sometimes i really do read books with my ass

Well folks, it's been about a month since my last posting, even longer if you don't include weird crying llama facebook ads as posts.


Since October, a few noteworthy activities have occurred.


A few days ago I experience my first earthquake. My whole apartment shook, especially my bed, which I was sitting on at the time. I wish I could report that I automatically knew that it was an earthquake, but as I have never felt an earthquake, I started yelling at Potato (my one-eyed cat) for shaking my bed. About a half-hour later I found my facebook mini-feed blown up with statuses about the earthquake that apparently was measured at 5.7, whatever that means. Poor Potato, first she has that whole lack-of-eye thing going on, now she's getting blamed for earthquakes, what a rough life. I don't feel too terribly though because recently she sat on my computer and broke the keyboard. Now only half the keys work and I had to buy a keyboard to plug into the USB port. Potato, you little fucker...


All is well on the teaching front. I'm finding that I really really enjoy teaching my three year old babies. No, the curriculum is not challenging (we've spent the past 4 weeks talking about how to name blue triangles and green squares, it's not exactly intellectually stimulating) and yes, I do have to deal with some nasty stuff, such as students who barf in the middle of practicing our Christmas play or pee their pants in class. But my kids are absolutely adorable and precious and make me laugh now that they can communicate on a very basic level. I like to think of it as getting paid to hang out with 11 of my shortest and most retarded friends who think the phrase "smell my feet" is the most hilarious joke of all time. Really, I taught them "trick or treat, smell my feet" about a month ago, and they bring it up constantly, especially when the discussion has nothing to do with foot odor.
"Jimmy, what day is it today?"
"Smell my feet! AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!"
"....."


Besides saying "smell my feet" all the time, they've got some good jokes for 3 year olds. As they are too young to read English or Chinese, sometimes I find random Chinese words and tell them it translates to "teacher Robin" (how they call me in school). They know I'm joking (except for one "special" kid, I'm pretty sure I've got him convinced) but find it funny every time. That's the nice thing about 3 year olds, you don't need to get new material for jokes because they NEVER die. I've pretended that I can read our story books with my ass since back in August, but it's funny every time I do it. "AHAHAHAHAH!!!! TEACHER ROBIN!!! NO BUM BUM!!! NO BUM BUM!!!!AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Anyway, when I try to tell them that 所有網頁 圖片 影片 地圖 新聞 翻譯 stands for "teacher Robin", they correct me and tell me it actually stands for "roma romama, gaga ooh la la", which is a pretty good joke if you ask me. We exercise to Lady Gaga in the morning and my kids love it and sing it all the time. Nothing like some cardio to Bad Romance to start your day off right to learn English.


Let's make a list of things I have taught my children:

• blue triangle
• Trick or Treat, smell my feet
• ra ra ah ah ah roma romama ga ga ooh la la

What more could you ask for in an English education?


I have no life outside of teaching since the hours I teach are dreadful. I work mornings and nights AND have to work Saturdays. Sunday is my only day off, and I'd like to tell you I spend it mountain climbing and exploring Taiwan, I usually spend it napping because I'm hungover from Saturday night festivities. Hey, gotta enjoy the time here somehow.


I am, however, planning on going on vacation somewhere in Asia during Chinese New Year early February. A friend and I were planning on going to Thailand and perhaps to Bali (Indonesia). I am legit excited to ride me some elephants. He called me a few days ago to say he found cheap tickets to India, so we might look into that and save Thailand for another day. I'll keep you updated.


PS. For your viewing enjoyment, here is a photo I took of some Teletubbies in the MRT (metro) station. Why? I don't know. But whoever these mystery teletubbie aficionados are, I wish to befriend them.

random facebook ad

Ok, so this has nothing to do with anything at all, but I need SOMEWHERE to post this.

You know those ads that pop up on the side of your facebook? Mine turned Chinese recently, which is just as well since I despise those ads and usually X them out and mark them as offensive. Today this one came up.

Ok, what on earth is this advertising for?!?
I copied and pasted the text into google translate and this came up.

Phoenix! WASHINGTON mud horse as a pet is out of date, a number of recent
Watch young woman haunted day and night depths of flowers in full bloom.
Competing to get the Phoenix mount fly ...
"brilliant full text please click read"

Oh, okay, that clears things up...
WTF.

adventures in paragliding

This past weekend I went paragliding!!

