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/
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!
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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!!!!!
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