Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from the Dream Mall in Kaohsiung, Taiwan!

More lengthy update to come.

Storytelling Competition

Or should I say, storytelling/showing/dancing/singing/costuming/setdesigning competition. See my friend Vicky's post for her apt rant on the latest English competition my students endured. Vicky's complaints about the competition differ in detail but reflect my feelings in general.

About three weeks ago, I was told to write a seven-minute story about "making dreams real" that students would be able to memorize and recite. So I tried my best to come up with something that, I thought, ended up being a pretty good story. Not performance, not play. Story. After roster-changes and writing-changes galore, my final three team members were handed the final version of the story four days before the competition. We added in props as late as an hour before. When they went up on stage, I was nervous for them. So many changes, and having to memorize it all? Thankfully (unlike for Reader's Theater) there was no time minimum, so we didn't have to worry about them speeding up because of nerves.

But they didn't! I sat in the second row, recording with my camera while trembling a bit out of nerves for them. And they did it perfectly. There wasn't a forgotten line, and any word left out still kept the story intact. And the moral was delivered perfectly: "Don't wait for a magical wizard to show you the way. Love your family, work hard, respect others, and watch your dreams come true!" I was brimming with pride and confidence for them.

After all was said and done, we got one of the 4th place awards. I'm not going to complain, because I know some teams didn't place at all. But in a society where it seems like the predominant educational philosophy is "first place or bust," I have no idea how to explain why my students didn't do better. I just hope that they are proud of their hard work and accomplishment, and don't resent us too much for not giving them stage directions and head-to-toe costuming.

Anyway, here are the kids that will always be first place to me: Marvin, John, and Mina read "Andy and the Wizard."

Christmas in Kaohsiung

Now that I've gone over my classroom activities, I can tell you about the "traditional" Christmas I managed to pull together in this land without any apparent Christmas tradition.

Every Christmas since I can remember, I have been in Berwyn with my family. We go to church on Christmas Eve at 11pm, where we sing Silent Night in candlelight. Christmas day, we wake up in the morning (or afternoon, in recent years) and open presents and stockings together under the tree. "We" of course is my mom, dad, brothers, usually grandmother, and more recently, Cressy, our high-school-days' foreign exchange student from China. Then we have an extended family Christmas dinner, either at my family's house, my grandmother's house, or my cousins' house nearby. We call family further away, and then occasionally my brothers will run off to a movie and maybe invite me along, too. Or we'll all fall into turkey-and-sugar coma and fall asleep.

I was more than a little bummed about being away from home for Christmas. Right after Thanksgiving, my roommates and I decorated our apartment with a small (fake-- duh) tree, lights, and even some stockings. We found all the Christmas movies we could get our hands on, but that's all we could do.

As Christmas came closer, though, it started to seem a little more real. I was angry about having to be here, I tried to pretend it wasn't Christmas, I got sad about it, and finally, I got over it. I managed to find an English-speaking (in fact, foreigner-run) candlelight service on Christmas Eve, with Silent Night and readings from Luke and everything. We ordered a turkey from a hotel nearby, and some Fulbrighters even made some homemade mashed potatoes. So those Fulbrighters around brought a dish, came to our apartment, had a Christmas dinner, and watched Christmas movies. After our guests left, my roommates and I exchanged presents under the tree. It wasn't home, but it was something.

My roommate Dan, carving the turkey:

Decorating gingerbread cookies, care of Nicki:

Christmas revelry. You can see our decorations in the background:

After the gift exchange. Vicky is "that kid" who has to wear every gift she receives...

After watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" over a dozen times last week, I finally had to learn my lesson...

Christmas Day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.

Christmas comes to Fu Xing

I could either write one really long update about the holiday season in Taiwan, or I can break it up into hopefully digestible bites. So, here's the holiday update on how Christmas came and went at Fu Xing Primary School. We spent about two weeks of class doing holiday-related activities... I could write about it, or I could show pictures. I think I know what all my blog-readers prefer.

First, I taught them about the holiday season in the US (I even tried to talk about Chanukah before Susan told me it was too hard to understand...). Then they drew/colored pictures to decorate the classroom and listened to Christmas music. No pictures of that.

