SCREECHING CATS AND CONFUSED TAXI DRIVERS...

Ni Hao! I just got back from yet another trip to Taipei. I know It seems like I go there all the time, and yes I do. This time we made arrangements to stay at the Grand Hotel and see the Chinese Opera. It was a more expensive weekend, but well worth it.

This trip is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and have been planning for several weeks now. An open invitation was extended to anyone who wanted to come, and there ended up being a total of eight girls from our school who went. Julie and I had been wanting to go to the temple again before I went home, so Julie, Elizabeth, and I left immediately following our Saturday morning classes, while the other five planned to leave a little later. We got on what we thought was a 10:30 bus, but it didn't leave until 11:00. This pushed our slim chance of catching a 2:00pm session from "slightly possible", to "impossible" because of the 2 1/2 hour ride, plus thirty minute walk. It turned out alright, however, because we were allowed some time to stop at the Chang Kai Shek Memorial. Here are some pictures I took:

Upon arrival at the temple, we inquired when the next session would be, and learned we only had to wait until 3pm. During this time I was also excited to have an opportunity to meet the new Temple President's wife, Sister Walker. The Walkers just arrived in Taiwan 3 weeks ago from Dallas, Texas where they had previously served in the Dallas Temple. Here they knew both sets of my grandparents, who also worked in the temple there. It was nice to have a small connection to home. When we came out of the temple following our session, it was dusk.

We decided we didn't want to walk the 30 minute trip back to the MRT from the temple, so after stocking up on sandwiches at Subway, we caught a taxi. (This was the first time I have had a female taxi driver.) About 5:25pm we climbed into the cab and I told our driver where we wanted to go, "The Grand Hotel". She nodded as if she understood, and said what I thought was the street name for the hotel, I answered in agreement, and we were off. Well, after about 30 minutes our driver pulled over to the side of the road and announced we had arrived. We were not at the hotel, but on some random street in the middle of Taipei. You can only imagine the confused expressions on our faces. Anyway, thus began our frenzy of pulling out maps, showing pictures, and our driver looking more and more confused. Finally she realized where we wanted to go, flipped a u-turn, and we back-tracked the entire distance we had already traveled. Now in Taipei you can't haggle a price out of your driver, they follow the meters, and our meter was slowly racking up the miles and eating into our wallets. We weren't too happy. I did feel bad for our driver, however, because she was very confused and it was apparent she had never been to the Grand Hotel. She stopped several times to ask directions and we pulled up to the hotel just after 7pm. The meter read over $600NT, but she only charged us $300NT, which I thought was a fair exchange.

The Grand Hotel is exactly that, "grand." It was beautiful and we felt like royalty walking into the lobby and checking in. Our friends had checked in earlier that day and so all we had to do was get the key that was left for us. Room number 503. We hopped on the elevator and after checking to see if our key would work in the door of Room 509 (yeah, we got the numbers mixed up), we found our room. We were surprised when the door said Suite 503. We hadn't booked a suite... Anyway, the other hotel guest may have heard the screams coming from Suite 503 as we entered and ran around in a frenzy of excitement. We were ecstatic. Soon after the initial shock wore off we realized we were standing in the dark because we couldn't get any of the light switches to work. The only light at the time was the entryway light. We called down to the front desk and learned that there was an energy-saver mechanism that required our key to rest inside to turn on the lights. Well, we decided to re-enter our room once more, this time with the lights on.

So I didn't take this first picture, becuase we never had a chance to get far enough away to get the whole thing in a photo. I found this picture online. This place was huge...

Elizabeth posing to show the scale of the lobby

It was very difficult to pry ourselves away from our room and attend the Chinese Opera. We just wanted to lounge around all night in our suite. But we still hadn't met up with our friends and assumed we would meet them at the opera, so decided we needed to still go. This time our taxi driver knew exactly where to go, and we arrived a few minutes later at the TaipeiEYE. Our friends were not there, and concluded that they must have chosen some other form of entertainment for the evening. We did meet up with Liz Frost who was staying in Taipei with her uncle that weekend. Here we enjoyed an evening of traditional Chinese and Taiwanese theatre with short performances of a hand puppet theatre and Chinese Opera. Taiwan is famous for it's hand puppets and the show was a lot of fun. My favorite puppet was the one that blew fire. Yes, real fire. I had been told that the singing in a Chinese opera can be compared to a bunch of screeching cats. I can now say that I do see the resemblance. It does sound like that... I think the performances are best explained through video, so here is a collection of video clips from Elizabeth's camera:

Here we are trying on the traditional headresses worn in the Chinese Opera. Notice our hand position. We were instructed how to properly hold our hands to frame our faces.

