christmas and new year’s

okay, so this is ridiculously, shamefully late. but we’re doing this anyways.

christmas:
christmas was nice. this was my first christmas away from home, and it felt a little weird. i’m not really that close to anyone here, so i was a little nervous about what i’d be doing. really didn’t want to spend christmas alone.  luckily, angelica from work invited me and several other people to a christmas extravaganza at her grandfather’s house! it sounded like it was gonna be great, but right before the big day, angelica’s uncle unfortunately passed away. he’d been sick for a while, but it was still sudden for her and her family.
obviously and rightly, christmas plans were put on hold. so i ended up having a couple friends over on christmas eve, and christmas day there was a small get together at lisa bartle’s, the big boss at tpr. it was nice! so that’s my christmas.
as for christmas in taiwan in general, it’s a much bigger deal than you’d imagine for a country where basically nobody celebrates it. apparently the companies here want to make the same amount of money as american ones do. it’s not nearly as big a deal as it is in america, but the good news is there aren’t tons of carols and obnoxious things every time you walk in a store. here are some pictures of what things look like.

new year’s eve:
new year’s eve is a much better story than christmas. on the 30th, it was holly’s birthday and people from work met some of her friends.  we all got alongpretty well, it was fun. the party ended, but I stayed out with a couple of the people I met there, and we had a fun night hopping around different bars and things. at the end of the night, they invited me to their new years plans. these plans ended up being going to a party at the w, one of the nicest hotels in the city. it has a fantastic view of taipei 101. i should, at this point, probably mention that taipei has a pretty cool tradition for new year’s: they put fireworks all over 101, then set ‘em all off.  it’s a pretty cool things to see, especially when it’s from a $12000 per night suite. where there are servers who make drinks for you. and all kinds of classy amenities. pictures below. anyway, it was an awesome night. lots of fun people and probably the best view in the city of the fireworks.

this is just going up because I don’t want to forget how fun it was.  one of the best nights ever. so before halloween, I made some new friends, emily and lachlan. on halloween, I went to this huuuge concert with them, featuring a really famous dj named steve aoki.  it was a costume thing, and I went as data from star trek: tng.  (I made that costume out of a thrift store yellow shirt, cardboard, aluminum foil and my underarmour. hand sewed the shirts together. pretty proud of myself.)

the following are pictures from that evening.

 so yeah, post cake the makeup took a beating. not a fan of the last pictures, but i couldn't not include darth vader and rufio.

new job and classes

so my new job. long version. the place is called happy top.  I hear about it from thekla, another tpr teacher who works there on the side. apparently there’s a small class available 4 days a week, hour and a half per day.  I email a resume and meet with the lady in charge, dana, who is very nice, explains everything, asks me if I can give them a demo. I come back the next day, interrupt a class being taught by a girl named audrey, and teach vocab for twenty minutes. nothing hard.  she gives me the job. I come in and sit in on audrey’s class for an hour to watch how the pros do it, and then I start my first class later that week. 

almost simultaneously, I enroll in chinese classes.  I go on couchsurfing.com a lot just to see what people are doing, (it’s a really cool website, I recommend checking it out) and someone posted about in enrolling in really cheap chinese classes. 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for about $150 US per month. not bad, especially compared to the fortunes the universities charge. the guy on couchsurfing was also struggling to get just 5 people to enroll, which means tiny class size. awesome! 

I go in to my first day of chinese. walk in, sit down, take inventory of the other students.  holy crap it’s audrey. the girl who I’d just spent two days in a classroom with is also in my chinese class. what are the odds.  of all the people in taipei, seriously. so that was really cool.

anyway, my chinese is improving, the class is nice, it doesn’t go too fast so if I miss a day it’s pretty easy to catch up.  the tones are still tricky and we’re memorizing more writing than I’d like, but hey, it’s not private tutoring.  man, I really don’t care about reading and writing. what a pain.

okay, back to teaching.  I have a total of three students in my class: amy, ken, and ian. very small. practically a tutoring environment. thing is, it’s not just me teaching. I have a co-teacher. so there’s  3-2 student to teacher ratio.  crazy!  anyway, we basically just go over reading, vocab, and writing. they’re a little behind for their age I think, but we’re working on it and they’re really fun.  I think the kids just need to be pushed. they resist doing work sometimes, but once I insist on stuff they do it and do it pretty quickly.  I really like teaching the class, and I think they like me too!