Saturday night after work I jumped on a train to Taichung, which is a little over 2 hours from Taipei. Another Hess worker, Victoria, and I arrived at around 7:30. We signed up to go paragliding with a South African guy named Yuri who runs an adventure business in Taichung/Puli.

Yuri met us at the train station and took us out to an Aborigine pub. We sipped beers and Yuri ordered us "some meat" off of the menu since we didn't know what to order. The waiter brought out a mystery meat-like item and placed it in front of us. I felt hesitant but ate some of the mystery rubbery and spicy substance. We then found out later we ate snail. WHAT.

Oh hey, no big deal, just accidentally eating some spicy snail in Taichung...

The next morning we headed out before lunch to get in some paragliding action. Puli is located an hour away from Taichung and we arrived there around 1pm. There were at least 30 paragliders up in the air.Victoria went up first. They suited her up and they jumped off!

After an hour of waiting, Victoria and Yuri came back. I asked how the paragliding went and they told me the wind had died and they were only up in the air for a few minutes. I looked up in the sky and saw that there was hardly any paragliders left.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. After three or four hours had gone by and no one was able to stay up in the air, we were ready to head home to Taipei. We were dissapointed because Victoria went up for only a few minutes and I hadn't even tried it. We found Yuri and told him we wanted to return, but he wanted to wait another 30 minutes. We saw a few people attempt to fly but not stay up for very long so Yuri asked if I wanted to try it, knowing that we probably couldn't fly for very long. OF COURSE! (We had to pay him even if the weather was bad, so I might as well try it...)

Suited up and ready to go

I'm flyyyyying!

This is actually Victoria in the air, not me, but obviously I couldn't take pictures of myself flying. You wouldn't have known if I didn't tell you anyway.

One more thing crossed off my "shit to do before I die" list. Paragliding, done and done.

Here's the link to my facebook album to see more pictures.

taiwanese happy hands club? yes please

Awkward Taiwan anectode of the day:

I went to Taipei Main Station the other day and, as usual, wandered around aimlessly until I found what I was looking for, except I found something better: Taiwanese Happy Hands club.

What is the Happy Hands club?, those with little culture or little knowledge of classic movies like Napoleon Dynamite might ask. Here's a refresher:

In the middle of this train/bus/MRT station was a group of middle-aged Taiwanese woman performing a sign-language dance of a Chinese song. So much win.

As my life is becoming more stable and I am becoming more immune to the oddities of Taiwan, I find myself having less to write about my activities. The rest of this blog post is going to be dedicated to a part of Taiwan I have yet to describe: the night market.

The Taiwanese feel a great sense of pride for their night markets. These markets sort of help define what IS Taiwan. Just like you ask a Chicago tourist if they've seen the Sears (/Willis) Tower or a Paris visitor whether they've seen the Eifel tower, natives frequently ask if I've been to the night markets.

A night market basically is a clusterfuck of people and vendors in a giant, outdoor market where really cheap shit is sold. The biggest and most famous Taiwanese night market is the Shilin night market, where I have been to a few times, though there are also several local night markets that are much smaller. It's fun to visit on occasion and a must see for tourists.

You can find a variety of things at the night markets. There are many clothes and shoes stores that I've checked out. Food stands and sometimes actual restaraunts also are part of night markets, though after one rough night after eating night market food, I've decided to not partake in this aspect of the night market. Really, you can find most anything at a night market - I even saw iPads being sold. Sometimes they have weird combinations of stuff being sold at one store - today I went to a market in LuZhou that sold raw fish and shoes in the same store. I made a mental note of that place so when I'm in the mood for salmon and Adidas, I know where to go.

