Wednesday, October 5th
I was excited for this day because it was a total blow off day. One class and then the rest of the day I'd go to the hospital to get a check up with the other Dewey people. No English club (yay) During my only class for the day, I did the same lesson from the previous days with the same old flyswatter review game, except during the review game, I used these plastic squeeker toys instead of my slap hand sticks. They already got pretty banged up from the previous days, already went through 9 classes. The classes break these things like crazy and I'm crazy enough to keep buying them, but they're fun :) So even though one of the squeeker toys had a few cracks, I continued to use it. My Wednesday class has a lot of energy which is strange because they are at a lower level of English. Normally the lower level students are very shy and keep to themselves in class. But this class definitely tries with any activity I give them. So when it was time for the review game, I did boys vs girls. The rules of who goes up to the board also changed over the weeks because the classes would spend too much time passing it off to someone new to avoid going up to the board, so this time, the students went in row order. It was this quiet, sweet girl, Mia's turn. (I named her..I make it sound like she's a pet..but I'm proud of her name because she really liked it when she got it) She's a lower level student and to get up to the board is an accomplishment in itself, but of course this particular review game couldn't go as smooth as the others. When the word popped up, Mia gets all excited and starts to hit the board 4 times with the squeeker toy and the toy explodes into a ton of pieces!!! The class, including me and the co teacher, up roared in laughter because it was just a funny situation. But Mia, assumes it's her fault for breaking the thing and goes from laughing to crying!!! The poor girl was crying about this squeeker toy. The bell rang and even with a lot of consoling from me and Silvie, she continued to cry. Silvie said "she feels bad because she doesn't want to disappoint the teacher.." I kept telling her that it was already broken, its ok, it was cheap, it's not her fault, and then I said mei guan chi mei guan chi, and she found my use of Chinese pretty amusing. I was like "is that how I say it?? Is that right, teach me how to say it right!" and just distracted her from the situation. I felt so bad, I think I scarred the girl for life.
Back at the office, I told Joe and Wenli about it and they thought it was a funny story and Wenli kept telling me not to feel bad for the girl. As coffee Joe pours me some coffee, he says "so guess what?...me and my wife bought the giraffe." I'm like.."wait seriously!? It's so expensive though!" and he's like "Well the giraffe's name is Sophie and so is my daughter's, so my wife wanted to get it!" I'm corrupting these poor Taiwanese people..showing them overly priced teething toys.That's hilarious, I'm not sure how he ordered it. I don't think Amazon works out here..I'm glad he didn't ask me to have my mom ship one out here. She had just shipped Crest white strips for Wenli and Joe was aware of this. After lunch, which I barely touched, Wenli said I was free to go because the hospital thing was at 2 and she wants to make sure I get there ok. I was going to ride my bike to the hospital from my apartment because Sam said "it's right next to your place.." I don't know where this guy gets his sense of time or directions..no, there's a dentist office, bike shop, breakfast sandwich place RIGHT next to my place. In my area is a library, park, and night market. Off in the distance beyond those things, is the department store and hospital..Whenever he says things are very close to me I always proceed with the question "can I walk there?" and if his answer is, "oh no no.." then I say, "Well Sam, that means it's too far. If something is very close, you can walk there."
I changed into different clothes because it was super hot and then I started to walk to this hospital. I was instantly sweating so I was like, "nope, not doin this.." and I caught a cab. It wasn't far but it wasn't very close either..it was a little further than Chung Yo department store. I met up with Shija before hand. I stopped and got a Mango iced tea and I'm standing in line and this lady just blatantly cuts in front of me (this has happened a few times now at stores and food stands)..it's like if you don't start shouting out your order right away people just get right up in front of you and shout theirs out. The hospital was very nice and clean. The other Dewey people were there which is always fun. I of course brought the important red folder that my mom organized that had medical documents and prescriptions and stuff but oh no that wasn't necessary. Once we walked in, the workers start throwing papers at us and just having us sign everything. SOoo we did. The one thing I signed said that I'm allowing them to release my results to the public or something crazy, and then thank god Parker was there and was like, oh no check off this box instead, you don't want to agree to that. Then the lady gives me a sheet that says what I'll be doing that day and it included an xray, blood work, and some other exams. I instantly freaked out and was like.."ok wait, what type of blood work am I getting, I'm not getting shots right, I already got these shots at home so I'm not getting them here.." I started to get panicky when I knew they were going to take blood. I haaatteeee giving blood. I only like when the nice deaf lady at Dupage does it because she’s awesome. She finds your vein in one second. Everyone else searches for the vein for a while and keeps making me squeeze that ball thing and agghhh even talking about it makes me cringe. So the lady tells me and Shija to go to this room and take off our shirt and bra and put this cover up on and we were getting a chest xray. It was funny because everyone had to go to the same dressing room and even though there were separated doors with locks..you're still all changing in the same room. So I could hear Jim in the stall next to me like "What about my belt..do I need to take my belt off? What about my watch? How do you get this thing on?" He cracks me up. I go to take my "chest xray" and the lady keeps saying some word to me asking a question and I'm like..facing this wall and I'm like.."what? I can't understand..what are you asking..wo bu dong.." and shes just like mumbling something like.. face it face it...and I'm like.."the wall? I am facing it?" and the other lady is like "no no, Pregnant? Pregnant?" And I was like "NO I'm not pregnant..I've already answered that twice when I filled out papers."
