What We Eat, Part II

It's been a few weeks since I've given any real consideration to writing. After all, the last thing I want to do after a nice long day of breaking English into tiny words, sentences, and grammar labels is write something original of my own. It would be much simpler [is] blogger came with a [est] of questions and answers, much like the classes I teach.
*as you can tell by my excellent grammar and spelling, I'm really digging writing at the moment. We can play a game and you can correct me.

Therefore, back to food we go! In a country of cheap deliciousness, there's nothing I like to gloat about more than what I eat, what I make, and how obscenely cheap it was. And it was cheap.

Let's discuss something I love to eat: the lunch box. A lot of people find the lunch box bland or boring. I say, if you eat a boring or bland lunch box, get over it and move on, because you're bound to find an amazing one within a block of the last joint. The lunch box is generally a flat-ish to-go box divided into one large section and 3 smaller containers, generally reserved for your veggies. (Or if you're really awesome, you'll use them to divide up your different meats, because often you can choose tofu, tiny fish, and eggs as your "vegetables."

You can find lunch boxes practically everywhere. They are the "fast food" of Taiwan, although truthfully, you can find McDonalds and KFC pretty frequently as well. And nearly every restaurant will sell one to you. Damn smart, I think, because it practically ensures you eat a balanced meal. (Unless, again, you think tofu and eggs are vegetables. Which they aren't. But they are delicious. Have I mentioned I haven't met a Taiwanese egg I haven't liked? It's true. It doesn't matter how it's cooked. Eggs here are magical.)
*However, James reminded me that yes, I did find an egg I didn't like. It was 1,000 years old. Sort of. It was a hard boiled egg buried in hay for like a month and then peeled and cooked inside some ridiculously disgusting black jelly. Almost gag reflexed that one right onto the market table.
**Whoops, just informed that the black jelly was actually the egg white, way too far gone. Check this out: whytheheckwouldyouruinaperfectlygoodeggbydoingthistoit?

One night in Danshui, we found ourselves starving. Needless to say, Caitlin was not the happiest bird on the street. Thank goodness two doors down from where we parked our scooter was a family restaurant. What you see is a fish...a whole fish...a possibly once happy fish...of which I ate...the whole thing (save the very middle spine) and other deliciousness - the strips of yellowish stuff you might not recognize is bamboo (I love bamboo here just like I love eggs). Price: 75 NT. Less than $2.50.

Hot pot coals about to be covered by duck filled pot of goodness.

Just as common as the lunch box is the hot pot. Huo guo, if you pardon my excellent Chinese. Wo xi huan wode huo guo hen la. Heck, I could sit here all day pretending to know Mandarin (What I just tried to say using my 50 word vocabulary was "I like my hot pot very spicy.), but then you'd never find out what food I'm talking about.

Duck heart: chewy. Duck liver: bomb.

Eating hot pot in Taiwan is like eating burgers at home. Or burritos, if you're from California. Or sandwiches. You go a restaurant, pay either a set price or all you can eat price, and cook your food in a pot of boiling, flavored water in the middle of your table. There are a billion variations, and most of them end with hot, spicy, oily water flying onto your shirt. Nevertheless, this is duck hot pot.

We went out to dinner with an obscenely large group and found "famous" duck hot pot. Long line. Like, 45 minutes, which is oodles here. Finally you sit down at tiny stools and a low to the ground table. Your pot has a whole duck in it. You buy the things you want to add: mushrooms, meatballs, cabbage, hearts, livers, pigs blood and rice (oh yes, we did) - and cook it. Slowly. And drink some beer. And eat some more. The broth was gingery oily goodness. If only I knew how they did it, I would make my own.

Look who's making yeast rise in Asia...

Speaking of which, even though it's still equally cheap to eat out then eat in, I'm still finding time to challenge myself with the oddness of ingredients available over here. One of my greatest acheivements has been Sunday pizza. I found a terrific pizza base recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, and have since taken to whipping up a simple batch in our fabulous toaster oven every week. Toppings? Tomato sauce, of course, but the first few weeks we had sardines and lime, instead of anchovies, because there weren't any. Since then, it's anchovies, olives, capers and cheese...and a good ol' margherita. Chomping on pizza in TaoYuan. Come visit and I'll make you some! (PS. Bring some pepperoni.)

