We Love HK!

The life of a student is no-doubt a busy one.  We've been adjusting to the change of pace while studying hard, making new friends and substitute teaching.  Also, did I mention before that James is the Vice President of our GMBA board?  He's a high achiever!  

Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, we were forced to take an unexpected "vacation."  It's a long story but I will try to give a brief explanation.  We have been living in Taiwan with a work sponsored visa.  We thought we would be able to switch our work visa to a student visa when school started.  However, due to the rules, we were required to leave the country and apply for a resident visa to be switched to a student visa at a Taiwan Embassy.  The closest Taiwan embassy to Taiwan is located in Hong Kong.  Well, we quickly planned a trip, bought plane tickets, and headed to Hong Kong last weekend. 

We had heard mixed reviews about Hong Kong from friends.  Most westerners enjoy Hong Kong for the shopping.  They carry western brands and sell clothes that actually fit the western body shape (unlike Taiwan).  However, we aren't big shoppers and we just completed a shopping spree in the USA.  Despite the mixed reviews, travel agent James did some research and planned a fabulous trip for us in Hong Kong! 

We finally rode the High Speed Rail (HSR) in Taiwan.  We took the cheapest route to the airport which included an 11 minute ride on the HSR as well as a few buses. It was speedy!

The sign say "Taiwan High Speed Rail" and James is happy to have a 7 Eleven coffee in his hand!

It looks like a bullet!

This was our first time in the domestic terminal in Taiwan airport.  There is a gym!

There is also a library.  I don't know if you can check out the book but you can read them while you wait at the airport. 

The books are organized by language.  I looked at a "Harry Potter" book for a few minutes. 

After arriving in Hong Kong, we took a bus to get to our "apartment" for the weekend.  We hopped off the bus at Times Square.  It was exactly like New York City except a lot of the signs were in Chinese!

The next morning after dealing with our visa stuff, we went to Hong Kong Park.  I am hiding in the fountain!

From Hong Kong Park, we hiked up to "The Peak."  At the top there was a mall and some great views.  I can't imagine who thought it was a good idea to put a mall on the peak of a mountain but it worked out well in Hong Kong. 

We enjoyed the rest of Hong Kong Park on our way back to the Taiwan Embassy to pick up our new visa (which thankfully went smoothly).  Hong Kong Park had a large aviary among some other neat things.  

Hungry Bird

The Taiwan Embassy was in one of the matching towers. 

The sign reads "James Fish" so a picture was a necessity!

We enjoyed the Hong Kong light-show that evening.  We took a ferry to another island.  From the viewing spot, the light-show played music.  Participating skyscrapers would light up in sync with the music.  It was quite the impressive skyline especially with the reflections on the water!

The next day, Saturday, we hiked the Dragon Back's Trail.  It is a part of the Hong Kong Trail system which includes over 50 km (31 miles) of trail!  The views of the ocean, mountains and city were quite breathtaking!  James would have loved to play the golf course in the picture :-) 

The portion of the trail we completed ended at this beach with turquoise, clear water!  It was a fantastic way to end a hike.  We came prepared with our swimsuits.  Surprisingly, the beach was not crowded.  

On Sunday, we did the Mclaehose trail. We hiked 25 km (15 miles) of the trail!  The whole trail system includes 100 km (62 miles) of trails.  Hong Kong is truly a trail runners' and hikers' paradise.  All of the trails are VERY easily accessible by public transportation.  Also, the majority of people speak English in Hong Kong.  In fact, most of the time we were in Hong Kong, we forgot we were in China.  We were always surrounded by a variety of nationalities and heard many different languages.  It reminded me of being at Disney World :) And the picture above...for some reason the trail had cows on it. 

James and I are always making new friends!  This couple is training for a race in November which includes the full 100k of trails.  Eek!  

The views of the beaches on the hike never got old.  In fact, each beach looked more beautiful than the one before.  We felt like we were in the Caribbean or Hawaii.  Once again, none of the beaches were crowded in this city of 7 million people.  It's a mystery to us!  Our only theory is that there are so many beaches to choose from that everyone is well-spread out.  In fact only 7% of Hong Kong is urbanized.  The urbanized areas are some of the most densely populated spots in the world.  You would believe it if you ever travel to Hong Kong!!

The trail was LONG and SUNNY and HOT!  It was an intense day of hiking but enjoyable in the end.  The trail took us over 8 hours to hike.  I think we each put on about 10 layers of sunscreen and drank 4 liters of water.  

