Happy St. Patrick's Day!

7 months?! I've been here for 7 month already? I feel like I just got here, but today it was pointed out to me that I am one of the 'veterans' of the group.  I've been here longer than most of the people I spent the weekend with, and that was a weird realization.
No surprise, but the holidays of the week: St. Patty's Day and the ever-so-important Pi Day were barely acknowledged in Taiwan (the latter was not even acknowledged by me, which I am ashamed about!).  Sometimes it can be a little weird living in a different culture's set of holidays.
This week seemed incredibly hectic, which I assume is because I taught more cover classes than my own classes.  Being the cover teacher for someone else's can be much more stressful than teaching your regular classes, first-and-foremost because it involves walking into the unexpected.  On any given day, when I plan my lessons I know who my students are, what they will respond well to, what they already know, etc..  For a cover lesson I don't have that comfort, however, when I cover a class there is a greater chance that everything I do will be viewed as new, fun, and exciting to the students.  This week the classes I covered went really well because of that!
Nothing new happened this weekend, you've read all these adventures before.  The thing that was fun and new was the fact that I got to bring other people around for their first times.  On Saturday I brought some of the guys geocaching in Taichung, which began at the previously photographed military tank cache.  We attempted two other geocaches during our adventure, but were unsuccessful in both.  It is really unfortunate, but it appears that geocaching has not been highly popular in a few years (at least in my area) so a lot of the caches have gone missing and no one has been watching them to notice.  It was still a fun excuse to scoot around Taichung though (and an even better excuse to get dinner at Bollywood, and I will never say no to Indian food).

'Secret Military Reserves' cache in Taichung

Today the weather was perfect so we all got out our bicycles and wandered Changhua that way.  We had a lovely afternoon of bowling and arcade games, and finished up with burgers for dinner.  If it weren't for the surroundings, I would swear that nothing about today was Taiwanese at all.  

My thought of the week is going to sound very random, but it is inspired by the fact that I had my first real salad in Taiwan this evening.  Don't get me wrong, I'd say I've had more fruits and vegetables than ever here, but salads don't appear to be as common, presumably because they don't involve cooking.  Anyway, what I find interesting about salads here is the fact that I can get 1000 Island Dressing everywhere in Taiwan.  There are probably 4 different salad dressings that I have seen here and 1000 Island is one of them, yet back in the states, it is slowly being weeded out of restaurants for not being as popular.  It was one of the things I originally predicted I would miss when I moved here (which is why I was sent a bottle of it for Christmas), but it is definitely not in short supply.  In general there are a lot of things that we expect won't be here when we plan to move, which is silly on our parts because this is a fully developed country.  Why shouldn't there be the same types of stores here? The same things to buy? With that being said, the fact that there is KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Domino's, etc. never ceases to surprise me (but I completely expected to see McDonald's), because these are things that I did not imagine would be as appreciated in Asia as they are in the states (and all western countries).