Jet Lag Recovery Group
Hello, everyone. Greetings from the lovely Taiwan.I am feeling much better now that I've finally slept through the night. I realize I was sounding a bit like a spoiled American before (which I'm not totally denying), but things are on the up-and-up.
To begin, I pulled the cushions off 1 of the chairs in the living area of mine and Anita's flat and one off a chair in Amy, Monica, and Greg's flat and put them on top of the board-bed, underneath the sheet. Now I really only have a space that is about one and 1/2 feet wide for sleeping, and it's not exactly even, but it feels so much better. It's still no Tempur-Pedic. I'll take a picture later today.
Yesterday was the first day of classes. I'm teaching 6 classes a day with 25 students in each (it's like middle school all over again, but without disciplinary problems). Fortunately, I only have to plan one lesson a day and teach it 6 times. My students are very bright and range in age from 17-43. Their English seems quite good. We are building rapport, and so far I really enjoy them.
Yesterday was also a day of adventurous foods. Because I woke up so early, I took a walk around the neighborhood near the university in search of some breakfast. I hadn't eaten dinner the night before due to an overage of napping and blogging, so I was pretty starving. I tried to go to a bakery Craig had showed us that is one of his favorites, but it wasn't opened. Even Starbucks wasn't open at 6:45am. Dang them. Anyhow, I wound up finding a little tiny stand with a line in front where 2 ladies were hashing out dumplings. People were stopping their cars to purchase the delightful treats, so I figured it couldn't be that bad. Plus, it was CHEAP and I was about to gnaw my arm off. I got 2 big dumplings, one filled with something like spinach and garlic, the other with cabbage and a pork or chicken-like meat, plus a milk tea for roughly $1. It was great.
Then came lunch, where a lady from the International Office (who really was trying to be helpful) helped me order food at the student center... it was the first (but not the last time, I'm sure) meal that I looked at and decided right off that I couldn't eat it. It was an udon soup with floating pieces of something that looked like chicken neck, complete with skin and bones. I dumped it (it had only cost me $2, so I didn't feel too bad about it) and had some more dumplings, a Snickers bar, and Coke Light instead.
Amy and I went out for adventures after class in the evening to see the beautiful Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Palace and the National Theatre. It was great to get out and do some sightseeing... it was much more of what I imagined Taiwan would look like (I've been spending most of the time here on what I like to call "the compound" [aka: the campus] that is quite different from the city center). We went to dinner afterwards, where the thing I thought to be curry tofu turned out to be soft silky tofu in some sort of yello egg-yolk sauce. Not very great. However, we did have a delicious fresh-mango-over-ice-with-mango-sorbet for dessert at a place called Ice Monster, and that was divine.
I'm going to post some photos on ofoto today (excuse me, kodakgallery.com). I'll send you a link to those soon.
Love to all!
posted by mitsi @ 10:25 AM
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