(standing at the bottom of one of the tallest buildings on Earth)
It's almost Christmas! I'm everyone back home is getting ready for some quality time with friends and family, and for all you folks abroad like me, I hope you have an equally happy holiday season. It's kind of odd here. There are Christmas decorations up, and there are songs playing in all the stores, but it's still feels like late summer, although the nights have been falling into the upper 50s. I have to admit, I do get a kick out of all the people here busting out their winter coats and from hearing everyone say, "It's so cold!" in Chinese to their friends as they walk outside. Clearly they have never experienced anything even close to a Wisconsin winter. :)
It's actually been a pretty chill these past two weeks. Some of my classes are wrapping up, so that means review days and finals for them. Not a lot of work for me in class, but a ton of grading for me at home. This has led me to set up a station on my desk in my apartment. Grading things is actually kind of nice now. I've got my laptop in front of me, so I can watch movies or listen to music, and today I went back to the tea company I talked about in my last entry to stock up on some more delicious tea and invest in a teapot, so now I've got a steady flow of hot Taiwanese tea ready at my side whenever I need to work through 20 or so papers, tests, or workbooks.
Unfortunately, I'll be working on Christmas day for nearly 13 hours, but I guess it's extra money, and as a special treat, one of my adult classes surprised me with an invitation to a Karaoke bar this weekend as their Christmas gift to me. Should be fun to relax a bit and sing a few Christmas songs with my students. So far, both of my adult classes have been very fun and generous too, bringing me local snacks, chilled tea, and even some small presents (so far I've
gotten a calendar and a fan). The kids are pretty good too (for the most part, haha), and I can tell they're getting excited to perform their Christmas carols next week. I'm going to try my best to bum a video off of another teacher with a better camera since mine doesn't record sound, but no promises.
(above: a selection of teapots and cups at Lin Hua Tai Tea Co.)
(the statue of Sun Yat-sen inside the memorial building; please salute!)
Now to fill you guys in on my Adventure Thursdays. Today's was pretty chill, just a visit to the post office to send my first mail home (fingers crossed it arrives safely), a trip to the tea store, and a meeting later on. I did get a chance to try out a great restaurant and had a big plate of vegetarian curry, the perfect pick-me-up for a rainy day. However, last week's Adventure Thursday was a different story.
Last week, I visited the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, which is basically a huge traditional building housing an equally impressive statue of Sun Yat-sen. Another brief history lesson, Sun Yat-sen was instrumental in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the last remnant of imperial rule in China. Afterward, he acted as the provisional president of the new republic, and is considered by many Taiwanese to be the "father of the nation." Anyway, the memorial hall complex is a very nice place to go and relax, even if you're required to do a salute to the statue of Sun Yat-sen upon arrival. :) There are several gardens and a large pond surrounding the building itself, and from these, you can see the Taipei 101 building, one of the tallest structures in the world.
(left: Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall; below right: the Taipei 101 building can be seen from most places in the city)
I headed in the Taipei 101 building's general direction, not too hard to do since it towers over the rest of the city and you can see it from practically anywhere. As I got
closer, I continued to be amazed by just how tall it actually is. The tower is 101 stories tall and was designed to resemble a stalk of bamboo growing up out of the city. It houses a large, very high-end mall on the bottom six floors with stores like Armani, Chanel, Dior, Gucci, and a ton of other brands I've never even heard of. Needless to say, I did no shopping on my teacher's salary, haha. Once you get past the stores, you can buy a ticket to ride the express elevator to the observatory decks on the top floors. It's kind of a tourist trap, and there were a lot of gooney foreigners (probably myself included) who were willing to pay the $12 dollars to make the ascent, but I figured, when in Taipei... :)
(approaching the Taipei 101 buliding; it's... so... tall!)
Apparently the elevator is the fastest in the world, and I did experience some g-force factors making the rise and had to try to un-pop my ears a few times. However, it only took about 20 seconds or so to climb nearly 100 stories. Better than the stairs right? Once I got to the top, I walked around the entire area, indoors and out. The outdoor viewing area actually reminded me a lot of the walk around the top of the state capitol building in Madison, just add a few thousand feet, haha. One down side of being that high up is that you can really see the smog that shrouds the city. They say on a clear day you can see all the way to the ocean, but unfortunately I could barely see the mountains around the edge of the city.
Overall, I'd say it was a cool experience being up that high, but I'd much rather have my feet safely on the ground. I can imagine it must be one of the weirdest feelings to be on top during one of Taiwan's frequent small earthquakes, yikes!
(the view from the indoor observation deck at the top of the Taipei 101 buliding)
Alright, that's all for this week. I'm going to leave you all with a picture of a typical street in Taipei. This one is right outside of the second school I teach at. You can see there's not a lot of emphasis put on enforcing building and street airspace codes since the advertizements seem to try and top one another for jutting out above the road. Happy holidays to everyone back home and overseas!
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