Second, they wrote letters to Santa. Some choice entries:

(As you can see, some didn't quite grasp the concept of a form letter.)

Third, my fifth graders put on a Christmas recital in their music class. It involved "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Santa Claus is coming to Town," in English!

Here they are, performing "Jingle Bells," or 叮叮當, on the recorder. Did you know that recorders come in soprano, alto, tenor, and bass varieties?

A performance of "We Wish you a Merry Christmas:"

Also, we watched the old cartoon version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in all my classes... 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders alike found it hilarious, captivating, and comprehensible-- even without subtitles. I'm sad that I no longer have the ability to laugh at cartoons just for being funny-looking. Anyway, the movie got across the message that I thought many of them needed to hear: Christmas is not defined by presents or decorations or fancy food.

A picture of the kids enjoying the Grinch (I'd never seen them pay this much attention all semester):

My grinch lesson board:

For those classes who had time, I wanted to tell my favorite Christmas story, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." The language is a little steep, though, even for native English speakers of the same age, so, with the help of my fantastic co-teacher Susan, I translated it into a Chinese poem with (approximately...) the same meter and rhyme scheme. Then the students drew/wrote their reactions:

Some sample "reflections" on the poem:
Stanley, from class 4-5:

I like this poem, but is very long. X'mas's night is quiet so is good. reindeer it's fling very high. He is very fat. He has elf and toys, he want give many children. He can go any ( ), Many children has a stocking. children want a gift any years. They are happy in this day. The world is love X'mas. so I like x'mas, too.

Heidi, from class 5-3:

I like this poem, this poem is old, it is 200 years old, I like their's Santa. hope Santa can give me a computer, but Santa is not here, this poem is long, the picture is beautiful, the Santa is fat, and teh Santa is nice, hope can listen again. Merry Christmas.

If anyone is interested in my (illustrated!) Powerpoint of "Twas the Night before Christmas" with Chinese and English, let me know.

And finally, since I did have to work all day on Christmas, I figured the only way to get through it was to bring it. So, of course, I brought it. And "it" was a reindeer sweater and antlers.

So, a belated Merry Christmas to all of you, from Fu Xing Primary School!

Katie is going to Krakow?!?; a filler post.

It's been too long since I've updated, but all my blogworthy goings-on lately connect somehow to the holiday season. I'd prefer to let that wrap up before I start summarizing and describing, so until then, here's a post that needs posting to tide you over.

---
Sometimes, life happens in mysterious ways. You find connections in two seemingly unrelated parts of your life, and those connections reinforce that your life might actually make sense after all.

An example? My winter break trip to Krakow, Poland.

As you all know by now, I'm working at Fu Xing Primary School in Kaohsiung city. Kaohsiung is to be the host of the World Games in July 2009, so the city is making all sorts of preparations to show the world that it is an international, developed, tourist-worthy city. Every elementary school has "adopted" a World Games country. I'm not sure how and why the countries were assigned as they were. My roommate Dan's school has a really strong English program, and its adopted country is the United States. Makes sense. My roommate Vicky's school has adopted Uzbekistan. Why? Who knows. One of the schools up north has adopted Cuba. And my school, Fu Xing, has adopted Poland.

Before the boyfriend Jonathan ever got a job offer to work in Poland, I was spending at least one period a week teaching in a room with a huge map of Poland on the wall, and cardboard cut-outs with traditional Polish clothing. I've translated messages for banners and posters to welcome the Polish World Game athletes. In case you don't believe me...

Wall-sized Polish map with cultural tidbits in Chinese:

Polish cardboard cutouts. The dude on the right is our English Village postman... obviously.

So even though planning a Lunar New Year trip from Kaohsiung to Krakow was neither easy nor inexpensive, the fact that I'll be spending my only school vacation in Poland actually, somehow, makes sense. My principal even wants to give me a stipend to buy cultural and educational souvenirs to bring back for the school.

Now, I leave for this trip in about a month. This is the first time I'll be going to a foreign country where I don't speak the language and/or don't have a native speaker contact in the area. So let's get your Poland/traveling/Europe/learninganewlanguagereallyfast tips rolling!

