I have settled in nicely to my new digs, and things are going well at the school. Eva (our receptionist, clerk, manager) accompanied me to the hospital on Wednesday for all of my tests. These are the tests that are necessary in order for my boss, Emily, to apply for my Alien Residency Visa (A.R.C.).
Once I have my A.R.C., I am offcially a landed immigrant in Taiwan, and I am entitled to work and benefit from their medical coverage.
The hospitals here are amazing! They are actually fast, efficient, and friendly. This part of the system is very similar to Quebec. We get a medicare card and everything! Once we have this card, any visit to a dentist or a doctor will cost me about $100NT ($5.00 Canadian). So I did the pre-requisite tests, did an ex-ray and had a blood test.
After the testing, Eva drove me back to where I had parked my moped (we had rendez-vouzed on the main street). I went back home, grabbed a bite to eat, and then scooted over to school for my first class.
I have three classes (soon to be four). My first class of the day is at 2pm (until 4:30), and consists of nine kids (ages 7 & 8 ...and one 6 year old who is my best student). Here they are:
Top row: Anthony, Joyce, Grace, Maggie, and Willa (my 6 year old)Bottom row: Darren, Nathan, Jack, Lily, and Judy.
My second class is from 4:40 until 6:10 and there are three 10 or 11 year old girls in the class: Jackie, Kiki, and Mary.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I also have a class from 7:30 until 9:00, and there are two kids in that class (13 years old): Sean and Maggie.
Nicole is going to start teaching Kindergarten in a couple of weeks (we currently have no Kindergarten class, it is only scheduled to begin in a couple of weeks). When Nikki starts teaching the Kindergarten, I will take over her evening class on Monday and Wednesday night (11 kids, ages 11,12 &13). The new teacher who is supposed to start in January will take Nikki's day classes and the one evening class that Nikki does on Tuesday and Thursday.
On Friday afternoons there is a market in town where there are about 50 stalls of jade merchants and antique dealers. Nikki and I went this week for a little while. It was neat! I picked up a small jade piece for a friend of mine and Pierre's. She is a fanatic for Oriental items... I know she will love it! Getting there was half the fun, actually. You have to drive down the main strip until you get to this one little side street... you go down the side street for a few meters until you see a small opening between two buildings. The small opening opens into an alley wide enough for one or two mopeds.... you follow the alley until you come to a clearing behind a Buddhist mission...and there is a giant tent where the Jade market is held every Friday from 12 to 2.
Neat, eh?
We browsed around for a bit, and then we went to work.
The way school works here, the grade school children (gardes 1 to 6) only go to school half days except on Friday when they go for a full day. So, we have classes with them in the afternoons from Monday to Thrursday because the children are not at Chinese school. On Fridays, however, Nikki and I each only have 1 class from 4 to 6 because the students are at their full day of Chinese school. Since we have the free time, we also have our weekly staff meetings on Friday at 2.
There are really only about 50 non-Chinese people in Chiayi, and there is a girl named Natacha who knows all of them, so she is the chick to meet!! Nichole and I went and met Natacha (she is very nice... which is probably WHY she knows everybody, LOL!) and we got some Papaya Milk (the only word that you will ever realy need to know in Chinese, other than "hello" and "Thank You" is "Mogwai-Neonai"... it means Papaya Milk... this stuff is really good, LOL!
We chatted for awhile, then Natacha came over to our place and met the kitten. Afterwards,
Nikki and I went for a drive over to the West side of the city.
Nikki and I live on the Eastern edge of Chiayi: the street that runs behind out building is literally the border of Chiayi and countryside (although the "country side" looks like suburbs). On a clear day, looking West, we should be able to see the mountains that tower over the city. Unfortunately, due to the constant pollution and haze: we never see the mountains. Nikki says she's has seen them ONCE in the three months that she has been here: the amount of smoke and dust in the air is terrible!
We headed out towards the west side of town (which is where Natacha lives) and we drove up, past the Western limits of Chiayi, into the mountains. The scenery is incredible! Lush fields of sugar cane and palm trees! It's unbelieveable what a difference it is from our side of the city! ...looking out our kitchen window, we see the fields and farms (and a few buildings off in the distance) but over here on the west, it is like the Rockies (except they are green all the way to the tips!)! The mountains tower up over the city, and they are covered with thick, rich, green vegetation!! Every square inch has been touched though: there is nowhere that you dont realize that these 'forests" are manicured... but they are certainly beautiful! Also, once we got up into the mountains, I saw whole flocks of what looked like humming birds! In fact, in the entire week that I have been here, I haven't seen more than a handful of birds: which is really strange! There are absolutely NONE to be seen, except in cages, so I was really pleased to hear the sounds of nature again, and see some actual birds!
Anyway, to finish my story, we drove up into the mountain today and stopped beside a reservoir called Reni-Tan. There is a huge dam of some sort, and beside it there was a "sight seeing" area where people can park their cars and mopeds (lots of mopeds, LOL!). People often spend the afternoons there on saturday and Sunday.
Tonnes of people were, believe it or not, flying kites. There were whole families up there doing just that, LOL! In fact, we were amused to note, it was mostly the older people flying kites and the children were standing around looking bored, LOL!
There were a bunch of food vendors, so Nikki and I had snacks. The one "snack" that she and I both avoided is something that Nikki calls "stinky Tofu"... it is literally what it sounds like. It is deep fried or baked or grilled or whatever (they use it in all kinds of things) but the smell is enough to make your stomach leap out of your throat. I had smelled it a couple of times this past week without realizing that it WASN'T rotting garbage that I was smelling. Yuck.It is indescribably stinky. I don't know what on earth ever posessed someone to think that it might actually taste good!!! In fact, I think the first person to taste it must have done it on a dare. It smells vaguely like warm dog poo on a hot spring day, mixed with rotting vegetables and cheese gone bad. How is that for horrific?
They drench the stuff in sauces and spices (and sometimes bake it into pies!?!?) but no amount of burying it in condiments will EVER make me so desperate as to actually try it!
Anyway, after we successfull avoided the stinky tofu, it was starting to get dark... it was really cool because we had a HUGE red sun hanging above the mountains, and, if we turned around we had a huge white moon hanging over the lake!!! We noticed that a lot of the mopeds were starting to leave, so we did the same. We drove back down into Chiayi and stopped for coffee at a fancy sh-mancy coffee shop on the main road (called the Pahydophadilium). Coffee here really is very expensive: in fact, we each had a Cafe Latte and they were $7.00 Canadian each! (We figured that we might as well spend the extra $2.00 because just a regular filtered coffee was $5.00!) ...so you can well understand why I've asked Pierre to mail me a couple of packages of VanHoute coffee from home, LOL!
Well, that was our big outting for today. I know it doesn't sound like we did an awful lot, but it is about a half an hour drive up to the mountains, and a half hour back, and we did spend a lot of time up by the lake! :-)
The road that takes you up to the lake is reached via a fork in the road. If you turn left you head into the lake district.... if you continue straight (Which we are planning to do either on Sunday, or next weekend) you arrive at an IMMENSE statue of the Buddah! I can't wait to see it! I'll post pictures when we get there!
Well, that's it for now! I have to get out of this internet cafe: the smoke and noise is crazy, LOL! (I have found a way to get my own back at them, though, I have accessed my MP3s on line, and I am playing music full blast **hahaha** at least it is drowning out the noise form their damn video games, LOL!)
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