Last Message from Taiwan

This will probably be my last blog post from Taiwan. It has been quite an adventure over here - many stories and memories I will keep with me for the rest of my life. I have learned a lot about a part of the world that I never thought I would be in - culture, customs, traditions and people. I have also learned a lot about people and organizations - both good and bad (which I will probably be posting more about a little bit down the road).

There is one thing I have tried to do in my "recent life" - which I define as somewhere between my sophomore and junior year in college - and that is this: To never leave somewhere, someone or something wishing I had done more. It is a simple motto that I have tried to live by.

Coming to Taiwan, I had 3 goals: 1. To do as good as a job possible when I was working. 2. To travel the region. 3. To learn some Chinese.

I can say without a doubt I have accomplished all of my goals - and more. Although a full disclosure on work (specifically the headhunting organization that got me here) will be withheld for a little while longer, I know by the reaction of the kids when they leave the school towards me, the fun that they are having in my class and the comfort and ease they acquire with foreigners their culture and their language (or me) that I have done my best here teaching english and western culture to these kids.

While here, I have been fortunate to visit 2 other countries: Hong Kong and Singapore. Before I arrived to Taiwan in February (hell, before I decided to go to these places) I probably couldn't have found either of these places on a map (or even Taiwan). Now, I can probably rattle off not only a list of countries in southeast Asia and point them out on a map, but I can say I know people, from many of these countries and even can give travel advice to 3 of them. Although I would have loved to visit Thailand, Korea and Japan while over here, the fact that I was able to see Hong Kong, Singapore and have for the past 2 months been covering a lot of Taiwan has made me more than content in achieving my second objective.

The final objective, until the past 6 weeks or so, I thought I was going to fail at. I had learned a couple of words and knew a handful of characters, but I had not really learned anything useful. Well, as of now, I can cuss like a Chinese sailor and have a Chinese name: "Shou Dee Dee Da Gee Gee", which would translate literally into "My little brother, the big chicken chicken". I'll let you figure out what that could mean...

I would say that I now have a vocabulary (of either words I can speak or characters that I know what they repesent individually) of close to 90 words. Not bad for 6 weeks of learning on the fly.

All in all, I have to say that my experience in Taiwan has been amazing and that anyone who has a chance should visit this tiny island country for as long as they can.

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Now, for the "Best Names List" for this last week of school:

Afra - and she's Chinese!
Billion - but he knows a dozen words!
Bunny - she doesn't like carrots!
Enzo - he is a Taiwanese students who is at an English school being taught by Americans and chose his name because he thought it sounded Italian. Try to keep up...
Moon - she left because she was homesick - twice!
Jimmy - who is Jet's identical twin brother (who we had 2 weeks ago)!

Until next time...

Letters from Students

So last week I forgot to post some of the letters from the students I recieved. Enjoy.

(All are posted as they were written)


Mr. RJ:

You are my funny teacher in the school. Thanks for teach! And tanks for you story yesterday!

from Heidi Wang

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Dear Mr. RJ:

THANK you to bring we to river! it is so fun! and goodto play! Frisbee is fun too!

(P.S: DON'T FORGET ME!!!)

By student Julie Leu

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Thank you Mr. RJ happy from Angel

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Dear RJ:

you are so funny. thank you. and handsom! (by the way, she underlined the word "handsom")

Jennifer Chang

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Mr. RJ:

You are very funny!! You are very funny!!!!! on your class, I learned a lot of thing!!! thank you!!

I LOVE YOU! MR. RJ <3

Judy

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To: Mr. RJ (Thursday)

My name is Becky, thant for your teach this week! I will not froget your!

P.S I will came back! wait me!

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Mr. RJ:

Your class make me scary, but, I like your talking, and your teaching.

