Okay, so let’s see where we left off. Right—paintball, the day before spring semester started. Now that I’m finally sitting down to write, we’ve just polished off week three of the spring semester.
Alright, I got a page into the blog entry and then never finished, a failure of epic proportions on my part now that we’re nearing the end of March, and I started writing this mid or late February. Feel free harass me about it, if any of you are still reading.
Spring Semester: WEEK 1The first week of the semester, my co-teacher and I finished editing a script for the upcoming reader’s theatre competition, and I attended Lantern Festival celebrations in Yuanshan and Pingxi. If you’re not familiar with it, the Lantern Festival begins with Chinese New Year and goes on for about two weeks. During this period of time there are more fireworks than normal.
The celebration in Yuanshan was a smaller, local celebration in the park, maybe ten minutes by scooter from the apartment. We got to see a bunch of lanterns made by local elementary schoolers. As well as large constructs of rabbits. I don’t exactly know what to call them. There was also a depiction of the turtle and the hare. Given that it’s the year of the rabbit, I have a feeling the rabbit won the race in this version—you just have to look at the turtle’s face.
Some of the more interesting lanterns I saw were [pictures coming soon].
The next night, I went to the famous Pingxi Lantern Festival’s closing night. They left off hundreds of lanterns at a time into the sky. I wasn’t sure exactly what these lanterns looked like or were made of, but I was curious to find out. We took the train out of Yilan and transferred lines at a tiny station onto a far smaller train, with only a few cars. It was already packed when we got on, and there were definite doubts about whether or not we’d manage to all fit, even spreading ourselves out. We made it—barely.
The Pingxi lantern festival was huge and it was swarmed with people. As the train came in, we saw the field where, every half hour, they let off hundreds of lanterns at once. The set up reminded me of a long, giant night market. It hasn’t become uncommon for us to talk about eating our way across the new places we visit in Taiwan, and Pingxi was no exception. A majority of the Fulbrighters in Yilan made it to the last night of the festival, and we ran into a couple researchers from Taipei. I bought a lantern early on, and wrote on it with marker. (Other stands had paint and paintbrushes, but it took considerably longer for paint to dry than marker.) I wasn’t sure what a lantern would look like or how exactly it got off the ground (or what would happen when it came back down). The lantern I got was about chest high, red, and made of what seemed like gift wrap tissue. It had 4 sides, but was folded flat, entirely closed at the top, with a metal hoop on the bottom. You’re supposed to write your dreams/wishes/prayers on your lantern and send them off into the heavens to be answered. I wrote three things on mine: rest for the weary, an end to the anger, and hope for the future. There was some surprise later that I’d written so little on it, but I wrote what I felt and to me that was all that needed saying—I had a lot of people in mind when I wrote those things and those few words seemed to cover all of us pretty well.
Someone also bought a lantern for all the Yilan Fulbrighters there to sign, and we signed it and went down to stand on the train tracks to light it. Personally, I think the idea of standing down on train tracks when there are trains running, to light something on fire seemed a little bit sketchy…but judging from the crowds around us it seemed like what we were supposed to do. After you finished writing on your lantern, a special stack of ghost money was given to you as a wick, and it’s speared onto somewhere at the bottom near the hoop. One person really can’t set off one of the big lanterns by themselves. Lantern steps:
1. Buy a lantern.
2. Write your hopes/prayers/wishes/dreams/grocery list on it. Or really, whatever you feel like writing.
3. Find an open space with no grass and bring the lantern there.
4. One or more people need to hold the top of the lantern as open as you can so that it’s got as much air in it as possible—another person lights the wick at the bottom and you drop it on the ground, letting the fire heat and burn out the oxygen in the lantern. The lantern will inflate. Do not let go until it is fully inflated. Once you let go, it will rise into the air and (hopefully) not get caught in any trees or on any telephone wires—though I did see both happen.
Anyway, it was really cool watching the lanterns go up, all the people gathered together—and of course there was no end to delicious Taiwanese food. Most of the people who were there had come from Taipei and the line for the buses back to Taipei seemed to go on for ages. There were only so many trains back that night so I headed back to the ticket counter and managed to get a ticket before being swallowed by a crowd of people. The little station filled to the point where no one else could get a ticket. I was near the front, and this is the first time I can ever remember being physically moved forward by a surge of people behind me. The train was packed with everyone on top of each other in no time and we were on our way back home. And it was only Thursday.
Saturday night I went out yet again…KTV in Luodong for a birthday celebration. We had a blast. It was the first time we’ve done KTV together as a big group. The memories won’t be fading any time soon…and if they do, there’s always the pictures. Er, strike that. Why do I look like singing is causing me pain in my pictures? I love singing. Well, there’re always other people’s pictures, right?
