OUR APARTMENT

Phil and I just realized the other day that we hadn’t posted pictures of our apartment yet. We decided it’s probably time to do that...

The picture below is of our apartment building. We live in the unit directly to the right of the green oval sign sticking out of the building. Our apartment is supposed to be an actual home, but because of the way most homes are setup in Taiwan, it works for our landlord to rent out separate rooms to different tenants.

We do laundry on the roof of our building.

Below you will see the view from our roof. The reddish-brown building with the trees below it and what looks like a triangle at the top, is my school...as you can see, we live very close to where I work.

The inside of our apartment consists of three rooms: a bedroom, a bathroom and a living room/dining room/kitchenette area. Our apartment is very nice...it’s brand new, but with white concrete walls, white tile floors, no storage closets and no kitchen, it kind of feels like a really incredible dorm room versus an actual apartment. That’s okay with us, though, we like it!

The pictures below are of our living room/dining room/kitchenette area. This is the area we enter into from our stairwell. Our apartment came furnished, which was very helpful. As you’ll probably notice, our couch and chairs are bright blue and red. At first we rolled our eyes in disgust at these “interior decorating disasters”, but now we really like them! We find they bring some fun color into our otherwise very white apartment. They’re also a great way to symbolize our time here because Taiwan’s flag’s colors are blue and red. Finally, the couch and chairs match our luggage. This may not seem like a big deal, but with no closet to store our luggage in, it’s nice to be able to think of our bags as adding to the room’s color, instead of clashing with everything for an entire year! :)

As we walk down the hallway from our living room/dining room/kitchenette area to our bedroom, our bathroom is on the right. Our bathroom is great! It has a western toilet and a shower with massage shower heads.

Finally, you’ll see our bedroom below. Our bed is pretty big...it’s two single beds put together. We weren’t able to find a blanket large enough to cover the whole thing.

ADDRESS UPDATE

Quite a few of you asked for our mailing address and when we gave it to you, we gave you both our apartment address and my school's address. We told you to use our apartment address for regular mail and my school's address for packages. Well, recently people at my school told me that they think we should have all our mail sent to my school because they're afraid it won't get to us if it's sent to our apartment (I'm not exactly sure why). So, with that said, if you're planning on sending us any mail, please send it to the following address:

Yunlin Elementary School
Attn: Annalicia Niemela
No. 111, Zhuangjing Rd.
Douliu City, Yunlin County, 640
Taiwan

RECENT WEEKEND ADVENTURES

Taichung

On the weekend of September 12th-13th, Phil and I ventured out of Douliu to Taichung...the third largest city in Taiwan, about an hour train ride north of Douliu. Our travels got off to a funny start when we noticed a stray dog in the Douliu Train Station...no one seemed too concerned! :)




We arrived in Taichung on Saturday in the early afternoon and decided we should find a place to stay. To get some ideas, we whipped out our trusty “Lonely Planet” Taiwan travel book. We found a hotel we were interested in staying at and located it within 15 minutes. To our dismay, it had closed down. After we sighed and decided we’d just walk around the city to see what we’d find, we looked up across the street and saw a Holiday Inn Express!

Now, it wasn’t our intention to travel all the way over to Taiwan to stay in American hotels, but when you’re carrying your travel bags around in intense heat and humidity, wondering if you’ll be able to find a place you want to stay and on top of that, wondering if you’ll be able to communicate with anyone at the place you want to stay, seeing a Holiday Inn Express is a breath of fresh air! :) Everyone at the Holiday Inn Express spoke great English and they gave us a room with a very nice view of Taichung Park for half price!

After we checked into our hotel room, we decided it was time for some sightseeing! I work with a guy named Andio. His hometown is Taichung. So, he wrote down some things we should see and do in the city. It was nice because he wrote them down in English and Chinese. This was extremely helpful, especially when we got lost! :)

One of the highlights of our trip to Taichung was visiting a Buddhist temple with an ENORMOUS statue of Laughing Buddha. If you look closely at one of the pictures, you’ll see Phil standing below the statue...that gives you an idea of how big this thing is!