So we changed back into our clothes and all of the Dewey people were in this big open area that was the waiting room, but the nurses were also doing the blood work, blood pressure, vision test, weighing, and measuring out in the open in this waiting room..strange. Not much privacy in this hospital! My name was called and my heart started pounding because I knew they were going to take my blood and turns out they were just doing the weight/height first. It was awkward because everyone is around you and then you stand on this big scale but face the other way so you can’t see your weight but everyone else can (it’s in kilograms so I wouldn’t know what the hell I weighed anyway) and then this nurse presses this button on the scale and this tall yard stick thing that’s attached to it, comes down and taps you on the head (without you knowing that this will happen) and it takes your height! It scared the hell out of me. It was funny to see everyone’s reaction to it, because even though we were all in the same room and could see each person get weighed and measured, not ONE person in our group was paying attention. Whenever we get together it’s this huge production of school stories, culture shock stories, and just short attention spans all around. Just a bunch of talking and laughing and walking from person to person asking questions. The hospital staff told Sam and Bryan to have us keep our voices down because we were being too loud..this is a group of 24-55 year olds haha. So these nurses and doctors were probably getting frustrated having to go through the same thing with each one of us, take off our shoes, stand here, sit here, look in here, after all 12 of us did it. And as if the public scale reading wasn't enough, they have to measure your waist too. They start pointing to my stomach and saying "button, button" and I like lift up my shirt a little to show them my pants button? and Sam's like "NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING" as if I'm down right stripping in the open, I was like..dude relax she said button, what is she saying, and he's like, "she means point to your belly button." So I did, and she measures me, and says the number in Chinese, and obviously this means nothing to me. I'm like "Ok whatever." and I literally don't care to know it because we just don't do that at our doctors, we don't get measure around our waist each checkup, but Sam butts in and asks her in Chinese what she said and he's like ok she said blahblahblah centimeters, and I was like "Ok thank you for providing me with that vital information." Then it was time for my blood pressure, great timing, I just finished my big tea drink, had to change in some unisex dressing room, and got weighed and measured with a translator in front of a group of people standing around me..so long story short, I failed my blood pressure test. I hate when that happens. The nurse looked all concerned and of course Sam's all up in my grill asking the nurse what was wrong and he's like, "ok she needs to re take it in 10 minutes, it's too high. Try and relax..alright now time to go get your blood work done." AHHH now I'm really never going to relax. Caron was very comforting and settled me down a bit before hand, and the needle didn't hurt, but I will say this: they must have taken blood for a full 60 seconds or longer. I'm not kidding, I just stared out a window and counted and once I counted past 30 I was like..wait what is this chick doing..why am I still here? Then I started to sweat and in my head I swear I felt weak but I kept trying to read the chinese symbols on the buildings to distract myself (it's not very distracting when you don't understand any of them though) So that was a long stressful process, now back to the blood pressure. There was this nice new guy from New Jersey(well new to me, he's lived here for a while, and yes he likes Jersey Shore, I asked him) and he was an all around big guy, and he sat next to me when I went to get my blood pressure taken for the second time and he goes, "is the band too tight on your arm, because those bands are made for small Asian arms (he probably didn't say Asian arms, but that's how I interpreted it) and can cause your blood pressure to go up, and I was like "ya know what, it IS too tight!" My hand was cold and numb for a while when she was taking it before SO he told her in Chinese that I want a bigger band and she changed it and it felt 1,000 times better. I finally passed my blood pressure test. My eyesight one was interesting, very different from our E chart. They use little arrows < ^ > and you have to say left right up down. It was tricky at first for some reason, but I think I did well.. I did notice that about 90% of people here wear glasses..no joke. Ok maybe less than that, but almost everyone does, and if they aren't wearing glasses, they're wearing contacts. Could be that arrow test.. I saw a funny picture one time and it was an eyesight chart but with a lady undressing (inappropriate but funny). You can't see her naked because those pictures are at the smallest part of the eye chart haha.
