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