Merry Christmas from Taiwan

Merry Christmas! It certainly doesn’t feel like a second Christmas has passed since my arrival in Taiwan, and yet, I know it has.  I was pleasantly surprised last year how much less heartbreaking spending the holidays away from home turned out to be, and, for as much as I look forward to a future Christmas with my family, I wasn’t heartbroken this year either.  I’ve had this conversation with people a lot recently, and I would say it comes down to technology, social networking and Skype have kept me in contact with all of the people who are most important to me.  When my mother was around my age she moved to Mexico for a while, and saved money for weeks to be able to call my father for the first time.  Now, for no money at all, I got to see my parents on Christmas day (and open my presents with them), and I joined my high school friends at a Christmas party via the computer screen (I even dealt myself into their game of Cards Against Humanity and was able to play by holding my cards up to the camera).  It helps to keep the world a much more manageable size.

I didn’t send my entire Christmas week on the internet, that would be a waste of all of the wonderful things there are out here in Taiwan.  Instead, I spent my day in Yuanlin with my “Taiwan family” of co-teachers, where we ate gingerbread cookies and did a Yankee Swap-style gift exchange (which was fun, but I do miss shopping for specific recipients rather than for generic gifts). 

Merry Christmas from the reindeer teachers!

Aside from the Christmas festivities, the other major event of this weekend was the third consecutive weekend of birthday celebrations.  December seems to be the month of birthdays among the Taiwan teachers, and within the last three weeks we have had a barbeque, teppanyaki dinner, a mountain hike, and now the experience of a Gold Class movie theater.  What is Gold Class you might ask? It is the movie theater equivalent of flying first class; you get a recliner, a blanket to curl up with, and a meal served to you in the theater, is there any other way to see a movie?

A view from above, dinner at Spaghetti House.

For all of the things I love about Taiwan, there are still aspects that drive me crazy, and one repeated aspect happens to live below me.  You know I’ve talked about my neighbor countless times because she is known for unplugging my internet whenever she sees fit.  That has been annoying, but I have taken solice in the face that she appear to be afraid of me and returns to her room if she knows I am in the hallway.  The new game today, and it better be some sort of misunderstanding, is that someone has stopped my washing machine mid-cycle.  They did not steal attempt to kick my clothes out of the washer to run their own load, they simply stopped the spin cycle from continuing so my clothes were not being cleaned, but were simply sitting in a pool of water.  It seems to be petty and college-like behavior if you ask me.

Enough about that, I had a very interesting conversation with my manager today, which is the basis for my cultural note of the week: baby names.  A name is a very important part of any person’s identity, and different cultures go about selecting their children’s names based on birth order, family history, name meanings, and an uncountable other selection of reasons.  In Taiwan, parents must consider many more factors that commonality or pronunciation.  There is a superstition that the number of strokes that make up each character of a name as well as the total number of strokes in a child's name can be lucky or unlucky, so a fortune tell is to be consulted when considering what the name shall be.  A fortune teller should also be consulted to help select lucky names according to the bazi, which are the four pillars of destiny based on the year, month, day, and hour of birth.  The fortune teller will provide the parents with a list of names that according to the alignment of the 'blocks of time' will be lucky, and the parents then select the one which they feel best fits their child.  To an extent, it would be nice to have something narrowing down the long list of potential baby names, but it also means that you can't really pre-plan the name.  The other thing that is interesting about certain days or times being lucky is that it causes an increase of C-sections for the more desirable times.  There are just so many things to consider when selecting a Chinese name, and most children (at least in Taiwan) end up with an English name as well which means they might not even use their Chinese name later in life, what a strange realization.

Walks and Waterfalls

Well, I don’t mean to brag, but, who am I kidding, Homei deserves to brag.  We are a competitive school with a lot of talented students, and once again we are showed that off.  In a nation-wide Shane writing contest we took home 3 out of 9 final prizes (the same percentage we won at the speech contest).  We are the only school in my owner's franchise to have students take home a prize!