After the hospital trip, most of us decided to get some dinner together and I asked Sam if he'd be able to meet up with this scooter guy with me tonight just in case the guy tries to rip me off and speaks Chinese. Dinner was ok, Shija's food almost didn't come out, and each meal came with sparking apple juice and Sam was convinced it had alcohol in it and wouldn't drink it, and me and Jeff and Caron were like, "No it's just like Welch's sparkling juice, it might taste that way, but there's no alcohol." and I had to prove him wrong, because I'm stubborn, and the empty bottles were right by our table and in plain sight on the bottle it says, "NO ALCOHOL." I showed him and Sam can't be wrong so he asked our super young waitress in Chinese, and she said "yes there's a tiny bit of alcohol in it." He got all happy and I go, "ask our waitress how old she is.." and turns out she's 16..this is also a culture that doesn't drink too much..there's no way she knows what she's talking about..she didn't even get one of our salads right and there were 3 to choose from..I'm not trusting her one bit.
So after dinner Shija and I took a small shopping trip to Chung Yo. I bought a really cute jacket that I could wear for this supposed cold weather that's coming. Sam was going to swing by to get me at 8:30pm to bring me to the scooter man (it was all the way by the art museum) He's hesitant about this because he still thinks that waiting 3 months would be the best idea (why would I wait that long, shout out a bunch of money, and have the scooter for less time?) Sometimes, I think he knows his ideas are wrong, but he refuses to be wrong so he stands by whatever crap comes out of his mouth. I'm convinced this is the case, and meeting with the scooter guy that night with Sam tagging along was solid proof of that. We got a little lost on the way but when we finally got to the apartment building (which was gorgeous..love this area by the museum) Sam and me were trying to guess what this guy's nationality would be. I was like, I dunno, at first I thought his name was Jose and then he told me to just call him Wyn and his last name is so and so, I didn't know if he was Taiwanese or not. Sam's like, oh he's for sure hispanic or middle eastern..I'm like..really? Where do you get that from? So this guy Wyn walks out and turns out he's Dutch. His name is pronounced Vin. So I quietly said to Sam, "oh we were both wrong," and he's like no I told you he wasn't Taiwanese.(Whatever, he's like the kid in class that everyone can't stand because they're a know it all.) Wyn was super cool, he's lived in Taiwan for 9 years, married a Taiwanese woman (seems to be a popular thing to do as a foreigner guy) and even though he's Dutch, he's mainly lived in Canada. He showed me 3 scooters, I naturally gravitated towards one, it was 14,000 NT. Wyn was filling me in on life as a foreigner in Taiwan and how we basically can get away with a lot. It's unfair, but true. Sam agreed. THEN, Wyn starts to tell me about how I would go about with my daily scooter life and how in order to do that we get to cut corners and ignore a few rules here and there. Like, not needing a license, no one writing you tickets because you don't have a Chinese name, or how people ignore some rules of the road and which ones I need to be aware of. Sam did NOT like this conversation. He got real weird and was like "I can't hear this, I can't be here for this because HE is listening" (and pointed up to the sky) Wyn, who just met Sam 5 minutes prior, was like.."wait..what?" And Sam would go on these rants about God and how he's living an honest life because he believes in the lord and how he can't talk about breaking rules and Wyn and me were like..umm ok..So Wyn is like..welll..you might not want to hear what I'm going to say next then..and told me about how to get the papers put into my name and any shop will do this even though they shouldn't and Sam was like, "ok I need to walk away." When Sam returned, he kept saying that he was just worried for me and it's HIS job to look after me and as a friend he wants me to be safe, all very nice things, but then he would do his whole condescending talk like "Now..Diana...you need to pay attention to people around you..sometimes, when the light turns yellow and red, people drive through it still, be careful and look for that.." I was like.."Sam, I've been riding a flimsy bicycle with scooters for the past 2 months and had to follow the same rules, how come you weren't concerned then?" I don't think he realizes the type of defensive driving that was instilled into me by my dad growing up. From the age of 16 and on, it's all about defensive driving. Sam also kept talking about how the signs can be confusing and Wyn was like.."what signs? They're all the same as the ones in America.." and Sam's like, "well the Chinese signs, the Chinese street names" and I was like.."Sam if I decided to not do something because of the Chinese writing around me..then I'd sit in my bathroom all day long.." then he just named every excuse in the book in order to get me to not ride a scooter. I ignored all of his concerns only because we've been over all of these and the main solution is, "well..we'll never know if we don't try." I'm not going to fly across the world and disregard all possibilities of disasters and problems and then get to a foreign country and ride my bike in the same square mile every day for a year. Basically, I told Wyn I'm interested and I'll take the scooter. I'll have a few lessons before I actually take it home and my first scooter riding lesson is on Saturday morning. Wyn also said that every Friday after school him and his foreigner friends go to the Beer Factory by the HSR station and I should join them. I won't even elaborate on how excited that invitation made me.