Entering a night market means you must leave American customs at the door. As many travelers know, what is deemed polite and inpolite by American standards does not hold true in other countries. For example, when I visit clothing stores, sometimes the sales clerks follow me and breath down my neck while they hold up ugly shirts they think I might like. In the States, a worker who follows your every move is one who thinks you are stealing. In Taiwan, it's someone who genuinely wants to help you and earn your money. It still creeps me out and generally makes me leave the store. Another difference is how the Taiwanese regard size. When I walk into clothing stores, the sales workers point out the clothing that is "big enough to fit me". Here is another huge culture difference. Here, stating that a customer is "big" is just as offensive as stating that their hair is brown, whereas you'd practically get a lawsuit for that type of action in the US. I've even had workers take clothing out of my hands that they think is too small for me. I try not to take it personally because this doesn't happen to just me. A friend of mine who has an athletic body that would be considered "hot" by our American perception was handed a plus size catalog upon entering a night market store.

When I get past the annoying store clerks throwing fat lady shirts in my face, I have purchased some awesome clothing items. By awesome, I mean awkward, of course. Taiwanese clothing shops offer so much ENGRISH. Engrish is bad translation of English by Asians.

Here are some examples of amazing Engrish clothing items I have bought.

We can't fly the world so bitch with multi-colored bananas. Makes perfect sense!

Let's gat it start in here! My friend and I bought matching shirts with this phrase; hers is white.

Though this hat has no Engrish on it, I still look like a tool in a bedazzled trucker hat made for obnoxious tourists. Of course I bought this.

I've seen some pretty interesting English phrases on clothing items here. From bad grammar and spelling or just awkward phrasing, the shirts can be pretty hilarious, especially depending on who is wearing them. Sometimes our kindergarten kids come in with innapropriate English phrases on their shirts. Ohhh, Engrish.

Though I'm laughing at the awful English -> Chinese translations, it works pretty terribley in our favor also. Many Taiwanese have told me about all the stupid Chinese tattoos we get that we think say "peace and love" when they really say "spicy chicken and gnomes". And tattoos are more permanent than a stinkin' t-shirt.

As this blog comes to a close I leave you with this piece of advice: beware long skirts.

typhoons, toilets, and one-eyed cats named potato

First on the agenda of blog-story telling is to tell you about a recent dining experience. A few Sundays ago, I ate at a classy restaurant called The Modern Toilet. I kid you not, this place is bathroom themed; you sit on toilets and eat on a bathtub.
Everything is served to you in a toilet and most of the menu is things that would look gross served in a toilet. I ordered curry.


I even got a urinal shaped water bottle as a souvenir! This has been used 0 times since the purchase because urinal shaped water bottles have a pissy design (buh-dum-CHING) that does not allow for efficient drinking. But how could I deny such a souvenir?

After the toilet themed restaurant I got a 5-month old kitten. Yes, I am now the proud owner of a one-eyed cat named Potato. Or ma ling shu, as she is called in Chinese (by me, when I pretend I speak Chinese).

Here she is, in her one-eyed glory.

Here is what she would look like if I got her an eye patch and she became a pirate.Here Potato is eating a french fry. Friggen' cannibal.

Last weekend I finally moved into my new apartment. I was living with another Hess worker at her apartment, but I didn't like the no AC + subtropical climate of Taiwan combination. Plus, it was an old apartment and I slept on the floor which meant I was covered with bug bites all over my arms and legs. Yes, I've gotten a total of about 8 of those huge, poisonous spider bites on my arms and had to go to the doctors again. Lovely. A Taiwanese girl told me she thought that I had allergic reactions because the spiders were peeing on my arms, not biting them. Somehow, this didn't comfort me.

Anyway, I've moved into a dorm-room like apartment and have yet to be peed on by spiders. I say dorm room because the floor has 4 rooms. Only girls are allowed to live on the floor and I had to sign a contract that I wouldn't bring boys in at night because they might scare the other girls...I also had to sign that I wouldn't have any pets or drugs in the apartment. I've already brokenthese since I currently reside with Potato and her one-eyedness and I have a meth lab in the bathroom.
I actually don't even know what meth labs look like. I just googled it and I definitely don't have enough room for that shit.

It's also similar to a dorm room in it's size- it's tiny. I guess it's ok since it's just me (+ Potato (+ meth lab)), and I don't need a ton of space. It's one room connected to a bathroom. Get this - in the bathroom, the shower and toilet are in the same space. You can literally sit on the toilet and take a shower. I CAN SAVE SO MUCH TIME. I of course tried this out instantly but it's not nearly as much fun as you'd think.

I'm right next to the gym, which is fabulous because I can guilt myself into going more often. I've already increased my weekly gym goings by one; now I go once a week.

