention is on my system being familiar with potential diseases. I thought I was doing really well: drinking a fair amount of water and o.j., getting lots of sleep, running occasionally.

But come to find out, running might just be part of the problem. In the States I think running in the winter is what keeps me healthy. I spend less time indoors and I get fresh air and exercise. Here, I'm beginning to suspect that the fine particulates I breathe in might be neutralizing the positive effects or maybe making it worse than not running.

Maybe I should be hiking more. More away from the city and the traffic, and not so much rapid breathing. It would be an interesting physiologic research project, if I had the time and resources.

I hope, next week, to have a real blog with pictures and interesting things to talk about.

Day off

2009-07-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

This's pretty unexpected but suddenly my schedule has a big hole in it. I unexpectedly have Tuesdays off. This does leave me feeling a little guilty, 'cause Marie still has to work, and she' s working more than I am, again. But I went for a hike and I felt better.

This's heading towards a hiking trail called Guizikeng. I think it might sound like Guay-tsih-keng, but it depends on how you interpret the letters anyway.

I took the MRT north, about halfway to the coast, to a stop called Fuxinggang (Fu-shing-gong). Then I followed this overflow canal for a while. There were a bunch of these heron-like things that really didn't like it when a walked past. Even tho' I was up on the edge and they were down in the bottom of the canal. But it was okay with me, because every time I'd get close to one it would take off and I'd get to see it soar down the canal.

I did have an interesting time because I'm just sure the map in the MRT station didn't quite match to the real world. It seems to happen once in a while.

Usually they're quite helpful, but it's really hard to check if I screwed up or the map is some how off. But it was entertaining because I kept looking for some sign to my left, as I hiked along the canal, for the start of the trailhead and where I'd start into the rougher country. But the only sign I saw was a board that'd been knocked down and was lying along side the trail next to what looked like someone's front yard. If you imagine a ramshackle collection of corrugated steel, nearly black wood, and tarps to be a house, then this was the front yard. So I kept walking.

It was still really hot and humid. I don't know how hot, but wearing athletic clothes with a breeze made it okay, especially for a July day in the tropics.

I did eventually find a trailhead. It wasn't what I expected, but it led me up a series of switchback rock steps. There was a little sign at the start of the trail that said 2,400 meters. After a really long time of walking up these rough-rock stairs I found 2,300 hundred. I was really glad I didn't have to be anywhere 'cause I was already seeing myself crawling up after a thousand meters of those.

This's what I saw about 300 meters up the trail. On the left you can see a needle-like building in the mist, that's Taipei 101. I did start pretty high. As the train goes north it slowly climbs up the wall of the basin Taipei is in, but I hoofed a lot of the elevation on my own.

Fortunately for me and my water supply, the 2,400 meters didn't mean 2,400 meters of stairs. I still dunno where it was counting to, but the stairs ended after about 4oo meters. It was a surprise, but I was really glad I wouldn't feel the need to call a cab to get me from the top of the mountain.

That's the end of the trail right there. I'd actually found a saddle between rather more serious hills, but it was enough for the moment.

More to the point, finding these little-used places are vital to me and my time in Taipei. I kinda freaked out when I visited New York on my own, years ago. Downtown Seattle took a while to get used to and I've always been glad it's a tight group of building that get filled with pedestrians.

Here, once you walk out of your apartment, there's people, people, people. It's like something out of a Star Trek episode where a planet is so overpopulated they kidnapped Captain Kirk so he can give some young woman, in sixties clothing that's pretending to be other-world-modern, a disease. No points for guessing how he gives her the disease.

Point is, I really need these breaks from humanity. I always forget this until I'm out in places like this and I feel some of the pressure slide away.

I love this. This's just indicative of the local thinking. There isn't any population or even much farming for a couple of kilometers, but they still stick a four-story building in the middle of the draw between these high hills. I suppose that's what the U.S. needs to start doing, instead of covering every inch with houses and yards and asphalt, but it looks very odd to me.

I did have some trouble finding my way off the hillside. There was supposed to have been a trail back into town but, to paraphrase Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a green wood,
one of them diverged again,
and I thought, "now which one do I take?"

I get the impression that things on the edge of the city are even less regulated than in. Or maybe they're regulated the same but out in the relative countryside fewer people mind if someone drops a farm across a walking trail. So I picked a trail and ended up walking right up to someone's cultivated plot that brought up images of farms from Vietnam through too many action movies.

I couldn't tell what they were growing, but I figured going through wasn't helpful, so I went back and tried again. This time I wound up in a golf course. At least I could get to a road from there.

Oh, and I realized that while herons are beautiful and majestic while strutting and gliding even on a concrete canal, on a golf course they look a little silly.

I thought this was neat. I'd had no idea when I'd left Taipei City, but apparently I was coming back in from Taipei County-Province.

This was also really instructive. This's a cemetery along a hillside between the golf course and the community along the metro line.

What's unexpected isn't the Christian symbols (if you look really close), but that they're still tombs, not burial plots. Tombs do make more sense, in a very densely populated place like this, but it's interesting to see what allowances are made for broad cultural morays and the specifics of the church.

These are all facing one way. There's no allowances for feng shui, like in Taoism and Buddism shrines. But I did find, as I walked past, hell money. A roll of paper representing a gift to the deceased to be used in the next world. So there's a sort of amalgamation of worshiping at work. Again, not that I'm surprised, but it's interesting to see it.

I liked this view. I gives an impressive idea that I climbed and climbed on my hike.

No, I don't know how or why the buildings are so dense and then suddenly there's open land. Much of the open space isn't farmed that I could see. I do know that demarcation line is the MRT tracks, so maybe the metro owns everything on the right, but that's all I know.

I think I was something of a surprise, walking as I was, down the road. I was much safer than these two, I think. I had low concrete barriers, ostensibly to keep cars from hitting the rock retaining wall, but it gave me a safe little path.

So that was my day off. Next Tuesday I'm going back. This time I'll spend less time poking my way around and I'll charge right up the hillside and find out what's down another path at the top of the saddle.

This's just for entertainment and cultural levity. Marie and I are working on getting new alien-residence-cards. It's a legal thing to stay in the country, or at least to avoid a few thousand in fines when we leave the country.

But to get this card we had to have another medical check. We just saw this show on Discovery channel here about drug resistant tuberculosis. Forget swine flu or bird flu or blue flu. Tuberculosis is scary. I'm glad we get an x-ray for that!

But this photo's of the form we got from the hospital. Look at all the stamps! There's about a dozen stamps on here. Some are just dates, but some are obvious yet obscure. They have this thing about stamps here. If you want something to look official, stamp it!

And this's from a shopping trip after the hike. I had the camera with me and I saw these no smoking signs sold next to the ashtrays. I like that.

So, it's not so hot here, tho' it is usually close to a hundred. But it's the humidity that's impressive. As I walked home one evening, I realized I could actually feel the moisture collect on my skin. I could tell that I was stickier now that half-a-block back. But it really makes you appreciate any little breeze, or air conditioning.

Visitors from outta town

2009-06-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of weeks since my parents have been here. I haven't written about it 'cause we showed them most of the things that I've already posted here. But we did do one major thing Marie and I've never done before. We went to Dajia Park to see the Dragon Boat races.

The park is marked by this unusual bridge, called the Dajia (Dah-jah) bridge. It's pretty famous because it's such an unusual structure.

This's everybody headed into the park. Someone at work said that the Dragon Boat races mark the beginning of summer and it's really hot there and then. But we didn't think it was that bad. It was warm, maybe even hot, but it wasn't miserable.

The boats start under the unusual bridge and they run in heats of four for about 500 meters, I think. This's one of the boats returning from a run. They have Dragon Boat races in Seattle, but it was pretty neat to see it done by people for whom it's a very long tradition.

The story goes something like: there was a renowned general who advised the emperor of China. But the emperor would 't listen to his advice, so in his shame or frustration the general threw himself into the river and drowned. The people, in an attempt to prevent his body from being eaten, made these special triangles of sticky rice wrapped in seaweed and threw them in the river for the fish to eat instead. Which's why these things are so popular during this holiday. No one seems to know why they race boats.

My personal theory is everyone gathered at the river as part of this holiday-memorial and at some point, unsurprisingly, some guy turned to another guy and uttered the immortal words, "race ya."

And there was also a midway of sorts with lots of food, like a fudge fountain for your marshmallows or squid on a stick (mom liked that, not) and things you could buy. And there were rides for smaller types.

And now, the weather: currently, at 10:30 a.m., it's 91 and the humidity is 60 percent, so it feels like 102. Which is to say, not what I'm used to June feeling like.

I think the best way to visualize it is: with the A/C on, I can take a cold shower, put on a shirt I keep in the freezer, and the shirt will be sticking to me before I get outside. By the time I get to the subway three blocks away, my shirt will probably be sticking to me more than not, certainly by the time I walk another three blocks outta the subway to school. Not to gross anyone out. It's just hot and sticky here.

My current trick is to wear one t-shirt to work and change into something else when I get there. I thought the shirt-in-the-freezer was a good idea, but cotton just won't stay cold more than a few seconds. I need a shirt made outta those freezer packs. Mmmmm, cold.

But I think we've been pretty lucky. It's been a mild summer, I suspect. Locals have said it's usually really hot by the Dragon Boat races. And I've noticed that if I want my kids to consistently say it's hot, I have to write 35 C on the board. That's about 95 degrees. 30 C (85) is hot to some but only warm to many. And the Dragon Boat Festival was three weeks ago.

So by now we should be little puddles of Seattlites, as we're unfamiliar with real heat or humidity, but we're doing okay. We don't even have the air running all the time. It's still warm inside, but we can open windows and get a bit of a breeze, which really helps with the humidity. Oh, and there's air conditioning at school, so that's okay.

But I think there's a drought or something like it. I heard from someone a month ago that the reserves are down to 17 percent or so of what they usually are this time of year. If this prevails then there's a rationing that might happen. This means no going out to restaurants. You can get takeout, but they don't have water to do the dishes. But we haven't seen that, either. And it's rained several times since then, so maybe there's less chance of that.

But I think a lack of water is why there's been few bugs. Marie's been bitten several times, but I just haven't seen many. We even got an electro-racket a couple months ago, when we thought we might really need a weapon of mass-mosquito destruction.

It's like a small tennis racket and the handle holds a rechargeable battery. You flick it on and wave it around and when you come in contact with a mosquito-ZAP! Some rackets carry such a charge there isn't even a carcass left. The bug's just vaporized. So I guess it's an active bug zapper. You get to go get the bugs, instead of waiting for them to find the zapper. I saw a woman using one on the street, in front of her restaurant. It was like she was waving a bundle of firecrackers. Snap, crackle, pop. I haven't seen that many bugs in one place yet, but she was certainly frying something.

So we had a good time being tour guides and showing my parents around our newish city. And it was good to do something that wasn't going to school every day.

The really funny thing, my folks left on June 1st, their wedding anniversary, and due to the oddity of the international dateline and the speed of trans-pacific flight, they arrived at midnight on May 31st and had their wedding anniversary over. So we were wondering, does this mean they get to add another candle to the anniversary cake? Just wondering.

Hot fun

2009-06-07T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's no longer really culture shock, I don't think. It's just standard boredom afflicting us.

I've had this same feeling after spending time contracting for Microsoft. Contracts are necessarily simpler jobs; they want you to just plug in and do the work, so I'm usually bored after a month with two to nine months more to work. And this is what that feels like.

Marie has said she's looking forward to a job she's good at. She seems to feel like she isn't cut out for exciting people, basically kids, about English. I think she does fine, but she's worried about the kids' experience, which probably makes her a better teacher. But she's said she's had feelings like she's done with this job.

I'm looking forward to a shower that doesn't start cold and take five minutes to get lukewarm, then warmer and when I turn it down it's cold for a minute, then warmer and warmer, and when I turn it down again, really cold!

I'm looking forward to not hanging all our laundry in a closet and using a dehumidifier to dry it in less than a day or two.

I'm not looking forward to having to get up at 6:30 or 7 a.m. five days a week. I like getting up anywhere from eight to ten six days a week and going to work around three or four.

I am looking forward to having Saturdays off again.

But we did have a Saturday off a couple weeks ago. We went to the beach, and it was good.

Our Saturday off was the result of a holiday several weeks ago. Everyone, including kids, got a Thursday or Friday off, so they had to make it up at their regular school.

Don't ask me why, we still don't have answers on why they have loan holidays not actual holidays. But it meant that our kids were in their regular schools this Saturday, and everyone else was at work, so the beach was almost certainly much less crowded for it.

This's most of the group, current and former teachers from Marie's school: Dorothy in red, then Belle and Melissa. Lying down are Aileen and Fiona. Vera's around somewhere. Dorothy is holding Bom-Bom and Kiki is in Melissa's lap. Not pictured is Belle's chihuahua Chi-Chi.

Marie asked if it sucked going to the beach with a bunch of hot Chinese women... and my wife. The obvious and safe answer was no, but it was also true. Mostly what this reminded me was that I'm old, and I was never cool, and I'm certainly not cool by any kind of Taiwanese standard. There's no badly written English on any of my shirts. Arf.

It was really just great to sit on the sand, in the sun, not at work, not in the city, not yelling at kids, and look at the water. Next stop, Japan.

I thought this was funny. The kid here has a kendo stick, a wooden samuari sword. The bag at his feet has a watermelon in it. He's blindfolded and his friends would guide him to the bag which he would smash the daylights outta and then they'd eat the cracked watermelon. I'm thinking about trying it. Good beach entertainment, and food.

Besides the people, we brought a dog.

Or two. Actually three, but I didn't get Marie with the third.

They were these little toy dogs that rode around in oversized purses, which brought to mind a cartoon that shows a woman rummaging through her bag trying to find something, and her friend asks, "what'd you lose? Wallet, cell phone, car keys?" The woman replies, "dog."

Marie and I both got scorched. We're outta practice for being out in the sun for six hours. We're just peeling now. Oh, and thanks Patti, for the aloe. We nearly used it up after we got back. They must have something like it here, but I haven't seen any.

It was well worth it tho'. We had what felt like a long weekend, even if it was only two days. We played in the South China Sea. The lifeguards wouldn't let us go deeper than about waist high, but they went home at five, so I got a chance to swim out a little in this protected cove.

I think I'm only a bit disappointed we didn't walk around the beach to the far point. Maybe we'll make ourselves go back later in the summer, well after our skin's recovered.

Star Trek and other weekend fun

2009-05-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

It's been good that we can see most movies here that we could see in the States. We saw the new Star Trek and it was at least as good as billed.

It's really funny to see movies here, tho'. Even tho' they have the translations, the cultural stuff just doesn't cooperate, like all the old lines: "Damnit Jim! I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" and the reversal when McCoy claims to like Spock 'cause he yelled at Kirk, and the classic Scotty line, "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!" got no reaction. Nothing. Marie and I were giggling like idiots, but not a peep from the rest of the crowd.

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Danshui, up north, to tool around and see some history. Turns out, it was one of our last cool days.

This was breakfast. I just couldn't do it, Marie dug in tho'. I was glad I'd had some cereal. We aren't sure what it was. Noodles and sauce, definitely, but the mushy shell is either tofu or fish paste. I was trying to try it, but after hearing what it even might've been, I was done.

We spent a couple hours wandering along the boardwalk along the river. The Danshui River is a huge artery that used to bring ships into Taiwan. Now it's just a touristy thing, but it's very pretty, even when it's overcast.

And we saw this traditional looking performance, even if he was using a sound system. It was very Chinese, to me. He sounded ethereal, with what sounded like quarter tones and the language I couldn't make heads or tails of if he was speaking. Singing makes it sound like you're in a dream and you're watching a Twin Peaks episode. Weird, is my point.

This was the main destination for the day. These cannons were a part of a historical fort-house that overlooks the Danshui River. I should remember better if the Dutch built it first or who, then the British took it over, and the Chinese too, somewhere in there. Taiwan seems to change hands every couple of months a hundred years ago. But it was neat in a historical sorta way. Probably 'cause it had a colonial feel to it, it was like visiting Williamsburg or Mount Vernon, but with more Chinese descriptions.

We found this shop of kinda curioes, kinda classical, kinda kitschy stuff. Tho' I think there's plenty of stores that sell stuff like this. Some looks tasteful and interesting, some looks like the worst stereotype come to life. But it was interesting and kinda funny 'cause tho' we've seen things similar to this in other places...

we've never seen anything like this. These little guys are Chinese representations of the animals of each lunar year, like it's the year of the ox right now. You can have your birth-year animals heat-sealed to a rock for a hundred NT or so. You can get a bigger rock if you plan to have kids.

Yes, Marie bought one with two tigers on it. Even tho' she was born the year before I was on the solar-Christian calender, we were both born before the lunar new year, so we're both tigers. I have to admit, these things are simple enough, yet culturally specific enough that I want to get them for everyone I know, I just don't wanna pay the cost of shipping rocks.

And last weekend we met up with some acquaintances we met in D.C.

This's Rachel and Werner. Rachel was the one who suggested to Neil, when they were in class together for the State Department, that we should look at traveling to Taiwan when our P.C. plans disintegrated.

When we met them yesterday, they were on their way through to China for her job with State. By now, she's in Chengdu (at least I think she said Chengdu) for two years.

They took us to the National Palace Museum. We'd been once before, but it's so overwhelming, it was good to have people who had an idea of what to see.

This ivory piece is one of the prizes of this massive collection.

I can't really blow it up much. They were a little picky about photos. I was only taking video, no flash, but I think they just don't want you to take your own souvenirs. Go to the giftshop for postcards.

But the ball in the middle of the chain was made from a single piece of ivory and it has at least 17 globes carved one inside the other. Apparently they don't even know for sure how many pieces are in there. Part of the mystery, maybe. They're all free floating and can spin (if they'd let you touch it) in any direction.

And this piece is the prize of the collection. It's a piece of cabbage, carved from jade. I'm not kidding and I spelled it right: cabbage. Food carved out of rock. It's on postcards and posters. I suppose it's not so far from carving dragons and stylized lions from granite or ivory, but I'm still trying to get my head around it being so important, 'cause the Corn Palace is a little closer to being a joke than the center piece of an art collection describing 3,000 years of history behind a fifth of the world's population.

But it's hard not to be impressed by something so old.

But who cares! On with the parade of inflatable animals!

I didn't get a good head-on shot of this caterpillar. Who knew balloons could move so fast. Oh, it's hot here, now. Only about 80-85 but the humidity is over 50 percent. It's officially summer and icky.

Mr. Frog here was much more cooperative. He's part of the Deaflympics ad campaign and was joined by kids in frog suits. Did I mention it's hard to be a kid with a job here, and have your dignity? At least you couldn't see who they were under the masks.

On the up side, my parents are coming in a couple of weeks, so we should have some more photos and touristy stuff to show soon. On the down side, it's uncomfortable now, and it's only gonna get miserable. Tis' the season to be indoors, so we'll probably have less in the way of touristy stuff after that, but maybe I'll work the next few adventures out in installments.

Long overdue vacation

2009-04-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

Hi to all of our readers! Sorry it's been so long since the last entry. I've been sick and working and still more sick. And there hasn't been much to report in a long while, but we finally had a real vacation last weekend.

We had Saturday off for the first time in a couple months, so several people hired a van and we went to Hualien for a couple of days to see the famous Taroko Gorge, which is the place you're supposed to see if you spend any time here. And we could see why.

The most important thing was being out of the city, and not working. Maybe not in that order. It's hard to tell; but the views were just terrific.

I am trying not to have just blank shots of trees and rocks, but it's hard to go from a feeling of isolation at work for a couple of months in a crowded and busy city, to something in nature that inspires awe, without getting a little stupid about trying to capture the memories for the next month or two and the rest of your life.

This's a big topo map in the visitor's center. We're in the dark line running up the middle, but the details are a little fuzzy. The little red light near the bottom is a town, so this park, which's most of the topo map, is really big. It's not Yellowstone, but it's plenty big for a couple of days.

As Marie said, "it lived up to the expectations" and I agree.

We started on a local hike up the river. We were frequently under these overhangs.

Over the weekend I was struck by how in Washington, the conservation corps would go out with shovel and chainsaws to cut trees and keep trails open along the sides of mountains. Here, apparently the trail crews just use dynamite, or artillery. I'm only basing this on how much rock has been cut out, which was an immense amount.