On Saturday night we...I :)...thought it would be fun to get dressed up and go out for a nice dinner. Someone told us about a restaurant we should go to with an English menu and gave us the address.

We found the street on a map and took a taxi (taxies are really cheap in Taiwan) to that street. The street didn’t look very long on the map, so we just thought we’d walk down it and find the restaurant. Well, things didn’t go as planned. We walked down this “not very long” street for about an hour and found nothing. Hungry, sweaty, tired, not so cute anymore we ended up eating at McDonald’s...typical Americans! :)

Then, we took a taxi back to our hotel. Luckily, someone had given us a helpful tip...take pictures of everything, so if you want or need to go back to a particular place, you can just show the taxi driver the picture. It works great!

Kaohsiung

The following weekend, September 18th-19th, we took an hour and a half train ride south to the second biggest city in Taiwan, Kaohsiung. We met up with a few other foreign English teachers that we had met at orientation. It was great to see them and we had a fun time hanging out!

Kaohsiung is beautiful at night. Most of the pictures below are in or around Kaohsiung’s Central Park area.

In Taipei and in Kaohsiung they have a public transportation system called the MRT. This system is extremely convenient and well organized. They also keep the facilities looking amazing! (If you’re caught eating, drinking or chewing gum on the MRT, you have to pay a very large fine.) This system is also intended to be very safe. For example, at most of the stops, there are blue rectangles painted on the floor. People who feel unsafe, traveling alone at night, are suppose to stand in those rectangles because there are security guards watching those areas via video camera at all times. What a great idea!

We stayed at a beautiful hotel for the price of 55 USD per night!

In this hotel, like many other hotels, hospitals, malls and office buildings, they didn’t have a floor number four. The reason for this is the word “four” in Chinese is very similar to the word “death”. (Many people here are very superstitious.)

Our trip to Kaohsiung was fun, but quick! We ended up having to be back in Douliu by the late afternoon on Saturday because one of my co-teachers invited us over for dinner.

KTV

After dinner with my co-teacher and her family on Saturday night, they whipped out their KTV system and we started singing! The great part about KTV that I forgot to mention awhile back when I explained it, is that the pictures and movies going on behind the words have nothing to do with the song. So, for example, you might be singing, “I’m All Out of Love” and be watching people surfing and then an airplane flying and then two kids walking down a sidewalk...you just never know what you’re going to see!

The pictures below are of my co-teachers children. Samantha is in eighth grade and Samuel is three...so cute!

PHIL'S EXCELLENT BUS ADVENTURES

Please keep in mind that I tell this story with a smile on my face.

Two weeks ago (Aug. 31-Sept. 4), my first week of school, the buses traveling from Douliu and Huwei went a little haywire. On Tuesday my bus to Huwei did not take its normal route. I could tell because where it usually turns right it turned left. I had asked two different people if the bus was going to Huwei so I wasn’t nervous about getting to Huwei, but I was nervous about finding a place to get off the bus. As we got into Huwei I had caught a glimpse of a street sign that went near my school. I got off on the next stop and followed the road to my school. I was pretty proud that I got off at the right stop on the first try and I felt like I just dodged a major catastrophe. Wednesday would be a different story.

My bus had taken the same route as it did on Tuesday, but I wasn’t worried at all because I had made getting off on the right stop seem so easy. When we reached Huwei I started looking for that same road sign I saw on Monday, only I did not see it anywhere. I did not recognize any landmarks because well, on Monday I got lucky and didn’t pay attention to anything other than the fact that I did such a great job getting off on the right stop. As the bus continued to make stops I tried my hardest to find my road sign without looking super nervous. At one point I had two ladies standing up in the middle of the aisle talking and blocking my view to the other side of the road while I was desperately looking for my road sign. I never saw my road sign in Huwei and after 4 or 5 stops the bus driver pulled off the road, stopped the bus and started yelled something. After a few clueless moments of wondering why he stopped I had some nice passengers come a talk to me. I had four people trying to tell me something, none of them used English. My only guess was that we were leaving Huwei and everyone had known I missed my bus. I can’t imagine how dumb I looked when I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders at them. I was not about to get off the bus when I had no clue where I was. So after they figured out they couldn’t communicate with me the bus driver continued on his way. I had no idea what I was going to do. I pulled out my phone to call Annalicia and it died on the third ring.

