When we first got home with Kaylee, and I mean this was maybe the second or third night home from the hospital, we hadn't learned about scheduling or feeding increments yet and were just feeding her whenever she cried at night. So this second or third night home, we were astonished when our brand new baby slept for nearly six hours. Six hours! We said. She's not sleeping through the night, but how nice is that!
And then we went to the pediatrician. He said that, because she had not established a weight-gain pattern, that it was potentially very bad for her to go that long without food. And thus, we started scheduling her feedings every 2-3 hours. During the day, this provided some much needed structure and sanity. At night, however, this means that I stay up until 9 or 9:30 and feed her. At 12, Sze gets up. At 3, it's my turn, and at 6 he starts his day, so he works a bottle into the morning routine. This boils down to a pretty good system, except when it's not, which is often. I wake up when the alarm goes off for either of us to get up. He wakes up if she cries for more than about 5 minutes, which is longer than it takes for me to get up, get the bottle, put it in the warmer, and find her pacifier so she won't wake up her daddy because he has to work in the morning! SHHHH!!!
Well, Friday we had another trip to the pediatrician. Kaylee has had some stomach issues which were leading to slower weight gain, so we were crossing our fingers for a good week. Hurray! She is up to 8.15 lbs! Since she has now established two consecutive weeks of really good gain, I asked the doctor about spacing out her night-time feedings.
"Oh, I wouldn't let her go more than about 6 hours between feedings at this point, but start gradually spacing them out."
I don't think I would have been happier if I'd actually heard angels singing. 6 hours??? That's like a full night's sleep! So, last night, we turned off the alarms, and, as life is circular, returned to plan A. We'll feed her when she wakes up hungry. And, while it didn't end up equaling 6 hours of uninterrupted rest, it did equal 4 - she woke up at 1 and 5, hurray! Progress! Now if we can only get her to sleep in the nursery...
The process of getting her to go to sleep is one in which we show our off-kilter stripes pretty clearly. Many of the forums recommend the four B's for bedtime: Bath, Bottle, Book, Bed. Bathtime I discussed before as a traumatic experience she'll have to tell her therapist ALL about when she's older. Bottles are pretty self explanatory, though difficult to administer when she shoves her hand or my elbow into her mouth as a source of nutrition. The books, however, are pretty far from your average nursery rhymes.
See, bedtime is kind of Sze's domain. As I have her all day, he attends to her most of the time in the evenings. So, when he sits down to read her a story, he picks up pretty much whatever the closest book is. This has included The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Good Omens, and Top Gear Magazine. And I thought I was warping her with Alice in Wonderland. When either one of us sings to lull her to sleep, it's rarely actual lullabies. I hum the violin solo from Sheherezade or sing Gershwin's Summertime. Sze is starting her early on classic rock, with variations on a theme of Hotel California and Simon and Garfunkle's Sound of Silence. We'll rock her, bounce her, and call her every name under the sun except the one we gave her. "Oh, what is this fuss, my little tadpole? Are you a little velociraptor? Of course you are. Oh look, honey, she's being a frog. Can you hold the progeny for a second? Thanks. Oh, aren't you the cutest bean on Earth!"
For such a small person, she's developed a fairly discerning taste in music. She conducts the orchestra by waving her little arms in tempo with the music when we listen to my Joshua Bell and Yo Yo Ma Pandora station. She does the happy baby dance in her swing, kicking her feet and wiggling, when we listen to Big Band on my Michael Buble station. And she likes the Beatles, but who doesn't like the Beatles?
This weekend has been a very busy one, and will continue to be so. Friday was an adventure in grocery shopping and a trip to see the doctor. Yesterday, we had friends come from Northern Virginia, and we took a walk to Cold Stone for fantastic ice cream. Kaylee had a poo apocalypse, hurray! Gross. And we had a vegetarian feast and watched Loony Toons. Today, we're going to Charlottesville with some friends to drink good wine, and then having dinner with my old roommate/hubby, Angela, and her fiance, Dave, I hope.
