Kids are Kids. (period)

So a really big reason that I came here was because I wanted to be fully submersed living in another culture. Well... I surely have accomplished that, like it or not. So I've discussed the whole saving face thing as part of their culture, ya that bugs me a slight amount. The next aspect of Taiwan culture i'm about to fill you in on, more than bugs me, it down right TICKS ME OFF. That's right it really just chaps my as*.

LET your KIDS. BE kids.

I understand people are busy, and i've obviously never been a parent, but c'mon people. Kids here are so freaking JAMMED packed with activities regarding their education they literally don't have any time to play. It. bugs. me. Seriously these kids, starting at age 5 go to Chinese school, at 7:30 in the morning and the little ones get off at 1:00 and the older at 2 or 3 I think. Doesn't sound so bad right? ERRrr wrong. They then come to our school for at least another 3 hours and after that some go to other schools to help them with certain subject like: math, art, piano (not even kidding 90% of these children play the piano, and play it WeLL). Or they just stay at out school doing their Chinese homework waiting for their parents to come and get them.

No lie these kids, even the 5 year old, have at least 2 hours of homework every SINGLE night. Where is the time for dolls, and playing in the dirt? OH ya! It doesn't exist.

Okay, sorry I can't quite get off my soapbox yet. This one, this one right here, is what chaps my A*s. I can't say that I really hate anything about Taiwan, but this, I hate. Unfortunately these people left a bad impression on me, a really bad one. Child Abuse, yes abuse both verbally and physically. Here are some stories of just the icing on the cake.

- If our kids don't get above an 80% on their tests, they're supposed to re-take it. No big deal right? Wrong again. My kids will beg me to not tell their parents when they don't pass (sometime even if they get below a 90%). Why? Because their parents hit them, with belts. PEOPLE!! Your kids schedules are so damn packed with Chinese school as it is, give them a break if they don't pass a test! Some kids are lazy, none of mine are. So, needless to say none of my kids parents are ever informed when they fail their tests. (which is not that often by the way.)

-This happened to me just today, and I was sick about for quite a while. So I have a morning class with two of the cutest little girls. (i've talked about them before) On Monday's we go out in the town somewhere, today we went to the park. We were playing doctor and I was the girls patient. One of the girls wanted me to lay down on the pillow and seriously just tapped me with the pillow. She's 5, it's what 5 years old do, I laughed and just told her she was silly. The mother flipped. After at least 15 of talking to, what she said I don't know because it was in Chinese, she finally made the girl get down on her knees and bow and say i'm sorry 3 times. Awkward.... but I gave her a hug and said it was ok. I thought that this was enough as it was. Nope. Then the Mom called the dad to come. What he did, honestly in America would have gotten him arrested. Too bad here he is a police man, so he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. He started yelling at this child in the MIDDLE of the PARK! Full on. Yep, guarantee if someone saw this in the US they would call DCFS, then he started hitting her. hard. At this point the dad honestly would have been arrested on the spot. My heart broke. I didn't know what to do. Honestly, there really was nothing I could do, and this went on for at least 40 minutes. It was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced. America needs to spread the word about a new concept called time-out. It works like a charm.

I'm sorry for this grim post, but it had to be said. i know and realize i'm not a parent and obviously don't understand the whole concept. I know you want the best for your kids, but seriously? I'll say it again, let your kids me kids. They're going to pick their nose and eat it, and full on fist fight their little brother and sister, they want to play with dolls and toys, let them. Call me some hippie or something but gall lighten up people!!

Taiwan, you never cease to amaze me.

I just realized I haven't actually written on here in a while of my great adventures, just of my weird random experiences. Well... let me tell ya they indeed just keep a comin. and they are fantastic!

Here you have Wong Gong. This lovely little town on the beach, if a beach is what you could call it. We more or less just wanted to see the ocean so we went to the nearest place possible. It was an interesting little place. Fun, though. It was dedicated, I mean DEDICATED, to fishing. It was the towns calling in life to be clammerians, and scalloperoo's. Cool though and it really was a beautiful place. I'm a sucker for the ocean in any way shape or form, even if it does reek real bad.

