Visitors!

Chris and I renewed our love for our profession last week when we celebrated spring break. This vacation was made all the more sweet because we had our first visitors to our new residence. My brother and sister-in-law, Harrison and Ali, made the trek from Santa Barbara to spend a week with us in Taiwan.

They arrived late Sunday night and we took an unintentional tour of Taipei as our taxi driver decided to take the long way home. As my grandmother used to say, it didn’t take long to spend the night and we were off and running Monday morning showing off our adopted city. We wandered all around seeing the tourist sites and the not-so-tourist sites and, of course, experiencing Asian culinary delights. I think that for the first day, Harrison and Ali were impressed with the Mandarin that Chris and I had picked up. Seeing as how they learned everything that we knew during their one week, the awe-factor wore off quickly.

Tuesday, we had a relaxed morning as Chris watched the NCAA basketball championship game. Needless to say, he was delighted that not only did Taiwan air the game, we had a day off so that he could spend all morning watching it. After the game, we decided to head downtown and journey to the top of Taipei 101, so named for its 101 stories. Until August of this year, it will be the tallest building in the world. We were excited to make it to the top while it still has this distinction. The building brought surprises around every corner; the impressive views were interspersed with random golden ant art exhibits, a coral museum, and ample opportunities to purchase memories from your experience on top of the world. We enjoyed a late lunch at one of our favorite where the chef and owner, Bernie, made the meal quite memorable. Afterward, Ali was feeling adventurous so she and I went to the local salon where they gave us both new styles of their choosing. The hour and a half scalp and back message was a hit, however the Asian coif didn’t go over as well.

The next morning, we were barely in our seats before the train departed to take us to Hualien. Chris and I had been to this city before and we loved it so much that we had to show it off. We spent the afternoon doing traditional Hualien activities such as painting rocks and eating pineapple. If you haven’t painted rocks at your bed and breakfast, you haven’t lived. That evening we went to a night market for dinner to get a little adventurous with our digestive systems. We tried stuffed French toast (known as coffin bread), barbecued chicken feet, duck tongue and heart, and even stinky tofu (more on this experience in a blog to come). Thursday we hired a taxi to take us through the famed Taroko Gorge. We hiked throughout the gorge and even through a “water curtain” where the water was bursting through the cave walls and we wandered through wearing ponchos. We were a little surprised when we came home and our proprietor was shooting off fireworks. Not wanting to miss a party, we joined in and happily complied when she handed us sparklers and directed us to make a heart sign with them. When in Hualien…

After a bike ride through some gardens on Friday morning, we boarded the train back to Taipei. We made reservations at a famous dim sum restaurant and enjoyed being back “home.” Saturday was busy as we tried to fit in everything that we still wanted to do. We went to the National Palace Museum and the Jade and flower market. We attempted to make it to Taipei’s hot springs but were a little late. We settled for the riverside night market of Danshui instead.

Easter Sunday we went to church and before having to bid our guests farewell, we had one last Taiwanese experience as we got some famous “bubble tea.” We had a great time playing tour guide and were sad to see them go. Hopefully, this blog was enticing and we’ll have some more visitors soon! We’ll make sure to have plenty of rocks for you to paint and appointments to get your hair cut.

A Whole New Ballgame

Some of you may or may not be aware that I have taken on a new role here at GCA. Being a small school, we are obliged to take on tasks for which we may or may not be qualified. My new responsibility falls into the latter category.

Chris and I often joke about our many differences: morning person vs. night person, introvert vs. extrovert, rap music vs. country music, caring about Auburn football vs. not caring about Auburn football, etc. However, none of these differences is as pronounced as the disparity in our athletic abilities. Though I am tall and look like I should be good at sports such as basketball or volleyball, I am not. Actually, to say that I am “not good” at athletic activities is a gross understatement. The truth is, as soon as I see any sort of ball, all brain activity ceases and my sole concern becomes how I can avoid coming into contact with said ball. This actually made me a successful dodge ball player in elementary school, until I was the only one left on my team and everyone was depending on me to get other players out or catch a ball to get another team member back in the game. Then I wasn't so hot. My equipment aversion did not prove helpful in any other sporting event.

