http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , Taiwan , Taichung en-us Thu, 10 Dec 09 12:45:36 +0000 Thu, 10 Dec 09 12:45:36 +0000 We visited Taichung Taiwan which is the largest city in central Taiwan. It is fairly easy to get to Taichung since the new high speed rail traditional Taiwanese rail road from the Japanese era and various bus companies provide service to Taichung. This city is sometimes known as the motel capital of Taiwan due to the sheer number of motels located here. Motels in Taiwan are not the same as mote http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-447436.html Photos of my Room in Taiwan during its cleaner days. It's a single room on the 5th floor of part of an array of buildings which faces a fertile farmland which can be seen from my window. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-440355.html Photos of farms and farm practices taken around Futien where I live outskirts of Taichung Taiwan. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-437760.html Miaoli is a county on the west coast of Taiwan that is full of beautiful mountains and parks. I have a good friend here who luckily for me dreams of being a travel guide. So when she asked me if I wanted to go look at the flowers in Miaoli I had no idea what I was in for. Our small group became four when two other Taiwanese teachers decided to join us and off we went. Up the small roads that w http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-393915.html For warm sunshine in winter to walk around the art museum in a really nice thing. Here with green trees and filled with fresh air relazing and sitting on the wood floor empty your brain without any thinkings. Hope i could have this kind of life in crowded Taipei city.But it seems to be a luxurious wish with nice weather in Winter. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-360692.html I'm so tired right now. Not surprising I guess considering I had about 3 hours of sleep on Friday night. The train ride wasn't too bad I had a really hard time finding the area where they sell tickets and ended up walking up and down stairs and all around the station for about 25 minutes with that huge backpack on. I was sweaty and my back was hurting and people were laughing at me. Not fu http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-265806.html so um i've been reeeeally bad about updating this blog and it's probably because it's not as user friendly as my old blog. nor does it have entries from as far back as high school. i'll try to make sure i post pictures and things here but if you want to read my more regularly updated blog...and er...the stuff i generally don't tell the public here's the link to the blog i do post on http http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-263246.html so i've started work and it's really difficult. i come home every monday absolutely exhausted after teaching seven periods straight and ending on my abominable ps3 class. so far i'm two for two on migraines on mondays. hopefully that'll get better. being said you still couldn't pay me enough to go back to hess. there's absolutely no comparison between ps3 and treehouse. i will never go back to http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-250254.html ...just what the hell is up with rosalind these days or marie if you're from my prehistoric days here's a brief update.i went to this chinese new year banquet for hess and i was terrified. i'm working for a corporation and it took six months to hit me. my goal in life was to never go corporate and i've already given in at the age of 22. depressing.so i've got a new job. i really had been lo http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-239919.html Actually it's January 2nd here...but that's beside the point. I wish I could have been home for Christmas HOW I wish it but that's a story for another time when I'm feeling better and actually ready to giggle about my landlady...maybe in ten years but I have a sorta Christmas present for everyone. I finally got around to playing with my graduation footage So here's a dorky little vide http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-232029.html As do pictures Hey everyone I'm really sorry that I haven't updated this thing since August. I have to type up all of my diary entries and backdate them for you. I've moved and I'm now lving in a place that has internet and it's part of the rent toohuzzah. So I figured I'd wish everyone a Merry Christmas especially since with my record you proabably won't get your Christmas cards http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-228948.html The amazing thing about Hess is that the moment you threaten to quit they do everything in their power to accommodate you. I think Irsquoll be keeping kindy. To be honest Irsquom really just paid to be a white person in the classroom and twoandahalf hours go so quickly that my mistakes seem minimal anyway. Besides Irsquom only doing this for three years. The reason for that deci http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-204507.html Their knobbly knees and big eyes all brown are starting to grow on me. Maybe I can handle this.Culture Shock Moment Irsquom constantly amazed and annoyed that there are two intermediaries between me and my landlady Patricia the flaky Head Homeroom teacher at the kindy and the real estate agent that found the place for me. The thing is I knew when I moved in that the reason I was getting http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-204506.html I told myself when I bought this journal that I was allowed to leave Taiwan once Irsquod filled all 400 pages. I donrsquot know if this means Irsquoll be writing everyday in an effort to get out of here faster or write only once a month or so in order to prolong my stay. Probably a mixture of both I daresay. Had my first truly stupid work moment today. Honestly thought my class started http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-204502.html Made it to Taiwan. Have spent nine days in training met Naomi England B.B. U.S. Lispeth Seth U.S. Jez England Marco South Africa Heidi fellow UCSC graduate and a multitude of others. Have been working since Monday am overwhelmed by work but figure if Hess really does end up being a problem I only have to stay with them for a year. The thing is I love HL http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-204500.html First off I logged onto travelblog.com today and was pleasantly surprised to find that many of my pictures from older blog entries have been recovered. Awesome Because I don't have the time or energy to re upload them. Now all they need are captionsstay tuned.Today was the final day of classes which is hard to believe. I can remember writing my entry 'First Day of Classes' and wow does that s http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-194981.html Well this entry is a little late but I finally have some down time to write. Last Saturday we took a day trip to Lu Gang. Lu Gang is about an hour away on the coast. Our first stop was a restarauntlike place where we used an imitation of oldfashioned riceclay playdough basically. But edible. and had arts and crafts time. The guy leading us through the clay modeling tried to help us creat http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-193205.html Last week we took a trip to Kenting. Kenting is the very south of Taiwan. It's a 45 hour bus ride which meant we got to watch lots of pirated DVDsnew and old. The one's that stick out in my mind are Pan's labyrinth Harry Potter 5 and Transformers. We left bright and early Thursday morning class was canceled for us for Thursday and Friday. Arriving around noon we stopped for lunch. After lu http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-190407.html Hey everyone Sorry it's been so long. Travelblog.org has been down for a while. I'm not posting anything yet because travelblog.org is still having issues. It lost most of my entries and the 4 of the 13 that were recovered are only partially recoveredthey've been mixed and matched with others' pictures and entries. I also got a comment that belongs to someone else's blog. So as soon as I sort http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-188101.html It's Sunday afternoon and I just got back not long ago from a quick trip to Taipei. Myself as well as 4 other friends decided to get away from school for the weekend and what a weekend it was We packed a lot into less than 48 hours. It all started Friday afternoon after classes. We left not long after classes ended. After getting to Taipei we checked in at our hostel and headed over to Taipei 1 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Taiwan/Taichung/blog-186683.html