Getting political

Taiwan has a very interesting political situation. Aside from the obvious ambiguous status in its relations with China, the domestic politics can get pretty intense.

This article describes one of the many recent antics of the two rivaling parties. I kind of wish congress got this hilariously personal... or at least had article titles with such stupid humor.

So click and be merry: Man who snatched wig will have toupee.

My new(ish) bike

You may remember a post from a month or two ago referencing my spontaneous desire to buy an electric bike in the context of other spontaneous desires. Well, I've become well-known here for my follow-through. In early November, after lots of price-checking and research, I found a used electric bike on a craigslist-esque Taiwanese website, contacted the owner, checked it out, and got myself a new toy.

The bike is about a year old and is the same size (maybe a bit shorter) than an average bike. It's equipped with a lead-acid battery that weighs about 25 pounds, which would render the bike totally impractical if it didn't so handily fit in my building's elevator. With the battery off, you ride it just like a regular bike. With the battery on, you can "rev" the "engine" to about 15mph without pedaling. All this for a mere 5000 TWD (about $165 US).

This means that I can now ride to work sweat-free and fee-free in about the same time as the bus would take. I pass most of the regular bikes on the road, except this one stubborn old man who pedals furiously and manages to pull just ahead. This is by far the best mode of transportation for me. I plug it into the wall for a few hours at night, and voila, I have four hours of battery. An efficient and effortless way to get around, it doesn't require a license and doesn't emit any form of exhaust. The best part? People here think electric bikes are extremely nerdy, so it will probably never get stolen.

And now, a grainy picture of my electric bike.

My new shoes

Before they get any dirtier. My most important souvenir from Tainan.


Yes, they are so Asian, thank you for noticing.

A weekend in Tainan

This weekend, Dan, Dani, Nicki, Shana, and I ventured into the city of 台南, about an hour north of 高雄, led by Shana's host family. Tainan is the former capital of Taiwan, known for its beautiful architecture and numerous old temples. It had a pleasant old-town feel, and though it's also a large city for Taiwan, it felt much less like a city than dear old Kaohsiung.

Anyway, I'm tired and it's been a long day, so enjoy your favorite kind of blog post: light on narrative, heavy on pictures.

Saturday night, a nice alley/side-street (in black and white-- I was fooling with my camera settings):

The front of Shana's host father's favorite temple:

A nominee for my Taiwanese food hall of fame, 鱔魚米粉, for the categories "thing I least wanted to eat" and "thing that made me feel sick the longest:"

Sunday morning, scenes from the temple parade (switch to phone camera as my real one ran out of batteries):


The Confucius temple:


A very old tree outside the temple:

And a nice garden:

And those are the highlights from my weekend trip to Tainan.

I will also note, it was no colder than 55 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday night, and we found ourselves shivering in sweatshirts, hoods pulled up, and blowing on our hands to keep warm. Oh, Taiwanese winter...

Television musings

One of the things that minimizes the homesickness and keeps me sane is being able to watch good old American TV, whether found online, recorded via Slingbox, or rented at Blockbuster. There are a handful of shows that I'm keeping up with, and by "keeping up with," I mean some days I can't wait to get home to watch my recording from a few hours earlier, and other days I'll realize I haven't seen the show in weeks and should probably catch up. In any case, my TV repertoire strikes an interesting balance.

Mondays

• Chuck (NBC): half-action, half-comedy with a dash of never-gonna-happen romance.
• How I Met Your Mother (CBS): romantic comedy, twenty-something humor.

Wednesdays

• Private Practice (ABC): total guilty pleasure. Primetime soap opera.
  
• Pushing Daisies (ABC): whimsical, artistic, clever.

Thursdays

• Grey's Anatomy (ABC): total guilty pleasure. Primetime soap opera.
  
• The Office (NBC): smart, awkward comedy with a dash of romance.
• 30 Rock (NBC): smart, awkward comedy.

Anyway, mid-season schedules have been released, and it appears that Chuck will be on hiatus until February, and Pushing Daisies is being canceled completely. If you take a look at what's left, that leaves a lot of awkward humor and guilty pleasures. Where's the substance? Where's the legitimacy?