I give you all of this background information to help you fully appreciate the news that I am about to divulge to you. I have been asked to coach a sport. Yes, my friends, I am not simply on a sports team, I am in charge of teaching and training for it. For so many reasons, I never thought that this day would come, but here I am. Before you worry too much about the health and safety of the kids on the team, rest assured that I will not be handling any bats, balls, clubs or rackets. I am the new cross country coach of GCA. I am teaching kids how to run until their legs fall off. Fun, eh? I am actually pretty excited to try my hand at this because, though I know how to run myself, teaching high schoolers how to run is a whole different ballgame. This is true especially because this is the first time our school has had a cross country team. My first order of business was to train the kids to look forward to our “meet” instead of our “game”. I also had to convince the girls interested in the team (and their mothers) that their legs would not become fat from running. Go figure.

So far, coaching has gone well. The paramedics have not yet been called nor have I made anyone cry… yet. In my book, an ambulance-free practice is a successful one. Here’s hopin’ for four more weeks of successful practices!

Just a Walk in the Park

I’ve had a bit of writer’s block lately and I think that the reason for this is twofold. First of all, many of the things that have struck us as blog-worthy over the past several months we have already recorded in our online journal. Secondly, so many things that we might have written about in August don’t even strike us as out of the ordinary anymore. Things that so captivated us when we first arrived don’t even cause us to do a double-take now. I was reflecting on this jadedness this morning during our daily walk to school. “What is something that we haven’t written about Taiwanese culture that is amusing?” Like a bolt of lightning, it hit me. Perhaps it was the uniformed exercise group to my right or the backwards-walking gentleman to my left. All at once I remembered that walking through Nan Gang Park in the morning is better than a three-ring circus.

As a general rule, most Taiwanese are interested in general fitness and therefore like getting out and exercising. However, their methods can differ quite substantially from our own. First of all, and this may or may not have factual basis, the Taiwanese are convinced that beating a certain part of their body will result in that part becoming stronger and more toned. I can kind of understand their reasoning when it comes to “toughening up”. However, all rationale was thrown out the window the first time I saw a man who I am pretty sure sits as a model for the Buddha statues ambling through the park with his grimy t-shirt tucked above his gut slapping his big belly with a bamboo pole. Does he really think that is going to accomplish something other than giving himself a hernia? My confusion about this practice only intensified when I noticed numerous people slapping places that no one has ever tried to strengthen nor should they ever try to strengthen, such as faces or the tops of their heads. Many stroll through the park loudly clapping their hands together Paula Abdul-style to some rhythm that only they can hear.

The idiosyncrasies of Taiwanese fitness don’t stop at body beating. On various occasions, I have speculated whether I have wondered into a Monty Python sketch full of people perfecting their skills to get their gait approved for government backing by the Ministry of Silly Walks. Someone walking backwards all through the park is as about as normal as it comes. Many people walk with their arms stretched high above their heads or spread out like they are preparing to swan dive. The one who we look forward to the most is a gentleman that Chris and I lovingly refer to as “Mary Poppins” because he looks as if he is trying out to be an extra in the chimney sweeper dance on the rooftops. Outfitted in tiny running shorts, he lifts his left knee as high as he can, crosses his leg across his body and drops it quickly in front of his right foot. His right leg acts as if it were in competition with the left as it attempts to lift itself higher and cross more quickly than the left one did. All the while, Mary Poppins has his arms stretched out wide as if to say, “I am here, and I am marvelous!”

