"It can't be closing, I'm still drinking"

My instinct is to say "Happy Chinese New Year", but, that would be wildly mistimed (seeing as that holiday falls in February).  The only reason, I suppose, that I am inclined to write about it is that this weekend my school held our annual Chinese New Year dinner.  The teachers, TA staff, and managers of the four Linda Wu schools (Changhua, Homei, Yuanlin, and Dali) enjoyed a family style Thai dinner in Taichung.  The food was delicious, the company was great, the only problem was that the restaurant couldn't accommodate the size of our group well, so we were separated into different tables based on the schools we work at, which made it more difficult to mingle.  Also, it was a relief to see that after the 'horror stories' of ice breaker games the teachers were forced to play last year, this gathering involved very little alcohol and no awkward games.

This is the full staff of foreign teachers in my school's franchise

As I've said before, the group of teachers in Taiwan is constantly changing, this week we have welcomed two new teachers.  Seeing new people reminds me not only of my first few weeks in Taiwan, but also of the fact that I have been in Taiwan for 5 months already! I still have a lot to learn about this country (shoot, I've still got a lot to learn about this city), but having new people around gives me the chance to give advice, directions, etc., which is a nice change.  I'm not the 'newbie' anymore.

Speaking of not being the 'newbie', now that I have been here for a while, I am starting to really know the strengths and weaknesses of my classes.  I have primarily older students, and while I would say their speaking, listening, and reading are at reasonable levels, their writing skills are below par (by my standards).  Because of this my TA's and I have implemented composition notebooks with two of my classes.  This is based off of one of my Linguistics professor's classroom techniques (look at that, I'm making use of what I learned in college!).  For one of my classes this composition notebook will be a form of conversation between me and my students; every week they will write to me about their day, or their goals, or tell me a story, or whatever they are motivated to write about at the time, and my writing will be a personalized response to them.  For the other class, this notebook is more of an assignment, and I will prompt them with various topics to write about.  For both classes, one of my side goals for this project is to motivate my students to enter the Shane writing competition that happens in late spring.

I'm not going to lie, I'm having a hard time coming up with unique aspects to this week.  I don't think I will ever call a day in Taiwan 'mundane', but this week lacked the stand out moments that some of my other weeks have consisted of.  We did a lot of the usual activities, like dinner at Flamingos, and shooting pool, which are always fun, but certainly not noteworthy.  I'd say the only big thing (other than the Chinese New Year dinner) was our evening at TC18 (a night club in Taichung).  I wouldn't say nightclubs are unique, but I would say having waiter service and a private booth are not an everyday experience (and certainly a first time experience for me).  Also, the evening in TC18 is where the 'less-than-classy' title of this post came from (we don't allow people to live down quotes in this group).
My mistake, there was a rather unique thing that happened this week, and my research has still not yielded a full explanation of this Taiwanese tradition.  It appears in Taiwan (though possibly only in the Changhua area) that when a person commits suicide via hanging (which happened during New Years in the old school in Homei) there is a tradition which the entire city takes part in.  Not long after the discovery of the body (it was about a week in this case) it is believed that the ghost wanders from the location of the suicide to either the sea or the hospital (I have heard both explanations).  All city residents are expected to be inside their homes by 10pm, and when the 11 o'clock ceremony (which I believe is a procession) and fireworks occur, you are supposed to close the blinds and not look outside.  If you see the ghost you must join it (in the procession and potentially to the afterworld).  I'm happy to say I survived this ghost day, even though I was naughty and stayed outside after 10pm.

Comparison time! Taiwan is remarkable, and there are certain things that are so amazingly cheap.  The cost of gas is currently around 35NT per liter (which is just over US $1), a pack of cigarettes (as always I have a lot of smoking friends) on average ranges between 45NT-85NT (between US $1.50-2.50), a full variety of scarves are 100NT (about US $3.50), but for some reason electronics are ridiculously expensive!  I went to the store to look into repairing my old camera (because all that is wrong with it is the lens has sand in it) and that will cost me over 3,000NT (over US $100) to repair.  Buying an identical camera is only 2,900NT, how much sense does that make?