A trip to the mountains

For Lauren's last (and only) full weekend in Taiwan, we took a trip with several other Fulbrighters to the mountains. 阿里山 is one of Taiwan's most popular tourist spots, particularly during this time of year when the cherry blossoms are in bloom. We got there right at the tail end of the cherry blossom season, which means slightly fewer cherry blossoms (but still as many tourists).

Anyway, because it was peak tourism season, we (read: Rebekah and Gered, our awesomely 辛苦 trip organizers) had to creatively put together the trip without actually staying in 阿里山. So we left early Friday and took the train to 嘉義, hired a driver to take us to 瑞里, and promptly napped on the "traditional Asian floor, as we said in HCAP-Seoul. (You get a couple blankets and lay them on a wooden floor and that's your bed.)

After a lunchbox lunch at our 山莊, we decided to go see the sites in the mountains and were off.

Lunchbox satisfaction level:

View from the balcony:

The forest/mountains were really pretty, and there was a lot of bamboo:

We hiked several kilometers to find a batcave (or "bat grotto," as some signs called it). Apparently all the bats have left the area because of tourism. Oops:

We then spent a lot of time looking for a waterfall. First we thought it dried up:

But eventually, we found it:

There were a lot of steps. We definitely ended up walking (hiking?) further than we had intended, which resulted in a long upward climb to the top:

But at least it was pretty along the way:

That night, we had a big family-style vegetarian dinner at the 山莊, saw some fireflies with some very enthusiastic young hotel guests, ate some roasted sweet potatoes, drank some floral tea, and went to bed by nine.

The next day we were up at seven (I opted out of the 4am sunrise trip). We had another family-style breakfast at the hotel, and when we weren't psyched about eating pickled radishes for breakfast, the 老闆 reassured us that we should try it even though it's not like "美國的漢堡." Then we were in a car to 阿里山 by 8.

Unlike 瑞里, 阿里山 was full of tourists and we were not full of energy. So we took a few trails, took some pictures of the cherry blossoms, saw some giant trees, and called it a day.




At 3pm we took the famous Alishan Forest Railway to our hotel in 奮起湖, yet another mountain town. The Alishan Forest Railway is the third most famous mountain railway... or something. I'm not sure. It was a very pretty ride though, and every once in a while we'd pass a crazed tourist snapping pictures of the train from the forest.

The train approaching the station at Alishan with cherry blossoms and mist... too much 特色!

Lauren and Katie aboard the Alishan Forest Railway:

Our stay in 奮起湖 wasn't entirely eventful; we found a good restaurant for dinner, hung out by the 7-11, and saw the staff of the hotel we stayed in exactly once from check-in to check-out. Then we were up and off at 8am for a long and nauseating busride back to 嘉義 where Lauren and I parted ways at the 高鐵 station. She headed off to the airport and I headed back to Kaohsiung.

And there ended Lauren's visit to Taiwan... Now that I've caught up with blogging, I'm headed out to 墾丁 for three nights and three days of Spring Scream. I never did the multi-day, camping-out concert thing back in the United States, so I'm sure I'm in for an experience.

Back on Monday!

An afternoon at Lotus Lake

Lotus Lake, or 蓮池潭, is one of Kaohsiung's more famous and more scenic attractions. I'd managed never to really go there until Lauren's visit prompted me to find something nice and also representative of Taiwanese (or more broadly East Asian) culture. My prior visit to Lotus Lake was in August when we were touring the various co-teaching schools, and Chiou Cheng Elementary is right by Lotus Lake. In August, however, Lotus Lake was totally dried out in order to make it deeper for World Games trials and competitions. So as you look at these pictures, imagine sports like competitive waterskiing, wakeboarding, and canoe polo taking place on and around these tranquil waters.

That's about all the description I can give. Lotus Lake: a lake with nearby mountains reflected in the water and picturesque temples set on and around it. Now take a look at the pictures.

The Dragon and Tiger pagodas:


Views from atop the Dragon pagoda:

(The land)

(The lake)

The Spring and Autumn Pavilions (I think?):

Me being Asian by a Buddhist deity:

Lauren stands by the least scenic part of the Confucius Temple at Kaohsiung (the rest of it was closed for the day):

And that's it for Lotus Lake! Up next: a weekend in the mountains. Stay tuned!

Your average Tuesday?

I was in the middle of an entry on my trip to Lotus Lake with Lauren when the sound of several fireworks in loud succession coming from very close by interrupted my train of thought. I was forced to investigate.