But it doesn't stop there. Bi-weekly burritos have also hit the menu. Our head teacher found us some amazing, taqueria-style tortillas (not a corn one in sight yet, but my hopes are high), and I've managed to find pinto beans, guac fixings, etc., to make a meal of amazingness. You'll have to take my word for it. I'm pretty sure I'm crafting some of the most authentic things this side of the Pacific.

Bienvenidos de Taiwan!

Oh yeah, about that teaching thing. Pretty sure I'm going into the out-of-home restaurant biz as soon as my contract is up. Winky winky face.

Happy Hallo-whattheheckkindofholidayisthis?

Out of respect for my children, their parents, and ultimate human privacy, you will not be able to see pictures of my P1 children dressed as dinosaurs, Super Mario, a lion, Belle, a fairy, a creepy shiny costumed man, a penguin and a pumpkin.

Instead, I will describe to you how to throw your very own Taiwanese Halloween.

1: Ignore it. Most Taiwanese families do, anyway, and it's only propagated for two reasons: Taiwanese parents send their kids to English schools, and Taiwanese people love to buy shit. Any excuse to have a thing of some holiday related novelty is enough reason to have a family outing to Carrefour to pick out a costume.

2. If you can't ignore it, go over the top for no particular reason. As did the Taiwanese staff at our school, you too can spend hours making Halloween decorations out of paper, plastic, yarn and paint! My class made ghosts out of Kleenex, spiders out of handprints, and pumpkins out of paper shapes. Then, stick them everywhere. Hang black plastic over doorways, please, because everyone loves bags in the face.

3. Play as much Halloween music as you can, as long as it isn't scary. This leaves you with about three suitable songs, one of them being "Trick or Treat" - a song version of the chant set to the tune of "It's Raining, It's Pouring." If I never, ever have to hear that song again, I will be at peace. They played it on repeat for three hours this morning over the loudspeaker.

4. Go trick-or-treating, but only at school, and while at school, only go to one classroom, thus making the actual treating time more efficient. Less candy, less fun, but also less time wasted.

5. Waste lots of time having every single student in the multipurpose room - let's say - 100! - tell the other students what they are for Halloween. In Chinese. While the Trick-or-Treat song is playing so loudly you can't actually hear the 4 year olds tell everyone ta shi shei.

Okay, okay. I wrote that blast pre-afternoon nap. This portion of the blog is post-homemade bean and rice burrito dinner. I'm a bit more retrospective and little less critical now. A few more quick points:

Halloween is simply not a holiday. It is a photo opportunity. Parents hung around for hours today just to see their kid take 10 seconds to walk across the stage in their costume, most of which were store bought (and many of which were the same, bought at the same store.) Some of them were homemade brilliance. One little girl showed up in a vest and skirt entirely made of bubble wrap and paper flowers (guessing mama doesn't have a day job) and there were some very decadent pumpkins, or nan gua, as I heard announced so many times. The kids stick their fingers up in a peace sign (the Asian pose we all make fun of at home, oh yeah, so real!) - snapshot! - done. The kids don't do anything. 

But field trips are like this, too. Let's go to a museum. Let's take a billion photos at the museum. Back on the bus. Let's go to the supermarket. Take a billion photos with the fruit. Back on the bus. There's this odd "The photo is more important than the experience." thing going on. Why do you want a picture of something you didn't actually do?

Tomorrow is my "anniversary" of three months in Taiwan. Time flies when you're buying consumer goods, writing obscene amounts of report cards, and taking your umpteenth photo.

But I still love my scooter.

"Teacher, Are You Sick?" and other random tidbits

Why yes, Taiwanese people, the doctor's mask over my face and the tissues falling out of my pockets indicate that in fact, I am sick.

