Can I have some familiar food please!

We watched Treasure Island yesterday and Orlando Bloom's character, Ben is stranded on the island for three years. He has an unnatural desire for cheese! "Cheese is like a piece of heaven!" That's how we feel right now! I want some decent cheese with my omelette, and some real cream in my coffee and what about something fresh and raw?! Don't get me wrong Taiwanese food is fantastic and it IS fresh, but it's not raw. It's not that crispy cool salad with nuts and peppers and crunchy carrots. It's all cooked! 

So what? Make yourself a salad then! Well we don't have a fridge at the moment which means most of the ingredients to make a decent salad will go off! Did I mention double cream greek yoghurt?! So we can't make a salad! 

We tried a Korean restaurant the other day, and I ordered a "salad." It consisted of, onions, spring onions and sweet corn! Renalda had a bibimbap, which was actually pretty awesome, it comes in a thick steel bowl and is still sizzling when they place it in front of you. The rice at the bottom congeals and gets fried into a crispy delicious crust which is a little crunchy and a little chewy, but fabulously tasty. I had serious order envy! I had a few bites ;)

We also had a Korean hotpot at our downstairs food vendor, and tried a 1000 year old egg. The hot pot was something like a moerby stew, with everything under the sun in it. We ordered one with beef, but found pieces of fish, shellfish and other unidentified morsels in it. The egg varied in colour from translucent turquoise to black and grey. It's consistency was a little chewy, runny in places and powdery in others and it tasted like strong blue cheese mixed with stinky egg and is something I won't do again. 

We found out last night that all "barbecue" places aren't barbecues! We quite enjoy the Taiwanese barbecue shops. You get a little basket and choose some meat and veg which is then chopped up and fried or just mixed with some spices. We were walking around town last night when we saw what we thought was a barbecue. The options were the same, the baskets were the same, we just failed to notice the cardboard bowls that everything was served in. We made our selection, and were then asked what kind of noodles we wanted. We selected some, and then were handed a huge bowl of soup and a bag of cooked noodles. All quite delicious, but cooked, and now we know some barbecues are soup places, which is great, because we quite like soup! 

Unfortunately no food photos this time. Tuesday is payday and we have decided we will buy a little piece of heaven to satisfy at least one craving. Matsusei, the expensive, Japanese supermarket in DaJia, does have decent cheese, at a decent price. However we are still living on savings, so we haven't bought any. That will change soon. Cream? Not so much, and definitely no decent yoghurt, if I could find a cheap source of milk I'd make my own for sure, but it seems like dairy is not very important here.

Some sickly rest 27 March 2014

Sometimes getting sick has it's upsides. After school on Monday night I was pretty exhausted and I had a scratchy throat. By Tuesday morning I was feeling significantly worse, sore body, more runny nose than usual, mild headache. I decided to go to work anyway, but did manage an hour nap around 12. By the end of my second lesson I was toast! Seriously toast! I knew I was running a fever. All I wanted to do was lie down on a bed. Selena was talking to Renalda when she saw me and suggested she take my temperature. She did and it registered 38.8, which I think is relatively high.

She insisted that she take me to the doctor, immediately. It was 20m away, literally on the next corner. When I told them about the cardiac medication I take (quickly translated by Google), they bumped me closer to the front of the queue. They gave me a face mask as soon as they took my temperature. Finally they took a nasal swab and did a lateral flow test (think pregnancy test) for flu. They found that I had type A or B flu both of which can be quite serious. I got put off work for 5 days (3 days + weekend :( ) and was handed a mountain of medication. The medication includes a 5 day course of Tamiflu, and 12 individual packages with 5 tablets in each package, 3 per day for day time and one for night time to help me sleep! Then there's also a bottle of cough syrup. It cost me NT$1680 (~R580) in South Africa I suspect I would have paid closer to R1680!! And that's not the end of it. When I get my medical card it will be much much less! I think the consultation fee is NT$200 and the rest is free!

So ultimately this is allowing me to get some much needed rest. Unfortunately not the same for Renalda :( And to catch up on my blog, which is now as up to date as it's been in a while. See, getting sick has it's upsides ;)

Another week bites the dust - 23 Feb 2014

Wow, time flies! We have almost been working here for a month!! There have been ups and downs but we are both getting better at it. Renalda took some pics of one of her science class projects. They looked really great!

The solar system

I think the best part about being in Taiwan at the moment is the food! We are certainly giving everything a try. Below is some blood curd soup we tried, and below that is some beef soup, something of a staple for us at the moment.