Many of you laugh at how seriously I take TV (whatever, please observe my stress levels, even during peak thesis season at Harvard), but I'm not the only one. I read this article mourning the cancelation of Pushing Daisies, in the meantime jabbing at this season of Grey's Anatomy. The comparison was too entertaining to pass up:

Well in terms of artistic legitmacy (which is a relevant topic when talking about “Pushing Daisies”) at least ABC still has “Grey’s Anatomy,” right? Aren’t the critics wild for that [...]? Yeaaah, no. My wife still watches it despite the fact it officially jumped the shark after the second season... “Grey’s Anatomy” seems to circle around and find a new stunt to jump over the shark every week. The other week it had a robot on it. Yes, a [...] robot! And then I noticed the other night they’re telling a ghost story with the dude who died from a bad heart a few seasons ago. It’s time to retire the phrase “jumped the shark.” We’re now in the era of “Grey’s Anatomy” and when a show screws itself beyond repair I’m saying it’s either “gone robot” or “ghosted Denny.”

Anyway, of my few loyal blog readers, I'm sure that none-to-one of you actually cares about the content of this post. But still, I had to throw it out there. When English storytelling competitions and teaching observations and travel plans and scheduled-and-rescheduled events are around, it's nice to have something that keeps me sane.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, I may be in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, and I may have had to work on both days that most Americans get off work, but at least I got to eat some turkey. And talk about it, a lot, in my 感恩節 lesson plan.

I was actually lucky enough to have two Thanksgivings. The first was last Saturday night; we met an American woman at a bar a few weeks back, and she was kind enough to invite us to her own American Thanksgiving at her apartment. So we enjoyed a Costco turkey, homemade pumpkin pie, and lots of other traditional American Thanksgiving food (including mashed sweet potatoes, provided by Apartment C) in the company of several English cram school teachers from the US and Canada.

The second Thanksgiving took place on Thanksgiving night and was held by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in Kaohsiung, which is basically the American consulate/embassy (but due to Taiwan's ambiguous political status, it cannot officially be called that). So, the chief of AIT hosted this event for Fulbrighters, our Taiwanese co-teachers, and some other Americans living and working in Kaohsiung. It was more than we could have ever hoped for on Thanksgiving in a foreign country. There was turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, cookies, cranberry sauce... and it was all fantastic. And thankfully for me (and all of you), my fantastic co-teacher Amy brought her camera and sent me all the pictures she took. And Taiwanese people love to photograph food. So, some photos from my first Thanksgiving away from home, care of Amy.

Homemade dinner, probably in the largest domestic oven in southern Taiwan... which would be average size in the U.S.


Pumpkin pie... straight from Costco!

A lot of the Fulbrighters and our co-teachers, with Mason (deputy chief of AIT):

Amy, Susan, and me, with the host (chief of AIT-Kaohsiung, or whatever you call it):

Note my insistence on wearing a sweater, even though it certainly wasn't cold enough to do so. The good news is, it was as low as 65 the other day! I hope these "cold fronts" come with more frequency from now on. (It's back to 78 today.)

Third place!

So, the past few weeks, I've been spending a lot of time (in class, between classes, after class) working with a group of seven fifth graders for Fu Xing's entry into the Kaohsiung City Reader's Theater competition. Susan and I auditioned and selected the team members together, while I was solely responsible for writing a 5-minute original script. Considering I had no idea what "Reader's Theater" even was, let alone what an appropriate script would entail, it was a bit of a challenge. Last year's English teacher prepared them for months before the competition and was able to arrange multiple practices a day, and the students earned second place. Susan and I found out about it a week before the registration deadline (less than a month ago) and, both being new to Fu Xing, had no idea how to go about... anything.