Apparently, the temple across the street from my apartment building is having some sort of temple parade right now. I saw some temple parades in Tainan, but they were all around 10am on a Saturday (or was it Sunday?) morning. A very logical time. Right now, at 10:30pm on a Tuesday, I would not expect this amount of liveliness (read: loudness). But alas... fireworks, cymbals, Asian horns, and deities shrouded in neon lights are filling the street in front of my apartment and pouring into my very large window. The dog is going crazy, racing from my bedroom door to my lap and back again, trying to find a way to escape the noise and/or find its source.

I took this video from the porch. Not a great view, but maybe it will give you an idea of what is going on (and has been going on for at least 30 minutes) and what will prevent me from falling asleep until it has finished. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this wouldn't happen back home... at least, not on a Tuesday night at 10:30.



Also, in my family, this is not just an average Tuesday. It is my 奶奶's birthday today. Happy birthday, Nan!

Kaohsiung earns more tourist dollars because of American Fulbrighters...

Last week, my friend Lauren (also Harvard '08) decided to take her own spring break and visit me in Taiwan. This was very fun and exciting for me, as I don't get a spring break. So during her visit, I gave her a sampler of things essential to Kaohsiung City and my life there. Things like...

...eating 雪花冰 at Ice Art:


...taking a boat ride on the 愛河:

...getting all-you-can-eat 火鍋:

...going shopping at 新崛江, one of Kaohsiung's many 夜市s:

...hanging out with Chia-ling (and making peace signs in every picture):

...teaching some classes at 復興國小:

...and even stopping by the 太平國小 English Village:

Lauren and I also ventured to Lotus Lake, a place I hadn't been since August (when it was more like Lotus all-dry-and-smelly-because-it-was-dug-up-for-the-WorldGames), and spent the weekend in the mountains of central Taiwan. Blog posts on these adventures and more coming soon!

If you're coming to Taiwan...

Hang out with my newest friend who lives at the Taipei Taoyuan airport:


On a related note, my friend Lauren from college days is visiting this week. As usual, when I'm with an actual person, I spend less time with my computer. You can expect a blog or two about our adventures once she heads out of town. But a sneak preview: she has come to school (Fu Xing and English Village) with me every day so far, which means our post-work activities have mainly involved naps.

English Village consumes yet another day of my life

Alternative title: My first step toward becoming a Taiwanese soap opera star.

The Backstory
I don't know if you all remember, but there's this thing called English Village that is a big part of my job here in Kaohsiung. Two days a week, every week, I go to an elementary school other than my own Fu Xing (last semester it was Fu Dong, this semester it is Tai-Ping) and work the English Village. What does this mean? For over two hours I act as a "waitress" and repeat the same dialogue/activity eight times with a different group of fifth graders from Kaohsiung. Every ten minutes it's a new group that I've never seen before and will never see again. The amount of times I've said "menu" and "restaurant" since September is probably in the quadruple-digit-range, and I'm not at all exaggerating. I won't say it's not mindless, and sometimes my least favorite part of working here, but I acknowledge that it's a good experience for all of the fifth graders in Kaohsiung to get a chance to practice English and learn that speaking to foreigners isn't that scary.

Anyway, many schools throughout Kaohsiung also have their own English Village (though it's not yet part of the field trip circuit like Fu Dong and Tai-Ping). Fu Xing is lucky enough to have its own English Village convenience store and post office. Working at Fu Xing's English Village is far less painful, as I know many of the students and I don't have to do the same restaurant/menu/"I want blahblahblah" routine.

How this relates to my eventual fame and fortune
So someone, somewhere (read: probably the Kaohsiung Bureau of Education) decided to document the success of Kaohsiung's English Village program by making a film at each English Village, large and small. No one really knew what to do, though, so it has turned into a "let's show off our school and its best English students" video. Whatever. All I know is, I spent four hours this morning with a handful of our best fifth and sixth grade English students and a guy with a camera in all of our faces. Not something I expected to be doing this year, but as I've learned this year, when working in Taiwan, one must expect the unexpected.

I tried to minimize my actual on-camera time by giving the big parts to students, but I still did my part. Most of the day I just spent taking pictures and shaking my head in amusement and disbelief at the strange things that have happened since moving to Taiwan. Oh, culture!


The pictures you will all skip to instead of reading the above text
The pivotal Convenience Store scene:

The principal gets involved:

The recorder ensemble is featured, of course (sorry for the bad angle):

Fu Xing Decor?
And some weird World Games art created out of recyclable material. I'm unsure whether these were made for the video or whether kids putting up these art projects the day before the filming was unrelated.

A robot with all of the World Games sports on it:

The World Games mascots atop some empty bottles:

This one was actually pretty, made of cardboard and old CDs:

And this one wouldn't be nearly as creepy if it weren't wearing a sweater:

And that was how I spent my Friday. What did YOU do?

C-Bikes

Long time no blog.