Marie always looks at me suspiciously when I'm obvious about taking her picture, but she's still cute.

We also got to meet the locals, like this caterpillar. The long, black antenna are the front. It's hard to take a decent photo of something this small. I think I was still too close. Once you got over the initial shock and surprise, he was kinda cute and fuzzy.

The water of the river next to the trail was this electric blue where it was deep enough. Fay jumped in. It looks like it should be freezing, like it's meltwater off a glacier, but there aren't any glaciers in the neighborhood, so it's cold, but even Marie put her feet in.

The entire gorge is a protected park, but it's also kinda like an Indian reservation in the States. The aboriginal people who have lived here for hundreds or thousands of years (I'm not sure of the time) are allowed to use this area to live and grow crops for a living. They grow this plant, which looks a bit like a fern to me, for sale. It's a cultural food so it's making a comeback, apparently.

Another of the locals. I first thought this was a flying ant. Later I saw a sign warning of poisonous wasps, so that was probably this guy.

I remember when I was little, my dad had a new video camera and he was showing some video of a buffalo in Yellowstone Park. And as we were watching, the video zoomed in until the huge animal filled the TV and it took a few steps towards dad and the camera. Then dad said, "right about here I checked to see how close I was."

I put my foot down next to this guy for comparison, and he started for my foot, but slowly. So I put the camera up, focused, and took the shot. But as the camera takes the shot there's a second where it blinks and there's a blank screen. So I couldn't see the bug around it. I thought of my dad and the buffalo, but on a smaller scale. Smaller creature, much much closer. But I got the shot and I left, if slightly quicker than I might have.

We started up on the bridge behind us and we walked down a stairway to this trail.

Today was a really easy time. We'd gotten up early to leave Taipei. We still got stuck in traffic, but it wasn't too bad, especially since we had a driver. The drive there is pretty uncomfortable, 'cause it's a very twisty road and even if you don't have to worry about motion sickness, you're always being rattled around like a bingo ball. It's just uncomfortable for several hours. If we visit again, we're going by train or even plane.

In the Gorge the trails are largely made for walking. There isn't a lot of elevation so it's not really much of a hike, which was nice. We found comfortable spots along the way to rest and just watch the scenery and unwind. We played in the river a little, but mostly it was just another place to stop and go, "oooooo, ahhhhh."

Back up on the bridge there are these lions every few meters. You can just barely see another one behind Marie. The funny thing is, they're all different. Each one is unique, if only by a little, so someone decided to spend some time and money on this bridge.

This was on our way out of the Gorge to Hualien for the evening. I just loved this tiny little strip of town on the side of the mouth of the Gorge. It reminded me of Virginia or maybe some place in the Olympics. I also think I liked it 'cause of a dearth of traffic. I just love when there isn't traffic.

We spent the night with Adele and Michael. Adele is a coworker of Marie's (and Cat's, Alanna's, and Fay's, so I was the oddball, yay), and she made a terrific Taiwanese-Chinese dinner. Then we crashed on the floor and showered there in the morning. Michael works in Hualien for the Taiwanese Air Force. She visits him on weekends, or something like that. But it was a very nice visit for us.

The next day was much busier. The first thing we did was drive back to the Gorge. Hualien's a decent sized town-city. It's not nearly as big as Taipei, but it's not insignificant. But it's a drive from the Gorge.

On our way we passed through this cemetary. I mention this partly because the place is amazing and partly because this's the reason we had Saturday off. The translation is "Tomb Sweeping Day" and I've kinda assumed it's like Memorial Day or maybe Day of the Dead. People visit relatives' and ancestors' burial places.

You can see some Christian influences but most everything here, and there's a lot of here, is decidedly not. It's all above ground, and some of these tombs are big. Some aren't, but there's quite a range.

On the left you can see a bunch of rocks holding yellow paper down. Fay called that "underground money" I think. Money for the ancestors and spirits, I gathered. She mentioned there's a collective burning at some point.

If you look really closely, you can see that the tombs all face different directions. Apparently, there's a Feng Shui expert who knows which way the tomb is supposed to face according to when the person passed away.

But we spent most of our time tooling around finding these walks to go on. They weren't really hikes, but they were still quite impressive. We were also quite pleased that there weren't many people visiting. I thought it'd be busy, since it's a holiday and this place made me think of a junior U.S. parks program. But I guess Marie and I went through Mt. Rushmore just a week before the official summer opening, and it was hardly busy.

I don't think this has the total traffic a place like Mt. Rushmore or Glacier National Park or Yellowstone has, but it's still obvious a lot of work has gone into it, not the least of which is all the tunnels blasted out.

These signs are about every fifty yards, I'm not kidding. They're very frequent, and obviously in two languages. Tho', as Marie pointed out, they don't want you to linger, but they want you to read the signs. I didn't get a photo of the paragraph long explanation on why you shouldn't linger. That was really funny.

But really quickly, you get kinda inured to the signs.

Then something like this kinda gets your attention and I realized something hit hard enough to dent a quarter-inch galvanized pipe railing. I took the photo and de-lingered myself.

This was one of the walks we took in the late morning. This's a canyon called Tunnel of the Nine Turns. It's really neat 'cause it used to be a major road through the Gorge, but as other highways made this obsolete, and more people came to visit, they closed this road to all but pedestrian traffic and they dug a bigger road for park traffic farther in the mountain.

It defies comprehesion, how narrow and steep the walls are. It's hard to figure out where to not take photos. It's one of those places where you think the next thing you see is the epitome of the experience, and the next. I love digital film.

This was one of the rock falls they decided not to clean up. They just put a railing around it and called it good. You can see the rest of the tunnel behind Marie. And on the left is where this smaller tunnel reconnects with the traffic tunnel.

I think this's one of the best illustrations of A: how ridiculously sheer this whole place is yet absurdly high, and 2: how much they like tunneling. The straight edge in the lower right is a series of columns they put in where they blew out the side of the tunnel. I think, instead of installing expensive and complicated-to-maintain ventilation equipment, they just blew holes out the side of the tunnel. Some of them are yards deep.

I also wonder about how much weight is on one of these tunnels. Even more so when we were walking through several unlighted tunnels. That really discourages lingering.

This's the other thing they like to do. These little pavilions for no apparent reason. The red is kinda associated with a temple, but there's just a little bench under there. But the weird thing is, there's no way to get to this thing. There used to be a parking lot next to it from that road, and there was a stairway up to it from the left, but they're both blocked. So I don't know how long this little thing's been just sitting there, unused. It makes me wonder about other buildings I see that don't seem to have any access.

We stopped in the village of Taroko for lunch. I should've taken a photo of the village itself, but I was more interested by where the village was located. Dead center in the photo is another of those tower-pavilions, but this one is definately part of a temple. I nearly got locked in it later in the day.

The rest of the village looks like six buildings transplanted from Taipei. Tho' this parking lot seems to be for a motel to the left that was reminicent of a Holiday Inn, which had bathrooms Cat declared to be, "the nicest bathrooms I've ever been in!" I think she said.

This was lunch. That's egg and shrimp right there, mushrooms in sauce to the left, then cabbage, then kung pao chicken, which is pretty similar to what we know from the States, then the greens they grow on the other side of the Gorge. Remember the plants I said looked like ferns? That's them, cooked. They kinda have a minty flavor, but that might be the spices, but not bad. Then mountain pig. Mountain pig is gooood.

We all shared this, with a bowl of rice for each. Just spin the table and pick up what you wanna try. This was a combo meal. It was supposed to be for five people, and it fed the six of us. So I feel better about how Chinese recipes say they feed six people, or two Americans. 'Cause this was supposed to be for five Chinese, and it more than fed two Chinese and four Americans.

This was the high point of the whole trip. We walked a mile or two, through several very long, very dark, very wet tunnels to get to this point. We were on our way to the Tunnel of the Water Curtain.

That's a suspension bridge in the background.

Here it is, up close. Alanna had a little trouble with it, but she made it there and back. And it was worth it.

See the bridge above the falls? That's where we came across. See the people? That's how big this thing is. And the noise was amazing. The noise in my video was just rapids. This's a full-bore waterfall.

But I was thinking, "it's really impressive, but it doesn't look much like a curtain, and there were a lot of tunnels, but I was expecting them to be more related." I got way more than I expected.

This's about as close as I ever want to get to the edge of total fear. We walked through a couple more caves and I led the way into this cave while everyone else was on a potty break.

If you can see the faint light, that's the light from the guy's flashlight. You can just see the shape of the guy to the right of the light. I tried a flash in here, but there's so much water, the camera focused on the water on the lens.

This cave is an outlet for an underground river. The faint streaks you can see running through the light is a waterfall IN the cave. It's like a firehose, several actually, right there ahead of me. Imagine enough water to come up to your shin and five feet across, every second.

I didn't want to step into the water. I could've cared less about soaking my sandals, but I didn't want to walk under that torrent of water. And it was dark. I didn't even think to turn around, which was just as well 'cause I'd already passed a turn that meant there was no outside light.

I moved forward by the light of this guy's flashlight, and by staying on the blocks to the right of the downpour I managed to only get my jacket shell wet, if completely, and my camera (in its case, in my jacket) was undrenched.

After the run through the cave, the other side was really anticlimactic. It was beautiful and impressive, but you half expected to see the Land That Time Forgot and dinosaurs roaming in the distance and so forth. It was that kinda experience.

This's the crew. That's our driver, Hank, in the blue, then Fay, Cat, Alanna, Marie, and me.

The fun part was going back through the cave.

This time, we did it without light.

The noise was absurd and ridiculous and amazing. Complete and utter white noise blocking anything else. I was the first through, thinking I could help others, somehow. But I got in and realized there was nothing I could do. I got drenched just hugging the wall, and I didn't want to slip 'cause then I might end up on my back in the water. And at one point I was completely blind; there was absolutely no light. I couldn't do anything but feel desperately for the wall and inch the next step forward, which would've been okay, but every other step there's a drip down your neck or spray of water from the hose on your right. It was really distracting.

The worst part was when I could feel myself turning a corner and there was no light from the other end, and more turning and no light and more turning and still no light! It's the longest fifteen seconds I can remember.

Finally out and starting to dry, the walk back was, as usual, much shorter.

More locals: bats hanging from a cave ceiling. This amused me 'cause a guy with a flashlight must've heard something so he spotted them with his light. But then he left. I pulled out my camera and was literally shooting blindly (pardon the pun) and waiting to see what appeared on my camera's monitor. Love digital. I took a couple of photos with nothing in 'em before I finally found this group again. Kinda my own echo location.

So, those're the highlights. We had a really good time, and I realize now that we let too much time go by without a vacation. So hopefully we'll be able to come up with another little adventure in the next few weeks.

You too can teach in Taiwan!

2009-02-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

So we've been here well over six months now. I thought I'd mention a few things for the general population that might be interested in coming here to teach and see some of the world (and, it occurred to me later, it's a pretty good job when there are none in America.)

First off, this place is good for flexibility. There're always schools looking for teachers, at least for kids. We've heard the adult departments are taking a hit from the economic slowdown-meltdown.

If you've read our other blog mariekeithinarmenia.blogspot.com you can see how we spent two years trying to join the Peace Corps to do the third-world thing and be socially helpful and the like, and were rejected. But just two weeks after finding out PC didn't want us, we were on a plane to Taiwan with jobs lined up. It's good for sudden changes and travel. Very good for that.

It's also good 'cause you don't need any training. A college degree and a passport from an English-speaking country is it. It's kinda the new Eastern Europe. Of course, we wanted to see Europe, or South America, but Europe can now demand (and get) people with TEFL certifications and experience teaching English as a second language and other abilities. South America doesn't pay.

Not that I had to get paid for this, and Marie certainly didn't care; Peace Corps only pays you about $6,000 in a readjustment fee, and that only if you complete the two-year stint. But most of the programs in South America pay you enough to live there, and that's about it. If you wanted to travel you might actually spend money.

There were several groups offering to place teachers in South America but they frequently had a "processing fee" or something that was frequently a thousand dollars or something. This was only a problem 'cause Marie and I'd spent several thousand bucks on testing and shots and such for the Peace Corps. And we're getting a little older, so we're looking to buy a house or something when we get back and we couldn't do that unless we actually made money over the next year or so. This sort of thing, like PC, would be fine and great for a person out of college, say, interested in seeing the world cheaply.

Other countries like Taiwan are Korea, Thailand, China (yup, China), and Japan. But Japan has it's own special niche. They don't require special training or degrees, but they work about a year in advance, it's called the JET program. Like Europe, so many people are interested, they've got a backlog of people interested in going there and getting paid to do it. And they pay very well.

So that's a little how we ended up here: it pays pretty well and they'd take us immediately with no special training or education. We could've gone to China, which supposedly has better pay 'cause fewer people want to go and spend a year or more there, but they'd just had the latest crackdown on Tibetans for the Olympics, and I wasn't sure I liked the idea of arriving somewhere that might actually say, "Welcome, give us your passports." So we didn't do that.

I think it's important to come here knowing what you want to do, 'cause it makes a difference. In the case of Marie and I, we came here with the intention of spending some time in another culture, learning another language, and so on. We didn't have the intention of roaming around Asia. We wanted to spend a long time in one culture, to try and get to know more than a tourist's view.

So it isn't so bad that we got our jobs through Reach to Teach, which's sort of a headhunter group for teachers. They find a job with a company like Kojen or Hess or some other large school here in Taiwan, and then that school will pay to pick you up from the airport and put you up in a dorm for a week. That puts you in a financial hole right from the start, but you sign a year contract anyway, and if you complete the year, then they waive the fees (like 10 or 20,000 New Taiwanese dollars, which's only about $300 to $600 or so). At the end of the contract, they also give you a bonus of another 6,000 NT, so it can be close to a grand, U.S., that you'd give up if you break the contract. I think there's also something about giving up two-weeks pay if you break the contract. Sorry, I can't find the contract at the moment.

Oh, these details aren't on the contract Reach to Teach faxes to you. The details about breaking the contract show up once you're in the country and at a school's offices. So they do something of a bait and switch, knowing, now that you're here, you're less likely to balk at these details.

So the point is, if you're determined to come here and spend some time, then getting a contract can be okay, especially if you have little experience traveling and you don't know some Chinese already. If you aren't sure what you want and you think you might not want to deal with the problems of a for-profit school, then you should look into pretending to be a tourist. Find a decent hotel, learn the subway, bring a map to point to in a cab. If you're living here, I don't know if you still have to sign a contract the first time, but they don't have nearly the financial leverage if they didn't help bring you here. This'll make it easier to split if you only want to be here for six months or if the politics of the office gets to you.

The school also vouches for you in getting an ARC (alien residence card or something like that) and technically, if you quit, your ARC is immediately revoked and you have a week to get outta the country. But having gotten into the country, many people lurk under the radar, tutoring or whatever. And if you can find another school (and they're all very willing to poach other schools' teachers) then they pick you up and you get your ARC through them. There might be problems tho', if you let your ARC lapse, then try and get a new one. I dunno.

But don't feel bad if you do this or if you switch schools. Kojen isn't supposed to use foriegn teachers with kindergarden-aged kids, but they do it all the time. Occasionally, foreign teachers are actually herded out the back door of the school. So Kojen and other schools are doing illegal things on a regular basis anyway; everybody knows it, it's just accepted.

I should mention the visa. Visa's for Taiwan are easy. In fact, it's almost Canada easy. You get on a plane here, they write one out at the aiport, BUT that visa can't be extended. It's a tourist visa, 30-days: come, see the sights, eat, leave. If you think you're going to be a teacher, you need a two-month visa, those can be extended indefinately. They cost like $160 or so, but, as my brother in the State Department pointed out, that's just the reciprocal cost of what the U.S. charges for a visa.

Anyway, a visa can take some time, but mostly it's the cost and writing a letter saying you want to see the Taroko national park, and the beaches at Kenting, and Taipei 101, and Danshui, and the sunrise at Alishan and you don't think 30 days is enough to do it all, or something like that. We stopped at the Taiwan outreach center in D.C. (they don't officially have an embassy to placate mainland China) and we had our visas the next day.

So far, working here reminds me of working as a contractor for Microsoft. They pay you well, and there are even perks, like these bonuses you get when most of a class continues to the next session. This happens every three months, new class sessions, but they take months to get around to paying the bonuses. But it creates a nice little extra trickle of cash after you've been here four or five months. Each bonus is 400 or 500 NT, but it's enough for a good dinner or drinking session for a person. You can even have an okay meal for two.

But even thinking like a contracted employee (and an editor at that), I didn't see the stipulation in the contract that we would provide a minimum of 18 hours a week. NOT that Kojen would provide 18 hours a week, but we would be available for 18 hours of teaching a week. I think I've grumped about that before, but it's pretty important. My boss hired me 'cause she needed a new teacher to replace an outgoing person, two months from when she hired me. So for two months I was teaching about five hours a week and the occasional subbing.

Teaching 15 to 18 hours a week is a pretty comfortable, if simple, existence for one person, but under ten is underpaid.

Housing is something else. In Reach to Teach's literature they mention the school will help with housing. Maybe they're referring to the dorm they give you for a week, and can stay in for fairly cheap after that (if you yell at them loudly enough, otherwise they'll try and kick you out for the next teacher) but can be kinda crummy so you don't wanna stay there forever, but we had the idea that they would have someone who was a sorta real estate person, to help with long-term housing.

There is no specific help for finding a place to live. None. Other teachers at your school will probably help, but they have their own lives and problems. The Kojen main office's idea of helping was telling us about tealit.com, which's a popular site for foriegn nationals and English speakers to sell stuff, look for jobs and apartments, etc. So you're really on your own for finding a place. I suggest deciding what kinda person you are, first.

I work with a guy recently outta college, who isn't phased by all-night traffic. He lives near a college campus for 7,000 NT (apiece) with two other roommates. Marie and I are into our second careers. We live in the Wan Hua (Whaa) district for 14,000. But we live by ourselves with more space in a well-furnished apartment, and it's not nearly so noisy here. We don't have the array of shops here, but they aren't really far away.

And on money, Kojen (locally pronounced Kuh-JEN) was one of the last hold outs that paid every two weeks. They just ended that this month. They do allow new teachers to get advances for the first three months, but it's better to show up with cash.

We heard from Reach to Teach that we should bring about $1,500 apiece. Marie and I thought, as a married couple, we wouldn't need it. And besides, we had assurances from our bank in the States (Wells Fargo) that our ATM cards would work here.

We brought more than a thousand in travelers checks and it took us five or six different banks before we found one that would exchange them. And one of the hundred-dollar bills I had, had a marker blot on it. I watched that bill go around the bank office and be inspected by at least three different people and I really wondered if they'd reject it. We also couldn't find a bank that would work with our ATM cards, until we found MegaBank, which, ironically, has the fewest offices in Taipei.

Cash, while not so secure, is safest. On the up side, it is incredibly safe here, personally. Marie has never felt insecure on the streets here. I'd say the only risk of bringing cash is you might mislay some of it.

Taiwan is very modern, in places, which results in an extremely cash-centered system. Our credit cards work at all big stores and restaurants, but they all cost 20 to 50 percent more than buying from a local vendor or mom 'n' pop shop. So cash is cheaper as well as more flexible. But buying in these big, chain stores is the only way to get some tastes of home. So far, the best deal is 25 NT for a donut that tastes like a donut from Mister Donut or Dunkin' Donuts. That is just way too much donut. If you buy one off the street it's like 12 NT, but it also doesn't taste quite right.

And about time off: they talk about taking time off and you can certainly get vacation time, but don't expect to have weekends to see the country. We knew coming in that we'd have to work Saturdays, but we thought, and were led to believe, that we'd have Tuesdays off, so if we could cover Monday, we'd have a three-day weekend to travel the country. Right now, we're both working six days a week. I know some people are working less, some more, but many people were expecting to have two days off a week, even if they weren't one-after-the-other, but didn't get it. So it's taking more effort and organization than I expected to even leave the city and see some of the rest of Taiwan.

The best advantage here is Costco. If you want chips, cheese, or cereal at a reasonable price, find the Costco here first thing. Cheese here is hard to find, and priced like it's exotic. Cereal isn't very popular. It's easy to find, but it comes in small packages and they can be very expensive. But don't waste money and get a membership in the States. The fee here is 1,200 NT, not even $40, and they're very helpful in signing up. Five minutes and you're hip deep in gallon jugs of soap and cases of Red Bull. Oh, Costco's the only place to get Red Bull, according to a coworker. And American-cut t-shirts.

