It's been great to have the week off school, but unfortunately the weather has been some of the worst we've had so far- cold, wet, and rainy. Therefore a lot of the plans we had for this week had to be abandoned. Instead of going camping, hiking, and day-tripping, we spent a lot of quality time together just relaxing and rejuvenating. We did find an amazing center that houses a huge selection of Taiwanese handicrafts and works of art from all around the island. It was great to find some beautiful and hand-made items for our friends and family back home.

It's really hard to believe that we're down to the last two months of our year living abroad. These last days will be spent doing all the things we still want to do and journeying to all places we still want to go. In the line-up is a trip to Orchid Island, a ride on Alishan Forest Railway- one of the most spectacular mountain-railways in the world, and a visit down South to the tropical beaches of Kenting. Hopefully we'll have some exciting updates for all of you soon!

(Post by Bacon)
Back home I used to watch way too much television. I really only had a few shows that I would want to watch on the DVR and then after that I would channel surf. In Taiwan any American show I want to see I can watch online, but any kind of casual watching habits I had have now been destroyed by Taiwanese television. The standard show here is filled with unnecessary sound effects, constant graphics popping up, and awkward laughing. Explaining it in words does not give it justice so I decided to just grab a few clips off youtube.

This is the basic Taiwanese formula at work.

Standard commercial formula.

This is actually a Japanese commercial, but it's not any weirder than anything I've seen here.

The people of Taiwan have several favorite pastimes: eating stinky, stinky, stinky tofu, driving like maniacs, and, perhaps most favored of all, KTV-ing (singing karaoke). The latter is something that we generally associate in America with perhaps one too many pitchers of domestic beer and an odd desire to embarrass ourselves publicly. In Taiwan, however, KTV is a little bit of a different matter. You can barely turn a street corner without seeing a Party World or a Holiday- giant buildings devoted solely to the art of singing along with a teleprompter. But it doesn't stop there. Oftentimes you'll be strolling around in Taipei and run into some serious, live KTV action right on the street- we've even witnessed a KTV battle. Oh yes, and talent, you ask? Irrelevant. Just grab a mike and sing your heart out- we've seen, and unfortunately heard, some pretty tone-deaf people draw a huge crowd of devoted listeners.

(Post by Bacon)

It seems like every month at school we have some sort of competition for the kids. Usually it's like a song and dance for the kids to perform. It's supposed to be about the students, but because of the way the school is set up it is really about the teachers. How your students perform can actually affect your bonus down the road. I know it's funny to think that children singing and dancing is connected to monetary gains, but it's true. The classes are set up in a competitive fashion and while most of the English teachers don't take it seriously, some of the Taiwanese teachers do. I made this video to mock the whole thing.

Saturday night a few of us went out for a friend's birthday. We found our way to a little hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant tucked down an alleyway in the Shida area (swarming student hang-out). The decor was slightly kitsch, but in a delightful and cozy kind of way. As Bacon and I have never eaten Indian food, our friends recommended a couple of great menu items: we scooped up our yummy tikka masala and eggplant curry with the hot buttery naan bread, and toasted the whole evening with India's famed Kingfisher Beer. I think Bacon and I have a new favorite ethnic eatery...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our friends and family! We missed all of you at this time of year, but we loved and will cherish the unique experience of the beautiful Christmas weekend we spent together here in Taiwan.

(Post by Alisha)

(Post By Bacon)

Pig's blood soup (pictured above), tofu squares, tubes of fish paste,
oyster egg pancakes: ah, just some of the delightful delicacies we've experienced, in sight, smell, or taste, since we've been here. Now I know that most of you are wearing a a genuinely perplexed look right now (hey, you mean authentic Chinese food doesn't come from a Li Yang's-esque establishment with General Tsao's chicken combos and neat little sweet-and-sour packets?) but a lot of Taiwanese cuisine we've tried is generally unidentifiable at best, and cooked in sweet, briney oils at worst. Even the deserts fail to strike any chord of familiarity (think dense cubes of gelatinous goo). This isn't to say we haven't found several foods that we can't get enough of- namely, pork and cabbage dumplings, beef noodle soup, taro balls, steamed layer cake, shaved ice, fresh fruit teas, fried squid, and rice, rice, rice with just about any vegetable, egg, or brothy topping- but the craving for American food is slowly over-taking the desire to expand our palate as the days go by. While we may be getting slightly less adventurous on our weekend dining excursions, we do, however, eat Taiwanese food every day for lunch. At school, "Auntie" prepares a huge pot of white rice and about three to four trays of, for lack of a better word, toppings- no pre-packaged Sysco school lunches here. All the teachers take a small bowl and fill it about 2/3 of the way up with rice, saving a bit of room at the top to pile on whatever new dish Auntie has concocted that day. Here is a sample schedule of what any given week is like for food: