"Travel brings power and love back into your life." -Rumi

The quote I found for this blog entry is one of my new favorites.

Taichung is a much cleaner city then I would have guessed, as far as trash goes. It is surprising because you can never find public trash cans. Recycling is very big here, they will even charge you $3NT for each plastic bag you need. Also, every receipt you get after a purchase is a lottery ticket. You just enter the code online and you could win. Haven't entered any yet but that's only because I don't know that website.

There are tons of dogs here. The smaller ones are very nicely groomed and are always being carried by their owner. There are also bigger dogs that seem to just roam the streets (even wild dogs up in the mountains).
I am finally getting used to going barefoot in school, the hardest thing to get used to is not flushing any toilet paper, to be honest I forget more often then not.

 These shoes are gorgeous!

The 3 Chinese lessons we had were a bit helpful, but not much if we don't take the time to study outside of class. The phrase "Do you speak English?" I put to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which helped all of the girls remember. The phrases I use the most have been, "Hello. How much? I am a teacher. I am American. I'm sorry/Excuse me. How cute."

 Year of the snake, also the year I was born!

Few fun facts; Baseball is the biggest sport in Taiwan. Here, we English teachers, are getting paid the same as what the doctors get paid. When Taiwanese women have babies, they buy presents for other people. The insects are huge, spiders with bodies as big as your fist and cockroaches the size of your index finger. (I've seen the roaches, not the spiders...yet). I haven't seen a single insect bite me, however I have about 15 bites on my legs. :-( There are 7/11's on every block it seems. Beautiful temples, parks, and schools all over the place as well.

A group of us went to a 90 min yoga class on Thursday. It was held in a small intimate room, very peaceful and serene. The instructor was Canadian so he spoke English, which was nice. He was caught off guard by the group we came with and said we were a "Caucasian invasion." Haha. I hope to go again with a much smaller group, it felt great to calm my mind from how fast paced this first week has been.

Friday night we went to KTV, a karaoke bar where you can rent out a room with your friends for 3 or 4 hours. The room had its own bathroom, couches, tables. You were allowed to bring in your own drinks and it also included a buffet upstairs with ice cream! In the room, there was a huge screen that played the videos of the songs requested by anyone in the room. We had 27 people in there.

A group of the Asian teachers came out as well, it was really fun to see them singing songs in Chinese and having a good time. I sang, Shania Twain, "That Don't Impress Me Much." Later on I requested 'Poker Face' by Lady Gaga, let me just say that Lady Gaga was a HUGE hit. Another artist that had everyone up on tables and couches was Backstreet Boys, that made me feel right at home!

Saturday, rise and shine. I woke up, took a short bike ride to the train station with a few of the girls, hopped on and took the train right outside of town. ChiMing (local friend) was taking us hiking up on the DaKeng Mountain. It was only 1.5 miles to the top of the mountain, it felt like 5. ChiMing said the trail we did was only a level 2 out of 5. There are log steps most of the way up to the top, a few times the logs seemed to be going up at a 60 degree angle.

The view cannot be captured in a photo.

Every once in awhile there was a place to sit and rest, or better yet, have tea. There are many natives that will hike up the mountain with pots, burners, and all the necessities for tea and snacks. They will haul it all up to spend a morning or afternoon up on DaKeng. Twice we were invited in by the older natives who were having tea and fruit. They played the harmonica for us and we conversed as best as we could.

After the long trek down the mountain we had a feast of all sorts of food. I have tried many things without knowing what it is I am eating, only once have I run into something bad so it's usually worth the risk. We met another great group of Taiwanese students who had just graduated college.

Later that night, Kelly, Laura, and I went salsa dancing with ChiMing and his friends for his last night in Taiwan. I am not the best salsa dancer, but it was so much fun. I did notice that I danced better with some men more than others. I think the ones who were stronger and more confident in their leads were the ones I did much better with. The Asian women here are so beautiful and they look so young (maybe it's the pale skin). It was an exhilarating night, but I was more than thrilled to crawl into bed after such an eventful weekend.

 Kelly and ChiMing 

Sunday, America Day in Taiwan, we finally moved out of the hotel! For one month I will be living in the Palace, then I will move to my apartment with Kelly. The Palace is gorgeous. The pool is basically a huge grotto and we are close to tons nice restaurants and shopping centers. I pay 5000 NT per month, which is $166 in the US.  We will have other small bills as well, security, cable, internet, and electricity. We do have a washer, although we have to hang clothes to dry. There is AC in every room and two patios. The trash has to be taken out daily so we don't get maggots or any other bugs. Having my own room and not living out of a suitcase makes it seem much more real that I am permenatly here. They say it takes about 3-6 weeks for homesickness to kick in. I will say it's almost impossible to get in touch with anyone back home with the time difference and it has been quite frustrating. I do think the week in the hotel helped us ease into this drastict change in our life, plus we were all able to form bonds now that we are split up into two campuses.

View from my apartment!
Tomorrow is the first day of teaching my 2nd-4th grade class, as well as my 7th grade prep class. I think I have a bit of first day jitters too. It is Summer School for them, however unlike back home where Summer school is a form of punishment for not doing well throughout the school year, here the kids go to get a head start on the upcoming year.

Coming back home to teach will be so different. Here we get a two hour lunch break every day which they provide, 10 hours of paid prep time per week, they buy most any resources you need, there are field trips quite frequently, plus they really trust you as an educator to do want you feel is best for your class. -- Thanks for reading-- I'll do my best to keep up as teaching begins!