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.

Parents and Taiwan

My parents were able to visit me and here is proof that they actually came!

Outside the National Palace Museum. My mom got really good elbowing her way around to see things. She's pretty much Taiwanese.

Taking down the flag at the Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Pretty neat shot.

This is either the national theater or the concert hall. One of our students will be playing there this coming Wednesday. We would go if Taipei wasn't 3 hours away and we didn't have classes early the next morning.

At the temple for a dog.

Looking out from Yeliu Geopark.

My mom and I at Yeliu. I feel like Wolverine or whoever that guy is.

I finally got a picture of this. My battery died the first time we came when I went to get a shot.

Another look at Yeliu.

Phil and I had not actually visited a Hot Springs until my parents came. Here is the picture of the bath in our room. It turns out that there actually is a cold for this bath, but we did not figure that out until the next morning. We filled the bath all the way and then realized that we were going to give ourselves third degree burns if we got into the water. We decided to wait about 1/2 hour. When that didn't work, we began adding cold water from the shower nearby. That took another 1/2 hour. By the time we actually got into the water, it was nice. We still felt like it was sitting in a bath at home with rusty nails.

I have a great video for this suspension bridge. As soon as I figure out how to post it, it will be up. Oh, this is at Taroko Gorge.

The parents.

We decided to drive over Hehuanshan to get to our school, which stands for Snow Mountain. The drive was incredible, but we will never do it again. We made my mom carsick by driving this road. Oh and the last hour was terrifying. You can see the road we just drove on in the distance:

This is what the last 1 hour looked like, except you can't see the massive drop off to the right and left:

A better view of the road. We don't want to find out if the guard rail will hold us. In fact, we had to back up at one point because in most parts the road is only 1 lane and a large truck was coming the other way. Oh and like driving in Taiwan, they do pass you if they can.

The temple at Sun Moon Lake. We live 5 minutes from here.

We were really sad when my parents left, but were excited when we could make:

And tonite, we get chili!

First Impressions of Taiwan

My parents are coming this Thursday evening around 9:30 pm and I am absolutely excited about it! I want my parents to know what to expect, so here are some of our first pictures we took when we arrived in Taiwan.



These are the view from the airplane before the flight attendant told us to put our cameras away. Actually, he yelled something like "No cell phones. No MP3 players. No cameras..."

Not as exciting as Thailand's streets, at least color wise, but this is Taipei.

Typical (ugly) apartment building in Taipei.

A view of 2 parking lots. One is for cars (Top lot) and the bottom is for, you guessed it, scooters.

If you have spent a day with Phil, you know he likes original (gross) drinks. Here is an example.


We were hungry after getting fed multiple times on our way over from the states, so we were excited to find crackers with sea weed on them and, yep you guessed it, Ramen noodles in our hotel room. We were hoping that the picture on the front looked like chicken. Who knows...

We also can not wait for my parents to come so we can impress them with our amazing Chinese skills. We actually have been asking our students how to say a lot of things so my parents will think that we are fluent in Mandarin after only learning it for one year. (I can communicate on a pre-toddler level, at the moment, but that is only if I can use some English words. Just don't tell my parents.)

Phil and I went to Taipei this weekend and had a great time. While there, we visited Shilin Night Market, which is apparently the best night market in Taipei and Taiwan. (At least that is what our guide book told us) A night market is basically a mixture of clothing, arcade games, food that is fried, barbecued, boiled, frozen, chopped up, left out, etc. and a whole lot of people. It also happens at night, hence the name. It took Phil and I the entire night to actually find where the Shilin night market takes place. While looking for it, Phil found this and I (also) found a used bookstore...

We finally made it!

Originally written on Wed. Aug 20

We left my parents house at 2:30 pm Monday. We arrived at our hotel in Taipei at 9:00 am Wednesday. (Which is 9:00 pm Tuesday eastern standard time) Needless to say, it was a really long trip. We can't complain though. On the flight from LA to Taipei we had an entire four seat row to ourselves so we could stretch out a bit. We were able to get a bit of sleep on the plane. Here's a few interesting things that happened:

In LAX they made us weigh our carry on bags. 7 kg limit - 17 and 15 kg bags. Sitting on the floor of the airport we did some switching around and checked one of them (our 5th free checked bag!)

Our LAX-TPE plane had a tire change while we were in it. (yes, we were still on the ground) This put us in Taipei 1 1/2 hours late.

We are staying in Taipei tonight to get our health exams tomorrow, then it's off on the high speed rail (190 mph) to our home for the next year, Yuchich Township.

We took the fastest elevator in the world up 90 stories in 30 seconds to the top of Taipei 101 - the tallest building in the world. (508 meters high) Needless to say it was a really nice view!

We had dinner tonight at a coffee shop. Heather had ice cream on a Belgian waffle (the perfect meal for a diabetic!). I had a veggie sub complete with slices of hard boiled egg, peanut butter and mustard. Interesting. It tasted better than it sounds.

We managed to stay up until 8:00 pm tonight. (that's 8:00 am as far as our bodies are concerned) zzzzzzz...

In Taiwan

We have arrived and we are finally getting over our exhaustion. I am presently sitting in the elementary school using the internet. We would have posted sooner, but we have had a hard time finding internet.

We arrived in Taipei a few hours later because the airplane needed a new tire, but we got all of our baggage and had no trouble getting through customs. Robert gave us two options, either go directly to the school or spend a day in Taipei and get our health screening out of the way. (In Taiwan, to teach, you have to get a health check) We would be able to stay the night in Taipei and get some rest. We stayed the night in Taipei and got to do some site seeing. We went to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. We did not do much more than that, because we were absolutely exhausted.

We got our health screening out of the way and then headed to our school. It was really hard because there was just the two of us and we had 3 big bags, 2 small bags, a backpack, a camera bag and a guitar to carry, but we made it.

It is really pretty here. We will try to post pictures soon. I hope everyone is well.