Silly Pictures

You can buy all kinds of hilarious things in Taiwan. For example, I spotted a product called "F-cup Cookies" at a local drugstore...as far as I know, the US is relatively free of such bust-enhancing snacks. Night markets are also a good bet for ridiculous purchases, such as my beloved bagmonster:

It even says my name on it!

Dressing small animals in clothing is unfortunately but amusingly common in Taiwan.


Found this in a random clothing display on my way home from work. Jiggawhat, Taiwan???


You know it's an awesome place to stay when the floor numbers are just written on the wall in permanent marker


Hotel slippers are generally one-size-fits-all. Obviously they did not take my father into account.




We were on a ferry, and there were rocking waves and a motor providing nice white noise...


This is pretty cute but looks decidedly less comfortable


My favorite item on this menu is "true relative." (although let's be honest, pigeon belly and lumbar tendon look pretty good too) Better than that other restaurant we went to in Beijing that offered "slightly over-cooked balls"!


Sign next to a low doorway


Older women in Asia tend to wear a lot more sequins and rhinestones than American women of the same age. Apparently they also promote dairy products more, too.


Creative sleeping options on the subway


The Great Mosque of Xi'an apparently has a "Complainer"


Creating jobs in a Communist country: Why have a pole to hold up the end of the tape when you can have a person?


Sometimes in China there is no Western-style tolit, so you have to use the pedestal tolit


We felt an instinctive urge to gather at this place...can't say why, it must be something innate


Fact 1: Ghosts do not have knees, so if you make the threshold really high, they won't be able to get in your doorway.
Fact 2: Westerners do not have knees either - this was the rationale given to an emperor by a Western diplomat who wouldn't kowtow to him, and the reason for the phrase "foreign devils." Although as we can see, certain foreign devils are crafty enough to get through the door kneelessly.


Meets the soft love in the snow white world - light dependence this instantaneous eterna!


A group of Asian tourists gave us really funny looks while we were doing this at Taipei 101


Annnnnnd last but not least, this particular moment of ridiculous is brought to you by English Village:

p.s. - Gered does not really punch children, he is very nice and the kid wanted to stage a silly photo
p.p.s. - doesn't he look adorable in a suit? (slash holding a giant teddy bear)

Awwww

In the West, there's a bit of a stereotype that Asian children are all quiet, obedient, and diligent workers. This is a lie. Sure, I have kids that are like that, but for every one of them, there is another kid who is loud, trouble-making, or just totally spaced out. Therefore, it is unsurprising that there are days when Teacher Rebekah runs out of patience with her classes. Recently, my co-teaching rotation through the other grades has caused me to miss some of my normal classes, and in some cases, my usual students presumed that I left because I was unhappy with them. In fact, Patty may or may not have actually told them in so many words to guilt-trip them into behaving.

My class 5-5 is usually pretty good, and has a lot of sweet and intelligent students, but recently they have been getting a little bit wild. I had to miss a session of their class last week to teach a 4th grade class, and I didn't think too much of it until the beginning of this week, when I found a little note addressed to me on Patty's desk. It was from a student in 5-5, and read as follows (with a fair amount of cross outs and whited-out bits):

Rebekah, I'm Michael! (5-5)
are you sad?

don't sad
, be happy!

Love You!

...And the o in "love" was a heart. SO CUTE. That filled my cuteness quota for the whole week, I think. In high school, Mr. Schmidt used to tell the Goonies, "As long as I have students like you, I'll never retire."* Kids like Michael are why I can go to work every day and attempt anew to wrangle hordes of adolescents into learning English without totally going crazy.


*He retired 3 years later. Apparently subsequent classes of history students were not awesome enough.

Deprivation

If you're nerdy (which I am) and fairly observant of the date (which I'm not, but this is an exception), then you're aware that today is 3/14, a.k.a. Pi Day. To most observers of this particular holiday, it is a joyous occasion, full of digit recitation and consumption of circular desserts. In Taiwan, however, Pi Day is bittersweet, for although nothing can take away the endless digits of our favorite irrational number, the accompanying comestible is sadly quite scarce.