I tend to get pity stares like, Oh dear, the foreign teacher went and took a bath in viral germs, so I have to justify the origin of my illness. "It's P1." I say. "The babies don't know how to cover their mouths and cough in my face."

It's true. They are disgusting little germ monkeys. The poor things shouldn't be in school, they should be in isolation. A week ago, I developed this lovely flem-y hacking cough a-la-students and went to see a doctor: Bronchitis, he said.

Now, I don't know what they learn in Taiwanese medical school, and I don't mean to discredit anyone with a P.H.D., but they tend to think they everything is very bad and curable with several types of medication. I'm pretty sure I don't/didn't have bronchitis. I'm pretty sure, because I am a doctor, that I have the flu. Nevertheless, Dr. Best gave me several types of medication, and I am still sick.

Speaking of medication, I ran out of oral contraceptives this past week and thought it would be easy as pie to buy some more. Remember what your teachers tell you about ass-uming?

It just so happens that oral contraceptives are one of the few types of medications that are not covered by the national health plan. This means that I can get a walk-in appointment and medication for tonsilitis for 50NT ($1.50) but a box of birth control costs me a whopping $500NT (about $15) - non-negotiable. For a country that manufactures much of the world's pills, I find this utterly ridiculous. And expensive. I speculate that the Taiwanese government wants women to have more Taiwanese babies (birthrate is below replacement), and therefore they don't want to encourage women to be smart. I am smart, but I'm paying out the rear for it.

Speaking of rears, I had one of my P1 students (the 2-3 year olds) pee on my hand last week. Speaking of P1, not only do they cough in my face but I have to also wipe their streaming snot. My solution: the doctor's mask. Teaching with a doctor's mask makes me feel safe and smart simultaneously. Except that if the students can't see my mouth moving, sometimes they don't understand what I'm saying. At that point, I pull the mask to my chin. There's nothing sexier than a chin mask.

Have I mentioned the rain? There's a little something called Typhoon Megi swirling around over here, causing incredible amounts of damage in the Philippines and soon to be China. Taiwan is out of the main path of destruction but we are incurring a tremendous amount of annoying, wind-driven rain. This is the rain that flies sideways and gets your legs nice and wet.

Rain + scooter = abnormally wet.

The rain comes up and down and sideways. We had a fabulous 15 minute scooter ride home on Thursday involving a downpour and at least three 90 second red lights. What can you do at a red light on a scooter? Sit there and take it like a man, that's what you do. Even with a rain jacket, the water still manages to trickle down your sleeves and under the face shield of your helmet. My shoes ended up so full of water I nearly had to tip them out to drain them.

I love the rain. It's still warm enough to wear shorts.

PS. Made pizza from scratch on Sunday. It was amazing. Except that there was not an anchovy in the entire city of TaoYuan. Trust me, I looked. I went to two different stores at opposite ends of the city...with my hacking "bronchitis." In the end, we ate cheese, olive, sardine and lime pizza. It was amazing.

My Scooter, or; Things I Shouldn't Tell My Parents

It is illegal to park your scooter on the sidewalk in Taiwan.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. (Honk your car horn.)
When in Ireland, do as the Irish do. (Drink a pint.)
When in New York, do as the New Yorkers do. (Have a slice.)

When in Taiwan, do as the Taiwanese do, and buy a scooter.

And so we did.

Our little black bundle of 50cc Yamaha joy, I call her Zippy and she spouts black smoke out her butt hole. She cost $300 and is the best piece of transportation I have ever owned. Don't tell the Subaru, but scooter driving is way too much fun.

It's a lawless road. Technically, you can only drive on the far right hand side of the road, sometimes in specially marked lanes, sometimes where there aren't parked cars. You aren't supposed to turn left, and instead you must cross the intersection and put yourself in "The Box," where you wait to go the right direction.

Did I mention that the average Taiwan traffic light counts down about 90 seconds? 90 seconds of agonizing, Why didn't I just turn back there? time.

