Taiwan 2

March 1st

Yesterday was my hardest day yet. I believe the excitement of coming, then being here began to wear off. A somewhat daunting feeling sunk in. How will I manage to be happy in a country where I only know 10 people that speak English?? Also, half of the people I know are leaving in 2-6 months. Another thing that made me uncomfortable was my ugly, hateful room. Perhaps it is the bat shit on the wall or the huge wide metal slaps that block out most of the sunlight. I somewhat resigned myself to living outside my room and not getting too attached to people…. not the best feeling. Some things in my life (I’m sure in yours too) remedy themselves quicker than others. I decided that a) I can make my bedroom good and the common room great and b) I need to learn as much Mandarin as possible. I do feel better now.

As I write this I am sitting at my fave coffee shop. It has some of the best coffee in Yi-lan and the guy behind the counter is sweet and accommodating. Lots of the teachers hang out here. I rode here on my new bike and am waiting to go on a hike or to the hot springs with Sonja and Stephanie. I discovered that 7-11 sells English newspapers ( I am a bit of a news junkie) and that eating a friend egg with chopsticks is a little tricky. The shop I am in is directly across from the National Ilan University.

This past Thursday I had the hilarious experience of going shrimp fishing. I’ll set the scene: we scooted away from Yi-lan in a gang like formation and drove for 15 minutes. We showed up at a large industrial size building and sauntered inside. There we rented polls and fished for shrimp in a pool sized area. We baited our hooks with chicken hearts then waited and waited. The experience was the opposite of riveting and just plain funny. In one hour we caught 4 shrimp for the 7 of us. The Taiwanese people looked so serious when thehy were fishing. We just chatted, waited and giggled a bit. At the end of the hour we grilled the 4 shrimp (I caught the biggest! woot) and ordered two buckets of prawns, one big fish, general tao chicken, fried shrimp with pineapple and a sweet sauce + the shrimp folk threw in about 3 dozen shrimps cooked with chilies. I literally had shrimp on the brain and in my tummy as I dreamt of shrimp fishing that night.

Some people have asked what I have been eating:

Chicken curry with pasta and shrimp
Veggie packed burritos with peanut sauce
Fried onion bread
Leek dumplings
Lots of bananas and salad
Soup with every possible ingredient

My school provides a very nice free lunch for the kids and the teachers. This week I tried rice with steamed veggies, perfect tofu and a chicken or pork stir-fry with veggies. It is very nice to have a home cooked meal to break up the teaching day. Kids here definitely eat healthier then kids in Canadian elementary school lunch program.

I think I figured out why the Taiwanese can be so emotionally flat.,…. I believe they are exhausted. They definitely work really hard. For example, the school I work at is in addition to their elementary school program. This makes for a very long day. It is inspiring to see people work hard and to be so dedicated however I think they could take a bit more from the Italian lifestyle, as in life should be pleasurable. To each their own though!