On our last morning in Hong Kong, we awoke for a quick jog to stretch our tired legs before our flight.  We were surprised to find the protesters had expanded to the Causeway Bay area (where we were staying).  The night before we heard one of the tear gas bomb explosions.  It was quite scary.  The explosion was followed by several fire trucks and sirens.  We quickly left the streets and went to our apartment in hopes of finding safety!  If you haven't seen the news about the protests, just go to the CNN website and it will be the headlines.  Praise God we went to Hong Kong the first weekend possible or else the protests would have prevented us from getting our visa.  The public transportation to the Taiwan Embassy building was closed starting on the Sunday we were in Hong Kong since the building was surrounded by protesters. Since leaving Hong Kong, we have been keeping up with news and we are concerned about the current situation.    

Many of the city parks had special areas for the dogs to use the bathroom.  So odd!

It's like the Incline Railway in Chattanooga but in Hong Kong!

An umbrella vending machine.  James is holding his invisible umbrella. 

So...the place we stayed.  James used an online room rental service called "AirBnB" which a few friends had recommended.  He found a place close to the Taiwan Embassy for a good price.  This place was seriously the size of most peoples' closets or bathrooms!  Literally, only one person could stand up at a time.  Wow!  That's city living!  We also found the food to be quite expensive (San Francisco prices).  The first grocery store we found, we loaded up on oatmeal, bananas, apples, peanut butter crackers, soy milk, ramen noodles and frozen vegetables.  That's all we ate for the rest of the trip.  I haven't been able to even look at ramen noodles since then...

The sink was literally in the shower!

I can't believe this place managed to squeeze a kitchenette in this room.  It served us well! 

Good-bye Hong Kong!  We hope to see you again! Our review of Hong Kong - INCREDIBLE!!!!!

Same City, New Life

First of all and most importantly, our visit to the good ole' USA was amazing!  It was wonderful to see everyone and complete our Tour De Babies.  Also, thanks to all of our dedicated fans!  Because of y'all, I promise to keep up the blog going even with school work.  However, I am going to try out a new style - more pictures and less words - to reduce the amount of time it takes to write each blog.

Our return to trip to Taiwan was thankfully uneventful.  Upon returning and readjusting to the time zone, we were able to set up our apartment, attend two campus orientations, cover teach and even squeeze in one Hsinchu County hike.

James running a race in America.  Yes, his shirt has cookie monster on it.  And yes, he was a cookie monster with Gammy's cookies on his birthday!

As with everything in Taiwan, it takes at least two tries to get things right.  You may remember how disappointed James was when we first arrived to not have someone holding up a sign with his name on it at the airport.  However, now our second time landing in Taiwan, things worked out in our favor.  Here's our taxi driver with a sign reading "Mr. James Rockwell." 

We are ready for action at the International Student Orientation!  The Global MBA (held a couple of days after the International Student Orientation) was exciting and scary together (as James' old student would say "good and bad together").  It's going to be a tough but exciting two years!

The day after I paid my college gym membership fee, I was in this Olympic sized pool swimming laps.  I had to wear a lot of sunscreen though! I'm going to have the tannest back at NCTU.  

We were greeted at the Student Activities Fair with this friend!  If I join the horse club, then James is going to join the archery club.  Well...we will join the clubs if we have any free time between studies, cover teaching and hiking. 

We also got to watch the cheerleaders perform! For those that know my friend Katy Vining, I texted her this picture immediately!

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for, our new apartment! It's a great little place.  We are about a 10 minute drive from campus and a 10 minute drive from downtown Hsinchu,  We aren't near any major roads so it's always quiet.  In addition, we have been enjoying the running routes on the "country" roads. 

The view outside of our residential area's gate. 

Our apartment building.  It's a two year old building and still feels very clean and new!  There is also a parking deck underneath the building.  We have our own car parking space which our scooters fit nicely in. 

Our studio apartment "bedroom" and desk. Please note the "new" sheets that our friend gave us (along with quite a few other things) before she moved back to GB.  Also, please note the little yellow rubber ducky in every picture.  That was James' idea.  The duck was a good-bye present from one of his students.  Where's Waldo and the Luck Duck? 

The nicest TV that we've ever had!  We think it's brand new as well as the mattress, refrigerator and washing machine. 

This sofa is VERY comfortable!  A bit too comfortable when you are recovering from jet lag...

The bathroom (obviously)

The rain shower head

Finally we have a kitchen and a washing machine! This place is perfect for us!

Do you want to see something really cute?!

Here's a picture of James' kindergarten class that he substitute taught for the week before we traveled to America.  They are just too cute!

I already miss everyone!  We will try to post another blog soon about the beginning of 17th grade :)

Life is OK

你好! 好久不見. (Hello!  Long time no see.)

The month of July has been busy busy busy!  We have gotten a glimpse into life as a student for the next two years.  Studying is time-consuming and hard work.  We have really enjoyed learning again....it has been a while.

So, here's a quick update of our life...

一 (1) Moving - We managed to move all of our belongings in one trip in a Toyota Wish!  It's so nice not having furniture to move. The whole move (packing, moving, unpacking) took less than 4 hours total.  I love the simplicity!