Anyway, long story short, we pulled it together. The competition took place today, and I'm happy to say that my students got third place in their division! (Groups were divided by school size.) And I think they had a good time with it, too. Special thanks to Glennie for getting the ball rolling with my creativity. Here's an excerpt from our conversation on November 5th:

me: i need a creative idea for a kid's play

Glennie: how are you?

can you base it on a book?

me: that kids who can't really speak english could pull off

8:26 PM should be original

Glennie: winnie the pooh?

ah

me: it's 7 kids

and there's no acting, just.. dramatic reading

Glennie: you have to write it?

me: previous winners have included a lot of kids speaking in groups and singing

yes

Glennie: hmm

when do you need it by

8:27 PM me: tonight.

well i have to have a solid idea tonight

we submit our registration tomorrow for the contest

which includes the kids' names and the title/subject

8:28 PM Glennie: ok, right now all i'm coming up wiht is having masks

of two different colors (two groups of three) who don't like each other for one reason or another

me: hahah

Glennie: and one little kid in a white mask who makes them see that they are pretty when they mix (i.e. red and blue groups make purple) or something

So, with that in mind, here I present to you the final rehearsal of Fu Xing Primary School's "Blue, Yellow, and Red," starring Annie as the Narrator, Marvin and Gavin as Red, Lily and David as Blue, and Dennis and Christina as Yellow. I was way too nervous to film during the actual performance, and I'm way too impatient to wait for the official recording, so the final rehearsal (with mistakes and prop mishaps and all) is what you get. But trust me, you'll get the idea.



And here's a picture of Susan, me, and the Fu Xing Reader's Theater team after the performance.

PS: This post was supposed to go up Wednesday night, after the competition took place Wednesday afternoon, but the video took an eternity to upload, so you're not seeing it until now. Sorry!

PPS: Mom, did I ever thank you for this shirt? If not... thanks. I like it. I wear it a lot. Like to Reader's Theater competitions.

Written with a broken heart

I don't really know how to talk about it, how to write about it, but it's something that you all will ask about at some point, so it's best for me to answer your question before you even ask.

Three weeks ago today, we adopted two young puppies, Sonic and Milo. They had been strays, but they'd had their first round of vaccinations, and we were seeing the vet regularly. After about a week and a half, Sonic started to lose his appetite, and got a pretty severe cough. We brought him into the vet, who told us that Sonic had canine distemper and would likely die.

Canine distemper is a disease uncommon in the US because most dogs have been vaccinated against it and vaccinated mothers provide their puppies with enough immunization to get them through the early months. Taiwan, however, has a high population of stray dogs, and many Taiwanese don't follow the vaccination protocol for the dogs they do choose to raise. Thus, these highly preventable, highly fatal diseases still have a high occurrence in the population.

We contacted the woman from whom we'd adopted the boys right away, and a week ago she picked Sonic up to stay at a veterinary hospital for treatment. I visited him every day, but after the first few days, he began to quickly deteriorate. And this morning, three weeks after we adopted him, Sonic was unable to stand, eat, or control his own muscles. With incredible sadness but full knowledge that it was the right thing to do, we had to let him go.

I'll always remember Sonic. He was paper-trained within a week (Milo still hasn't figured it out). He liked to chew on anything; if our shoes weren't around, he went for the kitchen wall. His eyes were always bright, unlike any other dog I've seen before-- we fondly called him "Asian eyes." He was a handsome dog who had a lot of energy, but until the day he lost muscle control, he would climb into my lap and fall asleep in minutes. I'll always remember Sonic.

There is nothing we could have done about the canine distemper, and in fact it's still likely that Milo will start showing symptoms any day now. All we can do is hope for Milo, and be glad that Sonic at least knew some love, comfort, and a sense of home before he died.

I will always remember Sonic.

Yet another reason I'm glad I bought a Slingbox

I may have to stay up until 1am to watch kickoff, and it may have a pretty slow buffering process, but at least I can watch the 125th Harvard-yale game, live, from my bed, in Taiwan.

Also, every time I hear the words "great football weather," "cold, windy day," and "below freezing," I feel a little less jealous of all my friends back in Cambridge this weekend.

And, I just heard the band play. Aw.

A little slice of home

So, you know how those fake-vintage shirts have become really popular lately? "Iowa City 4-H State Finalists 2003," "Chippewa Little League All Stars," "San Jose High Varsity Soccer," etc. Well, they are particularly popular in Taiwan. I get the feeling they're mostly made in Asian countries, from the bizarre diction and spelling used.