In other news, the Christmas season is in full swing and the classes this week have been themed to prove it.  With our front lobby decorated with trees and cards, and our fully teaching staff donning Santa hats, it is almost possible to forget that this isn’t a Christian country.  We have been spending weeks teaching our younger students Christmas carols, and this week we have begun to set up the final product of that, a music video competition between each of the classes to perform a Christmas carol, and since this is the day-and-age of social networking, the music videos are being placed on Facebook so the parents and friends of the school can vote for their favorites (see, we even compete against ourselves).  While I’m fairly certain it would be breaking the law in any western country to post videos of students to a public forum, this is just something that happens here in Taiwan.  Other Christmas-related activities included writing letters to Santa, and holiday crafts, and games.

While it may not be as cold as some of my past Christmas seasons, the weather has been quite rainy this week, most days felt more like a typhoon day than any of the actual tropical storms I have experienced, but with the lower temperatures it can be hard to stay warm.  That is why I  can say that nothing beats a nice warm shower and wrapping up in 3 layers of blankets (well, except maybe pajamas that are fresh from the dryer, but that isn’t an option right now).  Despite the weather, this weekend was a perfect getaway from Changhua and another chance to explore the scenic outdoors of Taiwan.  To celebrate the birthday of one of my fellow teachers, several friends and I made our way north for another hiking weekend.  I should have known when I set my alarm that meeting at 7:30 am wasn’t going to happen, but it took until my 7:48 phone call to really realize that, so from the start, I was braced for a bad day.  Still, I got up, showered, finished packing, and jumped on a train within the hour, fully prepared to spend the day alone on the mountain.    Lucky me, fate had different plans in mind, and as I stood in the last car of the train I spied another one of my friends who found the morning’s timing difficult to manage, so we made our way to Taipei together.  From there, we needed to get to Sandiaoling, a small city to the southeast of Keelung and a little over an hour outside of the main city.  We made our way along the tracks, one stop at a time, when suddenly…our whole group was standing outside of the train! As it turned out, they had been waiting to take a historic train for the final leg of the journey, but it never showed up.  The coincidence in all of this is remarkable, I should have been stuck alone all day, but I happened to pick the perfect train car to find another teacher, and that teacher and I happened to pick the train car that stopped right alongside where our friends were standing, perfect again.  We reached our destination within a few minutes and set off onto the trails.  The nice things about the Sandiaoling hiking trails are that they are known for several large waterfalls, are considered a relatively easy path, and they include obstacles like wooden ladders and rope bridges.  In total we saw 4 of the most impressive waterfalls I have seen here in Taiwan: Hegu, Motian, Papi, and Shifen and spent the entire day on the mountain.

Waterfall number three: Papi Waterfall.

The steep climb up the trail.

My culture notes typically consist of topics which I have recently been thinking about or things that I feel are unique, but this week my culture note is about something I had to research to even know it existed.  In Asia, there are four countries that make up the "Asian Tigers".  The Asian Tiger countries are Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea; and they are famous for their high economic growth rates since the 60's and their ability to maintain those rates.   Taiwan's role as a Tiger is mainly attributed to its participation in the export business of electronics, which can be seen in modern-day Taiwanese companies like Acer, Asus, and HTC.  Theories as to why these countries have had such immense success have included the role that Japan played past colonization of a couple of them, US affiliations with a couple of them, and the government and geography of the countries which allowed for freedom in ideas and movement; but definite explanations aren't known.