二(2) New Neighborhood - We have been living at our friend's apartment during the past month.  She teaches at an international school in Hsinchu and travels home to America every summer.  In past years, she has returned from her two month holiday to discover a moldy apartment.  We gladly took her up on her offer to house-sit while we are between leases.  

We LOVE her neighborhood.  It's called the Science Park.  You must be an employee for a company/school in the Science Park to live in this "restricted" area.  It's basically a college campus for adults.  The small area includes quiet roads, lots of trees, a large lake (named Lake Placid), an Olympic sized outdoor swimming pool (which I have been using a lot), tennis courts, basketball courts, a driving range, playgrounds, an outdoor skating rink and a Family Mart convenient store.  

We wish we could continue living in the Science Park, but it is restricted.  We have already found an apartment to move into when we return from our visit from America which we are excited about!

Lake Placid

Outdoor Olympic Sized Pool

Basketball Courts

Outdoor Skating Rink

三(3) College Life - I must admit that I feel like I am five years younger from being on a college campus during the past five weeks.  There's a feel of optimism and enthusiasm that radiates in the air!  James and I had a successful Chinese class.  We both completed the class with an A+!  Our entire final was in Chinese!  Our daily schedule has been: wake up early, exercise, go to Chinese classes for 3 hours every morning, eat lunch on campus, study at the college library for about 3 hours, do chores and make dinner, study Chinese for about another hour, and go to bed.  We have learned to write close to 300 hundred characters!  We are both really looking forward to our MBA program in September but hope that we find some time to work/teach English more than we have been in July with all of that studying! (By the way,  I am substitute teaching this week at James' Shane English school and all of his students really miss Teacha James.  He must have been #1 teacher!!!!  Go James!)

Our intensive summer Chinese class was an interesting mix of people.  It included four Japanese housewives and one Korean housewife whose husbands work in Taiwan, a male Korean student who in is Taiwan for the summer to learn Chinese, one male Indian student earning his PhD at the college who had to pass the Chinese class in order to receive his scholarship money for next year, one male Russian whose mother is a professor at the college so he came to spend the summer with her between jobs in France (he also speaks English, French and German), and one female student from Thailand (we never really knew her story because she spoke little English).  The Japanese and Koreans already knew the characters since they learn them in grade school.  We were so jealous that they only had to study speaking Chinese!!!!!!

Rachel's Chinese name (luo means "rock")

James' Chinese name

Happy graduating pandas on campus!  Hopefully that will be James and me in 2016!

Lake on campus

The newly renovated library.  This is seriously the most awesome, modern library I have ever seen.  Too bad photography was not allowed inside!

Making new friends on campus

We learned how to paint　中國書法 (Chinese Calligraphy) on the last day.  Here's our class, 老師 (teacher), and a few extra students from another class. 

Showing of our calligraphy and paintbrushes. Ohh...I got my haircut, too!  I couldn't take long hair anymore in this hot, humid Taiwanese summer!!!

Writing Chinese characters takes a lot of concentration!

Here's a funny song we sang in class:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XTBwvi0h2E&list=PLE_P8mlcQkAPMc1NsRxlPPOaeVgz67VVB&index=21 .  In the first part of the video, the English man says he wants some dumplings.  The cook asks him if he is tired.  This is quite funny because "Dumplings" and "Sleep" have the pronunciation in Chinese (shui jiao) just with a different tone.  This stuff really happens here!  The locals don't realize that you want dumplings, not sleep even though you are at a dumpling shop. To them, these are two totally different words.   Chinese is soooooo difficult!!!!!!!!!!

四(4) Scooters and more - The older scooter we purchased when we first arrived in Taiwan was allowing us to know our mechanic more than we cared to.  ("Nickel and dime us" as James says.) So, James decided it was time for a newer scooter.  He found an awesome deal (as he usually does) for a scooter with only 1,000 km on it!  

It's sold!

Looking good Zhan mu shi!

In addition to the new scooter, I also passed my scooter license tests. Thanks to all of James' hiccups from his experience, I had a few less visits to earn mine.  

Practicing for my test.  I had to balance between lines like these for more than 7 seconds.  In the actual test, the lines are electronic and make a siren go off when you hit one.  

A simply nerve-wrecking test with those electronic lines and sirens!

五(5) - Outdoor Fun - Even with all the Chinese classes, we have managed to squeeze in some outdoor fun on the weekends.  However, we brought Chinese homework to do with us on the buses and trains every time. Efficiency! We don't have many pictures probably because we are sweating too much in this crazy heat to take out a camera! Plus, what scenery could compare to the pictures from our last blog? 

