Open Air Market, Telephone Tribulations, Shopping 2/20/09

The Open Air Market, The Shopping, The Meal, The Phone Call, The Cabbie!







Hi Everyone!
These blogs are so fun to create and share our experiences with you!
Yesterday, Ted and I braved going by ourselves to a "traditional market," which is like a Farmers' Market in the States. To get there, we have to walk quite a distance down those famous steps and then through a tunnel that is a walkway that connects the University grounds with the first part of Kaohsiung City. In the tunnel is,currently, a display of lights that are neat to look at!! They reminded us of the lava lamps we all have seen!
Once we got to the correct street with the "traditional market," we pointed, used our calculator and any other gestures that worked to buy: fresh corn on the cob (that was delicious!!), fresh tomatoes (that I washed first in scalding water, as I do with ANY fresh fruit or veggie that does not have a peel!), fresh shrimp (complete with their heads with eyes staring at us), a wonderfully delicious pineapple (that they sliced for us right there), a cantaloupe (have not had that yet), and a couple of pairs of lightweight socks for me (the ones I packed are too heavy!)plus a strainer for our pasta and rice cooking efforts!
Today, we went to the Carrefour (the big grocery store), again using our very own taxi driver who is very friendly,responsible and inexpensive, so we will!). Taxis are quite inexpensive, and one is not to tip!






The other real challenge for us has been trying to make a call to the USA from here, so that Ted could contact his mom and see how she is doing directly (We did succeed, and she is making good progress, walking more,etc!). Basically, the problem was that what the international calling card said to do was incorrect!! Our friend Janet helped us out when she discovered the problem!
Tonight we have been invited to a "banquet," (their word). It is a big deal; everyone dresses up and there will be, we understand, many, many courses of food!
We continue to enjoy our adventures here! We hope to travel this weekend to the Kentung National Park, where we will stay overnight on Saturday night, as it takes under three hours to get there.

After Ted's Second Day of Teaching a Three Hour Class!

After the second consecutive day of three hour classes, Ted is beat! Nothing like a Taiwan brew to rest the weary mind and bones. After an eight year absence from teaching graduate courses, he is exhausted (He claims it is more a mental than physical fatigue, but I am not so sure....! )He came home and took a three hour nap!

On our route to and from classes or anywhere else for that matter, we encounter not only the monkeys, and the steps, but the mopeds! Every body has one, and the students zip around faster than you can believe. It definitely is a situation of "Walkers, Beware!" Ted is ready to get one, but, fortunately from my point of view, he forgot to bring his driver's license! Whew!




After class each day, we typically eat in the courtyard outside Ted's office; again, surprisingly, today's weather was delightfully comfortable, with a light breeze. As we did yesterday, we bought lunch, for a mere $4 apiece, at the stand located in the courtyard; we had a ham and cheese sandwich, delicious homemade corn chowder and a strawberry smoothie. Can't beat the prices for food around here!


Then, on our route home (before the steps!!), we stopped outside the 7-11 (where everybody goes for everything, from bread to phone cards,to wine) where there was a stall for photos, the kind you see at an amusement park. But the sign said passport photos were available there. Ted needs one that size to obtain his staff ID card.I need two for the reapplication for our visa when 60 days are up. So, we stepped inside the booth and it started talking (in Taiwanese) to us with instructions. Panicking, we zipped out of it and went into the 7-11 to ask for help from the very nice, limited English-speaking clerk. Fortunately, gestures as though I were taking a picture and pointing to the outside booth, she understood our need. She then very quickly turned to two of her customers, presumably students , who could speak a little English. Giggling and smiling the whole time, these two very kind students managed to convey what we needed to do, which buttons we needed to press, and we got our pictures!

Two comments about our daily residential life: when we first noticed the bars on our villa's windows, we assumed they were to stop thieves. Wrong! Monkeys! People here are so helpful that it appears things like theft are rare.

Secondly, each night, after doing the dishes (that is HIS job here just as in the States,thank-you!) Ted takes the garbage outside to a general trash area, praying all the while that the monkeys are sleeping! While taking care of the trash, he also fills a big water bottle that he brings back to our kitchen, where he pours it into a filtering and boiling machine! It reminds us of how precious our water system is in America!

Good night all!

