Flea Circus

Came back from Dragon Boat Festival to find out that the teacher who had been here for only three months had gone.  Three weeks of G covering the lessons until the new replacements arrived on the 20th. As part of their training, they have to observe several classes.  The have only observed one of my classes. It is a class of 15 kids ranging in age between eight to eleven, who after being in school all day, have finally snapped.

I introduced the new teachers and encouraged the students to ask them questions. They asked the normal “How old are you?” “Where are you from?”  and they laughed at Minnesota, thinking it was “little soda.” During the questioning, one student randomly started meowing, followed by another cat, and a monkey. Joseph, the smartass of the class, asked in a high pitched, baby voice “Do you speak English” followed by a maniacal laugh. Completely ridiculous, especially paired with the looks on the new teachers’ faces.

At the end of the training week, one of the new teachers had to teach while I observed. It is a class of eight, six to nine year olds; a challenging class with moody twins and a hyper active six year old. The new teacher messed up and started to panic slightly. The six year old, feeling the rise in tension, stood up in his chair and started singing at the top of his lungs. Each class he takes the opportunity to stretch out his diaphragm, but this was particularly loud. The new teacher stood in shock as seven children ran to subdue the six year old, and the six year old started backhanding the students as he sang his finale. Stacy and I sat back in amusement.

One of my classes includes the aforementioned hula dancing kid, who has since developed a multi-personality disorder. When he takes off his glasses, he is no longer Angus, but his twin brother, Ongus.  The barking kid has calmed down a bit, but he still pants. That class also has a loud child who claims he likes to eat babies… I am a bit worried.  

The “gay” class is still at it, but is now including heterosexual relationships after they claimed I was gay and I said “No, I like boys.” and then had to hastily explain that I meant boys over the age of twenty. One boy offered to hook me up with his eighteen year old cousin and a girl offered to set me up with her dad. I should mention this is the class that draws pictures of me surrounded by ghosts, or me throwing grenades at students.

I will be curious to know how the new teachers handle these classes. I hope they don’t try to stifle their creativity and weirdness. These kids are the only redeeming feature of Hemei, let alone the school.

In other news, summer is here. Temperatures are between 31-43 degrees Celsius. The air conditioners only seem to be able to get the rooms down to 28 degrees. Despite the heat, we’re still walking around Taichung and Hemei. This heat is just plain useless without water to swim in.

Erecting an Egg?

Once upon a time there was an advisor named Qu Yuan who told the emperor to quit being such a greedy liar. The emperor didn’t take kindly to the advice and banished the advisor. Qu Yuan spent his days of exile writing poetry (because being a poet somehow makes you important in China). One day, a warring kingdom overtook the greedy, lying, emperor’s kingdom. The advisor was so sad that he threw himself into the river. 

One night, Qu Yuan came to a neighbor in a dream and complained that the fish were eating his body, why not throw some rice into the water to distract the fish. Well, rice brought more fish, which attracted bigger fish. The advisor came again and suggested that the village make sticky rice wrapped it in bamboo leaves, that way it would last longer. So the villagers sacrificed their meagre food for a corpse and threw these rice dumplings into the river. But this just attracted more fish.

Desperate to save his rotting corpse, Qu Yuan came again and suggested that the village make a boat shaped like a dragon, because everyone knows that fish are scared of dragons. So the villagers made a dragon boat, put a drum into the boat, and went about the river making a racket and scared the fish away. Presumably, because the fish got scared away—for an entire year, I might add—the villagers had nothing to eat, so they were forced to eat the rice dumplings.  Now every year, across China and Taiwan, they race boats shaped like Dragons and beat gongs or drums and make one hell of a splashing racket.

Other traditions to do during this holiday are putting out special plants to ward off ghosts and bugs, wearing a perfumed satchel made to look like the dumplings, and balancing a raw egg for good luck  (or as our school says: erecting an egg).

I get a three day weekend. The boss suggested a trip to Lukang, but the river is ugly and a teenage student told me there was nothing to do there during the festival but wade through people. Decided to go south back to Tainan, instead. Caught up with a friend from Korea, who has recently moved a bit north of Tainan. Got a room in a love motel for a whopping thirty dollars per night inclusive of a round bed, a clean bathroom stocked with one towel, a razor, toothbrushes, and a comb, not to mention the complimentary condom.

Woke up terribly early on Sunday to go to Guanziling, a famous hot spring resort up in the mountains. Judging by the one-lane road and debris littering the river below, we were just a couple of days shy of a mud slide. The town is built on the side of the mountain, the only safe pedestrian route is the historical “Hero’s Path,” aka 300 steps of hell.  I am no hero, I rode the bus to the top and walked up ten stairs for a photo op.

We wandered up a path to get a good jungle photo, but stumbled onto private property. The owner shared some of his bayberries with us (don’t worry, these are the edible kind).  We arrived at the outdoor spa covered in red juice from the berries, but they allowed us in anyway.

Enjoyed the mud and various other types of pools, but avoided the sauna, figuring we had already sweated enough for one day. Broke for lunch, eating local boar something or other and some noodles. For desert, we shared an expensive coffee from the famous Dongshan coffee plantations. Relaxed for a couple of hours in the spa, before heading back to Xinying.

Arrived at the bar in Xinying and ordered drinks, only to be told that the owner, Shou-ting  (aka Sue), was taking us and the bar tender to the night market. Desperately tried to down our beers, but Sue promised that someone would put the beers in the fridge. We wandered with our local guides through a typical night market of greasy food, strange clothes, and mountains of hair accessories.  When we got back to the bar, our drinks were still on the table, hot and flat.

Slept in a bit longer on Monday before catching the train an hour south to Tainan. The bus to the historical district took nearly as long as the train and the heat was excruciating. But we still wandered through the historical markets and sampled Asia’s version corn dogs. Watched the dragon boat race through a sea of umbrellas.  Gave up and decided to beat the crowd to the train station so we could have a seat for half of the journey, stood near the bathroom for the other half.

It was a well-deserved relaxing break!