Halloween Week and Weekend

October 24th-30th 

Prior to this week I went to Mode Mall to buy my candy at the Carefour, which is a giant Walmart like store (I think this was the large fluorescent lit store that I got all of my stuff from the first week in Taiwan.) I ate at a restaurant, The Fat Olive, by myself. The manager was speaking fluent English to me the whole time. He was a younger guy..but I think we talked a little too much because at the end of my meal he asked me out on a date. My first date offer from a Taiwanese guy. It was super awkward. He asked me if I wanted to see the Hugh Jackman Robot movie? (Who WOULDN'T want to see that)..Initially, I thought he was just being friendly and offering to take me places like all the other people here do..But after the whole movie talk and some other strange compliments, he's like "ok so how about this Friday.." I'm like.."uhh I have Chinese class sorry.." "Ok then this Saturday?" and I was like.."I'm actually going to the museum with my friend" (these are all true statements) so he said "ok..then next weekend?" I finally was like..yaa that's fine just text me or something.. if this actually happens, I'm bringing Shija along. I do not want to go on a date. I shouldn't have gone there..I ate a crappy attempt of pizza anyway.

Anyway, Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, not sure why, but I was pretty envious of everyone's Halloween photos up on Facebook and I was sad to not be attending one of Nick's famous apartment parties..but I figured I'd still go all out and I bought the students a bunch of American candy and I planned on dressing up that week and teaching the kids about our traditions. I also had a presentation planned for that Thursday morning where I could actually wear a costume and not feel dumb. The lessons for that week consisted of a Halloween crossword and then a game I made up, "Monster Mash" where 6 groups of students would create the scariest most gruesome monster part they were given (head, arm, leg) I said they could make it gross or silly or scary, and they loveddd this. I really like doing lessons where they draw because even the worst drawer in the class is the equivalent to my best attempt at drawing. I played the song Monster Mash and Thriller for them and at the end of class, I had them line up outside of the classroom and knock on the door. Every 4 or 5 students would have to say "Trick or Treat" in a group, and they'd get a piece of candy. I made sure each one said "Thank You," too haha.

This boy, Skyy, is one of my favorites. He's hilarious.

Skyy made the "fashion leg"

They broke out the pastels!

This was my favorite monster!

Trick or Treat!

Wednesday, October 26th

For English club, I was real excited about what I planned (of course I planned it at 1am) but regardless, it was a fun idea! I wish I could do it with each class, but the materials used would be very wasteful and Taiwan loves recycling. I did a Halloween relay race. In groups they had to complete the following tasks (but since this class is ridiculously boring, this seemed like actual work to them..)
1) Witch broom race (works great because the brooms they use to clean the school literally look like witch's brooms)
2) As a group, recite "Trick or Treat,  Smell my feet, Give me something good to eat."
3) Dance for 20 seconds to Monster Mash (this was nearly impossible..even after I danced along with them.)
4) Put together this skeleton (that took me an hour to cut out for each group)
5) Wrap up a group member like a Mummy with toilet paper. This they actually liked.

The English Singing Competition is just around the corner. We practice everyday after lunch, and Sabrina hired a friend to help choreograph (thank god..) He's this tall lanky Taiwanese man. He has highlights in his hair and dresses super flashy and he's hilarious. He literally is theee perfect stage performer teacher. He reminds me a lot of my theatre teacher in high school. So I help out with the pronunciation and he works on the song and dance. They also ask me for help with some of the motions and expressions to go with the words. I guess about 50% of the competition is based on pronunciation, 30% is based on creativity..the creativity part I think we got down, but my students were pronouncing "Sunshine" as "Sum shime" for a good week straight. Being that it's the main word in the song, I had to fix that ASAP. Other words to fix: "ars" for "arms" "erss" for "earth." Here's one of their practices. They've improved since! I think it's "quite good."