The whole evening was very fun and we returned to our hotel very satisfied. The time was just after 10pm. Unsure what room number our friends were in, we called down to the front desk, who then called their room to confirm that we did in fact know each other. Anyway, our friends called us and invited us to our rooms to swap stories. It turned out that there had been some confusion on where the theatre was, and so they never found it, which sadly explains their absence that evening. Here we also were filled in as to why our rooms where suites, as opposed to the deluxe rooms we payed for: It turns out the hotel had a large group reservation that needed our rooms, so we were bumped up from two deluxe rooms to two executive suites, which are more than twice the price. I was amazed. Well, the rest of the evening was spent in the comfort of our hotel taking pictures in our bathrobes, drinking our complimentary bottled water, and enjoying a nice bath (quite the luxury considering it has been five months since I have seen a bathtub...)

The view of Taipei from our balcony

The next morning we had our complimentary breakfast and said our goodbyes to our executive suite. It was Sunday and we needed to get back to Taichung in time for church at 1:30pm. Heather, who was supposed to be teaching the Relief Society lesson at that time came back with us. We caught the hotel shuttle to the MRT (underground train), caught a bus at 11:09 just in time for it to leave at 11:10. We did the math and realized we might not make it back on time for Heather to teach. We accepted the reality and hoped that the Relief Society presidency wouldn't wait too long before starting without us. Well, upon entering the city of Taichung I started to notice landmarks near the church. The bus had not yet arrived at it's destination, but we realized if we got off right then we might just be able to make it. We stood up and started signaling for the driver to stop. He finally pulled over. We jumped off the bus and flagged down a cab that just happened to come by right as we got off. We told the taxi driver "Chung Yo Mall!" which is right by the church. He quickly took us to the mall, and we jumped out and began running to the church. We truly were a sight as we ran through the streets loaded down with our bags, wearing our skirts, and of course just being American... We arrived in a frenzy during the opening announcements, and Heather taught a wonderful lesson. Whew.

CHOPSTICKS AND PUMPKIN PIE

Ni Hao! Thanksgiving in Taiwan was defiantly memorable, and full of several "firsts." It was the first time that I have experienced Thanksgiving when the people around you don't recognize what day it is. We told a handful of the Taiwanese, and they responded, "Oh, is that today?" When I told my 2nd graders they didn't believe me. They thought it was a different day as if they are the authority on the American holidays... It was the first time I have eaten Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks. It was also the first time that I have worked on Thanksgiving, as I taught from 1:30pm to 7pm.

Fortunately I am not the only American living here in Taiwan, and the teachers here were able to create a wonderful meal. We found a place in Taichung that was taking full advantage of the foreigners and their need for turkey. We ordered a 16 lbs. turkey which came with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and 2 pumpkin pies. Now this isn't enough for 16 people, so we all contributed to the meal, resulting in a smorgasbord of food. I made two apple pies, which I think turned out alright. I wasn't extremely satisfied with the crust, but it is hard to get the proportions right, because our measuring cups are in metric measurements or else don't have any markings...and I lost my count a few times because I was talking to a friend. All things considered, I still got the approval from those who tried it.

Kathryn and Trevor carving the turkey

We had dinner following our classes at 9 o'clock that night in the hallway of the fourth floor where we live. We tried to get permission to use the school's large activity room, but were shot down for reasons I won't go into detail here... I have decided that the hallway turned out to be an ideal place, however, because it created a nice atmosphere (and it was close to the kitchen). We had some homemade decorations for the table, a contribution from a few of the classes. All in all, it was a Thanksgiving to remember. Here are some photos:

This is our table and the food spread. Those are my apple pies in the lower portion of the picture on the top-right. In the lower-middle picture is my place setting. The place mat was made by Julie's students. She had them write things they were grateful for. Mine read, "Allen is grateful for hogerth." Hogerth is the name of one of the boys in the class. Yes, that is his real name. The name card was made by Liz Merket's class. If you look closely you can see that mine has a cut-out hamburger... The candle holders were made by my class. They are just paper cups turned upside down with construction paper wrapped around the outside and some paper cut-out leaves. We placed tea candles on top.

