You know what they say, "Time flies when you're having fun." It also flies when you're so busy you can't see straight. And when you're both at the same time, well... whiplash becomes a distinct possibility. But enough with the idioms. The point is, I realize that I have been a very bad blogger lately. Even my 93 year old grandfather has noticed and voiced his displeasure. So enough with the guilt trips, everyone (cough*mom*cough). I'm back.
A lot's happened over the last few months. For starters, I officially survived my first semester as a teacher! I also turned 23 and, as most of you already know, my family came to visit me for Christmas. It was pretty much the best Christmas present anyone's ever given me and it was really fun to get to share a bit of my life here with them!
So, without further ado, here's a (really quick and abbreviated) recap of what I've been up to lately so I can get back to my regularly scheduled blogging:
1. Siena and I took some of our wonderful 4th graders on a field trip to the Houtong Cat Village to thank them for all the hard work they put into our weekly English sentence skits.
Siena was very popular with the cats in the cat village (this particular cat
flat out refused to get out of her lap)
Only in Taiwan: you can buy cans of wet cat food and feed the cats with chop sticks
2. I took a ride on the Maokong Gondola with my host family and had lunch at a lovely teahouse.
With Candy on the Gondola
Traditional Taiwanese tea set
3. My family visited me for Christmas! We spent about a week with my awesome host family in Luodong and another week traveling around Taiwan.
With Pei Cheng's preschool class after teaching a lesson about Christmas. Immediately after
this picture was taken, the kids mobbed my dad, who they decided was actually Santa.
My two families at our beautiful hotel in Wuling (right by Sheipa national park)
Mom enjoying the bounty of the Kaoshiung night market: strawberry shaved ice and fried mushrooms
Getting dirty at the Guanziling mud springs
We were rather surprised when we discovered that the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village
at Sun Moon Lake is actually more like One Piece World (One Piece is a very popular anime)
And, to make our vacation even better, one of my friends invited us to their New Years Eve party, which culminated with us fireworks display at Taipei 101 from their roof! This is why it was awesome:
4. I turned 23! I had an early celebration with my family and my Taiwanese friends before my family went home. On my actual birthday, I headed to Beitou to check out the hot springs, beautiful Japanese architecture, and hell valley (a thermal vent that releases 70 degree Celsius water, so hot that the area is constantly shrouded in an etherial mist).
Celebrating at a delicious Peking duck restaurant
In Hell Valley with Stephanie
5. I attended the Fulbright midyear conference in beautiful Xitou Leader Hotel (right near Sun Moon Lake). I got to learn a little bit about all of the awesome research being done this year in Taiwan and "reconnect with nature."
A boat ride on Sun Moon Lake
On the Sky-Walk, part of one of the many nature trails surrounding our hotel in Xitou
6. Since the midyear conference took us all the way to the middle of Taiwan, Christine and I decided to stay in the area for a few extra days and explore the towns of Lugang, Changhua, and Taichung.
Mazu Temple in downtown Lugang
Lugang's narrowest (and most famous) alley is called "Breast Touching Lane" because it is impossible for two people to pass each other going in opposite directions without their breasts touching
Rowing around on Taichung lake
The Baguashan Giant Buddha in Changhua
*Whew* I think that's enough for one post. Up next, I'll tell you about my wonderful winter break trip to Japan and Pingxi's awesome lantern festival!
Good news: My poor busted ankle has finally recovered enough for me to do some hiking again. To celebrate, I headed down to Taroko Gorge National Park to support my friend, fellow Fulbright ETA and French horn playing pro Dan Severson, who was playing in the annual Taroko Music Festival. To celebrate Taiwan's 100th birthday, this year the festival organizers decided to bring in 100 French horn players for one epic concert in Taroko.
Dan doing some last minute rehearsing before the concert
They had free shuttle buses running from the train station to Taroko's visitors center (where the concert was being held). When Christine and I boarded our bus, the volunteer tour guide on board got on the loud speaker and started giving everyone all of the details about the concert and the day's events. But the highlight of her speech was when she announced: "And this year, we have two foreigners in the French horn group!" Although our fellow bus riders had been pretty quiet up until then, at this announcement everyone gasped and started excitedly discussing whether or not the foreigners were "shuai ge" (handsome boy) while Christine and I, the only non-Taiwanese people there, tried unsuccessfully to contain our laughter.
We got to the park at about noon and Dan's concert didn't start until 2, so Christine and I met up with Dan's wonderful LET Angela, who was also there early, and decided to hike Shakadang Trail.
