Visitors from outta town

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.