Therefore, and I blame this on the length of the traffic lights, people drive as it is necessary. It is necessary to pass on the left, because sometimes old ladies with parasols walk in the street at -2 mph. It is necessary to thread your scooter through 3 foot gaps between cars and buses, because otherwise, you wouldn't move anywhere. And sometimes you make a left turn, just because you can't stand "The Box" and then extra several minutes it will set you back, sucking in scooter fumes at the intersection.

It's fantastic. It's stimulating. It's dangerous, and we are aware. It's like getting to be in the scene in Star Wars where Leia and Luke are racing through the Endor forest on the floating speeders. Lean right, lean left, DUCK, squeeze your knees in so you don't bang them on the car next to you. It is a bit rough going over the bumps, but hey, if a lower back massage will only set you back about $20, no harm, no foul, right?

But Caitlin, where do you put your stuff  on a scooter? It's not like you have a trunk or anything!

Good question, my friend. The beauty of Zippy is she is equipped with a plastic hook that perfectly allows grocery bags to sit at your feet while you're driving. And thank goodness Taiwan is the safest place in the world besides a petting zoo pen of bunny rabbits and marshmallows. Need to leave your shopping on the scooter while you hop off to run errands? No problem! Need to leave your helmet because you don't feel like carrying it into the restaurant? Heck, why not display it on top of your rear view mirrors! The other day, James and I scootered our new bromiliad plant home and left it on the foot pad while we made a doctor's visit.

I swear you could leave your wallet on your scooter seat and find a fresh rose and a $100NT note folded inside of it on your return.

Anyway, the scooter is amazing. James and I "splurged" on the cheapest ride, lowest power, smallest seat, but in good condition. At $3 per tank of gas, it's the cheapest way to get around. So far, we've stretched her legs to the ocean (twice) and to the mountains (hot ass hot springs) and are never disappointed. As much as I love transportation, it seems like the best places are only accessible by Taiwan's favorite transport mode.

How's she handle?

Zippy doesn't purr, she buzzes.

Learning to drive in the empty parking lot. Unrealistic good practice, but I have since progressed to the big leagues.

What We Eat, Part I

Question: What do you eat in Taiwan?

Answer: Anything I frickin' want. 

It is ridiculously easy to eat three-ten square meals a day in Taiwan, not only because all townships like TaoYuan have a person/restaurant ratio rivaled only by New York City, but because it costs peanuts to eat deliciously, to eat well, and to eat diversely. 

 Those who know me are familiar with my obsession with cooking. The best part about being here is I can not only indulge my kitchen love, but also give myself a bit of a rest and let someone else do the cooking (and the dishes) for a change. This is especially handy on most work days, when jumping around for 8-10 hours doesn't leave me with the desire to run home and whip up something creative.

Let's turn to the photos for evidence:

Breakfast of Champion (Teachers)

*at least it prevents a hunger meltdown*

OK, so we're spoiled breakfast eaters.

Breakfast is a long, drawn out affair involving several types of cereal, bananas, a supplementary fruit - in this case, a mango - whole wheat toast (or half wheat, I speculate, because it looks less than grainy), almonds, and a glass of iced oolong tea. Iced tea for breakfast? Are you nuts? No, I'm just sweating like a pig at 8:00 in the morning, thank you very much.

Rou Fan - Something I Can Order In Chinese

 The ubiquitous "肉飯" - meat rice (this particular one is lu rou fan, with stewed pork meat) and a bowl of "it" over white rice costs a whopping 75 cents. Note the red coloring - this is hot sauce - a necessary component of the dish. I could eat this all day, except that I'm probably missing some other key nutrients. This particular one comes from what we like to call "The Ladies," an eatery around the corner run by two ladies who cook, well, homestyle Taiwanese food. You can also get various pig parts fried up, if it so tickles your fancy.

Are you sure you're in Asia, Caitlin?