As part of the vegetarian feast, Jackie, Fran, and I made this fantastic chickpea salad. Chickpeas, or garbanzo beans, are a really great low calorie/high protein option for vegetarians and omnivores alike, and they have a fairly mild flavor that gives a good canvas to which you can add all kinds of other flavors. This is a slightly time consuming recipe, simply because there are a number of steps, but trust me, the end result is worth it. Don't skimp on fresh mint, and use fresh lemon juice if you can.
Greek Chickpea Salad
1 green bell pepper
1 red onion
1 tomato
1 cucumber
1 small can sliced black olives
1 can chickpeas
3-4 tbs fresh mint
Salt and Pepper
Ground Cumin
Ground Coriander
Crushed Red Pepper flakes
Lemon Juice
Olive Oil
Put the top shelf of the oven as close as you can to the broiler. Preheat the broiler to 500 or Hi, whichever your oven does, and cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Slice the pepper in half and place it on the sheet. Quarter the onion, removing the skin, and make a pouch of aluminum foil for it, covering the onion with olive oil. Also place on the baking sheet. Broil for about 10 minutes, watching carefully, until the skin of the pepper is blackened and charred. Remove the pepper and put it in a plastic zip bag for 15 minutes. Put the onions back in the broiler for 15 minutes as well.
Peel the cucumber, the chop the cucumber and the tomato into bite sized pieces. Put them in a large bowl and combine. Drain the olives and add them.
In a small skillet, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil. Saute the chickpeas, seasoning liberally with salt, pepper, cumin, and coriander. Add about a 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes: they are very potent. Add about a tablespoon of lemon juice, and stir until it cooks off. Remove from heat, and combine with vegetables in the bowl.
Remove peppers from the bag and peel with your fingers, then deseed and chop into bite sized pieces. Add to bowl. Chop onion into smaller pieces and also add to the bowl. Stir in mint, salt, and pepper, and enough lemon juice and olive oil to coat like a dressing (maybe a 1/4 cup?). Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes to let the flavors combine.
Buon Appetito!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Attack of the Mommy Brain, and Cooking School
My name is Rebecca, and I am here to tell you that Mommy Brain is not a myth. However, it's not quite what you would think, at least not for me.
Sure, I forget where my keys are, what I was going to make for dinner, and if it happened before Kaylee was born, there's a snowball's chance in a VERY hot place that I'll have any recollection of it whatsoever. That, though, can all be chalked up to physiology: sleep deprivation, hormones, and the myriad other physical challenges my body is facing. That part of Mommy Brain is temporary.
What I'm talking about when I talk about Mommy Brain is the complete compartmentalization of my thought processes: those of Rebecca, the adult, the wife, the cook, the functioning member of society, and then those of Rebecca, the mother. The Adult half of my brain makes grocery lists, addresses birth announcements, and efficiently deals with the day to day minutia of running a house. The Mommy half of my brain, however, is a cornucopia of the frantic, the exaggerated, and the completely absurd.
For example, last night we were giving the baby a bath. Kaylee HATES baths. She shrieks like a banshee and wails like we've skinned her and she's just waiting to be roasted over a fire. So, partially for my own sanity in the face of such fury and partially to soothe her screams, I sing while I'm scrubbing her belly. Last night, I was making up words to the tune of "On Top of Spaghetti." However, I'm REALLY, REALLY bad at it, so the song went something like this:
We're making clean baby
All covered with soap
But Baby hates bathtime
So she's going to mope
We wash her cute belly
And her little arms
But... something something jelly
And we mean no harm
See what I mean? Another gem is a rousing rendition of "Rock a Bye Kaylee," which has different words each time I sing it, and none of them make ANY sense at all. Diaper changes (another experience that makes her scream like the world is ending) have turned into narrated battles, with Kaylee ordering her minions to arm the Poo canon before the evil enemy, Mommy, can raise the defenses (the diaper, of course). When they fail, she has to pardon them to keep them from losing their lives. I mean, I've always been silly, but this is a whole new level of completely off the wall goofiness. And the worst is, this is only the beginning. My parents and I still have ridiculous jokes we tell each other from when I was a kid.
