School Anniversaries

School birthdays are a big deal here in Taiwan. Lots of preparation goes into them, and the week of includes all sorts of games and competitions. The actual anniversary day is built around a school carnival and the finals of all of the contests and races. For some reason unbeknownst to me, my two schools picked the same week to have their anniversaries. Luckily, for the big day, one had chosen Friday and the other Saturday - otherwise, I really would have been in trouble.

Above: Me with co-teachers Carol and Anita

On Fridays, I have English Village in the morning and the afternoon off (all of the ETAs are supposed to have Friday afternoons free for "cultural exchange" purposes), so I usually do not go into school. This Friday, though, I had to try to make it from one side of town to the other in under ten minutes (it normally should take quite a bit longer...) so that I could make the tail end of Minzu's carnival. The seventh graders (my students) had started working their stalls early in the morning and would be closing up around lunchtime. When I arrived, I realized that I had made the mistake of not bringing any small change. So I handed a $500 bill (equivalent to US $15) to my co-teacher, asking for change, and ended up holding $500 worth of tickets. Not quite what I had in mind... I now had the remaining 15 minutes of the fair to spend $500 on carnival food and drinks. I walked around all of the tents, holding my wad of tickets in one hand, while students hung bags of food over my other arm and stuffed all sorts of fried food (which I don't even eat), blow-up toys, drinks and ice cream into my purse. I was quite a sight... I had finally had enough, so I gave the remainder of my tickets to a student and roped two other students into helping me carry everything upstairs to my office, where I proceeded to give as much of the food away to other teachers as possible.

Above: Me with Carol's homeroom classroom

A list of everything I acquired (I honestly do not remember buying most of this - I was just telling students to take tickets and put stuff in my bag haha):
8 drinks (everything from coke to green tea to black tea ice cream floats)
3 juice boxes
1 bowl of spaghetti
6 boxes of sushi (don't ask... that was my co-teacher's class's stand - I think she was abusing her power lol)
2 bags of friend chicken
3 slices of cake
3 bags of popcorn
2 bowls of ice cream
6 tiny Hello Kitty key chains (only in Asia...)
2 blow-up toys

Above: Me with Minghua office buddy Vicky

The next morning, I tramped over to the other side of town to Minghua's birthday celebrations. Their carnival was huge - much larger than Minzu's and encompassing nearly the whole of the grounds surrounding the school. I was wiser this time around, and only bought $200 worth of tickets. It was hard, because while I do not eat carnival food, I wanted to visit all the stalls and buy things from my students. Basically, this means I got lots of drinks and ate lots of ice cream - not a bad thing. :) As always, visiting Minghua was fun, as students were very excited to see me. The day was quite festive, starting off with an opening ceremony, then including an English spelling bee, 80 meter races, art exhibits and live performances with students dancing and singing on stage. I heard all of my favorite Asian teen-sensation songs, such as "Nobody Nobody" and "Sorry Sorry."

Above: Me with old co-teachers Yachi and Ellie
Below: Me and Phoebe (church friend who teaches some of my kids in her cram school)

Sun Moon Lake

This past weekend, Kaitlyn and I went to Sun Moon Lake (日月潭). It is north of us in the middle of Taiwan between Taichung and Hualien (remember, where we went to Taroko Gorge). The lake is the largest natural lake in Taiwan, one of the 13 designated national scenic areas and one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country. In fact, someone told me that it is the most popular destination for tourists from mainland China. The name "Sun Moon" comes from the shape of the lake, which is in two connected parts, one side looking like a sun and the other in the shape of a moon. In the middle of the lake is Lalu Island. Kaitlyn and I both really wanted to boat out to the island, so that when people asked us what we had done for the weekend, we could mispronounce the name and tell them we had boated out to "Lala" Island.


