Mark's Mission

When Progress Meets a Setback

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:03:00 +0000

I was moving along steadily with 5BX—into the second ladder and climbing without much trouble—until about a week ago when I got hit with a chest infection, the worst I’ve had in a while. For me it usually follows the same pattern: sore throat → runny nose → chesty cough. In the past, a quick course of antibiotics would sort me out, but this time it feels like it’s taking forever to clear my lungs.

Because of that, I’ve pressed pause on both 5BX and the gym. Part of me wonders if I was overdoing it—but at the same time, there’s this urgency in the back of my mind: build muscle while I still have the health, energy, and youth to do it.

For now, it’s recovery first. I’ll restart once my breathing feels solid again. The plan is to pick up where I left off and not lose the consistency I’ve built.

7 Weeks into 5BX: Small Steps, Real Results

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 02:04:00 +0000

It’s been 7 weeks since I started the 5BX program, and while it’s not that challenging yet, some exercises are beginning to bite. The app I’m using doesn’t exactly follow the original program—it gives you a timer for each of the five exercises, whereas the booklet just tells you to complete everything within 11 minutes. I actually like the timed approach, but I can see how it might become tricky to finish some exercises in just 1 or 2 minutes.

That said, I’m definitely seeing results. My flexibility has improved—I can touch my toes again—and the crunches are easy. So are the leg pushups at my current level. I’m tempted to upgrade to full pushups, but that raises a question: how do I progress later if I go off-script now? One idea is to alternate styles—wide pushups one week, narrow the next—but I haven’t implemented that yet. Maybe I'll do that when I get to my goal level to make things interesting. What I have started doing is increasing the range of motion using yoga blocks, which feels like a useful tweak.

The hardest exercise for me right now is the alternating-leg “supermans.” They’re meant to be done quickly, but as a posterior chain movement, they feel too rushed. Still, once I move up to the next chart, they’re replaced by full supermans with the reps going way down again, so the pacing issue should resolve itself.

I’m still hitting the gym in parallel, and I can feel myself getting stronger week by week. If you’re looking for a simple, free program that can be done at home in under 15 minutes, I can see how 5BX could help maintain a fitness baseline far above that of most sedentary people. It’s gradual, accessible, and surprisingly effective.

As someone with a heart condition, I’m always balancing the need to stay active with the importance of not overdoing it. That’s one of the reasons 5BX appeals to me—it’s structured, gradual, and scalable. So far, it’s been an excellent way to build consistency without putting too much strain on my system.

A new mission?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 10 May 2025 05:03:00 +0000

It's been a long time since I posted anything. Almost 10 years! We are still in Taiwan, although we now live in Hsinchu. Home of the now world famous TSMC.

My exercise journey has been through quite a slump. Renalda and I both did some yoga for a few years, which was great, I love the mental calm that comes after a good session. I would get super irritated when the instructor interrupted the quiet time after a 90 minute workout. While in Yilan we also continued walking regularly in the early mornings all the way up to Covid. Then we mostly stopped.

I tried my hand at a PhD which meant we needed to move to Hsinchu in mid 2022. The National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University campus is on a hill, so I got quite a bit of walking in, but not much else. We didn't manage to consistently restart our early morning walking habit, things got busy, I got heavier and less keen. I continued with the PhD for 18 months, but it felt like a further qualification was too far off with me not contributing to our budget, so I went back to teaching 60% of my day, and started studying some AWS and SAP courses and brushing up on my Chinese reading.

Exercise wise I started feeling worse and worse, it felt like my body was very unhappy. Without going into details there were worrying symptoms that perhaps my circulation wasn't as good as it should be. Along with some inspiration from a church friend, I decided to go to the gym late last year. I've never succeeded in going to the gym regularly. I have paid for at least 2 full year long memberships in SA without going more than 5 times each year. I did much better at Run Walk for Life, but there's nothing like that in Taiwan that I know of, and to be honest, walking outside in the afternoons, in summer is downright unpleasant. So no wonder.

At first I tried going along with what my mate was doing, but he's been lifting for years, and I'm in a body that has never run optimally, so I soon abandoned that idea. I went back to the Primal Blueprint Fitness plan, which I modified to suit me as I've progressed (and to make some use of all the available equipment). It includes 2 full body "Lift Heavy Things" days with three "Move Slow" days and one "Sprint" day. I added swimming as my move slow days, because there is a pool at the gym. Haven't added back a sprints day yet... I'm considering doing that in the pool.

Swimming? Move slow you say? I agree with you, it used to be that swimming=drowning. However, after reading Tim Ferris's "4 Hour Body" I found that I can swim quite easily with breast stroke, interspersed with freestyle. The trick is in the waterline length. Keep your body as long as possible for as long as possible and you will move far, with little effort.

This has been working well, I've been going to gym more than 50% of the week days, and I'm enjoying my lifting days a lot. I'm just worried about the time. I'm not sure I'll always have 1-2 hours to spare most days to spend in the gym... so, here's the mission. I'm going to do the ANCIENT 5BX Royal Canadian Airforce fitness plan. It takes 11 minutes for men, and 12 for women (XBX).

I will continue with my gym plan for now too, as long as my heart and body can stand it, and see where I end up. At my current age, it should take me just 24 weeks to get to the recommended level, A+ of Chart 2. That is if I move up every week. I'm considering taking pics and videos weekly, no guarantees, but it would be nice to see the progression. I do plan to continue my usual workouts at the same time. 5BX is so gradual, that it should be fine, certainly to start with.

I found an app called "XBX and 5BX" which we are both using to guide our workouts and track our levels.

Yilan International Children’s Folklore & Folkgames Festival - opening ceremony

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 05 Jul 2015 04:04:00 +0000

We were given tickets to attend the opening ceremony of this years festival on July 4th. Not being able to read Chinese we thought it was just access to the water theme park, but we were pleasantly surprised that there were a number of folk dance performances to be held that evening too.

The representatives at this years event

There were performing artists from 6 countries and Taiwan, namely, Bolivia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Russia and Thailand. We thought it was only for children but a number of adult performers were also present.