Blood curd soup - not as bad as it sounds, quite yummy

Beef Soup - definitely yummy

The lady at the place where we got the aforementioned dishes was somewhat upset that we hadn't ordered her oyster omelettes. We gestured that we would order one next time... we had had oyster omelettes before and were somewhat underwhelmed. She was however not to be deterred and minutes later an oyster omelette was on our table, gratis! It was indeed for us, the best oyster omelette in Taiwan as she was trying to tell us. She is Indonesian and speaks a little bit of English. 

We chatted for some time and decided to go back the next night to order some omelettes proper. Mistake. She took this as the queue to regale us with stories we didn't understand about her family and the Mazu God's whereabouts. We tried in vane to go home as by this time it was after 11pm, but she wouldn't let us go politely. We have had to avoid the place since then, hoping not to damage our guanxi. 

Rita making oyster omelettes

One of my new colleagues, Derek asked us to join him and some of his friends in Taichung for dinner on Saturday night. We went to the Little Tibet Restaurant which served both Indian and Tibetan dishes. It was in Taichung so we took a train and a bus. It took us 2 hours to get there!! We definitely need to get a scooter asap.

Most of us decided to opt for the Tibetan food as no one had had any before. It was super yummy, in true Indian style we shared all the dishes we ordered and split the bill equally. And some of us ate with our hands. The only Indian food we had to have was the garlic naan, I struggle to resist naan bread.

From bottom anticlockwise: Garlic naan, Tibetan deep fried bread x 2, Tibetan stir fried beef, butter chicken (I think), vegetables in blue cheese sauce (YUM)

Left to Right: Emily, Ping su, Renalda, Me and Derek (Colleague)

After dinner we went to the nightmarket literally down the next street, where they were selling the usual allotment of goodies, except it looked more upmarket that the other night markets we had been to. The lighting was brighter, the signage newer. Even the people seemed to be different, I can't quite describe how, but they were. We heard that the last train for DaJia would leave at 10:30 so we'd better move. We got on another bus, which was painfully slow and headed back to the Taichung Main Train station. Derek seemed to think we were super late and started running. Turns out we had a good few minutes to spare, so we stood on the platform catching our breath. Renalda bought some water from a vending machine, which turned out to be tea...they had used an empty tea bottle and filled it with water. Of course everyone who buys anything from a vending machine can read Chinese!

On Sunday we had planned to go to the Dakeng Scenic Area, a nature reserve of sorts where you can hike and cycle, but it was close to where we went the night before and we didn't really feel like travelling for 2 hours again before getting to our destination. We decided to give the mountains a rain check and we headed for the sea. 

I hadn't read the map very well so we got off at a random stop pretty far from the ocean and we had to wind our way through rice paddies to get to the sea. And wind we did! I'm not sure how they decide to cut up land for rice paddies, I guess it must be to do with the contours but they do seem quite random. Rice paddies are clearly hard work and there were a number of people in their paddies on Sunday morning. 

Triple story building...rice paddy. 

DaJia is known to produce the finest taro in Taiwan. Taro is a sweet potato like plant. We get a version of it in South African called the madumbi. Taiwanese taro is purple where madumbi is white. There are tons of sweet dishes made from taro around. The plant has an elephant ear leaf, which I realised was identical to the madumbi leaf I planted in Pretoria. So below is a field of taro.

A field of flooded taro - big brother of the African Potato

Symmetry among chaos

The symmetry of the rice paddies was quite striking. The paddies themselves were quite disorderly, but the actual rice was planted about 10cm apart in a row and the rows were seperated by about 20cm. I've seen it in vineyards and fruit orchards, but never on this small a scale.

Random cyclist sculpture

Factory farmed geese :(

We finally got to the ocean, but there wasn't much to see. Just a large expanse of brown sand and some small breakers further out, so we decided not to take pics. But there were tons of windmills. Taiwan appears to take renewables very seriously! And they really want everyone to recycle.

Renalda trying to slow down the turbine

Me trying just to touch it ;)

The scale of these things is unbelievable. I went to stand on one. The wind was blowing quite strongly but they were only doing 20-30rpm.

Where's Mark?....on the stairs at the bottom of the pillar!

We then looked for some food before getting a bus home. We couldn't communicate so we just settled for a bag of nuts and some beef jerky (not very yummy). The bus ride home was surprisingly quick, it would have been much quicker for us to have ridden down, but it was still a good day out.

