If I had to guess, I would say many of you are probably fans (in some capacity) of the popular sitcom Friends.  There is one episode in particular that illustrates incredibly well some of the situations I, and many of the other ETA’s here, have encountered while trying to teach English to Taiwanese students.

“The one where Joey speaks French.”

A little background for the out-of-touch ‘Friend’: Joey, a most-of-the-time-struggling actor writes ‘fluent in French’ on his resume.  He gets an audition for the part of a French man, but unfortunately, he doesn’t know a word of the language.  So the always helpful Phoebe, who can actually speak French, offers to teach him his lines.

Joey Trying To Talk French – Watch the best video clips here

My own personal ‘Joey’ moment:

me: Where are you from?

student: whe asda skdfhkj sdfkhs

me: Where are you FROM?

student: asldfkj slfksjdj weoir LDKJFS

me: Where

student: Where

me: are

student: are

me: you

student: you

me: from?

student: from?

me: where are you from?

student: whe- laks alsdfk  oiud?

me: [banging head on the desk]

Students: 1; Dani: 0

and 10 million points to all language teachers out there, who face this everyday.

Lately I’ve been thinking about teaching my 6th graders a song, preferably a song that they were already familiar with so that they would be more interested in learning the lyrics.  In order to kickstart this idea, I asked all of my classes to think of any English songs that they knew or had heard on the radio and try to write down the name of the song or the artist.  After one of these announcements, one girl named Cherry came up to me to suggest a very popular female singer: Brani.  Conversation as follows:

me:  ”Hmm….do you mean Brandy?”

Cherry: “No, Brani.  She sings ‘Baby Baby”

(and not knowing Brandy’s musical repertoire and thinking it still might be a translation issue…)

Me: “Is she black?”

Cherry: “No”

Fancina (trying to assist): “Oh, Isn’t she from England?”

Me (Just throwing out suggestions at this point): “The Spice Girls?”

Cherry: “No.  I think America.  She is kind of crazy”

Me: “Lindsay Lohan?!”

Cherry: “No.  She cut off all her hair.  She a bad mom.  She is crazy.”

Me (Lightbulbs flashing and bells ringing): “Oooohhhhh! BRITNEY.  BRITNEY SPEARS!”

Gotta love these moments.

 So you’re in Taiwan, you’re in a hurry, you don’t have cup-holders, and come to think of it, you hate cups anyway.  Well do we have a solution for you! Introducing drinks in a bag! Holds the liquid, supports a straw, and produces flat-foldable rubbish.  No more annoying empty cups cluttering your life!  The clear plastic bag also allows for full visibility of the contained liquid.  For an added bonus, add QQ (jelly-like balls) for a more textured, and highly more entertaining drinking experience! Plus, when you hold the bag up to the sun, you can watch as the light refracts among the jelly globs!  Artistic, delicious, entertaining, convenient….what’s not to love? Found at many drinking/eating establishments in Taiwan.  Get your drink-in-a-bag today!

What splendor! What joy!

This past weekend, I was invited to partake in something I thought only really happened in stereotypical Asian films, or in cheesy workout videos, and not in real life.  OK, let me start by giving a little background.  A few weeks ago, my roommates and I joined a qigong class (I think its qi like your chi and gong (kung) from kung fu).  Think intense yoga + awesome Taiwanese man who loves doing headstands.  We joined it after hearing that my friend Joy’s mom goes to this class every Thursday night.  Supposedly, qigong cures a bucketload of health problems AND keeps you the same age as when you started.  AKA: I will be 22 FOREVER!! not bad!  So we go to this class for two hours every Thursday night…and we’re not supposed to eat dinner because after class, our chi should fill us up so we won’t need food.  We haven’t mastered that aspect yet…but we’re working on it.  So last week the teacher (from now on known as Teacher) invited us to go with him to the famous Jade Mountain for the weekend.

Meet Teacher. With Jade Mountain in the background. Not bad at all.