Taiwan in the News

I would love to tell you about all of the adventures this week held, all of the amazing new things I experience, anything new at all, but sometimes a week is just a week.  While I can not say that watching the second part of The Hobbit on its release date, or co-manning a group barbecue dinner, or covering classes in Changhua school are things that happen every week, their existence did not create stories which are worthy of retelling.
So, instead of discussing my week, I want to discuss some of the things that have put Taiwan in the news this week.  First, one of the biggest names in American sugary snacks arrived in Taiwan this week, and while their presence in department stores and gas stations across the US is likely to never diminish, their success in stand-alone businesses definitely faltered in the early 2000's, causing all of the store locations I can think of to close.  However, it appears their international market is doing well, and so the people of Taiwan can now be subjected to Krispy Kreme.  I have a feeling the company will do well in this country, mainly because they only have one strong competitor here (Mister Donut), and with a contract to open 10 stores within the next 5 years, their business should spread throughout the island.  The negative side to this, however, is that for a country which has been so concerned with its obesity rates over the last decade or so, a company like Krispy Kreme may not be the best thing to bring over from the States (what I wouldn't give to see a Sweet Tomatoes salad bar here).
Now for a bit of local news for the folks in my University-city: Milwaukee.  While you are possibly unaware of the fact, your hometown baseball team now has some Taiwanese representation.  Selected in the Rule 5 draft this week, Wang Wei-Chung from Taitung, Taiwan is on the Milwaukee Brewers as a hopeful pitcher for the season, though because his promotion to this new team was so extreme, is doesn't seem likely that he will remain there for more than a season.
Outside of the news, I simply want to share my new, and ridiculous clothes rack with you.  As the weather gets colder in Taiwan, clothes take longer to dry, and suddenly that load of laundry that used to air-dry overnight (I miss having a dryer) now take 2-3 days before they are foldable or wearable.  The problem this leaves me with is that my one drying rack is now insufficient because I get impatient and want to finish all of my washing around the same time.  There is a solution which I have found, and it is silly I know, but it is also one of the perks of having a drop ceiling: extra places for you hangers (be careful if you copy me, don't over-do-it on the weight).

My winter drying rack, what do you think?

The Start of the Holiday Season

"I'm dreaming of a [white] Christmas", well, the song may be stuck in my head, but I have no delusion about what color my holidays will be this year.  Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays, and I have loved the early stages of preparation.  The trees (yes, it is plural) are decorated, the stockings are hung, and I even bought an Advent calendar, so let the countdown begin!

Placing the star on the Christmas Tree.

It was a good week around work and the time really flew by, even though I haven't ad a typical work week in a few weeks now.  I seem to have taken on the role of Monday cover teacher around the franchise, and after tomorrow will have visited 4 of the 5 schools on consecutive Mondays.  Being a cover teacher can be really fun because the students generally love your games and are more enthusiastic during your lesson because they like the new experience, but I would always prefer teaching my own classes rather than someone else's. Mainly this is because there is a comfort level with your own school and your own classes.  Every time I cover another school I worry that my timing will be wrong, or I will miss a section of the lesson plan that exists in one school but not the other, and everything takes twice as long to plan.  When you teach your own classes, before you even open the book you know what will work and what won't and you know which students to watch out for and which ones will lead the discussion, cover teachers don't have this luxury.  Thankfully, over a year of experience has helped me cope with all of this, but it is still a thought that goes through my mind every time I am sent to another school.

This week also held the dreaded work meeting.  Why ‘dreaded’? I don’t know, really it was a wonderful meeting, and it was very nice to discuss issues from each of the schools in a forum where we could actually consider the possible solutions for them.  I’d say the main reason why people were so opposed to the idea of a work meeting were that this is the first job most of us have had which holds unpaid work meetings (and the idea of donating any more of our time to the company is unappealing) and the fear of the unknown in terms of structuring (whether we would be allowed to discuss the topics that really affect us).  Luckily, the way it worked out is that we were allowed to assign our own agenda and fuel it with our on problems and ideas, which led to some lively discussions on a lot of topics, and while not all of the advice shared might have been brilliant, it was nice to remember how many different ways there are to go about conducting your classes. 

