out and about...or is it oot and aboot

No, I don't really say oot and aboot.

The one thing I love about Taiwan is how something is always happening, whether I know it or not. Yesterday proves this point. We had nothing to do so we went for coffee to come up with ideas for something interesting. We sat there longer than was necessary (mostly because it took so long to get our coffee and food) and we finally decided to go to the multicultural centre to look at the pictures they had on display. The cultural centre never really shows a lot, but the exhibits are always changing. One of the first things we noticed was this...




It is indeed a statue of Chang Kai Shek, which is totally rare right now because the government is in the process of moving all the statues of him onto some remote mountain.

The second was this..
One of the pictures on exhibit. It was on one of the silk banners that they do a lot of the Chinese art on...it was really freaking cool. This isn't the greatest picture because the panel was behind glass.

As we were leaving, this was going on...(notice the sitar...in a band. Click on the picture for a larger image)




So we wandered over to take a look. Of course being the only foreigners, we stood out and the MC's started talking to us and actually translating what was going on into English (we think they were university students and putting this event on was some sort of final project...we think) anyway, they actually came over and thanked us for coming, so of course, we stayed. I mean, they went out of their way to give us all the programs and everything and they all just kept staring at us and smiling. We stayed 3 hours (of course, drinking beer, we needed something to keep sane in the hot weather of Keelung) and listened to all the different bands. Some songs were in English, some in Mandarin, but it was a great time. Some bands were better than others, but it proved to us that that the Taiwan music scene is really growing and is getting pretty decent. It was a great day...until some weird guy sat beside Jacqui and started rubbing her arm. Then, we left.

another friday night

From these pictures you can probably gather what sort of a weekend I had. Friday was great, Saturday...well, not so much. Hurray for nice weather and being able to go to the roof-top bar again. Officially the cheapest place to get beer in Keelung, which is probably not actually a good discovery.



The elections for Keelung Mayor were on Saturday. We went "campaigning" for #2 because he loves Keelung...and he saluted T&J from his truck during a parade. I don't think he benefited from our drunken wanderings through Keelung at 4am with his cut-out. He lost to #3 (the thumbs down from the first picture)

This is my new friend, found in the lucky star!



These are my other friends..they don't look nearly as exciting as my new friend. Too bad.

random photos

I was looking through the photos of my computer today and found some shots that I haven't posted on here. I have been using Flickr a lot lately (so much so that I'm even considering paying to go "pro" for better organization of my pictures) and even joined a random group to try and make me experiment with photography more. I just figured it would give me something cool to do and actually try and get better and more creative with taking pictures. This is one I found...



It's the corner of either the National Theatre or the National Concert hall. I'm not sure which side I was on (apparently I have posted this on my flickr and it is the Concert Hall). I am going to miss all the cool buildings that I can take pictures of here.

On a side note, yay for random days off! We don't have to teach kindy today because it's Labour Day. Since not many of the kids are going to be at school, we didn't have to go in, and since I only have kindy on Tuesdays, I have the whole day off (because you know, the whole 2 1/2 hours I work on Tuesdays is just so stressful ^_^) Of course I have completely and totally wasted it, but whatever...it was a day off!

sunday meanderings...

It was Jacqui's birthday yesterday and since we were all fairly hungover from the night before (we doing birthday parties right here in Taiwan) we went to Taipei for a movie and some food. We found a new restaurant that specialized in British food and Tom and Jacqui were in heaven with Bangers and mash and chicken pies. I was in heaven with the salmon eggs benedict that I found. Yeah, that's right, they had eggs benedict.

On our walk from the restaurant to Taipei 101, we went down the side street and found the furniture shops in Taipei. It was the most amazing stuff I have seen in this country. It was at least 4 blocks of stores dedicated strictly to furniture of all sorts. There was some of the most beautiful wood furniture I have ever seen and if I was going to live in Taiwan forever, I would have bought it all. But I'm not, so I didn't. I think I have a thing for furniture though. If only it wouldn't be a bloody fortune to ship it back to Canada.