  So at 5:30 am on Saturday morning we began our mountain adventure! The weekend was full of qi gong, rice, hiking, headstands, nature, Buddhists, stargazing and more headstands.  We didn’t get back to our apartment until about 9pm Sunday night, but it was worth it!  We got to watch the sunrise on the top of a mountain while doing qi gong.  We then toasted the day with Taiwanese wine (I don’t know how great that is for the chi…but if Teacher says its ok…).  We also went hiking through one of the most beautiful mountain paths, we saw an amazing skyfull of stars (but unsuccessfully found any constellations. I don’t think we are used to being able to see that many stars at once.)  We had a tea party overlooking the mountain, and we also went to a Buddhist master’s house/garden/temple and had tea and fruit with him.  Talk about a culture-packed weekend!

So here’s a rundown of the weekend:

Saturday:

1.  6 hour drive up to the mountian, stopping several times to look at the beautiful views.

First stop: visitor's center outside of Kaohsiung. Full of turtle-dragon statues. Teacher was just as excited as we were to pose.

Me and Jane by a roadside waterfall

2. The hike.

The modern day Louis and Clark. Seeking our fortune in the Taiwan wilderness. We came up with almond-scented leaves, a few splinters, and a wild kiwi.

Mountain: 1; Americans: 0.

So 4:30 am Sunday morning rolls around, and its up and at ‘em for the sunset!  

Sunrise on the mountain. pre-qi gong. This is also the first time I've been cold since I got to Taiwan. Never thought I'd miss that!

Now, Qi Gong.  I’m not in any of these pictures, since I was the one taking them, but I promise I was right beside them doing various chi-enhancing movements.

Vicky and teacher doing some push-up-type position. This is while the sun is rising. After I snapped this photo, I was told to warm up my chi, so my picture-taking took a hiatus.

We toasted the sun with some Taiwanese wine. Nothing like drinking before breakfast! Here teacher's pouring...

...and while we 'cheers'-ing

Teacher's really warming up his chi!

our 'it's 6am and we're drunk!' picture. (not staged at all.....?)

On the way back for breakfast, and everyone so full of chi, we needed to stop and admire some nature!

drinking from a fresh mountain spring. VERY COLD!

Which obviously turned into a water fight with a convenient mountain hose.

And nothing hugs like a good tree.

Same tree...more love. I hope you are starting to understand how sweet Teacher is.

After lunch we did some more Qi Gong.  Obviously every extra moment should be spent in a headstand or in a split.

Jane doing one of Teacher's favorite poses. You would never guess these two are in their late 50s!

Dan, Vicky, and one of Teacher's students trying the headstand. We've still got a long way to go!

Eating freshly picked guavas that we picked on our drive back down the mountain. If you haven't tried them, I suggest it. A. MAZING.

And then, as if this weekend wasn’t awesome enough, we stopped at one of Teacher’s friends places….his friend happens to be a Buddhist master, and his place happens to be a Buddhist temple.  WOW.

Looking out from the temple.

Dan, Buddhist master, Teacher, Buddhist student (I think), me, Vicky, other person, and Jane.

The perfect Asian experience, right? I think we all feel a little more balanced and content.

I think Taiwan has the right idea. Get right to the point. We all know what REALLY happens in the bathroom. Why mince words?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a serial tv watcher, especially not when it comes to cheesy soap operas.  So when my roommate Katie told me and Vicky that we should try watching Meteor Garden (one of the most popular Taiwanese soap operas to date), I was very hesitant.  But hey, it might help my Chinese a little.  After hearing her and one other girl in our group gushing about this show, I decided to give it a try.  I blame it entirely for my lack of blogging over the past week.  

After one episode, I was hooked. Its a modern Cinderella-type story about the tumultuous romantic relationship between a poor, common girl and a snobby rich boy.  

