A New Year, A New Woman!

Greetings, ni hau, and happy new year! How are you all? Just a reminder to please write me back; think of these blogs as e-mails to you, I'm constantly telling you what I'm up to, you need to do the same!! Deal?

Many stories to share! To begin with, I have finally attached pics of the scooter!! She's about 9 years old but definitely still has a lot of spunk in her (we hope!!). It has been about a week and I will now attempt to drive it - on my own - so please send me your happy thoughts!!

On Sunday, Lee and I went downtown to shop for cell phones: MY FIRST CELL PHONE!! Me, the queen of anti-cells! But it is a necessity here, for Lee and I to contact each other let alone allow my friends and family to reach me (I'm now one of those people I hate on buses that text messages!!) It's a beatuful, tiny, red Nokia and I love it! As Jess pointed out to me, with the cell phone and the scooter, I am no longer the same Thornhill girl I once was!

To end with a funky story, while Lee and I were outside setting up our cells, a group of young girls came up to us and said, "You are beautiful! Can we take your picture?" which Lee willingly agreed to while I nodded, confused as to why they wanted my picture!? We took photo after photo, each girl taking a turn posing with us! Then when they left, another group of girls did the same thing!! Straaaange!!

Shana Tova from Taiwan!

So many things to share, so little time!! Where do I even begin? Well first of all, shana tova to you and yours! I wish you all a happy healthy New Year, and may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

Being away from home for a whole year means missing every holiday with your family, which is a really big loss. It's hard to accept, and made even harder by the teensy weensy Jewish population here in Taiwan: all 100 of us! In the whole country, with one synagogue! Conveniently located in Taipei, I plan on going next Sunday for Yom Kippur. For those of you who don't know, Rosh Hashanah is the first of the New Year and a time to begin introspection, looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to make in the new year. Typically, I get together with family for a big dinner celebration, but this is no longer possible! :o( However, Lee and I went out to dinner here to a deelish Italian restaurant for some super cheap and yummy pasta! Afterwards, we scooted to a nearby river and threw bread crumbs in, to symbolize the disposing of our past years' sins. Then we came back to our dorm and dipped apple slices in honey, to symbolize the sweet new year to come! (pictures seen above) Our dorm-mates also joined us :o)

After a rough week, I welcomed the weekend with arms wide open! Laundry, actual meals, playing pool and scooting around the city, talking to people about things OTHER than class is all a really weird and wonderful change! Tomorrow Lee and I might even get cell phones, aaah! Other than that, I welcome you all to the exciting world of the Betel Nut Girls!! Betelnut Girls are the craze here; sexy skanked out chicks standing in glass booths selling disgusting fruit known as betelnut! It is eaten similarly to chewing tobacco, only it spits out a deep dark red so the sidewalks look like they're been spotted with blood! I welcome you all to check out the link above, for a closer look :o)

And last but not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORRIS!! Enjoy being a dirty old man!

WE GOT A SCOOTER!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, congrats are in order! Lee and I are now officially the proud owners of a beautiful blue scooter, previously loved by a fellow Canadian! So we know she's in good shape :o) Her name is Neeha, and tomorrow we are going to get new shocks, an oil change, and the breaks tightened. Don't worry: we already bought new helmets too! Pics to come soon, I promise! But in the mean time, here's a shot of one of my students bustin' a move, just to keep you entertained!

What a day in Taipei!

How can so much happen in just 24 hours!? Lee and I left Saturday at around 6, after our classes were over, for the train ride to Taipei - a 40 minute ride, the equivalent of going from Thornhill to downtown Toronto via public transit. Only we went to another city!! Taipei is the capital of Taiwan, and it's awesome! We got out of the train station downtown which is right in the heart of it all, only to be greeted by an overwhelming rally!! There was a mass public protest going on, of the citizens protesting their corrupt President, and it was madness!! People chanting and marching and throwing petitions in our faces, when all we wanted was directions to our hostel! So I finally decided that good old trusty Starbucks must have some English speaking people, they won't let us down! Low and behold, there was actually a group of 3 WHITE kids sitting and drinking coffee!! Forgetting all manners and common etiquette, I ran up to them yelling "thank G-d!!" and practically kissed them all for existing - don't worry, Lee remembered to introduce us and act normal :o) So these 3 kids were from the States and Hungary, all on high school exchange programs and knew their way around fairly well, so we asked them to join us on our journey to the famous Shihlan Night Market, the biggest in the city! It's impossible to describe if you've never been to one before, but it was so huge that we walked around (in the rain) for 2 hours and didn't even cover half of it! The loudest, dirtiest, smelliest, most crouded place I've ever been in my life, just buzzing with people all trying to sell you something, from clothes to food to electronics to jewellery to complete junk!

