September 23, 2007 (That's September 22 to you!)

Things are better now that we are in Kaohsiung. I’m still not entirely sure that this is where I want to be, but I am much more inclined to give it a chance here – one more day in Taipei and I surely would have been fighting my way to the front of the ticket line to get a flight home. We took the bus here on Friday and found our way to Kojen school 1, which is where I’ll be working – Rachel will be at school 2, which is not too far away. We were met by Michelle, who is my academic director, and taken to our second temporary apartment right next door to the school. We were thrilled to find that Ben was staying there as well and the three of us went to dinner where I feasted on my first vegetable of the week – asparagus salad, which consisted of asparagus covered in what tasted like sweet cream cheese icing, with a cherry on top, literally. After dinner Rachel went to sleep and Ben took me to the Chiang Kai-Shek cultural center where we watched groups of people breakdancing outside and what looked like some sort of aerobics step class accompanied by La Cucaracha. We walked home via Wufu road and for the first time since I’ve been here I was happy.

I woke up in the morning wanting to go home again, but this time knowing that the feeling would probably fade by the end of the day. Michelle took me to the hospital to get my vaccine and told me her life story while we were waiting, and the doctor was nice and chatty – wanted to hear about Costa Rica and about what I thought of Taiwan so far. He really didn’t think I needed the vaccine; shocker, no one does. I’m so glad to have that one less thing to worry about now – I’m not too worried about tsunamis anymore, now all I need to get over is the threat of being bombed by China, and I’ll be ok. Kaohsiung is the nationalist city of Taiwan and Ben seems to think that there must be many missiles pointed at us. Rose, a Taiwanese woman who used to work for Kojen and who is known throughout the city as being the best thing to have ever happened to foreigners (because she really is) says that maybe after the 2008 Olympics we can worry, but certainly not until then. After the hospital I ate lunch at the school and then took an afternoon nap before observing classes. I am observing Brieanna, an American teacher who is here with her husband Jon. I am taking over most of her classes and Rachel is taking over most of Jon’s because they are leaving Kojen for another school. Right now they live right below us in the Kojen apartments and they’ve taken us under their wing; we seem normal, they say, so it’s their pleasure. The class was a little overwhelming; the kids were raucous. I’m glad that I’m not being thrown into the lion’s den right away, I’ll be observing for at least another week.

Afterwards, Brieanna and Jon invited us out to dinner with them, so we went to this Japanese all you can eat restaurant with Rose and her blind father and the rest of their family. While there wasn’t much I could eat, it was an interesting experience nonetheless. I watched others eat jellyfish and learned how to say “My mother is mad at the horse” in Chinese – “Ma ma ma ma”. We then went to Green Bay, a bar down by the love river (Rose’s blind father and children came to this, as well) for some good times, and I got my happy birthday at last.