My culture note expands to the world this week, though it mainly involves the reactions of Taiwanese Children.  As I’m sure you are aware, among the many people that undoubtedly died this week, two names are being widely discussed: Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker.  Of the two, Nelson Mandela is the more influential, but amongst my students he is often unheard of.  This is likely due to the age difference, and potentially due to the difference in topics discussed in world history in school, but what surprised me was not that my student’s hadn’t heard of Mandela, but that they had heard of Paul Walker (a man I didn’t know of by name (in fact, I originally thought of Scott Walker and was exceptionally)).  Why do my students all know who he is but most American students couldn’t even name a Chinese actor (let alone tell me if he/she died)? It’s because movies are a major export of the United States, and I think that is something we simultaneously assume and forget.  I’m sure you expect everyone to have seen the classics, whether that be The Godfather, or James Bond, or Star Wars, and so on, and you’d be right, these and many more have made it around the world, so it must follow that the new ones are even more widely circulated, but if you knew that most of these movies weren’t translated when they were sent over seas would you still assume they were widely viewed?  I can't imagine most English speakers would sit through 2 hours of a subtitles every time they wanted to see a new movie, but in Taiwan, that doesn’t seem to be a problem (I can’t speak for the whole world).  Think about that the next time you go to the theaters.

Chilly Weather Is Moving In, What Season Is It?

Happy Thanksgiving from my Taiwanese family.  Our meals may not have consisted of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce, but thats not what is important about the holiday.  What is important is being around the people that are important to you, and knowing what you are thankful for, and that is never difficult for me, I have a lot of great things in my life.

Traditional or not, this was Thanksgiving dinner.

Brr!  I know, the 17 degree (Celius) temperatures I am currently experiencing are nothing compared to the snow covered Midwest I’ve left behind, but it appears I have acclimated to the weather here, and am now relying on my comforter and fuzzy socks for warmth.  There are certainly some logical reasons why the cold would hit me so hard this year, because there are differences in how countries and people cope with the weather.  Let’s look at transportation for instance.  I bet you thought (or will think in the near future) how chilly it is when you are speed walking from your car to the store, but is that because you were blasting the heat inside that little car to make it unnaturally warm? Not only do I not have the option of a heater when driving around, I don’t even have an enclosed vehicle.  I am barreling 60kph down the road with nothing to block the wind but the clothes I am wearing.  Speaking of clothes, what do you wear during winter? Thick jackets, gloves, hats?  My wardrobe isn’t equipped with much in terms of warmth because the timeframe of usefulness is so short, a couple sweatshirts is about all I have.  Lastly, while the poor college students probably know what it is like, how long has it been since you have properly heated your house when the temperature drops?  Air conditioners are far more common than I ever expected here, but heaters aren’t important so most buildings don’t have them.  How do we cope with the cold then? It is a strange cold that seems to reside in the wind more than the temperature, so getting inside helps a lot.  Other than that, most people layer up and wait until the season is over. 

Despite the cold, I’ve become far more outdoorsy since moving to Taiwan, both due to the new environment and the company I now keep.  It is therefore, not strange at all to say that I went trekking up a mountain today.  After waking up early and riding up to Taipei, a few friends and I caught a bus to Yangmingshan National Park (which is located in the north of the city) to hike the trails, visit the peaks and hot springs, and enjoy a day in nature.  Yangmingshan, and particularly Qixing Mountain (known in English as “Seven Star Mountain”, is famous for being the highest dormant volcano in Taiwan (with a peak altitude of 1,120 meters (which we visited today)).   We began our hike in Xiaoyoukeng, trekked up to the Qixing peak, down to Menghuan Lake (which was remarkably uneventful), and further down to Lengshuikeng.  Aside from the height, the scenery, including the volcanically created steam vents called fumaroles are some of the main tourist draws for this region.  This meant that there were a lot of areas ripe with sulfur fumes and discolored by a combination of heat, steam, gases, and sulfur crystals, leaving a burnt-looking affect in sections of the rocks.  The weather was close to perfect, with temperatures low enough to keep us from overheating and clear skies for most of the way up the mountain.  The views of Taipei city below us were remarkable, but unfortunately, when we reached the summit, the mist was too thick to see off the mountain.  At the end of our hike we reached the hot springs of Lengshuikeng (which ironically has 'cold water' in it's name).  These hot springs stay around 40 degrees celsius and are not too hot comparatively.  I've been to a few hot springs in my time in Taiwan, but this was my first time at a nude one.  Outside the springs is a co-ed foot bath, then interested swimmers can separate into male or female bath houses and warm up.  If I'm being honest, we all ended up passing on the baths, while we thought it would be a nice ending to our day, the combination of a small pool of warm sulfuric smelling water, over-crowded with naked people.  That will just have to remain on the list of Taiwanese experiences I haven't experienced.

