Totally Bored for the totally bored

Last week came to the climax with Totally Bored, a ski/snowboarding/bike riding/skateboarding/concert event held at Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. It was crazy, and it's too bad that my work banned my computer, because it'd be cool to post some photos of it. Here's one of the skateboarding ramp; you can see the main arch to the memorial behind it:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/sport/photo/2005/07/24/2005039602

Anyway, in between the two buildings (the concert hall and the theater hall) there was this 10 story ramp with snow. SNOW. 35 degrees Celcius and they have snow there. Anyway, it was cool, except for the B-grade European talent that performed (where were the North Americans? Nowhere to be found). But it was a cool event, and I think Mei posted a little bit about it.

The Asian bands in the concert were interesting: one guy screamed like Fred Durst on acid, as Mei put it. It was 'cool'. Hahaha no, it wasn't, it was incredibly lame. I got a kick out of looking around and watching people. The next group was cool; it was a solo guy singing with a cool beat, and he had 5 breakdancers behind him as his posse I guess. I couldn't classify the music as rap or rock; but it definitely had a cool beat and the lyrics were funny, as translated by Mei. And then came Coolio. I couldn't help but laugh at the stuff.. like Coolio's "trance" and his "if you're happy and you know it" diddy... it was funny because he was definitely so into himself. Then came the "1, 2, 3, 4, get your woman on the floor" song and that was awesome. Russell: I was thinking of you, man. (Uh, in a purely platonic way......) And then gangsters paradise, and I was hoping Weird Al would show up. And he was shouting like Little John.. I was thinking, NO WAY, is he here?!? But no.

Haha, it was cool. Great event, overall, and it had everything. And it was FREE. Too bad I was super poopy and super cranky because it was hot and I was EXHAUSTED from not sleeping. So... Mei luckily put up with me. She had a few chances to lose me in the crowd, but didn't. So kudos to her.


I said I'd write about the pros and cons about leaving here, but it's too premature to do that, I think. Maybe in a month. But shoot, I still have.. 1 and a half months left! A little more. Which actually isn't long at all.

Take care everyone!

Two more weeks to go!

That's right, the last week of July, and the first week of August, and I will be done. Oh, and one two-day graduation trip. But that'll be beans compared to teaching.

My kids are starting to disappear: Alan was gone for two weeks to go to China with his family, and Vincent is now on vacation never to return except for the grad trip. Less kids makes it easier to teach, plus we finished our last official Calvert lesson, so now it is just photocopied handouts to practice their phonics and math skills. (In case you forgot, Calvert is a home school program for kids in the States, which is hard to teach to a class of twelve when it's designed to be one-on-one between parent and child at home.) And teach them how to dance to "I'm on the Top of the World" (with moves choreographed by me) and a one minute grad speech (written by me, ok, with a little help from Andrew). I'll try to post the speech for you to read, I have to teach it to my kids first before I can take my only copy home.

Yes, we had a typhoon, Typhoon Haitung was a doozy, we got Monday off, yay! But really couldn't sleep Sunday night because the 140mph winds made things noisy and a little nerve wracking hoping your roof doesn't get blown away. Southern Taiwan got it a lot worse than we did, about a total of 2,000 tourists were trapped in various areas because bridges were blown away or ferries wouldn't set sail from the mini islands off shore. They're finally starting to get clean up crews going to clear out and start rebuilding freeways and bridges. Crazy stuff!!

Yesterday was an exhausting, but really cool day. Nokia put on "Totally Board," which means they set up a super tall ramp, covered it in snow, and had skiers and snowboarders from Europe do a small X-games style competition. They also had a smaller hill set up for people to go down in inner tubes. This was the first time a lot of people in Taiwan saw this kind of event live (this island isn't really known for its mountains of snow), it was just fun to see all the people oohhing and ahhhing every time a snowboarder rotated mid air. They also put on a concert after the games, with a few local acts, and Coolio! That's right California's own Coolio, with famed hits like Gangsta's Paradise, 1,2,3,4, and Fantastic Voyage. I had a lot of fun, and got some good pictures of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial hall and snow.