Spring Semester: WEEK 2I worked hard again the next week, and by the weekend my instinct to rest battled with my new found determination to go experience something new. Well, rest lost. Rest is kind of lazy like that I guess—just didn’t put up enough of a fight. So Friday night I found myself with a full backpack, headed to the Yilan bus station, and getting ready to take the train down to Kaohsiung for 2 nights (without my laptop) to see the butterfly migration in Maoli’s Valley of the Butterflies. It’s one of only two mass winter butterfly migrations of its kind, worldwide. The other is the orange monarch butterfly migration to Mexico. Let’s face it—I’m in Taiwan now. When, if ever, will I be in Mexico? If the butterflies are in Taiwan now and so am I, it’s time to go see the butterflies.
I got to the hostel around midnight—the owner is really nice and was waiting up for us. It felt weird to be without my laptop. My laptop follows me to school, and if I’m going out without it, it sits there and looks at me like I’m deserting it…okay, I’m making that up. But it’s very strange to be without it. I did have my iPod touch with me, and the hostel had internet—but it’s not my laptop. I survived 48 hours, laptop free.
Back to the point, shall we? We shall. Butterflies.
A van was picking us up heinously early for a Saturday morning to drive of us off to Maoli, which is an hour or hour and a half (I think) outside of Kaohsiung. To be honest, I slept part of the way, so it’s hard to be sure of much. We hiked through the hills and up stairs, looking at the butterflies—bluish-purple, white, yellow, absolutely gorgeous. Before we ascended, one of the museum or park volunteers gave us a lesson about the butterflies and showed us dead preserved ones up close. Butterflies have scales, kind of like a fish, and they change color depending on how the light hits them and the angle. It was amazing how brown the scales could look one moment and royal blue or deep purple the next.
When we finished at Maoli, we went to the Indigenous Culture Park—also about an hour or more outside of Kaohsiung. Fortunately we had the van and driver for eight or nine hours. We spent a while in the museum there, and then took a tram up to see model houses of the various groups of Taiwan’s first people. One exhibit that I really liked though was a set of dioramas, with a hologram projection you could play. The dioramas were all solid miniatures, and pressing a button projected an image of people moving around the place. I think it was a great idea, mixing the solid and the digital, rather than doing one of or the other. It gave it more life.
The tram also took us to more butterflies. I have never, ever seen butterflies like these. They were amazing. Sky blue and black bodies with orange wing—the sort of colors you rarely seem to see outside of a box of crayons. Breathtaking.
After a long ride back to Kaohsiung, we put our things down at the hostel, grabbed lunch, and then regrouped to decide what to do with our last night in Kaohsiung. The night market won out, and we enjoyed it immensely. There were fresh grilled shrimp and crabs, fish, burritos (I know, hold the phone, burritos? Yes, burritos!), candied sweet potatoes, Turkish ice cream, and all sorts of other things. After a long night of enjoying the night market, we went back to the hostel, having to head back to Yilan the next day and teach on Monday.
Nobody seems to comment…is anybody reading this blog, or am I talking to myself?
Spring Semester: WEEK 3And now we hit March. I’ve been keeping myself busy still. I tutor on Mondays, and do language exchange Tuesday and Wednesday for a few hours a night. I get to practice my Chinese in a relaxed environment and I get to help someone who really wants to learn work on their English. It’s a win-win. It makes me wish I would have participated in Conversation Club at IUP—but I was shyer then and the thought of randomly meeting with someone to practice language just wasn’t strong enough to lure me away from my dorm. Now, I’m enjoying my meetings.
I tried to keep myself pretty busy, but it’s hard to find a balance between being busy enough to tire yourself out and keep from over-thinking, and being so busy your brain never shuts off. Guess which one I got? I was not feeling well at all on Saturday morning, so I missed out on Tu Di Gong’s birthday celebration and the rice planting ceremony.
Spring Semester: WEEK 4Friday, March 11, a tragedy struck Japan in the form of an earthquake, followed by a fatal tsunami. I’d like a moment of silence please, in remembrance.
Taiwan was spared. We were on a tsunami watch that afternoon and evening. Students were sent home early from school. The expected tsunami never landed here. We had a trip to Yilan’s famous Turtle Island scheduled for Saturday and we were told know by 6 AM if the coast guard gave us the all clear for the trip. ETAs from Kaohsiung had come up for the weekend too. The coast guard gave us the all-clear so at seven thirty in the morning on Saturday, we were on our way to Wushi Harbor in Toucheng to set sail. It turned out, that while the coast guard had deemed it safe enough for us to travel the water was still extremely rough from the quake and ongoing aftershocks. It was too rough to dock on the island. The island is a nature preserve and doesn’t really have a traditional dock—we had to get special permission to go for the hiking we had planned. The hours that followed on the boat are not some of the fondest I can recall, but given good weather, I’d be willing to try again. The island did look very pretty as close as we got to it.