We went to see Wild Hogs. I had never seen any previews for this and I didn't even know who was in it. Imagine how excited I was when I found out John Travolta was in it. Yeah, I was bloody excited. Jacqui made Tom sit beside me though. Apparently she doesn't like it when I laugh at stupid things in the movie no one else laughs at. (yes, Jacqui I know you are going to read this :) ) For a silly movie, it was actually pretty good. I enjoyed it, but then it had John Travolta in it and I love anything that he's in and I always have. Because you know, he's a god.

spring scream

I just had the most fantastic weekend. It was Tomb sweeping day here in Taiwan, nicely coinsiding with Easter I must say. Nothing worse than everyone having a long weekend off at home and I have to work, for some reason, I hate that. I did however totally forget about Good Friday and ate meat (oops) Not that there was much fish around, it was really a burger sort of weekend since I went to a music festival in Kenting.

We only found out about Spring Scream last week and even though I was hesitant about going, I'm so glad I did. It was seriously one of the best weekends I've had in a really, really long time, and no, that's not because I was drunk through a lot of it...mostly it was because I was listening to amazing music, meeting amazing musicians and having a great time. The festival was great because it really allowed for access to the bands and getting to talk to them and it was a great way to find out more about the Taiwan music scene.

If you want to see pictures go here to my flickr account...I have too many to chose which ones to put here...

I finally got to see Consider the Meek, a band that found me somehow here on myspace soooo long ago. I met them in Fulong last year but I had never seen them. When I found out they were playing this weekend that was the only band we made the date for seeing...the only appointment we had and they were worth it. They were really good and now I have my friends hooked and we are going to see them again on Sunday when they play with NOFX.

Some other bands of interest that I found this weekend....

Charlie Taylor (and the Axis of Evil)
***check him out...incredibly funny and well worth it
Rabbit Is Rich
Mosquilephant
Swui

These three are all Taiwanese, but all have a really, really great sound and go check out the pictures at Flickr...if you view as a slide show, you can click on any picture to pause it and find out who the band is...assuming of course I was able to remember who they were ^_~

with wine, doors watch out

Last Saturday was suppose to be a quiet night. T&J and I were going to head to Taipei for something to eat but the box o' wine got in the way. This is not the first time this has happened. We had just enough that we decided to invent our own drink when the box became empty...uh, never, ever mix brandy and vodka.

We decided we wanted to go dancing but J's clothes (and yes, her hair straightener too...okay, so sometimes we like to be girly, It just doesn't happen very often and dancing requires girly-ness) were in their closet, which just happened to have locked itself from the inside. I didn't ask how this could have happened, but regardless the door was locked.

It was decided then that locks don't matter, hinges do. Take it off the hinges, I said. Yes, I said it, it was my idea. It was my idea for them to take the hinges out and then pry their door out with a screwdriver and put big dents in their door frame. It worked though, I am a genius, but all I could think of was why didn't I think of that when I was locked in my bathroom.

chinese new year trip part 3

Alright where were we. Sun Moon Lake, right. This is one picture that I forgot to post last time. The coolest thing by far that I saw. They had these trees all over the place and being that they are by far my favourite fruit, I was quite excited. Can you see the bananas?



After we got back we were pretty tired, so we went for dinner at a place called Frogs and sat under this....



Now can you see the coconut that was threatening to fall on us? Luckily, I wasn't sitting directly underneath it, however it did raise comments through out the evening.

So with Taichung finished we had to head to meet up with some more friends in Tainan. We got a train which took about 2 hours. When we got there we didn't have much time to relax and we were off to a fort. Now, being that Tainan is not actually anywhere near the ocean, it is more inland, we were confused as to how it actually protected Taiwan. It had a moat around it, so I guess it was just protecting itself from people trying to get over the moat. I'm not exactly sure. I was confused about it, especially when we saw all the big cannons.




After this, we discovered that the next thing on the agenda was another fort. I'm all for history, trust me...but it was really hot, I was really tired, and not really interested, so when we couldn't get over the bridge to the next fort, we took it as a hint and went back to the hotel to sleep (I know, but this is what happens when you are old and you hang out with people that like to party) So we got back to the hotel and yes, we had been there to drop off our stuff, but this particular feature was still making us laugh...



That's right, that's a mirror all right. On.The.Ceiling. Pretty swank huh.

