I Wish I had Gotten My Laundry Done...

This was another one of those weeks that went by too quickly.  Before I knew it, it was the weekend and I can barely recall the events of the week.  I'm sure there were some interactions with students, particularly in the form of classes, there were tests given and papers graded, and none of that was particularly exciting.  But, the work week is a necessary price to pay for an enjoyable weekend.
You remember those crazy nights in college where you stayed out all night, getting yourselves into one crazy shenanigan or another? Yea, I remember those nights too, but in Taiwan, they don't stop when college does.  In Taiwan, most bars tend to close when the customers leave (or when the bartender wants to be done) rather than at a set closing time, so it is quite possible to find yourself finishing the night at 6 or 7 in the morning.  Lucky for me, I occupy my time with much cooler activities, so I don't find myself leaving the bar at this time, instead I find myself leaving karaoke at this time (I love my life).
Now, don't go thinking only a few hours of sleep could take away from my Sunday activities.  This afternoon a few friends and I went out to a city in Taichung county called Houli.  While it may have its own train stop, it does not have much to see, except for the beautiful biking trails.  From the moment you step off the train it is apparent that this is a biking city, which will strike you most prominently when you are swarmed by 10 different people offering you flyers to show that their bike rental company is the best (even though it is essentially identical all of the other companies).  We rented a couple of bikes from one of these shops and covered about 25km of trail.  It was an excellent use of an afternoon.

Biking over the river in Houli.

Well, wish me congratulations, I finally got my Taiwanese driver's license (as they say, third times the charm).  After a rough patch with both the written exam (due to translation issues) and the practical exam (due to balance issues), I met my goal and can now legally drive in Taiwan (though I'm pretty sure legality has never stopped anyone from driving in Taiwan).

This is my driver's license! Look how happy I am about being able to drive!

Did you know that Taiwan has been undergoing a water shortage for the last few years due to a low amount of water during the rainy seasons? I didn't know this either until about an hour ago when I ran the washing machine (which is my Sunday tradition) and instead of a clean batch of clothes received a note saying the water would be shut off until Monday or Tuesday.  This really wouldn't bother my too much, except that I had no forewarning, and my clothes were left sitting in the water of a half-filled, non-functioning washing machine.  My frustration with the washing machine led me to look into the issue, where I learned that the concerns about shortages has caused rationing in the various counties of Taiwan, but the central counties (including Changhua), are usually not as affected because of our reservoirs (like Techi in Taichung) and the tendency for rain to occur year-round (whereas, in the north it is common for there to be a lot of rain during the winter and not a lot of rain during the summer, and in the south it is common for there to be a lot of rain during the summer and not a lot of rain during the winter).  So, now you know one of the ways Taiwan is being affected by global warming (and, if you are like me, you have probably thought while reading this "Taiwan is an island, isn't it? There must be something they can do with all of that water located all around them.").

There's Music in the Air!

I really enjoyed this week at school, not because anything particular happened, it might have just been because the stress of Mother's Day activities had finally ended.  The thing that I didn't enjoy, however, was the ending of an era in my Homei Shane School life.  Thankfully this isn't my usual sad post about how weird it is when my friends here move away, this is just about a co-worker changing schools, and while it will be sad not to have him in the office, it is so nice when people not only decide to stay, but are given the opportunity to as well.  There are a lot of memories I could use to summarize the last 9 months of working together, but without a doubt, our office time boils down to two phrases, "Homei's for life" (taken from the pinyin spelling of our city's name, which looks remarkably similar to "homeys") and "Teachers In Formation" (taken from a misreading of a folder in our teacher's room which said "Teacher's information" but was read with the wrong parsing").

Graeme, Tash, and I - Homei's for life, Teachers-In-Formation.

This weekend centered around the Compass Music Festival, which is one of central Taiwan's largest gatherings of foreigners, all coming together to enjoy music and food.  The event lasted for 2-days, and was scheduled to showcase 18 bands (all of the bands on day-1 were foreigners, but I can't speak for day-2's performers) and be feature food from around the world..  The thing that is amazing about event's like this is that they remind you how many foreigners out in this small country, and how many countries we come from.  I would say the only downside to the day was how incredibly how it was (I think it must be due to the amount of rain lately, but the humidity has become horrible as we move into the summer months making a day of 85 degrees feel between 87-105 degrees (the range of highs in this week's temperature)).
There wasn't much to the rest of the weekend.  A bit of shopping, a bit of eating, a lot of rain.  It was a really nice, relaxing weekend, that was it.

Our newest teacher, performing spoken word at the Compass Music Festival.

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A delicious Thai dinner to finish off the weekend.

