Full of It

I'm so going here before I leave.

Oh, yes. The Modern Toilet. The ice cream names are my favorite. "diarrhea with dried droppings" (chocolate), "bloody poop" (strawberry) and "green dysentery" (kiwi) Mmmm, mmmm.

Who's hungry?

Birds on the Brain

Before you begin, important Cultural Slang: Penis = bird , yellow = perverted (in Mandarin in Taiwan)

Speaking of the cultural implications of bird...

The book that we use for the upper levels at Kojen is American Shine. American Shine is an ok book. It is a book made by Brits teaching American English, so you'll often find random bits of British English, but that is forgivable and most likely useful to the students in the long term. The book is divided into 9 units with 4 lessons in each unit. After each unit, there is a running story, and some activities for the students to do. This all looks well and good, until you find out that the running story is called, "LA Bird"

The name is forgivable enough, but the story happens to be about a woman getting robbed. What did she lose you ask?

Her bird.

But her bird isn't an average bird, it is a big, expensive, special, yellow, and magical bird. So, of course, part of our job as readers is to figure out who would want her bird.

I've never seen a class full of mid-schoolers so happy to be reading English before.

Japanese

Before you begin, important Cultural Slang: Penis = bird (in Mandarin in Taiwan)

Last week was my final week teaching my class of high schoolers from 3:40 - 6:30 pm on Saturday. Kojen is slowly phasing me out of the work force. I have been asking to dump this class for months. 3 hours + 15-yr-olds + overbearing parents forcing their children to study English + Saturday = FUN TIMES! I took this class over when I came to Taiwan. It took the students exactly 8 months and 3 weeks to warm up to me. We were just finding our flow when Kelly, my boss, told me that she was going to give the class to the new teacher. Poor girl, but I was/am not exactly sad that a) I get off at 3:20 on Saturday now b) don't have to spend 3 hours jumping around like a damn monkey trying to ascertain whether or not there is life in room 523.

The final class I taught was on adjective order. Opinion, size, age, color, shape, origin, material, purpose, etc, etc (there still seems to be some debate as to what the adj order really is, but I digress). As native speakers, we naturally put adjectives in the right order, but SLLs do not. As I was soliciting examples of each category from the class, one of my students tells me that Japanese women are the most beautiful, and then proceeds to crack up like he has just told the funniest joke in the world. We were going over the lesson and every time I would say Japanese the whole class would giggle. I was, as usual, clueless as to what was so humorous, so my student, said, "Teacher, you want to know why so funny?" "Sure, why's it so funny?" "You know English name for man bird?" "Ok, Brandon, we can talk about birds after class." The class had a good chuckle over bird, and then we returned to class.

At the end of class, Brandon explained what was so funny about Japanese. "Panese", he said sounded the same as, you guessed it, "penis". In Taiwanese, not Mandarin, Taiwanese, "ja" means "to eat", so Japanese, in the minds of trilingual Taiwanese 15-yr-olds, means "eat penis".

Ok, so maybe I will miss that class just a little bit.

Ba Gua Kung Fu

One of my coworkers, Jeff, invited me to join his Bagua Kungfu class. He studied in the US, and it's one of the reasons he came to Taiwan. My legs are punishing me (They started shaking after the warm up. Wow, feeling a pinch out of shape here), but I was very happy with my Ba Gua Kung Fu class. It's like TaiChi and Kung Fu all mixed together, which means I still felt as though there was a possibility of me kicking someone's ass, but I wouldn't have been surprised if that person happened to be over 80. I'm definitely going back on Tuesday. It feels good to be sore and empowered to put the smackdown on the geriatric population. AND it's a great excuse to post this video.

Cafe Gigi:Shameless Plug

One of our favorite places in Danshui (淡水, or Tamsui) is Cafe Gigi. On one of my sick days, Philip and his friend, who was visiting, were trying to find the Fort San Domingo 紅毛城. The fort was originally built by the Spanish in 1629. The literal translation of the Chinese name, Red Hair Fort, was in reference to the Danish, who took over the fort in 1642. Like always, when we try to find something, we rarely find said thing. Instead, they found the lovely Cafe Gigi. Cafe Gigi is like how I want my house to be if I was artistic, had any talent for decorating, or a green thumb. The tea is delicious and lovely, it has the only wine I've had in Taiwan that wasn't a little too well aged, and the food is scrumptious and filling. If you ever trek up to Danshui, you must stop here.