This unexpected, but I think of this as part of the fun of traveling. The local t-shirts are cut so that if you move your arm away from your body your sleeve hikes up to show off your shoulder. If you want a shirt that lets you raise your arm above your head before you're showing armpit hair, you gotta find the right cut, and Costco is one of the places, relatively cheap, that you can find that cut. I had no idea.

This's just a short-list and descriptions of some of the benefits and unexpected problems we've had with this adventure. Right now, with a global economic recession and near catastrophe in progress, it's looking pretty good. Marie and I aren't saving a lot, but we're saving some, which makes me think that going to South America would've been even less financially beneficial than I first thought.

It's been a dull couple of weeks; we're just getting back into the regular teaching routine after having that week off for Lunar New Year. But we're talking about taking a couple days to see some of Taroko national park. So hopefully we'll have another adventure soon.

But in the meantime, a photo for the cultural humor:

This woman's jacket does say, "High Nice," above that "Jacket Rarely," and at the bottom "Always Start From Now."

I could almost see the last line being some marketer's idea of a tagline, except none of the rest of it makes sense, unless you count just throwing out words you want to be associated with or like the sound of, and that still doesn't explain why you'd want your jacket to be a jacket rarely. But the Puma symbol, even with the little registered trademark symbol, I think perfectly explains the translation confusion, and the habit shops here have about just using images and logos regardless of trademark copyrights. Personally, I'm all for infringing, but it's pretty bizarre to see this.

This sorta thing is pretty common. My current theory is this's where a lot of typoed shirts go. I've seen some bizarre typos on what look like school track sweatshirts and such that I think Taiwan's just an outlet for mistakes. Kinda the Land of Misfit Clothing.

More soon, and if there are questions about visiting or teaching here, I'll try to answer them, either here (if I can make the answers funny) or in an e-mail.

Through all kinds of weather

2009-02-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

Actually, no, the weather's been great here. Too warm, really: mid-sixties to seventies. I think I'd enjoy it more but it has this tinge of the sauna that was last summer. It also worries me every time it gets into the seventies that summer will be here in about April and I don't wanna think about dealing with the heat we had from the moment we stepped off the plane until somewhere in October. Or was it November. It was long time, anyway, and I don't want it to be longer.

We've gotten some cards lately from grandparents. Thank you Grandpa Gipson and Grandma Ewen. It's been great to get things from home. And Grandma had to send hers twice. Even when e-mail is common and we talk to friends and family almost as much as we used to, it's really been nice to get something in the mail. Especially 'cause we can actually read it.

Grandma asked if I would mention something about the classes I teach, so I will. I'm still considering getting photos of some of my kids. There isn't the paranoia here that would require me to get permission from each child's parents, but still. I'll see if anyone's interested in seeing these kids.

I have about a hundred kids a week, right now, little more. Their ages are from about seven up to about thirteen. I have two younger classes, we call them M-classes. M-2 and M-4. They're seven or eight. I have a couple of middle classes, called K-classes, K-10 and K-11. And a couple of older classes, A-classes, A-4 and A-9.

The kids are all pretty stereotypical from what I know in the States. M-classes are still excited by learning much of the time. They're also dumb enough that they don't realize they're learning when we play a spelling game. So that's useful. But they're the loud ones, very prone to screaming. It takes a lot of energy to keep their energy moving in the right direction.

K-classes are my favorite. They're middle of the road. They don't have the energy of really little kids, but they aren't as deliberately disinterested or lethargic as the teenagers in A-classes. They also have the more interesting material. I can have actual conversations with them.

In M-classes we have a TA: a Chinese-Taiwanese teacher who grades homework and helps if things get really out of hand. But I like the independence of K-classes. I have to grade all their homework myself, but I don't have a TA in that class I feel like is looking over my shoulder.

A-classes are the hard ones for me. A teacher here told me, "you have to be their friend" and unfortunately, I'm not that kinda guy. And it's hard to be friendly when the kids see it as their job to stymie my job of teaching them. That's my Friday-night A-9 class: classic we-don't-wanna teenagers. Middle-schoolers, actually, aged thirteen or so. I have another class about that age on Saturday morning, which I like better. I think the early hour keeps 'em quiet. I have to spend energy motivating them, making 'em talk, but it's easier to move them in the direction I want when I don't have to stop them from going in another direction first.

I don't feel like I'm cut out to be a teacher. Certainly not at these age levels, anyway. But it's had the advantage of not being boring like my other jobs. Things always change, so I'm not going to the same job every day. It is funny tho'; the common complaint around my office is how people say they like teaching, but they hate the prep work, especially the grading. Marie and I agreed we could do a lot of grading, especially if we didn't have to teach. It's correcting really simple English, so it's like the easiest editing we've ever done.

We do have books for lessons, so much of a session (usually we teach two- or three-hour classes) is pre-programmed: teach this phrase and these words in this way, use this game, and so on. It would get boring, but the kids won't completely settle into a pattern. There's always a troublemaker or six, depending on which class.

That's a look at my week. If there are more specific questions (grandma), feel free to add a comment and I can answer it pretty quick.

Ogres have layers, onions have layers

2009-02-07T01:33:00.000-08:00

And so does culture shock. Sorry, no photos this time. Rather, an odd realization: culture shock seems to be a bit like being on a diet. It's not like you get used to the culture shock, or the differences in the culture, or whatever, and it goes away. You see differences, you figure out why they bother you, you might even find some way to work around the problems, but they never actually go away. You're always going to be hungry, no matter the good intentions of the diet.

This's, I think, the most homesick I've ever felt since I was about four and first stayed away from home and the familiar. It's kinda like I've begun to feel the 16,000 miles between where I am and what's familiar.

But it's not a real acute homesickness, it's like a faint nagging that something's not right.

I was just talking to my brother, Neil, and he was kinda agreeing that it comes in waves. It might never go away, or there might be a lightbulb moment and suddenly everything's okay.

I've noticed that I'm currently struggling with a little claustrophobia and the unexpected nature of this culture. In Taipei there's almost never a building less that three stories, most of them have more, so any view of the sky is pretty abbreviated.

I remember thinking in the States, in moments of panic about moving around the world, the other side of the world will still have blue sky and sun. And that helped, but I get here, and they don't have as much sky as I was expecting and, indeed, counting on. So that's new, different, and a little hard to live with.

The Chinese-Taiwanese culture also seems to run in nearly direct opposition to my American timing. Where I'm expecting people to be fast, like in the subway, people seem, frequently, almost indifferent to getting anywhere. There also isn't quite the reluctance to bump into people, here. So if I'm not in a hurry, it seems like everyone else is 'cause I keep getting these little pushes.

It does make for a sudden camaraderie with my brother. It hadn't occurred to me before but, now, with a few months in a really foreign country, instead of Canada, I understand my brother's time in Russia a lot better. We can talk in more depth about both our experiences.

But right now I'm wondering about this feeling that I'm just not cut out to be a world traveler. I like being a world tourist, but spending many months here, it feels a little like the wonder has worn thin, and I'm just treading water, waiting for the next change to come along. Which's why it was good to talk with Neil about this, 'cause he pointed out that it can take some time for the out-of-place-ness to fade.

Or, Marie and I've wondered if it's more a matter of being in such a different place. Here, we're still even functionally illiterate. In Europe, we'd learn the written and spoken language almost simultaneously. But the written language, here, is so far from English that it's a completely separate project to learn to read much of anything.

The interesting thing, now, is that much of our lives is familar, and becoming boring, and I think that's why I'm struggling more. Without the wonder that usually offsets the frustration, the daily work is just annoying.

I noticed that when we went to the Lantern Festival in Pingsi (Ping-see) the other weekend, it actually made the rest of the boredom more bearable. So in a fit of irony, it seems the way to prevent feeling out-of-place, frustrated, and culture-shocked in a still relatively new country is to continually find new and different places and experiences.

Yes, I lied, there are photos.

This's Fay. You've met her before. She's organized several outtings we've been on. She called us around 2:00 on Sunday to ask if we wanted to go to Pingsi to see the Lantern Festival. Marie and I'd talked about going, but we'd need to figure out the other train system here.

The metro is pretty user-friendly and intuitive. The inter-city system is less so. So we were pretty happy when Fay said she wanted to go, 'cause she's native and knows the system and the language.

The funny part is the trains are like Amtrak. They have the big seats but they don't assign seats, necessarily, and they overbook. So for a couple of stops we, and many other people, would just stand around in the isles like it was the metro.

The other amazing thing was how long we were underground. There is a complete second set of tunnels for these trains, separate from the metro. The tunnels here would make an ant colony simple by comparison.

I'll appologize now for all the shots out the window. Mostly, I'd forgotten about greenery and not seeing buildings ALL the time.

There were some neat buildings, but I liked that they were in the distance, for once.

In this case, I was amazed we'd fly past this temple-like place at, like, sixty m.p.h. Or maybe, even after months here, I'm amazed they build things so close to roads and tracks.

I think the only disappointment was that it was so overcast and misty. I liked it too, but sunny would've been interesting.

This illustrates the thing I still don't get. Middle of, basically, nowhere. They build this mid-rise apartment complex. How unexpected.

So when we arrived, it was dark. We waited a long time in Rueyfang to change trains. Then the spur to Pingsi was really slow. But the first thing was this sight of these tiny lights in the sky over the city.

Of course, this doesn't illustrate it very well, but it's the best I have. The really amazing thing is to know that each little point of light is actually a small hot-air balloon the size of a mailbox. And very quickly, they go...

from this...

to this...

to this. It was really amazing. And there are another twenty lanterns that the camera couldn't pick up, so maybe 40 or 50 total, but there was a steady stream all night. But on Saturday (day before we came) and Monday (day after), which are the big days for reasons I don't have, the local government pays to send up like 2,000. So we didn't get to see the big event, but at the same time it was fun to see what people just want to do. Maybe a little like seeing backyard fireworks versus some corporate sponsored project.

Marie mentioned that frequently, when you go to do something, or see something, the actual event isn't the most fun, amazing, interesting thing. But it was like seeing real and really big fireworks for the first time. The lanterns were the most interesting, fun, and, amazing part of the trip, tho' the grilled Chinese hot dogs on a stick were pretty dang good.

Pingsi seems like a pretty small, and relatively boring, town; but for a couple of weeks a year, every shop is selling these lanterns.

They're so into this and it's such a part of the local culture that their storm drains have lanterns on them. You can faintly see the train and the mountains, and the holes are depictions of lanterns.

This's what they look like before they're blown up.

Then you write wishes, like New Year's resolutions, but bigger, and more hopeful and expectant than just "I'll lose ten pounds," on them.

Then they attach these lighter fluid-soaked papers to the base. They are real hot-air balloons.

Then you light the thing and the lantern fills almost instantly with hot air. And I mean hot, you almost can't keep your hands on the thing for long. They're a combination of crepe paper and plastic, so they're not as slick as the rain gear Marie and Fay are wearing, but they're not prone to falling apart in the rain.

Then you let it go and it runs into a telephone wire and burns up until it falls to the ground.

It's not a good way to feel like you've sent your wishes on their way, so you go back, buy another and try again. The second one made it.

Sorry about the spots in the photo. It was raining. More thanks to Karl, this camera works in all kinds of weather and conditions.

You know you've arrived in a place when you can set out for a place far from home, like Pingsi, like Fay, Marie, and I did, and run into someone you know from back in Taipei. Cyndy (in black) came out with a bunch of people from her school.

Going home was much easier, a classic case, I suppose, of knowing where we're going and how long it would take. We even got good seats on the train. And tho' it was pleasant to watch the lights of the countryside roll past, we were amused by the curtains.

I mean, are these the curtains of a professionally run transportation company? Marie mentioned, "well, at least they're all the same." Yeah, in this car. Maybe we're getting cynical about how things are run here.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We got home about 10:00 or 11:00, but I don't think we were really exhausted. It was a really good way to shake off some of the culture-shock blues.

The ends of the earth

2009-01-29T07:10:00.000-08:00

Okay, a couple more photos of the temple on this very bright, warm day. From two days ago.

This's way outside the outer wall of the temple. The yellow things are the lanterns. Each one is way bigger than your head. And the crowds were, if anything, worse than the other evening, when we thought they'd be worst 'cause it was New Year's Day and we figured, like Christmas, most people would do this on the day. But no, it's a stream of people for at least a couple days.

This's my favorite photo. I can't believe the smoke shows up so well. It's all from the incense sticks (of which you can see many) that people stick in there as part of the prayer-offering. This also gives you a faint idea that, no, the crowds haven't really diminished.

Marie pointed out that she just heard that this temple is a combination of Buddist and Daoist religions, which means praying to one god or many elements or god-like deities as your religion dictates. I'm gonna rely on my very scant knowledge of eastern religions and Wikipedia and claim Daoism (Taoism) is a little more like a polytheistic religion because it involves praying to elements to help with the path of life, and Buddism is more about asking a venerated person for enlightenment. But the point is, one temple, two religions, no waiting.

This's a clearer shot of one of the altars, call it. It's a room which people pray to or at least in front of, but we've never seen anyone go in there.

It has a large person-like figure in it, and someone has set up offerings in the room, but if I didn't understand the rules of giving food and offerings to the temples, the deities, or the universe in general, I really don't get it now, 'cause in the lower left of the picture, those are in fact...

Choco Pies.

I have no problem giving Choco Pies as offerings, I was even telling Marie, imagine being a deity who likes Choco Pies but none are ever offered 'cause people think you're supposed to offer fruit and flowers, natural things of the earth. And this's not to make fun of anything, it's really just grappling with something completely unexpected and (as far as I can work out) illogical. It's just such a surprising thing to set up IN the altar-space for the deity-element. Especially since there are so many gorgeous flowers and fruits presented on tables; the Choco Pies just stand out as representative of a materialistic and industrialized society. Or maybe that's my western perspective screwing me up again.

But on to the ends of the earth, the earth being our island.

This's in Danshui (dan-shuway) or Tamsui (tam-sway). This place is just amzingingly packed. This was down one of the streets, so everything was really compressed but it was literally staggering as you bumped into people with every step. Even for here, this's packed. I will never, ever have a problem with crowds in the States again.

The crowds were probably caused by so many people having a vacation and a warm day. It was high 60s, maybe even low 70s. Many are still wearing big, fluffy coats, but whatever.

I did want to mention, I felt bad about calling fifties cold, 'cause then I read about the ice storm affecting like 17 states and people are trying to survive without heat in sub-freezing temps. We're not nearly that miserable. We're not threatened, we're just uncomfortable. We're wearing long underwear, socks, and even sweats to bed recently. But thanks to the flat sheet from Heather, the clothing is for the cold bed and getting up in the morning, not for staying warm in the night. Try it. It's amazing how much heat a flat sheet keeps in.

This's the real reason we came. They have this great boardwalk right next to the Danshui river which lets out into the Pacific ocean. You can get on a boat for a tour of the river, maybe even out to the ocean for 50 NT. We didn't go 'cause it was so hard to even walk a half mile or so along the boardwalk and then the line for the cruise was amazingly long.

This was worth it to see some of the place. The last time we went up there it was raining like mad and it was all we could do to find a specific restaurant, let alone walk the boardwalk. So, now we just need to find a happy-medium day.

Our next adventure was kinda like using an arbitrary point and learning to find our way around.

We've been to the ends of like four or five different points of the subway line. The Xindian line ends at the gorgeous riverside park with the long footbridge. The Muzha line ends at the Taipei Zoo. Danshui is the north end of the Danshui line. So we were thinking about going to Yongning, which is the end of the Nangang line. We've had good luck finding interesting things at the ends of these lines, but a couple (like the Nanshijiao line) end in industrial parks. Not good. So we decided to try for a specific place. Specifically, the Taiwan Nougat Museum. I am not making this up.

The station where we got off was just another urban collection of stores and traffic. Tho' Marie and I did decide that it seemed more suburban, for Taiwan, anyway. Fewer high-rises, wider streets, more green space especially in the middle of traffic. But it was still very commercial and as we headed for the museum, according to the map, it got very industrial. I think we passed an industrial sewage plant, and I know we passed a Nissan cargo truck dealership-maybe manufacturing plant.

So it was all very foreboding, and twice Marie asked, "will we recognize the museum when we see it?" So it was very gratifying, after passing blocks of shut businesses in dull taupe colors, to turn a corner and see:

The really funny thing was, this whole time we'd been worried about going in the right direction, 'cause the street signs way out there kinda quit using any semblance of English. But we'd seen a bunch of these cute little cows, and we'd had no idea what they were for.

But when we saw this cute little guy in front of the cheerful bright, red building we put two and two together and realized they were markers to find this place.

And because it's the year of the Ox, and that seems to be their mascot, Marie insisted on getting a kiss from the cow-ox-water buffalo. Actually, she first said I should get up there and get a kiss, but I said no. You want one, you get one.

The down side, we didn't actually get into the museum. It's still a major national holiday, so the place was closed up, but we were very pleased with ourselves to find the place, even if the company was doing everything they could, with the cute little cow-markers, to make the place easy to find. We overcame our illiteracy and found what we were after. Maybe in a couple of weeks we'll go back for the tour.

Finally, on our way back Marie took this photo of the truck dealership.

It's just a riot to decipher these phrases, which are even spelled right and not technically wrong, I guess, but the marketing people are just cracked. I'm assuming this's talking about the dependability of the trucks. Marie was thinking it was referring to the dependence on the employees. Either way, this's not the way to say it.

So it's been a couple of fun days. It's been really great to stay up late, get up late, not worry about when we're going, just go when we're ready.

But I will say, the fireworks are getting on my nerves. We avoid most of the noise by going to bed late. At least they haven't really kept us up. But this morning at six a.m. some son of a motherless goat let off a string that lasted for two minutes. It's not even a party neighborhood, but it is a celebrating neighborhood, very religious or old school culturally. And apparently a working neighborhood where people, even on their days off, get up early enough to light massive strings of fireworks. Sigh.

But that's been about the only neighborhood problem. We only have a couple more days off, then back to the moderate but unbroken grind. Oh, well, we've spent a fair amount of money, so it'll be good to get back on the pay wagon.

Climbing on New Year's

2009-01-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, again. Even locally it's called Chinese New Year. I guess a billion people can't be all wrong. It's given us a week off, which's been really great so far. But it's the lunar new year, instead of the solar. I didn't get that until today. No, I don't know how it works. But it means that sometimes it's in January, sometimes in Feb. So now it's the year of the ox, and the year of the rat is done.

I have no segue for that. I thought if I kept writing, one would come to me, but it just isn't. So, with our big vacation stretching out before us, yesterday we went for a hike up Yang Min Mountain. Taipei is in a big bowl, surrounded by mountains on three sides (south is kinda open) and we didn't exactly hike up the side of the mountain, 'cause someone had already put stairs in, but we didn't take a cab up either. Not like hiking in the Cascades, but it's a pretty good lifting of the knees.

This's where the fun starts. There're little signs on the steps telling you how far you've traveled. I forgot to get a shot, but after you get up the equivalent of a couple flights and you see a little plaque that says 100m you're thinking you're doing pretty good, until your guide-friend says it gets easier after 1,400. Then you start checking your watch for how late it is.

Just to point out, this isn't hiking by any means, but these're rough hewn lumps of rock. They aren't flat and even like a board, and they aren't uniform like stairs, you take one, then you might decide it's easier to take the next two, then there's a really wide step, and so on. I spent a lot of the time looking at my feet, just to check my footing.

I was trying to take a photo of the group as it came around this curve, but the gate is more important. I think this's near the half-way point, and we were making regular comments about living up here: groceries, coming home after a hard day at the office... but I think these were more farms than houses, but still, I wouldn't wanna haul fertilizer or seed up 700 meters of stairs.

The length was not well explained. I think it's like 1,400 meters linear, but then you have to rise 4 to 8 inches for every foot or so horizontal. That's a guess...

But the views said we were rising pretty fast.

We started after cabs hauled us up to the trailhead, of sorts, which was at the top of a long, steep couple of blocks, but walking up wouldn't 've been like climbing stairs for a half hour, forty-five minutes. But it would've made the stairs a lot more difficult.

At the top there was a long rough, dirt trail that wound around the top of the mountain. It had many vantage points for looking through the trees at the city and the valleys leading to it. This's Marie, Cat, Cyndy, and Fay (L to R).

