Feeling a Little Van Gogh

I have an affinity for hideously orange bedrooms. They follow me everywhere, or perhaps I seek them out. Whatever the case may be, I seem to attract them. The last two places I have come to call home have both had bright orange walls. The last one, in New Paltz, had a bit of an autumnal feel. It was a pleasant pumpkin orange with brown trim. Currently, I am sitting in a room that should be dedicated to the Florida Gators. The orange is borderline neon with a splash of electric blue. I would like to meet the females who occupied these residencies before I took over, but that seems highly unlikely at this point.

I have finally begun to settle in. I have moved into an apartment and, as you know by my last post, I have a job. Now that I have set up a base of operations, I can begin to take over the world. Work is nice and my social life is nicer. I have taken up the art of Ultimate Frisbee as my modus operandi for exercise. It is lots of fun and quite exhausting. It might be the most tiring activity one can engage in (next to soccer, of course).

So I am expanding my borders and conquering new territory everyday, however, I am not forgetting about the home front. I'm doing a little bit everyday to make this home feel a little bit more like... well, home. Today I went out and bought a mattress pad and decided to carry it back to the new apartment by myself on the subway. It was very entertaining, both for me and every other person who must have been thinking to themselves "crazy white boy." I managed to take a few people out in the process. I got off at Guting station and began the 8 minute walk down Tong An St. toward the river (which I live literally a stone's throw from) and decided to make life just a little bit more difficult. Ginormous mattress pad in one hand, I stopped to grab some lunch to go in the other. I wobbled the rest of the way home, trying not to spill my soup and decided that was enough Martha Stewartness for one day. Tomorrow... I paint.

Humorous Begininnings

The names Grow... Dave Grow. I am 26 years old and I have a Masters Degree is Business. I have been teaching English in Taiwan for over a year. I was born in 1982, the year of the Rooster, and come from New York, where police officers still ride horses. I may or may not be a spy for the Taiwanese government. This is the persona I have taken on for work and the sake of my students... except I lied about 1982, it was really the year of the Dog.

My first official week of classes has come to a close and I have learned many a valuable lesson. Valuable lesson number one: Taiwanese humor is quite different from mine. Due to the fact that Chinese is a tonal language, there are a huge number of words that sound almost exactly alike. So, Chinese humor is largely based on puns, and my sense of humor is therefore rendered insignificant to a group of students with a limited knowledge of the English language. However, we are all learning from one another (language from me, puns from them) and eventually we will meet somewhere in the middle.

For instance, today's lesson was modal verbs and how to make a suggestion or give advice. After we get through most of the lesson, I become slightly disinterested in listening to students repeat the same suggestions about what to take on a camping trip over and over again. I ask students to think of good advice or life suggestions that they can make to one another, and I give an example I think of on the spot. "In America, people will often say to one another 'You shouldn't eat yellow snow.'" In retrospect, a little planning and a better suggestion would have made my life easier.

First, I had to remind my students, all of whom live in a tropical climate, what snow is. Next I had to explain that snow is usually white, and as many of them thought, it's not pollution that makes it yellow. Third, I had to explain that it's a bit of a joke, between kids. This is certainly not the wisdom of the sages. Like I said, though, we will find a middle ground. And if they don't laugh at my jokes, they will certainly laugh at my terrible drawings on the board.

Would You Like A Drink With That Grain Of Rice?

food continued...

One thing pointed out to me before leaving for Taiwan, by many a person, was the need for chopstick skills. On multiple occasions, whilst dining on fine Asian cuisine in the States, someone pointed out that the real test to knowing whether or not you are good with chopsticks is how well you can pick up a single grain of rice. "Try picking up that grain of rice by itself," they'd say. "Let's play a game and pass this grain of rice to each other using chopsticks," they'd joke. And I was under the same impression. Chopstick skills require attention to detail, right?

Wrong. This, in retrospect, was quite possibly the dumbest notion ever to have crossed my mind, and I have done some sublimely idiotic things in my day. Really, who the hell eats rice one grain at a time? I mean, after a long days work on the job hunt and skipping a meal because I was at an interview, the first idea that crawls around between my ears is usually something along the lines of "I can't wait to eat this rice one by one by one by one." Cast under a spell of Western ignorance, and now brought into the light, I see the folly in my previous thought processes and gleefully shovel as much rice into my mouth as humanly possible. And then, with a mouth full of rice I reach over to have a drink and swash it all down, right?

Wrong. There are no drinks with meals here. If you're lucky enough to find a place that serves drinks, good luck getting a refill. The first night in Taiwan, Uncle Fred took Johnny and I out for dinner. We were having soup and I took a bottle of water out of my bag to have a swig of something cold. I received a good number of looks that all said the same thing, "What's with this guy?" As Uncle Fred explained, "Why do you need a drink if you've having soup?" I guess it kind of makes sense. You have your entire breakfast, lunch or dinner right in front of you, all in one bowl. Beverage included with the price of the meal. And what if you're having dry food that doesn't have soup in it, like a plate of noodles, you ask? Well, you just order a bowl of soup to go with it, of course.

An Endless Search for Hun Tun Mian

"How do you feel about the soup?"
"It tastes like a basement."
"Funny, I was thinking Grandma's house."

It has come to pass that the majority of our meal time conversations are about trying to figure out exactly what the hell we're eating. It's kind of fun actually. The streets of Taipei are littered with an abundance of street vendors peddling food from carts much like you would see on the streets of New York. On top of that, about 4 out of every 5 storefronts is a restaurant (the other 20% are banks or 7-11s). We sit down when we see something that looks tasty, or at the very least edible, attempt to have a dialogue in Changlish with the owner that usually just ends up confused expressions on all parties involved, and we sit down.

Plate of Dumplings with Grandma's Basement Soup

Countless times we have searched for Hun Tun Mian (Won Ton Soup with Noodles) and came up short. As each meal came, looking distinctly not like Hun Tian Mian, I shed a little tear and dug in. Not knowing what to expect, the first few bites are always a little interesting, but by the end of the meal the soup that once tasted like Grandma's basement is quite enjoyable. And each meal without Hun Tuns will just make the payoff that much more delicious.

Also, please note that I have uploaded some pictures for your enjoyment. You can find the link to my Picasa album on the left hand side of your screen, right below my beautiful mug.