Man Man Zou

I started writing this post yesterday, but I lost it because a building in our complex caught on fire and we lost our power (and my journal post!). We had no water this morning either, so I had to get ready at school. I’m not sure how big the fire was, but there was a lot of smoke and many fire trucks. I heard a bunch of yelling going back and forth in the courtyard between the security guard and other people, but I didn’t really know what was going on. And finally, about 45 minutes later, the fire trucks started arriving. I’m not sure how the fire fighters are supposed to be able to fight fires in dense apartment complexes like ours, but they were able to go around back in the small canal street and set up there.

So as I was saying before I lost my post, Mark and I went to Taipei last weekend. I went to meet up with two other foreigners who share the same interest as me, scrapbooking. And Mark and I have always wanted to visit “the largest English bookstore in China”, so that’s what we did.

First, about the scrapbook thing. A lady found me on a website I visit because I happened to mention that there are no stores in Taiwan with supplies. She emailed me with the exciting info of a store in Taipei, and asked me to come to the store because she will be making a short presentation on a technique. And another foreigner friend of hers was there as well because she has just started a new company that sells scrapbook supplies to North America and other places (basically stuff that is cheap to get in Taiwan, but impossible to find in North America).

It was great to meet these two women, because they were so different from any other foreigners I’ve met. I have nothing against other foreigners, it’s just that we all seem to have the same story: just out of university, here to experience a different country and make money at the same time (sound familiar?). These women were a bit older, so they have a different story. One is a lawyer from America, here living with her American husband (also a lawyer), with two young kids. The other is a high school teacher from Canada, has a Taiwanese husband, and has one young daughter. I really enjoyed hearing about the specifics of their life such as: a 68-year-old Taiwanese nanny, a nasty Taiwanese mother in law, problems finding specialists for their children’s needs, getting married in Taiwan, etc. Not to mention the fact that they are living in Taipei- worlds apart from life in Yuanlin. So all in all, it was very interesting and they were very nice.

I think that anyone living in Taipei can pretty easily live a ‘western life’ if they want to. Not so in Yuanlin. The difference between Taipei and Yuanlin is much more extreme than the difference between Vancouver and Vernon, more similar to the difference between Vancouver and Hudson’s Hope, I’d say. Taipei has everything from Subway sandwiches to a subway system. Everything is quite convenient (they even sometimes speak English!).

While I was at the scrapbook store, Mark went to see and shop in the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101. Last year I was in the world’s tallest buildings, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, but I guess Taipei topped those ones off. Good for Taipei, except I don’t know why they built the tallest building on land with frequent earthquakes and typhoons. I guess they know what they’re doing though because I read an article about it that said the building is designed to be able to sway 5 feet in any direction in the event of an earthquake or typhoon- now that’s a ride!

Page One Bookstore was amazing, it felt like it was the biggest bookstore I’ve ever been in, but it’s probably just been too long since I’ve been to a Chapters. It was a lot nicer than Chapters though, very fancy. Mark bought a lot of books (about $200 worth), and I’m actually surprised he didn’t buy more considering he was there from 11am-5pm!

Also in Taipei 101 was a western food store. I heard they had high prices, but can you imagine paying $9 for mustard, or $12 for single ready-made freezer meals? $8 for jam? It was crazy, but fun to look through. I got a box of Reese’s Puffs cereal (on sale) :)

And that was it for Taipei. We were planning on checking out a big political demonstration/protest going on that day at the Presidential Office, but we were too pooped. Too bad, because apparently things got exciting and the police had to use water cannons to disperse the crowd and a bunch of reporters got beaten up by protesters! Now that would have made an interesting journal post!

I have one small story to add about school: For personal amusement, I added the word ’shirt’ to my elementary class’ weekly spelling test. I did this because I have seen many of them write down ’shit’ so many times in writing assignments. I enjoyed seeing them write the swear word (and correcting them) many more times while we practiced for it, and today was the testing day. I was very amused to see one frustrated student stuck on the word, and just before I was going to take it from him, he quickly wrote ’shite’. :) That’s the end of my story.