This's what they're looking at. I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's a temple. It looks like a really big temple surrounded by small houses, right? But it's actually a medium-size temple with many small shrines around it. I'm not sure, but they could be shrines of ancestors that people have put there. I'll have to get back to you on that.

It was, unfortunately, a really foggy day. Fortunately, it was only fog. It was around 55 F, so we were near the dew point, but I'm sure we're going back up there before long (read: before summer) when the sun's out.

This's the whole group, including Fay's dog, Runner. How apt for a dalmatian. (How do you tell it's January in Taiwan? I'm wearing a scarf!)

Cat's been sick, that's why she's wearing the mask. You can buy those things EVERYWHERE in Taipei. That's kinda the local answer to the smog and pollution problem, I guess 'cause people can't get decent catalytic converters for scooters or I dunno what, but it does make me glad we're not living here long term. I can tell those things would barely make a dent in your intake of pollution. I think Cat was wearing it 'cause it was chilly and she didn't want to breathe even kinda cold, moist air.

This's a Japanese temple, which's up on the side of the mountain as we were coming down. This's a whole history lesson in itself, about how the Japanese have colonized the island several times, and there's a lot of pop and historical Japanese culture here. I couldn't tell a Japanese temple from a Taiwanese tea house (well, I probably could, you'll see in a sec). I just liked the view and the ornamentation of the building.

This's the shot I really wanted. I'm getting almost good with this digital camera, finding a setting that tricks enough light into the system, assuming I have time for seven tries.

This's how I know the difference between a Japanese temple and a Chinese tea house.

That's right, the tea houses have signs. And this one just happens to be the Sun shine tea house. That was pretty funny. It's also a hot spring, which can be a little tricky, to stay in the mood for tea and good food in spite of the sulphur smells when you walk up the stairs, but hey! Free soak in the hot tub with your meal. We didn't ask about details tho'. That was silly.

But this was the view from the deck. We sat outside, 'cause we'd been hoofing it for more than an hour, so outside was pretty nice. There were New Year's fireworks off and on in the evening in the distance. And they even played American jazz most of the evening: Sinatra, Krall, a couple others I couldn't name.

I suppose it's not very Chinese, but it felt like the Christmas evening we hadn't had yet. It was very relaxing and the lights and the view were comforting. It reminded me of being in Arizona for Christmas, 'cause it gets cold sharply after dark, so that was familiar, too.

Fay and Marie after the meal. Did I mention I found a new setting on my camera? I have sepia tone, too. Black and white does make photos more interesting.

I don't think it was after ten when we got home, maybe eleven, I don't remember, but the New Year's celebration was still in full swing.

This's actually from the afternoon, before we left to go up the mountain, but it's never like this. Our area is a busy place, but it's not a major place for people to come in droves, except for one thing, the Long Shan temple, which in Chinese is approximately the dragon mountain temple. It's very old and very large.

This only gives you a faint idea of the size. The entire temple is one inside another, inside another. This's inside the main walls, but outside the building itself. I won't claim to understand much. We just watched. This orb, for instance, people walked under it, one at a time, to pray. For what I have no idea but prosperity, health, and happiness are favorites.

This ox-man is next to the orb in the temple courtyard; the courtyard was so big I couldn't take a photo of both of 'em together. And this's here as a representation of the year of the ox, I believe. We didn't see anyone praying to it.

This archway here, is the opening to the main temple. This's inside the building behind the orb and ox. What really surprised us was the complete lack of structure. People came, prayed with incense, lighted candles, put food out, stood around, talked, bowed, stuck the incense in a massive iron caldron... there was no sense of organization. Everyone (and there were a lot of everyones) was one their own schedule.

I'm not quite so focused on the Judeo-Christian system as to think they needed organization, but it was really eye-opening. People came, prayed, and then they'd leave. I didn't really follow anyone through their time there, we just wandered around trying not to be too obvious about looking, unlike at least one other blonde who just stuck her camera in the main temple room, but there was a Taiwanese gentleman walking around with a camcorder, so who knows what they think of us.

I watched several different people but only for a bit at a distance. The popular system was to have palms pressed together, as in prayer, with many lighted sticks of incense held between their hands. They would bow once or five, or even more, times, and then stick one of the incense in one of several caldrons and repeat. But there didn't seem to be a set time or bows or anything. It seemed like there were guidelines, but that was about it. Mostly, we were amazed by the numbers of people and the constant movement.

This was also interesting. There are many small rooms behind the main temple, which no one enters. Same as the main temple. People would stand in front of the rooms, as the large central temple, and bow and pray. I do not know details, yet. But I'm going to ask around, just because it's so unfamiliar.

The other thing I don't grasp are these offering tables. It seems very clear that people leave food on these tables, and there were a lot of tables set up, some full of food, others looked like they'd been picked over. Marie and I saw a few people taking things from tables, but we're not about to take anything. It was also unexpected that while there were lots of fruit there were also lots of conventional convenience things, like bags of chips. I couldn't tell if it was a metaphorical offering, or if the food was intended to be eaten by monks, people in need... no idea.

In a couple of weeks they have the Lantern Festival. This marks the end of the New Year's celebration. If you look back at the ox-man photo, you notice the wall next to him is covered in these yellow globes. These lanterns are way bigger than my head. And they covered the entire wall the ox-man was facing. I get the impression that many of these lanterns (not these, 'cause I'm sure these are electric, but like them), which are made outta paper, are put in the river, still lighted, to float downstream. We'll have to see that.

I did mention the fireworks, right? It's a weird combination, for me, of secular food and family and gifts, and prayer, with fireworks. It's not hard to put the secular and spiritual together, but the fireworks still throw me. I knew they all got thrown together, so it wasn't a shock, but it's a weird experience to live it in, 'cause it feels like Christmas, New Year's, and the Fourth all glued together. And it's kinda noisy in the evening right now, so I'm really glad we don't have to go to work in the morning. I think our neighborhood is more prone to fireworks than other places.

And this's the secular bit. If you remember the first photos I took of the night market in our neighborhood, this's much busier. They've stuck carts (under the umbrellas) in the middle of the street, and there are even more people looking at all the stuff. The up side is there's no way for scooters to get in now. You just kinda ooze along with the crowd, gawking and laughing at things like pairs of little battery-operated pandas with glowing eyes wandering the streets.

Specifically, I took this for my brother, who noted that in Russia, you could buy a glass AK-47 (big gun) full of vodka. I think this dragon should've been filled with sake, but that's more Japanese anyway. Whiskey is a favorite here. So if anyone needs a glass dragon decanter of liquor, let me know.

Finally, this's how the locals decorate for the holiday. I don't know exactly what this says, but we've been learning to say Happy New Year over the last couple days. I think this's something like that, good wishes in general. Funny, you'll see these ribbons taped on closed store shutters and such. It's a tradition more than lights and older than Christmas trees.

So, what will we do tomorrow? We'll let you know.

Vacation

2009-01-25T21:20:00.000-08:00

We've been off yesterday and we don't have to go back to work until next Monday. So, I finally found a photo of Taiwan for our title. I thought about one of the photos from our trip to the coast, a nice coastal view, but I decided to go smaller, and this's a butterfly from the zoo just outside Taipei. I don't know if it's indigenous or not, but I like the photo.

It's not really hard to work six days a week, I guess, but it does get kinda old to have something to do nearly every day. It feels more like every day than when I was working 8 to 5, five days a week. Given the option, which we weren't, I'd rather have four days off and a couple of Mondays down the line. It seems like two days off would be much better than an entire week.

Like I mentioned in the last blog, Marie and I haven't had any luck finding places to go in Taiwan. They're all ridiculously expensive, like $500 for a couple of train tickets and a room, 'cause we started looking so late. Bummer. But we went for a long walk yesterday. It was good to spend some time wandering around the city where we don't normally have time to go.

This's at the south edge of Taipei proper. After this park is a river and then the metropolis becomes another city. I like that they carved a walkway through these rocks just for the sense of adventure.

Marie started to take this photo 'cause she wanted the cityscape, but I threw out my arms and she suddenly wanted to teach everyone back home Chinese. This shape is the symbol for "da" or big. It doesn't always mean big, but it usually sounds like "da."

This's "ren" or person. We have pictures like these, cartoons of people in these shapes to help us remember the shapes, though they're meant for little kids. But the symbols come from the idea of people. Someone walking meant person. A person with his arms opened wide means big.

On another subject, Marie's Aunt Lorre asked if we'd thought about when we might come home. We have talked a little. Mostly for my sake, I think. Thinking about home, and thinking about going home has helped me get through some of the culture shock.

Right now, we're thinking about leaving in October and spending some time in Europe and then coming home in time for next Christmas, BUT, that's if the economy cooperates at least a little. We have jobs here with a living standard that's close to what we're used to (even if the hot water's kinda erratic and the summer humidity is staggering) and we're saving a fair amount of money. So this's a question we won't really be able to answer until sometime this summer. But we will certainly tell everyone when we've settled on a plan.

Finally, another fun goof.

Marie and I argued about taking this picture. She didn't want to, saying we had enough mistakes. I said we should, 'cause it's funny and we rarely have the camera when we see these. I won. I had the camera. We didn't eat there, even if we could be confident they wouldn't serve us feet.

We were taking this walk on Lunar New Year's Eve day, which we've been told is like Christmas Eve for all the family get-togethers and eating and such. They don't give presents in big boxes with ribbons, instead they give red envelopes, frequently with money or other certificates.

Many shops were closed yesterday, tho' many, like in the U.S. were open. We stopped at a food shop and like a pro Marie asked, "Nee yo dan bing ma?" Which means, approximately, you have dan bing, right? I swear the guy blinked in shock. I don't think he was surprised to see caucasians (or as I've come to call us, more "cauc" than "asian") but I think he was shocked to understand Marie. There are lots of non-Chinese speakers wandering around using bad Chinese. He repeated, "dan bing" and she nodded, and then he said "yo" meaning yes, he had dan bing.

Dan bing is a pancake and egg kinda thing with a little sauce. It's very good, and it was perfect snack after a long walk. It was warm too. Funny tho', Marie's latte was 90 NT, two dan bing were 30 NT, together. Hmmm.

So, hopefully, I'll write several times this week. Lots of time, and we'll have time to see some of Taipei we've only been meaning to see.

Really, I just don't get it

2009-01-20T05:59:00.001-08:00

Okay, not whining, really this's just bizarre. So in the last two weekends we've had a Saturday off as well as our regular Sunday, and then a Saturday off but we had to work Sunday. I think I finally have the reasons, see if you can follow along.

Christmas fell on a Thursday this year, so did New Year's day. Christmas here is Constitution Day, but I dunno if anyone really cares about the distinction. It's a day off. The government of Taiwan decided (apparently about the Tuesday before Christmas) that to make for an actual holiday, everyone would also get Friday after Christmas-Constitution Day off.

To me, this's ironic 'cause that extra day off, Friday, would mean the most to ex-pats from the U.S., Australia, Canada, Wisconsin, where they celebrate Christmas. More to the point, it's a big, important, childhood-fixated holiday where it's weird to be away from family and weirder to be in another country. But, guess what, we didn't get that day off or the one after New Year's. Hmm.

BUT, the entire country had to make that day up, I guess. So every school kid, office worker, postal employee, and fire dog had to work the 10th and 17th of January (the last two Saturdays) to make up those days. I keep saying, those aren't holidays, those are loans. They don't even make up typhoon days here, I dunno why those two holiday days are so vital. Anyway, because the kids all had to go to school on the 10th and the 17th, we got the days off! Woo hoo! BUT!

The Lunar New Year, also called Chinese New Year ('cause that's the dominant population celebrating it) falls on the 26th or 27th. Whatever day it is, it means everyone's supposed to go back to work on the 30th... which is a Friday. SO (and I'm using a lot of capitals because I just can't emphasize these turns of fortune and logic with enough vigor) instead of going back to work for one day, we have to make the day up in advance! So we had to work this last Sunday.

Now, I'm all for not working one day in the middle of a week's vacation, but the result of this jimmying the schedule meant that kids went to school all week, then went to school on Saturday, apparently some of them had to be there at 7:00 a.m. (I don't know if that's normal) and many had finals that day, and THEN they had to come to English class on Sunday!

I'm really glad I didn't understand this until basically after the fact, otherwise I'd 've been afraid for my life. I mean, if somehow you could force U.S. students to school on a Saturday after a full week, and then handed them off to an ill-trained ESL teacher who they consider to be less important than say, gym class, you'd expect them to enact some scene out of an eighties hijinks movie where you see the teacher hung upside down, wrapped in duct tape, with an apple in his mouth, right?

The kids here seemed to take it in stride; it's just what happens to them occasionally, but I'd 've been halfway to panicked wondering how bad it was gonna be. But they were some of my smallest classes, so no biggie.

The educational bit for people back home: it seems like there's a complete lack of planning when it comes to, well, planning, here. Apparently, no one knew this get-Friday-after-Christmas-off-work-some-Saturday-to-be-named-later thing was gonna happen until December. I mean, no one could really explain it until after it happened, or so it seems to me. I don't think they really had it planned ahead, like most government and school schedules I've ever even heard of in the States. That's a heck of a thing to learn on the fly, let me tell you.

So, we're about to go into a week off. And boy, is time crawling. I could really use the down time. I think our complaint is, we thought we'd be able to visit a place or two. See a little of the country and get outta Taipei for a while. But the economic problems have hit here, too, and many people aren't flying anywhere for the big holiday, they're flooding the rest of the country, so it's creating sticker shock for us. I've heard recommendations to visit Hualien or Cingjing 'cause it's got lots of hotels and things to do, or it's quiet. But by the time I check with a travel agent, the price is 15,000 NT or 30,000 for a night or two. That's $500 to a thousand. Ick.

So, it looks like we might be exploring more of Taipei than we'd originally planned. Personally, I'm fine with that. There's still a lot we haven't seen and places we haven't gone. Marie might be more disappointed we aren't seeing more of the country and staying somewhere different, but it's what we have right now. And we're already talking potential trips next fall, so maybe not so bad to just have a week away from kids to get set for another couple of months.

Oh, and happy Inauguration Day everyone! We have been able to follow along on CNN and BBC.

culture shock and whining

2009-01-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

I think I mentioned, a while back, about culture shock. A friend of Neil's (who's spent time in Taiwan) described it as encoutering something frustrating and just ridiculous but instead of attributing it to the differences in cultures and habits, the simplistic part of your brain will want to just scream at all the Chinese people for being so stupid.

So, I had a very clear picture of that shock last night.

At my school every three months the kids move to a different level of learning English. At that time, we write up a grade report with their homework and quiz averages, final oral and written tests, whether or not they passed (they always do, but not for ability) and a few long-hand comments from their teachers (both their Chinese and foriegn teachers, thankfully, in English).

So, as I'm finishing a class my AD (academic director, I think) brings me the stack of reports to give to my kids. I had to write out my comments and such and give 'em to her for review. She handed 'em back to me saying I needed to white out the couple of places I'd scratched out a word I decided against.

Now, it helps to know there's a huge fascination with white out here. Every kid has a bottle or a little tape dispenser in their bag. The things aren't like the big brushes I remember from when I was little, they're like using a pen, but it's still a blobby mess that doesn't quite match the paper, and of course it leaves a big blank spot on the paper.

So when I get these hand-written grade reports from my boss, reports I had to write in my scribbly, left-hander smeared way, and she points at a couple places where I'd scratched out a word and tells me for the third time I need to white it out 'cause, "it looks really unprofessional," I was about 30 second away from saying, "and white out is professional?"

It took me a couple hours but I finally got it. White out is professional, here. That's what I'd been missing. Yes, I should've been listening to her anyway, but it's hard to convince myself that white out is a huge improvement over just crossing out a word. Maybe some people would agree it's better, but I'm so used to important reports going by e-mail or being printed for the right spacing and font and so forth, that doing anything "important" by hand is just anathema. White out is just whiting out anathema.

So, that just sharped the point on at least understanding some of the other things we're struggling with. Like the cold.

I wrote a while back that it was finally getting cold. Well, it's still not cold, I guess. I don't think it's been below 50 F, but it's one thing to enjoy when you're moving around at work then walking home and it's 50-ish, versus when you get home and your apartment is 50.

There's no central heat here, no forced air, nothing. We've bought a space heater for our bedroom, but it doesn't really heat the room, it just creates a bubble of slightly warmer air. I looked into buying one of those big oil heaters, the stand up kind that looks like an old steam radiator. But it seems like a lot of cost (4,000 NT or more, at least $130) and effort (cab ride to get the heavy, bulky thing home) for one, maybe two winters, especially since we didn't even start having a problem with the cold 'til January.

But the cold is still a gripe. They're very ready for the heat and humidity here. There are A/C units and central air everywhere. We have three A/C units in our apartment, one for each room, but no heat. Which's a surprise 'cause everyone's wearing thick coats by November, just as Marie and I were getting comfortable and taking out vests.

I'm reminding myself that if we'd been in Armenia, we'd be struggling more. I read a journal a guy there wrote about not being able to write long, 'cause he needed to get back to the warmth of the wood stove. So we're not that cold, but we're not quite comfortable, either.

The other thing I'll throw in here is about riding the subway.

The subway is usually just fine: clean, efficient, on time; but sometimes you get a couple of instances in quick succession and it makes you wanna yell at people. Specifically, little, old people. They seem most prone to pushing you so they can get on a train, or just so they can get past. Though I did notice, if you follow one, it's like having a lead blocker. They also tend to be the one to stop on the side of the escalator where you're supposed to walk, so you're left with the frustration of having to stop with them, or push past them. One is a feeling of having your inertia killed, the other is a sense of having to knock over an old person for a few extra seconds. I usually wait, mom.

I don't know what all of this means. For months now I've been telling myself being jostled on the subway is just a product of having so many people in one place, or being funneled through one place, and that's in a crowded city. But it still feels different than D.C. or Madrid. I also know there's a difference in their personal space versus mine; I'm just not sure how to reconcile my personal space with being halted and shoved by old, tiny Chinese people.

But I'll end with an up side. After a day of being poked by culture shock over grade reports and pushed around the subway and you know your apartment is gonna be cold when you get home and there isn't a thing you can do about it, it's really neat that you can stop almost anywhere and get hot noodles.

This bowl of noodles is a standard favorite. You can get it with a little pork, and the green is cilantro, and it's hot! Even by the time you walk home and up four flights. It's fast, too. It takes longer to get food from McDonald's than these little stands. And the best part, it's a whole 50 NT, $1.75 at most.

So there's definite ups and downs. I think, as my dad mentioned getting through the cold dark winter, we're struggling with the cool, overcast, but culturally variable winter.

Missing photos and random thoughts

2009-01-06T04:43:00.000-08:00

So, I'm finally getting around to posting photos from our big rafting trip to Hualien (Hwah-lee-en) months ago. These are the photos that our driver took with his serious equipment and a much better eye than you'd expect when it came for free with the trip.

This's our group all geared up and ready to hit the water. Love those padded helmets. You can see Marie just to the left of the center of the group.

But some people just shouldn't be told where the camera is.

But we got off. This's the best shot in the collection of Marie's and my boat. That's me on the right rear (can I say "aft" when I'm talking about a rubber boat?) and Marie is sitting just ahead of me.

We did have a fair flotilla on the water. Our group was only two of the boats.

But even our group was dwarfed in the canyons we went through. This was just leading edge of the trip. Our driver lost us here and had to pick us up at the other end.

If you want a really great view, drag and drop this picture onto your desktop and blow it up. This's where the river, I think the Hualien river, we were on empties into the Pacific. That's the Pacific between the two bits of greenery. It was a weird feeling. I've seen the Pacific many times in Washington, and I know we're living on an island. By definition there must be a lot of water out there somewhere, but it just doesn't sink in until you see it. Then you get this big whack of understanding.

And finally, I want to say "the end of the trip" which it was, but saying that gives the impression this's a sunset, and I don't think it is. We had a fair-sized mountain range behind us, so I think this must be a sunrise, but it's kinda ridiculous how beautiful it is, and I'm disappointed I couldn't take photos like this. Again, this's much better if you blow it up on your computer. This might be one I blow up and frame.

But more recently, we've been busy. We finally went to the National Palace Museum. The simplified story goes something like, when the government of China was being ousted by the Communists in the 40s and 50s, the now government of Taiwan lifted much of the historical artifacts of the last 8,000 years of China's history. And here's where they ended up.

