Taichung Trip

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Heather and I took a trip to the nearby city of Taichung this weekend. It's about 1 1/2 hours from our apartment. The scenery along the way is beautiful... the mountains rise up all around you and are often shrouded in mist. Amazing.

We started our adventure with lunch at "Herb House", an all vegetarian restaurant. These are a lot more common than you might think. Apparently many (all?) Buddhists are vegetarian. I had a "macaroni rice" dish that had a suspicious lack of macaroni. (I didn't find a single piece.) It was good though.

Them we checked out the National Museum of Natural Sciences. We were undoubtedly the oldest people there without kids. It was fun though and even us "old" folks were able to learn some cool science stuff. I will soon be attempting to make a water sphere lens for my camera. (Now were can I get my hands on a glass sphere around here? Hmm...)

An image made with a simple lens

Frozen Shadows

We then moved on to the Rain Forest Conservatory. This place is really cool. It's a giant greenhouse about 200 feet tall in the center. They have all kinds of plants that I've never seen. Some were really interesting and beautiful.

The biggest greenhouse I've ever seen

In the afternoon we checked into Chin Hua Hotel. Pretty fancy. We were pretty excited about the shower curtain and tub. No water on the floor!

That evening we went to 一中路 (Yi Jung Road). This place was nuts! There were so many people I felt like I was at a rock concert. There were tons of vendors selling food, beverages, clothes and trinkets. I picked up some sweet expanding chopsticks. Heather was more than excited to see "Salsa Mexican Soft Taco" stand. She immediatly ran to it and ordered one. It wasn't exactly what I would call authentic Mexican, but not too bad nontheless.

The chaos on Yi Jung Road

"Salsa Mexican Soft Taco"

We wrapped up the evening with some delicious barbecue from a street vendor.

A barbecue stand

The next morning we swung by CostCo, which is rather exciting because they have American food and other items that are unavailable anywere else in Taiwan. We got four bags of tortillia chips! Awesome! Sometimes it's the simple things. We decided to head home after this as a hugh typhoon was headed our way and we were hoping to beat it back to our apartment, which we did.

Overall it was a pretty exciting weekend!

Motley Crew

Here's part of our team. From left to right:

• Megan from TN - Girl's Dean
• Moriah from CO - 4-6 grade teacher
• Heather from TX - Science and Math teacher (you might recognize her)
  
• Esther from Taiwan - Vice Principal
• Holly from WA - 3rd grade teacher
• Cory from WA - ESL teacher, married to Holly
• 1/2 of Jeremy from NY - Principal

Here we are riding the bus back from an exciting evening out in the big town of Puli. (actually Puli is kind of small, but around here, it's pretty much a big deal)

Milk Tea, actually Chocolate Milk Tea

I received an Email from Elizabeth at church and it was great hearing from her. I decided that I would dedicate this blog to her and you will understand why shortly.

I love Milk Tea, especially Chocolate Bubble Milk Tea. I finally figured out how to say it in Chinese (I am not going to even attempt writing it the English version of chinese) and I can actually recognize a few words. To say Tea, you write 茶. To write Milk, you write 牛奶. I have not figured out Chocolate yet, but will shortly. I will soon be able to read the tea stands!

Also, our small town of Yuchih (it probably has 3 small grocery stands) has about 10 tea stands. So far, I have only tried milk tea from 3 tea stands. I will soon try them all. At one stand, they laugh everytime I try to order Chocolate Milk Tea. Oh well...

Milk Tea, though, is served cold. At our house, we have yellow tea, which is absolutely wonderful hot. When I come back, I will definitely be bringing some back for everyone to try. I will also post pictures shortly.

New Wheels

Check out our new car! It's a 94 Honda Civic.



The coolest part is pretty obvious... the magenta paint job. It also sports other amazing features such as 12 horsepower, approximately 5 miles per gallon and extra dim low beams/one working high beam (super handy on those dark nights when there are scooters all over the place). It has a four speed automatic transmission. I do wish it was a stick, but hey, you can't always have it all. It needs a little work, but mostly minor stuff. Replacing the air filter is number one on my priority list. It's coated with dirt and black junk. I'm thinking this may have something to do with the excellent fuel economy. The actual job of replacing it is the easy part. Getting my hands on a new one, well that's a different story. I have no idea where there is an auto parts store around here. I even went so far as to consider having one shipped from the US. This turned out to be impossible as this is a slightly different model than the one they sold at home. (the filter is a completely different shape).