We got home and took some laundry to the laundromat. Once that was done we went looking for a nearby highschool where we could do some exercise. The DaJia highschool has a tartan track and pullup bars, what else do you need ;) While walking around the track we noticed a group of kids playing volleyball, but the teams were 3 - 2 so we asked if we could join. They didn't seem too upset, so we got a half hour's worth of volleyball in too!! A really good day for the body.

We then bought some supper and went home to do some more cleaning. The floors needed to be vacuumed and washed. Just before bed, we both realised that we had made an elementary mistake, neither of us had sunhats or sunscreen on for the whole day in the tropical sun! My face looked like a lobster, Renalda looked a slightly lighter shade of pink ;)

We woke up the next morning and it was a little better, and no one gave us a hard time at work. No harm no foul.

A day out in Taichung - March 16, 2014

So we actually took a well deserved rest today and decided to go to Taichung (pronounced Taijung) for  the day. We thought the museum of fine art would be a good place to go, but finding it was a little challenging. Taipei was super tourist friendly with MRT and bus maps in English. Taichung? Not so much! Google maps is pretty good at telling you which buses to take, but not so good with what time the bus will arrive or how long it will take.

We had a lazy morning and got out of DaJia on the 10:30 154 bus, which took about an hour to get to Taichung. This was a huge improvement in the 168 which we took last Thursday to do some syllabus specific training. That bus took around 2 hours to get there! On the way there we saw some Christmas decorations!! What the...!! Apparently Christmas never dies in Taiwan!  I asked a kid in class last week what the big winter holiday was in Taiwan, expecting "Chinese New Year" as the answer. I got Christmas!

Christmas in March...really?!

We then had to find the bus stop for the 56 bus which would take us to the museum, except it was a few blocks down from the train station. So we walked down the road past a market and eventually saw some buses at a stop. But there was no 56 on the signs so we decided we were at the wrong stop and facing the wrong direction. We crossed the road and went to another stop just in time to catch the correct bus. 

There was a mother with two young kids who got on at the same stop. We smiled at the kids and said hello. The little girl was super shy and wouldn't look away from her mom's jersey. Random comment to make, you say? Perhaps. Google had told me that it would take us 7 stops to get to the museum... it lied. At about stop 10, we got off the bus to get our bearings. We had gotten a tourist map at the train station which we whipped it out only to find that we were about 5 blocks away from the museum! We started to walk. It seems like you get the best feel for a city that way. Taichung is another big city. But seems to have wider spaces than Taipei. That is my impression from my first few hours in the city, perhaps it will change.

It took us 20 minutes or so to find the cultural centre which was adjacent to the museum. We asked some directions and got pointed to the museum. The photos below are from the gardens surrounding the museum, which seems to double as a park for families to come and have a fun Sunday afternoon. As we walked toward the museum entrance, guess who we saw! The lady with the shy little girl! We had gotten off the bus a few stops early. Oh well, we are certainly getting our exercise.

Some cool looking calligraphy...translations anyone?

Renalda next to a voluptuous sculpture 

Write and Draw in the Fine Arts Museum

The rose cafe - beautiful roses hanging from the ceiling

The museum itself was quite nice. Entrance was free and there were a lot of pictures and art works, although many of the galleries were empty. There was some very nice senior high school art depicting Chinese New Year. Saying farewell to the Dragon and welcoming in the Year of the Horse. 

Mostly it feels like the art on display was quite peaceful. Although one piece I remember, which was a critique of the USA, was entitled something like "The good and the bad." It had images of the Apolo re-entry vehicle and doctors performing surgery with a mushroom cloud in the background and war ravaged landscapes all around. Very thoughtful.

Another piece which took me back home looked like a landscape out of the little Karoo. It looked like a sunset, with a mountain in the foreground which was dark blue and the last sunlight shining on another range  in the background painting it bright pink. Renalda and I both stopped and said "Wow!"

There was a paid exhibit, but at the moment we are still living on saved money so we will rather keep the more expensive outings for when we have a salary.

Lunch at the musuem - lamb curry combo about R70 to share yummy

Finally we looked for a late lunch and found the museum restaurant. We shared a lamb curry combo meal, which was super tasty with the ever present "quing tsai."

We then headed home slowly and took a 168 which we have now vowed never to do again as it is SOOO slow. We will do the train from now on. It feels like Taichung is actually very far away, when it is probably only 30km, but getting there by public transport takes forever.

And now after a rest we are ready for week 3 at Hess. Let's hope it will be an easier one!

In the tropics and freezing! 16 March 2014

What's with the weather here! I checked on a map that we are 100km north of the tropics and its been really cold! If it's not raining it's around 10 degrees and cloudy. We've been missing the sun terribly! So much for sunny DaJia!!

We just completed week 2 of our year here at Hess in DaJia and what a hectic 2 weeks it has been!

In fact we got here Thursday 27th Feb by train from Taipei and spent the first two nights in a somewhat dingy DaJia hotel...on a round bed nogal! We got introduced to the branch staff on Thursday and were then treated to a vegetarian lunch. To say I no longer tolerate lots of carbs is an understatement! The lunch options were either rice or noodles, and not wanting to appear as fussy as I really can be, I opted for noodles, which were very tasty...I didn't say I don's like carbs.

We then had our very brief "branch training" in which I could barely keep my eyes open (carbs)! Not a problem I usually have after lunch any more. We then went to see 4 places the branch staff had picked out as possible apartments for us. Taiwan has a "clean after you move in" culture, which is quite strange to us. All but one of the places we saw were a mess. The first place was the right size but in a serious state of disrepair, the second place, in the same building was huge and would just have been too much for us to maintain, and furnish. The third place we saw was smaller, was relatively clean and was very conveniently located. The last place we saw was a 3 story house which was once again way too big for us, but it was immaculately clean. Someone pointed out that, had we taken it, we could possibly have rented out the top floor to someone in future. 

We settled for the third place, on the seventh (ground + 6) floor, near the train station. It is 10 mins walk from work and conveniently situated. The local fresh food market in 3 mins walk away, there is a 7-eleven, a supermarket and numerous pharmacy/toiletry stores, similar to Clicks or Boots downstairs.

Friday 28 was peace day in Taiwan, commemorating the 228 incident in which KMT forces massacred hundreds of local Taiwanese. We spent the day walking around DaJia buying supplies we would need when we signed the lease the next day. 

We could only move in late on the 1st as the landlord wasn't available on the holiday. We spent the day buying a bed, a plastic wardrobe and some other odds and ends. We arranged for our bed to be delivered after 8pm!

Signing the lease was quite frustrating. The landlord spoke no English, so we had to work through Selena, one of the branch staff. I would ask her to ask something and they would speak for 10 minutes. I would get a short answer, ask another question and get another answer 10 minutes later! I need to learn the language!!

That Sunday we realised that there were a number of things we missed on Saturday so we went and did more shopping. We definitely needed a table and 2 chairs as working at a bed just wouldn't work. We got the stuff delivered after some more translation by Selena on the phone. I found that we hadn't been charge for the chairs so I asked Selena to help. Turns out that the store owner's child is at the school, so no problem!!

Teaching Week 1

Then our first week started. I think to say we were thrown into the deep end is a major understatement!   We are replacing staff members who are leaving and the head English teacher went on holiday for a week so we had a full schedule from Monday! Four teaching hours a day, with observations (2 hours each) three days that week. Considering we spent about 2 hours planning a 2 hour lesson, as we are completely unfamiliar with the material, we were exhausted! 

I had an early Saturday morning class, and after doing some laundry, the rest of my weekend was spent planning! I had three lessons in a row on Monday, which I think I mostly did justice to. The rest of this week was pretty much heads down, exhausting hard work. It's sad because at the moment I'm not really enjoying it, there are moments of pleasure when some kids look up at you and nod or smile or laugh, but mostly it feels like I'm not quite doing it right. 

Renalda and I made a realisation last night or this morning though. We need to plan the lessons we find easier first. Just like exam technique... the harder work takes longer and puts pressure on you to do the easy work in a shorter amount of time. This week we will get the easy wins done first, it will make us feel more confident and give us more time.

We're still loving the food here, it's great! I'm a whole animal person...if you are going to do an animal the injustice of killing it, give it the honour if eating it all. Taiwan does this! If you go look at the fish meat store it is all there and you can buy everything from liver to tripe at many restaurants.

Renalda and I make breakfast every morning and it is usually eggs with some freshly bought vegetables and kimchi. The market, as I said earlier, is 3 mins walk away so most mornings I roll out of bed and stroll or jog to the veggy lady to buy some "tshing tsai" (green leafy veggies sold everywhere). I'll  post a picture of a breakfast one day when I remember, but I think we are eating quite healthy...

I hope I didn't bore you with my long update, but nothing particularly exciting has happened for some time!