Do You Believe in Life after Love

It has been a month in Taiwan. That in itself is pretty crazy.
After the typhoon, the city is back to normal and normal life is starting for me...which means work, and having "the regular" at the tea shop across the street, and purchasing my own scooter dubbed "the beast", and experiencing the normalcy of life here in Kaohsiung.

The other day we also experienced an earthquake quite early in the morning and this was what it looked like:
My roommate Sandra runs into my room in the wee hours of the morning...like 8 AM and yells, "it's an earthquake" with her sexy Mexican accent and morning voice.
from my deep slumber and half-conscious, i grumble, "oh, i thought you were just shaking my bed"
"why would i do that?" she asks half-surprised.
"you know, i'm not too sure. not too sure at all."

And then, thanks to our intense elementary school training, we proceeded to stand in our doorways until the aftershock subsided. We also figured since we are on the top 15th floor, if anything happened, we could just surf down with no worry that others would fall on top of us. It's a win win situation. But alas, nothing happened and we are alive and well.

....


Recently I have also began playing basketball with my friends. I live right next to the world games arena and there are nice basketball courts that we go out and play on almost everyday. Now I might be 5'2 but my junior high basketball skills are slowly coming back to me, and as i am below everyone's line of vision, I just dribble right under them and that is how real sports should be played. Plus I have the whole trash talking down, "u.g.l.y. you aint got no..." which is probably the best part of sports anyways. It gets pretty heated.

Also this weekend a friend, cooper, from home came to visit and I, for the first time, got to play tour guide. I explained that there is a 7-11 on every block and that you can even pay your bills there, I explained the use of face masks as protection from smog and not from SARS, that there are karaoke bars everywhere and some are even karaoke strip clubs (hilarious AND true), the fact that we have an Ikea and a Costco, the monkeys, and even showed him how amazing the people of Taiwan are and how easy it is to live here.

He saw a small example of the kindness of people here after i had a small spill on my scooter when my breaks went out and I literally got ambushed by little Taiwanese women trying to heal me and clean me up. They were on their hands and knees pouring water into the wounds as a man on a scooter offered what I can only assume was antibacterial cream and as another man checked and miraculously fixed my breaks. All this before I could even say xiexie, thank you. It was such a perfect way to get hurt because by the time I even got to see the scrapes, they were all cleaned up and disinfected. What a country!

My little spill on the scooter. "The beast" as I have gently named it, thought I said go, but what I really meant was "Good God, stop for the love of all mankind!" Oh what a hilarious misunderstanding.


We also went exploring and climbed some pretty huge and spiky rocks by the ocean.
If you look really closely, that is me On top of that boulder, which might as well be the biggest boulder in all the world.


I have been exploring the night markets which stink of stinky tofu...that is the actual name, stinky tofu, I have played with the monkeys on monkey mountain which is a lot scarier than cute little monkeys you might think of, i have gotten lost driving around the city, I have climbed trees and rocks, been bitten by mosquitoes, climbed mountains, avoided cockroaches, and have begun living.



Teaching is a bit tougher than I thought because you have a classroom of 15 10-year olds who don't speak English and have ADD and yell, "Teacher teacher...uhfihi fueisfg" in Chinese as I explain to them for the twenty third time that I don't speak Chinese so I just assume that they always have to go pee. But I am getting used to it and they are fun and quirky and very smart so when I get a chance, I will post photos. I also start teaching a kindergarten class in a week, so that should be fun too! I also tutor a group of high schoolers and this week we are learning the lyrics to a song by Greenday, their choice not mine. Had it been my choice, I probably would have taught them something by Cher because how funny would a bunch of Taiwanese high schoolers singing "Do you believe in life after love?" look like! There will come day...I promise.


So there it is.
My life in Taiwan so far.
So far so good.
One month.
I do believe in life after love.
Much more to come....

I want to ride my scooter...i want to ride it now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRZn5wrktwA&feature=related

Typhoon Time!!

So currently I am sitting around with Sandra, Courtney, Danielle, Anthony and Ben while a typhoon is throwing itself a VIP party outside...and we are NOT invited. These past few days we have been hibernating inside watching 24 with short spurts of trips to 7-11 to get refreshments. The typhoon is like no storm I have ever been in. Winds were reported about 89 miles an hour and reached 112 in teipei. Crazy it is. So we have all been here hanging out and anthony's landord just called and told them that their apartment was flooded so they left for a bit to dry their apartment and bring a change of clothes. Apparently the drain on their porch was clogged and the water from the storm seeped through into their place.

And I was talking to my friend Brian who lives up north in Taiwan and he said that they tried going out on a scooter yesterday and one of their friends got thrown off from the back of the scooter! he is ok, but what a crazy story!!

Anyways enough about the typhoon, its getting too much attention and i think it is growing because of all the attention we are feeding it.

Everything else is wonderful. I have acquired a few jobs and am deciding which jobs to take with the best schedules. I will tell more of the jobs when I have exact details. It is finally hitting me that I am living here, in Taiwan!! and though its a crazy thought, it's a reassuring one and it makes me feel good to know that I can feel home in such a place as this.

On My Run tonight

I went running today in the humidity and the dark but never having felt safer in my life, let me tell you what it is like. Everyone stares. That is no shock to me anymore, neither it is as exciting as it was at first. But now I can appreciate the subtleties that Kaohsiung has to offer.
By our house there is a river and these bridges that intersect one another. I think it was built for the world games because it is new and beautiful and lit up with these beautiful white lights that give this area the Christmas glow. I began going on the bridge that overlooks the highway, and it might have been the humidity, or the beautiful Brazilian tango I was listening to, but in that moment, one word just hit me and I could not get it out of my head. For all the great things the hippies have done for our culture, I think the one setback is the cheapening of the meaning of the word harmony. And this is my own accusation, but I just don't want my story about Taiwan to sound like a peace and love fest...which it is. But the word harmony just sat there, on the river, the lights, the muffled sound of the scooters passing by underneath, the children running around, the sound of the humidity. It was simply serene.
thats it. i just wanted to share that word for today. harmony. think about it. use it. try to feel it. but if you simply cant, just come on down my way and i will take you that bridge at night with the lights and the heat, and the sounds of traffic with the haze of the city lights in the background, and you will somehow understand.