I don't think I completely grasped the magnitude of the things we saw. No photos allowed, so I have nothing to show, sorry. But I don't think there's a thing I can do to do justice to what they had on display.

Marie and I spent a couple days in D.C. before coming here, and we were awed and impressed and humbled by the history of the creation of the United States and the great experiment which isn't doing too bad 200 hundred years later. But then you come here and they explain the importance of bronze working from something like 4,000 years ago. And they can draw an almost perfect line between some guy who did the pot you're looking at and the modern smelting methods. It's like looking at the ocean and really understanding what you're looking at, the size, the power, the time it encompasses. The best I could come up with is to have some idea of how I wasn't really understanding much of it.

Sigh. I must be old. I hate this peace sign thing in photos, no matter how socially relevant it may be. I even took another one of Marie and this lion-dragon, but she blinked in that one. But I think this gives the best idea of the kinds of things inside.

We came on our day off, on New Year's day. Apparently, this was a free admission day, so it was more crowded than usual. Good thing this's crowded, 'cause compared to inside, this's pretty sparse. But Marie and I only saw part of one floor. We agreed it'll take several trips to even begin to see something of the entire collection. We'll also need walkie-talkies and emergency supplies for when we have to find each other.

I can't decide if they keep things dark to prevent photography, or just for ambience, 'cause it certainly isn't to help with reading.

And this's a shot of the boulevard from the museum. And it's a long way up, too. The huge lion-dragon Marie was standing next to is under the left-most white pillar.

On another topic, I also wanted to mention that I'd seen our friend Michelle's blog on simplicity. She set it up to work out her and her family's attempt at simplifying their lives. With a like-new baby (Griff is a little over a year), I can't imagine why she'd just have to simplify her life now.

I liked it 'cause she mentions that if you seach "simplify your life" Google will give you 1.2 million suggestions. And after checking a few she noticed that some people are trying to reduce the amount of money they spend, or the amount of time they spend on things that aren't important, or the amount of stuff they own-are owned by, and so on. One person even had a 72 point checklist on how to simplify... ahh, that's too easy.

I mention this 'cause several of these aspects are very important to us lately. I mention Michelle's journal 'cause that's what made me follow this line, I also have to mention it 'cause any lack of simplicity on Michelle and Karl's part is why we didn't have to simplify our lives any further. Thanks to them and their suburban home and space, we didn't have to say, "well, we can't possibly take Marie's wedding dress with us, I guess we'll have to get rid of it." And the same for a desktop computer and pricy monitor, among a couple of car loads of mementoes we didn't have to "simplify" so I have to keep mentioning that. And she reads our blog.

But we were in the camp of simplifying by getting rid of a lot of stuff. That was a very popular comment as we were getting ready to travel: "What are you going to do with your stuff?" Everyone seemed to expect us to store it, but of course that's pretty expensive for a lot of IKEA or IKEAesque furniture. I would say that getting rid of that much stuff is really great, 'cause you just don't see how much junk there is unless you're moving and when you do, you realize you have strings of Christmas lights that you can't remember buying, an answering machine you never use, and a VCR you didn't know didn't work.

But you've probably heard most of this. The interesting part is here, now, as we're maintaining our simplicity. Much of our not buying more stuff is 'cause we don't need much. We have two spoons. I'm not kidding. There are no dishwashers here. None. Every house seems to have a dish dryer. I don't get that. We just use ours as a dish rack. I can't grasp using energy to dry the dishes. But it keeps us from wanting a lot of dishes that we'll just have to do by hand.

After that we buy what's gonna get used: the dehumidifier is used every couple of days to help with laundry, and it kinda warms the computer room. The reading lamp and the water filter are used most days. The heater is used most days now. The fan hasn't been used for weeks, but it'll run about 24-7 when summer arrives. So far, the thing we have that we haven't used much are speakers for the living room, but it's nice they were there for the Christmas party.

We're also influenced by knowing that at some point we're going to have to reduce all this again to come home. I like the Brita water filter I found, and I might buy another one, but I'm not lugging it the 16,000 miles home.

So, those are my suggestions for simplifying your life: make yourself move some place far away for months, then come home. I'm kinda hoping a little of the simplicity sticks with us and we aren't quite so prone to buying something just 'cause it's there and we can afford it. We still have enough stuff to mostly fill several hundred square feet of apartment, but we're lucky; the apartment came furnished, so we didn't have to buy a couch or dinning table or a bed, so that's some of our simplicity. And we are discovering what's important to us. In spite of weight limits and having to carry everything, we brought about five nail clippers. So there's an aspect of finding the small and simple things that are important.

I can also say there's some logic in buying the decent quality stuff once. I've been really happy I bought a backup drive for our computers. It carried several hundred discs of music I wouldn't want to store on a laptop, but I was really glad to have several discs of Christmas music. So, yeah, find what's important to you.

The funny thing is, Taiwanese are very good at not simplifying. My current working gripe is how they have a big recycling program to encourage households to recycle their garbage, and the government even demands that all sellers charge for plastic bags, to encourage people to bring their own. But then you see that EVERYTHING is wrapped in plastic. Noodles, well yeah that's kinda necessary... head of broccoli, but why d'you need... bunch of kiwi, hold on a second that's... six-pack of beer, but that's just stupid... paper-back book, just STOP right there! Or at least, that's what it feels like when I'm looking around a store and I feel like someone's about to wrap me in cellophane.

And I'm not kidding about the book. Most books in bookstores are plastic wrapped. Maybe for water protection, maybe to prevent people from reading before they've bought 'em. Your guess is's good as mine.

This may be the best example of not simplifying. I'll give up being polite and just write, to my American perceptions half of the Taiwan economy, at least the local parts, are based on selling stuff that "fell off" the back of a truck. Marie showed me this shop of shops. No, really. Each of these individual little cubes is owned by a person or some kinda seller. So it's like a micro-mall or something. All kinda of weird knick-knacks and doo-dads and other things I don't have even random syllables to try and define them with.

So, that's been our last week or so. Next time we'll get into more of the details of culture shock, hopefully without being mean, but it's definitely necessary to talk about the culture that gives you a Saturday off of work, but makes you come in on Sunday to make it up.

We got 2009 first!

2008-12-31T10:04:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! And we get to say it first! Nya nya nya.

This's kinda what the big New Year's event looks like. This link isn't this year, that's not posted yet, but close enough. We did not go see this mammoth display of pyrotechnics. The traffic, and I mean the people traffic, was just amazing. I left for Cat and Cyndy's at about nine at night, and I almost couldn't squeeze into the metro car. It's usually only that bad at rush hour, and I don't think I've ever seen it that bad way out where we live. Just nuts. And much worse closer to Taipei 101 (the building in the middle of the fireworks).

But we had fun with Cat and Cyndy, Georgia and Fay. Pizza and munchies and a couple of drinks. It was a pleasant evening, at least a little due to not having to go to work tomorrow. And I'm a even happier 'cause I have an easy class on Friday so it's easier to go back to work.

And Christmas was a lot of fun, too.

We decorated a little and cooked a lot. Marie made a really good chili, and we had a ton of sugar in various forms.

This's a better shot for the lights. The lights and the little tree (the little fiber-optic thing behind Fay) came from a guy I'm tutoring. He just showed up with these decorations, which was great 'cause I wouldn't know the first place to buy stuff. I suppose I could've gotten something at Carrefour (said Jalla-foo in the local lingo, don't ask me why, no one knows), but I don't think we would've spent money for something we might not use again. So that was a pleasant touch.

It hasn't been all Christmas spirit here, tho'. Marie had an unsettling experience with the local view of Christmas. She was at Carrefour for last-minute ingredients on Christmas Eve (we had to work that day) and when she was at the store that evening she saw they were taking the Christmas decorations down. "On to the next sale," as she put it.

But in spite of any cultural confusions it's been a good holiday season for us. I got Marie a big, fluffy robe; new, semi-fluffy towels; and several bars of expensive soap. I found a Lush right next to the metro near my school, for all your skin needs. Really, all of them. Some in several forms.

This's a game we played at the party. Three people would reach into a box, and by touch alone they had to find a specific object among 30 or so other things while the other two were trying to find it. It was a cute game. I think the box even mostly survived.

So happy holidays from this side of 2009. We hope to hear from people when you get up.

It gets pretty cold here at night, down to sixty degrees

2008-12-22T18:26:00.000-08:00

Oh, where to start. We would certainly like to say Merry Christmas to everyone who takes the time to read our little journal. I'm also sorry I haven't written more in the last several weeks. We have been pretty busy and I've been sick again in the last week.

I think I read somewhere about people taking "biodiversity" vacations to other parts of the world so they could get sick, so they'd be better prepared for the coming pandemic. That's kinda what this's beginning to feel like. I've been sick more here in four months than I have in a couple years back in Seattle, or even in a college dorm. I just hope we're not bringing bugs home, or that we have to go through a disease adjustment period and spend six months getting the diseases we missed by being here for a year.

But school actually makes it easier to be sick. Five days out of six, I only have to be really energetic for two or three hours of teaching, the rest is just planning, so being sick and working isn't so miserable as having to go to the office for eight hours.

But we're actually spending some time working on being Christmassy here. We're having a big group Christmas party here in a couple of days, so we're figuring out how to make some of our favorite foods. And this guy I tutor has even given us a huge string of lights and a little fiber optic tree, so our place has begun to look like it's Christmas.

Oh, and thank you very much to family who sent money for presents. That's really terrific of you all. I'm sorry we can't offer more than this appreciation. Even our Christmas cards are late. But maybe a few photos will make up a little. Next in our line of inflatable animals:

How perfect is a blow up reindeer right now?

And how do you tell it's Christmas in Taiwan? We're wearing vests! It's running high sixties and low seventies lately. We've been told this's abnormally warm, but normal is about fifty, so not much different.

Oh, I just had a roadrace yesterday, the ING marathon. I only did the 9k race tho'. I haven't been training for even a half, tho' yesterday would've been perfect for it. It was sunny and about 17C even at 7:00 in the morning. I do hate early morning races. But this one was pretty good.

I lifted this photo from someone else's blog. It's just to give an idea that it was really crowded. I kinda went in blind, 'cause I don't speak enough Chinese yet, and there were a reported 27,000 runners and it seemed like there were another 27,000 hangers on, so it was probably the largest race I've ever been involved in. Many, many people is my point. But I'll give 'em credit, there was no check-in. I asked at an information stand and the guys spoke a little English but when I said "check in" a guy said, "no check in" and another one leaned over and said, "just run!" which I thought should be their race motto.

We got these little chips to tie to our shoes so whenever we crossed the starting line we'd have our own personal timer running, which was a good thing 'cause over the commotion and noise, noise, noise I totally didn't hear the start. Apparently they started the marathon, the half, and the 9k all at the same time. I started 15 minutes after the gun according to the clock over the starting line. I haven't been able to find results online, but I'm not concerned. My late start meant that I was behind like 17,000 people who were slower than I was, or something. I spent about 6k dodging in and out of walkers and really slow runners. It felt like I added another kilometer in dodging.

Even tho' they closed down a major road, like six lanes, there were people across the entire road, and I will say that there wasn't any system of slower people to the right or anything. I'd have to slide around slow people left and right. It reminded me of burst training we did in high school cross country, 'cause I'd have to jump through a hole between runners before someone filled it.

Oh, but it was hilarious to see on the front of the half-marathoners' bibs, 21.0985k. Absolute accuracy, I guess. It wasn't so much a race for me as an event that was interesting and yet confusing and weird to be a part of. It was both frustrating and fun.

And we've seen some of the local concept of Christmas.

This was after an acapella Christmas show, replete with Christmas tap dancing. Marie might give a better version of this 'cause I thought there would be something like Christmas carols, but they were more like pop love songs that used the word Christmas. It was nice to see decorations, and after the show they had a tape of other Christmas carols, so if I squinted just right it felt like Christmas in Arizona, which I quite like. So there was something like Christmas.

These gingerbread things are in lots of bakeries, for instance. But this event has given me at least a little understanding of two things: one, I don't wanna know how badly we screw up holidays we try and put on from other cultures, like Chinese New Year; and the other is, I suddenly feel very bad about how Christmas all but obliterates Hanukkah as one of the next most prominent holidays.

Not to belabor the point, this's just something I'm learning; I don't mind the inflatable reindeer and the holiday decor outside Starbucks. That's like home, they're trying to sell something, I get that, and it does help feel like there's a change in the seasons. But I think going to something like the acappella show which I had an idea for, something I thought was just for the sake of the season, and it turned out to be something completely off, something the local pop culture had usurped to make it different than every other event; that was hard. I won't bother to suggest how someone in the U.S. might act differently, 'cause I don't know how to explain it, but it made me think. It made me a little homesick. More even, I think, than not seeing any trappings of Christmas at all. And just to be clear, I'm not complaining about it. This's the sort of thing I expected to find out. And I'm a little surprised I haven't felt homesick more before this.

Besides, we've had other times where we feel very comfortable and glad we're here.

Like this trip to Xindian (Shin-dee-an) a couple weeks ago, which is south of Taipei but accessible by a longish subway ride. And again, you can tell it's December by the hoodie Marie is wearing, but hasn't zipped up. It was a perfectly comfortable day. I was surprised there weren't more people out.

This's on the bridge that's behind Marie. All the little boats you can see below me are little peddle-paddle boats people can rent and tool around in. We decided to just sit and enjoy the sun and relative lack of people. We've been in Taipei long enough that the number of people you see feels like a real respite from crowds.

And now, a linguistic lesson. I just learned that Taipei is actually said "Taibei." I'd heard Taibei a lot but had assumed that the b-p switch was a lack of distintion. I don't think Chinese speakers really hear a difference between s and sh and I'd assumed it was the same with the p-b sounds. But it turns out, it's a mistake that's the result of some idiots who created a language now named after them Wade-Giles. The problem is, it uses consenants that make sounds Chinese don't have to fill in for sounds they have that we don't. So while Chinese doesn't have much of a P sound, they have a couple of B sounds. So you have to know the Anglicization of the language and that the rules state the P makes a B sound to correctly pronounce Taibei. So all of the western world uses this system 'cause it's been around since the 1900s, but we all impose our English understanding of letters on the spelling of Taipei, saying a P instead of a B. This's something akin to the entire eastern world walking around saying "New Zork" or something 'cause they can't be bothered to get it right.

Obviously, this's something people would have to deal with on their own. You'd have a regular conversation like, "Where are Marie and Keith again? They're in Taibei. You mean, Taipei. No, Taibei is the correct pronunciation." And the rest of the conversation would be determined by how certain the person is that you're wrong. So it's up to you how much you want to try and change the world when the opportunity arises.

And we had a fun evening a couple of weeks even before Thanksgiving where we got dressed up and went to a friend's place for an evening.

This's Katy and Rowan's place. It's not big, but it's pleasant. That's Rowan on the left and Katy in black. I just wanted to point to why Marie was all dressed up.

Marie brought this great dress with her all the way from Seattle (then to Nebraska, then Virginia, back to Seattle, and finally to Taiwan) and she was thinking she wouldn't have a chance to show it off.

This's walking home very early on Sunday. It's really quite safe. We don't even have a choice after midnight. We have to take a cab; the MRT shuts down. We usually walk a few blocks home for simplicity. But our neighborhood is pretty quiet and reasonably well lighted.

This reminded me that someone asked about how clean it was here, and I said it was about as clean as any big city. And that's true to a point. In the core where businesses and offices reign, it's about the same as a big U.S. downtown, but in the more residential areas, it's not quite so good. The streets are where everything that would normally be hidden in grass and dirt are collected. There's very little open ground here, and while there are a lot of trees for a city this compressed, there's not a lot of space for dog doo or firecracker paper or spilled paint or anything to hide. And on top of that, there's more people per square meter here, so more people to dump stuff or spill their pop or whatever to make things even messier. The rain is the biggest defense against the worse of the mess.

Finally, I just had to illustrate the entertainment value of translations around here. This's the 27th funny thing I'd read this week, but this time I had a camera. This's in a grocery store where there were all kinds of samples to try.

So, from Taibei, Marie and I hope you and your family are happy and healthy, buried in the wrappings from the toys of your choice, and generally having a good time. So Merry Christmas, happy new year, and beware your lips.

Holiday time

2008-11-30T18:00:00.000-08:00

We haven't been taking pictures recently, but that's 'cause I forgot the camera when we went to our Thanksgiving party last night.

We don't get time off for Thanksgiving here. In fact, we almost missed it entirely. Because it's not a national holiday (obviously) with several days off and a big tradition of getting together with family and feasting, it's not on the tip of everyone's tounge, asking, "so, what're you doing for Thanksgiving," we don't remember to ask, "what day is it?" We did spend part of last week working out when Thanksgiving started. Now that the time change has happened, the east coast of the U.S. is thirteen hours behind us and so on. So it's even trickier to call (do we stay up late or get up early).

But we did have a fun time with new friends. There's a restaurant in the north side of town that's a favorite of ex-pats (really good pancakes, I'm told). And they'd make you a turkey with all the side dishes. So Marie and I helped collect the food (the bird felt like twenty pounds, but it was certainly huge) and take it to Daniel's (a new teacher in Marie's school) apartment.

So we had turkey, and mashed potatoes, gravy, and broccoli; and thanks to Marie's quick thinking and spotting a Wellman's store (which's an importer of little-seen food stuffs, like Stovetop stuffing) we had stuffing, too.

There was the usual crowd of people. Katie, Rowan, Kat, Cindy, Fay, and Vera, all of whom we've seen at most of our get-togethers, but Marie works with half of them. Daniel and his friend Gina, Melissa brought what Marie called the Kojen mascot, Kiki, a hyper little poodle-terrier thing. Dgie (pronounced Gee, I think) brought her son Josh, so we had one cute little four-year old running around to make it seem like a family holiday. Josh and the turkey are the two things I would've photographed if I could've.

But there were almost twenty people there, and we went through almost all of the bird; the pounds of mashed potatoes were gone in the first serving, and we even had pie. Though I thought we should've had two for that group, the restaurant sliced the pie into sixteen slices so it came out just right 'cause I don't think the Chinese people were quite as excited by it. Interested, yes, but it wasn't nearly the same thing for them.

And just to make it seem like Chistmas is coming, Marie and I went toy shopping afterwards. She wanted some board games to play with friends so we went to a Toys "R" Us where we found these big foam swords, axes, and hammers that I almost bought. We did wack each other with them for a minute, just to get it out of our systems. I would've taken a picture of those, too.

But it was fun to poke through toys and see the new Lego and Star Wars stuff. We just bought a couple of sedate games, one with dice and a big dominoes set, 'cause we're old. But it was fun to laugh at the toys and wish I could bring myself to buy a huge Lego set. I did almost buy Cluedo (Clue in Chinese) 'cause it has everything in English and Chinese, so I could've learned to say "Professor Plum in the library with the pipe," in Chinese. And the uses for those kinds of phrases are just limitless.

So, our next project is to get ready for Christmas, because we're having it here, at our place. So at least there'll be plenty of photos 'cause I can't forget the camera. And at the same time, we're trying to figure out where to go for New Year's. In the ex-pat community it's called Chinese New Year, 'cause it's a few weeks after January 1st. But it's a big deal 'cause we get more than a week off work, apparently. So we're trying to get outta town and see some other place. But just like the states, we need to be buying tickets (for the train, tho') now (and probably last month) 'cause everyone wants to be somewhere else.

So that's all the news from Lake Woebegone. We hope everyone's having great holidays, too.

Ahh, fall

2008-11-19T03:33:00.000-08:00

It's almost cold here. I really had forgotten what it felt like to be less than overwhelmed by heat. I like it a lot. So, we can now safely invite people to visit. I thought we'd need a couple of weeks to get settled and then I'd have some blog about helping people visit and see another culture and so forth, but that heat and humidity just makes it unfun. But now, it's fall cool and it's nice to be here. So all of you without new children can... um. Okay, Heather, d'you wanna visit?

But even more importantly,

I got new shoes.

I had this whole conversation with my brother about how to pack and what to do about running shoes when I was expecting to be in Armenia.

He told me that I might have to take some off brand or it might cost and arm and a leg, but I'd be able to find running shoes. So it's pretty funny to come to Taiwan and get the new model of the shoes I've come to enjoy, for about the same price as the U.S.