so basically, things are going really well here. money’s not that huge a worry now, finally starting to learn enough chinese to have terrible conversations with cab drivers and things, and the social life is doing okay!  got a few friends, mostly from work, and I really like this one new guy at happy top, he seems fun. we’re gonna go grab a beer or something later this week.  hooray new friends!

life update, getting the hang of this

so now I have a second job teaching 12 year olds at a place called happy top.  confirmed as of today. not a lot, just 6 hours a week.  but still, it’ll be worth about 4 days worth of living money per week, rent included.  every little bit helps.

one of the things it will help is fund my new chinese class, which I’m apparently taking for 10 hours per week for only 150 bucks per month.  less than 3.50 an hour.

not. bad.

pingtung pt 3

alright. so we’re on our way to waterfall 3.
there’s a path running along the river that lets you get back there, but it collapsed a little bit ago apparently. which means we get to walk up the river. there are a lot of rocks and things, so theoretically it’s possible to do it without getting wet. forget that though, I take off my shoes and leave them hidden between a couple rocks.
eventually, we make it to the waterfall. it’s reeeeally big. we take some pictures, and there’s even a place where you can go under it! it’s pretty amazing, not gonna lie. pictures!

so on to waterfall number two.
it’s smaller, but it does have rocks you can jump off of!

we played around for about half an hour, i almost died falling off a rock onto other rocks, overall, lots of fun. we go back, clean up, get ready for dinner.

overall, pretty great trip. later there was dinner and a bar and some other people and new friends and it was good. but these are the highlights.

pingtung pt 2

so the original plan was to head down on sunday.  problem is, I have class on sunday until 1 pm.  then I have to go home, pack up, head to the bus station, hop on the next bus, and arrive 5 hours later.  so at best, I’d be getting there at like 7 or 8. pretty late. I also don’t know where I’m going, staying, or getting off the bus.  also, I didn’t know how to get in touch with tessa and youming.  I tried sending them a facebook message, but didn’t have a response by the time I got back from teaching, so I settled in to wait until I heard more. after I few hours, I realized that youming’s phone number might be on his facebook, and sure enough it was.  I gave it a call and talked with tessa and decided to catch the 3 am bus to pingtung so I wouldn’t have to pay for another night’s hotel.  money was getting a little tight at that point. I went to bed at 9 so I’d have a few hours sleep.
the bus ride was uneventful, I slept through most of it, and woke up in some city. I couldn’t understand the bus driver, but I though pingtung was the last stop, so I got off with the last person.  turns out I went one or two to far, and after walking for a while I caught a cab back to where youming and tessa were staying. I got a hotel room in the same place as them, and took a nap until about 1130 when we were supposed to meet people for lunch and start the day’s activities.  after a quick shower, I met up with tessa and youming and we got some lunch by ourselves, the plans having been slightly modified while I slept. 
eventually, sam came by on his scooter to join us.  the day’s plans involved liangshan falls, a moderately well known tourist attraction that was about a half hour away by scooter. I rode with sam, tessa rode with youming. this was my first time riding a scooter farther than across half a parking lot, and I was a little nervous. where do I put my hands? not around sam, that’s for sure. that’d be awkward even if taiwanese people weren’t weird about touching.  turns out there’s a little handle thing behind where you sit, so I just hung onto that for dear life until I got more comfortable. 
liangshan falls is a series of waterfalls that turn into a little river.  the first one is used like a spring, with lots of people sitting/swimming in it. the second one is a little bit of a hike up the mountain, and has a big pool underneath it that you can swim in. the third is by far the most impressive, but people don’t see it too often because the path up collapsed during a mudslide and hasn’t been repaired.
we weren’t gonna let that stop us though, and we decided to go to the third one first and work out way back.
to be continued…

pingtung, belatedly

a few weeks ago I was feeling really bored and lonely.  there weren’t enough hours at work, I don’t have an overwhelming number of friends, I’m still bad at chinese… it was just a quick case of the blues on a gloomy rainy day.  so I decided to treat myself. I went to a relatively cheap but delicious italian restaurant and ordered a tortellini as big as my head. 

