Arranged boyfriend and locked door

Day 3 of traveling: pictures above are the president's building and the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall

I went to the President's building in the morning only to find out that I couldn't go in because I was wearing inappropriate shoes aka flip flops. I was scared though because the guards were holding guns!!

I got lost trying to go to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall and I found this buffet restaurant type thingy. I got hassled because I was American and this old guy was trying to set me up with his coworker who is 26. He kept saying he was cute and asked if I needed a friend. Then he said he could be my boyfriend. I kept laughing and trying to eat as fast I could but they kept bothering me. I asked for directions and then when I was leaving, I was walking to the place and the guy who they were trying to set me up with was on a scooter delivering food and the guy yelled out the directions to make sure I didn't get lost. That was so nice! lol

I then went to Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall where I met a Japanese guy. He wanted me to help him take a picture and I did too and we just ended up talking..well sorta. He barely knows any English and knows only Japanese. It was interesting trying to communicate with him when we don't know have a common language to speak with but it was fun. Then a Taiwanese-American guy came up to me and wanted to help translate but obviously it was pointless since he was Japanese lol He was with two girls and they were from Virginia <-Thanks Hien so it was nice to talk to someone in English lol The Japanese guy wanted me to go with him to Taipei 101 and he motioned that he would cry if I didn't go. I tried saying goodbye to him earlier and we met up again at the corner going to the MRT..or more like he found me again lol But we parted ways when we were on the subway

My other aunt (I have many aunts) and cousin came to visit me and checked out my apartment. My aunt was fiddling with the door and later on Cala got locked out because the deadbolt was locked and we had no key. The landlord said no one ever would use it. Cala and her friends had to wait for over a hour and after the locksmith came, we got into the apartment. Ugh I had to pay for the locksmith but it was only $12USD so it's no biggie..I'm just glad we got in!

-Chihchat

Bring on the rain!!

As it's my second day of vacation before I start teaching, I wanted to spend the whole day at the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall and to see the library and museums. I went to the library and the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall for a little bit but the sun was getting too hot and I got too tired and went home and took a nap lol Then tonight I went to Danshui (pictures above). It's a pretty city near the river where people go fishing. Last night I found out from Cala that the survey lady from yesterday thought I was getting allergies on my face. I thought I had really bad acne on my face although I usually never get it on my face. I guess I got a bad sunburn yesterday and my face reacted to it.

Taiwan is near the equator line so it usually gets humid hot and it rains a lot. It's basically tropical weather but I can't believe I would say this but I love the rain. Living in California for a year made me hate the rain because it always rained and it was gloomy and I could never go outside. I've always disliked the rain but I LOVE the rain here! I like the sun here too but it's so hot and it's so sticky and humid that you can't breathe. I get hot easily and I feel that even wearing a swimsuit outside wouldn't even help. When the rain comes, it's so cool outside. Sometimes we get really bad rain where it's just pounding down and you can hear it when you're inside but that's the best! Sometimes I don't even want to use an umbrella. I just want to walk outside and get sopping wet. The humidity is insane though. If you buy a bag of chips, you have to eat it before it gets flat since the air in the bag will dry out. It's hard to dry your hair and drying clothes since we don't have a drying machine and we have to hang our clothes outside or go downstairs and use a drying machine across from the street. I've been trying to save money and not be a pansy and not use the A/C at night when I sleep but I broke in the 3rd day I got here. It's way too unbearable to not have the A/C but my roommates and I don't put it on during the day. Luckily we all have our own A/Cs in our rooms. It's weird to say this but I can never be "clean" since I sweat all the time, especially after I take a shower (haha) and walking outside is all muggy and hot. I don't know what I'm going to do when mid-late July hits :/

-Chihchat

Cleaning of the guards and an adventure to throw out the trash

Today is the first day of my break before I start teaching. I think I start teaching either this Thurs. or Fri. which means I have a couple of days off to explore Taiwan. Although I woke up late close to noon, my plan was to see Taipei 101 building, the tallest building in Taiwan and some other memorials places like Chiang Kai-Shek and Sun Yat-sen memorial hall. I first went to Taipei 101 building and I was proud of myself because I didn't get lost too badly although when I first took the subway, I went to the wrong direction. I got to the building and there are a lot of nice, expensive shopping places. You have to go to the 5th floor where you buy your ticket to see the observatory which is the 89th floor. Although Taipei 101 has 101 floors, you can't go all the way to the top. It cost $400NT which was sorta a lot although that's about $14USD. I was following tour guides since I was by myself and I didn't want to get lost lol The elevator of course was cramped and I accidentally touched a random guy's butt haha I said sorry and his friends were making fun of him haha