When we were finally back on dry land again once again, we made up for lost time though. Some people were ready to go home and call it a day. I came close to it. However, I’d never really explored the area, and since some people were staying, I decided to stay. A group of us walked from Wushi Harbor up to Wai Ao beach. There were probably about a dozen surfers out there, even in winter, and even after the events of the day before. It was a gorgeous day and it wasn’t even noon yet. The sun had come out for the first time in what seemed like ages, and the air was warm and comfortable. We settled down at a coffee shop and ate and talked and went down by the water and spent a relaxing afternoon in Wai Ao. While there, I watched paragliders coming down off the mountain and landing on the beach. This is now on my list of things I need to do before I leave Taiwan. I’m hoping to do it sometime in April, but I’ve also heard recommendations to wait until the weather is better in May.
That night we went to the Luodong night market—it’s still my all-favorite night market in Taiwan. It’s not as big as Shilin, but it’s bursting with people without feeling like you’ll be trampled. The food is good, the layout makes sense, and it’s not terribly far from the train station. All in all, I’d say it’s a win.
After the night market, we decided after a long day of seasickness, walking, eating, walking, eating, and more walking, we ought to enjoy the natural hot springs of Yilan. It would be a crime to come all this way and not go to Jiaoxi. We went to a hot spring I’ve never been to before that was really amazing. It had flavored/scented pools that they changed out every few hours, pools with different temperatures, scented steam rooms (lavender, mint, Chinese medicine, and cinnamon), as well as a sauna. There was a large warm stone slab heated from underneath where you could lay and dry off. There was also a big pool with different jets and shower heads where you could spray yourself and let the pounding water work on your muscles.
And adventures in the Yilan area were not over yet! We got home from the hot springs a little before 2 a.m. with the intention of setting out for somewhere Sunday morning if the weather held out. We were treated to another gorgeous day and six of us made the trek (involving a train and a rather frightening bus ride) to Jiufen. Jiufen is an old town built into the mountains with tiny, winding streets (a lot of which are stairs at one point). We wandered are way through the crowds of people with all the stalls of food and drinks. There were a lot of things to sample and plenty to buy. Jiufen is famous for three things: a fantastic view of the area below it and the water, taro ball soup, and teahouses.
Taro ball soup has taro flavored glutinous rice balls, several different varieties of beans (I could only identify pinto and red bean, but there were several others) and is sweet. It is served both as a hot soup and a cold thing with slushy ice. We ate at a place where it was particularly famous and faced a great view.
After the taro ball soup, we found the tea house that inspired Hayao Miazaki’s Spirited Away (with all the masks hanging). We ordered a pot of tea and sat up on the patio on the roof, looking down at the town and the water and another town down below while a woman came up and did our tea ceremony for us. A very good time was had by all. I think going on a day with great weather made a huge difference for the scenery—Yilan and Taipei are both known for being pretty overcast and foggy. However, I think a lot of the experience probably would have been good in any weather.
Spring Semester: WEEK 5This week was our first big holiday of the semester (Valentine’s Day doesn’t count because I said so…it was the first day of the semester). St. Patrick’s Day. Wednesday and Friday, I gave two presentations for my fourth graders. The first one was a presentation on important terms in English concerning earthquakes and tsunamis—adapting a presentation I’d given the faculty on Tuesday. The second presentation was on St. Patrick’s Day. I made up a worksheet about St. Patrick’s Day, with a crossword puzzle for them. YouTube also played a lovely part in the celebration—they got to watch a major river in Chicago dyed green, see the fountain at the White House dyed green (Obama lives there? 真的，小朋友。), and who can pass up teddy bears trying to do Irish step-dancing. A good time was had by all. The fifth graders got their St. Patrick’s Day lesson on Tuesday, and at English Village on Thursday, I made sure to cover it and got my group to all wear green streamers on their wrists in case any of the other ETAs had mentioned the “it’s okay to pinch people who don’t wear green” policy. Fortunately nobody did, though my fourth graders wanted to pinch each other. At any rate, it was a very good week.
We even got to see the “super-moon” on Saturday night, because we were in Kaohsiung. I have no doubt that if we would have been in Yilan, clouds would have obscured the view. We’ll go days and days without seeing stars, moon, or the sun. I love Yilan, but I do occasionally miss the bright glowy bits of the sky.
