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.

I Am A Teacher/I Am A Birthday Party Entertainer

My best known Chinese word is “niao niao.” I say it constantly. “Niao niao?” “Do you have to go niao niao?” My students are two and three year old little pants-pee-ers, and we go niao niao a lot.

There’s hardly a better way to wake up in the morning (that is, of course, after a humid and sunny 30 minute saunter to work) than to put on your best un-scary face and entertain 11 babies. And they are babies, and I am a less-experienced teacher piloting the first ever Yo-Yo (tiny baby) class at Taoyuan Kindy. The best part: no one knows if I stink at my job. I’m literally making it up as I go, and there’s no rubric, guidelines, prescedent, nothing. Just me and my babies, learning about English, Chinese, and toilet usage.

Have you ever noticed how slowly toddlers eat? I get to watch them eat every morning. They love sweet buns and sweet soy milk, but they hate oatmeal and anything green. Sometimes I get my hands dirty and grab the spoon, doing the airplane and the choo-choo train, trying to force it down, but I usually let Teacher Lily and Teacher Pace do it. These are their babies too, (they are the Chinese Teachers), and they are amazing. And they have this fantastically frightening way of making the kids do just about anything…except eat quickly. So we spend a good part of the morning sitting around, watching snack digest into bathroom time.

The cast of characters: Alto, Oscar, Sannie, Angela, Wesley, Thomas, Chester, Yuka, Champ, Hans and Andy. Can you imagine how confusing it must be to a three year old to have two completely different names? Lucky me, I get to call them by the names they absolutely don’t recognize, so we also spend a lot of time running around the room waving apple-shaped name tags shouting “This is my name!” My favorite answer to the question “Sannie, what is your name?” is “Sanniewhatisyourname!” repeated nearly verbatim by the little pigtailed kid in question. She’s fabulous, but also very naughty. And so it goes.

The babies love to sing, or at least watch me sing and wave my arms around, so we sing a lot. Sort of. They also love to watch me blow up balloons and make the balloons make farting noises, so we do that a lot. But I swear they are learning. Alphabets and colors and how to stand in a line. Sort of. It turns out that this job is a lot like being a birthday party entertainer, so long as the jist of the activity is English centered. And everyone likes a good birthday, so as far as I can see, it’s mostly just fun. How lucky is that?

We go to the bathroom at least three times during English class. This is where I get to use my hard earning Chinese word – niao niao. I figured, there’s no need to punish the poor kids, who hardly even know Chinese, if they can’t recognize the word “pee pee” or “bathroom.” And since we have at least one wet set of pants a day, it’s necessary to stick to the driest approach. Oscar pooped on the floor last week, then stared at it for a good five minutes before we realized what was going on. The Chinese teachers and me, we’re bonding, one misguided bowel movement at a time.

My afternoons aren’t quite as hairy: I teach a curriculum to ages 7-11 very similar to a regular class at home. They love to use “pee” and “poo” in sentence substitutions, we just fly with it. They’ve come a long way from the tiny Yo-Yo urinals, so I figure they’ve earned it.

My week is full, but it is happy. Niao niao then, aren’t you impressed?

Caitlin Versus the Love Motel

Some people say, “Home is where the heart is.” But I like to think, “Home is right across the street from the OhYa Love Motel.” (Which, according to Asiarooms.com is completely booked tonight...for love.) See photo: my very own love motel. Kidding, Mommy!

Now before someone starts wondering what bed of sin I have made my nest in, “Hourly Rate” motels are apparently very common in Taiwan, a country where many married couples share a bedroom wall with their in-laws. It’s all very sensible when you consider that this is also a country where women protect their skin from the sun with umbrellas and recycling is not simply sorted as “Recycling” and “Garbage,” but into paper, plastic, metal, and garbage. Absolutely sensible.

What’s sensible about my new home in Taoyuan? (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Location.
(Location, location.)
Within a thirty minute walk to school, I can wave hello and give a goofy sounding “Tsao” to about 50 shop owners (dumpling shops, crap stuff shops, mobile phone shops, 7-11s, noodle shops, rice shops, pharmacies.) This country loves to buy stuff, and so there are so many people to say good morning to. Within 30 minutes of bus travel, we can be smack dab in the center of Taipei.
We are >1 minute to the nearest Family Mart/7-11 (though that’s hardly a bragging right. They are literally on every corner.) Two minutes from school is Taoyuan’s most awesome outdoor market, complete with dozens of fish, meat, and veggie vendors (and everything in between) – I will give a full account of the market scene later, but its simply too awesome to fit into this vignette.
We are five minutes walk to the nearest dan bing vendor – Chinese style crepe filled with egg and whatever else you want/they have – I order veggie, which always has canned corn, and the other day had sprouts, iceberg lettuce and cucumber…and hot sauce.

Our rent is less than $350 per month – split between two.
The apartment is on the 6th floor of a nearly new building, with several fabulous security guards, a small pool, a gym, a movie viewing room and a well decorated reading room. At night, the kitchen window is filled with the purplepinkblue lights of the OhYa sign. I love it. It makes me feel like I’m in New York City.
Except way cheaper.
Ohya, and I really like the Japanese sliding door to the bedroom and weird extra room that may become a dining room. And I really like the built in giant desk thing next to the kitchen that I also use to store food and dishes. Ohya, and the enormous closet, and the shoe closet by the door (no shoes in the house, suckah, this is Asia), and the laundry dry rack that lowers down like a chandelier.