I then went to the Sun Yat-sen memorial and that was my last stop because I didn't have time to go to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall. I got out of the subway and I couldn't find the building. I was going to ask someone and this lady with a smile comes up and starts talking to me. There are people who want you to fill out surveys but you should just ignore them, that's what Cala and Drew told me. Well she helped me find the building but then she started to ask me questions. I felt like I had to talk to her because she helped me lol She asked me if I wanted to lose weight and what I thought about losing weight. So I told her my opinion and she wanted all my information to join this mailing list for a program to lose weight. I lied and said I don't have a cell phone or email lol Then she said something about my face and I didn't get it but now I do. I got sunburned really bad so I think she was asking me if my face hurt lol

I got to the memorial and inside there is a huge monument of Sun Yat-sen made out of bronze I think. Sun Yat-sen is a historical leader around the 1920s who developed the three principles of democracy. There were two guards and it's cool because every hour they do the changing of the guards and they do this little ceremony thing. The funny thing was after the guards were changed, one of the workers at the museum helped wipe the guard's face and shook his clothes and sorta gave him a massage lol I guess since they can't move, the museum worker helps them haha And as I was leaving, they had people meditating which I thought was neat.

As I mentioned before about the recycling, throwing trash is also confusing. It comes at night which stinks (haha pun) because no one is home to throw it away since we all mostly work. The trash has been building up at my place and since I'm on a break, I needed to throw out the trash tonight. The food and regular trash can be thrown out everyday but the cardboard and the other recyclables that have touched food are only thrown out on certain days. Well we had 3 big containers of trash and I can't carry that much so I brought 2 of them down. The food trash was nasty since it was leaking! I met a lady and she was nice and was watching my buckets of trash while I had to go back to my place to get the third bucket. When the garbage trucks came, the garbage man was telling me to condense my trash but I didn't understand and the lady who watched my trash yelled at him, saying I was an American and helped me. The garbage man was really mad at me lol He kept repeating do you understand? I understood that part but I didn't understand what he said before. I don't know why throwing trash is so confusing!

-Chihchat

Plan of Attack

I knew living in Taipei I would have to deal with cockroaches but I never knew how scared I would be killing them. Living with people who are scared too doesn't help lol Last night I couldn't sleep well because even though I killed the cockroach, I didn't flush it down the toilet. I left it in the living room and placed a black carton over it so Cala and I wouldn't have to see it. I finally woke up today around 2pm. Cala got back from her LSAT and so we decided to muster up the courage and flush the cockroach down the toilet.

We brought the dustpan near the cockroach and knew we had to sweep the black carton aka dead cockroach into the dustpan. Cala did it and we already were jumpy, screamed and she ran to the kitchen. We just didn't want to see the dead cockroach. I actually thought it was still alive but if that were the case, the black carton would have been moving and it wasn't. We were trying to think of a way to put the cockroach in the toilet without seeing it. Cala got a chopstick and stuck it in the black carton. We wanted to make sure the cockroach was there and so she lifted up the black carton and we screamed and freaked out since we saw it. We knew it was there but just the fact of seeing it was disgusting. Then we were trying to strategize and plan a way to slide the cockroach into the toilet without seeing it and I was trying to explain to Cala what we could do. Basically I thought we could slide the black carton out of the dustpan but then the black carton would be dumped in the toilet. I was using an example by using my journal (dustpan), cell phone (black carton), and bobby pin (dead cockroach) to explain what I thought could work but we need to make sure the black carton won't go into the toilet. The cockroach was in the living room and Cala and I were contemplating our "plan of attack" near the kitchen and my room. Cala says I sounded like a military person, implemented our attack but when the time came to do it, I totally chickened out LOL

I brought the dustpan to the bathroom and all we had to do was dump the cockroach in the toilet. We even put the toilet seat up, turned on the light, and got everything ready but we were not mentally ready. I didn't want to make Cala put the cockroach in the toilet because she really is terrified of them. I knew I had to do it so I was trying to get the courage to just flush the stupid cockroach down the toilet. It was pretty sad; we were laughing and freaking out so much that the ground seemed like hot lava since we were jumpy. The above picture is what Cala and I chose to demonstrate the jumping positions that we did this afternoon LOL After about 15 mins of trying to calm myself down but still shaking uncontrollably, I took off the black carton but I didn't see the cockroach (granted I shut the light off since I didn't want to see it). I told Cala I didn't see it but then I finally peered over and saw that it was there. It was just that I was too chicken to actually hover over the dustpan to see it. Then I quickly dumped it in the toilet and voila, I flushed it. Whew..after about 20 mins of deliberation, we finally accomplished our task of getting rid of the cockroach in our place!! I'm just definitely not looking forward or mentally ready to kill another cockroach :(

-Chihchat

A cockroach hanging out in my room

Tonight my coworkers and I ate at an all you can eat bar and drinks to say goodbye to the foreign teacher Daniel and the Chinese teacher Dorothy. I'm actually replacing Daniel since he is leaving in a couple of weeks to go to law school in the States. We ate near the Taipei 101 building which is the largest building in Taipei that has 101 floors. The restaurant we ate at is a Japanese restaurant and the food was amazing! I consistently ate for 2 hrs and 45 mins lol Yeah..BUT I had a small lunch since I knew that I would be eating a lot. They had everything from sushi to Western food. Above is a picture of some of the food I got. They even had a Chocolate fountain and the free drinks included cocktails, beer, and wine. It cost roughly $800NT which is $24USD but it was worth it. It was nice to hang out with my coworkers outside of work and then later we were going to watch the soccer game but the bars was packed so we went to Daniel's friends place where we played card games until the next game which is 2:30am. USA is playing tonight at 2:30am-Taipei time.