I started to feel bad that I was getting bitchy with Sam and thanked him for his help and told him I appreciate his concern for my safety, but it will be ok. If for some reason something goes wrong, I will take full responsibility. Then he gets on the topic of food and asked if I ate and I mentioned that I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner and he tried giving me a lecture about THAT! "Here's the thing, beee carefulll with peanut butter" (making it sound like the peanuts are contaminated in Taiwan) and I say "Oh don't worry it's JIF and it's shipped from the U.S.." and he says "Yes. Well. Peanut butter and jelly is not good for your health and you will gain weight." All guilt for losing my patience with him was put aside. You don't tell a Health Education major that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are bad for your health. He literally makes me want to explode sometimes. So I said "Actually Sam, peanut butter and jelly in moderation is good for you. I use wheat bread from the bakery, low sugar jelly, and peanut butter which is unsaturated fat that is filled with protein that fills you up and gives you energy so you aren't hungry later in the day. I don't eat 3 sandwiches in a row..just one. I took Nutrition courses in college and have to teach kids about it.."
Thursday, October 6th
Today was not a good day. My presentation on sports didn't turn out too good. I got back so late from meeting up with the scooter guy and ended up staying up until 2:30/3am to finish it. It wasn't bad, just not great. I go through the whole thing and at the end I'm supposed to ask 5 questions pertaining to what I just talked about and the kids need to raise their hand and they get candy if they answer it correctly. Well I made a mistake with one question in the powerpoint about the Olympics. Instead of giving the correct answer for the number of countries that participate, I gave the number for how many sports are played. So I made the mistake of saying the correct answer is 35 or something like that instead of 200 something. At the end of my questions, the principal says something to Mark, and he comes up to me and goes "Uh Diana, the principal wanted me to tell you that the question about how many countries participate is wrong, the correct answer is this.." and he does this in front of the entire school, so even though a student got the answer "correct" with the choices I gave them, I had to get on the mic and say, "Ok I made a mistake.. the answer is this not this..alright..bye thanks for listening.." So awkward.
I'm pretty sure corporal punishment should be allowed for class 202. I'm not seriously for it..but just sayin..if the co-teachers decide to smack around some of these little brats in this class, I am NOT opposed to it. It's only the boys in the class. They constantly touch each other inappropriately and they're loud and talk over me and if I ask them to stop they laugh in my face and I just held them after class and dismissed the girls first, then the good boys after, then the bad ones last. And Brandy still continues to not discipline and then duck out of class once the bell rings..Then inbetween their class and another class, I had to use the bathroom on that floor and used the private handicapped one because the kids were everywhere, and the boys from 202 start pounding on the door and laugh and run away. I got out of there and walk right up to the 4 kids and was like, "what, what's so funny. Say it in English. If you can't, you can go to the Dean." Sounds harsh but I think I got my message across..
I didn't do much editing on my co-teacher's paper and she decided to tell me that she forgot about the 3 day weekend and I'm thinking (ya I get an extra day to do this, she'll just get it on Tuesday instead of Monday..) No SHE decided she wanted it by tomorrow!! Ahhh. I literally laughed out loud when she told me "she's like..mmm..mmmhmm..well I was thinking..umm..tomorrow I could have it hehe" I was like "hahaha Sabrina, that's not humanly possible." I told her I'd do as much as I could and she said the first 4 chapters are the most important so just get through those if I could.
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| Oh just about 200 pages.. |
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| You can imagine the amount of editing I did.. |
During nap time, I saw that my sister contacted me via skype saying to get back to her when I can. She threw in "Everything's ok" but it still sounded a little urgent so I got nervous. Turns out my dad was in a car accident that night coming home from a soccer game. A cop made a sudden turn into a funeral home late at night, a suddenly stopped, my dad stopped, car rear ended him which caused him to rear end the first car. I guess it messed up his new car pretty bad. This news set me off a bit. Kristen skyped me through my iphone which works in the office because I have wifi and she was at the hospital with my dad and mom and I just lost it. I think it was everything built up, didn't really do much grieving after the news of my Uncle Joe passing away and then hearing this about my dad freaked me out, and then overall, not having anyone at work to talk to is so hard. I know my co-workers care about me, but I can't explain the relationships you form with them. It's on this non-personal level and you don't have these in depth conversations or really get to know someone..Chiao did mention in the beginning that if I have any problems or I find myself feeling sad, to go to the counseling office where she works..but it was nap time so I felt weird doing that. On a positive note, my dad was totally ok, not injured, but I just felt bad for his situation. He's supposed to fly down to South Carolina two days later for the funeral services and now he has the stress of his car being almost totaled. He's too funny though, he was cracking jokes in the hospital and my sisters like, no really, everything is ok. So I had some time to cool off in a bathroom stall because I didn't want to wake anyone up in the office.
Friday, October 7th
Yay for Friday! I didn't get much done with editing or lesson plans the previous night so I worked hard on this paper all throughout the day. Sabrina would come into the office and check to see how it was coming along and I told her how I had a stressful day the previous day so didn't get too much done. She asked if we could work on it together at 4pm, so after school, and I thought that was a great idea. She told me she'd bring me coffee. We worked on it for an hour which was tough. She was very appreciative of my help but the actual editing part was difficult. A few times I had to ask her, "what are you trying to say here?" and she'd get sooo embarrassed! When I'd correct a mistake she'd be like, "ohhhh oh ya ohhh duhh" and cover her face and I'm like..it's ok, relax..no one likes to have their papers edited! When teachers would return my papers with all of its corrections, I hated looking at so a lot of times I would just put it away in my desk and forget about it.
Chinese class went well. We're learning how to say He is a student, I am a teacher, You are a office worker. I got papaya milk again and I asked the teacher if it's bad for me and she said she doesn't think so. Bring on the papaya milk! We got to chat with the other Dewey people only for a little bit.
Saturday, October 8th- Three Day Weekend! Happy 100th Birthday..Taiwan? China? I don't know..
I woke up nice and early and made a big cup of french press coffee. I need to buy some more. I got some pricey chocolate macadamia nut kind from Italy from Jason's market. I planned on meeting up with James from PALATINE!! Crazyyy small world. A guy from Palatine is here for a year, well not in Taichung but Fengyuan which is the town next door. Just like Glendale Hts to Palatine! About a 30 minute drive. Anyway, he got into Taiwan a week ago and is interested in getting a scooter already. I invited him to go with me to my scooter lesson because Wyn has a few others available. It was pretty disgustingly hot in the morning and I met up with James at the train station. We took a cab over to where Wyn was. James didn't really like the other two available and Wyn told him to keep looking and don't just settle on any scooter..maybe I should've done the same haha. (Welp, that's what you get when you're born with a lack of impulse control..it usually comes out the most with shopping.) Oo scooter, I need one, forest green? ok I like green. I'll take it. He took me over to this really cute park that had wide cobblestone pathways for people to ride their bike, run, and even ride their scooter on. It was a perfect place to practice! The first 10 minutes were just me practicing brake, go, brake, go. There's 2 brakes just like a bike, but the one on the right side is where the ignition is so if you go to squeeze that brake, you twist the handle a little and make the scooter go forward..Yep I of course did this and almost tipped that thing over. The scooter is super heavy, way heavier than I imagined. Then I got to ride around going like 10mph and getting used to balancing and then I got to go around the path and practice turns and got to speed up a little. People at the park could totally tell I was new at this. I rode by the same group of elderly people like 5 times and they'd wave each time and say "Ayyyyyyye!" The scooter is kind of cute, it's not ugly, I've seen some pretty ugly ones and I wouldn't call mine that. I might try and pimp it out. We planned on another lesson later on in the week.
James and I took a taxi back to my area and it was still very early. He suggested getting a beer or a shot (yep you're from my parts..) We actually spotted a little place called Sub Car which was next to Chung Yo department store and the girl running this little place was this tiny pretty Asian girl. She was decked out for the club though and turned on this techno music. We told her it was our first time there and she brought us out a beer on the house haha. It was 11 am. The sub I got was kind of gross..James got wings (but no still haven't come across any buffalo sauce) He headed back to his town and I got back to my apartment to pack for the weekend! Shija and I planned to stay in Taipei Saturday and Sunday night.
Shija and I met up at the train station and took a short ride out to the HSR. The HSR ride was no more than an hour and our trek through the MRT was fairly simple. We had to figure out how to get to the hotel and we had an address, just needed to figure out which line to take and which stop to get off of. As always, the people there are very helpful and we knew what stop to get off of and from there we planned on taking a cab or asking for more directions to our hotel. The weather was gloomy. A little drizzle. When we got out of the station we asked a girl right away where the hotel was from where we were and she looked like she had no clue. We decided to hop in a cab right there and the cab driver looks at the address and nods his head like he knows where to go, and then he starts to drive and I'm like.."omg Shija, the hotel is RIGHT there." It was literally across the street, and this guy actually started to drive us!! We were like.."wait it's right there!! let us out" and we had to pay him still and he laughed about it. The hotel was decent. Not too bad, and we were lucky to get a room for the weekend because it was a holiday weekend. Everything was getting booked up like crazy. The one was only about 1,000 a night, so a little over $30 and we were staying for 2. Our room had a real nice flat screen tv. It kinda smelled like smoke or..just old smell, but everything was pretty clean!
Our first adventure was to Taipei 101. We planned on going to the top but since it was so gloomy the people working there said it might not be a good view. It also has been getting dark so fast here. Once it hits 5 pm the sun goes down it seems like! So since we got a late start to the day we tried making the most of our time. We explored Taipei 101's shops and walked around the shops that are around the mall which are cool. It's almost like an out door mall setting like Oakbrook. Real pretty sidewalks and big stores with street performers like musicians and actors. It was so lively! We grabbed two coffees and a pastry to split from one cafe. It was delicious. We decided to do dinner a little later and walked through a mall with a ton of shops. We bought some ridiculously expensive candy..4 pieces for 200 NT haha. But it was damn good. I got a white chocolate raspberry one and a hazelnut chocolate one. We ate dinner at a Thai restaraunt and rather than telling us "hey were closing in a little bit," they decided to seat us, insist we order immediately, and then avoid us until the food is ready. It was good though! I love Thai food and so does Shija. Thailand is on our list of possible Chinese New Year trips.
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| He was singing Simon and Garfunkel haha |
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| Inside Taipei 101's mall |
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| Shija's City |
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| Anddd no Chicago :( I did Italy and Ireland instead |
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| Pricey but delicious |
We went shopping at a few places and we went into this store "So Nice." They had some interesting clothes, a lot of it reminded me of Express's clothes. Around the same price too. One sales associate was really rude towards Shija when she grabbed a size small in a dress. The lady went to grab her a bigger size and Shija said, "no a small is fine." and the lady started laughing at her! Shija asked for a male worker to help her instead and he ended up being the manager. She told him the situation and he wasn't happy to hear that but was glad he was informed. He was very nice. She also mentioned that sometimes, us foreigners like to go shopping without being followed the whole time, sometimes we just like to be left alone. I'm so happy she said this haha. It's so true. Every store I go to, the people literally stick by your side and watch you. If you pick a shirt from the rack to see what it looks like, they like get all excited and go "you want to try you want to try," and then show you a different color, and unravel it to show you that it stretches much bigger so it can fit (that's the best part) I bought this pretty white top that I was excited to wear on our clubbing adventure. Shija got this real pretty dress that was unique and we both agreed you wouldn't be able to find it in the states. One thing that we found extremely humerous during our Taipei shopping adventure were these streets vendors that would unroll a tarp full of shoes and accesories and wheel barrel a bunch of clothes and people would sift through them super fast and then police would come around and they would start packing everything up and drag all of there stuff to a different spot. It was soo funny to see these people follow a train of shoes and clothes and the vendor just accepts money as they walk. I was able to purchase something from one of these vendors right as the cops came up to us..except I didn't know what the hell was going on and was like "duo sao chien??" and everyones all quiet and shoving money into these vendors pockets and then they would scurry away. I'm wondering what exactly he's doing that's illegal? Did he steal these clothes!! Either way, I got this cute jacket out of the whole situation.
When we got done shopping, we realized it was already 10pm and lines were starting to form at this one club that was right next to the shops. It was called Babe 100. The girl out front was the promoter and told us that it's 400 NT all you can drink and it plays hip hop music. We decided to rethink our decision to go to that giant club Luxy. I definitely still want to go to Luxy at some point because it looks insane, but it's very expensive. 400 NT all you can drink sounded good to us! We still had to go all the way back to the hotel and then get ready and come all the way back to Taipei 101. At one point we were heading in the wrong direction and had to switch lines at the MRT but eventually we were back on track to get ready. We were exhausted but me and her were determined to try this place out! We ended up taking a cab over there at 1am because these places don't close until 4am so it's still enough time to get your money's worth :) The cab driver insisted that we call him for a ride home and we told him it'd be very late, probably 4am, but he said to call him. He gave us a little bit of a discount as well. Once we walked in we had to show i.d's of course and Shija still doesn't have her ARC ( I know what a pain that can be..) and she showed her driver's license and the girls at the front were NOT friendly at all. I feel like they were almost were going to turn her down and then they randomly ask, "do you have a cell phone number?" and shes like.."um ya?" And she had to leave her cell phone number for them and they let her in?? What does that even mean? Call her up when the cops show up to bust the place, or maybe it means if you have a cell phone you're a resident..but how does that make her over 18? I don't know. strange. The music was blasting but it was good music. Reminded me of NIU style Starbuster's music. Techno and Rap. This place was huge but there was only one bar and it was packed. Insane. The line, to get a drink was about 15 minutes. You hand them your ticket for all you can drink and you get ONE cup that you need to hold on to. When you finish your drink you can comeback up for another. If you get a can of beer, you need to hold onto that can and turn it in for your next drink. The first time around we got one drink, attempted to walk through the crowd and were pretty much done with it already. We learned our lesson. We stayed right up against that bar and ordered a shot, returned the shot glass, got a drink, returned that cup, got another drink. This was our routine about 3 times around. A guy invited us to go by their table for his friends birthday. He was another level of drunk. The way he was dancing was hilarious. These guys by their table were all very friendly BUT, again, they insist on talking to you so they can practice their English. Normally you come across the same old tired lines when meeting people in Chicago like, "Hey where are you from, where do you work, what school did you go to, oh really do you know this person, are you cubs or sox fan." and then they would disappear for the night (well maybe they just disappeared for me..) but these Taiwanese guys would not leave our side. They brought friend after friend over to meet us and we went through the same questions each time, "What your name. Do you speaka Chinese. Are you a teacha. Do you teacha English. Do you live in Taipei. Do you like Taiwan food. So sorry, my English is not very good." It was fine at first, but all of that talking mixed with the smoke, made my throat kill and I ended up losing my voice a little. (The teachers at school will loveee this, they think my voice is bad as it is.) Shija and I were just taking in the scenery. The dancing was really funny..When I was growing up, Asians were like the best dancers! They'd whip out there glow sticks and start break dancing for everyone when we were in middle school, but not here.. I felt like I was in the Brady Bunch Movie. One girl was literally dancing like Jan Brady. I can't even describe it further than that..but she did the same dance and didn't move from her spot thee entire time we were there...just moved her head back and forth like a bobble head with this super serious face. The one guy who invited us over to the table was even worse, the whole night I thought he was pretending to dance the way he was, as a joke because at one point he said to us, "Can you please teach the Taiwanese girls how to dance.." but I asked Shija if he was being serious when he was dancing and she said, "Oh ya..he was serious.." One boy who wanted to dance with me was 17!! I was like "noo..in my country, this is illegal in many ways..you shouldn't be in a bar anddd you're under 18..see ya." There was one really nice guy who had good English and he took pictures of the group, he didn't get into the picture though.
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| The one decent dancer in the club |
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| They get sloppy in Taiwan too..Notice boy in middle..boy on right was 17.. |
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When the club closed we tried calling that cab driver but Shija said it sounded like he was sleeping (rightfully so, it's 4:30am..) So we just hopped in one that was already there. These boys were asking for our numbers and facebook info and all of that, not necessarily with the intention of hitting on us though. I honestly think they just want American friends or something. We were pretty buzzed and when we got back to the hotel we ate our leftovers and watched a little of Inglourious Basterds. We ended up sleeping in to about 11 or 12 and we asked the hotel to stay another night which they were ok with. After showering and straightening up the room for the cleaning lady, we didn't get out of the hotel until 1:30 or so! Another late start! We wanted to head over to the zoo and do the Maokong Gondola's which are those air lift things that go up the mountain. We made a few pit stops in the MRT station, the shopping is just too good to pass up. One little food stand that smelled amazing, had a super long line and they were selling "coffee buns." They didn't look like anything special but we decided to purchase one to split anyway. It was awesome, it was this sweet bun with some coffee flavor that had melted butter inside. Two things that are hard to come by in Taiwan that I've noticed are salt and butter. Two vital ingredients. So this thing was good! We decided to grab some lunch before as well. Shija still hadn't tried spicy beef noodle so I saw a stand that looked like it would have it. They did have it, but it was different than the kind I like. Still pretty good, super spicy though. Me and her also randomly craved a giant coke which tasted delicious. She's a lot like me, she gets random cravings for snickers bars and coke out here.
