龍山寺和火鍋 － Dragon Mountain Temple and Hot Pot

Well, another Thursday, another adventure!  This week, I let you, the readers, decide what my next destination would be via my facebook status.  You voted, and I went to Longshan "Dragon Mountain" Temple.  Let me clear up one minor misleading point about the name:  there is no mountain in sight of the temple;  it's just a name.  However, it was still really cool.  I walked there from my place after a much needed morning of sleeping in.  The temple is surrounded by streets filled with shops selling jade pendants, red braided good luck charms, wooden animal carvings, and other traditional trinkets.  Opposite the main gate is a large plaza filled with snack vendors, the most popular of which, I'm sorry to say, were sellers of stinky tofu (this is actually what they call it, I'm not making it up).  This Taiwanese food is said to be delicious, but so far I've been too intimidated by the disgusting smell.  It's kind of like a combination of really smelly feet, rancid oil, and dog poop.  Why it smells so awful, I haven't a clue.  I have made it one of my goals to try it before I leave though, so rest assured, you will be getting the critique from me sometime in the near (or maybe not too near) future...

(the waterfall just inside the Longshan temple gates)

Anyway, I got to the temple, and was greeted with the smell of incense and the sound of falling water.  One of the coolest things about the temple was the waterfall to the right of it as you enter.  It's beautiful and it covers any observers in a fine mist which is cool and a relief if you've been walking for a while.  I continued into the

main part of the complex, and spent the next hour or so wandering around.  

(coy swimming in the pools underneath the waterfall)

It's not a big building by any means, but the intricate carvings, gold leaf, offerings of food and flowers, and beautiful calligraphy carved right into the stone held my attention for a long time.  Throughout my visit,hundreds of worshipers passed me carrying burning sticks of incense on their way around the central building.  It's set up so that there are seven distinct stops.  At each stop, 

there lies a huge urn carved with dragons where people can deposit a stick of incense.  The collective smoke from each of these vessels rises above the temple and provides a

 spiritual air about the entire area.  In front of each urn there is a statue of a traditional Chinese god.  If I'm right, Longshan temple's main focus of prayer is Kuanyin, the goddess of mercy, but there are six other gods that reside within the temple walls.  I was very tempted to buy some incense and make the rounds myself, but it seemed like there was a different protocol for each station, and in the interest of not being an offensive tourist, I offered up my silent well wishes to everyone back home instead.  

(left: the interior of Longshan temple; above right: the view of the temple from the street outside)

After leaving the temple, I spent some time browsing in the stores in the surrounding area.  Interesting stuff, but I'll probably have to wait until I have a little more money.  I didn't hang around too long though because I had a meeting with some of my adult class students.  What?  Work on an Adventure Thursday you say?!  Nope, my students were nice enough to invite me to a Taiwanese "hot pot" meal.  Basically, this involves a table with a heating element in the middle on which a large pot is placed, divided down the middle.  One side is spicy soup, the other mild.  The waitstaff bring a menu of different raw dishes you can order, then wheel them over on a cart.  You put the uncooked meats, veggies, and other goodies into one of the two sides of the pot and let them cook.  In a few minutes, you take them out, dip them in a delicious sauce, and you've got hot pot!  I've got to say, it was one of the most delicious meals I've had here so far, and the company was great too.  I really enjoyed getting to know my students outside of class, and they were all so friendly.  They even treated me, I didn't have to pay a cent!  Of course, I promised that if any of them had the chance to come over to America, I'd treat them to a killer dinner there too.  :)  

All in all, it was a pretty fun day, but now I've gotta hit the hay and get ready for two more days of back to back classes.  I'm subbing for one of my co-teachers next week, so unfortunately, this is going to be the last Adventure Thursday update for a while, but this weekend is showing promise, so keep your eyes open for that.  Keep the e-mails, facebook messages, and instant messages coming too!  I miss everyone and I promise to answer once I get the chance.  

(enjoying some genuine Taiwanese hot pot with some of my adult class students)

一些好笑的事 － Some Funny Things

So I just woke up around 11:30 here, and I've got about an hour-and-a-half before I make my trip into the immigration office to pick up some official documents for my stay, so I figured I'd write a more informal blog entry.  The beginning of the week is pretty low key for me and most of my classes are in the evening, so my sleep schedule gets kinda messed up.  If you're teaching until 10 PM and you don't get home until 10:45, you're gonna want to sleep late, guaranteed.  Unfortunately, this also contributes to the misery that is Friday and Saturday mornings when I have to change my sleep habits to wake up at 6:30 AM.  But enough about that.  On to the meat of this post!  