The first thing that catches your attention are the paintings on the crumbling stucco outside of the place. They are so not Taiwanese and stick out amidst the Taiwanese architecture. Taiwanese architecture is hard to classify. They seem to be going for the very boxy, stapled together, corrugated tin roof, and if you have the chance to cover things with pool tiles, you really should style. Needless to stay these paintings kind of stand out.



Also, you can't beat the patio on a sunny day.

The tea is yummy and brewed with fruits and roots and comes out looking beautiful.




The dinner selection is limited. There is curry (meat or not) and also the pork meatballs. Both are delicious, reasonable, and filling. She also has small, but tasty selection of wine.
In Taiwan, disgusting, big-enough-to-eat-tropical-sized-cockroaches, spiders mean good fortune. At the lovely Cafe Gigi, we were lucky to have a lot of good fortune on the wall 2 feet from our table, who-wa.
Getting there from Danshui MRT

It's pretty easy to get there in that impossible sort of way. Exit the MRT, turn left. The road you want is Zhongzheng Rd, but of course, that road sign is in Chinese. Basically, there is a fork in the road. You want the road to the left of the bank on the corner and to the right of Starbucks. Keep walking until you see the first temple on your right hand side, Longshan Temple. On the wall of the Longshan Temple you will see the Cafe Gigi sign. It looks like this:
Take a right, and head up the steps:

(handsome Filipino-American tour guide not included)

Follow the steps until you see another sign directing you to your right:
Take the right and walk up the ramp until you see the paintings. You will see the cafe sign just past the paintings. The garden entrance is on your left-hand side.

Pingsi Lantern Festival

The lantern festival pictures are up.

This fest was probably one of the most beautiful things I have participated in. The idea is to write your wishes on the lanterns, then send those puppies to the heavens. The colors of the lanterns have different meanings. These seemed to vary depending on where you purchased your lanterns. The result is awesome (literal meaning, not Bill and Ted interpretation) - a sky illuminated by wishes.



*If you click on the slide show, it will take you to the Picasa album.

Home Coming

We have purchased tickets!

We'll be flying into LAX on April 15. From there, we will be driving up nothing no later than April 19th for Greek Easter celebrations. Plans, living situations, and whereabouts get a little fuzzy after that.

Originally, we were planning to fly into Amsterdam for a week or so, then head home. But we have decided to stick around Taiwan and really see the country here before we head out. I told the school I am working for that I am leaving, so of course they are taking away my hours like it is going out of style. (Bastards.) The good news is I have more free time to travel.

Behold the Taiwan Bucket List in no particular order:

1. Snake Alley
2. Alishan National Park
3. Taroko Gorge / Haulien
4. Tainan
5. Visit Josephine
6. Visit Tammy
5. Kenting
6. Scuba diving of some sort on Green Island
7. Ride the high speed rail
8. Ride a bus line to nowhere
9. Eat as many different kinds of snacks as my innards will take.
10. Take my bike down the bike path as long as my little legs will peddle me
11. Koashung
12. Yoali
13. Ride scooters up the southern part of Taiwan

This is what we are exporting

We get Tai-chi, they get Elvira. Behold, in all its glory.

Next up...

Lantern Festival.

There are 2 options. The first option is this:

2009 Pingsi International Sky Lantern Festival


http://www.2009lightup.world.hbpr.com.tw/eng/index-eng.html

The second option is this:

Yanshui Lantern Festival also known as the beehive of fireworks. See the video at the link below.

http://www.gio.gov.tw/info/festival_c/glue_e/tainan.htm

I must be getting old because I don't really want someone shooting fireworks at my face. Pingsi it is.

The Lovely Nuances of Language

Found, December 26th, 2008 in the classified ad section of The Taipei Times.

Attack of the Giant Grasshopper and Happy 10/10

This picture doesn't reveal just how big this grasshopper actually is. This sucker is about 4 inches long and 2 inches tall and damn frightening when it randomly jumps into your path.














Can you spot the grasshopper? (Click the pictures for super spy glasses close-up)














We have today off. It is 10/10. Sort of like Taiwanese Independence Day. More like the Republic of China got kicked out of China by the commies (People's Republic of China) and relocated to Taiwan. You can read more, but not much, about it here