RJ is tall

Rachel

10 Days...

My time in Taiwan is reaching the final week and a half - which means I'm now in travel mode. This week has been spent cleaning the apartment, buying a second big suitcase, buying gifts to take back home, and shipping things home. Next week will be spent by me working until July 30 - and being I leave early on July 31st I need to get everything done this week.

I have also been putting together an outline for my trip to the northeast US/Canada when I get back and here is a tentative schedule:

August 8, 9: Williamsburg
August 10, 11: Pittsburg
August 12: Niagra Falls
August 12, 13: Toronto
August 14, 15, 16: Ottawa
August 17: Lake George
August 18, 19, 20: Ocean City
August 21: Columbia

Looks to be a fun trip.

Anyhow, I have decided when I get home I will be posting a lot of videos I have taken over here in Taiwan. A lot of these videos are really cool, but being they are a few minutes long (and I don't have the greatest internet connection) it isn't really feasible to upload them here. So rest assured, more entertainment from Taiwan is still coming your way - even when I'm back in America.

Being Followed

Being followed is not fun - especially when you know you are being followed. During my time in Taiwan, I have had the feeling that I have been followed since day 1. The worst part is, the people following me have not even been very stealthy. Who has been following me? Garbage trucks.



As the video shows, these things are very joyful sounding. They play songs similar to the songs you hear in America when ice cream trucks are approaching. But seriously, EVERYWHERE I go, I hear these bloody trucks.

When I was in Kuosheng a few weeks ago, I hear this song for 5 hours straight - but I never once saw the truck. When I was in Kenting a few weeks ago, I was walking up the main road and the trash truck was following me the entire time I was walking up the road. I turn around to walk down the road and ANOTHER truck follows me down the road. In Danshui this past weekend, a trash truck and its lovely tune followed me the entire time. In Yilan while I was in the cold spring, I could hear a truck singing its lovely tune in the distance the entire time. Bloody hell, these things are following me!

Danshui and Yilan

This past weekend I went on a trip up to Danshui and then took a bus to Yilan. Danshui is in the northwest part of Taipei county and is a coastal area. It's about a 40 minute ride on the MRT from the Taipei 101 area.

Danshui is a pretty popular area for both locals and tourists. The area has a boardwalk type area where there are lots of little shops filled with every type of trinket imaginable. I even found (and bought) a boob stress ball. Definitly going on my desk when I get home.

But while in Danshui, I found my favorite translated sign to date. In fact, the reason I like this sign is not because it was translated poorly. No. In fact, I like it because it is perfectly translated from Chinese to English. Take a look:





The next day I headed to Yilan. Now there are a few things to do in Yilan: a big nightmarket, McDonalds and a natural cold spring. I'll start with the natural cold spring.

I don't even know why they call it a spring, because in my opinion, it has the opposite effect. But anyhow, this thing was C-O-L-D. It costs $NT 300 (or $10) to get a private room for 45 minutes. And by private room, I mean you can hear everything going on around you - which is people usually screaming about how cold the water is.

The water had some kind of minerals also - I had a bunch of bubbles on my body while I was in the water. It was like bathing in a bathtub full of Sprite or something. But truth be told, I was not really savoring my time in the cold spring water.

The nightmarket in Yilan is pretty big and has a few things you can't find in other nightmarkets in Taiwan. They have a vendor stand that sells a special cake that is unique to that nightmarket. The place I stayed in Yilan was a freaky horror-movie quality place. I won't put the details online, but lets say I'm not intending on going anywhere near that place again. Freaky.

But the time in Yilan and Danshui was definitly time well spent. Here are a few other pictures from the roadtrip:

Being a Bad Role Model for Small Kids

Yes, I believe that I am a bad role model for small kids. I realized that this week (although others were astounded I hadn't realized this before now).

