Two Weeks Left!

Halfway there! Although there are some places I'm looking forward to going to, I'm also looking forward to getting home or at least to finish teaching.

Here are some pictures from the week!

At the Taipei Main Station

My new giraffe earrings

There's a hotpot restaurant called Cash City near our hotel. For 160NT (~$5.33) we get a platter of stuff and meat of our choice and our own hot pot. We also get unlimited drinks that include tea, pop, and mango slushie. Yes. Mango slushie. There's also unlimited ice cream that you can get yourself!

Meat hasn't arrived yet but everything else has!

One scoop of chocolate, one scoop of peanut butter. Yum!

For the weekend, everyone split up. Some people wanted to hike somewhere, some went to burn on a beach, some went shopping at the places I had gone to. Since I didn't want to do any of those and I had a goal of my own, I went off by myself which probably makes me happier anyways because I don't have to wait for anyone, especially since I had a goal. My goal: get the pennies!!!

So first I went to Dansui Old Market to pick up those Little Mermaid socks for Ga Jie since I couldn't find them anywhere else. The last time I went, I found a penny machine so I didn't go for that. But the last time I went, there was a typhoon coming so there weren't many places open. This time I found a second penny machine. Yay!

10NT (~$0.33)

Whoohoo!

New sunglasses 150NT (~$5)
Looks like my old ones but cheap enough that
if they break, I won't care.

After Dansui, I headed to the Astronomical Museum. Except, I got lost! I went the wrong way and headed in the complete opposite direction. (This seems to be a theme this weekend...story to come later.) If you can see the map down there, I ended up where the guy on the bike is. But I should have been to the left of the vertical red line. Oops! Got lots of exercise I guess.

Lost! Help me, map!

Found you!

Ooh...didn't pay money to go in though.

Found the penny machine!

Ok so this penny machine also has a story. I knew that the machine was in the gift shop and I didn't have to pay to get in so great! I purchased two copper tokens: one for me, one for my friend Jessica. Then I put the copper coin into the #1 slot and I should have put it in the #2. So I turn around to ask the cashier to help me and some little girl runs up and presses the button so a penny pops out. Luckily I just told the cashier that some little girl pressed the button and he gave me another one to replace it. Yay! Thanks, little girl! You saved me from shaming myself and admitting I put it in wrong despite the English instructions.

Next I walked over to Shilin Night Market to find the penny machine that someone told me was there. I found it! I notice that when I get a penny, a lot of people gather around to see what it's about. These ones are cute and have a bubble tea pattern on them!

On Sunday, a group of us were going to Pinxi/Shifen to light up lanterns. I was very excited for this because it was one of the destinations that I was supposed to go with Aunt Alice and never happened because of the typhoon. So we meet up (and some are hungover from going to a club the night before) and we get the tickets. We needed to to this: Taipei --> Ruifang, Ruifang --> Pinxi. We got tickets to and from so there are 4 in total. Since there was only 10 minutes before the train left (and they're very prompt) we had to run for it. We asked someone where the platform was and double checked the screen. We got on and it left on time. So we're not really sure how...but somehow we ended up on the wrong train! We didn't realize this until 1 hour later. So we got a lot of help from some English speaking locals and non-English speaking train workers and we ended up heading back to Taipei. We tried to figure out how long it would take us to go to Pinxi and found that it would take too long. Added to that we had some hung-over people who got motion sickness quite easily and...never made it. We went back to the Taipei Main station and called it a day. They decided to hit up some other tourist spots instead and I went shopping, then home to do some work for school.

This is where we started.

The right finger is where we should have ended up.
The left finger is where we actually ended up.

So that's the end of the weekend. I have one more weekend left. All the teachers new to Taiwan are going to Taroko Gorge next weekend (which I went to the last time I was here) so unfortunately, they won't have time to go back to Pinxi. But I will try to go to Jiufen and Pinxi on my last weekend.

Now to work hard for school. There are many things that need to happen this week, including finishing report cards and because one guy messed up his unit, I have to plan the whole thing on my own from scratch. T_T

First week of School

Work is work and fairly uneventful in terms of pictures. My students are well-behaved but very weak in English. They don't understand most of what I'm saying so I've had to be very creative when I teach. But we're getting along just fine. I don't go out on the weekday evenings because I would rather take the time to mark, prep, and relax. A lot of my colleagues who are in Taiwan for the first time are going out to other places but then they come back late and work very late into the night and are tired the next morning.

Here's my school and classroom!

Now here's some random photos from my week!

Minion luggage

This accursed cookie! I lost a filling because of it.
So annoying now...

These people are hardcore.

Cake!

Inside of Chiang Kai Shek Memorial

Revisit of Chiang Kai Shek Memorial 

DIY cotton candy

It looks like Taipei 101

Ximen Shopping District

Taipei 101 from a distance

I went to the zoo to find more pennies but I also saw animals.

Flamingos

Poo Art

Koala

Camel

Giant Panda

Thanks for the info in the toilet

Elephants

Penguins

 

It was really humid. Lucky kids...

Giraffe print light!

Maybe there will be more exciting happenings next weekend. This weekend was really hot and humid and it was hard to be outside for extended periods of time.