Potato has adjusted well, though at first she was very angry with me for moving her so much. I know this because she pooped in my shower. I guess I can't blame her, I'd probably poop in someone's shower if I were in a similar situation.

I'd upload some pictures (of my apartment, not the shower poop) but my battery is dead on my camera and I'm not totally unpacked.

Right after I moved into the apartment we had a typhoon. I'd say that the typhoon was similar to the whole toilet+shower combination - it sounds super exciting, but then it happens and it's kind of a let down. All that happened was that it rained a lot and was windy at times. I don't think we got the worst of the typhoon, but still, Taiwanese weather gods, I give you about a 3 on a scale of lame to badass.

Hmmm, what else to include? My life is becoming more stable and thus less blog-worthy. Besides a few random adventures here and there, such as going to a pet store and seeing a pig being sold, or getting flagged down on the street to do some English translation and getting paid with two bottles of Coke Zero, less and less random, awkward stuff is happening to me.

I apologize for all the toilet-themed stuff in this posting.

just chase that shot down with snake broth

I must interrupt this blog post with a plea to my home country. America, I leave you for one month, and THIS happens?
WHAT IS GOING ON?!?! WHY IS THIS NONSENSE HAPPENING!?!?! WHO WILL STOP IT!?

Now - back to your regular scheduled blog post.
What sort of shenanigans has Robin gotten herself into this week?

First of all, my schedule has completely changed. I originally signed a contract to teach only cram school classes, or buxiban classes, which means I teach classes that meet 2 or 3 times a week. These classes are separate from and take place after the elementary school classes the kids attend during the day. I teach a class called Tree House 1 which has kids straight out of kindergarten, or about age 7, and the oldest I teach are in a program called Step Ahead, and these kids are maybe 11 or 12 year old students. Although this was a change from the high school aged students I was used to in the States, I actually enjoy this age group quite a bit more than I do high school aged students. I felt like I was surviving these classes, and God forbid, dare I even say thriving in them. Of course, this means that something was to go wrong. And boy, did it. Last week Wednesday my boss threw me in kindergarten class. No; to call it kindergarten is not completely truthful by American standards - I am teaching preschool kids that are barely not babies.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.

First of all, these kids know NO English. Nothing. They barely know Chinese. They can't read, so I can't write things on the board. I can't discipline them because if I tell them to sit down, they just hear jibberish coming from my mouth and pay no attention. Some of them still don't understand that I can't speak Chinese, so they tell me things in Chinese while I stare blankly at them, just like they stare blankly at me when I speak to them. To say that teaching them is a challenge is an understatement. With older students, even my Tree House kids, I can see by the end of the 2 hour class that they have learned something (well, hopefully anyway). At the end of kindergarten, I have no clue if ANYTHING sunk with these kids. Also, my older students don't generally cry the whole class time for their moms.

Although it's hard, I do think they like me, mostly because sometimes I pretend to throw them in the trash. And I hit myself in the face with spongey hammers. This is how you get "in" with 3 year olds. I also have figured out that you can make anything fun in the world if you pretend it is. When I pull out flashcards, I make my face light up like I just won the lottery, and the kids think they are going to play the most fun game ever, when it's just flashcards. Suckers.

I have also learned some Chinese from my kids, such as the word for "pee" ("nyow nyow"). I'll let you figure out yourself how I learned this word.

Although it sucks teaching 3 year olds, they are absolutely ADORABLE. It's against company policy for me to post pictures of them, or I'd throw some up here. My cute little Asian babies... Like Dennis, who is this little chunker who has no clue what's going on in life. No clue. When we walk to the bathroom, he accidentally walks into other classes because he can't remember where he's going. His legs are so chubby that he is constantly falling over himself. He's confused about everything - when I say "good morning Dennis!" to him, he replies "good morning Dennis!" back. Oh, Dennis, Dennis the Menace, how much amusement you provide me...

I've been teaching kindergarten, or as they call it here, "kindy", for over a week. It's getting better, but I still have my doubts.