Quick summary:  The boy, Daoming Si comes from one of the 4 richest families in Taipei.  He and the boys from the remaining 3 rich families make a ‘gang’ called F4.  (These guys actually tried out a music career under the name F4, I suggest you look them up as well. And check out this sweet music video.  Think Asian Backstreet Boys, but WAAAAY cooler) 

Ok, so F4 is this cocky rich gang that rules the University in Taipei.  Everyone fears them, admires them, wants to be them, or wants to date them.  They get in fights all the time, and always win, of course; drink continuously, and spend ridiculous amounts of money.   They wear amazingly tight, multicolored outfits quite often, all while sporting incredibly great hairstyles.  They’re badass, plain and simple.   One of the members, Meizuo, is an American who speaks fluent English and Mandarin.  Apparently he wasn’t making it big in American showbiz land, so he turned to his roots and it worked out pretty darn well.  One of the best parts of the show is the random English he throws in every now and then.  Like when he tries to act cool at the bar and says, “Bartender, I’ll have a gin tonic and vodka, straight up” and then continues on with his conversation in Chinese.  Its awesome because I’ll be reading and reading and reading the subtitles, then for a split second, I know what’s going on.  You’d have to hear it to really appreciate it.

The girl, Shanzai, is a plain-jane with attitude and is the only person in the whole school to stand up to F4.  The rest of the show you’ll have to experience for yourself, but get excited for kidnappings, brawls, love polygons, lots of debauchery, and NO SEX! Imagine that! a soap opera where people’s clothes aren’t flying off left and right!  

As I said, after one episode I was done for.  It was like opening a can of Pringles.  I literally stayed in my room for hours, sacrificing food and sleep, to finish all 27 40-minute episodes.  I’m afraid this might have started a trend of serial Asian-soap-opera-watching.  But I’m planning on using the excuse that I’ll learn a lot of Chinese by simply listening.  Its like full-immersion via television.  Works for me!

This upcoming Sunday is the celebration of the Moon Festival, which is a very big holiday here in Taiwan.  Think 4th of July/Thanksgiving.  Its a time for families to get together, there’s a lot of food, and everyone goes out and admires the full moon.  There are a few stories behind this holiday, but I’m only going to share the one my roommates heard and agreed upon.  It was also supported by Wikipedia:

“Version 3: The earth once had ten suns circling over it, each taking turn to illuminate the earth. One day, however, all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. Houyi, a strong and tyrannical archer, saved the earth by shooting down nine of the suns. He eventually became King, but grew to become a despot.

One day, Houyi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However, his beautiful wife, Chang’e, drank it in order to save the people from the her husband’s tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating, and flew to the moon. Houyi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much, he did not shoot down the moon.”

In addition to Wikipedia’s explanation, I was also told that every year Houyi ordered all people under his rule to go outside and admire the full moon, and thus be admiring Chang’e.

All good holidays must have a traditional food to go with it.  Accordingly the Moon Festival boasts its ‘moon cakes’ which come in a wide variety of flavors: dried egg yolk, red bean, coffee, peanut butter, coconut, chocolate, and who knows what else.  In order to feel welcome and apart of this tradition, our whole apartment has been receiving an absurd number of moon cakes.  I think each one of us has received AT LEAST one box full, and its not even close to Sunday yet.  I’m predicting a marathon mooncake eating event in our future.

the beginning of our mooncake acquisition

For more versions, and an interesting history of Yin/Yang check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival.

Me and Fancina, my wonderful co-teacher, at a wedding banquet

So you want to learn about Taiwanese weddings? Take everything you know about American/western-style weddings and throw it in the crapper.  That’s the first step.  Aside from the fact that there is a bride, a groom lots of people there to watch said bride and groom, and mucho food, Taiwanese weddings have little in common with what I have always known as a wedding.  