Day 8: Yi Jiang Serviced Apartments

I woke up early to check on my colleagues' flight. They arrived at 7am which is 3 hours later than they should have arrived. I packed up and said good bye to my aunt, leaving her to sleep off her cold in the hotel. She was heading back to Hong Kong that evening though it was also fairly questionable whether she would be able to go home in a timely manner. (Edit: It is 11pm and she has just emailed me that she is finally back in Hong Kong. That is also approximately 3 hours behind schedule but at least she is home safe.)

Nothing was open. I made my way to my new hotel room and started to unpack for the month, all the while listening for English in the hallways. When I heard it I knew I had finally reunited with my team. Since they were jet lagged and needed to stay awake we did little activities with lots of breaks. We went around the area and found the grocery store, stationary store, dollar store, etc. We had a little snack at one of the department store food courts.

This area of ton is ritzier and the prices more expensive than what I'm used to in Taiwan. I'm not especially pleased with that and I plan to travel a bit further to shop. For those of us who taught at the other school in past years, we were used to dirt cheap food, fruit, drinks, etc. Here...not so much. But it's about a 40 minute travel to that other area so we'll have to do some exploring.

In between mini trips around the area, people went back to their rooms to rest a bit and maybe take a damning nap from which they didn't wake up from for a while. I spent the time watching English movies on TV (which I didn't really get to do because Aunt Alice prefers Chinese TV) and unpacking my stuff and re-packing for our orientation tomorrow.

In the evening, we went to Sogo beause there is a restaurant called Ding Tai Fung that serves exceptional soup dumplings. We met up with our colleagues at the other school who have already been teaching for a week. One of my friends was celebrating her birthday too! Since it was Saturday, the other school were heading to a club or karaoke afterwards. We went back to the hotel instead because everyone (except me) was really tired and ready to conk out and also because we had orientation at our school tomorrow and had to wake up early.

Very efficient making of the dumplings

There's one at First Markham Place too but not as good

Yum!

End of Day 8!

Retro-Post: Day 7 - Dansui/Taipei

The plan for today was to go to Jiu Fen and Shi Fen. I particularly wanted to go to Jiu Fen because the old streets of that area were an inspiration for the movie Spirited Away. Aunt Alice though Shi Fen was fun too because of the giant lanterns. But because of the oncoming typhoon it was not recommended that we go to those areas. Instead we went to Dansui.

There wasn't much to Dansui's Old Street. There were some things I found there that I liked and might return if I don't find them elsewhere because they were more expensive. Dan Sui is also home to the famous Fort San Dominigo but I didn't really feel like going since I'd already seen quite a few forts. As well, due to the typhoon coming there were a lot of sudden rain showers which was annoying too.

Don't worry Ga Jie, I'll get a pair for you for sure!

Hello Kitty shaped pineapple pastries!

Huge melon!

Found a penny machine! #5!

 After Dan Sui, we headed back to the hotel. I checked the forecast for the typhoon and saw that it would be hitting the strongest Friday night and Saturday morning. Since I was supposed to meet up with my colleagues Saturday morning at our hotel, I decided it would be best to move all my luggage over there and check in Friday afternoon. Since my colleagues were supposed to arrive at 4am, the rooms were already booked for Friday night so I was able to check in.

The hallway

All for me! Whee!

Although it's been fun going around with my aunt this past week, I've been living alone long enough that I missed my alone time and seeing my new room made me excited to begin work again, being able to stay in one place and going where I wanted and doing what I wanted when I wanted instead of needing to consider another person. I had avoided buying things because I knew I had to cart all this luggage over but now I can!

But since the weather was holding, we decided to go to one more place: the Chang Kai Shek Memorial area. It also included the National Theatre. It was huge and beautiful. It reminded me of a Chinese version of the Washington, DC National Mall area. So big! Funny enough there were a lot of troupes practicing outside. There was an orchestra, a hip hop dance group, a contemporary/pop dance group, and a flag-twirling group. Unfortunately, because of the oncoming typhoon all government workers were told to go home at 2pm and so this area was closed. I'll have to come back another day (especially because I hear there's a penny machine in there!)

Since we were only two subway stops away, we decided to walk back to the hotel and explore the area. Everything was closed or closing but the weather was ok...some scattered showers. We found a nice area on an opposite side of our hotel that I will also be going back to explore. After resting a bit at the hotel, we decided to head out and find dinner before everyone packed up. We chose a dumpling/noodle place in the area we just found. I thought it was delicious! The dumplings tasted like the ones my mom makes, but better skins since they were hand made and not store bought. Must go back before I leave. 

Pepper bun with meat, recommended by Aunt Alice - great!

Here it comes!

After that we hid inside our hotel room for the rest of the evening. Poor Aunt Alice had caught a cold so she slept as I read.

So ends my week of non-stop fun. Tomorrow I have to meet my colleagues at the hotel although I'm not sure if they'll be able to land thanks to the typhoon. Then begins my next 4 weeks in Taipei but from here it is time to work so blogging will be sparse. There are still lots of things I want to do in Taipei. I hope I get a chance to do them during my 3 weekends.

End of Day 7!