I'm really bad at this photo thing.

I went to look through my phone to see what I've taken since the last blog entry, and there is only ONE photo since I went about sightseeing. You wanna see it?

I mean, granted, it's a pretty great photo. As mentioned, I live above a Pizza Hut, but next door to the Pizza Hut is a tiny Chinese restaurant. I never ate there before, because well... I'm not sure why. But I went today, and asked if they had ji tui fan (chicken with rice), because shut up, it's awesome. They did, but it was 80 kuai without a drink. Granted that's not too much by US standards. A little shy of $3. But a Big Mac meal with a coke is 100 kuai, so I'm thinking "Hmm, that's a bit pricey." Anyway I get home and pop that bad boy open.

The chicken was as delicious as it looks, and I have no idea what the stuff in the rice was. Good nonethless, and it has inspired me to give this place another shot. I mean, like I have to repeat it, but the old Chinese proverb is true. "Confucius say, never doubt the ji tui fan place next to the Pizza Hut".

I just had my first real week of teaching, more or less. As I confided in some people earlier, I still don't care for my boss. But also as the head office said when I complained "You're not going to interact with her too much, so give it a shot." Well they're right, my interaction with her probably averages 1 to 2 minutes a day. But the passive aggressive, bipolar, micromanaging attitude is not appreciated. Like before the class, I started to erase the board from the previous one. One of the students came up, and in English, asked "Teacher, may I erase the board?"

Well sure, why the heck not? Saves me time, plus if you want to, you used perfect English to ask for it. So knock yourself out kid. My boss is walking by, sees me, and says "Mike, you shouldn't let the students touch the board. That is minus [some precise number] stars." (the point system we use for getting toys). Like, really? You have nothing better to do? I'm reminded of the "That is 50 DKP MINUS!" internet video. Anyway go run your own damn class, and when the kid puts his fist through a whiteboard, come back and we'll talk.

That's an awfully negative thing to end the blog on so I don't want to. I managed to meet another great TA, the lovely April. She, Caitlin and I went out to get some food at a fantastic place, also around the corner from my house. Some of the best fried rice I've ever had, covered with ketchup and pineapple. Yeah, I don't know why it works, but it did.

I have the next two days off, but unfortunately I'm going to be quite boring. My agenda is to finish a couple more lessons of Chinese, plan my classes for Monday, and finish work on programming a lesson plan generator. Yes, it is what it sounds like. The classes there are so formulaic compared to EF, I'm about halfway done writing a program that will do one third of my job for me - now it's just a matter of inputting data. I'm slightly terrified at the prospect of a fully armed and operational lesson planner.

Okay, for realsies Taipei sightseeing.

It's Chinese New Year, which over here is Christmas, New Year, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one mega holiday. Like in China, the country pretty much shuts down for a week or so so everyone can visit family, drink tea, and practice their kung fu. At least, that's what I imagine Chinese people do on their days off.

Anywho Yllen came to see me for the past few days, so I got to do the touristy things in town. Some were repeats of things I've done before, but most were new experiences. Now that I've gotten everything out of the way, I'm no longer one of those people that says "Ya know, I live here and have never done x."

So the first item of note is the second highest building in the world, the Taipei 101. AKA, the oh-my-god-thats-fuckin-tall building thats actually not downtown, rather slightly southeast of it. It doesn't even have its own subway stop, its about 3 blocks from the city hall one. Anyway it's not like you can miss the damn thing, that's for sure.

It's $400 TWD to go to the top, which is about $13. If you're a chump who doesn't still carry your college ID and pretend you're a student, it's $450. A little pricey, but it's not like I'm doing this every day. And honestly, I was surprised at what you get for that. The whole experience has the observation deck of course, but a lot of history, a movie, galleries, and a beer float for $50. In comparison, the beers at 7-11 are $45, so it's not a bad deal. All in all it took about 2 hours to get through everything, which surprised me.

We went to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's memorial, monument, whatever, but it was mostly unimpressive. But I wanted to see the Maokong Gondola, which I've seen on the subway maps but heard nothing about. It's an extension of the subway, and is exactly that - a gondola. I figured it would be a neat ride we'd take up and back, just to say "yay, gondola!" and call it a day. Oh how wrong I was!

First of all, that gondola is 4.2 km long. When you're moving as slow as a cable car, round trip, that takes some time. But it's no problem, because you get some of the most amazing views of any city I have ever witnessed. On one side, mountains, complete wilderness. Tea fields, dense forest, temples, huge rock formations, etc. On the other side, you get one of the biggest cities in the world in near it's entirety, because you're up so high. Maokong itself is a village way up in the mountains, looking down on Taipei. I wish I had better photos because it was dusk and very misty, but seriously - this was my favorite experience of this city, and I will definitely be back. Since I'm already cheating on this blog by taking a photo from the internet, I'm going to do the same for Maokong so you can see what it's like on a nice day.

You've got your other stuff in there - night markets, touristy shops, old temples. It was good I got out to see all this stuff because it's not something you feel as compelled to do alone. We went to Ximen, which I had mentioned earlier, but there was a big live music scene out this time. Lots of really amazing acts. But I guess the other item of note was Beitou.






Beitou is a village north of Taipei, yet on the subway. When the Japanese had this place back before WWII, they noticed there was no hot spring. They promptly said "Fuck a buncha that", and built one. Now it's a big tourist attraction, and I wouldn't mind living there. It has a good mix of what you'd expect an ancient asian town to look like, with a mix of luxury resorts and modern conveniences thrown in. There were no pictures allowed at the hot springs, so I'm going to shamelessly steal another one from the internet.

I'd never done a hot spring before, but it's quite fun. First of all the water is hot hot hot, and has a lot of sulfur in it. You usually only stay in one of the hot pools for 10 minutes or so, then switch to the cold pool. Then back you go, and so on. I will say going from "I think you could cook lobster in this" temperature water to "I think I saw an ice cube float by" water is quite exhilarating. There's also a bunch of old asian dudes in speedos, so rock on.

Whew! Too much to do, and we didn't get to everything on the list. Maybe I'll finish everything over the next few months, or wait and see if anyone else visits so there's something new.

Seriously though, Maokong. That place is ripped out of a postcard.