The first performance was from the Taiwanese dancers and was very elegant.

Taiwanese Dancers

We took a video of the very elegant Taiwanese dancing, you can watch it below.

Another Taiwanese performance

Next came a performance from Thailand. The costumes were beautiful, but the music wasn't really to my taste.

A Thai dancer in what looked like a hummingbird costume

Then some singing and dancing from an Indonesian high school dance group.

Some kind of warrior costumes I think

There was also a performance by dancers from Hungary seen in the video below.

They were really very good and the music was more kind to my ears.

The Russian dancers know how to smile!

For me they were really the best performance

They really had a lot of flair and energy

This performance was a lot of fun

These girls must be training to be ballet dancers

They even went and fetched members of the audience

Wonderful!

Harvesting rice

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 05 Jul 2015 01:48:00 +0000

It was starting to appear that harvesting rice was an event completed by mice in the middle of the night when no one was watching. Each day as we rode to work or back more fields were harvested, but we hadn't seen a single harvester. Then a few days ago we saw one and then two and then more. The rice is now being harvested furiously, many fields are bare, and what's great is that we managed to get some pictures of this fleeting, shy animal called a rice combine harvester.

One of the harvesters roaming around Luodong at the moment

Why is it called a combine harvester? Because it combines the three traditional stages of grain harvesting, reaping, threshing and winnowing into one step, saving a lot of time, and allowing farmers to spend more time drinking beer or eating stinky tofu at the local night market.

It's such a neat process, it doesn't even hurt too many of the rice plants. It's tracks are narrower than the distance between two rows of rice plants (planted by a rice planting machine).

The only damage it makes to the field is on either end where it turns. It has a limited storage capacity so after two trips up and down the paddy it must stop and offload.

Offloading the rice

It's an amazingly quick little machine. It looked like it took 15 minutes to harvest a really large rice paddy. It was going at an impressive pace.

For my mom

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 09:49:00 +0000

My mom asked for some pictures of the beachfront close to our house. She visited us a few months back, but unfortunately it was winter time and we only went to the beach once or twice with her. The beach itself is a black sand beach made from either shale or some volcanic rock. Unfortunately it's not the most popular beach so it isn't very well kept, meaning it is frequently littered with plastic, vegetables and other trash washed out of a nearby river mouth. It's popular with fishermen and a pack of feral dogs.

Sunrise at this time of year is at 5am, so we had to get up at 4:50, I think Renalda was up before that making me some coffee. I was not really compos mentis, but it was great to be there, Renalda had the camera, otherwise there would have been no photos!

Enjoy!

Fried rice, zhongzi and Taiwanese neighbors

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 04:31:00 +0000

We have some wonderful neighbors. There is an oldish couple who live next door, we say "Ni Hao" to them whenever we see them. Every now and then they will walk into our house and give us something. I say walk in because there is a different sense of privacy here in Taiwan. People knock and walk in, we often lock our door for a different reason now.

We have received fresh vegetables from them often as they have a large allotment close by where they grow all sorts of fresh veggies. In fact a few months back we got so much we couldn't eat it quickly enough and it went bad. We often feel like our thanks and expressions of gratitude, with our very limited Chinese, is just not good enough, but as we learn Chinese we will try to be better at it.

These are our sweet zhongzi, given to us by our neighbors

Last weekend was Dragon Boat festival and the thing to eat around that time is zhongzi (sticky rice pyramids wrapped in bamboo leaves). One day we were minding our business when Ama (grandmother) came and gave us 6 pork zhongzi, yummy! Then I walked outside one day and she was cooking fried rice on her veranda, which I try not to eat, but couldn't resist when she offered me some. So I got a bowl from home, a reasonable sized one and she filled it till it was overflowing. Renalda and I shared the bowl for a tasty breakfast.

A few days ago she came again to give us some more zhongzi but this time they were of the sweet variety. Well not really sweet, rather mildly flavored, to be dipped in sugar or honey. Also very good. Renalda and her got "talking" and she offered to show Renalda how to make "them". We misunderstood and "them" turned out to be pork fried rice with mushrooms.

It was arranged that Renalda and her would go buy the ingredients on Saturday morning (today) and we think she waited until 9am before she tried to walk in the door. Renalda was able to say "shi fen" which means 10 minutes from our Chinese lessons... awesome! They went off to a morning market close by which we didn't know existed to "mai" (buy) the ingredients. Then came some more misunderstanding. She had examined out kitchen and noticed our bread maker which looks very similar to a rice cooker. The amount of ingredients she bought was for that size rice cooker, which meant she had to rethink the amounts of ingredients.

Then another disaster struck! Our small rice cooker clearly hadn't been used for ages as the aluminium rice bowl had cooked through. Ama had to go and get one from her kitchen so that we could use our tiny rice cooker.

Finally the rice was cooked all ingredients were ready and she made us a huge bowl of very yummy fried rice in our wok. Now we know how to make Taiwanese fried rice. The secret ingredient? We think it's MSG... heehee.

We suspect it's MSG, if someone can translate, much appreciated!

The rice paddies of Yilan

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 03:42:00 +0000

Growing sticky rice funTastic!!

Being in the Republic of China (Taiwan) you expect to see a lot of rice eaten and grown. In DaJia, where we first lived in Taiwan, there were only a few rice paddies and lots of taro plantations. We worked so hard and our commute was short and through the town centre, so we didn't see much of the rice. Here in Yilan there is rice everywhere and we have enjoyed watching the life cycle, every morning we drive a few kilometres through numerous ever changing paddies.

Through the rainy winter months the rice paddies looked like big square dams of black water. The water levels rose and fell depending on the rain. Sometimes they were just mud patches, other times they were overflowing. Then as spring arrived they planted furiously. Rice is planted in perfectly neat rows with an automatic planter, something like a tractor with a seed sowing attachment. This tractor has special wheels that allow it not to sink in the mud, they look like water wheel paddles.