Here are their intersting little make-shift clam cars. They were super goofy looking, it kinda reminded me of a dr. suess book or something.

A while ago we went to the Confucius temple in Changhua and saw that there was some sort of dawn festival. After researching it we decided it was a big deal, and worth going, and ya know what? It was, well.... as good as it could get considering we had to wake up at 5:30 in the freaking morning! Come to find out the ceremony here in our little town is one of the biggest in Taiwan.

It was quite interesting, and duh since I don't speak Chinese I didn't really know what in the devil was going on. But these people marched around, sang and did a whole bunch of crazy stuff. Confucisim is all about education so there were a ton of students there, who I'm pretty sure had been standing there since like 5 in the morning. Some were passing out and such.

So started running low on Honey Bunches of Oats this last week, so obviously we had to make a trip to Costco! DUH! Maybe I just haven't inspected the Campbell''s soup isle too carefully but for some reason I thought this soup was really funny. Oxtail? really? Is that normal? And the other, I know you can't read it too well but it's corn bamboo mushroom and seafood soup... YUM!

This Saturday we had the General Relief Society Broadcast at the church. This is how it goes here in Taiwan: 20 girls huddled around a computer trying to watch the screen. Interesting, but it turned out great and we still got the message across. Let me tell after going to church here and traveling 1 hour each way, I will come home and be so GRATEFUL for church a whopping 5 minutes away. Good thing i'm only here for 6 months or I may go inactive pretty soon. No exaggeration, literally.

After the meeting we went to TGI Fridays. Yep, at first I was a little disgusted and vowed to never go there while I was in Taiwan. After 3 months and some American food deprivation, I caved. Oh and let me tell you it was SO good.

Thanks to my wonderful mother and father I have a deeply embedded love of tortilla chips and salsa (and twizzlers, which aren't here gosh dang it). Considering that these staples food have been missing in my life for 3 months, I've obviously started to miss them. Well, I got some Mexican goodness on Saturday, it was exactly what I was craving. Ok, I need to stop with all this food talk. It's really ridiculous I sound like is all I have is food on my mind. I may sound obbsessed with food but I swear i'm not, just sometime lets be honest, we get bored here. really bored. sometimes it's the only thing we have to takl about....

We also went for a nice little hike on Saturday on our mountain. It was rather lovely! But I must say if Taiwan doesn't cool down soon.... so help me.... I may just LOSE MY MIND!! But we found the coolest cemetery that went for Acres and ACRES and acres it was awesome! The graves here are interesting and super cool, they;re really big and i can't quite figure them out. This picture is one I just got off the internet because I forgot my camera. Most of them look like this, most are a little smaller, but there will be zillions of them and i'd say about 1/4th of them are kept up with the grass cut the rest just go to rack or ruin. It's weird.

So, da da da dah! There ya have it, a brief synopsis of the life of me. I'm on the downhill now which is odd. I still can't comprehend time here. Sometime it feels like i've been here a whole freakin ETERNITY and then other times I can't even comprehend how i've already been here for 3 months.

Staples in Life

Wanna know what I miss most about America. I've got 2 things for ya, and I bet you would never guess them.

1: Carpet, yes carpet. That lovely lush soft stuff you lucky ducks in America get the luxury of. I seriously daydream about taking off my shoes and letting my toes soak in the sweet soft goodness. Church, you know the nasty church carpet that isn't really like carpet? Oh ya you know I can't keep my shoes on at all! I bought a cheap little rug for my room the other day. I acted like I was a little girl on Christmas that had just gotten a pony for crying out loud!

2: Chhheeessse, you got that right cheese. I travel far and wide to get some decent cheese around these parts. Seriously. Costco is the only place you can get the good real deal stuff. We travel for about an hour to get there and walk a couple of miles. It's so worth it.