The park is also filled with people choosing a more stationary approach to exercise. There are myriad groups of people practicing tai chi, which is actually pretty cool. However, it seems that most tai chi groups have one or two rogue members who prefer to do their own thing. One man leaves his class every morning to hone his tree climbing skills as he nimbly ascends one of the park’s many trees to get a bird’s eye view of his exercising classmates. Another man steps off to the side and bounces his body attempting to touch his toes. Now, it wouldn’t be funny (or Taiwanese) if the stretching stopped there, but it doesn’t. With every bounce, he propels a mighty amount of air through tightly closed lips resulting in a sound that none would deny precisely recreates the sound of flatulence. That’s right. A man, bouncing trying to touch his toes, making his own farting noises. I wish I was creative enough to make this stuff up.

As I haven’t gotten up the courage to lose all couth and photograph these strange sights, you’ll just have to picture them in your heads. And trust me, they are just as funny as you are imagining them. So, as you go through your morning routines, do a couple of Mary Poppins steps in honor of us.

The Bug

This time of year, it seems that no matter where you are, people are talking about it. Hoarse voices from San Francisco to Moscow bemoan sleepless nights and aching joints. Waiting rooms in doctor’s offices from Nairobi to Buenos Aires swell with sniffling noses and scratchy throats. Just like your cities, Taipei was not able to escape it. It is… the crud. In some demented way, it is slightly comforting to know that we are all in the same boat suffering in the same way across the ocean. Chris’ tuberculosis-style hacking this morning confirmed that we are well on our way through round two of this nasty affliction. You see, working in a small school that houses children ages five to eighteen with their snotty noses and unwashed hands for eight hours in a day turns our work environment into some sort of ill-fated science experiment.

For round one, we were able to watch as kids and teachers fell victim to this illness and waited in quiet apprehension for our turn to come, and it did. It started with the coughing and then came the fever and chills. Having easy access to healthcare, I decided to drop in to the doctor’s office to see what he could tell me. All of the teachers go to the same doctor because he is a parent of one of our students. From the teddy bears and coloring books around the waiting room, I was able to deduce that he is, in fact, a pediatrician. So, feeling a bit like Gulliver in Lilliput, I waited my turn to see the good doctor. After a short time of poking, prodding, and measuring, it was proclaimed that I had an “injected and inframed throat” that were symptoms of the flu and tonsillitis. I went to check out when the person whom I had previously thought was the receptionist handed me an entire pharmacy worth of pills. I literally had six pills that I had to take three times a day. What were the pills that they gave me, you ask? I have no idea. They put them into handy little daily packets thus removing them from the original packaging and rendering them utterly unrecognizable to the untrained eye. Don’t worry, though, I was given an instruction sheet about my medication, but it was entirely in Chinese. I had an emergency pack of pills that I can only assume were horse tranquilizers that I was instructed to take if the first slough of drugs didn’t quite do the trick. And, here’s the kicker. Everything from start to finish including all the pharmaceuticals set us back all of three dollars. Not too shabby, I must say.

Having been healed from the first attack of sickness, we watched in fearful resignation as the horrible virus mutated into a form that was unrecognizable to our antibodies and the wave started again. So, here we find ourselves once again, though Chris is the one debating a visit to the doctor this time. To their credit, the Taiwanese do everything that they can to keep disease from spreading in the crowded city of Taipei. Doctor’s offices being numerous and inexpensive make it easy to get the medication you need, when you need it, keeping people like me from coming into work while hideously contagious. It is accepted practice to wear a medical mask when you are sick to help keep from breathing germ-infected air onto innocent bystanders. In fact, if you are on a bus, elevator, or subway and you cough without wearing such a mask, be prepared to get several stink-eyes shot at you from around the area. In addition to all of my drugs, the doctor instructed me to go to the local 7-eleven to purchase a medical mask as to not infect my co-workers and students. I can officially report, however, that Americans are not ready for the medical mask (though it makes a lot of sense) for when I followed doctor’s orders, I was teased relentlessly by my fellow teachers. To such taunts, I responded with a simple cough in their lunch and went on my way.