Despite it's few flaws, it's extremely handy to have. We live off campus (about 4 miles away), so it was really necessary. Our international driving permits should be arriving shortly thanks to my parents, so before long we should actually be driving legally! Until then, my boss told me "if you get pulled over, just pretend you don't speak Chinese". No problem.

Insomnia

We've just finished a four day weekend thanks to typhoon Sinlaku. After much tea drinking, most of which was unavoidably late in the afternoon or evening, (the Taiwanese love to drink tea, and love to share this caffeinated beverage with others - ie: Heather & myself) Heather and I have stayed up till 1:00 four nights in a row. I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning but I cannot sleep. A late night photo shoot was definitely in order. Here are the results of my insomnia:

Typhoon!

On Friday about 12:35, I was talking with Holly, an elementary school teacher. She mentioned that we were going to get a typhoon this weekend. She also told me that she had found out when our vice principal had prayed for protection from the typhoon that morning... We didn't think anything of it because we had found out so late. We went to Puli, a town nearby that has a few more modern conveniences than Yuchih. (We wanted to bling out our new cell phones and they don't have that type of stuff in Yuchih) We received a phone call from our boss in Taipei who informs us that this typhoon has 2 eyes and is comparable to a 5 on the hurricane scale... We were already getting stuff for an event Friday night, so we quickly got a few more supplies. Robert, our boss, also mentioned that we should not go near any signs during the typhoon because that was the second biggest killer... We still don't know what the first is.

Friday night I wanted to go to our kitchen which I have to go outside and then inside to get to it. At the front of our doorway, there was a ton of ants and they appeared to want to come in. (We think because of the typhoon) We cleaned them up and hunkered down for the long weekend. They reappeared the same time last night(Saturday night) as well. Auugghhh! We also found out that a majority of the typhoon was coming in Saturday night and all through Sunday.

So far, it is really windy and rainy, but I have not seen anything falling down. Phil and Cory went to get more water and tried to go to Balance to get chocolate milk tea for me and milk tea for everyone else, but they were closed. :( Luckily, they canceled the high school for tomorrow because our students are coming in and a lot of public transportation is closed. I finally got this place looking like the way we want it to... Yeah! I hope that no one is hurt.

More unique creatures

I thought this bug was kind of cool.


The snails here are the largest I've ever seen.

Biology and food and Biology

I feel that I have spent the past 2 weeks learning everything there is to know about Biology. The last time I learned biology, I was in 9th grade. Because of this, I have spent most of my free time trying to do a really good job teaching it. I gave the kids a quiz today, and I will soon see how they did on it. I actually gave a paragraph for them to write. When you teach, you try to avoid these, because it means that you actually have to read them. (Why I teach math, anyways) It should be interesting.

The real problem I have is trying to determine what is important to know in Biology. I want to skip certain sections just because of the vocabulary... At least the next 2 days, we will be using the microscope and they will be doing a lab type activity, so I dont have to stress so much about what to do next.

The food here is interesting. There are things that I really like and things that are horrible. I wish at the moment that we were in Taipei so that we could go to more American style restaurants. I am missing pasta, at the moment. or Diet Coke? (Not Coke Light)

How's your Chinese?

The operating system on my lab computer is in Chinese. It makes things a bit tricky at times. I frequently have to ask my students to come up and tell me what something says.

Uninvited Guests

There are lots of interesting creatures around here. From time to time some of them make there way inside our apartment.

A snail (or slug?) getting ready for the day with Heather's shower gel.

An assorted bug enjoying Heather's flip-flop.

Not Your Ordinary Flora and Fauna

We went exploring down near Sun Moon Lake on Sabbath afternoon and found some rather unique stuff...


This is no optical illusion or Photoshop manipulation, this grasshopper really is as big as a cell phone. Crazy!

I think this is called a sensitive plant, but I'm not sure. Very cool.

Please let me know if this video loads quickly on your computer or if you have to wait for it. Thanks!

Good Eats (Sometimes)

Check out some of the food we've been eating...


This is a typical meal from the cafe. It works like this: if you don't recognize something, just be brave and try it!

I have no idea what this purple thing was, but I can tell you that it tasted even more disgusting than it looks.

Last Sabbath the college church had a potluck in our honor (all the American teachers). They hooked us up with some good stuff!

Overall, the food is not bad here. I've had things I absolutely love, and other stuff that was just plain gross. I haven't been craving my "normal" food too much yet. I'm sure that will come soon.