I'll go back a few weeks (or months maybe). Now learning a little bit of Chinese isn't very interesting to me if I'm learning words I will never use. But I find that I can quickly and easily learn words that my mother would not be proud of. In fact, on several occasions, kids have tried to teach me how to say certain words (for example, "Chicken Steak") and I do a minor mispronounciation and everyone starts laughing. Me not knowing why asks them, "What did I say?" They then tell me that I said a really dirty word. Now a good role model would say something like "Sorry" but not me. I ask them to pronounce for me the "dirty" word, then go to one of the Taiwanese staff members and have them tell me what it means. Talk about a bad role model.

Another example happened this week. I was walking the kids over the bridge and below us is the river. In the river that day there were several people swimming. I hear all the boys yelling down things (which by now I know is never a good thing) and hear them all laughing. I then hear the people below us yell something back. I ask a kid who speaks good english what the students had yelled. He told me that they were making fun of the people swimming and told them to put some clothes on because they weren't that bad looking. Now a good role model would have made the boys apologize to the people and would have yelled at them. Me? I started laughing and said, "That's pretty funny."

Horrible.

There are other stories like this that I'm sure I'll post later, but just know: I am not a good role model for impressionable children.

Updates and Things to Look for

My time in Taiwan is quickly coming to an end, which is bittersweet - especially when it comes to this blog. I have found it to be very useful in conveying things that I have been doing to a wide amount of people, so when I talk to them after an extended period of time they know what I have been doing and I get to spend more time talking about things away from my world. With my return planned for July 31st, my blog will have to take on a new form altogether, as I will be more or less doing nothing all that exciting.

With that being said, I am thinking of ideas to write about that would be interesting for me and interesting to those of you who have taken time to read this. I must say, it is always a thrill to get an email from someone who said they liked something in one of my posts.

In the past (and some recently) I've fallen back on political/economic related postings. Although I find my own views interesting and correct, I'm sure that if you're reading this, you're not reading it to see what I am thinking about a certain political topic.

When it comes to business and all things related (whether it be my own personal experiences working for other companies and just expanding out my thoughts or the work that has been done and will be continued on Biomagine) I find it that it can be interesting, but that more than 1 or 2 articles a month on that would find me lacking much quality and original thought - so I need to find other things to write about as well.

So in short, I will be needing to think about what I will continue to post on this blog, but will love any suggestions. It seems that my friends and family seem to know what I enjoying doing and talking about more than I do most of the time, so let me know if there is anything you want me to write about.

Moving on...

Today was my birthday. It was spent working here at the school and getting sunburnt. All in all, not much different than any other day, which is fine with me. I do feel my age catching up on me. Being 24 is different than 23. Hearing goes, vision fails, things don't work...

Just kidding.

The other day I walked around a part of Taipei I hadn't visited before and came across a pretty neat temple. Now in reality, most of these temples look a lot alike from the outside - and if you just walked through without paying much attention, they would look a lot alike from the inside too.

But this temple was a bit different when I walked inside. They had statues of people lining the walls where the entance/exit ways were. The ceilings were very decorative and there was a place for burning papermoney for your dead ancestors (or whyever they do it). Here are a few pictures of this temple (which was at the entrance of the Raohe Street night market):







Well, the countdown is now at 18 days until I'm back in the States. I did see that Frank Turner has 3 concerts scheduled in November around my area (and by "around" I mean within 6 hours roundtrip). Gamecock football will be starting about a month after I get back as well - but I'm still not sold on being excited about that just yet. Made that mistake for 3 years, but maybe this year will be the year...

Until next time...

Southern Taiwan

After a bit of traveling around Taiwan, I can now say I am glad I decided to stay on this island rather than travel to another country.

From Thursday to Monday I was traveling around southern Taiwan. I went to Tainan, Kaoshiung and Kenting. Southern Taiwan reminded me a bit of Singapore - more sunny, hot and windy. A lot of the people in southern Taiwan don't speak mandarin Chinese, but the local Taiwanese language.

I think I could write a bit about my time and experience there, but I think I'll just post pictures and let those speak for me. Most of the pictures are from Kenting.