Voting, Pictures and a Science Fair Project

My sister in law recently entered the National Geographic "World in Focus" Photo Contest. It is a great picture and I was wondering if the few people who read our site would be willing to vote for her picture. (Trust me it is worth it) To vote for the picture, go to her picture site. You will have to give an email address and they will then send you a link. You click on the link and you can then finally "actually" vote for the picture. Again, it is a great picture!


Speaking of pictures, here are some random fun pictures around Taiwan.

The next picture is what happens when you want to order something from a restaurant. Usually you look at the menu and you can't decided what wonderful thing to order and this menu is no exception. (On this menu, you can see such amazing selections, such as "Powder Bowel", "Flower Twig", "Shark Smoke", "Very hot green vegetables", "Burn meat" and many items that are absolutely fabulous. We ordered the "very hot green vegetables" and bean curd to get this picture. You may have to double click on the menu to see these items.)


Near Taipei 101, this guy was selling lemon tea by Nestea. I didn't get a picture of him face on, but that would have been wonderful.


I kind of wish it was from the Salt Lick, but it is the closest thing to Texan barbecue sauce I will ever get in Taiwan. (I didn't buy it though.)

Oh, Taiwan.

A closeup.

My students have been working on a science fair project this past semester and, needless to say, I am glad that we are done with it. (excitement does not even come close) This coming Thursday and Friday (next week), they will actually be showing their parents, other teachers and staff their fabulous projects. I will try to post pictures of the projects in the future. Right now, I have to write my last "lecture" for my science class. I think it is ok to say YES!

2 weeks and 1 hour and 40 minutes from now, we will be on a plane. and only 6 more days of school. (not that I am counting or anything)

Things I wish I had blogged about

Phil and I are looking at the next few weeks and realize that the year is really coming to an end. We are ready to go home but there are some things that we will always remember, but I won't post about that for now. I will just post on some blogs that we wish we had blogged about but never got around to it.

National Concert Hall
My student is a talented violinist and won a competition to play at the National Concert Hall located at the Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall with other musicians. Unfortunately, her concert was on Wednesday at 7:30. Because of this, we could not go. Several other staff were going but we could not go because we would have school at 8:00 the next morning. (Taipei is around 3-4 hours from where we are currently at and the concert would have gotten out at 9:30 getting us home around 2:00. I don't do well without sleep) Tuesday evening, I realized that we could possibly take all of our students and go and see her perform. (And Jeremy said yes) So we put together a field trip (last minute) and went. Because we took all of the students, we did not have class until later in the day (Yeah) and I got to see my student perform in the National Concert Hall! If you click here, you can see some pictures of what this place looks like.

Reading Chinese
Phil and I have gotten pretty good at speaking Chinese (Only if you want to order something from the drink stand or why we are where we are. We have those down.) and can recognize a few words in Chinese. This is a good skill and is very helpful, for well, communicating with people we interact with every day. One thing you notice as you drive around, though, is that all of the signs have the "English" version of the Chinese written on them. Even though they have the English and it is helpful, you also notice the multiple ways to spell the same word. For example:

中: Means middle, center

Ways to pronounce it in Taiwan (What you see on the signs in Taiwan):
jhong, jong, jeung, jung, jhung, jheung, chong, cong, ceung, cung, chung, cheung, zhong, zong, zeung, zung, zhung, zheung

We have pretty much seen all of those. Many times a city will have the same road spelled 3 or 4 different ways within a few blocks of each other. (If you don't know the previous fact, it can get REALLY confusing.)

The reason why there are so many versions of the same word is that in China they use the Pinyin, but in Taiwan, they use pinyin along with 2 or 3 other differences. If you want to know about the romanization of Chinese in Taiwan, go here.

I Will Beat You At Charades

Chinese is really hard. We have been working on it (intermittently) since we got here last August. I would estimate that we probably have the vocabulary of 3 year olds at this point.

We do have a few specialized areas where we are slightly more advanced... Ask Heather how to order any of a multitude of Taiwanese teas and she will accurately hook you up. Ask me what a particular item is on a Chinese menu and I'll be happy to tell you. (although, if the dish does not contain one of the 6 characters I recognize, my response will be fabricated, and you will most likely not get what you wanted.)

