我回來了！－ I'm back!

(the dining room/kitchen area (stove not visible) of my new place)

Hello everyone!  It's been about two weeks since my last entry, and a LOT has happened since then, but for your sakes, I'll try to keep it relatively short.  And the best news you ask?  This entry comes with the first pictures from 

Taiwan!  

First off, I moved into my new apartment.  After two or so weeks of searching the city, sifting through Taiwanese advertisements, and stumbling through phone calls in Chinese with various landlords, I found a place and set up a meeting with the guy who owns it.  In order to meet with him, I had to take the local subway a few stops, so I got a chance to try out my new "easy card", the device by which most everyone here gets around town, good on the MRT (transit by electric train, both above ground and subway) and the extensive bus system.  My friend Chris was nice

 enough to give me his old card so I didn't have to pay the 100 yuan activation fee (about $3.20).  

   (my bedroom/study area)

My first impression of the place was decent.  It was a little dirty, and kind of a ways away from the school where I work, but on the plus side, it had a balcony, a working kitchen, it was furnished, and it was bigger than any other place I'd looked at so far.  I was used to looking at single room apartments with a closet sized bathroom.  If you want to get an idea of size, think college dorm room (and I'm not talking about the fancy ones they just built in Madison).  This place had a large bedroom with living room furniture, a kitchen with a separate cabinet and dining room table, and a bathroom.  As an added bonus, there's a small entry way to put your shoes and coat in, and it's located a few minutes away from a police station and a hospital (meaning it's a very safe neighborhood, and there shouldn't be any emergencies that can't be handled immediately).  

I set up another meeting with the landlord a few days later, met him at the subway station, and (reluctantly, it's my first time on my own remember) signed the lease, which was of course all in traditional Chinese characters...  After a night spent with some sponges, a broom, bleach, and a mop and bucket, I now have a clean place, and have discovered a few nice things.  For instance, the landlord had bought a piece of embroidered silk to use a tablecloth, but when I removed it to clean, I found that the table is actually made out of carved dark wood with drawers on two sides containing some cool things I hadn't anticipated like a large Taiwanese flag and many sticks of incense.  The same went for the traditional Chinese cabinet in the kitchen, which hid a bunch of old Chinese dishes and several beautiful vases.  My apartment is now a great place to relax after a long day of work, and one of my favorite things to do is sit out on the balcony, turn on some music on my laptop, and enjoy the cool night air (and maybe a Tsingtao beer too).  

(the "living room", right at the foot of my bed)

But moving on, I'll fill you guys in on my job so far.  This last week was in a single word, grueling.  I've been assigned several permanent classes since my last update, and I took over for a teacher on vacation the past 8 days.  This meant a lot of 13 hour days, more grading of finals, homework, and quizzes when I got home, and a lot of sleep deprivation for me.  But on the bright 

side, I made a lot more money that I would have otherwise, and I got to celebrate Halloween with a class I was subbing for.  

(a pumpkin and two fairy princesses)

(me and another English teacher 

in our Halloween getups)

They sure made a big deal out of Halloween at the school, and to tell you the truth, I was kind of glad about it, even though it was extra work for the teachers.  All the kids wore costumes and there was a catwalk costume show in the basement for an hour in the afternoon (think Taiwan's Next Top Model).  Of course, the kids were ridiculously cute in their Halloween outfits, and I was very impressed with how into it some of them got.  My personal favorite was a girl who made a papier maché mask with her parents at home and came to class as Jack Skellington from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (Brock, hopefully you'll appreciate this one.  I'm including a picture).  I was the MC for the costume

 show, and since I'm down to my last few hundred New Taiwan Dollars here until my next paycheck (under 30 bucks), I decided to bum a cowboy hat from the main office and play that part for the show.  I have a picture

of my costume next to a teacher who went all out and rented an English guard outfit from a store.  I think it turned out ok, and I finally fulfilled my dream to be a cowboy for Halloween (if any of you remember that time I was really sick and couldn't put together my "Woody the Cowboy" costume sophomore year).  

(the best costume ever!)

I'm still loving Taiwan and look forward to getting to know Taipei better.  Tomorrow I don't have any classes until 6:00 PM so I think I'm going to try to go on an excursion to one of the city's many sights.  I'm debating between the botanical gardens, an old tea village in the mountains, and the Danshui river.  More pictures and posts to come soon now that I have internet!