Fortunately, I do still get to exercise the part of my brain that hasn't been overtaken by babiness. When I troll the parenting forums, I always see posts from moms about how they almost immediately lost touch with their friends who were not parents. I LOVE my friends who aren't parents. I love my friends who are parents too, but it's the single girls, the unmarried couples, and my guy friends who will come over and keep Sze and I grounded in the world of people who don't have a newborn. Kaylee is a wonderful addition to my family, but I feel that it's pretty important that we don't lose touch with who we were before she burst onto the scene, and the friends without kids are invaluable for that.
Last night, my friend Ashley came over, as she does every other Wednesday, for our utterly informal cooking school. (This was after bath time, of course.) We've had cooking school since about mid October, and Ashley is an exceptional student and a natural cook, so at this point, I'm just offering starting points, guidance, and a kitchen in which to practice. This was the first "class" since Kaylee was born, though, and was a little more disorganized than usual. I had planned the side dishes- fettucini alfredo and a spinach, strawberry and goat cheese salad- and we'd purchased about a pound and a half of fresh turbot to prepare, but I completely and totally forgot what I'd planned to actually DO with the fish. So, I let Ashley make it up as she went along. She did really well! She concocted a sauce from ingredients I had around the kitchen and broiled the turbot to flaky perfection. We also timed the dishes pretty well, which is always the most challenging part of cooking to learn. It's so difficult to get everything on the table under normal circumstances, not to mention when you're learning and your teacher is juggling a baby and a spatula.
With her permission, I'm going to attempt to post Ashley's delicious sauce for Turbot. You could use any firm-flesh white fish you choose, but turbot is my favorite.
Broiled Turbot with Ashley's Special Sauce
2 turbot fillets
1/2 cup or so apricot preserves
1/4 cup red wine
2-3 tbs dijon mustard
ground ginger to taste
1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
salt and pepper
Olive Oil
Preheat broiler. Set fillets on a baking dish and season with salt, pepper, and olive oil. In a medium bowl, mix together next 5 ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings. Coat fish with sauce and broil until flaky, about 10 minutes. Serve hot with pasta or couscous.
Buon Appetito!
Sure, I forget where my keys are, what I was going to make for dinner, and if it happened before Kaylee was born, there's a snowball's chance in a VERY hot place that I'll have any recollection of it whatsoever. That, though, can all be chalked up to physiology: sleep deprivation, hormones, and the myriad other physical challenges my body is facing. That part of Mommy Brain is temporary.
What I'm talking about when I talk about Mommy Brain is the complete compartmentalization of my thought processes: those of Rebecca, the adult, the wife, the cook, the functioning member of society, and then those of Rebecca, the mother. The Adult half of my brain makes grocery lists, addresses birth announcements, and efficiently deals with the day to day minutia of running a house. The Mommy half of my brain, however, is a cornucopia of the frantic, the exaggerated, and the completely absurd.
For example, last night we were giving the baby a bath. Kaylee HATES baths. She shrieks like a banshee and wails like we've skinned her and she's just waiting to be roasted over a fire. So, partially for my own sanity in the face of such fury and partially to soothe her screams, I sing while I'm scrubbing her belly. Last night, I was making up words to the tune of "On Top of Spaghetti." However, I'm REALLY, REALLY bad at it, so the song went something like this:
We're making clean baby
All covered with soap
But Baby hates bathtime
So she's going to mope
We wash her cute belly
And her little arms
But... something something jelly
And we mean no harm
See what I mean? Another gem is a rousing rendition of "Rock a Bye Kaylee," which has different words each time I sing it, and none of them make ANY sense at all. Diaper changes (another experience that makes her scream like the world is ending) have turned into narrated battles, with Kaylee ordering her minions to arm the Poo canon before the evil enemy, Mommy, can raise the defenses (the diaper, of course). When they fail, she has to pardon them to keep them from losing their lives. I mean, I've always been silly, but this is a whole new level of completely off the wall goofiness. And the worst is, this is only the beginning. My parents and I still have ridiculous jokes we tell each other from when I was a kid.
