around taichung

I think that an extremely clever, fast-talking tile salesman came to Taiwan in the 70's or 80's sometime and unloaded his entire supply onto this poor country. Or maybe some important government official had a brother who manufactured tile. Or maybe the Taiwanese thought that making their cities look like the inside of a bathroom was the way to go. Whatever the reason, about a tenth of the buildings here are covered in tile. It looks ok actually, but it is something I have never seen before. My problem is that many of the sidewalks are covered in it too. And while they look nice, they get a little slippery Or, actually, really slippery. I have been caught up short while walking down the street a few times. (Especially when it rains.) But I can't be the only person who has this problem. Granted, it is not unusual for me to trip over myself while walking across the street, but part of the problem is definitely the material I am working with. Didn't someone test this idea out before they started slapping tile down everywhere? I really don't get it.

So, many of the buildings here are shrouded in tile. A lot (of other buildings) have beautiful, modern architecture. (Especially in the areas that I have been in, where the princeton review offices are.) But the majority of the buildings are old school, run down, communist era looking. Not that the communists were here, exactly. (I think. I haven't read super extensively.) But there was a repressive regime, and the outside of many of the buildings represent what that usually does to a country. However, I have heard (of the buildings in Taiwan generally) that the outsides don't reflect the insides, and that many of the insides of buildings are all beautifully refurbished. I have seen a little evidence that this is true, but my experience hasn't been extensive enough to really speak to this. I have seen some of both, crappy outsides with crappy insides, crappy outsides with nice insides.

A lot of the buildings lining the streets have little tiny storefronts, and when I walk home I look through them. Many of them are still open, but aren't actually being used as storefronts. They are being used as living rooms/pseudo store fronts, and the sidewalks have a kitchen stand or piles of merchandise hanging out all over the place. So when I walk by it is either like I walking through someone's front "yard" or through the middle of their stuff. It's weird. Or, if the sidewalk is completely taken up, I get to walk in the street. Where the mopeds and cars go. But that's ok, the drivers here have a really polite way speeding around you.

Speaking of which, the taxi drivers here are artists. They have absolutely no respect for the lines on the road. This ethic isn't a surprise, but it is amazing how fluidly they push their way into intersections. I mean, we are on city streets, with obstacles and all, so they can't go nascar fast, but it is sort of like decaffeinated nascar. The other day, one driver made left hand turn across three lanes of traffic. Across 3 lanes of moving traffic. He just drove straight across. Over yellow lines. Just decided, hell, I want to be on the other side of the road. It was extremely exciting. And no one was injured. Or surprised. Except me. But I was very quiet. I just didn't know anyone had balls that big. And, really, I guess I should be complimented that the driver thought I had anywhere that important to go, or that I needed to be anywhere in that kind of a hurry. Maybe he thinks I deliver babies, or change oxygen tanks for people with no lungs or something, and he is shocked, SHOCKED, at the casual way that I get into the cab, and he needs to make up for my attitude with reckless speed.

Anyway, at least they haven't been scamming me. I have been paying attention to the routes they take and all have been honest about how they take me around town. So, they are honest, but with no respect for the traffic laws of mankind. Or, with a transcendental understanding of the physics of what happens when 2 solid objects meet.

i am not making up names

i just want to say, for the record, that i am not making up city names by just adding different noises to the end of tai.

i thought i might take a trip to taivegas next week.

taichung can be spelled tai-ch/zh/ts-o/u/e/a-ng.

oh my god, hey, that totally worked!

i just got stuck in chinese character mode on the keyboard i am using, so i typed some stuff, and was like, hey, that is all in characters. looks neat, but i have no idea what i have said. maybe something profound, but probably not. for a second i felt like the proverbial monkey, typing for eternity and eventually writing hamlet- just typing away with no idea what i am doing. it felt really weird. i screwed up the characters by trying to do uppercase. it was really unsettling to feel like a monkey.

It rains here a lot. It rains heavily. It comes out of nowhere. Most people carry around an umbrella all the time, then when it rains, they pull it out and open it whenever they are in the open. Many of the sidewalks are half covered by overhangs from the buildings –about 5 feet across. So when it rains, you can walk along the covered part ofthe sidewalks, and then you pull out your umbrella to walk between blocks. It is pretty efficient. I scoffed at the umbrellas initially, because I was all- whatever, I'm from Seattle. I can take a little rain. Pshaw. Typhoon shmyphoon. Then I had to walk home in a real rainstorm, and I was more than happy to stop by 7-11 and get my new umbrella.

Speaking of 7-11, 7-11 is an amazing thing out here. They all have ATMs in them, and all the food you would expect, as well as some youwouldn't. You can make copies at 7-11, fax stuff, print, and paybills. You hand the 7-11 clerk your money and your bill, and they takecare of everything. Your water bill, electricity, etc. You can also get phone cards there. I bet there is more that you can do there that I haven't found out about yet. Also, most of the clerks seem to speak English pretty well. Also, they give you Hello Kitty pins with your purchase. Which I love.

