Good News: I live in a tropical paradise surrounded by rainforests, coral reefs, and beautiful beaches.
Bad News: It’s unbelievably hot. Every day. All the time. I can no longer wear clothing that extends past my knees because it’s just too darn hot.
Good News: Instead of a normal bell to signal class changes, we get to hear a short excerpt from the English Horn solo in the second movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
Bad News: This is my favorite movement in the whole piece, and I won’t be able to stand it in a week’s time.
Good News: I have an awesome scooter that’s loads of fun to cruise around on. I also have a Taiwanese driver’s license, so I get to drive legally.
Bad News: I think I am the only person on the entire island of Taiwan that actually obeys traffic laws, including going the right way on one-way streets, not running red lights, only making legal right and left turns, etc. And someone busted the handle to my front brake the day after I got it (it still works, though).
Good News: I don’t have to work with third graders (too young for me).
Bad News: Sixth graders can be a huge pain in the ass.
In Other News, I have been to Taipei and back. All the ETAs were required to sit through a tremendously dull two-day-long orientation with the non-ETA Fulbrighters as well as all the visiting Fulbright professors and such. I suppose it wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t already been thoroughly oriented from our entire month living on the island. In any case, here are a couple pictures from that weekend.
This is a picture of Grace and me standing on the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Of note is the outfit I was wearing, as it was entirely bought in Taiwan. The shoes and shades were purchased in Kenting, whereas the shirt and skirt were bought in Kaohsiung. And yes, my hair does always look like that here. It’s rather humid, in case I failed to mention it before.
Taipei 101, the tallest (?) building in the world. Some building in Dubai was supposed to be the tallest, but I think the project got canned or something. Taipei 101 is named for its 101 floors.
The view of the surrounding city from the observation deck somewhere near the top of Taipei 101. There was some seriously cool stuff going on with the sun and the patches of fog, but unfortunately the reflection of my lens in the window kind of messed up the coolness of the picture.
And with that, I bid you a temporary farewell! Until tomorrow, at the very least.
2 comments:
Some of the sixth grade classes are evil, and some of them are really, really sweet (6-1 and 6-6). Partly though, they're hitting the "we're kind of cool because we rule the school and we don't care about anything" attitude, but trust me, they're still little kids underneath it all. Try playing music/showing YouTube videos and see what happens.
TAIPEI IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
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