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.