A view of the mountains of Yangmingshan National Park.

We've made it to the peak of Qixing Mountain!

The steep decent begins...

This is a culture note I've never spent much time contemplating before.  If you live in America (and presumably most western countries), you've undoubtedly seen employees of the food service industry wearing hairnets while preparing your food.  Sure they look silly, sure they annoy most of the people who wear them, but they sure do seem to work.  I couldn't tell you when the last time I found a hair in my food in the states was, it occurs relatively rarely as far as I'm concerned, and they is almost certainly because companies can't afford the compensation tactics they must employ after a situation is reported.  Taiwan does not have these same rules for cooks, and it results in a far more frequent finding of hair in your food.  I would say once every month or two I find, or a friend finds, someone else's hair buried within their meal.  Does it not bother the Taiwanese population?  Are the solutions not worth it?  It seems silly to me.

When Did I Become the Homei 'Senior' Teacher?

Here I have arrived, at the end of at era.  My days of being the new teacher are over, as are my days in the intermediate ranking, and now I am the 'senior teacher' of my little school.  I use quotation marks because that isn't technically my title, in my franchise we have a single senior teacher for all 5 school, but is terms of Homei's school, I am now the teacher who has been there the longest.  What that really means, however, is that two of my closest friends here in Taiwan have completed their contracts (one in Changhua and one in Homei) and will be moving back to a life in Europe.  I think I'm only holding myself together because I know they still have a few more weeks around Taiwan before that fateful final day, even though the full week was a reminder of their eminent departure.  From teppanyaki dinners, to pool games, to night market trips, everything was preceded by the words 'the last'.

The 'going away party' - hotpot style

Enough about lasts, let's talk about a first.  I almost thought I had no funny stories this week, then I remembered a unique first which happened yesterday.  I (along with two of my friends) boarded the wrong train and found ourselves temporarily stranded in the town of Dadu (in Taichung County)!  Quite frankly, I'm surprised this isn't a more common occurrence, especially for me, especially considering the number of times I have bolted to the platform and jumped on the train without regarding the signs at all; call it optimism, call it stupidity, whatever it was, it had been a fool-proof method for me for 15 months.  The problem was in the fact that Changhua Station is the converging point of the 'Mountain line' which runs through Taichung city, and the 'Coastal line' which runs through Taichung Port, so we all assumed that since we could see the train was moving in the correct direction, it must in fact, be our train.  Luckily it didn't take too long to spot the mistake, we are familiar enough with the local cities that we had spotted our mistake by the first stop and got off the train in Dadu...what a silly mistake that was.  Dadu is a small town with a limited amount of English, a limited number of people, and limited resources.  The local bus schedule showed we were about 1.5 hours away from the next pick up, there were apparently no taxis, and when we tried to catch the train back to Changhua there was no access to the platform (because there is no raised crosswalk at the station, you have to walk across the tracks when they are unoccupied to board the platform), so we stood around for an additional 40 minutes swatting at oversized mosquitoes and commenting on our streak of luck as we awaited the next train.
Luck (at least where business was concerned) was not on our side this weekend.  While the locations we frequented were establishments we have been to countless times, the service we received was not as foreigner friendly as usually.  Have they recently had bad experiences with other customers (possibly foreigners) so they are getting stricter with their policies? Did we offend them in the past? Do they think that because we are foreign they can get away with it? The world will never know.  What we do know is that one of the local bars has begun charging us a $200NT minimum per person (plus a $50NT service charge also per person) to sit in their booths, and one of our local Karaokes charged us $400 for  outside food/drinks being found in the room.  While I'm not saying these are unfair policies, and do find it strange that they have only just come into existence.
Today's culture note, as inspired by the rain pattering outside my window, is about a member of the arachnid family who is known for showing himself during times of downpour.  One of the largest types of spiders in the world, known at the huntsman spider or a rain spider, can be found in Taiwan (though, my research shows they can now be found around the world, including the southern part of the United States.  In the larger specimens, this spider's leg span gets to being around 10-12 inches.  I am happy to say that I have not come across and foot-long spiders in my time in Taiwan, because, being slightly arachnophobic already I don't think I stay around it.  I have, however, come across this spider (below).  We discovered him many months ago and he had claimed areas of the teacher's room (including the window and the space behind the bookshelf) as his own.