Thursday, October 27th

Today's presentation went good! It was fun to dress up. I got there extra early (7:30am) so I could paint me and Wenli's face. She was dressing up as a cat with me. We played the one C.D. that my mom sent me (she sent a bunch of Halloween stuff, thanks Mom : ) and the kids walked into the auditorium and I was hiding behind a curtain (not my idea..Chiao's idea) and Wenli and I popped out. This presentation went abnormally long and I think it's because Chiao did a lot of translating. Wenli asked me later on if I think there's too much translating because last year, Shiela (the former EFL teacher) wouldn't have much translation. She said that Chiao was going into her own little anecdotes like "they don't use watermelons to carve, they use pumpkins, this is like Ghost festival because this and this," which is all fine, but she didn't really tell me she was going to add a bunch of stuff. After the presentation, Chiao said that she thought the topic was very interesting and her and the students found the fact that people actually "like" to be scared and go to haunted house and watch scary movies, the most interesting part. She said, in Taiwan people see that as confronting evil spirits and they stay away from scary things.

My mom sent me this cool e-card that I was able to put up on the smart board. It was interactive because you had to click on different things in the card to have it continue. So I used it and had the students repeat the words on the card and called up volunteers. This even got the most uninterested student, interested.
http://ak.imgag.com/imgag/product/preview/flash/bws8Shell.swf?ihost=http://ak.imgag.com/imgag&brandldrPath=/product/full/el/&cardNum=/product/full/ap/3125133/graphic1

Shija and I contemplated going to Taipei for the weekend because of the giant Halloween parties happening out there. Turns out, tickets were being sold upon entry for this party, but it wasn't guaranteed that there were any tickets left. So overall, it didn't make sense to spend that much money for a possible entrance into the club. We decided to stay local and try out the lounge at the top of Hotel One...this was all decided via the internet. Not sure what I would do during my free periods if I didn't have gmail, this blog, skype chat, and facebook...its pretty much all I do when I don't have class.  I got a facebook message from Lien asking if I wanted to meet up for dinner with everyone right after school. So I went to the train station to meet up and it was just Jim, James, Lien, and Sam. I guess Sam had to run errands with James and Jim so he drove us around..he said that he made sure I was invited otherwise I'd "kill him" if I found out they did dinner without me. That's a bit harsh, and not necessarily true. I'm doing just fine by myself with my little local restaurants. I've successfully become known at the Thai restaurant, a Taiwanese Style Noodles place, my beef noodle joint, the 2 potsticker places, and that one stand that makes my fried onion pancake down the street (I only allow myself to eat that once a week for calorie purposes) The owners of these restaurants light up when they see me, not sure how long that will last, but it's kind of nice! That night, Sam also decided to ask about my "tv situation" which is funny to me because I know damn well he hasn't talked to my landlord since I asked him to, about it 2 weeks ago. I told him there is no situation. I don't have a tv. My landlord doesn't talk to me. He said he'll figure it out (I won't hold my breath.) We ended up getting a duck from a stand of hanging ducks and bringing that duck to a food-court-like area near the night market. That was "going out to dinner." The duck was good but between the 5 of us, 3 being guys, we probably should've gotten a Daffy and a Donald (that joke is for you, dad.)

Saturday, October 29th

Today started out as typical Saturday morning that consisted of me making super strong french press coffee.. except I can't make my coffee until my landlord's class is over. The thing starts at 9 am and I refuse to wake up earlier than that on a Saturday. I could mosey on down there during the class to quietly make my coffee and cereal while the class is going on, which I've done before, but that would require me putting on appropriate day time clothing and not looking like a zombie because when you go down into this little room (well about twice the size of my room) every kid turns to look at me and my landlord temporarily pauses his teaching to give a quick hello, and then I try not to make any noise when making the coffee and I'm like tip toeing around. I'm also afraid my landlord will question my use of the airconditioning/hot water/ or tell me that I'm somehow still throwing out my garbage the wrong way.  It's easier to sleep in until the class is over and avoid any human contact..but recently, his classes have been way longer than 11am! He's been going to 12-12:30 on Saturdays and he gets down there at 8:45am to set up for the class. I always crack open my door to hear if he's done or not. Poor kids. Thank you mom and dad for forcing me to do Saturday morning soccer practice and not Saturday morning school.

I've been eating these egg sandwich's from the place below my apartment. Hong Ya. They really don't speak any English, but the young girl knows a tiny bit. I've been getting some special sandwich that I invented (because I'm the weird American who doesn't like cold white bread sandwich's with egg, chicken, cucumber slices and ketchup) so they give me this different bread that's like a bun/roll, fried egg, bacon..and then they still add the ketchup and cucumber slices only because attempting to cancel that out would rock their world too much..the moment you ask them to change something, you get these scared confused looks and it just throws off their system.