I got home fairly late, around 1:30am and I turned on my light to see a "dead" cockroach near my door. I wanted to scream but I couldn't lol It was late and Drew left this morning to Thailand for vacation and Cala has her LSAT test tomorrow morning. So I got a broom and I swept it outside to find out it was still alive. Yuck..but it didn't really move so I hurried up and got some killer bug spray and I swept it to the living room and I sprayed it then got a small black carton thing and covered it. So yeah..it's near Cala's door but I did leave a note. I just hope she doesn't open the black carton because Cala absolutely hates cockroaches. I just feel awful since she will get up early to get ready for her LSAT and she will see it. I want to pick it up and throw it away but I can't. I just can't..ugh I wish cockroaches could just stay outside out of our apartment, especially my room!!

-Chihchat

Green Door Bar

For lunch Drew and I were eating at this beef noodle place and the small restaurant type store was really busy. Well we came in and they cleaned off a table for us and I was sitting across from Drew when the waitress wanted me to sit next to Drew. Then they were sitting people across from us at the same table. Drew told me that they usually do that here to save space. He said he was surprised when he first came here because he was alone and had to sit with random people. So it was a little awkward to share a table with complete strangers but oh well..he was a small man and he finished his noodles fast!

After work I went with Cala and her coworkers to a bar called the Green Door. We were going to go to this one bar called "My Place." The bar's name is actually in English and it was packed because of the soccer game. The World Cup is huge here and everyone was watching the game. We then decided to go to this bar called Green Door and when we entered the bar, Michael Jackson songs were playing. Today is exactly one year of Michael Jackson's death. I was hoping to see more people outside today commemorating him but I didn't see anything. Cala said it was on the news but I was glad to hear his music playing in the bar. They were playing most of his songs for awhile. This bar was low-key. It was like an American bar where people were playing darts and they served fried food and pizza. Cala's worker actually ordered us some french fries lol Then when we were about to leave, they were playing My Heart will go on by Celine Dion. So weird..another Michael Jackson/Leonardo DiCaprio combination :)

-Chihchat

"Where are you from? Ahh you ABC!"

This morning I had to do errands to finish my ARC application and 2 out of the 3 taxi drivers were talking about me, wanting to know about me, and talking about ABCs, American Born Chinese. I never heard negative things about being an ABC but maybe that's also because I'm living in Taipei. Most of the people I have talked with said that it is good that I would come back to my home country and experience my culture. I remember having a conversation with Will at the airport about being an ABC and he said it wasn't bad since he had many ABC friends. Then you get the term FOB, fresh off the boat so everyone is labeled.

I knew that one of the things I had to get accustomed to was people understanding that I am Chinese, born in America. During my interview, my hiring manager even told me right away that this was something that I was going to experience and I might get frustrated. It's sort of complicated just because my father was born in Guangdong, China, a southern province of China where Cantonese is the main dialect. My father knew how to speak Cantonese and Mandarin. My mother was born in China but she moved and immigrated to Taipei when she was 2 years old. She only knows Mandarin. Then my parents married in Taipei and immigrated to the U.S. where my older sister and I were born. People would speak to me in Chinese and of course when I respond, the immediate question is, where are you from? They sometimes guess and I usually got mistakened for being from Hong Kong. I say I am an American but they want to know my ethnicity too. So it goes into this whole long story and I don't want to say I'm Chinese because even though I'm technically Chinese, I'm not from China and there is tension between China and Taiwan. Most of my relatives live in Taipei but I can't say I'm Taiwanese because I'm not that either lol It should be an easy thing but I find myself always rambling about who I really am. Then the usual response after answering in broken Chinese is "Ahh you ABC!" Especially in the U.S., I would sometimes get offended being called that but after living in Taipei for about 2 weeks and hearing it everytime I communicate with someone, I just learned that it's the way of life and that being an ABC isn't SO bad. I heard from some people that Asian Americans have a higher prestige and the funny thing is that in Taipei, apparently many of the "ABCs" go to the bars lol It was even mentioned in the Taiwan Lonely Planet guidebook that many "ABCs" go to this one specific bar..which I might check out later lol

-Chihchat