In conclusion, if I come home and wear a medical mask, be nice to me or else I might contaminate you with my injected and inframed throat.

A Day Without Salmonella

To help us all survive the short yet somewhat dreary month of February, we celebrated Hot Pot day at school on Friday. I am guessing that you, like me, have no idea what a "hot pot day" might look like or how one might celebrate it. After I heard that it required an extended lunch hour, I decided that was all the information that I needed and looked forward to the day with much anticipation.

For those of you who are not satisfied with the extra lunch time description, let me describe a meal with a hot pot. A large pot set on top of a hot plate is filled with some sort of broth. Diners patiently wait for the broth to heat to a proper temperature and then drop whatever desired fixin's into the soup and wait for them to cook. Our fixin's (that is the technical Mandarin word, by the way) were all quite tasty and included everything from crab and sliced pork to corn and tofu. Once the food has been cooked, it is fished out of the soup to make room for more things to be cooked.

The extra lunch hour was a lovely way to spend our Friday afternoon. Chris and I had our fill of noodles and dumplings and watched the high school boys eat more pork than I had previously thought was humanly possible. We later found out that we, on the ninth floor of the school, were quite lucky because we only had one group of students eating in our room. On some of the lower floors, there were several groups eating which required more electric hot pots which, in turn, freaked out the electric system and caused rolling blackouts throughout the afternoon. When the edibility of your lunch depends on the constancy of temperature, rolling blackouts are not your friend. Eventually, however, we heard that everyone got enough to eat and I have not yet heard of any cases of food poisoning. Any day without salmonella is a good day in my book.

Lesson Learned

We have grown slightly accustomed to our new culture not being aligned with that of the United States. Miniature candy and cheap costumes didn’t line shelves in October, nor was cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie seasoning abundantly displayed at every grocery store in November. So, when February rolled around and Brach’s candy hearts and Sponge Bob Valentine cards didn’t make a debut, we thought that Valentine’s Day would be about as popular here as Arbor Day in the States. We were wrong.

We went to bed on the night of the 13th with a couple of ideas for dinner, planning on deciding for sure in the morning. When we got up, Chris went and got the number for our top choice to call and make reservations. We decided to stick to the “touristy” places so that we could call and find someone who spoke English. I was sweeping the floor when I heard a response that I wasn’t expecting.

“What? You are totally full tonight? No space at all? Oh, okay. Thanks anyway.” Choice number two. “You’ve been full for a week, oh, okay. Thanks anyway." Choice number three. “No tables? How about the bar? Full too, eh. Okay, thanks anyway.” I saw that Chris was really starting to sweat until he finally made some headway with choice number four. “You’ve kept a few tables open for suckers like us who didn’t make reservations? Great! What time do you start serving dinner? We’ll be there.” So, Macaroni Grill it was.

For the early afternoon, we had planned on packing a lunch and taking a hike on a hill behind our apartment. However, during our mad dinner dash, we failed to notice the nimbus clouds rolling in and taking residence just over said apartments and hill. So, just as we stepped out to purchase our lunch provisions, soft pellets of rain forced an immediate 180 and we made our way back indoors.

Plan B. We each grabbed a book and headed to a café where we could sip on a cup of coffee and read for a while. The game plan was to skip lunch, have an early dinner and be sure to get a table at the first come, first serve option. But, Cupid’s arrow wasn’t finished with us just yet. Turns out, cafés are just as popular as restaurants on Valentine’s Day. So there was actually a wait there, too. Plan C. We thought we remembered stumbling across a small coffee shop near Macaroni Grill so we thought we’d give it a go. Spotting a free table, we leapt into action as I threw myself across the table to reserve it and Chris secured a place in line. After people stopped staring because of our bizarre acrobatic display, we enjoyed a leisurely afternoon full of espresso and Orson Wells.