In America, we cherish our rights. The Right to Bear Arms, the Right to a Fair Trial, the Right to Remain Silent, and of course, the Right to Have Pie Whenever We Want. In New Jersey, we are proud to uphold this right through a multitude of 24-hour diners, dedicated to providing pie at all hours to citizens in need. In Taiwan, there are no 24-hour diners, and those of us not privileged enough to have an oven (only Western diplomats get ovens) or at least a Costco membership have sadly limited options for pie acquisition. T.G.I. Friday's and That Other Western Place That Somebody Told Me Has Pie But I Haven't Been There Yet probably have pie, but if you want a flavor other than apple you might be out of luck. For those of you who are in America today, please make sure to appreciate the availability of pie, as well as all of the other:

Foods that are difficult or impossible to get ahold of in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
-brownies
-authentic Western baked goods, in general
-avocados
-baby carrots
-anything resembling actual Mexican food
-sour cream
-cottage cheese (I LOVE COTTAGE CHEESE)
-in fact, real unprocessed cheese of any kind (except in upscale grocery stores)

as well as...
Foods that are theoretically plentiful but usually unsatisfactory
-cake (usually fluffy and flavor-free)
-whole grain bread (it's all the consistency of Wonder Bread...bleh)
-pizza (frequently topped with things like corn and fish, and often drizzled liberally with mayonnaise)
-coffee (usually 3-in-1 coffee, made from little packets of powder. I actually like it well enough, but it does not achieve the same effect as actual coffee)
-sandwiches (the Taiwanese Sandwich is triangular, with 3 pieces of crustless, flavorless white bread, dried pork shreds, processed cheese, egg, cucumber, and maybe ham. Totally ubiquitous, totally undesirable.)
-salad (often involves cabbage instead of lettuce, plus the only widely available salad dressings are Thousand Island and Straight-Up Mayonnaise)

In short, many staples of the American diet are either rare, nonexistent, or generally butchered in execution. Chew on that as you eat your pie.

The Things We Ate

The first meal of the trip was actually Irish breakfast at the one pub/sports bar place that was open at 7 am for watching the Super Bowl. Here is how you would look if you were loopy from sleep deprivation and had just eaten a number of greasy things:


Eating noodles on a Hong Kong street corner. They have chunks of brined intestine in them, but Mom won't know that until later.


Chinese breakfast: youtiao (fried dough sticks) with soy milk for dipping


After visiting the giant Buddha on Lantau Island, we had a vegetarian lunch prepared by monks!


Tentacled things on a stick, and it looks like stomach in the background? (note: we didn't actually eat these, just took a picture)


A "boat" of squid balls: tasty pastry outside, bits of squid inside, topped with flakes of seaweed and, of course, mayonnaise.


Our first meal in Beijing! Don't remember what it was, only that it was delicious and abundant and there was an inSANE number of dumplings.


A chicken dish at the restaurant that our tour guide Dawson said was "not too fancy." Apparently something changed when Dawson was not paying attention.


Beef cooked with onions on a hot skillety thing


"Dragon-ball tea": you put a little ball into hot water, and it blooms!


Gered ordered "jujube juice" because it sounded interesting. It turned out that "jujube" is apparently code for "prune."


Our Peking duck, sliced at the table so you can watch!


Our amazing dinner at Quan Ju De, the famous Peking duck restaurant.


How to eat Peking duck: place some duck in the middle of the pancake. Add plum sauce, scallions, and a bit of lettuce. Roll the whole thing up and eat it.

I am a chopstick ninja!

Bimbo bread (red-bean flavor): the breakfast of champions! Particularly champions who need fuel for climbing the Great Wall!


A hearty post-Wall lunch. On the left you will see an egg-and-tomato dish that is pretty common in China, and made with plenty of sugar! Here we firmly believe that tomatoes are fruit, and therefore they are often prepared to be sweet.


Kebabs (aka chuanr) are a ubiquitous Beijing street food...here is Mom with some nice spicy chicken chuanr:


Miniature-banana chuanr: turned out to be kind of meh, but at least we tried it


Our hotel provided Western-style breakfast, aka they provide you raw eggs and your mother cooks them on the hot plate:


Outside the Summer Palace, eating jianbing, a thin eggy pancake with a fried thing, onions, and sauce inside. 很好吃！


A KFC egg tart with bits of something purple in it, I forget what


Xi'an street food: cake on a stick


Xinjiang food in Xi'an's Muslim Quarter: spicy lamb chuanr and naan


Assorted baozi


Preparing to eat pineapple rice at a Yunnan restaurant in Beijing


"Western breakfast" at Mom and Dad's hotel in Kaohsiung...sandwiches and chocolate cake?


When in Taiwan, you can't miss getting hot pot! Here I am poaching an egg in the broth where we just cooked up all our meat and vegetables. The egg collects all the bits of food that are left in the broth, making it extra delicious!


More "Western breakfast": chicken nuggets and French fries. Silly Taiwan.


Squid-on-a-stick in a Taipei night market.


Dad with a nosefruit a.k.a. bell fruit a.k.a. wax apple a.k.a. lianwu


My parents' last meal in Taiwan: MOS burger. Technically it is a Japanese chain, but it is alllll over Taiwan so I figure it's pretty authentic as far as things that Taiwanese people actually eat


Are you happy, Sarah Gorton?