We then watched the little seedlings grow at light speed into big plants, changing the landscape in a few weeks from a black water world into large fields of green. The farmers often staggered the planting so that the rice ripens a few weeks apart, you can see the result now, as the harvest is coming in. Some fields are still green, others are golden yellow, sagging with heavy sheaths of rice, others have already been harvested.

Almost ready to harvest

This is farmland in Taiwan, with power lines and 5 story buildings far in the background.

You can see fields of short cut rice plant stumps with bales or stacks of rice straw on the dried out paddies. The surface looks like dry caked mud, but the water table isn't far down, here and there, tractors have broken down into the mud below. There seems to be some disagreement about what to do with the straw. There are different methods of baling or stacking it, some farmers burn it, others put it on a huge heap.

This is one method of collecting the rice straw after the harvest

Another way to bale rice straw

Some older paddies already have the second growth of the rice coming up. Rice can be harvested twice in a season, so we will watch the second half of the life cycle from now on.

I guess this paddy was harvested 2 weeks ago, note the second growth beginning to show

In South Africa agriculture is something that is done on farms far away from the cities. In Taiwan there is so little arable land that it is necessary to use all available space to the max. This means that even in towns and cities land is cultivated and we now live in "rural" Taiwan, so vegetation is everywhere.

Scootering through the fields, note the raised freeway in the background

Toucheng and Waiao - 21 June 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 14:46:00 +0000

Some friends came to visit this weekend from Taipei. I'll include some pics of Derek and Joy in a later post because we didn't take any photos with them today. We got our quite late, about lunch time and took the train to Toucheng, intending to see the Wushi Harbor and perhaps the Lanyang museum and hopefully get in some swimming in too.

We started off walking to the Toucheng Old Street where there were some old Japanese buildings. An interesting mix of old and new and the ever present shrines and temples of course.

They don't build like this here anymore.

A charming little temple/shrine at one end of old street.

I think this used to be the old Toucheng general dealer in prosperous days gone by

Taking in some shade, it was quite a hot day, what summer day isn't ;)

Renalda finally gave me the camera ;)

I think this is to hold your roof down during typhoon season!

The Wushi fishing harbor from the hardworking side

The Lanyang Museum, we will have to go here another day

The not so hardworking side, with the tourist boats, this was the calm before the thunderstorm

Waio surfing beach, we managed to get in a swim, one of the surf companies allowed us to change in their tent

We ended up getting pretty wet in the rain, but it was a good day out. We found later that we could have caught a bus to where we walked, but we needed the exercise anyway :)

Dragon boat racing and boiled eggs - 20 June 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 12:15:00 +0000

This past weekend was Dragon Boat Festival where we got to eat sticky rice dumplings (Zhongzi - pronounced something like Jongtzi). Derek and Joy had come out from Taipei. Joy, Derek's Taiwanese girlfriend had also never seen a dragonboat race! We were quite surprised, she just laughed and said she always watched on TV. We stayed and watched for about half an hour, it was quite exciting.

Some of the races were heats and others were division finals, I think we watched the high school boys team finals which were quite impressive. The competition is a knockout the first two teams in a race go through to the next race, the other two are knocked out. It looks like the boat is steered by a "professional" who is not from the team.

We made bets on who would win, red, blue, green or yellow

They raise their oars when they are announced

When teams get close to the finish line they have a guy in the bow who leans forward to catch a flag which determines who won. Some of the races were extremely close.

Very well timed strokes

Teams grabbing their flags

We then took a ride up into the mountains to cook our lunch of eggs and mielies (corn) in a basin of boiling hot slightly sulfurous water. My first experience of geothermal cooking. The place is at the same location as a failed geothermal power plant, but it doesn't have an industrial feel at all.

Here I am busy cooking the mielies

Derek cooking the eggs

The eggs were soft boiled in about 10 minutes. They then have cold water basins so that you can cool the food off before eating it. Very well thought out. They had even tapped the water into pools so you could sit and warm your feet. The best part of all, you didn't have to pay a cent!

After lunch we drove around in the mountains and then headed back towards Yilan for supper. On the way Derek spotted a field full of sunflowers, we stopped and found there were a number of fields full of flowers. It was a good place for some photos, so we took many.

Renalda smelling the orange flowers

I must have said something funny

Some people offered to take this pic

Then they recommended all kinds of poses, their English was good

I'm not sure what they smelled like, my nose is perpetually blocked

Renalda insisted on taking these picks... guess who is the better photographer!

We then took a long ride down to the Yilan night market for some supper which consisted of random snacks, and went home to be in bed by 10. Joy and Derek went to the beach to watch the stars and discuss Tsunamis.

Daytrip to Meihua Lake - 14 June 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 04:20:00 +0000

I'm hoping to start writing more frequently again, it seems like we have a little more time, even thought we are still very busy. Renalda and I started to study Chinese at a local university as self study doesn't work with a busy schedule. We only go once a week for two hours so progress will be slow, but at least we will make progress.

We went scootering up the valley to see what we may see, we hadn't intended to go to Meihua (Plum Blossom) lake, but we had heard of it. It's nice for a quiet afternoon, there are a few snack stores and tons of bicycle rental places where you can rent a single, tandem, side-by-side, or 4 person bike all with or without a battery and motor, there were even Segways! We opted for good old man power with 2 person side-by-side 4 wheel bicycle.

There are a lot of nice paths to walk around and a one way bicycle road...yes it gets that busy. Lucky for us it was rather quiet. When I looked through our photos I noticed we don't have a picture of the whole lake, just of the surrounds.

A covered path around the lake

Lots of overhanging branches keeps it cool

Nice to be away from the hustle

They use tons of fireworks at the temples

Great place to have a temple

We took a boat ride around the lake... at light speed so very few of my photos came out

Such a tiring ride that Renalda took a nap with the teddies

It was nice to get out, and it's only 20 minutes from home.

Day trip to Juifen - 17 May 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 17 May 2015 14:33:00 +0000

I'm busy trying to catch up with the things we have done the past few months. My folks were both over in Taiwan, but I won't blog about that. There are so many wonderful little towns in Taiwan and we took a day trip to one a few weeks back called Jiu fen. It was an old gold mining town which ceased operations in the 1970s, started to die and then was regenerated a few years back by a movie that was shot there. Now it's a bustling tourist town on the side of a steep mountain.