After the Night Market we parted ways from our fellow anglophones and set off to find the Happy Family hostel. Ohhh boy!! After managing to get our address translated into Chinese, and find a cab, we spent the next half hour circling around the neighbourhood to find a seemingly non-existent address. Lee and I finally just said thanks and got out, determined to find it on foot (in the rain) but this took another solid 20 minutes only to discover a broken door hidden in a sketchy alley with a hand-written sign reading "Happy Family"!! We went up the broken staircase to wake the manager and ask for a room, where he proceeded to tell us that boys and girls sleep separately here!! So we left to find another Happy Family Two, yet again placed down a dark and creepy alley; hooray! At this point it was almost 1am and we were exhausted, willing to sleep anywhere - this desparation came in handy when we saw the closet-like room with bunk beds and a broken window! So we upped the price and got a semi normal room and the manager was super sweet, so we were happy (even though the washroom was STD-infested and dripped something nasty from the ceiling!) we managed to get a decent night's sleep.

Sunday morning we set off to see Taipei 101, the world's tallest building also containing the world's fastest elevators! It was really cool to see the whole city from the top, but it would have been cooler if the air wasn't thick and grey from al the smog! We then enjoyed exotic lunches in the cafeteria downstairs: Lee had noodles, bbq pork, tea, corn and watermelon while I ventured for noodles and an omelette with muscles! Deelish! We broused around the shopping centre inside, home to Louie Vitton, Coach, Sony, Playboy and other such high-end stores before checking out Longshan Temple. This beautiful building is traditional in its architectire of red brick and beautfiully coloured and detailed dragon rooftops, while inside holds a pretty waterfall and Buddhist statues, rooms of gold pillars and candles everywhere; Lee and I lit incense along with the others and watched as everyone prayed and bowed.

Our next site was the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, surrounded by the cultural centre of town - the opera house and concert halls, theatre stadiums, all big and beautiful! We weren't actually allowed to enter any of these places, but we took pictures before going to see the actual Memorial Hall itself: a 60 ft statue of the first Prime Minister, centered in an archway atop the longest case of stairs I've ever had to climb! There are two armed guards standing completely still beside the statue, and they never move a muscle all day long!

This brought a near-end to our trip, as we headed back to the main train station and shopped around the "mall" until our train departed - by mall I mean giant arcade with little shops of random knick-knacks and the occasional store. We FINALLY got to rest our feet on the ride home, where we enjoyed luxury showers, toilets (I hate squatters!!) with toilet paper, sinks with soap and other such commodities we take for granted!

Monday has been fabulous so far, with one class being cancelled thus extending my lunch period to two hours long! I am now off to teach another 4 hours for the evening. This week on schedule: grocery shopping, dinner with Canadian friends, a night of bowling and hopefully buying our scooter!!

Booked my first trip!!

Hi all!! Here's a random photo of one of my substitute classes, the kids are doing the ultimate form of embarrassment: the pee-gu-man dance!! When one team wins a game, let's say a spelling bee, then the losing team gets taunted and then has to stand up and spell the word with their tushys! Needless to say it's hysterical to watch!

So Lee and I booked our first trip!! In October we get our first holiday, 5 days off work for Mid-Autumn Festival, spanning from Friday to Tuesday. The only problem is that Lee and I are teaching with a private school (shhh! Don't tell Gloria!) for that Saturday, so instead of having 5 days free to fly off-island we only have 3 - but this could not have worked out more perfectly! After some looking around it was painfully clear that every flight out of Taiwan during this holiday has been severely jacked up in price, we're talking Canadian thou$and$, so we wouldn't have been able to go away for 5 days anyway. Luckily, we found the VERY LAST HOTEL ROOM available in beautiful sunny Kenting! It's the most Southernly point of Taiwan and it's a tropical beach has been built into a National Park, please check out the website to get the full scoop! So we are making more than enough money on that one Saturday to pay for the whole trip (it's sooo cheap!!) and we're going with a few other friends from our dorm, so it should be a blast!!

In other news, Lee and I are going to Taipei this weekend! Just for one night, Saturday to check out the huge Night Market and Taipei 101 (previous tallest building in the world) and then have the next day to see museums and temples and botanical gardens and the fun crazy streets! I can't wait!

This week has been absurd, pulling three 9am-9pm days and getting no sleep, but it's been so much fun - so many amazing kids in my classes and some bonding time with the dorm-mates :o) Aside from the too-hot-and-rainy weather, it's perfect!

Weekend Recap

After Saturday night's adventure through the Night Market, Sunday was supposed to be my nice relaxing day to catch up here - grocery shopping, finish unpacking, finish redecorating, and do my lesson plans for my new classes this week. Yea, right!

It's typhoon season!! And the word does not quite describe a tropical cyclone, which is heavy winds, torrential rain and giant floods everywhere!! But I didn't let this put a damper on my afternoon plans - so Lee and I, along with 4 of our other dorm mates all trecked through the storm and outside to hail a couple cabs. So the first cabby did not even know where the store was that we wanted to go to, so we climbed out and by the time we got another one it was so crazy outside that the 6 of us all piled into one cab!! Including the driver there was 7 of us, 5 in the back, soaking wet and laughing our asses off! Once we made it inside the multi-purpose Care4 (like a Costco meets Wal-Mart) we spent the next 3 hours shopping, only to pile all of our stuff outside again and back home, this time in 2 cabs. The crazy part is, one of the guys named Neil (England) bought a bike today, so the only way he could get it home was to ride it back through the storm!! I just would have bought it another day :o)

All in all, a great experience - hopefully great enough to keep me happy for the next 5 days, as my Mondays and Fridays schedules consist of me teaching at 3 different places from 9 to 9! Wish me luck!