Where to start….ok, well first of all, when you are invited to a wedding, you are not invited to a full day event of vows, food and dancing.  Its basically a 2-hour, 15-course meal.  (And to make this whole thing even better, there are two of these wedding ceremonies, one hosted by the bride’s family, one hosted by the groom’s family.) When you’re done eating, you leave.  There is no exchanging of vows, no priests, rabbis, monks, buddhas, yogis, or any other ceremonial figure.  All of the guests come in to a big banquet hall.  Upon arriving, they stop to sign in at the ‘guest-book station’ and you hand them your wedding gift.  Apparently newlyweds here don’t mess around with toasters and dishes and vacuums.  Oh no.  They only get money.  The money has to come in a red envelope and it has to be an even number EXCEPT no 4′s.  The Chinese word for 4 sounds like the word for ‘death’ and is thus considered bad luck.  (Shortly after learning this, I also noticed that no building has a 4th floor.  You always go to the 3rd floor to the 5th.  Except my apartment.  where I live on the 4th floor.  oh no.  bad luck will now probably ensue.)  When you give them your envelope and sign your name, the station ‘manager’ quickly opens your gift, counts your money and writes it down.  So there goes getting away cheap.  

Then you come in and sit at your assigned table, where a bottle of red wine (which NO ONE touched), guava, juice, orange juice, and oolong tea waited for you.  Right on schedule, the bride and groom come processing in, led by a young girl in formal attire playing a flute (this might be unique to my wedding experience and not true to all Taiwanese weddings).  

Bride (in her 2nd dress) and groom toasting individual tables

After about one course, the bride and groom leave so that the bride can change outfits.  I assumed it was so she didn’t dirty her nice white dress.  Wrong.  Apparently brides don’t buy wedding dresses here, they rent them.  Since they save money by renting, they then rent multiple dresses so they can basically play dress-up all night.  

Me posing with the lovely bride (3rd dress) and groom

The bride at my wedding changed 3 times, and I guess she has 3 OTHER outfits for the grooms’ banquet.  There was a white dress, a canary yellow dress, and a bright teal dress.  These dresses are also used for weeks before the ‘wedding’.  The newlyweds go around to different scenic locations and take pictures all dressed up.  The end result kind of looks like senior (high school) pictures and all of the guests get a wallet-sized picture on their way out.  

And now what I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for…the banquet:

WARNING: if you dislike or are allergic to fish, don’t plan on eating anything at a Taiwanese wedding.

1st course: raw fish, scallops, duck something

2nd course: soup with fish? mushrooms? bean sprouts. maybe some squid? and other mushy slimy things. In fish broth.

3rd course: crab with rice noodles in a chunky garlic sauce

4th course: large fish. fresh out of the ocean. NOTHING missing. eyes, mouth, everything

5th course: seafood fried rice complete with little shrimpies and mushrooms. Garnished with whole crabs

6th course: shrimp in an M² sauce (mango + mayo)

7th course: fresh fruit, elegantly displayed

8th course: something like orange chicken, but take out the chicken, put in some fatty pork and some bones. Still pretty good though, considering

9th course: chicken soup. quite literally

10th course: some seafood thing. part of a squid/octopus maybe?

11th course: ice cream wrapped in mochi (glutinous rice pounded into paste)

12th course: And finally what meal would be complete without fishball soup? (it is supposed to symbolize the end of a good meal)

 Just to make this clear, all of these dishes were for the table, and not for each individual person.  I don’t think I could have handled an entire plate of mango/mayo shrimp by myself.

So there we are.  A Taiwanese wedding.  No ceremony.  No dancing.  No drunk relatives.  Just lots of food and lots of rented dresses.  Still totally worth it and I will definitely go to another one, which may turn out to be quite possible since you can invite almost anyone to a wedding if you know them through some channel or another.  Looking forward to it!

PLEASE NOTE:  These are my superficial views on the wedding that I witnessed.  I am not suggesting that there is no ceremony or additional traditional/legal practices.  I just want to explain what one can expect if ever invited to a Taiwanese wedding.