Kaohsiung 2/17/09

Today, the professor began his first class: Leadership and Decision-Making. About 20 students appeared, though we have been told more may arrive by the end of the week. However, Ted thinks he may have scared some off with the group work assignments!!! About half the students are international ,primarily from France , Finland, and the Netherlands. he feels good that his voice made it through the entire three hours (with one ten minute break: he is tough!) It was fascinating to see how quickly such a diverse group with varied first languages could form into prospective teams! He also was able to get through the first class using all the new-fanged technology provided by the University! What made the class somewhat more challenging was the refusal of the Taiwanese Book Store to order Ted's text selections; the reason given was that the books are not published in Taiwan. The students have to order them individually from amazon.com, and the University is fine with that.

Meanwhile, I worked in the office, doing research on the practice of inclusion in American classrooms, for a chapter in a book that Ted has been asked to write; so I have become his assistant!
Some interesting observations today en route to work: the monkeys have appeared in full force!! Yes, random wild monkeys cavort at will around the campus and the person who might be holding food in his/her hands, beware! The presence of these creatures, which scared the daylights out of me at first, reminds me of the dogs that roamed the streets of Athens when Carrie and Nils were posted there. However, they do seem relatively harmless; none came TOO near us (though I felt they were close enough, thank-you!).

A number of you have asked for some photos of the steps we climb and descend each day, so I am posting some of them here! Remember, one cannot get a shot of all the steps we climb, because there are several sets of them!!


One wonderful turn in the weather; today was in the 60's, with little humidity and a light breeze!! It was absolutely delightful and a nice respite from the heat and humidity of the past four days!

Many of you have also commented on our 50's or futuristic refrigerator with its green and chrome colorations and digital read-outs! Well, here is the washing machine , also a bit weird! It seems to turn out rather ratty clothes. I think we will not be returning with as many clothes as we came with!

Lastly, I must comment on tonight's dinner. When I went to rinse out the chicken I had bought and frozen the other day, I noticed something one does not usually see (ever see!) in American stores!! Yuk!!

Ted as Professor!

Hi All!

Today, Ted started to prepare for his classes and got to open a bank account(not an easy process in Taiwan! You have to first obtain an ID number, which is bureaucratically tricky, then go to the Post Office/Bank (depends on which window you stand in line for!) and then sign about 24 forms!

Meanwhile, we got to see his two classrooms (very well equipped with computer monitors, overhead projectors, etc!)and were able to obtain, almost instantly to when we asked for the items, such goodies as: two comfortable chairs (not in photo) for the office, hanging file folders (which we had a devil of a time explaining:nothing like going to some stranger's file cabinet and opening it to show our host!), a DVD player converted to show American DVDs (Yeah, NetFlix!!) etc. Their efficiency in most cases (see slight exception below, though even then, they problem-solve really quickly!)is amazing!

The story behind the DVD is interesting; we asked for a player that could play American formatted discs; the store manager came over and said the Phillips brand would do that IF he obtained, via a phone call, the appropriate password to effect the change. Fortunately, Janet, our wonderful guide/helper, asked him to just "try it," once he assured us all was set! Well, it did not work. BUT, he ended up calling the Phillips manager somewhere, who travelled the next day to the store and fixed it for us!

Meanwhile, Ted has asked me to help do the research for a chapter in a book on Strategies for Inclusion Techniques in American Classrooms, so already I have a job!
Some of our photos today include more from the monastery visit, Ted's office (eat your hearts out, colleagues!) and his classrooms! Enjoy!

First Days in Taiwan

This web page idea is Anne Nester-Hamblen's! let's see how we (and you all) like it! As most of you know, we have been here now for three full days! The land is beautiful, tropical, lush and very hot and humid! We have to climb four sets of very steep steps to get basically anywhere from our villa apt, which has three bedrooms, nice size living room, two full baths, and a small galley kitchen (no stove or oven; cooking meals is definitely a challenge! I have succeeded in our first dinner here: a single frying pan on a hot plate held our asparagus, a salmon steak, and some pork and corn dumplings!) Since being here, we have: gotten cell phones and even, finally, gotten the cell phone menu to come up in English rather than Chinese!!), found an ATM machine that would accept our type of bank card (rejected at the first three we tried and we had NO NRT (Taiwanese dollars ) at that point!), been taken by taxi with our host's assistant ,Janet, to a grocery store (we are not near much in the way of retail stores, except for a 7-11, but even to get to that, we have to navigate those steps!I hope to lose lots of weight while here! I certainly will become more fit!), gone by ourselves via a short ferry ride to a nearby island for a hike on a beach and some seafood lunch at a street cafe (all in Chinese!), gone to the nighttime Lantern Festival, toured a famous monastery (Fo Guang Shan) out in the countryside and "made" our own tea in a sub-culture community , a Haku village!