It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the cram school in Taiwan. The TAs have worked very hard hand making paper decorations and cutting out tiny white letters for a poem claiming that a snowman is the best boyfriend ever. Red and green cellophane cover the windows, a cardboard tree is being used as a Christmas vocabulary advent calendar (get all twenty-five right and you can get a pencil and eraser!), giant nutcrackers and mini Santas line the desk behind the receptionist. On top of that the school had a great idea to have to students make snowmen for a contest. I thought we were going to die in an avalanche of snowmen! The students had a blast making them, though some may be suffering from PTSD after watching me accidently decapitate some of the less stable snowmen. It is payback for having to listen to “Ten Little Snowmen,” “Where is Santa?” and “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” over and over again.
Around
Hemei, many of the shops have mini Christmas trees decorated for the holiday. Terrible
Christmas music (surprisingly very religious songs) loop over and over again in
every store. It seems like they sort of get into the Holiday spirit around
here. However, it still doesn’t feel like Christmas is six days
away...especially when I have to work on Christmas. I have managed to get some of the Christmas
cards out, but the only Christmas shopping I have done is to my secret Santa at
work. There are so many rules, it is difficult to buy or sneak the damn present
anywhere. Matt has benefited greatly by getting little treats I had intended
for my person, but the boss caught me and lectured about how I need to be
sneakier and blah blah blah...it is very hard to be sneaky when everybody
watches your every move...
In other
news, weekends have been incredibly busy. Last weekend we graded papers and
treated ourselves to delicious Egyptian food. That was possibly the most
expensive meal we have had in Taiwan yet, but so worth every penny! I suggested
that I wanted to go there for my birthday celebration this weekend, but my
co-worker claimed that she didn’t like Egyptian food, and then proceeded to ask
what Egyptian food tasted like. She didn’t believe me when I told her it tasted
like heaven!
One weekend
we made it to Tainan, the old capitol of Taiwan. It was colonized by the Dutch
in the 1600s, but the Taiwanese didn’t have much patience for the Dutch laws of
replacing wood shacks with less-combustible brick huts, putting the pigs at the
back of the house instead of in the front or letting them run wild in the
street, and having a designated garbage dumps (and compost piles). The Chinese
came in and set the Dutch sailing.
Another
weekend we made it to the new Hunger Games movie... getting front row seats so
that everyone could make a fool of themselves getting up every fifteen minutes
to go the bathrooms, which were located on the right side of the video screen...Other
weekends we’ve made treks to Taichung for Huge Burgers, Indian food, and
hummus... all heaven for the eyes and taste buds... I don’t know why in Homei
they cannot make the food look or taste appetizing.
I have definitely
hit that six month senioritis mark. Everything is getting to me... the food, the
miscommunication, the dirt, the mold, the lack of sunshine, lack of roof
gutters and street gutters... it is only lightened by the free coffees that we
get sometimes or the incredibly cheap clothing and shoes I can get. The boss
has realized that I am “upset” about things at work... we had a special one
hour meeting about the things that were bothering me in which the only thing
resolved was that because I am a woman, I have to work extra hard to accept
change, because women cannot adapt to change very well...oh boy.
Here is to
making it to Christmas and then surviving the holidays! Happy holidays to all!
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