Amid the classes I'm teaching, the adventures I'm having, and generally my figuring out life in Taiwan, I've run across quite a few funny things that I wish I had someone else around to appreciate with me.  It's kind of embarrassing to randomly crack up on the crowded subway or while waiting at the intersection and have people look at you like, "what is this foreigner doing?"  

Most of these amusing thing have to do with the English translations for places and products.  They're usually great direct translations, not at all like the ones on mainland China which were incomprehensible, but they still could've used a native English speaker to go over them.  Some of the phrases are just plain hilarious.  Some of the things below are kind of, er, inappropriate, but that's why I got a kick out of them.  Can't say I didn't warn you!

1)  Racist Toothpaste:  This has more to do with the actual Chinese characters written on this particular brand of toothpaste.  There are two different kinds the company puts out, one reading "white people toothpaste" and one reading "black people toothpaste".  Not even kidding.  The "black people toothpaste" has a picture of one of those old timey minstrels with a blacked out face and a top hat.  The English translation of the stuff is now "Darlie" but I've been told that not too long ago it was called "Darkie" toothpaste until people (rightly) got pissed off and made the company change it.  Just wow...

2)  D-cup Café:  I very quaint corner cafe on my way home from work, complete with scones, croissants, and tea cups and saucers.  Had they only known what D-cup really means in English.

3)  Cock soup:  This is an instant chicken soup product.  You buy the bowl, add boiling water, and voila, you have chicken soup with noodles!  This is another case however where a quick proofing with a native speaker would've avoided this unfortunate product name.  

4)  Semen spa and massages:  In this case, the owners bypassed the English translation of the name in the first part in favor of the sound transliteration of the Chinese characters: "se" and "men".  This was no doubt in an effort to avoid any potential English puns.  Alas, how wrong they were...

Hopefully I'll run across a few more inappropriate/humorous signs, places, and products.  To be fair to the Taiwanese though, I have an equally funny/inappropriate story of my own.  I was talking to one of my adult classes and we were discussing what we like to eat.  I told them that I was a vegetarian and that Taiwan has a lot of great vegetable dishes.  "I like to eat tofu," I told the class, which proceeded to burst out laughing.  Apparently "eating tofu" in Chinese has the slang meaning of "performing oral sex on women".  So in the end, I end up looking just as silly when the language barrier is involved.  Fortunately enough, I wasn't in charge of a company mass producing a million products with the quote "I like to eat tofu" written in Chinese characters.  :)

在台灣下雨的一天 － A Rainy Day In Taiwan

(a view of Taipei at dusk from Maokong in the surrounding mountains)

Hello everyone back home!  It's been a while since my last entry, and I've got a lot to fill you all in on.  

First and foremost, now that my schedule is getting more concrete and I've got regular classes I'm teaching (not just subbing for), I find that I have a free day in the middle of the week, so I'm introducing "Adventure Thursdays" to the blog.  The basic concept is that every Thursday, I'm going to try to do one excursion to a must see site in Taipei or the surrounding area.  I've already had two Adventure Thursdays, so I'll start from last week's.  

If any of you know me well, you won't be surprised at my first choice: the teahouses of Maokong.  Maokong is a mountain town overlooking Taipei City (the view is the first picture at the top of the blog).  Two of the area's specialties are their "high mountain" oolong tea (高山烏龍) and their love of cooking tea right into any food.  I took the bus up the mountain, through bamboo groves and past tea plantations, and got off about half way up at the Maokong stop.  I guess I had been expecting an actual town, but it's more just a bunch of buldings (mainly teahouses and restaurants) scattered around the sides of the mountains.  I started hiking down the road to a promising looking teahouse built with no walls, just a roof over two stories open to the air and red wooden pillars propping up the structure on the steep slope.  It looked a little rustic, but it'd been a long trip and I was in the mood for some hardcore relaxation.  The folks there promptly seated me at a table overlooking the valley and Taipei City and handed me a menu of tea and tea dishes.  Each table came with it's own gas burner in the middle and a sturdy kettle filled with water.  Basically, you order which tea you want and any accompanying food, they turn on the burner, and bring out a bunch of tea supplies (teapot, cups, utensils, a tray to catch any spilled water).  I ordered the high mountain oolong and tea fried rice with potatoes.  I took a picture of the setup and it's posted here at the side.  