The additional thoughts of the week are focused on the tensions between Taiwan and the Philippines at the moment, which began with the killing of a Taiwanese fisherman in the Bashi Strait, the area of water separating Taiwan and the Philippines.  The Philippine coast guard, the ship responsible for the shooting of the fisherman claimed the shot to be in self-defense, saying that the fishing boat was in Philippine waters and was going to hit a Philippine ship.  Condolences were sent to Taiwan following the incident, but Taiwan has still issued a freeze on the intake of new Filipino employees.  This is a huge 'attack' on the Filipino people, because many of them rely on employment in Taiwan to support their families.  It is not uncommon for people from the Philippines to spend a few years in Taiwan, making money where the rate-of-pay is better and the cost-of-living is lower, so they can send back funds to their families.  Approximately 30,000 Filipino employees are hired in Taiwan every year, and there are currently about 85,000 Filipino employees on this island.  Taiwan's freeze on hiring from the Philippines will not only affect future generations of employees, but it is also likely to cause the Filipino-companies in Taiwan to close-down when they are no-longer able to staff themselves.

It has been interesting to hear people speculate what will come of this tension, particularly what will happen involving allies of the two countries.  With the US being an ally to both countries, it should not pick a side in the issue, but people are worried that with the US military bases already in the Philippines, the benefits in supporting that alliance are stronger.  The other wildcard is China, who have attempted to claim the death of the fisherman as an attack on themselves as well (because they want the world to believe they control Taiwan, even though the two countries have been separate for 102 years).  Some people worry that, if Taiwan preoccupies itself with a war against the Philippines, that it will leave the island susceptible to an attack from main-land China.  It should go without saying that I am hoping nothing comes of this tension, because I love Taiwan, and I would love to visit the Philippines, and war between any countries is a travesty, but was between two smaller island nations like this could cause irreparable damage.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, and specifically to my mother (who I will be seeing in a few weeks!)  Did you know that mother's day is not celebrated on the same day world-wide?  Some countries place hold their Mother's Day festivities on the 4th Sunday of Lent (which is traditionally called Mothering Sunday), while others hold their festivities on the 2nd Sunday of May.  Taiwan, like the United States, celebrates Mother's Day today.
I don't mean to undersell the holiday, but Mother's Day has always seemed to be a pretty manageable holiday in the past, it gives me a chance to show my mother how much she means to me, talk to her, give her gifts (when I live in the same state/country/continent as her), but it is a far more complicated holiday when you have 48 other mothers to look out for.  Each of my classes wrote letters home to their mothers during class this week.  When you think of writing on the whole, it never seems quite as difficult as it is when you are teaching it.  For each kid to write a letter home, the teacher must first plan what the children will write (whether that be through planning questions to prompt free-writing, or through writing a poem or something to copy), then get each student to write a rough-draft, then correct each of the rough drafts, then give each student a final draft paper, then correct the final drafts (without writing on them).  Sounds fun? Now try doing that with 6-year-old students who have only been in school for 3 months, it becomes a lot of work.

"This heart is red, this flower is blue, you're my mommy, and I love you" - cards written by my CE02 class

While card writing may not have been my favorite part of the week, I did enjoy leading my CEI05 class in a Mother's Day craft.  I distinctly remember making "stained glass" candle holders as a child, out of tissue paper, glue, and a glass jar, so I decided to let my students have similar memories.  I think the students enjoyed their craft-day, and the candle holders turned out beautifully.

This is CEI05, hard at work on their Mother's Day candles

The highlight of this week would have to be the weekend (which seems to be a usual description of my weeks).  I spent Saturday in the company of more than 100 different foreigners from around the world (though primarily from the UK, the US/Canada, and South Africa), for Tainan's 2nd annual Beach Olympics.    The competition challenged beach-goers' skills in javelin, running, swimming, soccer/football, sack races, tug-of-war, and more, as they represented one of four countries (the 4th one being "team Asia").  My friends and I arrived too late to participate in the games, but we enjoyed an afternoon in the amazingly warm water instead.   

The sunset in Tainan after a day at the Beach Olympics

Today we stayed closer to home, and by that I mean, we went to Taichung for a picnic in the park.  As I feel karma often does in situations like these where we pre-plan the day's activities, it began raining as soon as we arrived at the park, but thankfully we were sheltered as we sat down to lunch there, so it didn't ruin the day.  In fact, the rain simply added an artistic side to all of our photos of the day.  Realizing that our original plan of renting canoes on the lake wasn't a good idea, we revised our plans and visited one of Taichung's religious attractions: the Golden Buddha at the Pao Hueh temple.  Similar to the large Buddha on Mt. Bagua, there are windows along the back of Buddha (as well as his belly button), which indicate that this statue is intended to be entered, however it was closed today.  The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, we went shopping in SOGO, we went bowling in Changhua, and we ate dinner at a Buddhist noodle stand. 

