Lukang!

Paper lanterns, hand painted fans, and hand crafted wooden shoes, are all normal goods one would find in the little town of Lukang (pronounced Lugang). I've been trying to get there for the past 4 months I've been in Taiwan. Word on the street, or rather, rumor in the school halls has it as the best place for pictures and for suvinears.

Lukang was historically the 3rd largest city in Taiwan. That is until the early 20th century. It used to be a famous harbor, but the city refused to have the railroad gain access to its boundaries. As a result, Lugang escaped much of the modernization that destroyed most of Taipei's historical buildings, and in essence is much the same as it was 100 and something years ago.

Lukang is also home to the only person that is known as a National Treasure. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the dear man's name, but he is a National Treasure, because his craft of making and handpainting paper lanterns has become a lost art. Through him and his family, the craft has survived.

When we first got to his shop, the gentleman wasn't there, but his son was handpainting some clothes.

This design that he is painting became part of a beautiful flower. He also painted matching pair of pants with a really cool bamboo design on it. I ended up going paper lantern happy and bought four.
This one I had personalized for me, and Mom, this is a Christmas spoiler. The next lantern shown is for you.
It was only one of the amazingly awesome stops that day. We went to some really cool temples, got rained on, saw where they made insence for the temples, and also saw wooden shoes being made.
Above are these enormous steamers where they cook these roll like things with meat inside. Fenny, my Taiwanese friend, was so excited to try them. It was funny, I was excited for the shopping, and Miss Fenny was excited for all the different food she could get. Below is a video from the wooden shoe store where they fit the shoe to your foot. It's pretty much amazing!(Linds, this would be a X-mas spoiler for you, but considering I won't see you at X-mas or shortly thereafter, it may not be such a bad thing :) )


Below are some other pics of the place. Enjoy!

Halloween!!!

So I do realize that this is a few weeks late, but I still wanted to write about the fabulousness of Halloween. I have to say that the week of Halloween was treacherous, and incredibly stressful. My 3rd graders decided that they wanted to make pinatas for our Halloween activity that was to be held on Friday. They actually completed their pinatas. My 4th graders on the other hand were not so quick to complete their assignment--I ended up making 4 pinatas at the last minute. And with the humidity, let me tell you that it took forever for those suckers to dry out.

Halloween ended up being really fun. My Basic Reading class dressed up. Larson was Spiderman, and Belinda was Dracula complete with a cape made from a black trash bag--yeah, they get pretty creative over here. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go around with my kids through all the activities. Instead I helped out with the afternoon kindergarten class as they went trick or treating to the different classrooms of the school. They were very cute, but also very active. I was grateful to have my class back at the end of the day.

The Kindergartners trick or treating.

Me and Zoe.

My BR class. William, Jason, Aragon, Larson, Emily, Penny, Belinda and Becca

My third graders also go into the Halloween spirit and almost all of them dressed up. I was really glad that they were so excited about the whole ordeal. My other 2 classes were too cool for school. And they really weren't that fun.

My 3rd Graders showing off their pinatas.

Front row: Penny, Jenny, and Jacky.

Back Row: Michelle, Eve, Cheryl, Sabrina, and Brian.

Halloween night we had a girls night and went KTVing (karaoke). It was fabulous! We all wore our costumes, and got some strange looks from the locals. I also had several people come up to me and ask if they could have their picture taken with me. It was crazy! I ended up losing my voice, and had a rough time the following morning teaching. But all in all, it was definitely work it!

Why my students are so cool...

As many of you know, I teach four different classes. My Enrichment class meets from 6:40-8:40 pm Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It's pretty laid back. Lately my students have taken to playing chicken foot, in addition to Uno, and Phase 10. Here's what my students came up with at the end of class....

Yeah. They're cool.

What is that thing?

This is what you would call a pomelo. Aragon, one of my Basic Reading students, always brings me fruit. First, it was three amazing mangos. Then last week he brought me this amazingly huge citrus.

It was incredibly good, and I'm incredibly grateful to Aragon and his awesome parents!

Happy Birthday Lindsey!

The birthday girl, Lindsey, and Rachelle.

Our little girl is all grown up! Lindsey, the youngest of our Berhan crew turned 21 in the recent past and to celebrate we took a trip to Costco (yes, we have a Costco, and it is glorious!). Lindsey was craving some Costco cake, so we took the 30 minute scooter ride to Taichung. Unfortunately, we forgot how large Costco cakes are, so we had to improvise a bit. Jake, one of the other teachers, recently found access to a scooter, and prides himself on looking Taiwanese. That's why he's all covered up in his pictures. The Taiwanese, don't like to get any sun--the whiter you are, the better. Anyways, I hope Lindsey had a fabulous birthday!

Megan and Jake.

Lindsey and Megan getting the cake home.

Green Island!!!

So it's taken me a long time to actually finish blogging about my trip, and I have a couple more that I need to get done as well. So here goes!

We got to Green Island when it was almost dark. We rented scooters, and by the time we got to our hostel, the only gas station on the island was closed. So we basically didn't have a way to get around the island.