When the gnawing in our stomachs reminded us of our neglected lunch, we decided to try for a table at Macaroni Grill. Seeing several open tables, we strode up confidently to the hostess and requested to be seated. “Absolutely,” she said. “What name is the reservation under?” We sheepishly admitted that we did not, in the most technical since, have a reservation. Apprehensively, she asked, “Can you finish your meal in one hour and a half?” We guaranteed that we could make that happen and breathed a sigh of relief as she directed us to a booth. Dinner turned out to be delicious and we made it out well under our time limit. We hopped over to an international grocery store and grabbed a few “comfort foods” and caught the bus back home. The rest of the evening was spent snacking in front of whatever chick flicks came on HBO.

In all, it turned out to be a pretty fun Valentine’s Day. But, I have learned my lesson. When Arbor Day comes around this year, you had better believe I am making dinner reservations well in advance.

It's Official!

After much consideration, Chris and I have decided to stay another year here in Taipei. We have definitely taken a shine to this crazy Asian culture and, I dare say, they have taken a shine to us. Over the last few days, we have evaluated our expectations about moving here and how they have or have not been met.

First of all, we were very intimidated about moving to Taiwan -- simply because it was Asia. Why is that? For whatever reason, as westerners, we have some sort of deep-rooted fear of the Orient and its "bizarre" ways. I can't tell you how many warnings we got advising us to stay away from all meat because, chances are, it is either rat or dog. I can assure you that, while we may have eaten some odd things, the proud Taiwanese would never ingest either a gutter animal or their best friend. In fact, a lot of Taiwanese are a little grossed out by cheese. It is fermented milk, after all. Now who are the weird ones?

One of the scariest "fear factors" we had about coming here was the language barrier. Just the words tone and character sent shivers down my spine and, frankly, they still do. How would we possibly get around a place where you can't even decipher street signs and store names? The truth is, our Mandarin isn't nearly as good as I had hoped that it would be by this point simply because people are so ready to help. On more than one occasion, a Taiwanese person has taken it upon themselves to "adopt the westerner" and very amiably help us order at a restaurant or navigate our way to the airport. Even when we happen upon some of the local stores that don't speak English, the salespeople are invariably patient as we stumble through broken Mandarin and charades to get our message across. In fact, many people are actually apologetic that they don't speak English! How backwards is that? I am in their country and they are apologizing to me for not speaking English? It definitely gives us a different perspective for the Spanish-speaking communities around the United States because we have become what so many Americans complain about.

Having grown up in suburbia and Chris in the country, we were apprehensive but also excited about moving to a big city. It didn't take us long to come to the conclusion that we both love it. Between the subway, buses and trains, getting around couldn't be easier. As in most big cities, there is always something going on and somewhere to go. Being an incredibly international city, we get to try the Chinese version of all kinds of worldly cuisines. We don't drive so the only time we have to worry about traffic is when we are playing Frogger to cross the street. However, one of the down sides to the big city is the pollution. We were more than a little freaked out when we arrived and saw about 1/3 of the people going about wearing medical masks to protect them from breathing the polluted air. Hopefully no carcinogens will take root over these two years.

We were shocked to learn how incredibly safe Taipei is as well. We live across from a park and on the first day, we asked our principal if it was safe for me to go running alone. She had to stifle her laughter when she told me that it was absolutely safe. And, it's true! I would feel comfortable walking alone at 2:00 AM in just about any part of the Taipei. Maybe it is because of all of those over-crowded, under-fed prisons where the prison guards carry around cattle prods for anyone who disobeys. Just kidding.

All this to be said, we often wonder why we were so afraid of coming here. For the most part, the Taiwanese are actually excited to host Americans in their country whereas if we had gone to Europe, they pretty much would have resented every move we made. On the surface, many things about the culture in Taiwan may seem very different from American culture. But, when you get down to it, it really isn't that foreign. After all, have you ever seen a person from Montgomery try to order a sandwich in New York City? The culture and language gap may be just as wide across the Mason Dixon line as it is across the Pacific.