These were braaied shell fish like periwinkles, they were quite tasty

Renalda with Keelung harbour behind her

The old, higgledy piggledy town winding up the mountain

This dragonfly wasn't scared at all, I thought it was a nice photo

This part of the town is mostly deserted and falling apart

I wondered if the taps still worked, alas no.

Beams falling down in a doorway

Wonderfully made slate wall.

We mostly window shopped and walked around not really knowing where we were until we got tired and went home. We will go back sometime soon with a better idea of what to do and where to go.

Wow! It's almost a year since I wrote ANYTHING!!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:36:00 +0000

It's been too long since I wrote. I haven't had the inclination, energy or inspiration. We spent 9 months working at Hess and it was 9 months of hell. I think the last time I blogged must have been when my energy from South Africa ran out, and the excitement of moving to another very strange country wore off. I wouldn't recommend working at Hess to anyone. It felt like we were worked like slaves, weren't respected and didn't have enough time to do any of the travelling we had hoped to do.

The location of our branch didn't help either. It felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, even though DaJia is just outside Taichung City!

Anyway, thankfully we moved! We are now living in Luodong in Yilan county. The pace of life is much slower and the school we work at treats us a lot more like human beings. Renalda and I both teach kindergarten which is QUITE a change. We haven't done a lot since moving here as it is the rainy season. Apparently it's been a mild rainy season this year, but it's been pretty wet in our books.

I've been struggling with the "new school bugs." I think I'm just about over it now.

We had always intended for friends and family to come and visit, but at Hess it was impossible. We didn't have the leave. Even when we did get leave we had a ton of work to do before and after the time off. Now it's much easier, we do hardly any work outside of the classroom.

My father is here in Taiwan now, and my mother will arrive in a week's time. It should be great as Chinese New Year is around the corner.

Anyway, I hope to post some pictures soon of our travels while they are here.

A walk in the park - 27 April 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 02:55:00 +0000

Jenny had offered to take us for a walk on a local hill a few weeks back but we were pretty tired or ill and decided to post pone. We asked if this weekend was good for her and she was happy to oblige. She even fetched us in a car, which we didn't know she had (or had access to). She's a really great CT to work with, always helpful and willing to go out of her way. I guess it helps her to practice her English too.

It was fantastic to get out into a more natural environment. DaJia, even though it is considered a small town is very built up and we aren't near to any parks or green areas. Coming from South Africa, this can be quite depressing. I hope that once we get a scooter we will be able to find some places to chill where it is nice and green and perhaps a little quieter than DaJai itself, with the Mazu temple's fireworks constantly exploding in your ears.

It was also great to get a bit of exercise that didn't involve walking to and from work. Jenny had just gotten over a cold and we were quite worried when she seemed very out of breath half way up quite a steep climb. I was also quite surprised at how easily we made it up, not having done any specific exercise since leaving SA.

Jenny and Renalda

Jenny and Mark (perhaps I should get a different hat)

Gotta dig those Virbams ;)

Really beautiful landscaping

It looks like a vygie!!

Walking in a maze of what looks like jasmin bushes

I can't remember the name of the goddess

Renalda trying her hand at pole dancing... I mean climbing ;)

The only wildlife we saw

Steam train in DaJia - 26 April 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 26 Apr 2014 02:55:00 +0000

We were on our way to Taichung last Saturday when this rolled by. Couldn't resist taking a few pics. It left when we were on our train and we noticed that it had an electric locomotive hooked on the back. All of the joy of the puff puff, without having to build up steam. The train left on time, no need to shovel coal frantically ;)

Perhaps I can convince Renalda that we should take a steam train trip :D

I'd love to take a trip with one of these

Add caption

Taipei day trip and National Palace Museum - 20 April

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 05:50:00 +0000

One of Renalda's kids took part in a Hess English speaking competition. All 200 odd Hess branches took part in the knockout rounds of the competition and Renalda's student made it to the finals in Taipei. We took the opportunity to go see more of the city. His show and tell performance only started at 2pm so we got the 6:30am train into Taipei and went to the National Palace Museum.

Most of China's historical artifacts were taken to Taiwan after the CMT were forced out of China by PRC forces (I think). These are mostly housed at the Palace Museum and are on a rotation that apparently takes many years to complete. You can come every 2 months and see new things every time!

Me standing at the gate to a traditional garden

2 hours was not enough! You actually need the whole day, but looking and reading is hard work, especially when most things are in Chinese and there are millions of people around you. Next time I think we will take a guided tour. Unfortunately no pictures inside.

The National Palace Museum gate in the background

Renalda with the same gate in the background

The Palace Museum main building

One of the lions (?) guarding the museum

Another view of the main gate

We got a brief rundown of Chinese history. Then we saw some copies of western media written about Taiwan around the turn of the century, at that stage it was part of Japan. There were some beautiful sketches for an illustrated British newspaper on display. There were also some wonderful jade carvings and descriptions of how jade instruments and jewelry were/are made. The most beautiful piece was the famous Jadeite Cabbage with a grasshopper hiding in it's leaves, amazing!!

One of the administration buildings or outer buildings of the complex

The floor above the entrance level of the museum

Renalda with the museum complex in the background

Another exhibit was regarding bronze casting, but by that stage we were on our way out. It showed the history of casting with illustrations of the process that appear to be very similar today. There were a few bronze potjies that made my stomach rumble ;) So went to hunt for some lunch.

Taiwan style bunny chow and trotter soup, very yummy, but a bit pricey

We then went to one of the Universities close by, where the competition was taking place. We were very happy when Steve came second on the island in his competition! We can't claim any credit for Renalda yet, but it was good to show face and to be there with his parents while he was on stage. He won a sizable amount of money!
We then took the opportunity to do a little bit of shopping and then took the late train home, arriving in DaJia after 11pm! It was a good outing.