Fortunately, I do still get to exercise the part of my brain that hasn't been overtaken by babiness. When I troll the parenting forums, I always see posts from moms about how they almost immediately lost touch with their friends who were not parents. I LOVE my friends who aren't parents. I love my friends who are parents too, but it's the single girls, the unmarried couples, and my guy friends who will come over and keep Sze and I grounded in the world of people who don't have a newborn. Kaylee is a wonderful addition to my family, but I feel that it's pretty important that we don't lose touch with who we were before she burst onto the scene, and the friends without kids are invaluable for that.
Last night, my friend Ashley came over, as she does every other Wednesday, for our utterly informal cooking school. (This was after bath time, of course.) We've had cooking school since about mid October, and Ashley is an exceptional student and a natural cook, so at this point, I'm just offering starting points, guidance, and a kitchen in which to practice. This was the first "class" since Kaylee was born, though, and was a little more disorganized than usual. I had planned the side dishes- fettucini alfredo and a spinach, strawberry and goat cheese salad- and we'd purchased about a pound and a half of fresh turbot to prepare, but I completely and totally forgot what I'd planned to actually DO with the fish. So, I let Ashley make it up as she went along. She did really well! She concocted a sauce from ingredients I had around the kitchen and broiled the turbot to flaky perfection. We also timed the dishes pretty well, which is always the most challenging part of cooking to learn. It's so difficult to get everything on the table under normal circumstances, not to mention when you're learning and your teacher is juggling a baby and a spatula.
With her permission, I'm going to attempt to post Ashley's delicious sauce for Turbot. You could use any firm-flesh white fish you choose, but turbot is my favorite.
Broiled Turbot with Ashley's Special Sauce
2 turbot fillets
1/2 cup or so apricot preserves
1/4 cup red wine
2-3 tbs dijon mustard
ground ginger to taste
1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
salt and pepper
Olive Oil
Preheat broiler. Set fillets on a baking dish and season with salt, pepper, and olive oil. In a medium bowl, mix together next 5 ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings. Coat fish with sauce and broil until flaky, about 10 minutes. Serve hot with pasta or couscous.
Buon Appetito!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
New Beginnings, and a defense of the Full Time Mom
Welcome back, wonderful readers!
After nearly a year, I've decided to return to the blogosphere. This was kind of a difficult choice, as the last 14 or so months have been some of the most painful, thought provoking, tumultuous, rewarding, and ultimately life altering a person can have, and the idea of airing that laundry, dirty or otherwise, in such a public forum wasn't one in which I was interested. If you don't know the whole story, I can sum it up quickly: Since last January, I quit my job, moved to Taiwan, moved back from Taiwan, returned to Richmond, got pregnant, got married, moved, lost my grandmother, and had a baby. And the baby now is the biggest challenge of my entire life.
It is because of Kaylee that I decided to come back to blogging. While bringing her into this world was a cleansing and humbling experience, it brought with it a new set of adventures. And we all know how much I love adventures, and how I love sharing them, good and bad. The myriad discoveries of the four weeks since she was born, from the mundane (the inventor of the Crock Pot needs to be deified) to the scientific (did you know a newborn's stomach is only the size of her fist?) to the fantastically disgusting (if you've ever babysat, you have an idea of what I'm talking about), every day has been about growth and discovery, not just for Kaylee, but also for Sze and I. Everyone tells you that having a baby changes your life, but nothing ever prepares you for the magnitude of that change. This is about three million times harder than I thought it would be, and I knew it was going to be hard. And really, I have never, ever, not even when I was a hard-partying freshman in college, been this tired. Never.
During my pregnancy, Sze and I decided that I would stay home for a while to take care of Kaylee. While this decision is a strange one for a self-proclaimed feminist, I was already unemployed and the lack of expenses related to my working- daycare, gas, wardrobe, etc - nearly constitute a second income. So, I resigned myself to the life of a stay at home mom, prepared to rock my baby in peace.
Wow, I was completely delusional.