Didn’t I come here to work?
Ohya, I guess I did come here to work. After surviving nearly two weeks of 9-6 days sitting in an igloo of a training room, apparently I have enough knowledge to be trusted with dozens of children. What kind of children? Tiny ones, no older than 3 years old. But if their poopy diapers are as cute as their tiny faces and hands and feet, there should be no problem. Plus, how cool will it be to be the one person who will ultimately begin to mold them into bilingual beings? So cool.
I also get to teach older kids, I think in the 6-10 range. The curriculum/teaching methods are chant/song/game crazy, so it will be great to get some sillies out. Plenty of room for creative expansion, plenty of hours in the day to learn and teach. And, no weekend work. Singing songs and playing games with the world’s smartest and prettiest children, paying peanuts for rent and eating dan bing and taro steamed buns (they are purple!) all day long.
It just goes to show that everything happens for a reason. I already feel at home here, for better or for worse.

OhYa.

PS. I am buying a scooter, end of discussion.

Arrival in Taiwan: Caitlin Looks Like Lady GaGa

It's been four days in Taiwan and I have already eaten something I wanted to spit out into my lap (oyster omelette), used a rain umbrella as a sunshield (when in Rome...), spoken unintelligible Mandarin ("bathroom" is a hard word to pronounce!) and been called "Lady GaGa" by a woman in the Taipei hospital. This is going to be an eventful year.

I hate to be a busy adult woman, but these first two weeks are quite jammed pack, and I will only really be able to dip my toes in the blogging pond during teacher training. Therefore, I would like to simply create an outline of my first impressions today, using my interpretation of the CIA World Factbook as a design guide:

Introduction:

Taipei is a giant modern city with a gagillion motor scooters, half a gagillion traditional Chinese/Taiwanese food carts, 14 million grinning inhabitants, a metro system that runs like a bazillion bucks, and the safest vibe in just about, well, a tragillion years. It's pretty damn fascinating, bustling, and Taiwan strikes me immediately as the friend I never had, and the friend I will not tired of getting close to.

Geography

Taipei is big, but my world exists within my current living neighborhood, Zhongshang, and the tourist destinations reachable via the MRT (rapid transit system.) The buildings are tall, the buildings are sleek, they are covered in bright and rainbow colored billboards, and the streets are very flat. What I love so much? The city is surrounded by mountains on all sides, and you can even see the mountains through the hazy smoggy heat during some points in the day.

Climate
Taipei is a sauna right now. We might as well all just be walking around in towels, because terry cloth might make a bit of absorption difference. It is always hot. The Taiwanese jog after 9:00 PM because a) they are smart and b) only idiots run in 35 degree weather.

People

They may wear doctors' masks in public, but do not fear: underneath that mask is a giant grin that you just can't quite figure out. It's as if everyone's saying "I know it's freaking hot, Caitlin, I know you might be in for a bit of a shock here, but we are going to help you every step of the way." And they do: they love to help, they love to speak English if they can, and they love to play charades if they can't. Sure, there's a bit of a sidewalk-bumping culture (You'd better push and not apologize!), but have you ever been to a country where people actually line up for the subway? Simply breathtaking.

Government

So far as I can tell, my favorite part of the Taiwanese government is the way they handle healthcare. On Saturday we had to go the national hospital for physicals, as is required for all foreign workers, and it was the most amazing process I have ever been through. Sure it took 3 hours (but there were 30 of us, and they kept alternating Taiwanese-foreigner-Taiwanese-foreigner in their number calling): but once you got the ball rolling, they were medical machines. "Number 127: how are you? I will now take your pulse. Very good, now go to the desk. Step on the scale. Sit down. I will now take your blood pressure. While I do that, I will take your temperature. Scoot over one seat, we check your eyes. Excellent, now pay the front desk and get your blood taken. *Slurp* goes the blood needle, great! Now get your chest x-rayed - put on this soft cloth gown in our changing closet! Done." The best doctors' visit ever.

Economy

I love everything about Taiwanese money. I like talking about how much I have.

"I guess I don't need to go to the ATM for a while, I've got, like, 2,000 dollars in my wallet."

"How much for those shoes? $190NT? That is so cheap!"

The Taiwan dollar trades at about 31 to 1 USD right now, which makes this one of the best economic deal I have ever made. Price of a street cart steamed pork bun (around the corner): 9NT = 25 cents. Price of cute black flats Caitlin might have bought: $190NT = less than $6.

It's like living in the 20's, but with internet...

Communications

I don't speak Mandarin. Many, many/most things are written in Mandarin...or Japanese...or any other language I don't understand. But "xie xie" has turned out to be my most useful phrase, because everyone says it so often (of course - it's smiling helpful island!)

I am hopeful for my linguistic future. Stay turned.

Transportation

I have never been more afraid to cross the street in any country, except Taiwan. The lights take about 90 seconds to change, and even if you have the animated WALK sign, cars may still just see it fit to run right on through the intersection.

Then there are the scooters, the elegant, numerous scooters. They scare me too, as a pedestrian, but they are so cool in transit. Everyone seems to know what to do, even though there are so many. I saw a crash the other day, and the rear-enders immediately jump off their bike, pull up the guy they hit, dust him off, and everyone was happy and moved on their way. Just like a bike accident in Davis, I should say, only with a bit more plastic and petrol involved.

I realize I haven't touched on, well, practically anything. But I have oh so much to say, so please, stay tuned. As soon as I become insta-teacher, I will plenty of time to continue my diatribe...and it might as well be exclusively about food. Coming soon!