We missed Mazu returning - 15 April

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 04:04:00 +0000

We've started to get the feeling that we have been camping for too long. The sum total of our furniture at the moment is a bed (with a mozzie net tent), a "cupboard", some bedside tables, a small table, 2 cheap chairs, one of which I broke by rocking back and a plastic stool. So with our first pay check we decided to get a couch, at least when we get home we can flop into something comfy that isn't a bed.

Our kitsch DIY cupboard

Mazu returned to DaJia on a Tuesday which was a normal school day for the rest of the country, but because the traffic in the areas is restricted in the area (DaJia becomes a pedestrian town), schools are closed. This means we get the day off...but we have to make it up the preceding and following Saturdays! It's unbelievable for us. In South Africa we would just shrug and skip a day of school, not here!

We did have a little bit of work in the afternoon, some training in Taichung, so we decided to make a trip to Ikea, in the morning before the training. We've heard some scornful comments about Ikea, but we quite enjoyed being able to get everything you need in one place, and then to have it delivered and assembled (if you want).

We set a budget to spend but the main thing we wanted to buy was a sleeper couch, then we have a place for you to sleep when you all come visit! I had seen a cheap one on the Ikea website which turned out not to be too comfy. We settled for one which was still in the budget for the day, but was the entire budget. You can see it below, and it is very comfy to sit on, we haven't slept on it yet. Unfortunately Ikea only delivers to DaJia on Fridays so we had to wait a while for our comfort.

Our new sleeper couch

After training we went to get some Korean style fried dumplings and then took a taxi to a mall where we watched Captain America 3D in IMAX! Very cool, we will try to make it a monthly exercise.

We were a little disappointed to miss the fanfare and free food for Mazu's return, but at the same time it was nice to have a day out. When we got off the train in DaJia the air was thick with smoke from fireworks and the streets were strewn with litter. Perhaps it was good that we weren't there.

Our mozzie net tent

Mazu leaves DaJia - 6 April

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 02:09:00 +0000

One of the Chinese teachers, Jenny, who is originally from DaJia invited us to walk around DaJia during the Mazu festival. We were treated to thousands of people lining up for free food and many interesting sights, sounds, smells and tastes.

A food tent erected in the street to feed the hungry hoards

From left: Michelle, George, myself and Jenny having a free vegetarian lunch

Not having had enough rice and noodles we went to an even bigger tent where the rest of the hoard was eating.

A massive food tent

Apparently when Mazu leaves DaJia the free food is vegetarian, but when she returns it includes meat.
We then met up with some of Jenny's family who showed us a shortcut into the Mazu temple. It was milling with hundreds of people and smelled strongly of incense, so strongly that my eyes were watering and I had an occasional sneezing fit. We thought we may as well go the whole hog, so we lit a bunch of incense sticks. Jenny told us to put three here and there in the proper order. It was very interesting and the architecture was amazing. Very intricate and beautiful.

Inside the Mazu temple, lighting incence

Inside the temple at one of the shrines

One of the shrines outside the temple, and the thousands of people

Intricate artwork

I must admit that while it was interesting I was happy to get out for the sake of my eyes and throat!

These are our new pieces of heaven, they are crispy sweet potato balls. Very yummy

We walked around looking at the foods and other items available for sale. It was pretty, thirsty and hungry work. We bought some of the sweet potato balls above to share with Jenny and George, but George appeared not to like them! We were pretty surprised. Perhaps we have different taste to many western people. Renalda and I are pretty open to trying new things, good when you are in a new country and don't know what it is that you are pointing at. If it tastes good it's all good!

These cyclists will follow Mazu from Dajia South and return with her in 2 weeks

We got to see a few of these dragons whirling around

And I've been corrected that this is a Buddha

Renalda really wanted to talk to the Buddha

I couldn't resist getting a pic with a black Buddha who has white arms ;)

Another dragon

We then walked around a bit more, got some free supper and some watermelon, before calling it a night. On the way home we saw this game. It's gambling, you buy a bunch of rings and try to throw the rings onto the bottles, if you do you win that bottle. Not unlike horseshoe throwing games or some of the fun fair games we see on American movies.

Throw to win

It was a good, but tiring day.

A little bit of DaJia madness

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 05:05:00 +0000

Last weekend (29th and 30th of March) there was a festival of some sort in DaJia. We thought it was the buildup to the Mazu Festival, where Mazu, the Chinese goddess of the sea, takes worshipers on an annual pilgrimage to the south of the island. We woke up to loud music and more fireworks than usual and when we looked out the window, this is what we saw.

Pimped up rides downstairs

I know what you did last summer! You pimped your ride!

Interesting

Hellraiser. Note the Momo shop in the background!!

Talking about Momo, it is a toiletries/pharmacy store which is about 40m from us as the crow flies. We live above it and they play the most annoying song over and over and over again!! It's about 30s long and they seem to have it on repeat! I found myself humming it in one if my classes.

Other than the captain South Africa on the car...what the!!?

This is usually the street leading past the temple

I think this is one of Mazu's general friends, they were demons she defeated

The other general/demon

Dancing and fireworks are the order of the day!

So it turns out that this didn't have much to do with the Mazu festival. They just had some puppet shows and other performances on the week before the festival. I wish I could read Chinese, because a lot of information is missing and it's not always possible to ask someone.

And even then, when you ask a Chinese speaking teacher, you aren't sure if you got the correct answer or if they understood your question. Very frustrating!

Renalda and I will start Chinese lessons soon, but we are using Anki to learn vocab, both spoken and written at the moment.

Fruit salad and yoghurt. Without a fridge the leftover watermelon went bad :(

Renalda felt my pain regarding something fresh and this is what we made! A fantastic fruit salad with drinking yoghurt. Not quite double cream greek, but it was awesome!

The view from our apartment...not exactly beautiful, but it's home

This is the view of the little town of DaJia from our bedroom window. Not so little really, a lot going on with a small town feel.

Fried naan bread thingy

Interesting pancakes, that reminded us of naan bread, really yummy, with lots of oil!

