Thursday, December 17, 2009

郵件地址 - Mailing Address

So for everyone who's been asking about sending mail to Taiwan, here's my address:  

Devin Trezise
No. 9, Lane 90
Sung Chiang Road
Taipei, Taiwan 104

This is the address of the school where I usually teach and any letters or packages go straight to the secretaries' desks where I can pick them up.  Hope that helps!

那就是個很高的樓 - Now THAT'S a Tall Building


(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!  

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

趕上一下 - A Little Catch Up

So again, it's been a while.  I won't make any promises to keep on top of my blog better, because most likely I will not, but be sure to keep checking back once in a while for updates.  
 
(some of the smaller metal barrels of high mountain oolong tea at the Lin Hua Tai Tea Company)

1)  Lin Hua Tai Tea Company - This was a particularly fun
 excursion for me since I am pretty much a tea addict.  Turns out that one of my friends from high school cross country has been studying here for the last semester, but unfortunately he is leaving today.  However, we did manage to meet up one last time to obtain some high quality Taiwanese tea for him to bring back home with him.  There is certainly no lack of tea stores around here, but a lot of them have become very commercialized with high prices and fancy displays.  This is all fine and good if you're looking for a pretty picture, but I'm all about quality, so I asked some of the native Taipei residents at my school where the best place to buy tea was.  After a few mins on google maps, my friend and I were off to Lin Hua Tai Tea Company.  Essentially, it was the bare basics.  Huge metal barrels filled to the brim with different grades and different kinds of tea.  One thing that was notable was the smell of the place.  Never have I been to nor do I expect to visit again a factory so fragrant.  The people who worked there were very friendly and helpful, and we ended up buying a decent amount of tea leaves.  I'm definitely planning a return visit sometime in the near future.  

2)  National Palace Museum - If you all remember, I left my last Adventure Thursday up to a vote on the facebook between Longshan Temple and the National Palace Museum.  Well, luckily enough, I ended up going to both, just on different days.  I met up with a friend and headed to this famed museum in Taipei.  There's actually kind of an interesting controversy surrounding the treasures inside it's walls.  Quick East Asian History 101 course for those of you who aren't familiar.  :)  China's last emperor was dethroned at the beginning of the 1900s, 
after which the new republican government took over.  This regime persisted through the war with Japan several decades later but was finally driven out by the communist forces toward the middle of the century, at which point in time they fled to the island of Taiwan (Formosa).  However, the republican nationalist forces managed to round up many of China's finest cultural artifacts and bring them along to their new home.  Then, during the 60s, mainland China experienced what is called the Cultural Revolution, in which nearly everything old was wiped out in an effort to rid the country of any decadent influences and help it embrace the new communist utopia.  This meant that the majority of the treasures that had remained in China were destroyed.  Anyway, the big issue now is that China wants everything back from Taiwan, 
claiming that it belongs to the motherland.  This is true, but many people say that the objects were saved from the Cultural Revolution and wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been taken to Taiwan.  Regardless, it was amazing to see that many priceless things in one place.  The two most famous items on display are actually the smallest.  There is a cabbage made out of jade and a small rock that looks like a piece of meat.  These are treated like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre with people crowded around taking pictures and talking in amazement.  They were ok I guess...  :)

(top: the park nearest to my school; bottom: the entrance to Kojen English School 2 where I teach)

3)  Life at school - Some of you have been asking for updates about my classes.  For the most part, they're great!  We're entering the Christmas season here in Taipei, and the next few weeks will be devoted not only to teaching the normal English curriculum, but also to Christmas songs.  Most of the kids really have fun with this, and I'm currently teaching them Brenda Lee's "Jingle Bell Rock" and Bobby Helms' "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."  I'm gonna try to have the TAs take some pictures of me with my classes so you all can see them.  I'm also starting to settle into life at Kojen, and I no longer have to spend as much time preparing for classes, which has left me with time to try out different places to eat in the area.  There's a killer vegetarian buffet just two blocks away that I'd never noticed before, so my diet has improved a lot.  I usually have tofu, squash, lima beans, steamed greens, peppers, dumplings, and curried potatoes all served on top of brown or white rice.  It even comes with a free side of soup, and all for about three or four
dollars.  Delicious!  I also spend a lot of my free time between classes walking around the parks in the area.  I've included two pictures of the parks by my school.  It's really relaxing, and I'm definitely enjoying the 70 degree weather (sorry to all you folks back home in snow-bound Wisconsin.)  

(Another park where I walk between classes)

(The Red House Theater at night, about a 10 minute walk from my place)

4)  Life at home - In addition to getting accustomed to my job and my students, I'm also starting to get used to my neighborhood.  While my place isn't perfect (all I'm gonna say is a story involving a rat rooting around in my trash at 2:30 am), it's the place where I call home, and will be for the next 10 months.  The area around it is pretty lively, with weekly religious parades and fireworks.  It's also located close to a place called the Red Theater, a building built by the Japanese in 1908 as a marketplace, and later converted into a theater for the arts.  Now, it plays host to Taipei's teenage crowd and the city's gay and lesbian population.  The area around it is studded with movie theaters, restaurants, bars, and trendy stores.  Basically, Ximending (the name of the area) is a place to come to have a good time, which is convenient since that's what I plan on doing here.  :)