A Hotel School

This is something that one of Kathy's grade 9 boys wrote in answer to the assignment to design an ideal hotel. This is exactly as written, and I think it's cute!

If I could make the best hotel ever, it would be like a big school. I would make the bedroom be like a sleeping teacher and make it soft and worn. I'll make the food like the student's food, but I would put a lot of delicious food inside it. And I also would make a lot of toys and put them in a specil room let the children could play inside.

Happy Double Ten Day!

We have the day off work today because it's Taiwan's national day: Double Ten Day. This picture is from the ceremony at the school on Friday. It was quite the show.

So today is a day for relaxing, and waving a flag if you're Taiwanese and eating turkey and being thankful if you're Canadian.

So happy Double Ten Day and Happy Thanksgiving, and what the heck, Happy Columbus Day, too!

Double Ten Day

Some of my grade 6 boys in their very cute boy scout uniforms. They are holding the symbol for double ten day, because the cross is a ten, and two next to each other is double ten, October 10th, get it?

Sun Yat Sen?

I like the lines of this picture. More pictres of good old Chaing Kai Shek, or Sun Yat Sen?

Flag Wavers

They gave all the students little flags to wave. They seemed to think it was pretty fun. I like the little boy on the side who is very intent on having his flag the highest.

Flag Bearers

These are some of my grade 6 girls being flag bearers in their cute girl scout uniforms. They all look a bit surly - I don't think smiling is allowed!

Planning ahead is a good thing!

Alright, everything's planned. Whew- that was hard work. It paid off, though, I saved over $1000 Canadian by spending 4-5 hours searching the internet. Air India is dirt cheap, but tricky to book, because they only do paper tickets and they only mail them to the country of departure. But I finally found them at Travelocity.ca, which is now my new favorite travel site. Expedia.ca and Travel Cuts both had flights starting at $1500!

So, my Chinese New Year includes: Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Indonesia. WHOO-HOO! The Taj Mahal was on my must see before I die list, and I'd never find a $400 flight from Canada.

Now, with all my flights in hand, I can take my time looking into further travel arrangements, hotels, etc. Only three months to go.

Only three months to go!

This weekend I've spent hours upon hours doing travel planning for Chinese New Year. It's very time consuming, but it's the only way to go cheap-cheap. I'm still finalizing one country, but there's one thing I'm sure of:

I'm going to Bali and Lombok in Indonesia! I'm going to do a Geckos tour, because I don't want to just go lie on a beach by myself. You have to read the description of the tour - it sounds like paradise. I'm so excited.

Flowers

Are they real or fake? Well, they're sorta fake. They are made of felt! Now, I'm usually opposed to fake flowers, but these just made me smile. They're going to replace those ugly cheap tulips that I've put in my vase from Claire.

A bouquet

This is me with my bouquet of flowers outside of our office on the fifth floor of the junior high building.

Nanowrimo

Can I just say how happy I was to get my first Nanowrimo email this year! I went to the website, registered as a 2005 participant and got my new "participant image" for the sidebar. Exciting! I can't wait to start planning my novel. I have a few ideas I'm working on, and the rest of October to sketch out the plot.

Is anyone going to do it with me this year? It's a heck of a lot of fun. I suppose it's kind of like the experience of training for a marathon - extreme self-discipline for the ultimate payoff at the end. Except Nanowrimo does not involve exercise or cold mornings. It's more like curling up in a blanket with a coffee on a late Saturday morning. My kind of self-discipline!

So, if you want to check it out, start at their website: Nanowrimo. They have an introduction to what it is, and guidelines

Sunny Octobers

I miss Fall; leaves that crunch, the first scarf, and the apple cider. October in Taipei has it's own joys, though, every so often there's a warm breeze that makes the clear sunny sky seem magical. It's hard to believe that Monday is Thanksgiving - it's really hard to feel thanksgivingy when the weather is mid-summerish. However, we luckily have the day off, because it's October 10th, or Double Ten Day, the Taiwan National Day. So we're going to do a pseudo-potluck. One person gets the pumpkin pie from Starbucks, the other the real mashed potatoes from Chili's, and so on. It certainly doesn't beat cooking up the meal with Claire in the Meadows dorm kitchen, but it will be a memorable Taiwanese Canadian thanksgiving. And if the whole thing flops, there will always be American thanksgiving with our American friends!

Thanks for clicking the box, by the way. I've made a dollar in a day! This could get addictive. If anyone finds it annoying or if it slows down loading the page, let me know.