Too much fried food!! ;)

Supper, fried chicken, fish balls and pancake naan...scrumptious! I promise we do eat veggies!

Can I have some familiar food please!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 13:55:00 +0000

We watched Treasure Island yesterday and Orlando Bloom's character, Ben is stranded on the island for three years. He has an unnatural desire for cheese! "Cheese is like a piece of heaven!" That's how we feel right now! I want some decent cheese with my omelette, and some real cream in my coffee and what about something fresh and raw?! Don't get me wrong Taiwanese food is fantastic and it IS fresh, but it's not raw. It's not that crispy cool salad with nuts and peppers and crunchy carrots. It's all cooked!

So what? Make yourself a salad then! Well we don't have a fridge at the moment which means most of the ingredients to make a decent salad will go off! Did I mention double cream greek yoghurt?! So we can't make a salad!

We tried a Korean restaurant the other day, and I ordered a "salad." It consisted of, onions, spring onions and sweet corn! Renalda had a bibimbap, which was actually pretty awesome, it comes in a thick steel bowl and is still sizzling when they place it in front of you. The rice at the bottom congeals and gets fried into a crispy delicious crust which is a little crunchy and a little chewy, but fabulously tasty. I had serious order envy! I had a few bites ;)

We also had a Korean hotpot at our downstairs food vendor, and tried a 1000 year old egg. The hot pot was something like a moerby stew, with everything under the sun in it. We ordered one with beef, but found pieces of fish, shellfish and other unidentified morsels in it. The egg varied in colour from translucent turquoise to black and grey. It's consistency was a little chewy, runny in places and powdery in others and it tasted like strong blue cheese mixed with stinky egg and is something I won't do again.

We found out last night that all "barbecue" places aren't barbecues! We quite enjoy the Taiwanese barbecue shops. You get a little basket and choose some meat and veg which is then chopped up and fried or just mixed with some spices. We were walking around town last night when we saw what we thought was a barbecue. The options were the same, the baskets were the same, we just failed to notice the cardboard bowls that everything was served in. We made our selection, and were then asked what kind of noodles we wanted. We selected some, and then were handed a huge bowl of soup and a bag of cooked noodles. All quite delicious, but cooked, and now we know some barbecues are soup places, which is great, because we quite like soup!

Unfortunately no food photos this time. Tuesday is payday and we have decided we will buy a little piece of heaven to satisfy at least one craving. Matsusei, the expensive, Japanese supermarket in DaJia, does have decent cheese, at a decent price. However we are still living on savings, so we haven't bought any. That will change soon. Cream? Not so much, and definitely no decent yoghurt, if I could find a cheap source of milk I'd make my own for sure, but it seems like dairy is not very important here.

Some sickly rest 27 March 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 05:13:00 +0000

Sometimes getting sick has it's upsides. After school on Monday night I was pretty exhausted and I had a scratchy throat. By Tuesday morning I was feeling significantly worse, sore body, more runny nose than usual, mild headache. I decided to go to work anyway, but did manage an hour nap around 12. By the end of my second lesson I was toast! Seriously toast! I knew I was running a fever. All I wanted to do was lie down on a bed. Selena was talking to Renalda when she saw me and suggested she take my temperature. She did and it registered 38.8, which I think is relatively high.

She insisted that she take me to the doctor, immediately. It was 20m away, literally on the next corner. When I told them about the cardiac medication I take (quickly translated by Google), they bumped me closer to the front of the queue. They gave me a face mask as soon as they took my temperature. Finally they took a nasal swab and did a lateral flow test (think pregnancy test) for flu. They found that I had type A or B flu both of which can be quite serious. I got put off work for 5 days (3 days + weekend :( ) and was handed a mountain of medication. The medication includes a 5 day course of Tamiflu, and 12 individual packages with 5 tablets in each package, 3 per day for day time and one for night time to help me sleep! Then there's also a bottle of cough syrup. It cost me NT$1680 (~R580) in South Africa I suspect I would have paid closer to R1680!! And that's not the end of it. When I get my medical card it will be much much less! I think the consultation fee is NT$200 and the rest is free!

So ultimately this is allowing me to get some much needed rest. Unfortunately not the same for Renalda :( And to catch up on my blog, which is now as up to date as it's been in a while. See, getting sick has it's upsides ;)

Another week bites the dust - 23 Feb 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 03:37:00 +0000

Wow, time flies! We have almost been working here for a month!! There have been ups and downs but we are both getting better at it. Renalda took some pics of one of her science class projects. They looked really great!

The solar system

I think the best part about being in Taiwan at the moment is the food! We are certainly giving everything a try. Below is some blood curd soup we tried, and below that is some beef soup, something of a staple for us at the moment.

Blood curd soup - not as bad as it sounds, quite yummy

Beef Soup - definitely yummy

The lady at the place where we got the aforementioned dishes was somewhat upset that we hadn't ordered her oyster omelettes. We gestured that we would order one next time... we had had oyster omelettes before and were somewhat underwhelmed. She was however not to be deterred and minutes later an oyster omelette was on our table, gratis! It was indeed for us, the best oyster omelette in Taiwan as she was trying to tell us. She is Indonesian and speaks a little bit of English.

We chatted for some time and decided to go back the next night to order some omelettes proper. Mistake. She took this as the queue to regale us with stories we didn't understand about her family and the Mazu God's whereabouts. We tried in vane to go home as by this time it was after 11pm, but she wouldn't let us go politely. We have had to avoid the place since then, hoping not to damage our guanxi.

Rita making oyster omelettes

One of my new colleagues, Derek asked us to join him and some of his friends in Taichung for dinner on Saturday night. We went to the Little Tibet Restaurant which served both Indian and Tibetan dishes. It was in Taichung so we took a train and a bus. It took us 2 hours to get there!! We definitely need to get a scooter asap.

Most of us decided to opt for the Tibetan food as no one had had any before. It was super yummy, in true Indian style we shared all the dishes we ordered and split the bill equally. And some of us ate with our hands. The only Indian food we had to have was the garlic naan, I struggle to resist naan bread.