Angela and I at the trail-head (which is actually a big staircase that leads to the base of a bridge)
Taroko is famous for it's great hiking and absolutely breathtaking scenery and I can tell you it doesn't disappoint. The lovely afternoon weather didn't hurt either (it didn't start raining until later). The trail we took ran along a long cliff overlooking the bluest river I've ever seen.
Look how blue it is! *I swear no photoshop was involved in the making of these pictures*
But, just to make sure that you don't let the beauty of the place lull you into a sense of false security, the park has lots of signs like this to remind you that you just might die there at any time and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it:
"Falling rocks no stopping." 没办法 (mei ban fa), I guess you'll die.
By the time we got back to the concert venue, the show was about to start. All the chairs were full, so Christine and I watched the beginning of the concert from a tree (Angela refused to climb up with us). We soon became a source of great interest for all of the photographers and camera-men who were covering the event.
Making a scene as usual
The concert itself was very fun. I can't think of a much cooler venue than the bowl in the middle of a ring of gorgeous green mountains. My favorite moment of the day was when they played the "Jurassic Park" theme song since the whole area felt like something out of Jurassic Park already. Whoever made the fantastic decision to add that song into the repertoire, I salute you.
So let me begin by apologizing for my radio silence of late. All I can say is: 現在我的生活是瘋了 (My life is crazy right now). Anyhow, here's a quick story about my complete lack of grace and how I ended up limping around Taiwan for the last few weeks.
It all started with Taipei's annual Gay Pride Parade, which is the biggest gay pride event in Southeast Asia. Sadly, one of the reasons for the magnitude of this event is that in many countries here being gay is still considered a crime. So once a year LGBT citizens from all over head to Taipei to celebrate and protest. This year's there was "Discrimination get out!" A group of us Yilan-ers all decided to head up to Taipei for the afternoon to take in the festivities and show some anti-discrimination solidarity. We knew it would be a fun afternoon when this is what greeted us when we got off the subway:
Yes angel dog!
There was also your usual cast of colorful characters:
One of several Lady Gagas to make an appearance
There were a significant number of protesters from Malaysia, a predominantly
Muslim country where gay rights are still nonexistent
All in all, it was a very fun event. If you want to know more, there are some short articles about the Gay Pride parade here and here.
So back to the point of this story: my poor busted ankle. After the parade was over, Christine and I were wandering around the Da'an district searching for a famous cookie shop and generally killing time until we could meet up with my friends Stephanie and Colleen (who had planned to come to the parade with us but were running rather late due to some unexpected circumstances). Right about the time they were supposed to show up, Christine and I were walking out of this really cute (but kind of bizarre) candy store.
I say cute because of this:
And bizarre because of these:
Please note that the chocolate band-aids say "Queer-aid." Not sure what that's about.
Seriously, who would ever think it was a good idea to market candy pads?
I don't think I can think of anything less appetizing.
As we walked out, I didn't notice the step down from the entrance, so I stepped my foot totally wrong. You would think that with how often I trip over my own two feet I would have learned to catch myself by now. But no. Instead, I received my first real twisted ankle. Actually, as it turns out, I did worse than that. I managed to give myself a partially torn ligament. Ouch. But I didn't know that yet. So I convinced myself that it wasn't really all that bad and doggedly limped after my friends the rest of the evening.
*****
The next day, we had planned to go hiking in one of the many forest recreation areas in Yilan county. However, given the very swollen state of my ankle by the time we got home from Taipei, we ruled that plan out. Instead, we decided to take a nice, leisurely scooter ride over to Plum Blossom Lake. It's a beautiful area and you can rent these ridiculous 4-person bikes to ride around the lake (For some reason, I find multi-person bikes very funny).
On the little island in the middle of the lake
And now we come to the part of the story where I took my already busted ankle and managed to make it worse. You see, in addition to ridiculous bikes, Plum Lake is also home to the largest Taoist temple in Taiwan. Unfortunately, it's on the side of a mountain that you're not allowed to take bikes up.
Of course, my friends wanted to hike up and see it. I tried to just stay with the bike but they convinced me that I just had to come. For the record, hiking up a mountain the day after you sprain your ankle: not such a great idea. If I weren't so darn stubborn, I would have done the smart thing and given up after a few yards. But I have to say, the view from the temple was great. The temple itself was very pretty as well.
We made it!
By the time we had climbed all the way back down to our bike, my ankle had given up for the day. It was pretty much me and an ice pack for the rest of the evening.