I am working harder now than I have ever worked in my life. My day starts at 7:30 in the morning and ends at roughly 10:30 at night. I get up at 3:00 to feed her. I am a full time household manager, executive chef, grocer, childcare provider, and delivery boy rolled into one. I soothe crying progeny, change diapers, administer bottles, do laundry, clean, cook, run errands, field phone calls, and maintain the family schedules every single day. I take Kaylee to story time. Next month, we start pilates. Oh yeah, and I still have a healthy relationship with my husband. AND I shower once in a while. This is not the life of a Wisteria Lane housewife, and anyone who says that a stay at home mom isn't working has obviously never met one. While I used to think that "housewives" had given up their independence, I now realize that there's a lot of power in being the one in charge of it all. You're the traffic director, the conductor of the orchestra. You're the person who has the answers. And when you're awake enough to realize that, it's pretty cool.
I have chosen not to rename the blog for one simple reason: I'm still a Funky Gourmet. While my roasts may come from a slow cooker instead of a painstakingly basted rack of lamb that spent all day in the oven, cooking is still my passion and my release, now more than ever. I want to instill the concept of food as an expression of love in Kaylee, and of cooking as an art form. And frankly, chopping onions at 3 in the morning after she's been screaming all night is just about the best stress relief on planet Earth. So expect recipes and culinary quips. They'll still come. But, like everything else in this new life of mine, they come balanced with a bombshell of a baby.
Thank you for coming back to me, sticking with me, or finding my page for the first time. And Buon Appetito!
After nearly a year, I've decided to return to the blogosphere. This was kind of a difficult choice, as the last 14 or so months have been some of the most painful, thought provoking, tumultuous, rewarding, and ultimately life altering a person can have, and the idea of airing that laundry, dirty or otherwise, in such a public forum wasn't one in which I was interested. If you don't know the whole story, I can sum it up quickly: Since last January, I quit my job, moved to Taiwan, moved back from Taiwan, returned to Richmond, got pregnant, got married, moved, lost my grandmother, and had a baby. And the baby now is the biggest challenge of my entire life.
It is because of Kaylee that I decided to come back to blogging. While bringing her into this world was a cleansing and humbling experience, it brought with it a new set of adventures. And we all know how much I love adventures, and how I love sharing them, good and bad. The myriad discoveries of the four weeks since she was born, from the mundane (the inventor of the Crock Pot needs to be deified) to the scientific (did you know a newborn's stomach is only the size of her fist?) to the fantastically disgusting (if you've ever babysat, you have an idea of what I'm talking about), every day has been about growth and discovery, not just for Kaylee, but also for Sze and I. Everyone tells you that having a baby changes your life, but nothing ever prepares you for the magnitude of that change. This is about three million times harder than I thought it would be, and I knew it was going to be hard. And really, I have never, ever, not even when I was a hard-partying freshman in college, been this tired. Never.
During my pregnancy, Sze and I decided that I would stay home for a while to take care of Kaylee. While this decision is a strange one for a self-proclaimed feminist, I was already unemployed and the lack of expenses related to my working- daycare, gas, wardrobe, etc - nearly constitute a second income. So, I resigned myself to the life of a stay at home mom, prepared to rock my baby in peace.
Wow, I was completely delusional.
I am working harder now than I have ever worked in my life. My day starts at 7:30 in the morning and ends at roughly 10:30 at night. I get up at 3:00 to feed her. I am a full time household manager, executive chef, grocer, childcare provider, and delivery boy rolled into one. I soothe crying progeny, change diapers, administer bottles, do laundry, clean, cook, run errands, field phone calls, and maintain the family schedules every single day. I take Kaylee to story time. Next month, we start pilates. Oh yeah, and I still have a healthy relationship with my husband. AND I shower once in a while. This is not the life of a Wisteria Lane housewife, and anyone who says that a stay at home mom isn't working has obviously never met one. While I used to think that "housewives" had given up their independence, I now realize that there's a lot of power in being the one in charge of it all. You're the traffic director, the conductor of the orchestra. You're the person who has the answers. And when you're awake enough to realize that, it's pretty cool.