So the next part of this story is Kenting. I'll tell you right now, that it wasn't very good and might not even get a spot in this story. The best thing about it was that Kenting actually has decent food at their night market....but that's a whole other story.

Chinese New Year Trip part 2

I was suppose to put this part earlier than tonight, sorry. This week has been crazy and I can only prove that by saying it is Friday night and I am ready to go to bed at 10pm. This NEVER happens. Something must be up. I take solace in the fact that I'm not the only one. It was a general consensus that no one was doing anything tonight.

Okay, so the second part of the trip. On our second day in Taichung we decided to go to Sun Moon Lake. So we spent the morning on what seemed like the longest bus trip ever (unknown to us, this would be hugely surpassed by the trip to Kenting, but I digress) Sun Moon Lake was really cool. No swimming though, since some of my students had told me that if you swim in Sun Moon Lake you would die. I'm pretty sure that is not true, but none the less they had signs saying you couldn't swim in the area we were anyway. We wandered around the lake for a bit and then took a boat tour around the lake. Not your regular ride a boat tour. It had the typical Taiwanese slant of stopping at everything it could, which included some fish thing (I'm not really sure what that was all about, but we got to feed fish and see catfish) and a temple. The weather was absolutely great, which was good because we had heard it was raining in Keelung (home). Here are some pictures of Sun Moon Lake.
Not quite as nice as the Shuswap, but nothing ever will be.

(these pictures are in a random order...for some reason blogger changes the order that I upload them in...I haven't figured out why yet.)

A view of the sun on the lake while we were on the boat.



The view from one of the walking paths.



If you look closely maybe you can see that these are catfish. Definitely the strangest fish I've ever come across.



This was the island in the middle of the lake. It's a little small but the boat actually stopped here for people to see it. Of course, you can't actually go on the island...you can only go on the man-made "raft" of green stuff that surrounds it so people can look at the island.



One of the tour boats coming in. Unfortunately, our boat did not look like this, ours was boring and white. We were very disappointed to be sitting on it when we saw this one dock.



So those are the pictures. Next time, the trip part 3.

chinese new year trip part 1

To cover almost an entire week of trip in just one post is going to be too difficult I think, so you get it in stages. I will start at the beginning.

We couldn't make it on the fast train. Even with everyone telling us not to go on it and that many people in Taiwan wouldn't, it seems the lure of an 80 minute trip of the entire length of the island was too tempting to pass up since all the trains seemed to be booked. That was okay though since we have discovered the greatness of the aloha bus. The trip started out great, we got to Taipei after a bit of a crazy taxi ride and when we got to the bus terminal, we only had to wait 10 minutes for a bus to leave. Pretty decent for Chinese New Years Eve.

So we were off to Taichung, where I swore I would never go again for fear of ending up in a gutter again. Yeah, I don't have much luck with Taichung. Things always seem to go wrong there. This time didn't seem too much better either since after we got our hotel room, we decided to walk downtown to see what was going on. So two hours of walking later, we finally made it to the area we were headed in (little Europe, no less) to discover nothing open. And I mean nothing, other than 7-11's and family marts. So we had a drink outside 7-11 to decide our fate. I almost thought were going to have to plant ourselves outside of that 7-11 for the evening, and it wasn't even 7pm yet.

Finally, we decided to give up, catch a cab and go back to the hotel to drown our sorrows in 7-11 food and beer. Just as we had made this decision, we found a restaurant. Amazingly enough, we found a restaurant and with this discovery, we sat. For a really, really long time, we sat.

So that was day one. I was going to do day two today too, however, I'm too tired and lazy to post all my pictures, so you'll just have to wait for the Sun Moon Lake story. I will say, however, that it was by far the highlight of the trip, so that's at least something to look forward to.

chinese new year

Chinese New Year...those are the greatest words I think ever invented. Why? Because it automatically means holiday. My need for a vacation has been very apparent over the last two days, my poor kids and friends. It's probably been a good thing I haven't seen much of many people this week. See, this is my first real holiday in a year. The last time I had a vacation was last February when I went home for the month. Sure, we had 5 days off in October and we went to Green Island, but this is 9 whole days of not seeing any kids, not doing any work, of just pure relaxation. I have discovered this week that a year is a long time to go without a real quality holiday.