Personally, I think it should be cheaper. I mean, I came to the shoes. It even says on the box "made in China." Don't I get anything for saving them all that shipping? But I'm pretty pleased with my shiny new trainers. I even have a roadrace next month to break 'em in on. It's a nine kilometer, so I can't really compare it to anything, but it's Nike's race (the Nike 9k) so they can do what they want.

In another completely unrelated note, I thought I'd illustrate laundry here in Taiwan.

This is the dryer. Why, yes, it does look like a closet, and that is my head. That's because it is in fact, a closet. There are no dryers in private homes. You can go to a laundromat and use a dryer, but otherwise you wash your clothes (in cold) and hang them to dry. We have a dehumidifier which helps a lot, but you really have to plan ahead with clothes. You can't just wash something in an hour. It only takes 15 or 20 minutes to wash something small, but drying it's a project. So things go on hangers and we wait. Good for preventing set-in stains, bad for getting things without wrinkles. I do miss the simplicity of laundry in the U.S.

And I think we're moving into feeling like we miss things. We're starting to talk about holidays here. No one has a serious oven, so no turkey. We're talking about where to go for dinner, and what to do for leftovers. On the plus side, everything's open on Thanksgiving. The down side is we don't get the day off.

So, it's like everything else here, things are different. Maybe not better, but really not worse, just different.

Oh, and I wanted to at least ask, in general (let's see if this gets many comments) if anyone wants anything for Christmas from Taiwan. Marie and I realize it doesn't mean much to get something that says "made in Taiwan" but we've seen a fair number of inventive or locally made things that are interesting and exotic. And of course, they're momentos of us. I'm thinking of fans, and tea sets, and tea that might be fun to have in the U.S. And of course we can send you one of those gold kitties that's always waving a paw.

Zee dayz, zay are packed

2008-11-11T07:38:00.001-08:00

No, I don't know why I'm affecting a bad French accent, and in writing at that, it has nothing to do with anything, it just occurred to me.

So thank you to all of the people who tried to make us feel better by telling us about their heat problems (Marie's Aunt Lorre in Phoenix where they're still in the nineties) or lack of the same (Michelle in Seattle where it's just about perfect for fall) but we're doing much better now. The temp. dropped about 5 C all at once a couple days ago. It's now around 20 to 23 C so we're both much happier. We've almost completely quit using the A/C and we're talking about investing in a comforter and blankets for the coming months.

As an interesting side note, you cannot, repeat can not get flat sheets in Taiwan. I'd buy two single sheets and stitch 'em together, but they just aren't there. We're using a cover for a comforter as a flat sheet, and it works pretty well, but it's made for a comforter so my toes keep sticking out in the night, which really wasn't a problem until two days ago. I'm considering buying a fitted sheet and hacking off the elastic. But enough of my problems, the important thing is, Marie and I have been out into the wider Taiwanese countryside!

We took a whirlwind rafting tour a couple weekends ago. It has to be whirlwind 'cause we work on Saturdays so we can't leave until after 7 on Saturday night and then we have class Monday afternoon.

This is most of the group killing time before the vans arrive. That's Marie, Katy's opposite her, then Georgia, Kat and Cindy (who are from Hawai'i), and Vera. The vans were supposed to be there so we could leave just after seven, but not so much. But, we did get to try this neat little cafe kinda thing. It was the first time in months I've had more or less American fries.

I'm sure there's a joke there about American french fries (how do I hyphenate that?) but I can't find it. So dinner made up for a little of the delay.

We didn't leave Taipei until about nine or so, so we didn't get to the campground south of Hualien until about two a.m., so the pictures skip to the next morning when I was more coherent and able to comprehend a modern autofocus camera.

I just liked the mountains in the mist and the complete lack of other people.

This's out of one end of our little hut. I was so tired the night before I just threw my sleeping bag down and went to sleep. I wasn't thinking about bugs. That made for a long night for Marie. She's like a buffet to mosquitoes. I slept pretty well.

This's the other end of our hut. What surprised me was the lack of other campers. The other tents are all our group. I don't know when the camping season is in this place, but it's not now, and you're thinking "well of course not in late October!" But it was warm at night and hot during the day. Maybe people camp in the winter, I dunno, I'll look into that. But we were about the only people there. And it's like a KOA campground. Central bathrooms, even showers, tho' they do have mostly eastern toilets around, but there's usually a western toilet in the area. So I think the only real problem was the bugs.

This's getting ready for the raft ride, packing everything to go back in the van. That's one of the vans we came in and the driver, in the orange shirt, who, I'm not kidding, goes by the name of Cobra. Apparently it's from his Taiwanese nickname, which I didn't catch, but he was a solid driver on some pretty twisty roads, and pretty good with a camera, too. I haven't seen the photos he took, but they're out there. I'll post a few once I get my electronic mitts on them.

I did not take the camera on the raft. I'd thought about it for maybe ten minutes. I had an idea that I could use a couple of bags to keep it dry, but I got a look at what we were gonna do and I just put it back in the van.

The river itself was fairly sedate, only a few rapids and mild ones at that. But we were riding eight people to a raft. Four people straddled each side of the rubber raft. So there were a lot of paddles flailing around, at least in the beginning before we got the hang of it. But then we discovered the real reason for the trip, to splash other rafters.

Not that it wasn't a little fun, but I did like that our raft was more interested in paddling. I must be old. There were maybe a dozen to fifteen boats, and a lot of groups would pull alongside another raft and dig in with paddles and the bailing buckets, which I'm sure were there less for bailing than I first thought, and the two boats of people would wail on each other for many minutes. It was more amusing to watch from a distance. We'd splash people as we went by, but we mostly just kept paddling.

And it was a very good trip. It was mostly calm and level. We only had a couple of bumps on rocks and a couple of scary racing-right-at-a-boulder-in-the-middle-of-the-river moments. And the day was mostly bright sunshine and calm. And the river is a real river and runs through a well-cut gorge. And hills surrounding the river are covered in greenery, as you'd expect in a tropical climate. I was hoping for some bare rock and cliffs, but after months in urban Taipei, lots and lots of greenery was pretty welcome.

They even fed us lunch, though after a couple of hours of paddling I was ready for burgers or sandwiches, chips or fries, and a cookie. That might've been the first time I really forgot where I was. We got these box lunches, which aren't bad, they had strips of fried pork chop and a couple of veggies and rice. But they're not what I'm used to, so I was really yanked back to reality. But anything's good when you're using muscles for hours that aren't used to it. Though I was grumpy that they didn't mention that if you wanted something to drink, you'd better bring cash. I still haven't tested whether Taiwanese cash will go through the wash like U.S. currency, so I didn't think to bring coins on the trip or anything on the boat ride. But we mooched some water and all was good.

So, after another couple of hours of paddling (and splashing) we came to the end of our trip under this bridge.

We parked the boats just down the bank there, and dumped our vests, soft helmets, and paddles and took off. Not bad for 600 NT apiece.

Maybe the best part was seeing this view. That darker blue is the ocean. And this little landing has a zillion little shower stalls so you can rinse the sand outta your nooks and crannies. Again, no one was there. We basically had the place to ourselves, total of one dozen people in a place meant for a hundred or more.

This's the group after we're mostly clean and ready to head for the campground. Food and taking pictures of the local dogs took priority, though not in that order.

No, wait, I lied. This was the best part of the trip, though that shower was a close second.

This was just ridiculous how beautiful it all was. Green plants, red flowers, blue ocean, white surf. Kat (from Hawai'i) kept saying, "when did we get to Oahu?" or something. It made you a little stupid to look at it. But the real reason it was ridiculous was this little hut, with all the amenities of the last campground, but this view, was still only 500 NT a night. That's about $15. There were only a couple of other people there. In the U.S. this space would cost a hundred bucks and there'd be a three-year waiting list. I still can't fathom why this place isn't overrun by people.

This's food that night. It was really quite dark, until you use a high-powered flash and light the place up. You can see the headlight Fay (in yellow) is wearing to cook by, Cobra's next to her, then Vera, Spencer, Georgia, Amber, and Lee-Anne.

The amusing part is how strange time is, first when you're camping, and then when you're in Taiwan. We have no daylight savings here. The sun heats things up, so the day starts early, and it gets dark quick, especially when you're camped on the east side of a short but very sharp mountain range. So by seven in the evening we're working on food and it's pitch black out. Of course it takes time to feed a dozen people when you only have a couple of little camp stoves (don't ask me why you want hot soup when it's this hot, but them's the rules in these parts). And Nick started a fire so a few people played at making s'mores.

So we're wandering around getting fed and talking and Marie made me pack a bottle of Kahlua (but we compromised and she put it in a lighter plastic bottle) and some people made a run for milk and beer (don't get weird, the milk was for the Kahlua). So after all this preparing and eating little bits at a time and talking and drinking, people started to yawn and some one asked, "what time is it." It was nine o'clock. Old, I'm telling you. But at least the other kids were feeling it too. The paddling that is. I think everyone was tucked in or just crashed someplace more or less comfortable by ten.

And this's what we woke to. Marie was complaining that photos don't capture anything of a sunrise or a lion in the zoo or any sort of natural wonder, and I certainly don't dispute that, but it does a lot better than my text, so there ya go. Six a.m. up with the sun. And it was already 27, 28C, blech. But worth it to feel like I was on vacation and I lived at least near a tropical paradise.

This was probably the most popular pastime that morning. Taking photos with the amazing sunrise as a backdrop in a hope that some of the grandeur will survive to the picture. You decide.

Here's Marie and my contribution to the effort. (Oooh, look how long his hair is.)

And this's getting ready to leave. It was almost like we'd just arrived.... But it was worth going and doing and seeing.

And this's the whole group: Spencer, Cat, Vera, Marie, Amber (bottom) Georgia (top, who will not tell us her actual, Chinese name, as if it'd mean anything to us), Lee-Anne (bottom) Cindy, Nick, Fay (who would not raise her head 'cause she was counting the cash, I'm not joking, about nine times 'cause she was worried about over charging us, but after all we'd done it felt like we were paying about 20 bucks, for both of us, Canadian), and Katy.

Finally, I took a LOT of photos on the drive home. I opted against illustrating just how sharp the dropoff was next to the road (there was always a heavy K-rail between us and a hundred-foot plummet to our fiery deaths, mom). But this was worth noting, I thought. The water is so blue and perfect, and there's nothing between here and Hawai'i, but what looks like white sand is gravel. And where there should be a quaint fishing village turned tourist destination for lying on the beach and drinking ice-cold daiquiries and buying pointless gifts for friends, there is an ACTUAL fishing village and industrial center where I think you can buy concrete by the ton.

It was odd. It felt like the entire coast should've been overrun by holiday people and beach goers but it was basically us. Not such a bad weekend.

Reality versus...

2008-10-29T22:58:00.000-07:00

I just got home from my Chinese class. As I was riding the metro, and it was running above ground north of Taipei, I was thinking about how it gave a good view of the city. You don't see the details, but you get an overview of what things look like here. And for some reason I was thinking about seeing Taipei on TV. My grandmother told me about seeing a travel show about food in Taiwan. And I recently saw a few minutes of, I think it's called the Great Race: the world-wide scavenger hunt-reality show. I hate those shows, but the race was running through Taipei.

Marie and I've seen a few things, but not much, so I wondered if they'd go someplace I knew. They didn't, and the way the show works, they weren't showing much about the city. But it occurred to me that most travel shows are like an overview of an overview. Like taking a picture of a picture.

Mostly I'm thinking about this because my parents are talking about visiting next summer. And I'm thinking about how much different things seem when you're here (or where ever) versus just watching on TV. The immediacy of the place is paramount. The view is no longer surrounded by the rest of your living room. And the sounds and smells (especially the smells) come into play much more forcefully. And I'm thinking this because I would like to be able to play host for a bit and show mom and dad (or anyone else who'd like to visit) another pretty unusual part of the world (they've already seen a bit of Russia and Tanzinia). But I'm also thinking of the immediacy of the freakin' heat!

We thought we were getting into fall here, finally. I've been hearing nothing but how cool or even cold it's getting practically everywhere in the U.S., like the snowstorm on the east coast. It's still getting up to 30 C here and humid. I still sweat through a shirt just walking three blocks to the air-conditioned metro station.

This's our lesson for the day, ladies and gentlebeings. Taiwan, even tho' it's about the same latitude as Florida, clings to summer like a fat kid clings to cake. It's not really miserable, like the first few weeks, when it was five or ten C hotter and even more humid and we just weren't prepared for it, but it's not cooling like I was expecting, hoping, and making Faustian deals for.

So maybe I'm saying, enjoy your cooler weather. I'd kill for 70 F, as proven by the couple of cockroaches and dozens of ants I've doomed.

Not quite three months in...

2008-10-26T01:55:00.000-07:00

...and it's already time to say goodbye to new friends.

Jenn, on the left, went back to the States last week to start work on a post-grad degree. LeeAnne will be leaving soon to travel southeast Asia with a friend. Keith and I spent quality time with these girls and they have really helped us settle in.

I suppose it's logical, in a place where we're in such a minority, that the western teachers would come together, welcome each other and offer assistance. But I've been surprised at how much good advice we've received, and how much people really make us feel welcome. And I don't think it's just that so many of them are Canadians ;)

The party Keith mentions in the last post was for these two. But even as we say goodbye we've already welcomed other new teachers who now can use our help. I'm glad we have such good examples to follow.

Party party

2008-10-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody! Hi Dr. Nick!

We went to a party at a friend and former co-worker of Marie's last weekend. Emma and Grant have this amazing apartment with a ridiculous view. They'd been working here as teachers, like Marie and I (Marie worked with Emma for a couple of weeks before she got her great job) and we'd met them just after we arrived. They're a couple of very friendly, helpful, and generally agreeable people. I wish I were more like them.

This's Emma. Any necessary apologies to her. I was taking pictures without a flash, so I wouldn't seem so obvious and a little more candid. But I did get a lot of blur.

We had a great time talking with people Marie works with and eating food everyone brought. Notably, someone brought these sandwiches that were a little like pizza, with spicy meat and cheese, and I asked where they came from, thinking it was one of the more homey tastes I'd had in a while. The answer was, "Costco." Oh. Figures.

This's Marie (center) with (left to right) Jenn, Lee-Anne, and Rowan in Grant and Emma's huge and well lighted living room.

Every place here has tile floors. No carpet. At first we were assuming it was for easier cleaning and we were marveling at how much difference carpeting made, and how dirty our carpets must've been. But I'm rethinking that. A local I'm tutoring noted it was because of the pollution. And there is a lot of dust or dirt or soot that seems to collect in a few days. So maybe it is more about the city than just not having carpets. I'll have to find a way to test that theory.

Isn't Marie cute.

This's Katie taking a picture off the balcony of the seventh floor apartment, which has no building opposite it. This's far north of the core of Taipei (and where Marie and I live) so there are still open spaces. You can just see the field, of maybe rice, opposite the building. They have a very long view, at least when the pollution and clouds aren't bad. But it was amazing to see the view and their apartment. They even have an entire half of the apartment they don't even use. At the risk of divulging details, Emma said she gets paid more than Marie does (which is enough to support the two of us on a frugal budget) to just be on call in case her employer has time to work on learning English. And the apartment comes with Grant's job.

It was at this party Marie and I had a really odd conversation about recognizing people. I thought I saw someone I recognized from work on the street below, which I do almost every day on the metro, but then I think, "that's absurd, what're the odds in a city of 2.5 million you're seeing one of the twelve people you know?" And I look again, and it's never them. I mentioned this to Marie who said it's the other way for her. She's probably not recognizing people she does know, for the same reason of similarity. But for the height of irony, the guy I saw from seven floors up, was in fact one of my co-workers coming to that party. I don't know what any of that means, but it was an interesting occurrence.

And Marie and I have begun Chinese lessons. Marie's been taking lessons for a couple of weeks now. I'm only just starting, so she's got an advantage, but I'm remembering that I'm really bad in the early stages of language acquisition. I can't hear a word and understand it. I have to read it and think about it before I can actually use it. So I'm ridiculously slow in classroom conversations. Marie kills me when we play games in class that involve answering questions in Chinese.

But I've got more hours at my school now. It's not what I was expecting. I thought I'd be more tired, but I'm not tired from working or standing for hours or being energetic and controlling 20 seven-year-olds, or energizing 20 fifteen-year-olds. I'm just run down from thinking about the next thing I have to do, what do I have to do at school and when does that mean I have to be there so I have to leave at what time? My schedule is different every day; I can't count on going to work at a certain time every day, so it's a little tough to keep track of.

But it's not boring, and the money is beginning to be what we'd expected, so we're both pleased with that. And it is getting just a bit easier every time. There are still set backs and mistakes, but I don't seem to be making the same mistakes, so things are getting easier, I think.

Next week Marie and I and a bunch of people are going on a rafting trip on our one day off, so we'll have some really good photos and tales to tell, provided my camera's waterproof, otherwise one of the tales will be about the photos that got away.

Really, I know geography, I swear!

2008-10-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

Kinda embarrassing, but I just realized how wrong I was about where New Zealand is. A couple of entries ago I was talking about how it really isn't that hard to fly here, so a few more hours to New Zealand wouldn't be that bad. Of course, this might be true if New Zealand was where I thought it was, in Papua New Guinea.

I learned the hard way when Marie and I were just talking about big vacations we might take next year. New Zealand popped into my head immediately because I've heard stories from Mike and Becky. And, I thought, "it's on this side of the ocean so it's really close." Sadly, maybe because I'm an American and there's been no war there I don't know where it is.

We did a quick search for flights and of course it really isn't that close. All the flights were ten, twelve, fifteen hours. I couldn't understand (and prices were $1,200, $1,500, etc.) how that could be. So Marie pulled up a map and I had one of those "ohhhh" moments, after which I wondered where the heck I got the idea that New Zealand was north of Australia, instead of a couple thousand miles southeast. Whose job was it to teach me geography?

But that's one way to really learn something. Forget writing it down and listening to it and teaching it to someone. Make a fool of yourself telling it to people incorrectly. Good luck ever forgetting that fact again.

But, we are closer to New Zealand, by about half the distance. All the flights from the U.S. claim it's a 24 hour flight (two-four) to New Zealand. Whew. That's hard to even imagine. I didn't suffer too much to fly overnight to get here, but I dunno. I'm not sure that trip's gonna happen. Even Australia's still ten hours and $1,200 apiece away. That might be a bit much for a couple of weeks. We'll see, I suppose.

So, that's the educational bit for me. Let this be a lesson to you!

What's new at the zoo?

2008-10-12T19:42:00.001-07:00

Taipei does have a very good zoo. It's larger than I thought it would be, and for only 30 NT it's really worth going. We were there for four hours on Friday, and we didn't get to see everything.

We did, however, learn that going on a major national holiday is not the best idea.

I think this illustrates something I just learned (notice that the river of people goes right up the hill in the distance). In Taipei, there are about 25,000 people per square mile. It sounds pretty scary, but it actually makes it easier to know, yes, it really is crowded. You're not imagining it.

I shouldn't be surprised that the zoo here is so well done. The island's population is 25 million or so, most within a couple of hours by train, but I was still impressed by what they had, like Insect World, here.

We considered adding this guy, a black beetle, to our list of giant inflatable animals, but he's neither inflatable nor animal. But we did take a photo 'cause he is giant.

But part of Insect World is a butterfly house. Marie and I got to see the new butterfly environment at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha over the summer, but this one was a little more fun. The H-D Zoo had many more butterflies and moths, but they seemed a little standoffish. The ones in the Taipei zoo would float and flit around the patrons, daring people to try and photograph them in mid-air. I tried a couple times, but all for naught. But they were very photogenic insects. They'd sit very still while I got the camera right next to them for a photo.

I realize now that I didn't get the names of these. Not that it really makes a difference, I suppose, but somehow it feels incomplete that I can't remember even a common name of one of these.

Okay, except for this Monarch, here. I suspect that these are common butterflies to the region. In Omaha they had this complicated airlock system to keep butterflies in, either 'cause they're hard to raise or they could contaminate the environment. Here, we walked through a draft of air, and that was considered enough to prevent the butterflies from escaping. When we walked outside, it looked like the same butterflies were harassing the flowers just outside the building. I suspect that the environment is so people can walk among butterflies year-round.

Oh, but most of you will be happy to know I decided not to post the photo of the giant snail we saw in the butterfly house.

And we saw many more expected zoo residents.

Most of the animals seemed either pleasantly bored like this Meerkat, or, frankly, a little crazed.