Sunday Brunch: who knew? We found pancake mix at Carrefour, (with directions completely in Chinese, so I added bananas and winged it. Wung it? Wang it?) bacon, eggs, and an odd Asian fruit called a wax apple. It looks like a red pear covered in crayon wax and tastes like lightly flavored Chapstick. Great thing about the eggs: You can buy eggs in the supermarket, which is lame-o, or your can buy eggs from any of your neighborhood egg vendors, who sell eggs individually out of big crates and give them to you to carry home in plastic bags. The eggs are enormous and still have chicken fuzz attached to them. How cool is that?

 Moon cakes: It's a Moon Festival thing, really, but you can eat them pretty much whenever you want. And for me, since I only understand like two words when I ask "What's in it?", it's always a surprise! This particular moon cake was purchased because I heard the word "meat," and I assumed it was pork because...it's Asia. But to my dining confusion, it was peppered beef, inside a flaky crust, inside a smooshed sweet red been paste. I had another moon cake the other night I could have sworn had a fish inside of it. One of my kids set me straight. It was an egg. Surprise.

 Sometimes I cook dinner, too. In this case, I made a dish I decided to call "Bruschetta Pasta," due to the fact that it a basil, tomato, almond, and garlic mash up. I'm still making pasta sauce in the wok most of the time. I don't know if I'll ever go back. 

A word on tomatoes: they are expensive. The Taiwanese only really use them in a dish we simply call "Tomato eggs," which are tomatoes with scrambled eggs. I'd like to think I could make a killing selling pasta sauces, being as I'm the only one making them.

Skewers of glory. Flavored with cumin and chili, of course, because I just can't help it.

Our Taiwanese barbecue buddies letting me take a turn at the corn.

 On Moon Festival (or as my sometimes lazy students like to spell it, Moom Festival,) you barbecue. On Moon Festival, we barbecued, with some random people who invited us to share their grill. It turns out, everyone loves these tiny grills. Americans would shit themselves to see entire neighborhoods sitting in the street, on the ground, next to a barbecue the size of a microwave dinner tray. The trick is, the food takes so long to cook that you end up eating for hours. We sat down at 6:00 and had to rudely excuse ourselves at 9:00, for the sake of getting some rest for work. And all anyone eats is meat. Thin meat, fat meat, tofu that looks like meat, prawns, more meat, meat on a stick, etc. And corn. I like that.

Lastly, ye olde teppanyaki, a dining trend that I know East Bay residents would go nuts for. If only they knew how awesome it was to sit down at a grill and be instantly cooked for by men in bell hop uniforms. Our typical order (from left to right): spicy bean sprouts (they're on the house), scrambled eggs, spicy lamb and onions, and spicy veggies (last night, cabbage). Spicier than Hell, more delicious than your average meal, always hot (because it sits on the hot grill the whole time you're eating), and dinner for two, with a beer, costs under $8 USD. They're also open until 4AM, making them perfect "I just had a freaking long day and don't want to go anywhere how about teppanyaki because I'm starving and it's delicious" food. 

The cooks know us. 

This is only one installment of many.

Caitlin Returns To The Stage, Paid in Fruit

And you ask, "How are you going to eat all of those?"

Last week was a teaching bonanza. And yes, just like the wild west Bonanza. It was nuts.

I decided to take on not one, not two, not three, but four extra classes this week. I mean, practice makes perfect, and I love spending more face time with the kids. By Friday, I was being held together by iced green teas and cookies, trying to bring down a raging fever while giving unit quizzes.

Some wisdom: iced green tea is great, money is great, but sleep is superior. Don't take too many classes.

Anyway, back in the saddle on Saturday night, since James and I volunteered to do a song-and-dance teaching demo for a community event celebrating the Moon Festival (which actually happens Wednesday...which has something to do with rabbits and palaces and everyone eats these cookies called "moon cakes" and eats pomelos). We strapped on our wet weather gear - anticipating the typhoon to snag us on the way - and stomped down to school. It turns out the event was a disco light performance of sorts, where hundreds of Taiwanese neighbors sit in chairs and listen to middle-aged disco-dressed women sing catchy Taiwanese tunes and everyone enters raffles for microwaves and refrigerators. The emcee was wearing a pirate costume and Kim Jong-Il glasses.

