Finding light

Okay. This REALLY shouldn't be funny, considering that Americans tattoo incorrect Chinese characters on their bodies everyday, but after the couple of days I have had, wandering across this sign over a really swanky, high end hair salon was just about enough to make me stop dead in my tracks and get run over by a scooter.

Yes, you are reading that right, and no, I didn't make it up and my PC is too old for photoshop. That says Fascism Salon. HAHAHAHAH.

And so, boys and girls, ended what has actually been the best day of my trip so far. I went back to Taipei starting at the CRACK of dawn this morning for a formal training class. My travel companion was a woman named Cleo, a Taiwanese English teacher from another Joy school in the Jhunan area. I didn't think Jhunan was big enough for more than on Joy school, but apparently there is a lot of demand for TOESL here.

She and I were INSTANT friends. By the time we got to Taipei, we had already planned to have lunch together with her husband on Sunday. She's awesome. So, upon arriving, getting completely lost, getting un-lost, and procuring the all important elixir of life, coffee, we crept into class (late) to catch the tail end of a demonstration by the swishiest man I have EVER laid eyes on about presenting vocabulary in an interesting way. The vocab words? Mosquito, spider, ant, cockroach and bug. The topic of presentation? "Now class, how do you kill an ant?"

I couldn't make this up if I tried.

About 10 minutes after our late entry, another American guy saunters into class. His name is Max and I really don't think he could be MORE from Oregon if you branded him on the rear. He was seriously a West Coast posterchild. That said, though, he was nice, warning me off of dragonfruit (it looks cooler than it tastes, he says) and espousing the myriad merits of stinky tofu, a regional specialty that I haven't had the guts yet to try (he says fried, though, not boiled, though if I want boiled, man, he's no one to stop me...).

Class went as one expects a class training a bunch of adults how to teach young children English would go. A little boring, somewhat informative, but mostly common sense. C'est la vie, right? After class, Cleo and I grab some utterly weird burgerish lunch from a restaurant in the train station and then haul it onto the next train back to Jhunan. After a brief nap and adventures in giggles and self-portraits with my cool new camera that eats AA batteries for lunch, we were back in Jhunan and on with our days. Janet, the school owner, picked me up at the train station so that we could go to the hospital for my required health check before I can get my ARC (alien resident card). Unfortunately, there was no time for that, so it was put off until tomorrow. I strolled into school to see what training stuff I needed to do today, just to discover... haha! I start teaching tomorrow! Woohooo!!! Wait... what?

Fortunately for my palpitating heart, I am teaching other people's classes while that Chinese teacher is still in the room with me, which definitely assuages some of my communication fears. Still, this is good, if a little scary, and so my day kept looking up. After looking over the class materials for a while, I got thirsty and decided that I would go absolutely out of my mind if I had to go back to the 7-11 one more time. So I wandered off in the general direction of the market and the train station, where apparently EVERYTHING is. (Side note - literally every thing I have asked anyone where it is in the last two days, the answer has been, "Oh, over near the train station.") As I am ambling through the dusk, I remembered that Janet was going to lend me a phone while I am here if I can just get a SIM card and number for it. Fortunately, this memory coincided with my arrival on what is apparently the cell phone block of the market district. I managed to get the SIM card and a number on my own without having to resort to pointing or gesturing. I was excited.

That done, I continued my journey toward the cool stuff part of town. As I wandered, I came across a bubble tea stand where Cindy had taken me a few days ago. I crossed the street, managed to order my tea IN CHINESE and then began crossing back toward home.... when I saw the Fascism Salon sign. At which point I took a picture, just about died laughing, and decided it was time to go home. I walked back to the school, cooked some dinner, and now, here I am, blogging to you.

It has been a good day.

All my love, and hope your days have been as bright.