After last weeks adventures in pre-school teaching, I needed some weekend relief. I call it a weekend, but as I've mentioned earlier, I get ONE day off a week. :-/ Saturday night, I met up with some friends to go to "Snake Alley". Snake Alley is a night market in Taipei that used to be a red light district. We walked up to a booth where a man was poking a snake in a box. He was probably saying something awesome, but as we know, my Chinese is limited to "chicken breast" and "pearl tea", and since he did not mention these two things, I was S.O.L. for understanding.

We entered the restaurant, if you can call it that, and ordered snake stuff. Out of the group of 8 of us, only 4 dared order anything. It was the 4 girls too, go figure - the boys wimped out. For 150NT$ (4.50US$) we each got snake soup with snake chunks in it, a shot of snake venom, and a shot of snake blood.
You read that correctly.

First we dared eat the snake soup. I nibbled on the snake, which was bony. I don't know how, but somehow it tasted just like I imagined snake would taste like. One girl compared it to chicken, but I don't really think it was chicken-esque.

Here I am, looking extremely brave before I eat some snake.
Nom nom nom I iz eat snake

Then came the snake venom. I was quite scared to take it, though we decided that if it was awful, we could chase it with the snake broth. This, somehow, did not comfort me. The venom was mixed with some sort of alcohol. It didn't taste much different then a normal shot - a normal shot with a side of badassery.

Then came the snake blood. The snake blood was much less harsh to take down and was almost... dare I say it... good? I promise I'm not going to drink it again or anything, but it wasn't that bad. It contained a pill that was supposed to counteract the venom/blood combo in your stomach so you don't, you know, drop dead in the middle of snake alley or anything.

The next day, I finally got to do some hiking. 2/3 of Taiwan is covered in mountains and you can see them outside of the city. I've been itching to do some hiking, even though I'm not a big nature person. Two others and I decided to venture to Yang Ming Shan national park, where there are mountains, scenic look-outs, hiking trails, waterfalls, and hot springs. We didn't find any of that, but we did find... a milk pond? WTF is a milk pond!?

Milk pond?!

Actually, the only hiking we did was on the side of the road to the visitor's center. Let me tell you, that was work in itself! All that fried Chinese food + extremely hot weather + Robin hasn't been utilizing her gym membership = Robin drenched with sweat before she even starts "hiking".

We then did some extreme mountain climbing and where we sprinted up 90 degree angle mountains and jumped off of waterfalls to get to the next stop. Or maybe we rode the bus to next stop, I'm can't really remember.

The views from the bus and the few lookouts we made it to were breathtaking. I would have loved to explore more, but in typical Taiwan fashion, we got rained out.

For the first time in a while, I actually felt like I was in a foreign country. Since I work so much, I forget sometimes that I'm half-way around the world and there is a lot to do, like munch on snake and climb mountains. I'm sure I will do some more nature-related shtuff in the future, it's just I only have one day off a week (Sunday) to do any exploring, and I generally am not feeling up for hiking (aka:hungover). Eventually I'll do some more.

Since I just figured out this blog post how to embed youtube videos onto the blog, I will leave you with this closing note. If I could summarize my trip thus far into one video, it would be this:

how i didn't ride the magic school bus in taiwan

I've decided that traveling and living abroad is a roller coaster with crazy, intense highs and lows. Some days I absolutely adore Taiwan and love the adventures that have come with this new chapter of my life. Other days I wonder what I was smoking when I signed up to live in a country half-way around the world where I don't speak the language and don't know a soul. Actually, I'm not sure if a roller coaster is the best metaphor since I love the adrenaline rush of a plummeting roller coaster and that's not really my point... maybe Taiwan is one of those old, rickety wooden roller coasters that jerk you around and you only enjoy at some points? A roller coaster that jerks you so much that the photo stand workers have to delete the picture they snap of you mid-plummet because certain parts of you may have popped out of your tank-top amongst the intense jerking (a true story, sadly)? Whatever the hell the metaphor is, the moral of the story is that Taiwan makes me become bipolar.

The manic / top of the roller coaster feeling is amazing. Although much of my blog posts are filled sarcasm and mockery of the randomness of Taiwanese culture, I hope readers can tell that I'm mostly really enjoying myself. I ADORE those awkward moments, like when I went pants shopping with a friend and when he asked for a new pants size, the owner showed us her potty-trained rabbit who lived in the store. Or like the student I met yesterday who wanted his English name to be "whale". You can't find weirdos like that in the States. Well, we have plenty of weirdos, but you know what I mean. Taiwanese awkwardness is a new level that I am thoroughly enjoying exploring.