Anyway, yesterday in class, one of my fourth grade students was wearing one of these shirts. I almost didn't notice, but when she came up to do the speaking part of her midterm, my jaw almost dropped. Later, after the test, I just had to get a picture.

Why?


I mean, it's not spelled perfectly, but Tredyffrin-Easttown was the only word I ever got wrong in 5th grade spelling. Bizarre, eh?

As your holiday season approaches...

Hanshin department store has started putting up Christmas decorations, so I thought it would be fun to write up a list of some days I'll be working this year that you won't be.

I will be working on...

• November 27th, 8am-4pm
• November 28th, 8am-12pm
  
• December 24th, 8am-12pm
  
• December 25th, 8am-4pm
  
• December 31st, 8am-12pm
• January 1st, 8am-4pm
  

And so on and so forth. I figure this is about the time people start complaining about only getting off work a few days for Christmas, or having to work the day after Thanksgiving... or bragging about all their vacation days... Anyway, I'm probably not the person to go to for any of this.

Then again, I will be off from January 21st to February 11th. Krakow, here I come!

Culturally Confounded in Taiwan: Chapter 3

This one sort of goes along the lines of getting free stuff. But it doesn't.

I'm sitting in the classroom right now during lunch break. All the students are in their homerooms, either eating or settling in for an afternoon nap. A small girl just came in and said to me (in Chinese), "Today is my birthday. Here is juice for you." I replied with a confused "Happy birthday" in English and Chinese as she walked out the door.

So now I'm sitting here with papaya juice on my desk that some child gave me for her birthday. I feel a little bad. First I was disappointed to have my birthday on a Saturday because it meant no adorable 4th grade chorus of "Happy Birthday" in class, but now that I realize I might have had to provide treats for everyone on my birthday, maybe it was for the better.

This is not the first time this has happened, either. I've also gotten candy and mooncakes from students on their birthdays. I vaguely remember parents baking brownies or cupcakes or something for kids to bring in on their birthdays back in elementary school, but buying papaya juice for the whole faculty? This one's new to me.

My two excuses

So, the secret's out. Time to disclose what I've been busy with the past few weeks. But first, let me explain how it all started.

A few weeks ago, my roommate Dani was getting her bike out to run an errand. I was chatting with her while she was getting ready to head out. I told her about how I don't like using my bike as much in this traffic, and that I was (and am) thinking about getting an electric bike, or a kit to make my bike electric. Dani was half-interested in, half-amused by my rambling. I then said, "It's okay, it's just something I'm fixated on right now. That, and... how would you feel if I got a small, contained pet in my room? Like a flying squirrel or chinchilla?"

Dani laughed, said she didn't really care what I did, and then said, "What I really want is a dog." As a chinchilla was the most interesting, cuddly, still-containable pet I could come up with because I thought a dog was out of the question, I was excited by her response. So we talked. And we plotted. And we asked our roommates. I asked our guard whether dogs were allowed in the building, and he answered, "不要吵就可以啦!"

We had all the green lights we needed. So I started searching and email local animal shelters (in Chinese!) about adopting dogs. About a week and three trips to 左營 later, Sonic and Milo had entered our lives.

Dani and I adopted two stray puppies (sort of for my birthday) from an animal shelter here in Kaohsiung. They are mixed breeds, brothers, about two or three months old. We named one Sonic, because he is a little ball of energy like our favorite video game hedgehog. We considered some obvious corresponding names (Knuckles, Doc(tor Robotnik), and Tails)... but somehow, ended up with Milo.

If you're concerned, veterinary care is very inexpensive in Taiwan and we can more than afford it. And though it's complicated, I'm planning on taking them with me when I leave Taiwan.

And now, some pictures.

First, my birthday lunch at T.G.I.Friday's.


And now, PUPPIES! Everybody loves puppies.

First day home, Sonic likes chewing on my sock.

Dani cuddles the tiny, calm Milo while Sonic watches, desperate for attention.

Sonic finds the attention he seeks. In my lap.

Now, the boys are growing up. Milo is more energetic, and Sonic and I have enjoyed several naps together on the couch. Milo finishes his dinner first and stands vigilant over Sonic, waiting for him to lose interest and leave his bowl unattended.

