Time Flies...

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.

(For more information about the Cat Village and a lot of pictures of cats, go here: http://www.epicurioustravels.com/2011/04/taiwan-houtong-cat-village.html)

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! 

The Taroko Music 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.  

Just wait... the raptors are coming...

Hangin with the star of the show!

Thanksgiving in Taiwan

This year I had my first Thanksgiving away from my family (not to mention my first Thanksgiving in a foreign country) so, to make up for it, I had two Thanksgivings. After all, Thanksgiving is a strictly American holiday and what's more American than drowning your sadness with an abundance of food, wine, and good company during the holidays? (That only sounds super melodramatic. I mean it as a joke.)

The first party was held in Taipei by the American Institute in Taiwan. It was held on the top floor of a ritzy apartment complex right by Taipei 101 and the Fulbright staff and all of this year's recipients were invited. All the food was delicious, especially the bread pudding, and William Stanton, the director of AIT, carved the turkey.

William Stanton and the head chef tackle the turkey

 

The whole Fulbright Yilan crew!

***

While the AIT Thanksgiving party was held the Friday before Thanksgiving, the second shindig was a somewhat more low-key event on Thanksgiving itself. The girls at the Zhongshan apartment (where I lived for the first month after I arrived in Taiwan) were awesome enough to host a great big pot luck for all us Yilan-ites. Turns out that, when we pooled our resources, we had just about everything traditionally required for Thanksgiving dinner (except maybe green bean casserole) and a few distinctly Taiwanese things to boot.  

One of our food tables (there was a separate salad/sandwich table and a third for drinks and desserts)  

Through a funny twist of fate, we even ended up with a big fat turkey with all the fixins from a fancy restaurant in Taipei free of charge. Of course, then the problem was actually getting the turkey from said restaurant to the party in Yilan. But Vivian (who lives in Taipei) came to the rescue, volunteering to pick up the 6kg turkey and bringing it all the way to Zhongshan apartment in a taxi. 

Christine, the only one of us who had ever carved a turkey before, shows off her handiwork

*Sappy moment of the day* This Thanksgiving, I was thankful that, even though I was about as far away from my home and my family as I could possibly be, I was still fortunate enough to be surrounded by good food and great friends. 

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us in Yilan!

Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich

Let me begin this story by saying that, as a child, I loved Shel Silverstein. So, when it came time to pack up my life and move to Taiwan for a year to teach English to elementary school children, I reveled in the idea of getting to share this particular aspect of American culture and language with my new students. Despite the weight restrictions on my luggage, I ran to the store and picked up a copy of my favorite book of his poetry, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and I've just been itching to use it in the classroom ever since.

Then, my day came. My fourth graders at Dong Sing Elementary were learning about food and, since it was midterms week, we didn't want to start a new lesson yet. We wanted to do something fun but still somewhat on topic, a review activity of sorts. So I turned to good ol' Shel and found "Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich." It goes like this:

RECIPE FOR A HIPPOPOTAMUS SANDWICH 

by Shel Silverstein  

A hippo sandwich is easy to make.

All you do is simply take
One slice of bread,
One slice of cake,
Some mayonnaise,
One onion ring,

One hippopotamus, 

One piece of string, 

A dash of pepper-

That ought to do it,  

And now comes the problem... Biting into it!

Siena and I read the poem with our students and taught them a few new vocab words like "bite," "hippopotamus" and "mayonnaise." Then the real fun began: we assigned all of our students the task of writing their own recipes by changing the animal and all the food words in the poem. The best part: since Shel Silverstein's poem had an illustration, I made all of my students illustrate their poems as well. Some of them are, admittedly, a little bit gruesome if you think about it too much but they're just so funny I had to share. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Looking like it just stepped out of Sanrio, Lily's elephant sandwich was one of the cuter submissions 

Roger decided to add a few sprinkles of rainbow to his whale sandwich

I don't know if you can see it but this cat sandwich comes complete with a "slice" 

of dog (or at the very least a mini dog strapped to the cat's back)

Don't forget to add one car and some jam next time you make yourself a "pig sandwich"

Davis and his recipe for a dog sandwich (although it's really more of an impressively 

drawn wolf sandwich if you ask me)

And, last but not least, we have my absolute favorite: Vic's dog sandwich.