I also *think* I like my new job. I think, but I'm not 100% sure. I do like teaching better here than I did teaching Spanish in the USA while I was student teaching. Maybe it's because I teach younger students, maybe it's because teachers are much more respected here than in the United States; whatever it is, I enjoy teaching more. I'm getting the hang of it more as I approach my third week of actual teaching.

I don't even mind that I got bit by a poisonous spider and had to go to the doctor's to get injected by who knows what to regain circulation in my fingers. Now that the bite is healed, it's kind of funny. Like really, WTF, I'm just about the only person I know who'd get bit by a poisonous spider. I got bit in my bedroom too, not even some place exciting like a crazy safari or at some lab where they accidentally created Spiderman.


However, the roller coaster cart has to come down sometime / jerk you around / bipolar meds stop working / [insert other idiom for feeling upset]. There are some really low lows here too. After spending a fantastic night in Taichung, for example, I hopped on the bus to LuZhou. Mid-bus ride, the bus driver stopped the bus and yelled something in Chinese. He forced everyone to vacate the bus and left us in B.F.E. Mind you, this is around 10:30pm, when that bus could quite possibly be the last bus. We could have been in Japan for all I knew. Ok, not Japan since the bus was not driven by Miss Frizzle and it did not suddenly gain powers of extreme awesomeness to fly across the ocean (Magic School Bus anyone?), but you catch my drift. I was lost. I blindly followed most of the group onto another bus that passed by that I did not recognize. The bus also does not usually say where it is stopping in English. I kind of know the Chinese symbol for LuZhou: if you squish your eyes, it looks like a computer and a side-ways injection. I searched for computer/side-ways injection but didn't find it. I probably looked absolutely terrified because someone extremely kind asked me in English if I knew where I was going. "Absolutely not". She tried to ask the bus driver and look on the maps for me, but since I only knew one street of the intersection of my bus stop, I couldn't give her much information. She ended up telling me to get off at a stop "in LuZhou". I figured I could take a taxi from there.

Even though I was in LuZhou, I was so frustrated. Recounting my tale now, this seems not-so-bad, but during I was absolutely terrified. Here I was, poor white girl who can't speak Chinese, clutching her weekend belongings, practically shaking, scared because she has no idea where she is and it's too late for her to be walking alone with no sense of direction.
Here is the stupid part. The bus actually dropped me off in a place I have walked by at least 20 times on my way to work. In the darkness and my confidence that I was 100% lost, I didn't recognize it. At this point, I was literally sobbing in the middle of the street in my frustration.

I hailed a taxi to drop me off at my school, because I had that address written down in Chinese (this is how complicated things are here. Unlike Spanish or German that you could butcher a "donde esta el metro?" and people would know what you mean, the tonal language of Chinese is much more complicated. Anyone who isn't at least at intermediate Chinese skills has to show non-English speakers the actual Chinese characters because chances are, they won't understand you). The taxi driver said something to me in Chinese that was probably something to the extent of "you dumbass, you are on this street right now". The meter started at 70NT$ and stopped at 75NT$ one minute later (equivalent of a 15 cent difference), when he dropped me off down the street. Then I handed him a 100$ and he ripped me off with my change, just to kick me while I was down. Thanks.

The moral of this story is I really want to ride the magic school bus now, and also that stupid stuff happens that probably wouldn't happen back home because I (usually) know what is going on. Had I gotten lost in Holland, I could have called someone, looked up google maps on my phone, stopped at a gas station and asked directions, etc. I don't have those options here. I'm on my own and when I'm fucked, all I have to rely on is luck. Additionally, I'm out of my comfort zone, so minor disturbances become major here. Everything becomes extremes, and in this case, it was an extreme suckfest.

The point of this blog was not to complain and for you to offer me "some cheese with that whine" (uhhhhh cheese I miss you so badly whydidiremindmyselfofcheese), but just so you can have a more complete picture of my life here. Yes, I am living in extreme awesomeness, but it also extremely sucks sometimes.
It could be worse; I could be starting classes now.
Suckers.