Victor - The teacher's room huntsman spider

A New Kind of Game

Oh dear, it appears I am sick.  I sit here tonight, coughing, sniffling, and armed with a raspy voice, what a terrible feeling. 

I don’t really know how to go about explaining my weekend, because I like to think I am a little classier than the following story is going to imply.  There is no sugar coating it, my weekend consisted of a pub crawl, and while many have seen their variety of pub crawls (zombie-themed, mystery bus tour, subway crawls), but living in countries with public drinking laws has probably prevented you from traveling between 7-elevens.  You didn’t even know until today that you have been missing out on this sort of experience. 

Let’s start at the beginning.  Saturday night was my friend’s birthday, and to celebrate he created a game.  The game is simple, as long as you have a partner, a love of walking, and a tolerance for alcohol.  Over the course of a few hours the players would take a walking tour of Yuanlin, starting at the train station and ending in High-Relax (a local bar).  Along the route, there are 9 convenience stores, and at each convenience store a short interlude was planned, but rather than being relaxing interludes, they were drinking interludes, and a different mixed drink, beer, or wine, was assigned to be consumed.  Each person on the team was awarded 10 points for successfully drinking the assigned drink, 5 points for drinking an alternative drink, 0 points for drinking a soft drink/juice, and -5 points for drinking a water.  Furthermore, the entertaining aspect is that each person lost 5 points each time they went to the bathroom, so people were constantly monitoring each other’s bathroom behaviors.  At the end of the night, the team which completed the route with the most points was rewarded with the remainder of the ‘drinks kitty’, as well as the much deserved bragging rights.  As prestigious of a title as ‘convenience store pub crawl champion’ would have been, I think I can sleep soundly knowing that my team did not win.  Well, by ‘sleep soundly’ I guess I mean ‘only sleep for a couple of hours’, I almost forgot that it took until 8am to get back to our beds, and by that point I had spent hours singing solos in karaoke, lost my voice, and seen about a thousand marathon runners show us how productive mornings can be. 

A few hours of sleep later and we're off to the bowling alley!

My cultural thought of the week centers around an experience you almost certainly put very little thought into: taking out the trash.  Picture most public streets near you, or any local business, do they have a garbage can? In most places I have visited it is easy to dispose of your garbage, and yet you still see streets, rivers, woods, all littered with trash.  Here in Taiwan, it is exceptionally difficult to find public garbage cans.  So what do you do?  I still don’t know, I usually hide mine in my purse until I’m at home or in a convenient store.  Now think, what do you do when you need to take out the garbage or recycling from your house? Throw it in a bin in your driveway? For me to take out my garbage I need to take my bags not only downstairs, but down the street and around the corner to a public dumpster, and the really crazy thing is that I consider myself to be lucky.  Everyday (except Sunday I believe), in the afternoon and early evening, a team of garbage trucks blaring ‘Für Elise’ travels each of the cities collecting the trash from swarms of residents who have run outside with their bags in hand.  If you work or are busy during the collection period, you have to continue holding on to your rubbish until the next time you can chase down the truck.   With all of that hassle, you would think people would refuse to participate, but Taiwan has a highly successful disposal system, and is considered one of the most successful countries in the world for recycling rates.  