At the beginning of our stay here, trying to communicate was not only utterly fruitless, but also semi-terrifying. Picture this hypothetical scenario:

You realize that your hair is getting a bit shaggy (read: way overdue) and you ask for a hair salon recommendation from a friend. You get it, and head to the place. You park the car, take a deep breath and rehearse the phrase you think will request a haircut. As you get close to the shop, your heart begins to beat a bit faster. You become preoccupied with concern that you will say something utterly stupid and/or completely unintelligible and be laughed at. Again. You walk through the door and are greeted by the stylist. At this point your stage fright takes over and you completely forget the sentence you just rehearsed 400 times in your head. Thinking fast, you resort to the only language you know she'll understand - International Charades. You lift your hand up next to your head and flash the peace sign. Chop those fingers together - just like scissors. Make some sort of question mark sounding grunt. The stylist understands, smiles and waves you over to a chair. Success! Have a seat and await your fate. (If you can think of a good charade maneuver for "take a little off the top." please post a comment...)

OK, truth be told, this situation is not at all hypothetical. It happened to me. Actually it's happened a bunch of times. OK, more like every day. (Not the haircut specifically, but this sort of interaction.) Sometimes it's easy. (Really, what else would the hair stylist think a shaggy haired guy want - A perm? Well maybe, but that's another topic for another post...) Sometimes it's impossible. (What maneuvers could I possibly conjure up to ask for fuel injector cleaner?)

Charades, while effective, can occasionally make you look even dumber than a few mangled syllables of attempted Chinese. I recall traveling to the airport on my trip to Hong Kong. I stepped up to the counter to pay for my shuttle bus ride and the clerk asked me something. Thinking he wanted to know where I was going and having no clue how to say "airport", I motioned with my hand the path of a plane taking off (complete with sound effects). He then repeated his question which had originally been in English. "How many people?" "Uhhhh... sorry. One person." Yep, I definitely felt like an idiot.

So having had all this practice, I would consider myself a true professional when it comes to International Charades. We are returning to the U.S. in just over a month... I challenge you to a game of making people guess phrases by acting them out. Be prepared to loose. You won't even know what hit you.

Banquet

In my opinion, I believe that the banquet my school put on 2 weeks ago was way better than any other banquet I have ever attended. They actually had great entertainment which is a must (Our students presented!) and they also had great food! (Before I show you the pictures, many times in Taiwan, you see a mixture of styles in places considered fancy or posh. It makes for some amazing pictures.) Here are some pictures from our banquet:

The entrance to the place. What you don't see is that the road in front of this can only fit 1 1/2 cars on it. The bus couldn't make it all the way.

The place was called the castle or something like that. Here are pictures of the prince and princess. Amazing!

The theme was masquerade and the sisters ended up making a lot of masques for everyone to wear, including our trusty leader.

Moriah and Joseph. She ended up making her dress. It looked amazing.

Some decorations on the landing up to the second floor. As I said, they mix styles here.

Where we ate looked similar to this.

Outside heading to the talent show!

Megan.

Daphne works in our office and is amazing. My students actually loaned me the dress and the mask, meaning I didn't have to spend much money for the clothes. Very nice of them.

I would have put a great picture of both of us up, but this was one of the better ones...

Phil made his own mask.

Phil and me at the end. We had a great time, but are exhausted. And we have school tomorrow morning.

Things I miss

I have been trying to be good and not post about things I miss in the United States. I am finally breaking down and doing a post on what I am currently missing. I am currently missing the following:

(We can get these at Subway, about 1 hour away, but still)

If you know where this is, then you really don't need the next picture. If you don't well, here is another guess:
Phil took this picture so we could look at it with longing over here. It isn't helping, only making it worse. It is "Deluxe Chicken" from Chuy's. You knew some form of Mexican food was coming.

Our Church family. (At Camp Winneakeag)

We are also missing our families, a lot. I wanted to add Phil's Grandma, but I don't have a good picture of her.

Hehe, remember, the fish symbol means that it is raw.

(Maybe not this face.)

Odd Juices

Going along with absolutely disgusting things, here is a video of Phil and another teacher, Cory, drinking, well what else.

Asparagus Juice?!

After visiting the cute tarsiers, we decided to go on a boat trip. No, I take that back. Our taxi driver decided that we should go on a boat trip. We were unsure if we really wanted to do it. In fact, it seemed really touristy but we decided to go ahead because it might actually surprise us. It turned out that we actually enjoyed it. We got to eat a meal on the boat and go up and down a river in the Philippines. At the end of the river, there was a waterfall. The food was not that good, but there was a guy playing a guitar and it was relaxing. Overall a very good trip. The above picture is us waiting to board the boat and the next 3 pictures are us waiting for our food and the waterfall at the end.



We had specifically told our taxi driver that we wanted to go to a Tarsier Sanctuary and then head to the Chocolate Hills so that we could take some nice pictures of the Chocolate Hills while the sun set. We actually told him multiple times what we wanted. Instead, he again did his own thing and we ended up here, at the Chocolate Hills early in the afternoon. (And we never making it to the Tarsier Sanctuary.) Oh well, the pictures at least turned out.