They are sweet, smart boys who are about 90% paper-trained after less than two weeks. Their vaccines aren't complete until Christmas, so for now they have to be apartment dogs and can't go outside. But they were officially introduced to my Fulbright peers last night, so now they can be officially introduced to you.

A Landmark Occasion

Today in Kaohsiung, for the first time since I got here three and a half months ago, the temperature went below 80 degrees. All the way down to 66 degrees. Fahrenheit.

Kids are wearing ski vests over their gym uniforms. We didn't turn the fans on in class. I didn't sweat walking to the bus stop.

Of course, the same weather in New England would bring out lots of pasty skin revealed by shorts and tank tops, but here, I'm really excited that I can finally wear long pants and not want to die.

Here's to hoping this lasts!

Long weekend #2: Kenting

I've been neglecting the blog lately. I have two excuses, but I won't bother to tell you about them. Instead, I'll do a mostly-pictures update of my second weekend trip when Jon was here. We went to Kenting, which is on the southern tip of Taiwan. The setting of "Cape No. 7," Kenting is the Taiwanese resort town. Except we stayed in a small inn, not a huge resort, so much of the weekend was spent figuring out how to get around and what we were supposed to be doing. Regardless, Kenting was a beautiful place to be, and thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend (remember what I said about how getting advice from locals was a necessity?), we did end up at some good restaurants and on an excellent snorkelling excursion.

And now, some pictures.

Jon overlooks the main Kenting beach:

A view of the landscape on the east coast of Taiwan:

The Pacific Ocean. Look really hard, can you see California?

A nice trip to the national aquarium:



And a great snorkeling trip by the nuclear power plant. Seriously. Once you swim through a few yards of trash, you get to an amazingly diverse and beautiful coral reef:
(our snorkel-guide had an underwater camera. Phew.)

I still have some other Jon pictures and stories, but they are smaller. This will probably be my last in the "Jon summary" series, as I'm getting way behind on blogging on actual current events. But I hope you've enjoyed these stories. All this and more could be yours, if you visit Taiwan, too!

Taipei: Kaohsiung of the north?

Now, back to those Jon stories. It may seem like there are a lot, but he was here for over two weeks, and this post will mark the end of week one. Granted, my getting sunburned on 10-10 meant that I got my usual sunburn-induced cold/cough in week two, so activity was substantially reduced.

Anyway, I will come out and say it, Taipei is not my favorite city. Though Kaohsiung is supposed to be more dense, Taipei feels more crowded with more traffic and scarier-looking stray dogs. The biggest lesson that I learned from going to Taipei with Jon is that, in Taiwan, it is really necessary to get advice from a local on where to go and what to do. For the times when we just wanted to wander and find things, we inevitably got lost and ended up eating McDonald's because it's all we could find. When we found something online or in a travel book, we ended up disappointed and not sure if we were in the right place.

But the three places that were heavily recommended by friends, the Palace Museum, the Taipei Zoo, and the Shihlin Night Market, were definitely successful ventures. The Palace Museum is a collection of everything from art to ceramics to old letters that were taken from the Mainland during the communist revolution. No pictures were allowed, but it was definitely a tourist-friendly and worthwhile trip.

The Taipei Zoo is at the end of one subway line, far outside center city; it's a sprawling zoo with plenty of different landscapes to accommodate almost every animal. A favorite exhibit was the koalas, though the pictures didn't come out great through the glass:

And then there were the elephants, that Jon's college roommate Benny apparently took care of for a summer:

And that big furry bear that Jon really, really wanted to take home:

We also went to the top of Taipei 101, seeing the whole city from 101 floors up:

Of course, going to Taipei 101 with a physics major was a little different. He was way more interested in the damper that kept the building steady. Here he is, posing with the "damper baby," with the big damper in the background:

The Shihlin night market was also a successful trip, with more food and people than we could ever take in:

And finally, a nice picture of one of those great monuments that we never meant to see while getting lost on our way to somewhere else:

And though I have hundreds of other pictures from the Taipei weekend, it's time to move on to week 2. Look forward to it!