Today is a relax and rest kind of day, do some chores, recover from being on my feet all day. Hope you are all doing well!

Retraction!

I asked for THREE days off, and all I got was ONE! Unacceptable! I won't tolerate su-...

Haha, kidding. Hey the typhoon hit. It's dying out now if you still want to see the (impressive) satellite pictures on the web (http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V4e/index.htm, click satellite and loop it 12 hours), but it's set to give us rain for the next week. The weather forcast is funny (to me but not to Mei): everywhere on the island had a rain cloud for 5 days straight. It was maybe 35 pictures of rain clouds.

Right after my last post, it started pouring outside; I quickly got home and bunkered down for the next day and a half. There was some pretty strong winds, and definitely some heavy rain, but the typhoon grew weaker as it came, and it didn't hit us directly (I don't think? With it growing weaker, I got confused as to what actually hit us- maybe it did- there was a calm period which could have well been the eye in which we went out and played badminton. Hilarious, the winds were blowing heavily, so we had to aim about 45 degrees to the side, but the winds were also swirling, too, so if you hit it 45 degrees one way, the winds suddenly switch direction and you're hitting it as far away as possible), so it wasn't as bad where we were as I thought it was going to be. When we came out to see how it was, there were trees with broken branches everywhere, but luckily no flooding. I got my precious day off, and Mei was able to scratch off a day on the calender without having actually taught! Joy.

Less than two more months here, I still have to share my thoughts on that. Next time I'll blog FIRST and check my fantasy baseball team last (especially since this last week dropped me to second place and 15 games back! Grr) and really share my thoughts. Really. Haha.

Hope you're all doing great, I just bought 9 movies for about $10 so you know I am! Haha. Whoops 40 seconds time to post...

What do you want for your birthday?

That was what was asked by Mei.

"You know, I could use a few days off of work. Could you get me a typhoon?"

"Um, sure..."

"A big one. You know, one where we might have three days off, or something crazy like that."

"... of course!"

Well, last week came and went (Happy biiiirthday toooo me, happy birthday toooo me, happy biiiiirthday to Andrew... happy birthday toooo me.) and wouldn't you know it, no typhoon.

"Mei! You said you were going to get me a typhoon!"

"Oh, right. I'm working on it."

"Really? A big one?"

"Yep, a three day one. NEXT Wednesday, really."

"Ok."

And guess what happened? The next day I look in the paper, and... a storm was morphing into a typhoon, and it might hit Taiwan! ... no way... and what else? It might continue to grow, affecting the island for more than a day if it hits.

Well, be careful what you wish for I guess. Sure enough, a typhoon is coming, and it looks like it's NOT going to veer off to Japan! (I'll take the day off, I'll hope for no deaths or destruction...) Small winds have been blowing for the last couple of days, an ominous sign, and you can see the typhoon progression here:

http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V4e/index.htm

Just look for the English section, the satellite image is what you're looking for, especially looping it for 12 hours.

Anywho, don't mess with Mei, or should I say, Storm (from X-Men).


My birthday was cool, thanks for the well-wishes. Mei, Todd, and I went out to see War of the Worlds, and boy, was it horrible, I'll leave it at that, but it was great to be with friends. Even though I kept my birthday low key (shocking), some parents still knew about it, and I got some things from the parents and even a cake at work. It felt really good to receive some recognition that people were thinking about me, but I felt bad because I got two nice pens from a parents and a small tea cup set from a coworker, who I barely know! So a little embarrassed, but thankful for their kindness as well.

Going to bunker down for the night; it's supposed to hit late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Hopefully I'll get my present (no school!!!) without the destruction! Hope you're doing well, some more stories in a later post...

Make sure your feng shui is in tune!