Our taxi driver, on his own itinerary took us to a beach near the city we were staying at. Again, more his idea then ours, but it was a nice beach, so we weren't complaining.

umm, ok

All I can say is that when I have children, I want this to be one of my top hospitals.

If you thought that was weird, there is a mini-van/car that is also themed in a similar way. We will try to get some pictures soon.

We work with these people

That would be Moriah, the 4-6th grade teacher wearing the way awesome helmet and Jeremy, our fearless leader on the right with the amazing shades.

Dream Mall

Phil and I recently went to Kaohsiung in the southern part of Taiwan. Kaohsiung is one of the largest shipping ports in this area. We decided Thursday afternoon that it had been too long from eating Mexican food, so we headed to Kaohsiung and ate Mexican food Friday. After that, we had no plans and because it took us 3 hours to drive there, we decided to stay for the weekend. (BTW the Mexican food was some of the worst I have eaten in my life, but it was the best we have eaten in a long time) Saturday evening, we went to the Dream Mall, the largest mall in Taiwan. (Phil will probably post about what we did Saturday afternoon, so I won't bore you)

Pretty much any mall in Taiwan is full of stores that sell products that cost more than I make in a month, so we just wandered around looking at everything. While there, we stumbled upon the Japanese style floor and there was a store there entitled Hankyu Department Store (I may be wrong on the name). It had a lot of stuff in it that was impressive. I started picking up stuff, like paper lanterns, picture frames and kitchen stuff because we would be moving soon. The problem was that there was no prices on anything. I looked all over the package because sometimes the package will have the price on it, but it wasn't there. It also wasn't above the stuff like some stores do. Because we had no idea what the price was and our numbers are a little iffy in Chinese, we mainly just wandered around looking at stuff but we didn't ask how much stuff cost. Finally we got the nerve up to ask and the guy looked at us strangely and said that the stuff was 39 NTD (about $1.25 or so). We then asked about everything in the store and he said that it was 39 NTD. We realized then that the big signs everywhere with 39 on them and the Taiwan dollar sign next to it meant that we had become that cartoon.

You know the cartoon with the guy holding something asking "How much does this cost?" when there are signs everywhere saying that "Everythings a dollar."

Yes, we are teaching the youth of tomorrow.

What's In Our Pantry?

Thankfully, our apartment has a kitchen. We've stocked our pantry with all sorts of local delicacies. Here's a sampling of what we've got:
(You can click on the photo for a larger view if you can't read the package)



If these aren't seriously delicious, I'm returning them on the grounds of false advertising.



Sometimes everybody needs a little fiber. These taste very similar to the whole grain pasta sold in the States.



Hey! I recognize that guy!


Just like home.



These are moon cakes... Everyone eats these during the Moon Festival. They're.... uhh... interesting. I was in a grocery store recently and the clerk offered me a moon cake sample. She said, "it's beef" so I take a big bite. "...and pork!" Uhhh, thanks.


The name says it all.


Seaweed crackers with chocolate in the middle. Sounds yuki to me.


What is Job's tear, you may be asking yourself. I'm asking myself this question too.

Oh, by the way, while eating these don't forget to make a "healthy beautifully wish".


Seaweed crackers with cheese filling. Not a pleasant combination. Personally, I think the nana club sounds like a gang of third graders who make fun of their classmates.


These packets turn your plain oatmeal into those flavored oatmeal packs. (You know, apple cinnamon, maple brown sugar...) Pretty tasty. Hey, it's got that Quaker guy on it, you can't go wrong!

***NEWSFLASH***
Heather has just informed me that they have other flavors -> vegetable, mushroom, seaweed and some other assorted flavors we cannot decipher. Vegetable oatmeal? Maybe you can go wrong.
***END NEWSFLASH***


Usually I prefer my apple soda with chemical ingredients, but I figured hey, what the heck? I'll try it!


I've been staring at the asparagus juice every time we go to the grocery store. I had to try it! I'm waiting for a special occasion... I'm just not sure what occasion is actually special enough. Please reply with your suggestions.

Music

Phil and I went to a vegetarian restuarant in Puli last Friday. I had a really good baked curry vegetable rice dish and Phil had a noodle soup dish that he normally gets. There are a lot of Buddhists in the area and because of this, there are a lot of vegetarian restaurants. While we were there, we noticed that they definitely like English music. Here is the list of songs (in order) that they played while we were there.

1. Seal's "Kissed by a Rose"
2. A jazz song
3. Deep Forest
4. A Doors song
5. (I think) Fools Garden "Lemon Garden"
6. Bette Middler "Some say love, it is a river"
7. Engelbert Humperdinck "The Last waltz"

We unfortunately had to leave after that, but just wanted to share.

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.