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....