So last Saturday Andrew and I started packing up our second room and separating stuff between what would be mailed home and what would be left behind. Needless to say we ruffled the room up and a lot of stuff got moved around. We are now convinced that we messed up something in our feng shui because we had a not so good week last week, although this week is much better. Hopefully our chi has settled down and is flowing in the right direction again.

So last Sunday we went sightseeing with Andrew's student, and his little brother and father to the Shimen Resevoir. We saw the dam, walked around, went on a boat ride to see the lake behind the resevoir. After we left, there was lots of traffic, we sat in the car a long time because we kept getting lost, and eventually made it to a place that labelled itself a "bat cave." After getting lost on the trail (and me getting bit by mosquitos, grrr..) we finally find the "cave." It was more a depression with a small stream running through it, and lots of dripping water and moss everywhere. Not a bat in sight. Anywho, I was trying to take a picture, slipped on a super slippery rock, and landed butt first with camera in hand, landing down hard on the rock. Shock and despair came over me as I looked at my zoom lens to see the first half bent at a 45 degree angle. And I became a total girl and started crying. It had been a long day already, and my new, awesome, expensive, digital camera looked very broken. I felt bad because that made Clark (the father) feel really bad, and poor Andrew didn't know what to do with me. Needless to say, when I tried to turn the camera off, the lens wouldn't retract back into the camera. We quickly left the "cave" and headed back to the car.

Well, it wasn't as bad as I thought, and I now vehemently recommend Sony quality and durability to anyone who will listen. I guess my landing just knocked the lens off track, because I was able to just pop it back in place in the car. We took some test pictures, and they came out totally fine, no difference at all between pre and post fall. WOOO! I might take to a Sony repair spot just to have it checked out, but there is no difference in function or picture that we've been able to tell.

Then both of us had stressful a work week, lots of miscommunication, I'll let Andrew tell you about his, his frustration was a lot more than mine. So by Friday, we were convinced our chi was completely out of whack! But everything is fine now, maybe Andrew's birthday helped bring him new luck. Todd came in on Saturday evening and we went to TGI Friday's for dinner to celebrate, saw War of the Worlds (which I found incredibly disappointing) and on Sunday saw the musical Chicago at the National Theatre. Chicago was awesome and the theatre is beautiful Chinese architecture inside and out.

This week has been alright so far, I'm just riding the rest of July out, I have a few more weeks, and then I am done teaching! Crazy stuff! I'm very excited, but I will definitely miss some of my kindie kids. After kindergarten wraps up, I will be heading to Lungtan to spend some time with my family before we head out on our whirlwind trip around Asia.

We have a few more weekend trips planned, stuff to look forward to: hiking in Wulia and seeing snow in Taipei

Been a while...

hasn't it? Yes it has.

Well.. what's new with me. Let's see. Remember how my co-teachers quit because my boss is a psycho biyatch? Well, we have some new teachers, and they have way less control. One of them is a guy, which is interesting, because every co-teacher I have seen has been a female. Anyway, they have less control, so the last couple of months will be more.. interesting. But the new teachers seem really nice. Obviously, which is why the kids are more wild.

Doesn't much matter for me, though, less than 2 and a half more months and then no more teaching. My schedule is a little different: I have to get up earlier now because the nighttime class on wednesday and friday is now 10-12 in the morning, as is the Tuesday class, since the kids don't have school. It's good because I can go home earlier, bad because I have to get up early! Drat. I also will be temporarily teaching a class on Monday and Friday at 10-12 at the other school, so I'll be having more of a 9-5 type job for awhile until they find a permanent teacher for the class. A little more money for me if they don't find someone, I guess.

Other then that, just enjoying the heat (BLEH, I hate the heat, I just completely shut down!). Going to go sight-seeing (hiking!) tomorrow with a student's family (Clark and his sons Rex and Hans, and Mei is going as well). Should be fun and good to get outdoors, not so fun because we're leaving super early! Ha.

Time to leave the internet cafe, I'll write more later...