C.K.S.

Someday I mean to photograph Chaing Kai Shek memorial in earnest, because it is truly the most beautiful part of Taipei for me. I'd like to try some dramatic black and white shots with filters. But until I get around to it, here's a walking by, quick shot.

Coffeeshop

This is Kathleen's shot. She wanted to capture the Taiwan coffeeshop experience. Instead of using the coffee shop mainly as a source of caffination, here Starbucks and Ikari Coffees are full of people sitting. They might have ordered a caramel macchiato two hours ago, and that means they may then spend the rest of the afternoon sitting, doing homework, napping. I read an article about the growth of Starbucks in China, and how the Starbucks are used as an extension of people's homes, since they often lived in more cramped apartments. Interesting, eh?

A Saga of Contacts and Glasses

So, this summer I found out how many regulations there are in Canada about buying contacts. Without going into the details- even though I had a brand new perscription, I couldn't buy them.

So, I came to Taiwan, and wore out my last pair of contacts last week. Today I wore my glasses to school, and threw everyone for a loop. A little grade 1 boy asked me why I was wearing glasses, and I explained that my eyes hurt. Then I asked him if he thought they looked nice. "No, they look funny." I polled the whole class- across the board consensus: Ms. Carole's glasses look funny.

So, at lunch, I stopped by the glasses shop at the corner. Walked in, pointed to the brand of contacts I use at home, showed her my perscription, and walked out four minutes later! And, I paid under $40 for them, whereas in Canada they are about $140 at Wal-Mart. So take that Canadian regulations!

Chinese New Year

Last night, I booked the first part of my Chinese New Year vacation. It was a very hard decision, because our "company" is not giving any firm dates we are allowed to take vacation. As it was last year, we will only know about what days we will need to work winter camp one or two weeks in advance. That's no good for planning travel. Trying to get a cheap ticket two weeks before Chinese New Year is laughable! If you remember last February, I had a horrible time, was worked way too hard and ended up getting so throughly sick and exhausted I started the second semester at school desperately needing a vacation. All that to say, I knew I needed to just plan my travels, and worry about the 'company' later.

So, I booked my first flight from Taipei to Singapore. There's only one cheap company that does that route, Jet Star Asia, and the cheapest tickets sell out quickly. From Singapore there are lots of discount airlines flying everywhere. I'm thinking Australia and Bali, also maybe Fiji or New Zealand. Ironically, after I booked my flight I read about the bombings in Bali. Unlike most toursists, I think that's good news, all the hotels will have great sales to try to draw back business!

I'll let you know more when I decide where all I'm going. Should be soon - I've learned the value of planning ahead.

Happy B-Day!

Alright, it's Taipei Traveller's First Birthday! Exciting, eh?
Technically I think I started on October 2nd, but as blog author I hereby declare October 1st to by my blog birthday.
In a freakish coincidence, I just noticed on my blogger homepage that this is my 600th post. And my visitor count for total unique visitors is at 3,405 (meaning my mom only counts as one!)

So in honor of this momentous occasion, I thought about completely changing my blog look. However, I think continuity overrides creativity in this case. Instead, I'm putting my creative energies into designing a website for my next Nanowrimo novel, which starts in a month- I can't wait. So, Taipei Traveller will stick with the same look and the same name, probably until I leave Taipei and need to overhaul the whole thing. But I love my life so much right now, I can't see that happening anytime soon.

Chinese Opera

This was my favorite part of the Chinese Opera. Sadly, the only comparison I can think of making is to Mulan, which just represents my sadly Western-centered education. Anyway, the character in green was some sort of princess-warrior who was a very graceful, flexible and powerful performer. I wanted to go backstage afterwards and try to get a close-up of her face, but when I tried, they were already removing their makeup. It would have been a great shot, though. I'll just have to keep the memory.

Chinese Opera

These are the 'monkeys' and some sort of king? His headress has very, very long feathers on top, which added to the expressiveness of his character.

Lady in Lavendar

I used to think lavendar smelled like old ladies. I don't know at what point my opinions changed, but I do know that using all my new Italian lavendar bath products makes me feel so calm and relaxed. Wait, that's probably it. Once I started getting addicted to aromatherapy massage I started equating lavendar with pampering. There you go.

Oh, and I figured out which little grade 1 kid gave this to me (he wrote the card himself, all in Chinese). He's a cutie, who's quite good in class.

P.S. If you haven't seen the movie Ladies in Lavendar you most definitely should.