I was just getting into it, but my phone rang. which is kind of an event in and of itself, given how infrequently someone needs to get in contact with me. I picked it up, and it said “unknown number.” which ordinarily I wouldn’t pick up, because I get enough wrong numbers, just people speaking chinese on the other end and confusion for everyone, but since I was lonely and bored, any human contact sounded good.

“hello?”

“kevin, hi, it’s tessa. [nicole’s friend from her program in pingtung, we met a couple times, she’s great] I’m at the airport right now trying to get to kaohsiung [city in taiwan near pingtung], but they changed my flight and now I’m routed through taipei? can I crash at your place in like 6 hours?”

so I’m thrilled. clearly, god has looked down from on high and decided to take mercy on this poor lonely boy by sending him company from out of the country. 

“yeah, that should probably be okay, I guess. what time are you landing?”

...

later

...

tessa lands at like midnight, has to take a cab the entire 40 minute drive from the airport because the buses closed right before she got there, and shows up around maybe one am.  somehow, she has a smile on her face, despite what sounds like one of the top 5 worst travel experiences I’ve ever heard, involving cancelled planes, broken tickets, and astonishingly unhelpful “customer service.” at least they didn’t lose her luggage. 

she’s going to pingtung to visit youming, the taiwanese boy she started dating right before she had to leave taiwan. unfortunate timing.  she’ll be staying there for a little over a week, and would I want to come down and visit at some point?   hell yes I want to come visit, I need to see more of this country while I still can.  I figure I can dip out of taipei sunday afternoon and stay until maybe 2 pm tuesday. one full day.  we set up very tentative plans, went to bed, and when I went downstairs in the morning, tessa was already gone.

to be continued.

haha, oh man, asia

so i was awake a few nights ago and flippin between the english movie channels and i saw what looked like a game of starcraft. (if you don't know starcraft, you've gotta be either female, over 30, or have played some organized sport at or above the high school level. it's a computer game that some people take really seriously, and sterotypically asians are really good at it [like everything else].)

turns out it was starcraft. aparently they air tournaments here. i was bored enough to watch it, even though i understand none of the professional commentary and don't know the heartfelt stories of the competitors.  i thought maybe you'd want to see it too.

commentary/pregame

drama building...

oh my goodness!

the thrilling conclusion

anyway, i'm mostly just uploading this because i thought it was hilarious that starcraft tournaments are on tv in asia.

taiwanese people are CRAZY about lines

seriously. they see a line and just herd behavior into it. waaay more than in america. I guess it’s nice, like being part of the group? but it gets ridiculous. there’ll be no one in line for a street stall, but if it ever gets above 4 people in line, oh man, it’s gonna be 10 people long in less than a minute.

here’s an example. they just opened this store called uniqlo across from my gym.  aparently it’s like the gap of japan. they opened yesterday. this is one of the two lines out in front of the store. one of two. there’s another one.

 

people are craaazy

taiwanese healthcare

so now that the three day weekend/holiday is over, i was finally able to get to a hospital.  (they close all but the emergency room on sundays and holidays.)

i show up, find internal medicine, hunt down gastro, and tryto figure out what to do next. this super great old nurse grabs me and literally holds my hand to the registration desk. then she makes some joke and everyone laughs except me? "please do something for this poor hopeless foreigner." and everyone does! seriously, how nice is everyone here. so helpful to the dumb american.

so i meet the doctor and he’s fairly helpful, there are a couple mistranslations but his english is probably better than my spanish.  anyway, he gives me some meds for my stomach. slightly different but he recommends it. time to go pay.

edit for parents: the drug is called salazopyrine, it's got a slightly different active ingredient. they use the same mechanism but one has a sulfate group on it, it doesn't get recommended as much because some people are allergic to it. it's the same thing as in aspirin that people are allergic too, so i should be fine. also, some people apparently react suuuper well to it compared to mesalamine. so i figure this might be nice thing to try for a while what with me being in a flare right now. one rare side effect is extreme depression in young men, so if the blog gets really weepy over the next month for no reason, we'll know why lol

i get up to the payment counter and i bust out my taiwanese health insurance card that everyone working in this country gets. she rings me up: 350 nt aka less than 12 dollars. for seeing a doctor and a month of pills. in the usa, the pills alone cost 35 a month, a meeting with a doctor is like at least 30, and all of that’s with insurance that has to get paid for back home! I love this country!

here’s hoping obamacare is this good when it gets all the kinks ironed out. no complaints here.