Aside from almost catching on fire from the unsafe, very large fireworks that were shot off five feet from my face, the night was successful. We taught them English flashcards and I sang the Hokey-Pokey on the microphone. Man, it felt good to be back on stage again, even if it were a collapsible truck bed decked out in carnival lights. It also felt sweaty.

After our ten minute hurrah, we we gifted with giant boxes of pomelos. Though I have received many flowers, cards, chocolates, and hugs after a good night of singing, I have never walked away with such an obscure and heavy reward.

Tonight, Moon Festival barbecue. Who knew, it's like the Forth of July, for moons. 

The Raid, or: How Taiwanese Law Is Surprisingly Unsurprising

It is illegal for foreigners to teach Kindergarten in Taiwan.

It is illegal for me to do my job in Taiwan. Technically.

One of the first things we learned in Taoyuan is that in Taiwan, there are laws, and then there is what everyone does, including the law makers and the law enforcers. Take the process of owning a scooter for example:

1. The law: You must have a license to drive a scooter.
2. The law: You must have a scooter to take the test to get your license.

Conflict: How do you do both?
The answer: It's Taiwan.

So you must imagine how surprised/oddly unsurprised we were to learn that foreigners actually can't teach "Kindy." The Taiwanese teachers' union said NO, and so it was written, but parents wanted their babies to have native English education. And so it is commonly practiced that crazy youth like me end up working under...or perhaps above...government rules and regulations. We were told that it's very rarely an issue, and if anyone ever asks, just play dumb, pretend you don't understand what's going on, and don't sign anything. 

 So you must imagine how surprised/oddly unsurprised we were to get phone calls during our classes on Friday (just as I was about to teach ABC's...), saying "Open Sesame!!!" And my HRT (Homeroom Teacher) Lily starts shouting, "Open Sesame, Open Sesame" at me in her beautiful thick accent and I'm screwing up my face like, "Say what, Teacher Lily?" and all of a sudden I get it: Open Sesame is the code word for "We're being raided for illegal teachers...among other things." So I drop my flashcards, say "Bye bye" to the kiddies and bolt out the door.

Outside in the stairwell are my co-teachers, also panting up to the third floor, where we barricade ourselves in the teachers' room. Supposedly this doesn't happen very often, but everyone seems to know the drill very well. Aside from the third floor hiding the teachers, it seems like another "illegal" practice is being hidden: we aren't supposed to have Kindy on the third floor, either, and so an enormous bomb door (or something to that effect) has been closed and locked to completely eliminate the 3rd floor, as if to say, Sorry, but this floor doesn't exist anymore.

We sit sit sit, and wait wait wait, a bit Anne Frank-ish (not to compare a Kindy raid with World War II - though it made a moderately funny joke at the time) and 45 minutes later start to have rumbling tummies. It turns out the inspectors had been satisfied a while before and left. The office ladies had simply forgotten we were Open Sesame-ing and forgot to call. This was not malicious, I might add, just a little funny. After all, it doesn't happen very often, right?

So you must imagine just how surprised/oddly unsurprised we were last night, Monday, while teaching TreeHouse class in the basement classrooms (6-10 years old after school English), that we hear "Open Sesame!" shouted in the doorway. As the English teachers begin to bolt for the elevator to take us to our safe haven on the third floor, we notice a giant stream of students following us into the garage (where the elevator is.) It turns out the Taiwanese law says that classes cannot be held in the basement, and therefore, the students and the classrooms themselves were also illegal.

My poor class, yanked out of a mind-numbing lecture on the grammar pattern "How does noun sensory verb?" climbing onto me asking "Teacher, what is?" and me getting all Sound of Music on them saying "We're playing Hide and Seek and if you stay very quiet, we'll win!" What an absolute treat! Apparently, the basement also had an enormous space shuttle-esque door that effectively renders it "There's nothing important behind that wall!", and we were just taking precautions. It's not that anyone will get shot, or taken to jail, or even seriously fined.

People just don't like complications in Taiwan.

Go figure ;D.