I have chosen not to rename the blog for one simple reason: I'm still a Funky Gourmet. While my roasts may come from a slow cooker instead of a painstakingly basted rack of lamb that spent all day in the oven, cooking is still my passion and my release, now more than ever. I want to instill the concept of food as an expression of love in Kaylee, and of cooking as an art form. And frankly, chopping onions at 3 in the morning after she's been screaming all night is just about the best stress relief on planet Earth. So expect recipes and culinary quips. They'll still come. But, like everything else in this new life of mine, they come balanced with a bombshell of a baby.
Thank you for coming back to me, sticking with me, or finding my page for the first time. And Buon Appetito!
Monday, March 2, 2009
The next steps
As I sit in Seattle airport waiting for my next flight, I thought I would address some of the questions, comments, and concerns sent my way in the last 24 hours.
First off, I absolutely do not view this experience as a failure. While it did not go the way I imagined, frankly, what does? I mean, I didn't exactly imagine when I got a BA in English that I'd spend three years at a helpdesk, did I? Regardless of what exactly happened - which was basically just a complete communication breakdown between me, Janet, and the recruiter - I had the cajones to voluntarily turn my life upside down, move to the other side of the planet, and try something I had never done before. While not everything I try succeeds, I think the point is that I tried.
That said, I did get some really valuable and memorable experiences out of this. I made a true friend in Cleo and I discovered a lot about who am I and what I want out of my life and my career. I figured out that I can get over fish that have heads and that I do actually like oysters. And I realized that, you know what? I really like being in the United States.
I really don't know what I am going to do next. The immediate plan is to fly to Dallas and spend some time with my family, decompressing and working out the details. I still think that getting my teaching cert is a good idea, and that 4th and 5th grade is where I want to be. I plan to return to Richmond soon, because really, I can't stay away from my second family but for so long.
Thank you all for your support, encouragement, and well wishes. ALL my love, and thanks for reading.
First off, I absolutely do not view this experience as a failure. While it did not go the way I imagined, frankly, what does? I mean, I didn't exactly imagine when I got a BA in English that I'd spend three years at a helpdesk, did I? Regardless of what exactly happened - which was basically just a complete communication breakdown between me, Janet, and the recruiter - I had the cajones to voluntarily turn my life upside down, move to the other side of the planet, and try something I had never done before. While not everything I try succeeds, I think the point is that I tried.
That said, I did get some really valuable and memorable experiences out of this. I made a true friend in Cleo and I discovered a lot about who am I and what I want out of my life and my career. I figured out that I can get over fish that have heads and that I do actually like oysters. And I realized that, you know what? I really like being in the United States.
I really don't know what I am going to do next. The immediate plan is to fly to Dallas and spend some time with my family, decompressing and working out the details. I still think that getting my teaching cert is a good idea, and that 4th and 5th grade is where I want to be. I plan to return to Richmond soon, because really, I can't stay away from my second family but for so long.
Thank you all for your support, encouragement, and well wishes. ALL my love, and thanks for reading.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Another Change of Plans
After a turn of events this evening that I don't really want to go into but basically boil down to me getting fired, I have decided to come home. This has been an adventure, and not necessarily a good or a bad one, but it is one that I am fed up with and now will end. I should be in Texas by 10:00 or so tomorrow night, Central Time. Thank you for your support in this endeavor. It has been well appreciated.
All of my love, now more than ever.
All of my love, now more than ever.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Skies of Blue
Well, um, things are going here. I am most likely moving to another town within the next week or two because the program here in Jhunan is reducing my hours. Moreover, I've been pretty homesick and isolated the last week or two, so it will be nice to go somewhere where I may be able to make some more friends and such. Overall, I am just going to take this as a good thing and try to be positive about the experience.
That said, I have had some amusing adventures in the market. I managed to buy everything that I needed in Chinese, which was good, though I ended up buying oysters by accident, which was not so good, as I don't much like oysters. Though I did make a mean scampi-ish thing yesterday, which was fun.
Anyway, that's the update on my life right now. I could use some happy thoughts, and an idea of what to do with oysters in the future :)
All my love, and thanks for reading.
That said, I have had some amusing adventures in the market. I managed to buy everything that I needed in Chinese, which was good, though I ended up buying oysters by accident, which was not so good, as I don't much like oysters. Though I did make a mean scampi-ish thing yesterday, which was fun.