It was my favorite mostly because of Vic's unflinching realism. Unlike all of his classmates with their happy smiling sandwich centerpieces, Vic went to great lengths to reinforce that the dog in his sandwich is, in fact, dead. Just in case it wasn't enough that the dog's eyes X-ed out and its tongue is lolling, at the last minute Vic grabbed his pencil and added the dog's angelic spirit rising from the sandwich. And let's just stop for a minute and reflect on how very proud he looks about the whole thing.

Here's a close up in case you couldn't see the angel dog in the other shot:

Luodong: The farms, food, and baby animals grand tour

Thanks to my twisted ankle, hiking and other forms of walking-intensive travel were off the plate for a few weeks. But don't worry, I've still been keeping busy. For starters, Christine and I figured out how to bake muffins in a toaster oven (a general lack of conventional ovens in Asia is just one of those "cultural differences" I'm learning to get over).

Experiment #1: Pumpkin cream cheese muffins

If you can't tell, we voted them a success

Then, Christine, Cherrica and I got to go on a scooter-tour of Luodong with my host dad, Jason. As you may have inferred from my blog post title, baby animals and food figured heavily in said tour (my host family has already figured out my two favorite things).

After a wonderful lunch of homemade pork and green onion dumplings, we started off our tour at a goat farm/baby animal petting zoo/cafe/kid's carnival. I realize that that's a really bizarre description but I don't know how else to explain it. Anyhow, we skipped the carnival rides and headed straight for the animals.

Jason says, "bahh!"

The piglets were my favorite. I was sorely tempted to take one home with me (side note: this farm lets you rent piglets by the night, so taking one home with me was a legitimate option).

The farm also lets you buy milk by the bottle to feed to the piglets and the baby goats.

Awww! So darn cute! 

The farm also had some friendly free-range chickens and turkeys wandering about the cafe and the neighboring playground.

 Feeding the goats was also an option.

Of course, not all of the goats were strictly interested in eating grass.

And, just in case you still haven't reached your cute quote for the day, here's a baby bunny:

Happy year of the rabbit!

When Cherrica and Jason finally managed to drag Christine and I away from the animals, we headed to the night market for lunch (despite the somewhat deceptive name, many parts of Taiwan's famous night markets are open during the day as well). After a quick ride around town during which Jason pointed out all of the good places to eat, visit, or park a scooter, we stopped to pick up some 蔥油餅 (green onion pancakes) from the most popular stand in Luodong. For desert, I tried 豆花 (a desert made of shaved ice, tapioca pearls, and sweet tofu pudding) for the first time. 

 Lunch! Christine (right) got traditional 豆花 with peanuts while Cherrica (left) went for tried grass jelly (I promise, it tastes a lot better than the name makes it sound).

Next, we headed out of the city and into a beautiful patch of countryside to visit Happiness 20, a farm/restaurant/park with its own orchard and an emphasis on DIY crafts. Again, weird description but "farms" I've been to in Taiwan are just so different than most farms back home. I think maybe a tourist-friendly organic farm run by hippies in Vermont is about the closest you would come in the US.

Two of Jason's friends opened the farm a few years ago, so parts of it are still being built and expanded. One of the most fun things about the farm was their DIY pizza station, complete with a brick pizza oven (which Jason's friend constructed after watching an instructive YouTube video). We built a fruit, honey, and marshmallow dessert pizza and the owner's kids joined us to make a more traditional ham, tomato sauce, and green pepper pizza.

 We used honey for sauce. Other toppings included, pineapple, bananas, marshmallows, 

tomatoes (they're a fruit in Taiwan), and cheese. I feel like this should also be filed under 

"sounds weird, tastes wonderful."

After they put our pizza in the oven, we got to feed the goats while we waited for the food to cook. No offense to Dixie Crossroads, which will always be a special part of my childhood, but this was way more fun than feeding the fish while you wait for your dinner.

When they were ready, both pizzas were delicious. 

And we had fun herbal flower tea, complete with edible flowers, to go with it!
What more can a girl ask for?