Here are the teachers enjoying the meal. On the top-right and left are Whitni and Lindsay eating with chopsticks, the flatware of choice for the evening. In the lower-middle is Liz Merket. She wasn't too successful using a fork. It bent when she tried to use it...

...and here is Trevor sporting the general expression shared by all following our meal...

WE'RE NUMBER ONE!


Ni Hao! Well, the results of the Science Fair are in, and my class won first place! Hooray! Well, first place for their age group, but that is still out of seven classes. I secretly thought that my kids would do well, but I wasn't sure if I was just being a little biased. The video went over really well, but I think what really tipped the scale was their presentation. We only put it together the day before, and yet somehow all the kids came in the day of the fair with their parts memorized, ready to go. So you can imagine my surprise when it all came together, considering their behavior while we were practicing (i.e. the boys sitting in the trash cans, girls yelling at the boys, etc...) Anyway, just wanted to follow up on that, since I posted the video earlier.

TAICHUNG FOLKLORE PARK

Ni Hao! So on Saturday I made plans to go to a little village called Lugang. It is famous for it's old village and Taiwan crafts such as wooden shoes, lantern painting, and fans. The bus left the Feng Yuan station at 11:55am. I was not aware of this small detail (thinking we were planning on leaving the school at noon) until around 11:30am, and therefore did not make it in time to go with the group that was going. It turned out alright, however, as Julie, Mashell, and I decided to go into Taichung to the Taichung Folklore Park. We found out about it through the Lonely Planet guide, and decided it sounded fun.

Well, when we walked up to the entrance I was a bit leery to pay the admission price (only $50NT), because it didn't appear to have much to offer except some dying trees and a performance pavilion. My friends convinced me to just pay and go inside as there were several people milling around, and so we did. It turned out alright, although not a whole lot to report. There were some good picture spots, which we took advantage of, and a martial arts performance going on at the performance pavilion. They also had a small museum inside, and a historical building which was typical of a middle class home ( I am not sure of the exact era as all explanations were in Chinese). They had some shops, but all items were a bit overpriced. Here are some pictures we took and some videos of the martial arts performance:

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PAST FEW WEEKS...

Ni Hao! So the school recently replaced our ancient computers with brand new beautiful flat screens... Along with the new computers came some basic video editing software. I had brought with me two different programs, neither one I especially liked, but felt it was better than nothing, right? I prefer the professional software such as Adobe Premiere, and only will resort to using the home editing software in an emergency. (Yes, I have been spoiled...) Well, these new computer have a program I have never heard of before, but are surprisingly good. The format is a simplified version similar to Adobe Premiere, and so it was very easy to navigate through and figure everything out. Since this discovery I have edited two short videos, and have plans to make several more before leaving Taiwan.

Speaking of film making...This past weekend I went with one of the other teachers, Brett, to an international documentary film festival, which was hosted in our neighboring city of Taichung. We had planned to watch two films at a five o'clock showing and arrived half an hour before the screening hoping to buy tickets. Well, we found out that our films were sold out at noon that same day. So instead we attended an outdoor screening on the lawn of the art museum. They featured 5-6 documentaries of varying lengths. It was very fun. Well, since that time we have been inspired to make a documentary of our own capturing the experiences we are having here. We will see what happens with that. :)

So here are the two short videos I mentioned earlier. The first is a video of my second grade class performing our science fair project. It was an egg drop. The kids had some wonderful ideas, and I think it is a fun video:



This next video is six minutes long, so be prepared. It is a collection of video clips and pictures taken at our Halloween parties. I am a little disappointed with the resolution, as the pictures are not as clear as I would like. Sorry about that. I still think it is a fun video...

TAIPEI TWICE IN ONE WEEK

Ni Hao! Well, last week was a lot of fun...

On Tuesday I went with Julie to Taipei for a day of shopping and fun. The motivation for the trip was inspired by a family friend (hers) coming into town for business and was going to bring a package from home. This friend is a businessman who is the president of a factory here (one of the thousands...), just about an hour south of Taipei.

"Formosa" is the historical name for Taiwan. It is Portuguese, and means "graceful". A lot of businesses are named Formosa. This is a cool median we passed in the bus on the way to Taipei.