Anyway, that's the update on my life right now. I could use some happy thoughts, and an idea of what to do with oysters in the future :)
All my love, and thanks for reading.
Monday, February 23, 2009
You win some, you lose some
Since my last post, things have been mostly good. I taught on Friday and Saturday, working with my adorable and rambunctious littles, which is a rewarding but sometimes frustrating experience. There are three of them, and them have the mutual attention span of a hummingbird. One of the bigger problems with them, as it is with all of my students, is that the other students speak almost exclusively Chinese in class, so anything that isn't in the book, they tend to not understand. I learned to play Simon Says with some of my young classes, which is great fun, and I administered my first test. All in all, those classes went well.
Saturday afternoon, after school, Cleo and I took the train up one stop to Hsinchu. It is amazing how much of a difference one stop can make. Hsinchu, a 15 minute ride away, is a completely different world. It's a huge, bustling city with an an ancient city center beautifully preserved as a large park. The city itself is amazing. Much like Jhunan, the streets are lined with shops and there are armies of scooters zipping around town, ready to run over an unassuming pedestrian. In most places, prices are very good and Cleo and I managed to loot pretty well for not a lot of money. Though, we did a LOT of walking and bargain shopping before we actually bought anything.
While wandering, we found two things that were amazing: The old town gate and the moat surrounding the ancient city, and a temple to the Ghost God (for more information about the Pudu rites regarding the role of ghosts in Taiwanese religion, go here). The architecture in this place is astonishing and really, no matter how many of these temples and monuments I see, I don't think I am ever going to get used to the sheer splendor of the vistas you can literally just stumble upon without even leaving the towns or cities. The area of town around the old gate has a beautiful moat that is the center of a large park, salvia and other flowers everywhere. It's breathtakingly beautiful.
After returning to Jhunan, I did a bit more shopping, and curled up with a better than average pizza for my first cheese consumption since arriving. Saturday was a very good day.
Sunday was homesick and mostly uneventful, though I did have another instance with shrimp that have heads. You know, I don't think it's all fish with heads that gross me out endlessly. I think it's just the fact that whole cooked shrimp look like evil little aliens from Europa out to eat my brains from the inside. So bad. *shudders*
Today was another good day, for the most part. I forgot that, in addition to being a beast to learn in a literal sense, there are a many millions of bizarre vaguaries and shades of gray in usage that can really never be taught. Today, I complemented my coworker, Emily, on her very attractive leopard print shoes, saying "Emily, you always wear the cutest shoes. I love that pair." She looked at me, confused, and said "Cute? I think these are more lady." And I remembered, right, cute has the denotation of young, adorable, and childing. Connotation being the evil beastie that it is, I had the fun job of explaining the different uses of "cute" in slang.
Beyond that, I taught seven classes today, including the ruffians and the miscreants. While the miscreant teenagers lapsed backward a bit today - they were pretty rough on me - the material we were studying was dead dull and there wasn't a lot I could do with it. That said, though, the ruffians, my level 3 9-11 year olds were a dream. I won!!! I had this idea that they totally bought into. One of the things they were doing that was driving me crazy was to get out of their seats and try to "help" me with stuff, so I just played off that. Today, I started keeping score, on the board, for each kid in the class. If you were good, sat in your seat, and answered questions, you got plus signs next to your name. If you were bad, you either got minus or lost a plus (depending on how many pluses you had). The point of the game was that, whoever had the most pluses for good behavior, next class gets to be the President and will have a special seat as my helper. They get reward cards or candy and they get to help me chose the President for the next class. It worked like a dream. I was SO excited.
My last class of the day was funny. It is a really small class and they're the highest level class that the school teaches. Anne, the other teacher that I really like, was in the room with me, and we were working on topic sentences and writing paragraphs. As an example of a topic, Anne suggests foods eaten in different places around the world. This turns into a 20 minute discussion of weird foods, the weirdest foods we've ever eaten, and the very weirdest foods we've ever even heard of. Apparently, it is a delicacy in mainland China to eat a bear's paw. In southern Taiwan, you are supposed to eat monkey's brains for good luck, and salamanders are another commodity eaten regularly in the south. I talked about escargot, alligator, and crawfish. The girls in my class were pretty grossed out by the idea of crawfish, but people here eat grasshoppers, so I don't want to hear it.