As some of you may or may not know, Kaohsiung is hosting the 2009 World Games next July.  I might not have included this in previous posts because I hear it SO MANY times every day, that it seems like common knowledge.  Well let’s just say the entire city is pretty intense about getting ready for this event.  Its like an unveiling of the cleaner and more attractive Kaohsiung to the world, so they have every right to be pumped about it.  The city has even adopted a slogan that reveals their attitude towards the event: Kaohsiung 2009 World Games, WE ARE READY!!  With that said, there was a city-wide event/contest that was held today in anticipation of the World Games.  It was basically a theatre competition held between the different boroughs of the city (ie. bureau of education, police bureau, etc.).  Each bureau was represented by a team who had to write and produce a 10 minute ENGLISH play showing how Kaohsiung and their organization was ready for the World Games.  Most of the plays consisted of friendly Taiwanese people showing foreigners the city sights and the hospitality of locals.  

Our team

My co-teacher and a few 8 other teachers from around the area represented the bureau of education in this contest and I was asked to be their secret weapon! A native speaker who could help make sure the grammar was correct and that their pronunciation was as native-like as possible (although you try explaining how to make the ‘th’ sound in they and the or the motor skills involved in pronouncing all.  Not easy.  I thank my linguistic background for at least the method with which I ATTEMPTED to explain). Their play was phenomenal.  Fancina (my co-teacher) wrote the script and the cast was all women.  Let me try to capture the spirit of this piece of art: think Jack and Rose from the Titanic, skydiving, cheerleaders, a rap about Boules (some French sport?), and “Hey Mickey You’re so Fine”.  How could this not be awesome?  I have some clips from this and eventually I hope to get the whole thing online so it can truly be appreciated.

The other plays were of varying quality.  Overall they all kinda said the same thing: look at Kaohsiung’s wonderful subway system!  The people are so friendly! Look at the local delicacies!  There was one other group that stood out, namely the police bureau.  Their play was called CSI Fairy Tale.  It was the story of Snow White (with curly electric blonde hair and played by a man).  So everything is going according to the traditional fairy tale–Snow White’s mom dies, her dad gets remarried to a rather unpleasant but beautiful woman (in this play named Sweety), the new queen consults her mirror, finds out she’s ugly compared to Snow White, plans to kill her…right. We got it. Same ol’ same ol’.  That’s what I thought too.  UNTIL Sweety (evil Queen) comes to Snow White’s room (that’s right…no dwarves in this tale) and offers her a poison apple.  Snow White responds, “Why of course! I love apples.  Apples are delicious! An apple a day keeps the doctor away!”  and just when SW is about to dig into this delicious but poisonous apple, Sweety comes up from behind her and BEATS HER WITH A BASEBALL BAT! And it gets better! After SW is unconscious, Sweety SMOTHERS her with a pillow! Then plants a suicide note along with the poisoned apples! What a wench! SW’s dad is pretty upset so he calls 119, the friendly Kaohsiung police department.  The detectives arrive at the scene with their CSI gear, gather clues, and then conclude that SW could not have committed suicide because 1. the handwriting on the note did not match her own 2. She suffered from blunt-force wounds to the head 3. There was no poison found in her system.  There was also a cigarette butt with Sweety’s DNA all over it found at the scene of the crime, as well as a bottle of poison left in the queen’s chambers.  Sounds like a cut and dry case to me! So they bagged the wench and hauled her off to jail.  And the detective (named Conan) warned us all that he would hunt down any monsters to keep the streets of Kaohsiung city safe.  Wow.  Amazing.

Unfortunately the police borough didn’t win, although they were arguably the most entertaining.  FORTUNATELY, Fancina’s team did win! and they want to take me out for a celebratory dinner, even though I feel like my 2 hours of work with them was trivial compared to the month and a half of preparation they put into it.  But hey! Free dinner!

Bàobing (shavings of ice) is an extremely popular dessert in Taiwan.  It most closely resembles traditional American ice cream, however it is considered to be lighter and healthier (!!).  The base of bàob?ng is composed of extremely thin ice shavings.  Sometimes water is frozen with milk and then shaved off to create a slightly more substantial texture.  The ice shavings can then be topped with a variety of fruit (strawberries, passion fruit, coconut, plums) as well as the more traditional toppings such as sweetened red beans (see picture).  The entire dish is then usually topped with sweetened condensed milk.  I never thought beans would play such a leading role in my desserts, but hey, when in Rome…