We took a long MRT ride over to the zoo but it was a nice ride because it was above ground. The others were below ground and you can't see any scenery. When we got there, we found out the zoo was closed :( It's ok though, the Gondola's were still open! We could take the Maokong gondola to 3 different stops, one was the other part of the zoo (which was closed) the second was where all of these temples were, and the third, which was the way top, was all tea houses. Not sure why they're called gondolas if they're in the air and not in the water, but they were cool. Shija and I paid a little more to take the all clear gondola so you can see below you. It was starting to get dark so I was worried it wouldn't be as good as a view but it ended up being a beautiful view. It was a long ride too, it's not like when you wait in this long Great America or Disney World line for a fun 2 minutes of your life. This was a lengthy trip to the top of the mountain. It was kind of freaky, if i was afraid of heights, I would never do it. We shared it with a family on the way up and took pictures along the way. We went all the way to the top for the tea houses and those were awesome. You walk down this narrow road that you had to share with other people and the occasional car, and there was no fence blocking the edge. We walked all the way down the road to see all of our choices of tea houses and there were a ton. We settled on one that you could climb up more stone stairs and have a view from the top of the mountain down to the city. We ordered some lattes and a waffle with chocolate syrup.
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| Unknown number from last night..thanks Babe 100 |
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| Tea House |
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| View from Tea House |
We left the zoo and we were on a mission to find this foreigner bar called, Patio 84. There were Rugby finals going on so that would be a fun atmosphere on a Sunday night..kind of like watching Sunday football :) The description of the event online said that the bar was "steps away" from Shin Kong department store which was a giant mall by the mainstation. Well we asked around and people at the main station said "no no, its at the other Shin Kong at the next stop. Take the MRT there." Hm..ok there's another Shin Kong mall. Alright no big deal, the MRT is about a dollar for each ride. So we get to the next stop and we ask people at the department store where we can find this bar that's just "steps away." No one has a clue. The information desk is calling up people asking and finally they put us in contact with the bar. Shija talks to the bar worker and he says that it's at the OTHER Shin Kong department store, there's a third one!! How many of the same mall can you have in a city?? Its not like Shin Kong is the only one, there's Sogo and about 10 other huge malls. So she's like, ok how do we get to that mall. Turns out, we need to get back on the MRT, go in a totally different direction and then from the MRT, we take a taxi or a bus towards that mall and THEN it's steps away from the mall. We got a little stressed by this news because we were pretty exhausted, decided to look around at some shops and then head out to the bar. I bought a slice of apple pie from a shop at the MRT. It looked delicious. The bar was pretty far from where we were, plus we had to take a taxi, but when we finally got there, the rugby games were over and the guests were wasted. They were all South African and then there was one table of Taiwanese people. Me and Shija still hadn't eaten so we ordered food right away. We just got this greasy big appetizer platter. We were so excited to have wings at first, but then they said they were out of buffalo sauce! :( Our bartender was the guy we were on the phone with and he apologized for the confusion. We only had a few but since we were at the point where we wanted to sit and relax somewhere and the other bar patrons were like..spitting saliva drunk, we headed out not to long after we ate. These two South African guys wouldn't leave us alone. They were friendly, just sloppy drunk..and they kept asking to eat our food.. I just think after an entire night of talking to Taiwanese guys, we weren't really excited to carry on the same conversations and we definitely weren't on the same level of intoxication as them. We got back to the hotel, watched some tv, and passed out.
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| First bite of apple pie..it was glorious. |
The next morning, we went down to the office to ask if there were any openings for NYE and the lady said no and then was like..well maybe, how long do you want to stay? If we say we want to stay longer than other guests, do they get jipped out of their reservation? haha. She also said she wouldn't have a room for us Sunday night and she did..so I think she makes rooms magically appear. First order of business as we walk into the MRT, coffee buns. We had some help buying regular train tickets to go back to Taichung because we wanted to save some money. An older couple helped and then a young girl did. I asked if we'd have seats and she said, at Hsinchu we would have seats. Turns out it was the opposite. We sat for the first 45 minutes and I napped, and then a shit ton of people got on at Hsinchu and we lost our seats. One opened up and Shija said I could sit in it and she'd sit on the ledge of the seat. She's reading The Help. When she finishes I told her we have to see the movie. I love that book. I'm almost done with Water for Elephants..that's one depressing book..
Even though we had the whole Monday off, I was dreading getting back. I had to plan lessons and edit a billion pages of Sabrina's thesis. I emailed about 3 of my co-teachers because I still had no clue what was going on for the upcoming week. I knew it was midterms that week and Wenli mentioned that I wouldn't have some classes..but which classes, how many classes? I don't want to plan something completely new if I'll only have a few..Not one co-teacher got back to me. That night, I finally got to talk to Nettie, John, and the girls. It was good to hear from them! But my throat was sore from the weekend and my voice was manlier than ever and If I don't have classes, I'm taking a sick day.