We arrived in Taipei around 10:00am, after catching a 7:30am bus from Feng Yuan. We had made arrangements to meet Julie's friend for lunch, with instructions to call around noon. With two hours to kill we decided to get a jump on our shopping. One of the other teachers, Liz Frost, had told us about a wonderful handicraft mall she had discovered the previous weekend, and so we decided to go there first. Liz had drawn out a map of how to get there, but we were not very good at reading the map, for some reason, and it took us a while to find it... As is our custom (whenever Julie and I set out to find something), we stopped about five different people before we got clear directions and and hour later we arrived at our destination.

Here Julie is looking a little confused. I think this was the general expression we both had throughout the day... (More on that later)

The shop was a mecca of Taiwanese crafts, and one could spend hours exploring all the different items available for sale. The only drawback was that most of the items were beautiful, yet overpriced, and so we had to be selective about our purchases. I bought two original paintings for a total of $700NT ($22), but I could have spent several thousand NT at that place...

Just before 12:00pm we gave Julie's friend a call. He had flown in from Mississippi around 5am, and we were worried he may still be asleep, but he answered the phone cheerfully and we made arrangements to meet him in the lobby of his hotel within the hour. We got directions from a very helpful woman at the customer service desk at the handicraft mall (she wrote the directions to the hotel in Chinese for our taxi driver) and pulled up to the hotel after 1:00pm. (So we did a little shopping in between the phone call and our taxi drive...) Julie's friend, oh, his name is Ken, was staying at the Westin Hotel, which I guess is pretty prestigious. He gave us a quick tour, and introduced us to his personal secretaries. I felt a little under-dressed in my tennis shoes and backpack, while everyone else was in business attire.

We went to the "pizza joint" next door, which turned out to be a posh Italian restaurant, who happened to serve pizza. Once again, a bit under dressed...The decor was classy, yet modern and fun, with sheer fabric hanging from the ceiling to separate the different tables. The waitresses poured our water from Evian bottles, which had special holders designed to hold the bottle more gracefully. I ordered a personal pizza. I have to say that I really enjoy the pizza here. Not just at that specific restaurant, but here in Taiwan. It hardly resembles American pizza, considering common ingredients are peas and corn, but I probably enjoy it just as much. The Taiwanese know how to make a pizza...

Well, after lunch we said our goodbyes to Ken and returned to our shopping spree. We had made an attempt about two or three months ago to find this infamous shop that sells silk bags, table settings, etc...but could never find it. This time Julie and I were determined to not leave Taipei until we found it, and bought out the store. We had been given directions how to get there and felt confident we would find it. It is located in one of the five underground malls in Taipei. We followed the directions and found ourselves back in the mall we had searched two months previous. A little confused we began to walk up and down the long stretch of shops in pursuit of the "bag lady". After walking the full length of this mall, we decided that we had the wrong mall, and thus began a three hour search through all five underground malls...A very discouraging afternoon, to say the least.

We must have walked several km through the catacombs of vendors. What was probably even more upsetting however, was that when we finally found a phone and tried to call the school to get better directions, the phone number we had did not connect to the school, but someone speaking in Chinese...I tried the number several times, afraid I had punched in a wrong number, but each time connected to the same confused woman...The time was nearing 7pm when we decided we were not going to find the shop, and settled for doing some quick shopping in the original mall before we would catch a bus back home. While I was trying on some silk blouses, Julie explored a shop across the walkway and found what we were looking for...The shop was small, and crowded, but it had all the items we had seen our friends bring back, and for the same prices, so we assumed this had to be it. Our time was limited but we quickly went through the various items and made our purchases. Loaded down with our treasures we walked back to the bus station and arrived home around 10pm.

Well, upon arriving back at the school we pulled out our purchases for the others to admire. We told our friends that the directions they had given us were a little unclear and proceeded to gave some advice on how better to describe the shop...Well, it turns out that the shop we found wasn't it at all! So we have yet to find the place, but it turns out that we found some real treasures which would not have been available at the "bag lady's" shop. So I am happy with our adventure, even if we were a bit exhausted from all the walking...

On Saturday I went to Taipei with the Branch to attend the Temple. We once again took a chartered bus and had an enjoyable trip. For dinner I went with some others to a Subway around the corner and had my first sub-sandwich in four months...Following the temple, we stopped at Taipei 101, which is currently the tallest building in the world. There was the option to pay $350NT to go to the top, but I opted to just take some pictures from the ground, and spend the hour and a half exploring the shopping mall next door. No purchases to report, but I was excited to find a wonderful bookstore with a huge English selection. I'll have to come back to that place again.

"Hooray for Subway!" Here is the Subway sign mixed in with the typical Chinese signs