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| Lukang |
The entire month in one post, deep breath:
I was sick for nearly
two weeks. I went the doctor and was prescribed a ton of pills that made me
feel better. Amazing how that works! I
started to feel human around the time Matt was scheduled to arrive in Taiwan. As
his luck would have it, he got stranded in Bangkok for three days because of
stupid airline policies with Hong Kong Airlines. Finally, they allowed him to
come on to Taiwan, but not before making him buy a ticket back to London in
November. Ug. London vacation, perhaps?
Poor Matt was very jetlagged and drained from the stress of
the past few days, but we still managed to get enough energy to go to Taichung
on Sunday. We wandered around various malls and found a random park, apparently
built by the Japanese during the colonial period. Its main features are a pond,
a giant goat sculpture, and black squirrels.
Matt spent Monday through Wednesday preparing and wandering
the streets of Hemei and Changhua looking for English schools. He got some
pretty good job offers when he was needed to cover for a day at my school. He is
now employed at my school, but we rarely see each other at work because of,
well, work.
One weekend we took a break from it all and headed to
Changhua to check out the giant Buddha. It was an easy climb through a jungle
park to find the massive Buddha and good views of Changhua. We danced merrily
as “Under the Sea” and “Mickey Mouse” played over loud speakers… very odd for a
temple setting, I must say!
Moon Festival was on Thursday. We had a long three day work
week before having a short four-day weekend. Because a typhoon of dramatic
proportions was coming, we didn’t make any plans to go anywhere and our hiking
trip to Ali Mountain was canceled, forever.
Thursday we had beautiful weather and a BBQ at my
co-teacher’s house along with two of my students (ages six and nine), they both
screamed and ran away at the sight of me. But later warmed up to Matt and me
and we were all playing “Ghost” and other running games until Matt and I
thought we’d die—I’ll blame the mountains of food we consumed. We had a feast
of beef, pork, fish, mushrooms, onions, and other nameless vegetables, sweet
potatoes, and toast. Matt, of course,
tried the chicken, oysters, clams, and shrimp that were also available. It felt
like the first real meal I have had since the hot pot they had cooked for me!
We got up early on Friday to meet with our co-workers for
drinks, to find out that they had canceled on us! Since we were already heading
towards Changhua, we went further to Taichung and had another shopping trip. We
rushed home to meet with my neighbor, only to have him cancel on us too.
Saturday we were warned of the huge typhoon, but the weather was so wonderful,
we headed to Lukang anyway and enjoyed an amazing day with little rain. Apparently
the typhoon skipped Changhua County.
By Sunday we were zombies, Monday was just painful, Tuesday
long, and Wednesday the students were driving me crazy. Thank goodness for easy
Thursdays with my nice classes! Friday was actually pleasant; most Fridays are
very stressful with five hours teaching children between the ages of five and
eight.
In random news: won the Taiwan receipt lottery. I won a whole
200 NTD (that is almost 7 USD). This
lottery was set up in order to keep stores from not reporting their total
sales. Naturally, the only places I receive receipts are the big chain stores,
all the local stores have a cash-only, no receipt policy.