Our first night we walked around, did the typical touristy thing, and went shopping. Boy did we go shopping. We ran into a lot of foreigners including three Frenchmen. It was kinda funny because we normally don't see anyone in our little town of Feng Yuan.

The next morning we got up at the crack of dawn and went snorkeling. It was apart of our package, so we went out to this little snorkel shop, got our gear, and then scootered back to the beach. It was overcast, and a bit cold. The water seemed pretty menacing, and not very pretty. Our guide didn't speak a lick of English, and when we first got to the beach he handed us these leaves. We had no clue what they were for. Well, supposedly they were to wipe off our goggles, so we didn't have to spit on them to keep them from fogging up. Snorkeling was fabulous. Even though it was cloudy outside, the colors under the water were brilliant. We saw all kinds of fish, eels, coral, etc. Our guide kept on diving down, killing the clams, and eating them. I have to admit that I got sea sick because they made us wear life jackets.

After our little jaunt at snorkeling, we rode around the island. It's tiny, so it took about 1/2 hour to do so. Rachelle, my scooter partner, and I had an exhilerating time. Here's a video to document part of our wild ride around the island: Just kidding. I didn't know I was recording sideways, so I'll post them as soon as I figure out how to rotate them. So be excited!

Anywho, Green Island is a bit like Alcatrez in that Taiwan used to ship all of their prisoners to the prison there. The whole prison theme is felt throughout the island with restaurants, shops, and a tour of the prison.

Other awesome things: petting a real deer and all of the amazing beaches!

The trip home on the barf barge wasn't nearly as terrible, but it was nice to finally be on solid ground again. It was an amazing trip!

River rafting in Taiwan--not for the weak at heart

Yes, I rafted down that river. Yes, I had a near death experience. And yes, I obviously conquered the river (it may look tame, but a few river bends previous it was pretty vicious).

Saturday of our trip we woke up early to go river rafting: 6 Americans and one Taiwanese. We met up at the river rafting company's office to find ourselves with several hundred other Taiwanese natives. The difference between rafting in America and rafting in Taiwan is that everything is explained in Chinese, and that they don't have river rafting guides in each of the boats. For some strange reason we didn't expect it to be too bad, but man were we mistaken. We were put in a boat with another two Taiwanese, a Texan and a Frenchman. We happened to be the only people who spoke English, so they thought we should all be together. It was a blast. We started out being in front of all of the other rafts (there were at least 100) and we definitely prided ourselves about that fact. Everyone else seemed content on floating down the river, and engaging in seemingly high schoolish water fights. And everyone was bent on getting the Americans. Every time another raft got close to us, they tried to soak us. It never worked. Are you kidding me? No one's a match for a group of Americans (yes, I'm proud to be an American).

About two hours into the trip, and after two hours of very tame water, it was lunch time. They fed us rice boxes (which are amazing) and gave us time to mingle with the other participants (which we didn't). When it was time to continue on, they told us to link 4 rafts to a motor boat, so they could pull us through the rapids. As we tried to link our raft, we got lost and started floating down the river. No one came to our rescue so we braced ourselves for the worst. And I was incredibly proud of our group. We definitely conquered the rapids. It wasn't until we were half way through the rough part that a motor boat felt like they should hook us on to tow us through the rest. Bad idea. Really bad idea. As soon as we were hooked on they whipped us around into a rough rapid that tried to suck our raft in, and then yanked us out. The force flipped our raft over and we were caught in the currents. Gotta admit it was a pretty horrifying event. Some of us got trapped under the raft for a while, while others floated down the river, until some of the other rafts decided to give us a hand. I whacked my knee pretty badly on a couple of large rocks hidden just below the surface. By the time I got back into our raft, there were just 3 of the original 11. And we had 2 paddles. It would have been funny if it weren't so scary. By the end of the trip we ended up all getting back together minus a pair of eye glasses and a helmet that belonged to the Texan. All in all it was fabulous. I'd definitely go again.

After the rafting trip we had about 1 1/2 to get to Taitung where we needed to catch the last boat to Green Island. We thought there would be a bus stop at the end of the river rafting route, but boy were we wrong. We stood on a bridge and looked like hitch hikers--after a while, the thought actually crossed our minds. Fenny tried everything she could to find us a way to get to Taitung. She stopped a motorcyclist, old men with a flat-bed truck, and a tour bus. Finally we spotted a taxi driver who stopped and told us that he and his friend could take us to Taitung. He called his friend, and we waited....and waited....and waited.

What happened next was the most horrifying taxi ride I've ever been in my life. First of all the seat belts in the back seat were stuck underneath the seat, and we couldn't reach them with any effort. Our driver was insane. He sped at an incredibly high speed and passed cars when he shouldn't have. Seriously. Passed cars on our way up hills, over double yellow lines, and when it was obvious another car was coming our way. He got so close to another car once that left side mirror broke, and the glass went flying. It was seriously insane. But he got us to our boat--the Barf Barge--with time to spare.

More about the Barf Barge and Green Island later.

Laters!