Mama lion here was doing laps back and forth (that's a serious pane of glass between me and her). There were only a couple of lions in here, and the space was wide, but she seemed pretty wound up. Her cub was really cute. I couldn't get a decent shot of him as he stalked and pounced on her as she walked, but it was keeping a couple dozen patrons amused.

And we watched the Macaques for quite a while. There were maybe a dozen of different ages on this island. I don't understand the barbed wire around the trees. It certainly didn't stop them from climbing the trees; at best it slowed them down a little. And I tried very hard to get a couple of action shots of the younger ones tumbling and playing, but they're just to fast for my camera.

And there's always a problem person in any group. We'd been watching for fifteen minutes and someone threw a handful of food across the water. It was pretty funny to see the big Macaque dive into the water after it, but it didn't seem very good for the animal. Worse still when the twit threw a tied plastic bag of food onto the island, which the animals wrestled over and chased until after we left.

Personally, I liked the Austrailian tortise. Very camera friendly. I think Marie actually asked, "how do they tell them apart?" And this guy turned around and there was a big "4" on his shell. And you can't really tell, but this guy is not small. That shell is bigger than a manhole cover.

This actually scared me a bit. There was only a concrete, knee-high wall with the chest-high rail, and a trench a couple of feet deep and a couple of feet wide between us and these couple of White rhinos. They seemed either bored or complacent, but it still felt like being a little too close. Especially after seeing the bit with the Macaques and the food. I was waiting for someone to throw something or just generally tick the rhino off. Standing here I could only remember that elephants can't jump, but I dunno about rhinos. And if they can we'd be in serious trouble 'cause I don't think that little wall would slow him down if he was even mildly grumpy.

The giraffes were big here (at the end of Marie's nose), pardon the pun. Maybe 'cause they had a large paddock and a long rail where people could watch 'em. This was from the back of the yard 'cause I thought the photo was funny.

We didn't get to see the arctic animals or the asian ones. So we have a reason to go back, hopefully when it's not so warm or crowded.

And on Sunday we went to a movie with a friend of Marie's and a friend of hers. "Burn After Reading" by the Coen brothers was pretty good, and pretty funny, but we we all a bit surprised by the amount of violence. Marie and I had the idea it'd be more humor, less blood. There was a really funny scene when Brad Pitt's nose is bleeding, but it seemed more about the amount of comedy and stupidity in some dramatic events. Weird.

But we learned a couple of ins and outs (literally) of seeing a movie, here. One was they'll sell you popcorn and soda with the ticket, then you have to go find the stand to get the popcorn and soda. But there's no benefit to buying it with the ticket. Odd. And the really funny part was we had to buy the tickets then leave the building, cross a pedestrian area and go into another building to find the right theater.

I also have to say, I'm really glad I wasn't a teenager around here. They don't give the poor kids working at the theater an inch of self-respect. They have to wear these hats with big cardboard signs on 'em with ads for a movie or the theater.

And in our animal-zoo theme, I'll end with this, because it's funny.

Next time, really, beach, I swear.

Greetings sports fans!

2008-10-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's 2:30 a.m. here but this's the only way I get to sorta participate in Seattle getting whomped by the Giants, through nfl.com's play-by-play. And thanks to Dov for showing me that. It's a little bit of home that's much better than reading all the commentary on Monday. I might rethink this habit if the Seachickens don't figure out a way to win, but it does give me time to say hi to you all.

Oh, and I've been meaning to say thanks to Karl. He recommended the camera I'm using, and it's been a really good tool for what we're doing. On that note, on with the photos: food first.

I know what you're thinking: that looks like a bag of squid, but that's just ridiculous. And you'd be right, it is ridiculous, but it's also a bag of squid. The ridiculous part is it's sold next to ice cream. Seriously, the two things this little shop sold: ice cream and bags of squid. I am beside myself with both mirth and disgust. Whether that means there are four of me, I'll leave to you, dear reader. But this little experience reminds me that culture shock seems to be starting to set in.

I was walking to a bus stop in an unfamiliar neighborhood the other day, and I suddenly had a very strong sense of anxiety and frustration over not being able to walk on the sidewalk. Very early I took pictures of parked scooters filling the sidewalks. In the less planned neighborhoods, scooter parking takes precidence over space for people to walk, so everyone ends up in the street. The drivers are surprisingly good about this and there really isn't much honking about the herds of people filling the streets to go around the scooters. But I just had a twinge of "why?" accompanied by a sort of homesickness for Redmond, Seattle, Phoenix, and even Norfolk where the sidewalks were not filling in as parking lots. They all also differ in not being filled with people like here, but that's a different set of emotions.

In that vein, I'm really glad we went south of Taipei this weekend.

This's near the end line of the Muzha (said kinda like Mu-ch-zha) metro, where the Taipei zoo is. I took this photo for several reasons: the green hills are the most vegetation I've seen I think since we got here; very refreshing. Also the parking lot is the largest one I've seen here. It surprised me to see this much concrete dedicated to cars, but it makes sense, with whole families coming to the zoo, scooters don't make as much sense, and lots of people just take the metro. Next, it's raining and it was cool. It felt really good to be outside on a finally coolish day, even if we did get a bit wet. And it's hard to see from here, but they have huge sidewalks. Lots and lots of space for the really big zoo crowds, which weren't out today. So it was also a great time of not having to dodge people every few steps.

We were actually too late to get into the zoo, but we knew it was too late; we just wanted to find it and see if it was worth another trip, probably next Friday when we have a national holiday. Around here we've learned if we really want a trouble free excursion, we need to be willing to make a dry run at finding a place. But it definitely is worth coming back for. It has several environments with several dozen animals. It's not the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, which can charge $15 or $20 per person, but it only charges 60 NT. That's about $2, so, good deal.

And the trip gave us another installment in our giant inflatable animal series.

It's not really giant, except relatively, and it's not the whole animal, but man these things were popular. I never did figure out what they were good for, except whacking your little sister with.

And here we are having a surprisingly expensive, but surprisingly appetizing dinner. It was about 900 NT each, and then a half bottle of wine, totaling about 2500 NT, or around $80. So, pretty expensive, even for Seattle, but it had an appetizer, soup, salad, entree, dessert, and tea. And I was really surprised by the flavors. I had what they called a chef salad as the salad. It was like a mini chef salad, with a zippy orange-kinda dressing, unexpected but very good. And it's the first time we've had steak since we've been here, so that made everyone happy. And they were both good cuts of meat and done about the way we wanted, which's kind of a miracle with language barrier, and it felt like the server was surprised by us ordering medium rare. I wonder if that's an unpopular choice or if I was just reading her wrong. Whatever it was, we had a very good meal and evening.

This was also kind of a celebration for finally making enough money to live independent of our savings, tho' the celebration might've pushed us back into the red.

This's why there aren't more pictures of me. This's our night out, but I really don't know why Marie kept turning the camera every which way but level.

And I'm just learning that my wife has a juvenile sense of humor. She demanded that I take this picture. Maybe this's where I'm wrong. I thought it was kinda funny, but I didn't think we needed proof. This sorta thing is on every other sign, t-shirt, you name it. This's probably the record holder for size, prestige, and unfortunate meaning, but I just didn't think it was that funny. I thought the squid and ice cream was a lot funnier. I mean, if they sold bras or swimsuits that would've been funny!

But some of us are on the lookout for culture.

This's obviously a street performance, and that is a basket over what I'm assuming is her head (assuming the her, not the head). I couldn't read any of the descriptions, so I don't know if this's traditional music and attire, but I have the impression it is. And I'm sorry to say I didn't listen to much of the music, but it was pleasant to hear after the kids covering pop songs on the other end of the block.

Finally, I've been reading a little of the ongoing complaints from Seattlites about the new light rail and how much it costs and won't be cost efficient even if people ride it and blah blah blah. I'd really like those people to come here and see things like this. This's about ten o'clock on a Saturday night, when people in the U.S. are taking their cars because anything else's too much of a pain. They have a really good system in place here, so people use it. And you have to start building somewhere. And if anyone saw the amount of people this thing carries on a regular basis and calculated what would happen if all these people were even riding two to a scooter, they'd see how this system is the only thing standing between Taipei and mass gridlock.

Personally, it seems like a good idea to build the emergency release valve before you need it. But, the fact that Seattle couldn't get it's act together on this until just recently and is still whining about it, and Portland saw the need ten or fifteen years ago, is part of the reason we're seriously thinking about moving there when we've seen enough of the world.

So, sorry, still no beach trip, but confidence is high! We have next Friday off, so I'm hoping we can go to the beach either Friday or Sunday and the zoo the other. So I hope I'll have lots of stuff to show how much more fun we're having than you!

Yet another typhoon survived

2008-09-30T00:39:00.000-07:00

No, it's not a big deal. I mean, the winds in the latest typhoon were clocked at 140 m.p.h. or maybe 165 (my dad heard 165 but BBC said the wind measuring system topped out at 140, so who knows), but we're fine. Some siding or roofing plastic was littering the streets the day after, oh, and I forgot to get a photo of this guy working on his roof in the middle of the storm. But really, no problems for us. No flooding, we got a day off school, which we couldn't do much with, but it was still nice to have a two day weekend. Normally we have to work some on Saturday, get Sunday off, and then have to put in hours on Monday, so that was kinda pleasant, tho' we don't get paid.

So, we didn't go to the beach like we'd planned. Bummer, but I did go running just ahead of the storm again. Running in Taipei is an odd exercise, pardon the pun. I do see other people running, but it seems like an unusual activity. I think 'cause of the heat and humidity. Personally, I gave up running during the day weeks ago. Running in the evening isn't bad at all, and I think it makes the days a bit more tolerable. I still come home covered in sweat and probably a fair amount of condensed humidity, but I'm surprised every time by how the heat helps me loosen up while I'm moving.

Getting out of the city is an odd adventure. What I can't figure out is how I found a path to the park in the first place. I knew where the river was, so I started running east, but I had to bend right after a couple of blocks, then cross a major street and bend a little left, then cross an off ramp and run up three flights of stairs, run over the bridge and back down (which includes running down stairs, under the bridge, back up stairs and finally down more stairs). This takes about six minutes.

This's the Wild Duck, Goose Park Marie and I visited a couple weeks ago. Here, I can run without worry of scooters, cars, bikes, random pedestrians, and cumulative exhaust. Well, the bikes and pedestrians are still there, but in the evening there's far fewer of both on the river trail. Not a lot of lights there, but it's a comfortable trail. I haven't tripped yet. And the city views are just great. I keep thinking about taking the camera, but 360 degree views of a major city at night from a dark nature preserve just don't translate to film.

Oh, really funny. Go running in Taipei with your iPod and have James Brown's "Living in America" and Blues Brothers doing "Goin' Back to Miami" on there. First, it's a ridiculous sense of juxtaposing the location and the music, then it really hammers in that you're not in the U.S. any more.

Next time, I expect, we'll go to the beach and I'll have plenty of photos of playing in the sun, surf, and sand. There has to be an upside to 30 C this late in the year, right?

Bit o' history

2008-09-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

So, this week we have some Taiwanese history. I won't inundate you with the details here, but it was interesting that we'd talked with my uncle Max just a week or so before we came here and he remembered flying supplies here for the Navy just after World war II, so he knew it as Formosa; I can tell you that Formosa is Portuguese for "beautiful (in this case, island)" not that I needed to come here to find that out. But it was interesting to find that people here still call the island Formosa once in a while without speaking a bit of Portuguese.

I was also interested to find out that Taipei, at about 25 degrees north, is actually farther south than tropical cities like Miami, Florida and Nassau in the Bahamas. And the rest of the island is in the range of much of Mexico and Saudia Arabia, and it's only a couple of degrees north of Honolulu. I was interested because it explained the heat and humidity that is still continuing. Wait, not interested, what's the word... ahhh... horrified. I was horrified to learn we were in such a tropical locale. Mostly, I'm just really ready for less heat or less humidity. We're still getting mid-eighties and the occasional low ninety, and sticky. It's not as bad as when we arrived, but it's still sweat-through-shorts-and-t-shirt weather. So if we don't have as many adventures just yet, we're waiting until it's not Washington D.C. in August.

But we did have a fun and photogenic history lesson last week. We went to the museum and memorial of Chiang Kai Shek (apologies for the spelling, I'm having a hard time getting consistent English on some names), a dominant figure in Chinese history in the late 30s and early 40s and the first President of Taiwan.

This is the avenue that leads to the memorial. This photo also illustrates the adage about how it's better to have a bush in your hat than two in a bird.

The size of the memorial is impressive. It's on the scale of the monuments in D.C. A third of the way up we agreed, no more outdoor adventures until the weather really cools.

Obviously, it brings to mind the Lincoln memorial. But there are aspects, like the intricately carved ceiling, that make it as much Chinese and Taiwanese as western. I was also impressed to notice that the sculpture is in bronze. That seems more difficult to mold than marble.

This's looking back out of the memorial. In the first photo, I was standing just this side of the large white archway in the distance. The two massive buildings on either side are the National Theater and the National Concert Hall. We've looked into seeing something here, but we haven't seen anything upcoming that really grabs our interest.

We almost left after seeing the monument, not really thinking there was anything else. But Marie noticed there was a museum under the memorial level. Which brings us to the next installment in our parade of inflatable animals!

The woolly mammoth! There's an exhibit there for the next couple of months on the mammoth. We tried to find the entrance, but we'd spent a couple of hours roaming through the life of Chiang Kai Shek, so we weren't up to seeing a mammoth display... of mammoth, I guess. But I think we'll go back. The history of Chiang Kai Shek was well done, almost too thorough, though I was surprised that there was little mention of the government's move to Taiwan. I can understand the emotion behind it, but it's history, y'know? Especially considering the success the Taiwanese have here, it doesn't seem terrible to acknowledge coming here. But, that's just what they decided. It was a good crash course in some near-recent Chinese and Taiwanese history.

And these are some of the gardens surrounding the memorial. You can just see the edges of this in the wider photos. The incredible thing about this is, when you experience the compactness of Taipei, the urban compression, and then come here, it's almost a physical shock to see and have so much space and greenery.

This's on a bridge over a Koi pond. The views around here are in such demand by painters that we saw several almost in stadium seating. I was wondering if they have a reservation system, or if they should get one.

This's the other side of the bridge. I wanted a shot of this bird, because there aren't many birds in the city. There seems to be so little space and vegetation, that we don't hear or see many birds at all.

So the sudden appearance of this amazing stork-heron-crane thing, that it was about as big a shock as the memorial itself.

Now, before you go running to the next photo, a word on walking around this city: this is a pedestrian heaven or nightmare, depending on how many people you like to see in your pedestrian heaven. There are always people on the sidewalks. There are always people walking. People use scooters in huge numbers, but there are buses and the metro, so this's like the core of Seattle, but damn near all the time, and everywhere in the city. Sometimes it's impossible not to bump into people, though most of the time there's enough space, you just have to accomodate each other. But there are places called Night Markets that make it almost impossible to explain in terms of U.S. crowds. Maybe sports events, like a Huskers football game (not just volleyball), or some pro-team that's actually winning.

The amazing thing is, they do this every night. This's only the main, call it a concourse. It goes for two blocks. Little shops squished next to each other and the occasional restaurant. The really astounding thing, there's a street behind me, and off to each side are just like this.

There must be six blocks of people just wandering around, looking at the stuff on sale, looking for deals, getting food that ranges from a sit down multi-course meal to something you get in a bag and snack on as you walk. This is something tourists are supposed to see. Probably 'cause the locals come here. This's like the Taiwanese thing to do instead of watching TV. You come out here, get dinner cheap, and look around at the things and people.

This's for friends in Seattle who know Matt and Jenn. Normally I don't care about seeing somebody's name, even mine, on a store or anything, but seeing it here was seriously unexpected. And on a coffee shop, that just made it insane. Marie noticed that the characters next to the name do not mean coffee in Chinese, so we're not sure how Chinese readers know this shop.

And now, a word from our sponsor. Coming here, I was thinking that Taiwanese would be better about packaging, or somehow more enviornmentally friendly. They do the transportation thing light-years better than the U.S., but their packaging is massive overkill and I will say I'm disappointed.

This's a package of tiny cream sandwich cookies. You can see how small. And each one is individually wrapped. Then the entire batch is wrapped in another bag. I suspect there's a couple of cultural habits at work. One is preventing food from spoiling in the humidity, then there's a habit of not eating an entire bag of oreos at once, and I think there's a little paranoia about disease. Just to point out the interesting food habits, there are no family-sized bags of Doritoes. The largest bag I can find is about as big as one of those Grab bags from the kwikie mart. A can of Pringles is about the largest single container of chips I can find. Crackers are wrapped four or five to a pack, and then wrapped a couple more times. I have repeatedly reached for a box of cookies or crackers, and picked up an apparently empty box there is so much packaging. I'm sure it's healthier, to get treats in much smaller portions than I'm used to, but my guilt over the wrapping is kinda at odds with health.

Finally, I'll mention several food discoveries.

One is the Pocari Sweat. It's like a sweet Gatorade (and if anyone wants to send something, I can't find Gatorade here, and the powder is a lifeline after running in this humidity). I have tried it. I didn't think to take a photo of Marie actually drinking it. Sorry Michelle, we'll have to try again for better proof. But I have discovered what tea eggs are!

When last we saw our intrepid traveler he was contemplating the egg things on the right. They are in fact eggs that have been hard boiled in tea, so they have some of the taste of the tea and are meant to be eaten. Apparently Marie knew this all along. What's strange is how available these things are, but I've never seen anyone eating one. It's almost like they're supposed to be an on-the-go snack, but they aren't.

And I still don't have a name for these but they are indeed a fruit. You pluck them off the branch like a grape, then you have to peel the tough skin, but you only need to take off a small section, 'cause then you can just squeeze the thing outta the husk into your mouth. It feels like a peeled grape but tastes like sweet coconut. They aren't easy to eat (there's also a pit you have to spit out), not like grapes or an apple, you have to work on 'em, but they are fun, and pretty good.

And that's all the time we have, boys and girls. Come back next time when we'll talk about our visit to the beach and the complete absence of dumpsters. See ya real soon!

An actual event

2008-09-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

So we had something actually happen here! It was called typhoon Sinlaku. It was happening just as Ike was hitting the U.S. We thought it was probably for the best 'cause everyone back home wouldn't hear a thing about our circular weather and they wouldn't be worried.

This's what it looked like from our place. It was like a midwestern thunderstorm (minus the lightening) or a winter downpour in Seattle, but it didn't stop for three days. Really. They were expecting 50 cm of rain or a couple of feet. I think we got about 30 cm. You understand it's hard to be sure since we're still basically illiterate in Chinese and that's how most of the weather is reported.

We knew about it in advance, our schools closed down early, kinda like a snow day. And lots of people at our schools speak very good English and they'd talk about it with and around us, so we had some warning. There were also rumors of winds as high as 200 kilometers an hour, something like a class four hurricane, I think.

The TV news stations do the same thing here as in the States, they put some poor schmuck in a rain coat out on the coast with a microphone so we can see how bad it is. So the coastal areas and towns got hammered, but Taipei is more on the west of the island and the typhoon came in from the east, bounced off the island, and headed north. So we saw a lot of rain, and the winds were enough to keep most people indoors.

There were breaks that were quite pleasant, on Sunday we went out to breakfast and did a little shopping in the neighborhood. We were chased home by the heavy stuff and it didn't stop for at least the next ten hours. The damage to umbrellas here was just horrific, but that's about all we saw. Heck, I went running in the leading edge of it. How many times can you say you went running in a typhoon? It was windy, but not dangerous (there were still lots and lots of scooters around, how windy could it be?) and finally cool. Tho' I did get pretty wet. But here in the city we had some wind, lots of rain, and a day off from work.

But by Monday things had lightened and we had to go back to work. And by Tuesday we were back to clear skies.

On a completely different subject: I've been trying to get decent night shots for weeks. I finally figured out I have to use the fireworks setting and hold very still.

The neon and colored signs go up about three floors (in other parts of the city they go up four or five) so it makes for some pretty amazing city views. I always think of futuristic movies, like Blade Runner. But the colors and all the movement makes for an almost artistic collage of color and motion that can be almost overwhelming.

This's the same corner. The low yellow roof on the right is an open mall and Longshan Temple (that's the name of our neighborhood, Longshan Temple, we live across the road on the left, a block or two into the residental area).