A little rain didn't stop us from visiting Buddha

One of the big topics this week has been the Taiwanese driving test.  The system of obtaining a driver's license in Taiwan is easier than in the US, starting with the fact that there isn't a permit process first.  In Taiwan, to receive your (scooter) driver's license you must take a 40-question computerized test about road signs/regulations, and then show you can drive in a physical test.  The Taiwanese driving physical driving test is a very easy process, the driver must take their scooter around a track and demonstrate the ability to control the scooter at slow speeds by driving in a straight line for about 7 seconds, by turning the scooter in a controlled path, and by following road signs/lights.  The entire test takes about 1 minute.  The hard part is in taking the written test in English (which is a translated version of the Chinese test) so many questions are worded poorly and are hard to understand.   One of the best ones being, *while looking at a picture of a yellow circle* "True or False: Special flashing yellow light" (I still don't know what the question is).  I took the written portion of the driver's test this week, and realized that I had understudied for it.  The wording of many of the questions was more literal that I was expecting (for example: a picture showing a dip in the road does not mean 'bumpy road' (even though it would obviously feel like a bumpy road as you are driving on it), because it would apparently translate to 'dippy road'), so I failed it and will be re-taking it this week after a lot more studying.  Wish me luck!

 

A Weekend in Nantou with Buddhas and Pineapples

Welcome to May, my favorite month of the year.  Let's hope it is a good one (preferably one that is not too hot and not too rainy).
This has been a weird week for me, because no matter what I did, and no matter how much I slept, I was exhausted all week.  I might be a little crazy, but I think it is because I was feeling stir-crazy in Changhua.  I sometimes feel the need to go out and do something new, and it has been a couple weeks since I have done that.  Thankfully I went out and explored Nantou County this weekend, which will hopefully help eliminate the stir-crazy, sleepless me.
This weekend was a lot of fun, Saturday was spent in the mountains of Nantou County.  A few of the my friends, inspired by an ever-present urge to eat pineapple cake took our scooters to Sunny Hills, one of the well known pineapple fields/pineapple cake companies.  Have I explained pineapple cakes before? They are easily my favorite food in Taiwan.  There is not much to a pineapple cake to be honest, it is essentially a shortcake stuffed with pineapple jam, but I would live off of them if it were a a realistic option.  Certain tourist attractions in Taiwan are not actually set up for people to do/see things, and that is a reasonable description of Sunny Hills as well.  Upon entering the site you are given a free pineapple cake (which is, of course, the best thing about the place), and then you the throngs of visitors to one of three places: a store where you can buy pineapple cakes and pineapple juice (and nothing else), a tent on top of a building where you can buy a pineapple smoothie (and nothing else), or a small market area where you can buy non-pineapple goods (mainly vegetables, vinegar, and honey).  With the large number of people that visit Sunny Hills, I was expecting...more.
The rest of the evening was spent exploring Nantou City, which is surprisingly small, and completely uninteresting from what we could tell.  The temples we tried to visit were closed, the cultural center was poorly labeled and therefore impossible to find, but the restaurant of our favorite night market salesmen was open and that led to a wonderful Pakistani dinner.

Sunny Hills pineapple cakes!

 Today was, a weird day, to say the least.  Early on, when I moved to Taiwan, I made a Taiwanese friend at the train station, and she has been my language exchange partner since then.  We meet every once in a while, and today she took me to Nantou County to celebrate the birthday of one of the deities, which should have been much easier than it was.  Nantou County is a little over an hour away from where I live, but I have noticed in several 'road trips' with Taiwanese people that asking for directions is not frowned upon like it is in the US, instead it seems to be expected.  We knew the name of the city we were going to, and once we exited in that city, we got the rest of our directions by asking locals (and we didn't just ask one person, we stopped and asked for directions at every turn).  In the US I think the majority of people would be too embarrassed to ask for directions, and now that the popularity of GPS devices has increased there isn't much of a need to anymore.  The problem with the person-based direction system is that some people struggle with giving directions, and we found ourselves terribly lost.  After about an hour of wandering, and making the realization that we had arrived back at a town near Changhua, we decided to veer off in a different direction, and ended up in a small town called Guoxing.  Ironically, Guoxing had a temple that goes by the same name as the one we were looking for, but after a few phone calls we confirmed we were not actually in the correct location.  That didn't matter, we still enjoyed a temple buffet (which was consisted of a lot of tofu, which is still not my favorite food) and performed the temple rituals of incense burning and Buddha bathing.
My favorite part of this temple was not the building itself but the gardens surrounding the temple.  There were two main gardens, one had 20 or so boulders with Buddhas carved into them, the other had a large Buddha in the center of a paved circle surrounded by 500 smaller Buddha statues.

The 500 Buddhas: no two statues are the same.

I've talked before about superstitions on other cultures, and today I have another Taiwanese superstition.  This one pertains to photography in religious places, and how it is often viewed as taboo (though a lot of people, foreign and native still take pictures in these places).  Rather than having a fear that the photograph will take something away from the subject, in Taiwan the fear of photography in religious places refers to the unknown way this photograph will later be treated.  For example, if someone were to take a picture of a statue of Matzu, and this picture was later printed and somehow found its way to the floor where it was stepped on or torn, this would be disrespectful to the god.