So, things are going well. All of my love, and thanks for reading.
Saturday afternoon, after school, Cleo and I took the train up one stop to Hsinchu. It is amazing how much of a difference one stop can make. Hsinchu, a 15 minute ride away, is a completely different world. It's a huge, bustling city with an an ancient city center beautifully preserved as a large park. The city itself is amazing. Much like Jhunan, the streets are lined with shops and there are armies of scooters zipping around town, ready to run over an unassuming pedestrian. In most places, prices are very good and Cleo and I managed to loot pretty well for not a lot of money. Though, we did a LOT of walking and bargain shopping before we actually bought anything.
While wandering, we found two things that were amazing: The old town gate and the moat surrounding the ancient city, and a temple to the Ghost God (for more information about the Pudu rites regarding the role of ghosts in Taiwanese religion, go here). The architecture in this place is astonishing and really, no matter how many of these temples and monuments I see, I don't think I am ever going to get used to the sheer splendor of the vistas you can literally just stumble upon without even leaving the towns or cities. The area of town around the old gate has a beautiful moat that is the center of a large park, salvia and other flowers everywhere. It's breathtakingly beautiful.
After returning to Jhunan, I did a bit more shopping, and curled up with a better than average pizza for my first cheese consumption since arriving. Saturday was a very good day.
Sunday was homesick and mostly uneventful, though I did have another instance with shrimp that have heads. You know, I don't think it's all fish with heads that gross me out endlessly. I think it's just the fact that whole cooked shrimp look like evil little aliens from Europa out to eat my brains from the inside. So bad. *shudders*
Today was another good day, for the most part. I forgot that, in addition to being a beast to learn in a literal sense, there are a many millions of bizarre vaguaries and shades of gray in usage that can really never be taught. Today, I complemented my coworker, Emily, on her very attractive leopard print shoes, saying "Emily, you always wear the cutest shoes. I love that pair." She looked at me, confused, and said "Cute? I think these are more lady." And I remembered, right, cute has the denotation of young, adorable, and childing. Connotation being the evil beastie that it is, I had the fun job of explaining the different uses of "cute" in slang.
Beyond that, I taught seven classes today, including the ruffians and the miscreants. While the miscreant teenagers lapsed backward a bit today - they were pretty rough on me - the material we were studying was dead dull and there wasn't a lot I could do with it. That said, though, the ruffians, my level 3 9-11 year olds were a dream. I won!!! I had this idea that they totally bought into. One of the things they were doing that was driving me crazy was to get out of their seats and try to "help" me with stuff, so I just played off that. Today, I started keeping score, on the board, for each kid in the class. If you were good, sat in your seat, and answered questions, you got plus signs next to your name. If you were bad, you either got minus or lost a plus (depending on how many pluses you had). The point of the game was that, whoever had the most pluses for good behavior, next class gets to be the President and will have a special seat as my helper. They get reward cards or candy and they get to help me chose the President for the next class. It worked like a dream. I was SO excited.
My last class of the day was funny. It is a really small class and they're the highest level class that the school teaches. Anne, the other teacher that I really like, was in the room with me, and we were working on topic sentences and writing paragraphs. As an example of a topic, Anne suggests foods eaten in different places around the world. This turns into a 20 minute discussion of weird foods, the weirdest foods we've ever eaten, and the very weirdest foods we've ever even heard of. Apparently, it is a delicacy in mainland China to eat a bear's paw. In southern Taiwan, you are supposed to eat monkey's brains for good luck, and salamanders are another commodity eaten regularly in the south. I talked about escargot, alligator, and crawfish. The girls in my class were pretty grossed out by the idea of crawfish, but people here eat grasshoppers, so I don't want to hear it.
So, things are going well. All of my love, and thanks for reading.
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