This's downtown Taipei. You can see the size of the buildings and how far they go. This's a shot from the metro, and this line runs as an elevated train, so it's a couple floors above street level. I love seeing down these streets at all the things that seem familiar, like the buildings and the taxis, and the unfamiliar, like all the signs in Chinese. This's near my school. It's just past the trees on the right of the photo. You can't see anything, but there it is. Good 'ole #3 Kojen on Nanjing Road.

And this's looking over Wild Goose or Wild Duck park. It's a preserve or reserve, I think. The title in English changes depending on where you read it. But they have many sculptures of ducks, so maybe that's the name.

Right here we're under the highway. They have this huge wall (two or three floors) between the city and the traffic (which the highway above us goes over), and this park. So you have to walk up a couple flights of stairs to get here, but it you get some good views like this. We came from the right of this photo; we didn't walk from the cityscape in the background. This park follows the Danshui River, which runs through the city. So there's city in all directions from here. The core of Taipei is to the right, and the city in the background here is actually across the river. And it might look big, but it's a very compact city for 2.5 million or so.

This's an evening out. We do have friends here, well, mostly they're Marie's. Nick, on the right here, had turned 23. I don't even want to know how old the rest of our coworkers are. Jennifer is next to him, then Spencer, and Lee Anne is on the far left. These are some of the people Marie works with. And this's at a restaurant near Marie's school in a neighborhood called Shilin. I don't know the name of the place, but the teachers all call it the Indian Bar because of the neon Native American over the door. Hmm, should've gotten a shot of that.

This's the rest of the group. Several of these people are just friends of other people and met each other because they arrived through Reach to Teach. The green thing is the beer. The really cheap way is to have a bunch of friends and you order one of these things, which has four liters of beer for, I think I heard 300 or 400 NT. That's about $10 or $15. It's drinkable, but it's kinda like Bud or Coors. After living in Seattle and all the microbrews, it's a little short on taste. You can get lots of other beer here, but it's pretty pricey.

I did take pictures of the menu, for proof of we could've had Three Cups Frog, but the photo doesn't want to rotate, so it's tough to read. We also could've had Three Cups Chicken or Squid, Fish Chin, Fish Stomache, or Tentacles. I don't remember what we ordered, but it was good noodles, rice, battered fish, and peppered beef. Pretty cheap, too.

And just for fun, here we are waiting for the metro. Really, that's how I look when I'm waiting for the train. This far north, this line actually moves from underground to elevated. Pretty cool.

And this's riding the train home after a long day of teaching and an evening out. Good thing we don't have to be anywhere until tomorrow afternoon.

And I just realized that I'm slow on writing 'cause I like photos. Photos help and are more interesting than just a wall of text. But stupid Blogger takes minutes to upload just a couple of photos, so when I have eight or nine, it takes ten minutes or more before I have all the photos up. So, that's a bit of a speed bump between me and regular writing. But I'll keep on it. And maybe I'll get Marie to play along, soon.

The trip

2008-09-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

So I just realized that we never mentioned the trip here. That's part of the experience, right? I mean, we started in D.C. and we're exactly twelve hours ahead of them now, so we're really close to being exactly on the other side of the world. That's not something most people do on a regular basis, although my brother practically has a punch card for his trips.

Part of it is wanting to tell one of my favorite jokes. Lewis Black once said, "if you ever have the chance to visit New Zealand, my advice is: don't take it. 'Cause even after you've had a drink, a movie, a nap, a meal, another drink, and another movie, you've still got thirteen hour to go!"

I just wanted to say that flying to Taiwan, which isn't too far from New Zealand, wasn't like that at all. Marie struggled, but she has a hard time sleeping on planes, period. We got on our flight about 1 am (the China Air counter in Seatac doesn't even open until 9:30 or 10 in the evening) and about two we were airborne and I was drifting off to sleep. They had to wake me for the meal and I don't remember the attendant picking up the tray.

That was the weirdest part. After all the flying we did, from Omaha to D.C., then back to Seattle, China Air was the most accommodating airline. One airline charged us for two extra bags and you could get one drink for free. U.S. Airways charged us for all four checked bags and pop and juice all cost a couple bucks. Not even a dollar for an airline glass of pop. Two bucks. China Air fed us the minute we were at altitude. No charge, just "here's your hot meal of meat, potatoes, and mixed vegetables."

Then they came around with wine and water. I don't know the logic of the wine, and there didn't seem to be a lot of takers, but there it was.

They also had mini movie screens in the back of each headrest with a bunch of movies on tap. You can watch whatever you want, whenever. Heck, they already had "Iron Man" and it was still in theaters.

I say this 'cause Marie and I spent time and money to have plenty of books to read, and music to listen to, and charged computers to watch movies, but I didn't need any of it. Marie watched a couple of the movies the airline provided. I was asleep most of the time. But we dragged all this entertainment stuff on the plane with us, and I wouldn't suggest it.

Then, an hour before we were scheduled to land they came around with breakfast. You could pick an eastern or western breakfast. The western was a scrambled egg thing that tasted powdered, and the eastern was a porridge thing that's common here. I wonder if the porridge tasted as bad to someone from Taiwan as the eggs tasted to us. But it was a hot meal.

This was all a surprise to me 'cause we thought we'd gotten a pretty good deal for flying to the other side of the world. We were told it would cost between $600 and $1,200 apiece, and we were closer to $600, and we could've spent less but we wanted to go through Seattle. I was expecting to have to pay for a seat cushion. I wonder if China Air flys from Seattle to Phoenix?

I guess I'm telling this story in case people are interested in visiting or just thinking about flying across the Pacific. Places like New Zealand and Australia are farther 'cause they're in the southern hemisphere, but I wanted to say I was generally surprised that a twelve hour flight could be that easy. That is, if you can sleep on planes, it's unexpectedly easy. And if you have suggestions for how to sleep on a plane, we'd like to hear them.

Finally, being tourists.

2008-09-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been writing much lately. A lot of things have become common place, and important things like getting our alien residence cards would be just like pictures of us sitting in a DMV office. But I finally remembered to take the camera on a couple of trips. So we have the proverbial several thousand words to discuss.

Now, this's not to make fun of Taiwanese people or any group, because comparing English to Chinese is like comparing bananas and volcanos. So, when I bring you some of the mistakes (dubbed Chinglish by one of the teachers here) it's just a wonderful sense of the confusion that keeps the two languages and cultures apart. And we could do this for days if I could show you the shirts people wear here. But taking that many pictures of people's chests and tummies would get pretty weird.

For instance, Marie and I have no idea what an omnifarious concert would sound like, but I admit, it's made me a little curious.

This one's pushed me the other way, tho'. I can't bring myself to try Pro Sweat. Maybe at some point, but not yet.

On the food front, we just keep finding more things that entertain us without actually feeding us.

These guys are staples in the local sushi places and a couple other restaurants. The redder thing at the bottom is a tail, the tentacle things above it are legs and that black thing is an eye. This's a dish of about three shrimp. They're cooked, but legs on, head on. I'm just not ready to try one. I hope I'll be able to before I leave, 'cause they're all over. There must be some redeeming value, but I'm not there yet. We saw something like this in Spain, but somehow, here, it's weirder.

And these photos aren't to scare people with how bad the food is. There's lots and lots that is really good, tho' some of it's really bad for you. But we're having no trouble feeding ourselves. (I talked with my grandmother recently, and she'd just seen one of her first travel channel episodes, of course all about the weird and scary food of Taiwan.)

I don't remember what this is, but it looks like a sea sponge or something.

I think the meat on the left is tounge, I'm not sure, but I've seen that in Nebraska. And I think the eggs on the right are tea eggs. I haven't figured those out yet, but it's odd because you can buy them everywhere, almost literally. They have them in crock pots in 7-11s. I don't know how you use them but they're very popular.

I do not know what these are. They are also very popular. I think they're a fruit, 'cause I see them sold with other fruit, and I think I saw them on a nature program so I wonder if they're figs. But I can't quite make myself buy a bunch and experiment. I swear I will, if only because it's asinine of me to be buying plums and peaches from freaking California (I'm not kidding, they have the stickers on them), or apples from Chile. I will eat the local fruit soon, if only kiwis from New Zealand, which's almost local now. But those plums were so cheap when we got here, and they were really good, so now I'm kinda hooked.

And I just loved this. Who wouldn't want almond fish? It's like nuts and gum! Together at last! Another thing I might buy just to find out what it's like, at some point, but not quite yet.

Oh, I did get chicken Cheetoes. Seriously. There was a picture of a chicken nugget on the outside of the bag. It was kind of an accident. I wanted Cheetoes, as a kinda friendly food, and they tasted... like chicken. No, not exactly, I really wouldn't have guessed chicken until I looked at the bag to see what it was supposed to be. But it was funny, and I'm getting a lot more careful about what I'm buying.

But the real point of this entry is today's trip. We were visiting the historical neighborhood of the Beitou hotsprings, in the northern edge of Taipei. It takes a while to get there by metro, but it's a really nice ride 'cause the train comes out of the ground and becomes an elevated train half way through the city.

Marie and I passed a small park while we were up there. We saw this kid all tied up in this wheel like a boat steering wheel, and then his friend would come over and spin him around a couple times, but he was laughing like it was high entertainment. It was pretty entertaining for us, too.

I won't bore you with the details of the historic bathhouse. It was a fun little touristy thing to do. And we looked through the Taiwanese Aboriginal cultural center as well. The most interesting thing I noticed about the two places were the lack of English titles. The bathhouse had quite a few translations, but a lot weren't. It was almost pleasant to think that they were more interested in educating the locals, instead of the few real outta-towners. And there was enough to occupy us for a little while and give us an idea of the history. I'd like to go back when our Chinese is better, but I doubt it'll ever be good enough.

And here we are at lunch. There's a chain called I heart Sushi or Sushi Express (I can't tell) here that has the conveyor belt system (that's it behind Marie). We love the one in Seattle called Blue C Sushi. But this one has a little more authentic sushi. And yes, sushi is Japanese, but there's a very long tradition of Japanese living here, and the locals seem to enjoy it as well. And it works for me 'cause Marie's always happier around food, and sushi is a favorite of hers. So despite being a hot, humid day of walking around outside, it was a good day 'cause we had sushi for lunch.

And here's the proof that we're here and actually in Taiwan. I've been looking for quintessentially Taiwanese things, and this's what I came up with. A street so narrow that I can touch both sides at the same time, but it actually has an address. This's XiYuan Rd. Lane, 220, Alley 48. Roads are the big arteries, then the lanes branch off and are smaller, and the alleys smaller still. Technically, I think we live on an alley, but it's no where near this tight. And of course, there are scooters parked in this little bit of space.

Finally, I don't know where else to stick this photo. I held off on it 'cause Marie thinks I'm spending too much time on the scooter thing, but it was just ridiculous how cute this little girl looked in her little helmet on her big scooter.

Kids ride with mom or dad all the time. I've seen two kids and a parent on a scooter several times. They even have these weird bikes with a small seat in front of the rider's with footpegs, so kids who are too big to ride behind mom or dad can ride in front of them. It makes sense in a scooter-focused system, but it sure was unexpected.

I hope these entries are of some interest. If they're too few, it's only because so many things about our lives are becoming common. Riding the subway, going shopping, getting dinner is all old hat by now.

I have finally taught a couple of classes, tho' Marie's taught probably more than a dozen. I don't have a lot of experience, and I dunno what Marie thinks, but it feels like teaching is less a part of the experience, maybe, than if we were working for the Peace Corps. Teaching here is a job, we're employees and treated as such. So it feels like teaching is what we do to fund the rest of our time here. Maybe that'll change as I get some more experience and work more with the other teachers, but for the moment, there's work, and the stuff we do that's more touristy, so that's the stuff I like talking about.

Comments on the comments

2008-08-21T23:26:00.000-07:00

Someone mentioned that it looked really clean in the photos. It's about as clean as D.C. or Seattle. Which is to say, not really clean, but it's a familiar amount of clean. I also have no idea how people find their scooters in these lines of bikes. I'm assuming it involves some kind of call like penguins use to find their chicks for the first time after returning from the ocean.

And I think my brother asked if we have scooters yet. The answer is absolutely not. It's difficult to explain the insanity that scooters create and inhabit on the roads. I have now seen two scooter-involved accidents. I didn't see them happen, but one of them involved a bus, so I don't want to know what it looked like. The scooters are fine with pedestrians. It's only in the main roads that speed and many, many variables make it just nuts. So no, for at least many months, Marie and I will be sticking with metro, buses, and the occasional cab.

You do see some really hilarious things go by on scooters, like a dog riding in the footwell, looking around the front wheel. Or a toy dog perched on the handle bars like a hood ornament. But I'm definitely willing to leave the use of scooters to other, more practiced or insane hands.

We have a place to live

2008-08-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

This's a photo of the new apartment in Taipei. And there was much rejoicing. It's a comfy 600 square feet plus, or as they calculate in Taiwan, about 17 or 18 ping. Each ping is about the size of a double sleeping mattress. That took a while to understand.

But it's got air conditioning in all the rooms, it has a couple of gas burners, so we've been cooking a little. And the landlord left a lot of odd gear that would normally annoy me, but when you roll into a country with 190 pounds (or 81 kilograms) of gear, you don't bring things like a saucepan or a funnel or trashcans. So we were really glad to have a lot of the little things that you have to run out an buy immediately for a new apartment. But most importantly, dum dididum!

We have a western toilet!

Not that these things aren't all over, but there was that fear of having to live, and learn to live, with an eastern squat toilet. I don't think I was really scared of using one, but I think I feared the short but very necessary and very embarrassing learning curve. And even better, we can even flush the toilet paper. And that is a real threat. Some places you can, maybe you can in a lot of places but they don't want people in the habit 'cause they use the wrong paper.

Hey, it's kinda gross, but it's part of the experience. You don't want us shorting you on the experience, do you?

The view from the new place isn't great. But it's really interesting. You get an odd view of a city when you see something like this. I've noticed that there are bars and gates across windows several floors up. We've heard that there is very little violent crime in Taipei, but we haven't heard much about burglery, but to judge from the bars on decks and the door to our apartment people are worried the huns will return at any moment. I'm not kidding, this's a serious door with bolts I've never seen. Not to scare my mother, 'cause (not to over simplify things) I don't know what there is to steal here. You can see the neighborhood isn't really expensive. Oh, and the security door to our building is impenetrable to anything except blowtorch or high explosives. Really. You see police with handheld battering rams going through bad guys' front doors on TV. That won't work here. Big steel doors.

And we can see the street five floors below where we can watch the people, dogs, and cats go about their business. It's kind of a long haul up the four flights with six liters of drinking water (the water is safe to cook, wash, and bathe with, but apparently drinking it's a bad idea) but that's the only real complaint. We have a long view and it's a quiet street that's near the metro stop.

It's not the view we had at our hostel, but that place was pretty crummy. Marie wanted out of there as soon as possible, and I got pretty tired of sweating through a shirt every time I made a phone call 'cause the main room of the hostel wasn't air-conditioned. So we're both glad to be outta there, even if we didn't get to keep a good view.

We also lost our good luck charm. The last day we were in the hostel this little guy went scurrying past me. We were told we couldn't have pets in the new place, but I was wondering if I could bring him along and claim he was an infestation if I got caught. It was a moot point. I saw him long enough to take a couple of photos and didn't see him the rest of the night or the next morning. Fortunately, Marie was familiar with having geckos as house guests in Arizona, where they're considered good luck, so sleeping with this guy for a night didn't bother either of us.

Good photo tho', huh?

And this's how we paid for the new apartment, with 42 of the blue 1,000 dollar notes. I'm struggling a bit with the currency here, 'cause that little bronze penny-like thing in the lower right is a dollar. But I like how the 500 dollar bill has a photo of a celebrating baseball team on it. It takes away a little of the power of money as the ultimate goal.

Each dollar here is worth about 3 cents, U.S. And like 3 cents, it won't buy much of anything. But all the staples of life are pretty cheap. Our rent is 14,000 NT (new Taiwanese dollars) a month, that's less than $500 U.S. (we had to pay the first month and two more months in deposit, so about $1,300, most of which we'll get back.)

My commute on the metro is 19 NT each way, maybe 60 cents. Dinner last night was potatoes, chicken, chilies, tofu, and another unidentified starch (all fried and spiced) from a street vendor and cost about 170 NT, or maybe five bucks. Oh, I also got three bananas and three plums. 60 NT. Not quite two bucks U.S.

I think the funny thing is how cash focused this system is. Everyone has the RFID cards for the metro, but no one takes credit cards or checks. So when I signed the lease for our apartment, I showed up with 42,000 NT. Little scary, but all done now. But everyone is almost absurdly honest. The street vendors could be taking us to the cleaners, but I think I've seen one mistake yet, and that was for three dollars. Oh, and no tipping, and no tax. You look at the price on the shelf or the stickers or the meter and that's how much you owe. Pretty cool, especially when you're trying to understand what the person just said and you can't quite believe that your entire meal for two people really is going to cost less than five dollars U.S.

A word on transportation

2008-08-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

Marie mentioned we should get some photos of ourselves to prove that we're here, just to prove we're not faking the moon landing. But in the mean time, I took a few photos to illustrate the transportation situation here.

Can you count the scooters?

They literally go on out of sight. Same with bikes.

The bikes are near our dorm, close to the National Taiwanese University, just outside the metro entrance (you can see the top of it in the photo). The scooters are everywhere.

I can see why a bike would be good, but I don't get the scooters, yet maybe. The mass transit system is great. There are buses that run everywhere and the payment system is tied to the metro, so you can put money on a card and use it for a bus or metro, and it even gives you a discount over cash.

So far the metro's been punctual, cheapish, and even clean. It looks pretty new. It makes even the transit systems in D.C. and Seattle look like hailing a stagecoach. Oh, and it's air conditioned. Why would you pay to use a hot, noisy scooter? Good thing it's that obvious to me, 'cause these guys drive like they're delivering hot pizzas with their bare hands. I've yet to see an accident (in five days, but it looks like it should happen every time a light changes), and they seem very deferential to pedestrians, but the speed and intricacy of traffic makes cars look like boulders in a river of scooters.

And just an extra note, 'cause I didn't publish this thing at six in the evening. We're twelve hours ahead of the east coast (we get the day first). So if it's noon here, it's midnight in D.C. (they're just starting the day), it's 11:00 p.m. the day before for those in Nebraska, 10:00 p.m. for Arizonites, and 9:00 in the evening in Seattle. We hope this obscures things when you're thinking, "what are Marie and Keith doing now?"

We are here, or there, depending

2008-08-09T03:47:00.000-07:00

Ha ha! Peace Corps failed to stop us! We're sitting in our dorm in Taipei on our second day here. We weren't going to write anything in this journal until we actually got here, thinking that we started the blog for Armenia too early and we cursed ourselves. But we've fed ourselves, and taken the subway for the heck of it. We've shaken off most of the jet lag from yesterday and we're learning about Taipei very quickly.

First off, this place is staggeringly hard to be outside in. The locals make it look easy, but it's like 90 degrees and supposedly 50% humidity. I don't think it's that low. I'm always sweating outside, even in the shade, but it doesn't look like any Taiwanese are, ever. Oh, when we landed, at 4:30 a.m. local, they announced the temp. as 81 degrees. We knew we were in trouble. We do have air conditioning and it's comfy in our little dorm room. We even have our own little half bath, but it's right in the sun all day, so we keep the door closed and don't stand in there while we're brushing our teeth.

We met one other person here to teach, named Ed. He's from Tennessee about two days ago and must've just shaken off his jet lag. Our dorm for a few days is just over one of the school's classrooms, but it's really quiet here, even at night.

The thing I'll mention is the scooters. Holy cow, it's like they breed when they're parked. And they travel in packs, 'cause they can slide between cars at stop lights to the front of the line, so when the light turns green, it's like the start of a motocross race, but wimpier. I've seen a couple of scooter packs in Seattle, but they have no idea.

So, that's the highlights from our first day-and-a-half overseas. We're supposed to report on Monday morning, so we're on a cheap vacation for now. At least the food's cheap. But I'll get into that later. We're safe, we have all our luggage; we're kinda wondering what we've gotten ourselves into, sweating a lot, but pretty pleased so far.

And if you're wondering, I did not publish this at 4 a.m. It's about a quarter after seven in the evening in this part of the world.