A long and long overdue blog

The days are flying by much faster now than before! They are flying by so fast that I have no had the time to write a blog posting. We have officially been in Taiwan for two months now. I must say that it feels like we have been here MUCH longer!

The day after the typhoon we met up with some new friends to go hiking. This is the first time since we have been in Taiwan that we actually made social plans! One of the guys loves hiking and knows all the good hiking spots, so we headed out towards the small town of Neiwan on our scooters with our "tour guide" and three more of his friends. Once we reached Neiwan and started driving up the mountain, we learned that the typhoon had caused a mass amount of damage, including landslides. The locals were cleaning up the roads at top speeds. We gradually made our way up the mountain just to find out the road to the hiking trail was closed. We did have some great views though! On our way back down the mountain, we stopped for a quick dip in cold springs. It was a relief after driving around on such a hot day! It's pretty awesome that we can just go take a dip in the endless amounts of cold and hot springs in the mountains.

Some nasty roads due to typhoon damage

A house we made a quick stop to check out. One of the ladies with us has a friend that rent this house for $1,000 USD/year.

Some good views

Enjoying the cold springs

As far as teaching goes, it is going. I have my highs and lows with teaching. Overall, I enjoy it. However, some days it seems like all the students have too much energy or not enough energy. On the days they are full of energy, I feel like I am leading a 3-ring circus. The classroom is just nuts! On the days they have no energy, I feel like I am torturing them by making them play games and speak English.

The other teacher returned from vacation, so no more junior high students!!!!! But on the flip side, I am disappointed he is taking over the "summer camp" class. I really liked that class! The young class (Phonics A) is becoming one of my most enjoyable classes. The students are starting to "get the hang" of school and the classroom scene. They are all just so cute and ridiculously happy at times. My other young class is struggling to understand my pronunciations of certain words. The previous teacher had a strong British accent. The students are not doing as well on the spelling/phonics quizzes as they were before. For example, one of the words was "black" and several of the students wrote "block." Hopefully they will get used to my accent soon...

I have now seen two of my students outside of school. It's very entertaining to me for some reason. It really seems to freak them out and they don't know what to say :)

James and I are official drop-outs. We are no longer attending our free Chinese classes at the University :-( The class was way over our heads from the beginning (I can't believe they called this a Beginner's Class!) and we were not studying the material they gave us. With our teaching schedule, attending Chinese classes for a mere three hours a week was just too stressful. Personally, I was showing up at school a little later than I preferred. I already felt rushed and just confused from attempting to speak Chinese. We were called out in class several times for not studying. It was really embarrassing for me :( I never do that to my students. In our defense, how were we going to study whenever we pronounce everything wrong? Plus, what's the point of starting a beginner's Chinese class with family names? I can say little brother but I still can't count to five or ask how much something costs. Really?! Sorry...I needed to vent about it. They really should have given us some audio to listen to for studying. The entertaining part about us quitting is that we seriously see the main instructor for the class almost daily. He is a tall, large man from Israel who has been teaching English/learning Chinese for the past 20 years. He is exactly who you would picture as a bodyguard or security guard. He lives near us, eats at the same vegan restaurant as we do everyday for lunch, exercises at the University gym, and teaches English at a school right next to mine. Seriously?!

There seemed to be some confusion for some of the blog readers on who is feeding (literally) their sugar addiction. That is James, not me. I must confess that I do have an addiction to the sweet potatoes sold at Family Mart though. I am not surprised since I have had a sweet potato addiction on and off ever since I ate at least two sweet potatoes a day at the dining hall in college. I tanned orange that summer. No lie!

The summer heat and humidity here is close to unbearable. Of course, it makes it worse that James and I don't wake up and start our run until about 9am with our schedule. Others have told us we are at the worst part of summer that will last through the end of August. It will be nice to not be dripping sweat after my walk to school! All of the students are always sweaty during class, too :)

A random fact - Every grocery store here has a full isle dedicated to ramen noodles. I have never really eaten ramen until recently. I must say it is quite delicious mixed with some frozen veggies! Also the tofu section is about the same size at the meat section.

Last weekend we felt like it was time to do an overnight trip. It had been one month since our last overnight adventure. We decided to go to the small town of Wulai famous for its waterfalls, hot springs, hiking, sticky rice cooked in bamboo sticks, and fried bees. A couple of our new friends joined us for the journey. One of the guys is from Paris doing an internship in Taiwan for the summer. It was nice to chat about all of my great memories of the city from my study abroad trip eight years ago.

