Blogging Can Be Trying For The Short-Winded

I want to complain about my Chinese teacher. She is like a collection of bad teaching habits.

1) She plays favorites. In this case she has inexplicably chosen Nadege, the French girl who refuses to put her phone on silent though she spends half of class time texting sweet French nothings to her Parisian buddies.

2) The teacher spends a great deal talking about her personal life. I now know that she has two kids, one of whom wants to be a director and one of whom just doesn't know what to do. I know that she likes to root through her neighbors garbage to find out who isn't recycling properly, and reporting said offenders so that they may be fined, heavily. I know that her husband is gone on business trips a lot, which explains her nosiness, I suppose. Finally, I know that she would almost certainly leave her husband for Taiwan's president-elect Ma Yingjiu, who has descended, Obama-like, from the clouds to right Taiwan's wrongs and usher the Taiwanese people into a new era of untold prosperity and happiness.

3. She tests us on things that we never went over in class. Granted, the first test was almost laughably easy, but the proper remedy is not to suddenly test us on things we didn't know we would be tested on and give everyone 80s.

Also, I think she is trying to convert me.

Korean Games

I spent 6 hours yesterday at my classmate Soyeon's house playing crazy Korean games. First we played Yut, which is basically just Sorry except that you roll sticks instead of dice, and Korean girls yell at you when you do something wrong. Then we started playing same games which should by all rights be drinking games. In Korea, however, the loser is punished with a physical beating instead of shots. The beatings started out innocently, with a simple 2 fingers on the wrist, but gradually escalated to something that is called "Indian Bop," in which the loser must lie in the middle of a circle of people who then start wailing on the loser while chanting Indiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, culminating in a giant BOP! and final giant slap. All of which would have been tolerable if it were not for Yujin, who had an uncanny knack for painful wrist slaps and delayed BOPS.

Q (not the Star Trek one, Dad)

One of my best Taiwanese friends is named Q. At first I thought this was the English name he had picked for himself, because almost all Taiwanese people think it is necessary to use an English name when dealing with foreigners. This tends to have varying levels of success, starting at the mind-blowingly awesome "Playboy" and "Blaze," who my former roommate David had the honor of teaching, to the somewhat less inspired "Clement," who is currently terrorizing my classroom. So when Q introduced himself as "Q" a flurry of thoughts raced through my head. "Have I found Taiwan's only Star Trek fan?" "Why am I such a nerd?" "Is his knowledge of English so advanced that he has named himself after his own hairstyle? And if so what would his name be if he shaves it all off?" Then, unexpectedly, Q's friends started to call him "Da Q" or Big Q.

The thing is, QQ is the Taiwanese word for "chewy." Seriously. Instead of characters and strange, tone-based pronunciation, they just say "Q." As in, "These noodles are very Q." And so Q grabbed a hunk of his pony-tailed queue and explained that his hair is very Q, and so his friends all call him Big Q. I hope this leaves you as confused as it did me.

Digression is the Better Part of Valor

I held up my first ambulance in traffic today. I don't know whether to be proud of my adoption of local customs or aghast at the inhumanity.

Trains are so 19th Century

I got back from Green Island at 6 o'clock this morning. I left Green Island at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. This means (for those without an abacus handy) that, due the vagaries of Taiwan's transportation system, a journey which should have rated a mere "unpleasant" 6 hours ended up at a "grueling" 14 hours on Reed's Arbitrary Complainometer, rivaled only by the "hellish" received by my fourteen hour Chinese bus ride.

Aside from the return trip, Green Island was pretty amazing. Our hotel was run by an old, Taiwanese alcoholic who would only refer to himself as "laoda" or "The Big Boss" and bought me beer whenever we stopped someplace. But only me. The other 6 people in our party got kind of stiffed there. Anyway, my friends and I came to the conclusion that laoda is, in reality, the boss of Green Island's 2,000 cowering inhabitants, and our beliefs were reaffirmed when he randomly pulled over on the way to the harbor, walked up to a store owner and demanded 2,000 dollars, as well as a pack of cigarettes, which were given to him without complaint, but plenty of groveling.

Aside from protection rackets, Green Island has one of 3 salt water hot springs in the world, which cost 8 dollars to use all day. I spent from 9 o'clock until midnight jumping from cold pool to hot pool, driving frightened Taiwanese college students before me with equal measures of boisterousness and body hair.

Friday morning I rented a scooter made a complete loop around the island with Kristina, which took about 45 minutes. Finally, Big Boss drove us to the harbor, bought me one last beer, and wished us well on the Ferry of Seasickness.

綠島

Lest anyone accuse Reed of all work and no play (was that ever a concern to anyone?) I'm taking a bus bound for southern Taiwan in about 3 hours. The final destination is Green Island, which I just discovered is primarily known for its prisons and penal colonies and although that would be pretty cool if they were Alcatraz-like museums, they are still actively restraining Taiwan's most vicious criminals, which makes it kind of like a trip to SLO. Green Island was originally sold to me as a utopian resort island populated only by excellent cooks and salt water hot springs by some shifty Europeans, but I figure it will still turn out alright, despite the 9 hour bus ride to get there.