Incidentally, Hello Kitty seems to be schilling for everything out here. Someone needs towrite to Sanrio and tell them about oversaturation　I have seen her selling jewelry, clothes, sunglasses, food, lottery tickets, 7-11, and the Japanese airline that I mentioned before. Even the screen saver on the computer at work is HK. It has reached the level of what you might call a "social issue" I guess. Pundits write articles about how stupid it is for adults to be obsessed with this stupid toy, and how it is contributing to the downfall of society, etc etc. I think Hello Kitty may have sold out.

I drew Angola in the Princeton Review World Cup pool. Will someonetell me if that is good or bad? I think it is ok but nothing great.

The teachers here are a really great group of people. I am a littlesad to be going down to Taichung tomorrow, because I will have onlyone other teacher to hang out with. There seems to be a lot of coolvariety in the group.

There are a lot of Starbucks here. There are more 7-11s, but Starbuck　gives them a run for their money. Anyway, I went to Starbucks thismorning because there is one near the PR office, and I wanted somecoffee. It was a little surreal. First of all, because it was a very,very familiar thing in an unfamiliar environment, and the contrast wasstrange. Also, because it was 9 am, and not super busy, even though itwas in a busy area. 9am, and Starbucks was slow. Weird. I guesspeople's schedules are a little different here

There are many familiar stores here. I had emailed and asked if anyone　in the office wanted anything from the States that they couldn't getover here. Now I know why no one did, you can get anything and more.There is a Lush store and a Body Shop right around the PR office. The　shopping district is huge here.

There seem to be a few basic Taipei experiences. The Night Markets,the National Palace Museum, Buddhist restaurants (for me at least). Ihaven't been to a Night Market yet. I am eager to go, and I'll writeall about it after I have hit my first one. I have only been to oneBuddhist restaurant; it was amazing. The food was fantastic. Theproblem is that the menu is entirely in Chinese. And not in Pinyin,the Romanization of Chinese characters that someone who speaks noChinese can read,(phonetically and without comprehension), sort of.The menu is in actual Chinese characters. So if I go by myself, I willhave to just point to something on the menu and hope for the best. Buthey, that's fine. All part of the experience, I guess.

I found a place to live when I come back to Taipei. Well, I guess aplace to stay sort of found me. One of the other teachers here has anextra room until the end of August, so I will take that in July andAugust. She and the other woman in the apartment are Fullbrightscholars, so I suspect that I have fallen in with people who aresmarter than me, which is always fun.

(comments are open to everyone now)

I figured out how to make it so you don't have to be a blogger user to post comments, so comment away, people.

Impressions from my first day

On my first day, after my first blog entry, I left the office and started heading back to my hostel, and then I was planning to maybe hit a museum and a restaurant, but I thought I might walk back and see what struck me, you know, just follow the day. Well, I forgot that I turned around as I left the MRT (the subway system here, Mass RapidTransit) and walked the whole way to the next MRT station in the wrong direction. It took me about 5 minutes of looking at maps and turning the maps around in my head and in my hands, and then turning in circles to orient myself and the maps to figure this out. I am sure that I looked peculiar on the street corner, like I was trying todance with the map or something. But eventually I figured out why the streets had the wrong names.

The place I ended up was really incredible. I had wandered over to the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. He is a historical Taiwanese figure, and is seen as the father of the nation. There is a huge sculpture of him in an enormous building. It was funny to just be walking along the street, kind of lost, not sure where I was, and then glance to my right and see the biggest thing ever, this enormous building, just quietly loitering in a large park.

I wandered around the park for a while, then I went in to the building to see what was up with Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He was huge, and in sculpture form, as I said. He was being guarded by 2 armed guards, and I came in as they were doing their hourly changing of the guards. It was cool to see that, they do a whole routine. I tried to take a few pictures of it, but the camera was feeling snippy and only took one.

My favorite part of the whole process was that there is apparently a guy whose whole job it is is to go up to the guards who are on duty and adjust their uniforms, because the guards are not allowed to move while on duty. So he goes over and straightens out their sleeves and cuffs and stuff once or twice an hour. So if he picks someone up in a bar, or is introduced to someone pretty, he has to explain to that person that his job is to straighten uniforms. Not a lot of advancement in a job like that.

While the changing of the guard was going on, an English speaking guide sidled up to me and got me chatting. Then she offered to give me a tour of the exhibit. The museum part of the Memorial Hall has aprogram in which they have tour guides seek out confused looking foreigners and offer to explain stuff to them. I think that's really great. So I got some first hand Taiwanese perspective on the history of the island to add to the knowledge that I had acquired through my morning reading. (I have a hard time sleeping in a new place for a little while, so I woke up at 5 am last Sunday and couldn't go back to sleep. So I read about Taiwan, language and history. Because I had nothing else to do.) She was very, very nice, and I really appreciated her explanations.

Then I started heading back to the hotel, in the correct direction. If ound a great modern art/sculpture park. There was a big basket building. I have pictures. Then I think I just went home and went to bed. All the new experiences were a little tiring.

and now i am in taiwan

the flights were long. the first one was 7 hrs, and i was surrounded on 3 sides by 8th graders. oh god it was awful. i shoved tissue in my ears to tune them out. but i was on the aisle, and at least none of them was sitting directly beside me. i had an empty seat to my left-and believe me, that is the way to go. the space was nice, and it was good to have on this flight especially. there is something wrong with people at that age.

then when i got in at tokyo, i had to wander around the tokyo airport for 2 hours because i couldnt figure out where to go. i got to the airport way earlier than my next flight was leaving and the gate assignment wasn't on the monitors yet. so i went to 3 different desks, and no one could figure out what gate to send me to. oh, except one guy, but he thought i also needed to stand at this other desk too for some reason, but then it turns out i didn't need to, and i wasted 40 minutes hanging out in some random line. -well, wasted is probably the wrong word. i had to stand instead of being able to sit for forty minutes. i suppose there was no real way to waste my time at that point, it's not as though i was being prevented from working on some important project. he had an awesome accent though, australian/chinese.

so eventually i got the tokyo flight, and it was definitely with a japanese airline, b/c there was an enormous hello kitty painted on the side of theplane. i thought, wow, that's weird. hello kitty. they must be in some partnership with the airline. huh. then i went inside the airplane. ..

and there was a hello kitty cartoon singing me hello on the monitor on the back on the seat in front of me, hk was on the cloth/paper thing that is on all of the headrests, hk was on the place mats for the food, on the salt and pepper, the toothpick wrapper, and all over the foodpackaging. the stewardesses wore big pink hello kitty aprons when they served the food. the napkins were hk. the bags for dutyfree purchases were hk. in the bathroom the soap, moisturizer, babypower and face wash (itwas nice of them to have all that stuff, it was cool) were all hello kitty. i think there was something else too, but i cant remember now. anyway, i was sort of surprised the captain didnt come out with a big hk suit on. phew. so, yeah, i guess hk is in some sort of partnership with the airline. and dont you forget it

then i got into the tokyo airport, and, having been up for about 24hours, i was fairly incompetent. i stood in line to go out of immigration, but i didnt notice everyone else filling out this impotant form. so i got up and they had to send me back to go fill out the form. then it took me 3 tries to get it right, b/c i was so tired. theni had to provide a taiwan residnece address, but i didnt have the address of the hostel i was staying in, (don't know where it went). very kindly, they just let me go through. i suppose if i am that disorganized, there is no way i am part of any crime scheme. no one would hire me. so because of all this, i was the very, very last person to go get my baggage, and once again, i must not have looked like a threat, b/c the screener guys at the exit didn't even get up as i came by. they were like, anything to declare? i said no, and they said go.

then the princeton review woman was very patiently waiting for me, and she had a hired car waiting to take us into the city. (that was a surprise. the plan was to go in by bus.) i finally got to the hostel at midnight, taiwan time. the hostel guy was up waiting for me, b/c i had emailed a day earlier to say that i wouldn't be in till late and could someone wait up for me to let me in. he was very nice. apparently, though, he needed cash up front for the room, but luckily, once again i didnt look like a flight risk and he decided to let me just give it to him the next day after i had found an atm. the prin rev woman came in and talked to him about it too, so it was fine.

today i woke up really early, (i think b/c it is a new room. i couldn't sleep) and read about taiwan. then i walked around a little, got some cash and bottled water and then ran and hid in my room again for half an hour. when i ventured out again, oddly, the second time i felt much more savvy. i dont know why. (maybe it is like when you go to the beach and you need to ease yourself slowly into cold water or something- didn't want to take it all at once) anyway, when i went to the subway station (the MRT) instead of buying single trip tickets, i bought a frequent travelers card. ("easy card") the cards are neat, you can just stick them into your wallet, and put your wallet up to a sensor as you enter and leave, and it takes off the right amount. so immediately i looked like i knew what i was doing. which i think is funny. -i read about the cards this morning when i couldnt sleep. my taiwan book said to just put it into your wallet and wave the wallet at the sensor, and then that is what i did and i looked so cool.

then i came down to the princeton review office. there was no sign on the street that i could see, but luckily laura, the prin rev woman, gave me her card last night and i was able to figure it out from the address. and luckily i spent half an hour this morning reading about transliteration problems and how there are4 different systems, none applied particularly consistently, and i was able to discern that chung hsiao st was the same as zhong xiao st. phew. and now i am typing on one of their office computers.

i have training all this week, so i might try to hit a museum or something today. and this morning i sat and figured out where a few veggie restaurants are so that i can eat today. also, i found a starbucks. also, there is a lush store right near the office. also, there are a lot of scooters here. like, a lot.

mr. wong is the guy in charge of the hostel. he is very nice. he told me once last night and twice today about how i need to keep my valuables on me at all times. i figured that it wouldn't be a good idea to leave stuff in the hostel- it is safe, but you never know. some people had a passport stolen a week ago- but while they were out and about. but still, if it a hostel it is probably good to keep my stuff on me. it was funny though, how many times he told me. (i must still look a little slow and incompetent.) so all my stuff is in my money belt.

well, i guess that is all for now. i'll try to put something up once a week.

this is a sample post

it is weird to type on a laptop.