Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Alrighty then, I told you I was gonna be a better blogger! Before I delve into another round of pictures and stories, it's time for everyone's favorite.........Fun Taiwan Trivia! So, without any further ado:
1. Taiwan receives an average of 81.4 inches of precipitation annually. That's more than twice as much precipitation as Seattle, WA (although, truthfully, despite Seattle's soggy reputation, it is ranked 44th among US cities for annual rainfall behind cities such as Atlanta, NYC, Washington DC, and Boston). But still, it's a lot.
2. Among Taiwanese holidays and festivals are the following that are particularly interesting. This assures that life is never dull:
Lunar New Year (also known as Chinese New Year - the biggest holiday of the year!)
Youth's/Women's Day (a day of no school for kids and most women do not have to work either.)
Tomb Sweeping Day (family graves are swept and attended to)
Dragon Boat Festival (Dragon boat races are held and rice "tomales" are eaten)
Ghost Festival (Climax of ghost month, usually in August – offerings given to appease the “ghosts”)
Teachers' Day (celebrates Confucius' birthday and teachers)
3. When couples get engaged, a gift of a whole roast pig from the groom's family to the bride's family is a popular engagement gift. The bride's family would then send back the pig's head and hind portion, thus showing that everything has a beginning and an end.
Enough fun and games. Time for action.
So, back in the beginning of August, Rube was working at Hess (largest cram school in Taiwan) and Ellen was working at Happy Kids (small American school in Taipei). Rube hated - well hate is a very tenacious word.....Rube strongly, to the core of his existence, very much disliked his situation at Hess. There is no appreciation/support for their teachers, and no real regard for their students. As long as the parent's keep paying tuition, everything is fine. What's that you say? You have a student that doesn't know how to respond to "how are you?"...well, give him a passing grade so his parents think he's improving and they'll continue to pay! No problem!
And the foreign English teachers (those from the US, Canada, Australia, UK, and other native English countries) are not really supposed to be teachers. They're just any 'ol schmoe that's more like a puppet than a teacher. They're there for show so the parents feel like they're giving their offspring a quality education because there's a white skinned person (who may or may not be terribly hung-over) "teaching" the class. Teachers don't really teach - they read from a script of what to say and they're really only there to play games and be "the fun teacher." Critical thinking, independent thought, real-life language use are all out the window - no time for it. Just read the script, pass your students and we'll give you a bonus if your students return for another round of useless game playing.
Ahemm....Sorry....bit of a negative rant there. How bout some pics? Sounds good.
One thing we heard was a cool thing to do in Taipei was to check out the "night views" of Taipei. What this entails is hiking up some of the mountains that border and surround the city and, as nightfall descends, watch the city's multitude lights come alive and illuminate your senses. Here, we hiked up a mountain called Elephant mountain during dusk and got some good "night views." I have no idea who these kids are, but I wanted them in the picture with me for some reason. Their father obliged and they stood, stoically and a bit confused I'm sure, for our picture near the top of the mountain. Below are some photos that we took. It sure is purty.
In case you're not sure, the big, tall, looming building in the pictures is Taipei 101. It is an ever-present fixture in all Taipei cityscape/skyline photos because it's really big.
So time passes and my birthday arrives (Aug. 29) and Ellen planned a wonderful day. Our day started with a hiking adventure on Elephant mountain and the myriad trails around the mountain. So here's the daytime scene of Taipei:
One of the cool things about hiking around Elephant Mountain is that there are meandering paths that will eventually lead to someplace recognizable, but a part of the adventure is stumbling upon some of the many temples and shrines interspersed throughout the mountain. Here are some photos from our meandering.
In Buddhism, the swastika is commonly used in sacred art and is seen as a symbol of plurality, eternity, abundance, prosperity and long life. The swastika is used as an auspicious mark on Buddhist images and temples.
So Ellen's school (Happy Kids, if you haven't been paying attention) is a much better situation. Administration cares about their teachers, teachers actually teach, and students are fairly happy (as the school name implies). Ellen, through some sweet talking, convinces the principal at Happy Kids to interview Rube for an opening in the After School Language Arts Program. Rube goes in, lays on the charm, and ba-da-bing! Rube quits Hell, I mean Hess, and joins Ellen at Happy Kids. Currently, Ellen is the second grade teacher and Rube is the third grade teacher. We utilize an American English curriculum to be implemented in an after-school language arts program. Basically, we teach spelling, reading, and grammar from 4:30pm til 6:15pm. Schedule is nice, kids are nice, staff is nice....Happy Kids....Happy Rube....Happy Ellen.
Next, as a fun day-trip, we headed out to a small town in the hills near the northeast coast of Taiwan called Jiufen. There's a bit of Rube's family history in Jiufen so it was fun and there is a pretty popular food, tea, and trinket alley-way that made the trip very enjoyable.
Jiufen sits upon a steep hillside and winds its way down to the coast. Here's a picture from the upper part of town, after meandering our way through the crowded, narrow alleyways. The main attraction to Jiufen is this narrow, covered lane, but one can easily witness time slipping by while perusing various nick-nacks and crafts and sampling the many snacks available.
Here's a pretty good representation of the mob of people that have come to see what this small town has to offer. Claustrophoic? I sure hope not.
Here's Rube with some of the gastronomic endeavors to take place in Jiufen. We stopped in this little shop to eat rouyuan and fish-ball soup. Rouyuan is kinda hard to explain, but it's kind of like a big, thick dumpling where the outer wrapping is made of a rice flour dough. The result is a translucent pocket thing. The filling consists of Taiwanese flavored pork, mushrooms, and vegetables. It's then served with a somewhat sweet and savory red sauce. And fish-ball soup is a soup with fish-balls (balls made with fish meat that has been finely pulverized, with a consistency of a tender, rubber ball). Sounds a bit odd, but soooo good....to me.
We eventually made our way down the hill and visited the building (above left), but unfortunately it wasn't open (recognize it Yenba?). We had a very mellow end to our day, tried to digest all the food in our tummies and then made our way home.
As much as we like to get out of Taipei city and see more of the island, we also want to make sure we don't miss anything in the city. So, on a nice day, we decided to check out the Sun-Yat Sen Memorial which is really just down the street from us. The Memorial Hall grounds are expansive and is a nice little refuge from the bustling, scurrying, and scrambling of the city.
We brought some food and enjoyed a very pleasant picnic by the water. Here's the wreckage from our picnic.
Walking around the grounds is a pleasant stroll around a central pond where you can rest on benches and take in the goldfish, herons, turtles, and lillies.
We've dedicated ourself to taking advantage of the hiking that is close to Taipei. However, it's been raining steadily lately, and have noticed that we've become very much fair-weather hikers. To combat this, we've decided that we will not be deterred by less than ideal conditions and bring rain jackets and rain pants when necessary. The following pictures are from various hikes we've done in the Taipei area. Most of hiking involves long sets of stairs that climb to high hillsides with beautiful cityscape perspectives.
The pollution in Taipei is pretty intense, therefore, the beautiful cityscapes are almost always coated by a haze.
On this day, we were fortunate to get a break from the rain and get a really clear and crisp day. These are pictures from a hike we did with our friend Heather. We are in a city called Xin Dian, which is directly south of Taipei. Very pretty. Very pleasant.
// posted by Rube and Ellen @ 9:52 PM 