We are still trying to make our plans for the holiday. Unfortunately most everything is going to be booked or closed and of course, we are not ones for planning ahead. My friends and I abide by spur of the moment. We are last minute sort of people. We were going to try and go on the High Speed Rail however I think our last minuteness has sort of screwed us out of that. I'm sure we will get on it eventually though. I mean, 90 minutes to Kaohsiung means we could just go for the weekend...if we wanted to. It is do-able.

So this Chinese New Year, whatever we do, I'm sure it will be full of traveling and doing nothing and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that. So "Xin nian kuai le" everyone, Happy New Year.

my valentine...

Every year (or something like that) my mom has a sister weekend (with her sisters no-less) For some reason while they were out, they found something that made them think of me. I am not exactly sure why they all thought it was so funny that it should be sent to me. Am I really the only single person in our family? And if I am, so what? What did they think was so funny, you ask? I got sent this in the mail....




Yeah, was I excited or what about that. Really thrilled.

So in honour of Valentines day, I decided to let the little dude grow to his full 600% of original size self. Here is the progress of my new man...







So that's my Valentines date. Although apparently if I take him out of the water, he'll shrink again so I guess it's going to be a nice quiet evening in.

(and tomorrow's a special day for me too, (and no, NOT because of Valentines day) if anyone can remember you get bonus points...although for what, I'm not exactly sure. Maybe I'll send you my boyfriend for next year...I'll let you know what sort of date he turns out to be)

the farm

So we went off to the farm today for our field trip. Let me just tell you again how excited I was...I WAS VERY BLOODY EXCITED! I had all my kids excited about seeing the cows. We left late because one of the kids mom thought it was tomorrow. I said we should leave without him (probably could have too because he wouldn't go anywhere near any animals) but we waited.

It took an hour, one of my kids threw up. Almost on me, but luckily being the greatest auntie in the world has prepared me to move fast when a kid is going to throw up. I won't go into details but needless to say, I wasn't feeling so hot after that.

So we made it to the farm, oh yeah, I was crazy excited and the first thing we got to do was this...

I even had to give Jac a lesson on milking, my skill was definately up to par and I think I impressed the guy that was running the whole thing (the farmer!) One of my HRT's wouldn't even go near it, so I got to help all the kids...

After that we went to where we got to feed the cows.

Yes, the cows were cool, but the highlight, the coolest thing was seeing these....

It was a great day, even with the hour long trip there and the hour long trip back and the kid throwing up (amazingly we had no such incidents on the way back...after the kids had eaten)

It really made me miss the farm and realize how much I appreciate growing up there and how glad I am to start all my cool stories, "back on the farm..."

Oh and I think I'm a bit of a goat snob. These goats were cool (mostly because they were goats) but my goats were a lot cuter, and they didn't have horns.

Sunday meanderings

This is where I went today...

What did you do??

(This is Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, put up for this guy. I was suppose to be Christmas shopping, but spend most of that time here as you can see from the fact that when I got there it was daylight and when I left it was dark. The National Theatre is here too (one of the red very Chinese looking buildings) It is where I went to see Phantom. It is as impressive as it seems.)

happy hippo thanksgiving

A few weeks ago I went to the annual thanksgiving dinner put on for the bigshots at our compayny. (yes, mmmmeeee!!!) Since I bailed last year, I felt obligated to go, and since the head of the English department actually personally told me about it, yeah, you get the idea...I was suckered in. Anyway, here's a clip of the evening.




I am in the background of the clip with Adam saying he's thankful he doesn't have to give two speeches. I'm probably not on the actual video because as soon as I saw Moose come around with the video, I ran to the bathroom.

food, food and more food.

So the greatest thing about living in a country where food is such an important part of the culture is that you get to try so many different things. After a nice dinner on Saturday and a great evening, we went out again last night. For Barbeque.(if you are new to this space and unaware of how things work, click on barbeque and you'll be taken to where you can find backstory or information. Look out for this in my posts, I do it often) Jacqui, Tom and I have been there before but no one else had. We had wandered in there on the pub crawl on Saturday (no, it's not a pub, just a restaurant which sold beer) so we made a reservation for Sunday. You would have thought it was Thanksgiving in America the amount of food we were eating this weekend.

