Red Brick Villas Miao-li

Okay, so perhaps some 2 days after the typhoon...I was laying in bed in the early hours of the morning (early is 10 AM now...since I teach in the afternoon and spend most morning hours unconscious on my sleeping box) when I felt my body swaying. I was like...WTF? I immediately thought of earthquake and looked around my room to see if anything else was shaking or looking like it was going to fly off a shelf. Nothing. My swaying sensation lasted only a few hours and I was ...

We had big plans to drive up the coast then over to the Yangmingshan National Park. We were going to hike up the Yangmingshan. This was postponned due to rain. We did however drive up to the coast and stopped whenever it felt right. We ended up seeing some pretty cool sites.

... down the centre of town and was really pretty. There were heaps of different resorts offering hot spring water baths, both private and public, swimmers and nude. We declined a few, after looking in at the gloomy bathtubes and opted for a private outdoor hot spring pool with waterfall. It was perfect and a very relaxing way to finish the day. That was the end of our trip to Taiwan, next stop Australa.

We initially had ideas of grandeur with plans to visit the the countyside for some hiking and sightseeing of Taiwan's beautiful environment. Instead, we ended up hanging out in Taipei again. A pattern is developing. We went to the district near Da'an ...

This afternoon, Marlene, Alexandra, and I went to Taipei to visit the 2-28 Peace Park and Taipei 101. 2-28 Peace Park was built to commemorate a riot that happened many years ago spawning from a police assault on a single woman. It led to crosscountry riots and numerous deaths. The park is meant to keep this horrible day of 2 ...

Twice a week the plastic surgery department holds Grand Rounds in English. This Saturday Dr. Lin gave a nice presentation on upper extremity intrinsic and extrinsic stiffness. Dr. Fu-Chan Wei is sitting in the front row. After the talk there is interesting and sometimes controversial discussion. It is all in the spirit of learning and spreading ideas.

After the day in clinic with Dr. Cheng, we went to Taipei with our friends Holger and Emre. We took the shuttle bus to Taipei Main Station and then, after a bit of searching, we found the MRT (Taipei Subway) to take us to the night market near Longshan Temple. This is the main "Mountain Gate" entrance to Longshan Temple, preserved from the Qing Dynasty. We plan to revisit ...

... home" anyway? A home is a place you "feel at home" of course. So for me, Taiwan is home, definitely. Both my parents and my sibling's family are all still living in Taipei. At least two thirds of my good friends are still in Taiwan (a very close one just moved to Hong Kong a few months ago). But maybe I had lived in North America for too long abd become too "Westernized." Sometimes I feel quite uncomfortable to interact with some people here in Taiwan ...

(Ariel throws a mean dodge ball game with the boys every break) I need to have a small rant on the state of women in Taiwan, and really within much of the world. Many of these posts make things out as ****-happy, but that's because I am already in nostalgia mode for leaving here. There are a lot of irksome things to deal with, especially regarding culturally ignorant attitudes towards race and gender. Naturally, the idea here is that boys are better than girls ...

My first day of teaching, the kids scared the **** out of me. Those big eyes looking up at me, waiting for me to direct them. The younger, the cuter, the more terrifying. I tried to rehash out of the depths of memory any Girlscout songs or funny jokes that impressed me when I resembled one of these creatures. I think I ended up hopping around like a monkey for the most part. Actually, I still do, only I am a much more adept monkey. I go in and do my ...