Shija, Jim, and I planned on meeting up at the Hotel One lounge that night. Afterwards, Shija and I planned on going to some club (a club in Taichung?? No way!) I took a taxi out to Hotel one and the hotel was beautiful. No one questioned me when I walked in..just walked right up to the elevators and went to the top floor. Shija and Jim arrived shortly after. Jim got some beer and we got mojitos. We split buffalo wings, nachos, and some fried prongs/asparagus. It was on the pricier side but nothing crazier than what you would spend in Chicago. (I am slowly stopping this habit of comparing the Taiwan prices to US prices..I did consider 250NT cheap for a meal at first because it's only $8, but it's expensive for meals here..I need to not live my city life out here.) Jim had to head back to his area because he lives an hour away on the buses and they stop running after a certain time (I'm thinking on scooter it'd only be about 30 minutes or less but he's not interested in getting a scooter.) We planned on going to this club, The Lobby, that was having a big Halloween party. We weren't dressed in costumes, but we dressed cute. Shija has a friend that was planning on going to the club and gave us the location. We left the lounge right before the live music was starting (it's every friday and saturday but not til about 10:30-11)

You Puke, You Pay

The taxi to The Lobby was about 20 minutes. Shija mentioned that there was an online review saying that The Lobby is racist, but we didn't think anything of it until we actually experienced it. The line wasn't bad, but there also wasn't much order to the line. It looked as if there was two, so we obviously picked the shorter one and figured when we got to the door we'd figure out what it meant by then. People were in some crazy costumes (and just like US, girls dress extremely skanky) but there were also people not dressed in costumes. By the time we got up to the bouncer, he mumbled something in Chinese and we go to hand him our ARC card, and he wouldn't even look at it or take it..he just ignored us and let people in around us..we were like..wait what's going on? Apparently he called another bouncer from inside the club to come to talk to us in English, and this is when I experienced my very first act of discrimination. The conversation went something like this:

Him: Umm do you have a friend inside?
Us: Well we're waiting on a friend, she's probably inside
Him: Um ok, is your friend Taiwanese? you can't come in unless you are with non foreigner.
Us: We don't understand..
Him: I'm sorry It's just our policy, you have to be with a Taiwanese person to get it
Us: why?
Him: I'm sorry It's just our policy..can you call your friend and have her come out here (Shija's friend is Panamanian, not Taiwanese mind you..but either way it doesn't matter because she wasn't there.)
Us: So you have to be Taiwanese or be with a Taiwanese person...what if my mom is Taiwanese?.. Ya know..if this was America, you'd be shut down for this..
Him: (nervously laughs) I'm sorry..if you find your friend you can come in.

BOOOO Racist Club..jerks

So Shija and I, in shock mind you, see these two Asian girls. They were very friendly and we told them the situation and asked if they'd pretend to be our friends. THEY said, "well WE aren't even Taiwanese..we're from Russia, but they've never asked for our ARC's. We grab our new found Asian friends, go right back up to the original asshole bouncer, he blatantly ignores us and lets 30 people in around us, and finally the other guy comes back and says, "Oh ok, just go ahead and get back in line.." NOW the line has extended alllllll the way down the street..Hell no. We probably wouldn't be let in after waiting an hour in that line anyway..So we said screw it and hopped in a cab to God knows where. Shija talked to her friend who seems surprised about our story but then said she's always gone with Asian friends so that's probably why she's never had a problem. She told us to check out Babe 09, the same company as Babe 100 in Taipei! We got there, waited in line for about 20 minutes, paid $400 NT for all you can drink, and hung out there until about 3am. Everyone there was friendly, trying to talk to us, cheers-ing with us, and it was all around a better atmosphere then what The Lobby would've been like. My cab ride home was hilarious.  The guy looked at me and decided "oh she's American, maybe she'd enjoy my American music mixtape.." So he changes the music to some of the dirtiest rap and dance music I've ever heard..very very bad things were noticeably repeated in the lyrics and he's blasting it, and it's hilarious that he doesn't even realize what is being said. At one point, DMX's "Up In Here" came on... I've never heard the unedited version before (because when I first heard it I was 15 and it was on B96.) that was an interesting night..

Just some casual de-pantsing