*****
When the swelling in my ankle didn't go down after a few days, Christine, who as a ballroom dancing instructor has had ample experience with sprained ankles, knew something wasn't right and finally managed to drag my butt to a doctor (resisting and insisting that I was fine the whole way, of course). He took an ultrasound of my swollen ankle and found that I had a partially torn ligament. He printed off a picture of it "for my scrapbook" and told me to get an ankle brace and stay off my feet as much as possible for a few weeks to let it heal.
As you may know, the Fulbright ETAs here in Taiwan are divided between two counties on pretty much opposite sides of the island, Yilan in the northeast and Kaohsiung in the southwest. Of course, here in Taiwan, distance is kind of relative. So being on opposite sides of the country really means that we're an hour bus ride to Taipei, a short trip on the MRT, and then an hour and a half ride on the high speed railway apart. In other words, when we decided to take a trip down to visit our southern friends for the weekend, we left after lunch and made it in time for dinner.
Being the second biggest city in Taiwan, Kaohsiung has a little bit more variety when it comes to international food than we have back in Yilan. So, of course, we took full advantage of that fact and headed over to General Pancho's for some authentic Mexican cuisine (trust me, it's really hard to find good Mexican food in Asia, so it was something to be excited about).
Outside of General Pancho's with our hosts, Esther and Andrew, and some of our other
Kaohsiung 朋友們 (friends).
Real chicken burrito and margaritas for dinner = a good night.
Saturday was a big day of doing touristy things around the city. To start our morning off right, we headed over to Shoushan (壽山), also known as monkey mountain thanks to the thousands of Formosan rock macaques that call it home. The trailhead was on the far side of National Sun Yat-sen University, so we got a little tour of the campus (which, for the record, is absolutely beautiful) on the way there. We ran into a whole horde of monkeys right next to one of the dorm buildings.
There is a dorm literally 10 yards to our right. How crazy would it be
to live there?!?
Adorable monkey family!
About 5 minutes after this picture was taken, the money pushed Andrew
out of the way and stole his seat
After the hike, we headed over to the former British Consulate building, which is just a little further down on the same mountain. It is a pretty little colonial era red brick building that boasts great views of the city and, best of all, serves afternoon tea! Of course, I had to try it.
The steps up to the former consulate building
A display about how the British made trade deals with Taiwan back in the day
The view of the Cijin Lighthouse
Lauren and I had tea for two! It was a little bit British,
a little bit Taiwanese, and all delicious
We had dinner at an amazing little Thai place that served some of the best fish I've had so far in Taiwan. And, as a tropical island nation, Taiwan is very proud of it's wonderful fresh seafood, so that's saying something.
Spicy lemon pepper Thai fish. Yum!
On Sunday, Esther, Christine and I took the ferry over to Cijin island. It wasn't very good beach weather, so we decided to just wander around town for a bit before hiking up to visit the Cijin lighthouse.
Cijin beach
We're crabs! Not totally sure why this guy was there but I liked him.
Esther and I at Cihou lighthouse
Siena, one of my wonderful LETs, is actually from Kaohsiung county. Since we visited on a holiday weekend (Double Ten weekend, more about that later), Siena had also headed down south for a few days to celebrate with her family. Her parents own a restaurant and she was kind enough to invite Christine and I to come out to meet her family and have a late lunch. It was a bit of a treck to get there but the food was SO good!
Siena
Her family's specialty is Taiwanese style fried chicken. But it's not you average fast-food style fried chicken. As Siena informed us, you have to wait a little while to get you food because the chicken is still alive when you order it. In fact, at their old location, customers used to be able to walk over to the pin and pick out the chicken that they wanted (as a child, she always hated it when it was her job to catch a specific chicken from the pin because sometimes the others would poop on her head). However, since they moved to a more urban location, there isn't room to keep the chicken coup where customers can go see it. Anyhow, this point is that my lunch was very fresh that afternoon.
Fried chicken good enough to rival my grandmother's
After we had stuffed ourselves to capacity, Siena drove us up the side of a mountain to visit a temple and monastery with a great view. Our timing worked out just right because we just happened to arrive right before an elaborate ceremony was put on in front of the temple. Apparently, to keep the idols at one temple from getting too bored, they are sometimes taken to visit the idols at other temples. Then, when it comes back home, the worshippers go through an elaborate procession with lots of dancing in order to welcome back the returning idol. Here's a clip from the dance (the whole thing lasted about 10 minutes):