As we entered the next city a woman who had tried to talk to me back in Huwei came up to me, said something in Chinese, grabbed me out of my chair, and led me off the bus. I felt like a child. We waited at the bus stop for about ten minutes and then hopped on a bus headed back to Huwei. We go into Huwei and the lady told me that my school was three blocks straight. I had told her that I was a teacher at Dongren Junior High, who knows if she actually knew what I was saying. I glanced at my watch, 8:37, I was supposed to be at school 7 minutes ago.

I walked three blocks straight in the direction she pointed me and wouldn’t you know it, there was not a school in sight. I felt like I was in a reality T.V. show where you get dropped off in an unknown location and had to find your way out. Only I had no one to come and get me when I wanted to quit. I wandered around taking random turns hoping I would see something I recognized.

After about 45 minutes I noticed an English school. Perfect. I walked over, reached to open the door when I noticed they were closed. Why wouldn’t they be in this situation? I put my head against the glass door and covered the glare with my hands to see if anyone was in there. There was a lady at the desk. I waved at her. She didn’t respond. I waved her to the door. She didn’t respond. She had to have noticed me, sweaty white guy waving at her. I finally got her to come to the door and I asked her where Dongren Junior High was. She told me to go straight and when I see a stoplight take a left and then keep going straight after you see another stoplight. That didn’t make much sense to me, but I assumed that she meant take a left at the first stoplight and go straight, but I didn’t feel like testing her English to clarify. So I took a left at the first stoplight and after about ten minutes I saw a taxi sitting on the side of the road. Awesome. I pulled out my notebook (a teacher we met wrote down some phrases for me in English and Chinese) and pointed at the phrase that said “do you go to Dongren Junior High”. The cab driver shook his head and said no. I was in shock. Aren’t taxis supposed to take you where you want to go?

I kept walking straight and I ended up reaching a T. How was I supposed to go straight at a T? I went back to the English school, went past the first stoplight and took a random left which brought me to a park I recognized and finally to the street where I was supposed to get off the bus an hour ago. I got to my school at 10:00 and to my amazement no one had known I was an hour and a half late.

I thought my day was long and then on the way home I waited another hour and a half for my bus home. The other days I only waited 10-15 minutes for a bus. I thought that was a long wait. The next day, Thursday, my bus never came. Some high school students brought me to the bus station in Huwei, but the buses weren’t stopping at the bus station either. I thought that was the point of a bus station. We ended up waiting at the bus garage and finally caught a bus headed for Douliu at 8:00. While we were waiting for our bus one of the high school students told me that the bus system here isn’t very good and that sometimes bus drivers will skip stops. I guess I had to find out the hard way. A teacher at Annalicia’s school said that maybe the bus drivers were drunk and forgot to make some stops. I can’t wait to get on the bus again.


Time spent looking for school after completely missing stop: 1.5 hours

Time spent standing and waiting for a bus at usual stop where it normally takes ten minutes for a bus: 1.5 hours

Time spent tracking down a place to catch a bus because bus never showed: 3 hours

Using the bus system to get to and from school in order to save money: Worthless

INTERESTING ENGLISH NAMES

We know a lot of you are wondering how school is going for us and we want you all to know it's going well! I think the reason we haven't written about it yet is because there's so much to tell and explain that writing the entry seems like a daunting task. With that being said, though, we want to fill you in with all the experiences we've been having at school. So, hopefully sometime in the near future we'll have the time to tackle the task of updating you on that part of our lives (and show you some picture of where we work)! Unfortunately, that's not going to happen this weekend because we are traveling to Taichung (a large city about an hour north of Douliu) for two days and don't have the time to write a lot.