Once we arrived, we met up with Vivian (Fulbright staff) and Deborah, Monica and Kim (Yilan ETAs), in honor of Kim's birthday. The first night, we just all ate dinner and then crashed, as we were exhausted. Kaitlyn and I stayed at a different hotel from the others, called the Teachers' Hostel. It was a lovely hotel, scenically placed right on the lake, came with breakfast included, and had the added perk of giving teachers a discount. We were initially a little freaked out because Lonely Planet told us we could walk there from the tourist information center in the middle of town. Turns out that the walk is quite long down dark forested roads. Luckily, Taiwan is one of the safest places on earth, and we did not get jumped or mugged. The next day, when we went for an early morning run around the lake, the path no longer looked sketchy, but merely scenic and peaceful. It is all about perspective. :)

Our run was actually one of my favorite parts of the weekend. The lake was beautiful, especially in morning with the mist rising off of it and mountain-top pagodas in the background. The lake was quite large, so we did not make it very far around, just a few miles down before having to turn around and come back. We had to shower and eat breakfast before busing it over to the opposite side of the lake to meet the other people around 10am.
































Kim had heard about an aboriginal village/theme park which she really wanted to visit, so Kaitlyn and decided to go with them (it was her birthday, after all). However, aboriginal theme parks are not something I would recommend. Normally, one thinks of going to Sun Moon Lake because it is so peaceful and relaxing. Aboriginal theme park - not so much... It was incredibly crowded and very noisy. To get into the park, one had to take a cable car up over the mountains into a nearby valley. While the seven-minute cable car ride was lovely, providing excellent views of the surrounding area, it was not worth the two hour wait to get onto it, nor the one and a half hour queue to get out of the park back to the lake. The park itself was also an experience. Taiwanese aboriginal culture, traditional dancing, roller coasters, fried food, gift shops... Strange. The best part was an hour-long show we watched. Great singing and dancing, accompanied by men in loin clothes swinging across water on a rope - rather Tarzanish. Not sure I had ever seen a man up close and personal in a loin cloth (Discovery Channel does not count). Guess there is a first time for everything...





















Kaitlyn and I were quite worn-out by the end of the day, so we spent the evening wandering around the tiny lakeside town where our hotel was. The lake was so pretty at night with all of the lights shining. We even managed to avoid Taiwanese food for the night, finding an Italian place on the lake boardwalk.











Left: I do not know how Taiwan pulls off flying a "Nazi Party" sign...


The next day, we rounded out our lake adventure by going out in a row boat. Turns out Lalu Island was way to far to reach, but we still had fun trying to maneuver our rusty boat (maybe it is a good thing I never joined crew in college lol). It was the official start of our Dragon Boat training! :)

Taipei and Pingxi Lantern Festivals

A few weekends ago, we went up to Taipei for the Lantern Festival. Just like Kaohsiung had its lantern display along the Love River, Taipei also had a huge display at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Every year, the Lantern Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year (this year on February 28th), bringing the Chinese New Year two-week holiday to a close. The lantern displays are kept up for another week of viewing, so we went the final weekend on March 5-7. Our plan was to go downtown Friday night to see the Taipei lanterns, and then go to Pingxi on Saturday to watch the sky lanterns (平溪天燈) be released.

Friday afternoon, Kristin, Bekah, Katherine and I took the HSR up to Taipei, where we met up with Kim at the station. While Kristin went to visit her aunt and Bekah took off for swing dancing, the other three of us went downtown to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall to meet Annie (a Fulbright junior scholar researching the Avian bird flu). The place was packed! Not quite as bad as during the New Year celebrations at Taipei 101, but still very crowded. The lantern display featured massive tiger and floral arrangements (I think in acknowledgment of the International Flower Expo in Taipei later this year). While the Kaohsiung lanterns were roughly the size of a large couch or bed, the Taipei lanterns were more on the scale of large sheds or small houses. The size and intricate detail of each lantern was impressive. My favorite part, however, might have been the English translations for the names and descriptions of each lantern. On one side of the hall, there was a whole sections of lanterns devoted to different countries from around the world. We could not really determine what the criteria was for why which countries were chosen - obvious countries like Taiwan and China, alongside predictable Asian neighbors like Malaysia and the Philippines, with odd European choices such as The Netherlands and Greece (but no France or Germany), and several countries none of us had ever even heard of before (we assumed they must have been tiny Pacific islands... four Fulbrighters fail at geography...). There was also a giant tiger lantern in front of Taipei 101, rotating in circles and bathed in colorful laser lights.