Well, Hello Again

Oh?! So soon! That’s what happens when I indulge upon a mid-week update.  A few days later and I see nothing has progressed (either positively or negatively) with my neighbor and the ‘internet fiasco’.  I’ve gotten a lot of advice over the last few days about how to handle the situation, ranging from childish notes, to stolen modems, to discussions with the landlord (in Chinese) to blasting loud music late at night, but I’m hoping an unspoken compromise will work temporarily, so I’m keeping my router unplugged when I am not home so that if, for some strange reason it is affecting her, it isn’t a constant nuisance.  The strategy has worked for 3 days, but I was gone for two of them, so it is too soon to really say how it is going.

Speaking of being gone for two days, I’ve done a really good job of having weekend adventures lately, so I spent this weekend in a back-and-forth between Taichung (central Taiwan) and Taipei (northern Taiwan).  On Saturday, in the afternoon, we bopped around Taichung from the train station, to my friend’s house, to the Chili Cook-Off competition, to the High Speed Rail Station, all within a few hours.  It was a lot of fun.  There was good conversation, enjoyable (and not so enjoyable) music, and lots of chili (which I acquired a taste for somewhere through the years, after avoiding my father’s chili for my entire childhood). 

The Chili Cook-Off crowd, enjoying some music on a warm November afternoon.

That night I had the treat of watching one of my friends perform in a stand-up comedy show in Taipei.  Your initial thoughts are probably either: “but Kaitlin, you don’t like stand-up comedy” which is still true, but I like to be there for my friends, or “Do you understand the language well enough to be enjoying jokes in Mandarin” to which the answer would be ‘no’, but thankfully it was an English-based comedy show for a primarily foreign crowd.  There were 7 performers throughout the evening who performed short stand-up sets about a range of topics relatable to our lives here as teachers in Taiwan, and poking fun at the language barrier, the cultural differences, and of course, the crime circle more commonly referred to as ‘kindergarten education’.  The weird thing about hanging out with the Taipei crowd last night was being around so many performers, I haven’t been around so many stage people since I was in high school, but so see a room full of comedians, magicians, singers, it was a reminder of the kind of platform Taiwan can provide for performers, and how much you can do here besides just teach.  Don’t worry, I’m not saying I’d like to get on the stage, I got enough of that for the year at the Halloween Extravaganza.

After way too late of a night, too early of a morning, too little coffee at breakfast, and everything else that caused functioning to be difficult this morning, it was time to catch the train back to Taichung.  Essentially every fiber of my being was screaming ‘go home and sleep’ but there is nothing like a night club in the middle of the day to turn your mood around.  Lucky for everyone, specific memories of the day have been lost in a haze of the Filipino’s strong 7% beers, pasta, mirrors, sweat, and the Macarena.

I discovered one of the greatest a worst things about Taiwan this week.  Years ago, inspired by Halloween, I discovered a listing of some of the most unique abandoned (and thought to be haunted) buildings in the world.  In this list was a 1970’s village of futuristic pod shaped houses.  Each set of pods consisted six pods connected by a central staircase, and they were constructed in a line around swimming pools with the intent that the area could be used as a resort.  Unfortunately for those involved in the process, the resort never made it to its opening day.  The project or land was thought to be cursed and several people involved in the construction, or just people driving along the road towards the construction site died.  So, sad and abandoned, the site began falling apart and was good for little more than pictures.  It wasn’t until this week that I rediscovered this pod city, and learned of it’s location: San Zhi, Taiwan, just outside of Taipei, in a convenient location for tourists or Military personnel staying in the northern part of the island.  The heartbreaking news for me is that the city was fully demolished in 2010, leaving none of the pods in tact (despite petitions to turn one into a museum). Now where will I go to get my creepy building fix?

A few of the pod structures I will never have the joy of photographing by myself.