From bottom anticlockwise: Garlic naan, Tibetan deep fried bread x 2, Tibetan stir fried beef, butter chicken (I think), vegetables in blue cheese sauce (YUM)

Left to Right: Emily, Ping su, Renalda, Me and Derek (Colleague)

After dinner we went to the nightmarket literally down the next street, where they were selling the usual allotment of goodies, except it looked more upmarket that the other night markets we had been to. The lighting was brighter, the signage newer. Even the people seemed to be different, I can't quite describe how, but they were. We heard that the last train for DaJia would leave at 10:30 so we'd better move. We got on another bus, which was painfully slow and headed back to the Taichung Main Train station. Derek seemed to think we were super late and started running. Turns out we had a good few minutes to spare, so we stood on the platform catching our breath. Renalda bought some water from a vending machine, which turned out to be tea...they had used an empty tea bottle and filled it with water. Of course everyone who buys anything from a vending machine can read Chinese!

On Sunday we had planned to go to the Dakeng Scenic Area, a nature reserve of sorts where you can hike and cycle, but it was close to where we went the night before and we didn't really feel like travelling for 2 hours again before getting to our destination. We decided to give the mountains a rain check and we headed for the sea.

I hadn't read the map very well so we got off at a random stop pretty far from the ocean and we had to wind our way through rice paddies to get to the sea. And wind we did! I'm not sure how they decide to cut up land for rice paddies, I guess it must be to do with the contours but they do seem quite random. Rice paddies are clearly hard work and there were a number of people in their paddies on Sunday morning.

Triple story building...rice paddy.

DaJia is known to produce the finest taro in Taiwan. Taro is a sweet potato like plant. We get a version of it in South African called the madumbi. Taiwanese taro is purple where madumbi is white. There are tons of sweet dishes made from taro around. The plant has an elephant ear leaf, which I realised was identical to the madumbi leaf I planted in Pretoria. So below is a field of taro.

A field of flooded taro - big brother of the African Potato

Symmetry among chaos

The symmetry of the rice paddies was quite striking. The paddies themselves were quite disorderly, but the actual rice was planted about 10cm apart in a row and the rows were seperated by about 20cm. I've seen it in vineyards and fruit orchards, but never on this small a scale.

Random cyclist sculpture

Factory farmed geese :(

We finally got to the ocean, but there wasn't much to see. Just a large expanse of brown sand and some small breakers further out, so we decided not to take pics. But there were tons of windmills. Taiwan appears to take renewables very seriously! And they really want everyone to recycle.

Renalda trying to slow down the turbine

Me trying just to touch it ;)

The scale of these things is unbelievable. I went to stand on one. The wind was blowing quite strongly but they were only doing 20-30rpm.

Where's Mark?....on the stairs at the bottom of the pillar!

We then looked for some food before getting a bus home. We couldn't communicate so we just settled for a bag of nuts and some beef jerky (not very yummy). The bus ride home was surprisingly quick, it would have been much quicker for us to have ridden down, but it was still a good day out.

We got home and took some laundry to the laundromat. Once that was done we went looking for a nearby highschool where we could do some exercise. The DaJia highschool has a tartan track and pullup bars, what else do you need ;) While walking around the track we noticed a group of kids playing volleyball, but the teams were 3 - 2 so we asked if we could join. They didn't seem too upset, so we got a half hour's worth of volleyball in too!! A really good day for the body.

We then bought some supper and went home to do some more cleaning. The floors needed to be vacuumed and washed. Just before bed, we both realised that we had made an elementary mistake, neither of us had sunhats or sunscreen on for the whole day in the tropical sun! My face looked like a lobster, Renalda looked a slightly lighter shade of pink ;)

We woke up the next morning and it was a little better, and no one gave us a hard time at work. No harm no foul.

A day out in Taichung - March 16, 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 01:30:00 +0000

So we actually took a well deserved rest today and decided to go to Taichung (pronounced Taijung) for the day. We thought the museum of fine art would be a good place to go, but finding it was a little challenging. Taipei was super tourist friendly with MRT and bus maps in English. Taichung? Not so much! Google maps is pretty good at telling you which buses to take, but not so good with what time the bus will arrive or how long it will take.

We had a lazy morning and got out of DaJia on the 10:30 154 bus, which took about an hour to get to Taichung. This was a huge improvement in the 168 which we took last Thursday to do some syllabus specific training. That bus took around 2 hours to get there! On the way there we saw some Christmas decorations!! What the...!! Apparently Christmas never dies in Taiwan! I asked a kid in class last week what the big winter holiday was in Taiwan, expecting "Chinese New Year" as the answer. I got Christmas!

Christmas in March...really?!

We then had to find the bus stop for the 56 bus which would take us to the museum, except it was a few blocks down from the train station. So we walked down the road past a market and eventually saw some buses at a stop. But there was no 56 on the signs so we decided we were at the wrong stop and facing the wrong direction. We crossed the road and went to another stop just in time to catch the correct bus.

There was a mother with two young kids who got on at the same stop. We smiled at the kids and said hello. The little girl was super shy and wouldn't look away from her mom's jersey. Random comment to make, you say? Perhaps. Google had told me that it would take us 7 stops to get to the museum... it lied. At about stop 10, we got off the bus to get our bearings. We had gotten a tourist map at the train station which we whipped it out only to find that we were about 5 blocks away from the museum! We started to walk. It seems like you get the best feel for a city that way. Taichung is another big city. But seems to have wider spaces than Taipei. That is my impression from my first few hours in the city, perhaps it will change.

It took us 20 minutes or so to find the cultural centre which was adjacent to the museum. We asked some directions and got pointed to the museum. The photos below are from the gardens surrounding the museum, which seems to double as a park for families to come and have a fun Sunday afternoon. As we walked toward the museum entrance, guess who we saw! The lady with the shy little girl! We had gotten off the bus a few stops early. Oh well, we are certainly getting our exercise.

Some cool looking calligraphy...translations anyone?