(from top to bottom:  a temple on the walk to the teahouse;  my meal and tea;  the teahouse at night with glowing lanterns and a view of the city lights)

After the water boiled and I had a cup of hot tea in one hand and chopsticks in the other, I sat back and took in the mountain atmosphere.  I'm not really a city boy, and any time in the 

outdoors when you're surrounded by trees and a fresh cool breeze is a treat when those things are usually substituted for scooter exhaust and concrete.  I spent a few hours up there just thinking and drinking tea, then took the bus back down the mountain. As I descended, I noticed a network of lantern lit trails crisscrossing the mountain and valley.  Apparently the area is also famous for it's scenic hiking trails and relaxing pavilions, so I'll have to take a trip there again so experience that side of Maokong.  

The week since has been filled with the daily grind of classes, including a particularly tiring one from 7:00-9:50 PM every Friday.  Most of the class is in high school, and they've been up since probably 6:00 AM and at school all day, so I can understand why they don't want to be in an English review course late at night right before their weekend.  For the most part, they're unmotivated and only talkative with each other in Chinese.  Like I said, I can sympathize with them, especially since a lot of them are only there because their parents think it's a good idea, but Fridays are pretty much the same story for me with 13 hours of work and early classes to teach the next day, and my patience is wearing thin, especially when they don't bother to do their homework.  It's kind of disappointing, but I'm hoping that I can work up the energy a little bit in the next few weeks seeing as I just got this class from another teacher.  

On a more positive note though, my younger classes are going well, and I'm getting more settled into the routine of their course books and trying to balance them with games and activities of my own.  A new development in my schedule is that I now have two adult classes three times a week.  I've found them to be a ton of fun because a) the adults are there because they want to be, not because someone is making them, b) they're really curious about western culture, and c) I don't have to spend half of the class trying to get them to behave (a lot of my time with the kids' classes goes out the window trying to make them stay in their seats during a quiz, not hit each other, and use their inside voices when it's not break, haha).  

(The entrance to the Taipei Botanical Gardens.  I've always wanted to live somewhere with palm trees!)

Well, enough about work for now.  Today was my second Adventure Thursday, and I chose to explore the Taipei Botanical Gardens and the neighboring museum of art history.  Again, the gardens were a nice break from the city life.  They're pretty big, and since Taiwan is on the border between the tropical and sub-tropical climate zones, they're filled with all sorts of cool trees, grasses, and flowers.  My favorites were the avenue of towering palm trees at the gate, the bamboo garden, and the lotus pond (even though they're starting to die now that it's almost winter here).  Best of all, it's only a 15 minute trip from my place so I can go there whenever I need to chill out for a while.  

(from top to bottom:  part of the botanical gardens; a kingfisher (maybe?) hunting for some lunch in the lotus pond;  the art history museum overlooking the now fading lotus pond)

The art history museum borders the botanical gardens, and unfortunately three of the four floors were closed for renovations, but on the bright side, they said I could use my ticket again next time once the renovations are done for no extra charge.  :)  The third floor was the only part that was open, and it would've been the one I would've headed to right off the bat anyway.

They had a huge collection of Chinese artifacts, some dating back to 9,000 years ago.  I got tosee ancient oracle bones, Tibetan paintings, classical calligraphy, jade carvings, huge bronze ceremonial castings, and ceramics and pottery in every shape, color, and form.  It was a fascinating visit and they had English translations of all the Chinese notes and explanations so I was able to follow along very easily.  

(another beautiful bird fishing in front of the museum)

Now I'm back home listening to the rain on my balcony and admiring the sheets I finally found for my bed (never have I been so excited to have a sheet over my mattress, haha).  If I'm in the mood, I might extend my adventures tonight and go see "Julie and Julia" at a movie theater around the corner.  :)  This was a big entry just because so much happened.  I had to gloss over a lot of the details of my work, but I'm going to try to keep on top of my entries better from now on so I can actually fill you guys in on the little stories that happen.  Hope to hear from everyone back home!  Every e-mail and facebook message I get makes me really happy.  Miss you all!  

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!