We are finally learning how to "travel light." We packed for the whole weekend in my camelback bag (notice the small blue backpack I am wearing in all the pictures) and a small black backpack that James is wearing. Unfortunately we forgot to make me be the camera girl for a while so James is only in one picture, so you can't really see the backpack he is wearing. Anyways, we were pretty proud of ourselves!

We took a bus from Hsinchu to Taipei (less than $4 for the one hour trip). Then, the MRT to the most southern stop (about 30 minutes of travel time). Then, a bus to Wulai (about a 40 minute journey south of Taipei). We arrived at literally a whole new world! After a stop at the visitor's center, we were disappointed to find out the hike we wanted to do was closed due to damage from the typhoon. That typhoon keeps messing up our hiking plans! Anyways, we made the best of it and started on a journey of Wulai by foot. We walked for about 2 hours full of scenic views to get to the National Park with a famous waterfall. It was well worth the journey! The park not only had a three tiered waterfall but also a hike with pine and cedar trees. I had no idea Taiwan had cedar trees. On our journey back to town, we stopped at a cold springs swimming hole to cool off. Once back in the town, James and I cancelled our hotel reservations. There were no other hikes for us to do and the hot springs sounded extremely unappealing in this hot weather. We did get to eat sticky rice cooked in bamboo sticks and mountain vegetables. One of the vegetables is actually a leaf grown on a tree. None of us tried fried bees!

Papaya Tree

Walking down the road. We chose walking over paying for the mini-train.

Waterfall #1

After the long walk, we arrived at the three-tiered waterfall. Tier #1

Tier #2

Walking up to Tier #3

Tier #3

View from our hike

Pine trees and cedar trees

An overly friendly butterfly

What kind of spider makes a web like this?!

Enjoying cold springs with the locals

Yuck! Gross! That spider is huge! We were not willing to stick a hand in the picture for perspective. It is literally the size of your face. Not kidding.

Waterfall #5003...we saw a lot of waterfalls...

Sticky rice cooked in bamboo sticks

We headed back to Taipei on the bus thinking we might just go back to Hsinchu. I had a change of heart and decided we should stay in Taipei for the night. James agreed. We went from hotel to hotel looking for a room that was less than $70 USD. This is difficult to find in Taipei on a Saturday night even if your room has cockroaches. The city is alive and crowded. After only a few stops, we found a room at a decent hotel for $60 USD. For the first time in a while, I enjoyed a hot shower and a cold room. Those are real luxuries around here! We have yet to heat our water at home nor do we want to since our apartment always seems so hot.

The free breakfast at the hotel Sunday morning was a pleasant surprise. The buffet included green veggies, tofu squares, rice porridge, peanuts, bread and jelly, coffee (James was so happy!), tea, orange juice, fried eggs, spicy pickles, and some other things that I don't know what they are to tell you.

The breakfast was a good start to our adventurous day! We rode a bus to Keelung and then another bus to the small town of Jiufen. Jiufen is on the gorgeous east coast. We did a short but very steep hike to the top of Keelung mountain for some scenic views. We walked down the famous crowded street in Jiufen. They are famous for their sweet potato taro balls. We tried a free sample and they are not good! They are so chewy! Yuck! Instead of continuing on to the Gold Ecological Park a few bus stops further away, we decided to call it a day. We will be back to go the the Gold Ecological Park though!

What buses are for...sleeping!

A typical bus

Keelung's port. The large ship is a cruise ship to Hong Kong. Maybe someday?

Beginning of the hike

A large group with flags and drums that had just finished the hike. I am glad they were not on the hike with us. It would have been one crowded and noisy path!

Sigh...the lovely east coast

Famous Old Street in Jiufen

Taro balls

I promised James he could get a coffee if we went to the Crocs (type of shoes) store in Taipei not too far from the main station. First of all, I want to say that I still think Taipei is an awesome city. The Crocs store was located in this large shopping area with no cars. The streets were filled with performers and people shopping. Everyone spoke English at the Crocs store and were very helpful. My reasoning behind these shoes is that I destroyed the work shoes I brought from home. I have never had a smelly feet problem until now. I am just sweating so so so much that everything reeks. (I hope that was not too much information!) Crocs can be hand-washed because they are all rubber. So, I found the perfect pair for work. I once had someone tell me that owning a pair of Crocs is life-changing. Well, my life is at its limit for changes but I must say these shoes are so comfortable for standing and teaching all day! I also had one of my students say to me, "Teacha, are those new shoes?!" It made my day :)