Blogs from Taiwan, Asia - page 112

Chapter 15 The design of the school is quite interesting. There are classrooms on one side of the corridor only. Classrooms still have old-fashioned blackboards, which I have come to prefer because I can threaten to run my fingernails down the board to bring an unruly class to order. The floor is finished concrete, which I don’t like. The kids each have a free-standing desk and an individual chair, and the noise will wake the dead when students move their chairs even a little. There should be a school rule—no metal pencil cases. Some kid always manages to drop one (accidentally on purpose). On impact with the concrete floor, the case bursts open like a fragmentation grenade, and makes about the same amount of noise. Whenever that happens, I get an apology. Dwoh bu chee. My ... read more

Tis the night before the parade / Moon Show and all the creatures are stirring! Only several hours to go and so much has to happen. My students have only been able to get in a few days worth of work here and there and we will be up all night. And of course, we've had to make time for Moon Show rehearsals which cut dearly into building time. There's a lot of confusion about staging, and we're all kind of making it up as we go along. The students are really excited about being a part of the show and we manage to work them all in. Each tree has it's own group of acolytes. Although we've been working hard, the largest, most complicated tree puppet still has areas left to papier mache. All of ... read more

With all this planning for the months ahead, Tapei has been one of those places I didn't look into much. Furthermore people told me it wasn't such a great place. They said it was dirty and very industrial. I'm now wondering if they've even been here. In short this place has been very impressive so far! It's a large city of about 5 million people. 10's of thousands of scooters buzzing along the roads. It's very clean, in fact cleaner than Vancouver...Spotless. I definatly didn't expect that in China! Everyone here seems rich or at least very well off. There's no ugly cars on the street and very little homeless people, I've maybe seen 2 or 3 in the last couple days we've been here. The streets are busy but not chaotic. Finding our way around ... read more

Hi Everybody! We are staying downtown in a convenient location. We love our hotel, Sunworld Dynasty, which we got on the internet for a great price. It has an open lobby with glass elevators and is quite fancy. We decided to not take a tour but to adventure out on our own. We walked to the government area of town and saw the Chiabng Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. The people here revere this former leader and have a huge statue of him in the hall with military guards. There were many beautiful national buildings in this area, like the National Concert Hall, Theater, Library, Museum, Presidential Office, etc. I will try to put pictures on when I can. I cannot access the port on this computer. I especially enjoyed going to the Taiwan Handicraft Center. I had ... read more

Socrates once wrote: “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Even though this was back in 400 BC, this wise man’s words seem all too relevant; or so it would seem… One week into this adventure and I can already say that this has been one of craziest experience ever. To soothe the cultural barriers and the ensuing confusion and pain, I have been blessed with Becca’s presence and, get this: my old man! Haven’t seen my dad in about a year and he just happens to be in Taiwan the first week I’m there. Needless to say, having those two around has been a massive comforting element. So I finally moved into my new apartment: a nice modern two bedroom duplex, right in the heart of the Business District, really close to the Subway station. ... read more