Left: Awesome winged tiger with caption "Everything as your wish is like the tiger with wings."
Right: Most intimidating Sponge Bob ever.











After walking around the lanterns for a few hours, Annie took us to a night market near Shida University where we joined up with Deborah and Jessica (Yilan ETAs) for shaved ice and some late-night shopping. Visiting Taipei is always fun, because there are so many other Fulbrighters to find and hang out with. There are only 12 of us down south, so I think we often forget about the other 30+ people up north. Bekah even got to bump into one unexpectedly while swing dancing.

The next day, we went to the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival (after an odd morning of touring the Taipei Miniatures Museum - not something I would recommend to others...). Pingxi is a small village just outside of Taipei up in the mountains, and hosts one of the largest lantern festivals in all of Taiwan every year. When we arrived in the afternoon, the street fair was already spilling over with people, buying fried food and fresh fruit juices while shopping for tiny collectibles and souvenir lanterns (I may or may not have bought six tiny and two large ones... They were just so pretty!). As the sky darkened, people began releasing huge paper lanterns. These lanterns are made out of colorful paper, each color signifying a different meaning such as luck, love or wealth. People paint their wishes and dreams on them, releasing them into the sky. I love the poetry of the idea - sending our hopes and prayers up into heaven.** You must think of it in a metaphorical sense; dreams are transitory and ephemeral, with us for a moment and then gone, released into a space of time we cannot follow or find again. But they are lodged with God, who knows all things and who understands our deepest desires and most secret fears and joys.











Starting at 6:30pm and occurring again every thirty minutes or so from out front of a local school, there were scheduled releases of a hundred lanterns at a time. Of course, one could set off lanterns from anywhere along the street. One of the best places was on top of the railroad tracks, which ran along a ridge overlooking the main part of town, giving beautiful views of the sky. The entertaining part came every time a train passed by, as people had to grab their lanterns and jump out of the way. The whole festival had a very joyous air, as everyone would clap and cheer for each new lantern set off, no matter how many had gone up before or would go up later.

We decided to join in the tradition, so all bought our own lanterns to paint. Bekah and I got a red one (when in Asia, one must do red :) ), and decorated it with our wishes and extremely talented drawings of tigers and stick figures. We did not join in on one of the big releases, but sent ours up a ways down the road. When lighting the lantern, we had to stand on the edges to hold it down until the heat from the flame filled it, causing it to gently float into the sky. Luckily, we sent off our lanterns early in the evening, around 7pm. The night quickly deteriorated into sporadic rain and gusty winds. We saw many failed lanterns, which were blown into trees or buildings on the way up, causing them to catch on fire. One lantern was whipped against a telephone line, going up in flames before dropping to the ground and nearly burning the shrieking crowd beneath. Strong winds and paper lanterns do not mix well.



The hardest part of the evening was trying to get home. Since Pingxi is quite remote, the best way to get in and out is by bus. The city ran free buses for people from the Taipei Zoo metro stop out to Pingxi and back all day and night; but even with buses running every couple of minutes, we had to wait in line for close to forty minutes to get standing spots on the hour-long bus back to Taipei.


** Do not try to over-analyze the idea of sky lanterns: my father's first response was to criticize the theology, and Bekah could not help but ponder the many negatives for the environment of sending up thousands upon thousands of paper lanterns which must land and litter somewhere. Though, I went and looked this up, and the government actually pays the locals to go into the mountains afterwards to clean up the area. The surrounding area is very impoverished (tourism from the Sky Lantern Festival brings in enough revenue to support the village the entire year), and the lantern clean-up is an important source of income for the locals.