Yep, I guess I took for granted these precious worldly good and had to travel to Taiwan to truly appreciate them.

P.S. I've also started liking corn while I've been here. For those of you who know this is a BIG DEAL!! I've HATED corn my whole life..... weird. Maybe my mind is just more open here and i'll come home and hate it, but for the time being that stuff ROCKS!

Begining to Make Sense

For my morning class I have just two little girls that are sisters. There mom likes to take us out a couple of days a week for class to experience some real world stuff. Today was great? We went to the bakery to make and decorate some cakes! Sounds fun right? Well.... it was fun, I just may never be able to eat cake again is all. (well at least Taiwanese cake, I don't think I could EVER give up American cake)

These people are sick nazti's but umm... hello apparently they really really really don't understand the whole germ concept! We went in and started making the batter for the cake, the place was a little dirtier than I would have liked but ok none the less. Well..... I really can't describe what went on in the batter making procress. Let's just say no handwashing, LOTS of sweat LOTS, washing dishes with hoses outside, mixing batter with your hands after they were just holding the dog, letting the dog run around the bakery, flour containers that looked more the garbage containers we use for our lawn clippings, and I could go on but i'll spare you.

Now it's beginning to make very clear sense why my bowels don't agree with me about 90% of the time while we've been here! I probably will begin making all of my bread purchases at the very large local grocery store where they wear hair nets, and gloves. May not be much better but a little more peace of mind to say the least.

Thought I would just share my over grossed-out-ness with you. But minus the disgusting cleanliness factors they've got going on it was quite fun!! Now I see why the cake isn't sweet they put about half of a cup of sugar in there and seriously the guy made 7 cakes! Whoosh that a sin right there.

Magical Moon Festival!!!

Just in case you were wondering, I will be celebrating Moon Festival next September. This holiday was just FANTASTIC!! These people know how to party and it couldn't have come at a better time! Here is how our day went...

This is a party we went to last night with a couple of our students families. Ummm..... may I just ask why Americans got so freaking jipped on their whole metabolism and fat storage thing? These people can EAT!!! Really though. EAT!! Another teacher and I came late with the secretaries from our school, we got there about 7:30, but 2 of the other teachers got there at 4:30, we got home about 11:30. Ya.... long time. I know. But you know what we did basically the ENTIRE time? Oh ya, just eat. and eat. and eat. and eat. and eat. stop for fireworks. and eat. and eat. I don't understand these are the smallest people in the world, literally average weight of a grown-up in like 110, no jokie. We got jipped!!

I really love going on these home visits. It's so cool to be able to see what families are really like and be so totally and completely submeressed in their culture. I love trying their food, and let me just say I made a doofus of myself a couple of times that night. I don't know how they eat some of the stuff! There not out on the picture above but they were talking about these mushrooms and how good they were. they brought them out and set them in front of me. So what else do you think I would do? I took one and started to eat it. Well apparently that was a really stupid idea and they all busted up laughing because apparently you HAVE to COOK it before you eat it. Whoops. Secondly, yep you wouldn't think eating food would be that difficult but there was more than one instance where I made a fool of myself. Surprise surprise. They gave us some fruit, I have no idea what this fruit is called but it's specific for moon festival and it looks like a really BIG pear but the inside tastes and looks more like a grapefruit. Well, they handed me over a big ol' hunk of it, so I stuck it in my mouth. Duh! What else would you do. Well, bad idea. You have to peel the outside skin off of it and get the fruit inside the little covering thing. oops. Who knew eating food would be so difficult?

But other than that most of the food was pretty good: oyster balls, rice sausages, sausage, chicken, clam and mushroom soup, nectarines, yummy chinese chips that look like cinnanmon toast crunch, and some of thee SPICYEST food i've ever eaten! (I thought I was going to keel over, literally)

Cute little man. Kids are the same worldwide. They THRIVE on fireworks.

(like the sick short-shorts he's sportin?)