Normally, two terrific meals in one weekend does not occur, but oh man I'm glad it did. It was nice to go with foreigners and not all co-workers. Don't get me wrong, I love my Taiwanese friends, but they really do have different food tastes. We were able to order off of an English menu rather than having them order for us (of course, Piper did order a couple of things off the Chinese menu that weren't on the English one, but really, only one of two things) It made a big difference to what we were eating and how much we enjoyed it. I mean, we always get Fish Jaws when we go with people from work, and personally, not too fond of fish jaws thanks. This way, we actually knew what everything was and we were not afraid to try it.

Last night we discovered the greatness of beef, beef and more beef (it was really good, we kept ordering it) We didn't have fish jaws but we did try the Frog. The Frog was really good and honestly I think the strangest part of it was the fact that it was my suggestion. We even had cows tongue and it was really good...cut nice and thin and no weird skin with tastes buds involved.

seafood buf-fet

I was woken up by one of my students calling for a telephone test. I forgot the questions at school so now I'm going to have 4 more people calling me this morning. Since I'm hanging around having to tell all these kids what a big freak I am (instead of just not answering my phone, I'm nice like that) I am going to share my dinner from last night with you.

1) lobster (was covered in mayo though)

2) Sashimi!!!!

3) rice with shrimp on top
4) shrimp (this was amazing too)

5)fish meatballs, a little scary with the eyes looking at you, but really good!
6) scallops (see below for more info) Nice radish flower hey!
7) Johnny's vegetarian thing
8) Crab
9) lamb soup

It was soooo good. 10 courses of just amazing food. Well, most of it. Some was a little mysterious (sea cucumber) but everything was tried. Even the scallops with the mayonnaise baked on them (there is an obsession with putting mayonnaise on the seafood here. I love my mayo, but even I think it's a little gross. Could be due to the fact that it's not even the good mayo) with the mayo scraped off, the scallops were really good!
Favourite, the sashimi...I knew it would be and I was right. Even if I felt really bad after because one of the chefs went to get a fish, dropped it on the floor and proceeded to kick it into the kitchen. Then put a towel over it to stop it from moving. It was better than the sashimi we had at the last place, so even better. The lamb soup was really good too but I'm still a little confused how it's considered seafood.

Pub crawl after was great. The one drink max at each place was good, we were allowed road beers so it made up for it.

I have to start writing down the cool things my kids say. Twice today I remember laughing out loud and now I don't remember why.

Today has been a crazy day. We are in the midst of writing essays and practicing for a speech and writing competition that my company is holding. Let me tell you, it's a lot of work. Normally, as NST's (native speaking teachers) we only have to edit and proof-read essays that the kids have written and then our co-teachers have pretty well re-written. That was last year.

My Treehouse class (kids that went through the whole Kindergarten experience go onto a special English class because usually their English is too advanced to go into the language school) they have finally reached the age where they can enter this contest. So here I've been organizing, re-writing, editing, proofing, typing, practicing...everything that is involved in this process has fallen onto me. Yes, I'm tired (mostly because as I write this, I'm waiting for another essay I have to proof over email from my language school) but tonight we had our first real practice, and while yes, they don't really know their entire speech, I really think they could do well. It makes me proud to see them trying their hardest and this is just when we are sitting on the floor going over pronunciation. All this work is worth it seeing my kids having so much fun learning a freaking speech that they have to say in front of God-knows how many people.

The competition is next Saturday...I hope they do a great job, I really believe they will. I'll keep you updated.

my school

I found this on YouTube and wanted to share...this is a clip that the tv show 5Takes (I don't know why it's all in Chinese) but anyway...they came to do a show at one of the schools in my company....

it's done

So all my worrying about leaving in March was for nothing. I was told today that they really want me to stay and because of that, they are willing to have 4 brand new teachers next August if it comes to that. So now, I have no idea when I will actually be home because I plan to go traveling after...but I still have to figure out what to do with all my shit! If anyone has any travel advice for Asia, let me know....