Now, I was clearly wrong when I said that we were up too early for the butterflies. This time, taxis came for us at 4:45 AM. Saturday I went down to Kaohsiung with my friends. Kyle, Andrew, Brittni, Eric, and Jill were all running the half marathon. Jenny ran her first full marathon. Again, congratulations to all six of you—I can’t imagine doing it. At any rate, Saturday brought us down to Kaohsiung, and at 4:45 Sunday morning, taxis picked us up to take us to the ROC Military Academy base. This is the only day of year the base is open to the public. Carolyn and I were there to cheer on stalwart runners. The race started at six a.m. and as the day actually started, we saw food booths set up, a few games set up for kids, and an assortment of equipment from both the army base and the neighboring air force base in Tainan 台南. I’m sure at some point, just about everybody has seen a tank in a movie. It’s another thing to see one close up and see how massive it is. There were three helicopters, and we actually got to walk around in the cargo ‘copter. There were also drills going on and bands during the morning and afternoon. The first runner to finish the half-marathon came in At I think an hour and seventeen minutes. At that point, we moved to the finish line to wait for our friends.
Spring Semester: WEEK 6Really now, you call this spring? I’m freezing. Admittedly, the temperature outdoors back on the east coast of the US is significantly colder—we have no snow here, and we’re not down to single digits (not in Farenheit anyway), but I do miss central heat, and the idea that windows should stay closed to keep the cold air and wind out. It seems to be constantly wet, and we wash clothes and hang them up and they just don’t seem the least bit inclined to dry anymore. (Weather rant over, thank you for tuning in. Did you tune in? No…probably not. Oh well.)Okay, so back to the actual week. I finished my storybook. Somehow the storybook project never made it into the blog, so to update you: all of the ETAs were asked to write storybooks for Yilan County. I had a really awful, trite storybook in February. It was the third story I wrote, and I was unhappy with all three of them. It was just plain terrible. I wanted to be inspired. I wanted to write something that felt worth reading and worth reading. Ben Franklin said it best, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” I’ve been trying to manage both this semester. Over the last four and a half years, since starting college, I almost entirely forgot writing for myself. And I’ve missed it. And I didn’t even realize how much I missed it, or why I stopped doing it. I’m starting to figure out those answers now. I’m also trying not to live entirely in my writing, and to make myself go out and do things worth writing about, or at least worth a funny story at dinner. I realized a lot of “my” stories at the table aren’t my stories. They’re somebody else’s—and that’s great, except I should be writing pages of my own life and I forgot how. It’s something I need to work on, I am working on it. I’ve filled up about six pages today, writing about things I’ve done in the last six weeks. Things I didn’t necessarily think I had it in me to do—but I did them. With three months and change to go, I’m going to keep trying to make myself get out and do new things. Paragliding is on the list. I’m also hoping to make it over to Hong Kong—another city checked off my list. At any rate, these are my goals: keep reading, keep writing, keep doing. Reading also fell by the wayside somewhere along the way and I miss that as much as writing.
Er, there goes my introspective rant. At any rate: storybook. Our storybook rough drafts were due in February after winter break, and I was thoroughly distressed by the awfulness of my story. I was determined not to use that story. Unfortunately, the final deadline was March 23rd, and as of March 16th, I had nothing but story I didn’t want to use. I had finished my class around 11 or so and sat at my desk, trying to think, to salvage something…anything. With a week to go and illustrations to do, I had to have something. I really just wanted to fly away from everything. Whether that instinct had something to do the story that emerged, I’ll never know, but by the time I left school for lunch, I had text complete (or nearly complete) for a story about a bird and a fish. I’m really not sure entirely where this story came from—it just kind of happened before I knew it had started. At lunch I storyboarded most of the story, and I spent the next week (including the train to and from Kaohsiung) working on pictures. I really like my story and I’m thrilled with it. I’m not posting it up on here right now—if you want a digital copy, feel free to ask. But I wanted to post the dedication here on the off-chance that any of the people this book is dedicated to are reading.
To People Who Help Me Fly:
Thank you for nudging me out of the nest when it was time to go.
Thank you for leaving the light on so I could find my way back.
Thank you for answering my “Whys?” with “Why not?”
Thank you for dreaming big.
Thank you for swimming through the stars with me.
Side note: I do spend the majority of my waking hours at school, teaching, but that’s about the same this semester as it was last semester, so I figured everybody would rather hear about my non-scholastic adventures rather than my lesson plans for Hello, Darbie.