A week has gone by and I haven't given you any entertaining updates on my Taiwan existence. Oops! That really means I have nothing exciting to report... sorry.

But as a filler, here's something that I passed by a couple weeks ago and found kind of cool.

It looks like Kaohsiung City is "going green," both literally and figuratively, in a new program that's like Zipcar for bicycles. The lime green bikes could catch anyone's attention:

Basically, in an effort to promote both eco-friendly travel and Kaohsiung tourism, the city is setting up these bike rental locations all around the city and developing tourist-friendly bike trails (which I'm hoping are not, but I'm guessing are, largely composed of scooter lanes on major roads). Here's the kiosk by the Cultural Center:


The rates are fairly cheap... NT $30 for the first half hour, NT $15 after that. So, an hour of biking costs you less than US $1.50. Plus, you get to ride around in an awesomely lime green bike. What could be better?

For more info, check out the C-Bike English website.

A language anecdote

On Thursday, like every other Thursday, I was leading Fu Xing's English Village class. We have a different class come through every Thursday morning to do English-related activities. Last Thursday, we had two first grade classes come to play a simple game with post office vocabulary, then get a sticker.

Students don't start learning English in public school until 3rd grade, so the 1st graders don't really know any English except maybe "Hello" and "1, 2, 3." Maybe a few go to private English schools outside of class. We just play an easy game, make sure they say things like "Ready" and "Thank you," then they're on their way.

At the end of the game, as I handed out stickers to the winning team, one of the 1st grade boys stuck his sticker to his hand and then held the sticker back, looking confused. He said, in Chinese, "Teacher, there is no trash can, what should I do with the back to my sticker?" So I reached out my hand and took the sticker back from his. Then his face lit up and he smiled. This is the point where other students have said, "Katie 老師聽得董國語!"

But being in 1st grade and in a different linguistic mindset, he made what seemed to him a perfectly valid assumption. He said, in Chinese, "Wow! I can speak English!"

I don't think being a linguistics major is a prerequisite for finding this adorable.

They grow up so fast

So, our little Milo is about 7 months old these days (or 6... that's what you get when you adopt a stray) and already at the "he won't get any bigger than" weight that the adoption vet told us (15 kilograms). But of course, he's still getting bigger. And just got his 結紮 yesterday. Though I declined to see his 蛋蛋... do they offer that service in America?

He goes on walks (often walks us), sleeps through the night, and, as a couple vets have said, "很會吃."

Anyway, here are the pictures that everyone wants to see of the little Taiwan 流浪狗 that could.






Little post-op Milo (a.k.a. Coneface) walks home from the vet...

Extra(-)Krakow Adventures

Jonathan and I had two big adventures outside of the city of Krakow. If you watched my school Powerpoint, you've already gotten a preview.

First, we went to Wieliczka Salt Mine, about 30 minutes (on a very, very crowded public bus) outside of the city. The salt mine is one of the biggest tourist attractions Krakow has to offer, or so say all the travel guides and websites, so we figured we better go. Having never been on a mine tour in recent memory, and having never been to a salt mine ever, it was an interesting experience, and most of the other members of the English tour agreed. I paid the 10 zlotys (3 USD) to take pictures (I'm an educator, after all!), so here are the pictures from this very old, very touristy salt mine.

Note that everything in these pictures that's not made of wood or water is made of salt.

Nicolas Copernicus... made of salt! By salt miners!

A chandelier... made of salt!

A Catholic church... made of salt!

General mine picture. (Not entirely made of salt.)

The salt mine was really cool to see, and our tour guide had awesomely dry humor. Of course, it's the kind of place I'd love to wander and get lost on my own, but with 300km of tunnels, I'm quite sure I wouldn't have found my way out.

Trip Two: Zakopane

After a recommendation from a friend (thanks Carissa!), Jonathan and I spent a day in Zakopane, a little mountain town about two hours by (a less crowded but more teenagery) bus from Krakow. Because Jon's lack of health insurance did not go well with his snowboarding abilities, we didn't try to go skiing and just opted for sight-seeing. It's a good thing we weren't going to ski, because we went on an unusually warm (50 degrees Fahrenheit) day, and half the mountain was melting.

So we took a ride on the train/gondola/whatever-it-was up a mountain and took in the sights:


We also walked around the town for quite a bit, watching vendors trying to entertain and sell to anyone and everyone that passed. We even tried some of the local mountain cheese, but I think we picked the wrong kind, because it just ended up tasting like ham.


After the sun set and Jonathan and I had finished his birthday pizza and apple pie, we got on a very long, winding train back to Krakow (how the train takes twice as long as a bus, I will never understand).

And with that, I think, the blogging of my winter vacation to Krakow (nearly a month ago) has come to an end. Hope you enjoyed it!