So, instead, we thought we'd try to bring some smiles to your faces by listing some interesting English names we've encountered since being here. Some of these are elementary students' names, some are junior high students' names and some are adult names. There are a few things we want to say in defense of the people who have their English names listed below. First, we appreciate the fact that they have an English name at all. English names make our lives so much easier here. Second, sometimes people here will create an English name using the sounds of their Chinese name. This makes sense, but for some reason it doesn't stop us from finding these names humorous. And, finally, we realize it would be hard to choose an appropriate name in a different language and to satisfy a different culture. In fact, it even seems a little hypocritical that we created this list considering Phil's Chinese name is Fe Li Pu! :)

Here they are.....
---YoYo
---YuYu
---BoBo
---RoRo
---Sun
---Sunny
---KiKi
---Aih
---Our
---Happy
---WieWie
---Nelum
---Peko
---Lovey (not LoveLy...just Lovey)
---Handsome
---Pinky
---Amily (not Emily)
---A boy named Alice
---PiPi (pronounced "pee pee")
---Teeth
---Chest
---A boy named Jenny
---King
---Grape
---Navel
---A boy named Gretel
---Nretel
---Egg
---Eggs

THE SORRY SONG

Right now in Asia a song called, "Sorry Sorry" by a Korean music group called Super Junior is a big hit. We've been told that in Korea people sincerely love the song and the music video that goes with it. However, here in Taiwan, people like to make fun of the song and the dance. Recently, a group of Taiwanese comedians (similar to the comedians who act on "Saturday Night Live" in the US...they often impersonate politicians and celebrities) appeared on an entertainment show pretending to be Super Junior and performed the "Sorry Sorry" song and dance. After the show aired, almost everyone in Taiwan became familiar with the song. Now, we hear and see people of all ages singing and dancing to "Sorry Sorry"! :)

This is a link to the actual "Sorry Sorry" music video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9PqwYOAPJA&feature=fvw

This is a link to the clip of the Taiwanese comedians impersonating Super Junior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wekZkF6jGw

OUR FIRST HIKE IN TAIWAN!

My director and one of my co-teachers and some of their family members took us hiking last weekend. We hiked up a small mountain about 15 minutes away from Douliu.

We got to see a lot of tropical plants and some tropical wildlife (a lot of different lizards and some beautiful butterflies)!

(Bamboo)

(Coffee Beans)

(This is called Typhoon Grass. Apparently the number of horizontal lines on the grass changes from year to year. Each year, though, every Typhoon Grass plant on the entire island will have the same number of horizontal lines on it. The number of horizontal lines represents the number of typhoons Taiwan will get in a particular year. This year the Typhoon Grass only has one line on it and so far there’s only been one typhoon...who knows!)

(This is pomelo, a fruit we weren’t familiar with before coming to Taiwan. It’s similar to a grapefruit, but sweeter and the process of eating it is much different. Apparently Douliu is famous for pomelos.)

On the hike, I was involved in a conversation that screamed, “You’re obviously not from a tropical place! How do you not know that?!?!” The conversation consisted of me finding out that there wasn’t just one type of tree called, “Palm Trees”. Oh no...there are many types of palm trees, each producing their own fruits or nuts. I probably should have known that!

(Here’s two types of palm trees. The ones on top are banana trees. The ones on the bottom produce Betelnut. When people chew Betelnut, we’ve been told feels like a caffeine buzz. Chewing Betelnut causes a person’s mouth to look like it’s bleeding. It’s a habit here similar to chewing tobacco in the States.)

At the start of our hiking trail, there was another Taoist temple. This one was the most colorful one we’ve seen so far! This month is “Ghost Month”, so there were a lot of people doing interesting dances. We were told they were doing the dances in attempt to ward off and/or separate themselves from ghosts. The dances were interesting to watch! At one point, Phil pointed out to me that one man had his middle finger up while he was dancing. I don’t think it had the same meaning for him as it would have if Phil or I would have done it. Phil was able to keep in his laugh, but of course I burst out giggling right as we walked by this poor guy!