We managed to get the camera out on one hike :)

We did a 10K race the first weekend in July in Taipei.  James set a PR (Personal Record) of 39:26! The race only cost $5 USD but we received a lot of stuff!  Two T-shirts, two towels and breakfast food, plus we each placed in our age groups and won two trophies, another T-shirt that says "Life is OK", a bag, another towel and a Mickey Mouse cup.  We need to find more cheap races like this!!!!!

That's a lot of stuff for a $5 USD race!

六(6) Professional Writer - Shane English has a monthly newsletter.  Shane employees contribute the articles for money.  I decided to submit an article about our great hiking experiences using the "Taipei Escapes" books.  They liked my article and posted it.  Does this make me a professional writer since I was paid for my work?  :)  They asked me to have a monthly article called "The Rockwells' Adventures" or something similar but once they found out I was leaving, they took it back.  Ohh well!

I can't seem to insert the pdf with the article so a copy and paste of the text and a screen shot picture from my phone will have to do!

SHANE ENGLISH SCHOOL TAIWAN TEACHERS’ NEWS | July 2014 

Hiking in Taiwan

By Rachel Rockwell.

The other day an article on Facebook 

sparked my interest: 26 Words that have a 

Totally Different Meaning in Taiwan. I would 

like to add one more word to that list –

Hiking. 

My husband, James, and I were picky about 

what country we wanted to teach abroad. 

After much research, we chose Taiwan 

mostly because we are outdoor enthusiasts. 

In our now distant past life of living in the 

southeastern United States before May 2013 

(time passes in Taiwan like dog years when 

you are new), we were avid trail runners. 

Hiking was too slow and boring to pursue for 

us. 

Our first hike in Taiwan was at 

Yangmingshan. We were shocked to find the 

whole hike was going up a long set of stairs 

and then descending another long set of 

stairs. In addition, it took us hours to hike 

only a few kilometers. 

That’s when we quickly discovered the 

definition of hiking is quite different in 

Taiwan. Hiking in the US means a slow 

paced enjoyable form of exercise on dirt 

trails in the woods for all ages. Hiking in 

Taiwan means an intense steep mountain 

climb on stairs possibly with ropes, chains 

and ladders where sweat flings from your 

brow uncontrollably and your legs begin 

shaking on the long descent. Also, the local 

grandma and grandpa can climb up the ropes 

and chains at about twice the speed of you 

without their voice shaking in fear from 

heights!

Hiking actually replaced our trail running past 

life since climbing up a mountain happens to 

be much more intense than running some 

slightly hilly trails. However, not being able 

to speak Chinese (we are still working on that 

one…), we quickly ran out of new hikes to 

explore. Living in Hsinchu, we can easily 

reach the mountains by scooter but we found 

ourselves repeating the same trails regularly. 

How many times did we really want to go to 

Lion’s Head Mountain or face the crowded 

steps at Yangmingshan? 

When we spent the mere 1,000 NT for TWO 

of Richard Saunders “Taipei Escapes 1 & 2” 

books our outdoor exploration reached a 

whole new level. A British expat and expert 

hiker the author, Richard Saunders, makes 

hiking in Taiwan a breeze for non-Chinese 

speakers. He gives incredible instructions on 

how to reach forty different trail heads by 

public transportation for day hikes near 

Taipei. Furthermore, he writes detailed 

directions for the trail. He even goes so far to 

say “track bends sharply right after passing a 

couple of garages.” The books also include 

twenty different day trips from Taipei. His 

descriptions of the hikes and time 

estimations are realistic in my opinion. 

My husband and I had the pleasure of joining 

the “Taipei Hikers” Facebook group for a hike 

in Pingxi last weekend. Richard Saunders 

leads the group on incredible group hikes, 

day and overnight, as well as scooter trips 

around the island. As we spent eight hours

climbing the disturbingly intense crags at 

Pingxi (aka an adult playground), we 

refreshingly (yet a bit slowly after a long day) 

walked away with smiles on our faces and a 

lot of new Facebook friends. 

If you find yourself desiring to explore more 

of the outdoors in Taiwan but are intimidated 

or at a loss of where to go, I HIGHLY 

recommend Richard Saunders books. You 

may be sweaty but you will not be 

disappointed after doing these hikes! Taiwan 

has a never-ending amount of outdoor 

exploration which is easily accessible from 

public transportation, especially in Taipei. 

You can purchase the books “Taipei Escapes 

1” and “Taipei Escapes 2” at the Eslite 

Bookstore or Caves. They order the books 

for no extra charge if they don’t have them in 

stock. 

As for James and I, we have already 

completed sixteen of the forty hikes in the 

books. It’s a goal of ours to complete all forty 

of the hikes while living in Taiwan. Of 

course, Richard has two other books 

“Yangmingshan: the Guide” and “The Islands 

of Taiwan” if we stay in Taiwan longer than 

expected... 

Happy Hiking! 

再見! (See you again soon!) ....in America!!!!!