Finally Got Some Pics!!

I can't believe it when I write that I have only been here 4 days: it seems like a lifetime already! So the first 6 pictures are some shots of the dorm; communal washroom (clean!!), kitchen, living room, and then the two rooms that Lee and I share: one bedroom and one "office"!! The sign 'Gloria' is just outside, and without the little sunshine on top I would never find it, ever!! There's a few shots of the street just outside our building, notice the Golden Arches shining in the distance :o) I threw in a night shot of the busy street to be artsy, then there's Lee holding a menu on his birthday where I took him for bday brunch - accompanied by a pic of a fascinating concoction Lee ordered and then hated! Oh yea, and the two little pigglets in a cage just in front of the bus stop, awwww!

I am having the time of my life that is so different from any other place I've ever been: I can't describe how it feels to just walk around the city on my own, with my bag over my shoulder and bargain with the locals when I can't even speak the language! To listen to all of the traffic and Chinese as just background noise; with the smells of a busy city, some streets dirty and unpaved as I weave through markets and buy fresh fruit just like you would picture on TV lol. I already know my way around most of the bus routes, and am a recognized customer at Starbucks :o)

School is going great!! It's hard and exhausting and time consuming and yet so much fun! I have too much to tell about all the kids and the work and the hilarious lectures! But it's the most amazing and exotic experience I have ever had, and there is only too much more to come.

Where to even begin...!

How can I do more in 3 days here than in months back home!? It has already been a lifetime of changes and I feel like there's too much to tell! But I'll try anyways!
So the apartment here, the Gloria "dorm" is pretty cool - first 3 floors are for the school and then ten of us live on the 4th floor, a mix of nearly-all-Canadian, American, one European and one from Alaska, all our age, everyone's cool! (One girl has 2 loud dogs but they're friendly) Lee and I have completely Ikea-ed our two bedrooms, into one bedroom and one office: sooo pimped out! Pics to come soon I promise!! So far I've been on 3 scooters, one *squatter, eaten some deelish dumplings (with pork inside oh g-d!!) taken 2 cabs with non-English drivers in the rain, gotten lost and taught classes ON MY OWN!! And I'm learning Mandarin!
Lee says hi to all of you - now officially a dirty old man as he just turned 25 today! I've sat in on many Observation Classes which then include my teaching the last 10 minutes, been to one Workshop (we have to attend so many) and tonight was officially my first night as a solo teacher! My kids range from kindergarten all the way up to high school! NOT AT ALL how I expected them to be: the stereotype of Asian children being very attentive and quiet and proper is laughable; they're even louder and more hyper than kids back home! Some are super cute and then the high school ones are really chilled, so it's a great mix - and yes Jules, I have been asked many times "do you have boyfriend" lol!! The high school is a trip - it's a real private high school, I have my own desk in an office and everything!! I feel like I'm role playing :o)
Every day is jam-packed from 9am-2 at night, with classes and prep work and shopping and exploring and restaurants and meeting new people and getting together everything we need - Lee and I will be getting cell phones and a scooter very shortly!
So all is well! It's hot and humid and smelly and loud and I am loving every minute of it! Miss you all, xox

Only to me!!

So there has been a flight delay. Ready?

My family and I get to the airport in due time, only to be greeted by "you know that your 1:30 flight is now scheduled to depart at 5:30?" Excuuuuse me? This little time difference results in my arriving in Tokyo too late, missing my connecting flight to Taiwan and I now get to spend the night in a hotel, and all of the next day, only to leave the following night and, oh yea, Lee is waiting there for me on the other end without a clue!!

So there was a mild freak out. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both, and then we got passed along from one department to another, to another, as nobody wanted to answer any of our questions or find an alternative. After speaking with the Departures Manager it has been decided that there are no alternatives, piss off, and so we turned and came back home to wait 4 hours before going back.

When I got home there was a message from AirCanada informing me of my flight delay :o) AND there was another message, saying that there is an alternative route leaving from Vancouver and would I like to call and re-schedule? Thanks AirCanada for letting me know when I was there! So after calling and waiting on hold for 35 minutes to reach a human being, my new route is to leave Toronto Sunday night, to Vancouver, then leave there at 1:30 am and get to Taipei 5:10am Tuesday morning, instead of the previous 8:30 at night arrival time. No hotels, no baggage claims, and 12 hours of my life back! Thank you very much!! So I called Lee's mom (on her birthday!!) and gave her the details, incase Lee calls... and e-mailed Lee and our boss Penny in Taiwan to notify them of the changes.

This has all been very exhausting and frustrating, and now all I can do is hope for the best! So please wish me luck, and I will let you know how this all turns out on the other end... A great start, dontcha think!?