On Wednesday we went to explore the nearby city of TaiChung. What a joy. We found this cool temple. Old meets new here. I wish I would've read the history behind this puppy but un-fortunately I can't read Chinese and we have no idea what this place is, so I can't look up the history online.

I think I should definitely pursue a career in Buddha mimicking modelling.

Da da da DAh!! Cute little Buddha we found! (this picture doesn't show it too well but he is really large i'd say at least 50 ft. tall) Of course I had to give the cute little guy some lovin.

For dinner we went to this lovely restaurant at the top of the mountain in ChangHua. It was lovely and we could see all the fireworks going on for miles! it was AWESOME!! Imagine all the little families that do fireworks in their driveway but, make all of those illegal fireworks shooting in the sky! We could see them all! It was incredible.

Dinner obviously is a little difficult to order. We weren't sure what we were getting, is all I knew was chicken.... This was the first course. They really just don't get salad, i can't explain what kind of dressing was on that puppy but it was interesting, and the soup? Oh ya that's just some campbells cream of chicken soup, don't worry.

Like I said, I got chicken..... what part of the chicken that was is a mystery to all. On the bright side the broccoli and carrot was really good though!!

So there ya have it! A brief summary of the lovely Sun Moon Festival! Pretty great day i'd say. I wish we had one every week!

Throwin it out there.

So, pretty much for various reasons this week at work was. A. living. Hell. Let's just say i'm learning patience here. Sometimes it's really REallY reALLY REALLY REallY haaarrrd for me to understand the culture here. I just don't understand the whole "save face" thing. Seriously our school director will tell me something that is from our secretaries, who found out through the parents of our kids, and want me to tell another one of the teachers, and then report back to her. Umm.... really? Lets learn efficiency here people. Dear parents, write in you communication book with our kids your problem.... please don't make it go through about 5 different people, and by then of which the story is so distorted and off no one understands what's really going on because half the translators barely know English. There is an easier way. This is just a glimpse of some of the chaos that went on this week. But, ok enough of the freakin pity party. Sometimes you've just gotta throw that off of your chest!

But really, i'm still in a love affair with Taiwan. This. Place. Is. To. Good. To. Be. True. I just needed to write my anger down somewhere!

Formosa.

Alright, so I was just looking at that last post and realized how crummy is sounds. So, after our hard week I came home to this on Friday night.......

So, you're probably asking yourself "what in the devil is that?" Well, if you guessed it and knew it kudos to you! This right here is a mobile karaoke stage half semi full 'o' fun! Rolling down the street you may think this truck is full of fruit or something good like that, oh no it's even better! This puppy folds out into a FULL blown stage, flashing spot lights and all.

Yep, our nice quiet little courtyard became quite the hoppin place on Friday night. When we -came home we were greeted by a very large tent with dozens of families BBQ-ing and partying it up. At the end of the tent, and quite literally right outside of our front door was this gem. Yep, like I mentioned a while ago the Taiwanese mean business about Karaoke. And let me tell ya they've got some GREAT voices to go along with it.... not!

Of course we sang (Hey Jude to be exact) and made royal fools out of ourselves. But that makes it all the better right? After we sang a nice family gave us some shrimp. Mind you these aren't the nice little shrimp you get at home these puppies were the size of LOBSTERS! and yes.... I ate the nasty yellow and green brain head of the shrimp..... I may not be eating shrimp again for a while...

On Saturday Karyn and I decided to go to Taipei to go to the temple and do a little touristing. Here's some of what we came across.

Taiwan "art?"

(and you can't see it but there's water coming out of the head of that puppy)

I still, can't wrap my finger around what these people think reagarding their artwork.

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. Way cool this place was GINORMOUS!!

Chian Kai Shek again. Way cool.

Notice the umbrellas? This was the welcoming of the typhoon that hit us on Sunday.

Yep, we FINALLY got our beloved typhoon. Kinda a pansy of a typhoon if you ask me though. It didn't even freaking last until Monday to give us the day off today gosh dang it! But still an experience none the less and they cancelled church yesterday because of it.