Renalda next to a voluptuous sculpture

Write and Draw in the Fine Arts Museum

The rose cafe - beautiful roses hanging from the ceiling

The museum itself was quite nice. Entrance was free and there were a lot of pictures and art works, although many of the galleries were empty. There was some very nice senior high school art depicting Chinese New Year. Saying farewell to the Dragon and welcoming in the Year of the Horse.

Mostly it feels like the art on display was quite peaceful. Although one piece I remember, which was a critique of the USA, was entitled something like "The good and the bad." It had images of the Apolo re-entry vehicle and doctors performing surgery with a mushroom cloud in the background and war ravaged landscapes all around. Very thoughtful.

Another piece which took me back home looked like a landscape out of the little Karoo. It looked like a sunset, with a mountain in the foreground which was dark blue and the last sunlight shining on another range in the background painting it bright pink. Renalda and I both stopped and said "Wow!"

There was a paid exhibit, but at the moment we are still living on saved money so we will rather keep the more expensive outings for when we have a salary.

Lunch at the musuem - lamb curry combo about R70 to share yummy

Finally we looked for a late lunch and found the museum restaurant. We shared a lamb curry combo meal, which was super tasty with the ever present "quing tsai."

We then headed home slowly and took a 168 which we have now vowed never to do again as it is SOOO slow. We will do the train from now on. It feels like Taichung is actually very far away, when it is probably only 30km, but getting there by public transport takes forever.

And now after a rest we are ready for week 3 at Hess. Let's hope it will be an easier one!

In the tropics and freezing! 16 March 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 00:24:00 +0000

What's with the weather here! I checked on a map that we are 100km north of the tropics and its been really cold! If it's not raining it's around 10 degrees and cloudy. We've been missing the sun terribly! So much for sunny DaJia!!

We just completed week 2 of our year here at Hess in DaJia and what a hectic 2 weeks it has been!

In fact we got here Thursday 27th Feb by train from Taipei and spent the first two nights in a somewhat dingy DaJia hotel...on a round bed nogal! We got introduced to the branch staff on Thursday and were then treated to a vegetarian lunch. To say I no longer tolerate lots of carbs is an understatement! The lunch options were either rice or noodles, and not wanting to appear as fussy as I really can be, I opted for noodles, which were very tasty...I didn't say I don's like carbs.

We then had our very brief "branch training" in which I could barely keep my eyes open (carbs)! Not a problem I usually have after lunch any more. We then went to see 4 places the branch staff had picked out as possible apartments for us. Taiwan has a "clean after you move in" culture, which is quite strange to us. All but one of the places we saw were a mess. The first place was the right size but in a serious state of disrepair, the second place, in the same building was huge and would just have been too much for us to maintain, and furnish. The third place we saw was smaller, was relatively clean and was very conveniently located. The last place we saw was a 3 story house which was once again way too big for us, but it was immaculately clean. Someone pointed out that, had we taken it, we could possibly have rented out the top floor to someone in future.

We settled for the third place, on the seventh (ground + 6) floor, near the train station. It is 10 mins walk from work and conveniently situated. The local fresh food market in 3 mins walk away, there is a 7-eleven, a supermarket and numerous pharmacy/toiletry stores, similar to Clicks or Boots downstairs.

Friday 28 was peace day in Taiwan, commemorating the 228 incident in which KMT forces massacred hundreds of local Taiwanese. We spent the day walking around DaJia buying supplies we would need when we signed the lease the next day.

We could only move in late on the 1st as the landlord wasn't available on the holiday. We spent the day buying a bed, a plastic wardrobe and some other odds and ends. We arranged for our bed to be delivered after 8pm!

Signing the lease was quite frustrating. The landlord spoke no English, so we had to work through Selena, one of the branch staff. I would ask her to ask something and they would speak for 10 minutes. I would get a short answer, ask another question and get another answer 10 minutes later! I need to learn the language!!

That Sunday we realised that there were a number of things we missed on Saturday so we went and did more shopping. We definitely needed a table and 2 chairs as working at a bed just wouldn't work. We got the stuff delivered after some more translation by Selena on the phone. I found that we hadn't been charge for the chairs so I asked Selena to help. Turns out that the store owner's child is at the school, so no problem!!

Teaching Week 1

Then our first week started. I think to say we were thrown into the deep end is a major understatement! We are replacing staff members who are leaving and the head English teacher went on holiday for a week so we had a full schedule from Monday! Four teaching hours a day, with observations (2 hours each) three days that week. Considering we spent about 2 hours planning a 2 hour lesson, as we are completely unfamiliar with the material, we were exhausted!

I had an early Saturday morning class, and after doing some laundry, the rest of my weekend was spent planning! I had three lessons in a row on Monday, which I think I mostly did justice to. The rest of this week was pretty much heads down, exhausting hard work. It's sad because at the moment I'm not really enjoying it, there are moments of pleasure when some kids look up at you and nod or smile or laugh, but mostly it feels like I'm not quite doing it right.

Renalda and I made a realisation last night or this morning though. We need to plan the lessons we find easier first. Just like exam technique... the harder work takes longer and puts pressure on you to do the easy work in a shorter amount of time. This week we will get the easy wins done first, it will make us feel more confident and give us more time.

We're still loving the food here, it's great! I'm a whole animal person...if you are going to do an animal the injustice of killing it, give it the honour if eating it all. Taiwan does this! If you go look at the fish meat store it is all there and you can buy everything from liver to tripe at many restaurants.

Renalda and I make breakfast every morning and it is usually eggs with some freshly bought vegetables and kimchi. The market, as I said earlier, is 3 mins walk away so most mornings I roll out of bed and stroll or jog to the veggy lady to buy some "tshing tsai" (green leafy veggies sold everywhere). I'll post a picture of a breakfast one day when I remember, but I think we are eating quite healthy...

I hope I didn't bore you with my long update, but nothing particularly exciting has happened for some time!

Into the great wide open - February 27, 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 03:20:00 +0000

Up where the sky's so blue 😉 That is both a reference to a song and to the fact that our new home in DaJia will be a LOT more sunny than Taipei.

Wow, what a busy week! I haven't had a chance to post! I'll try to give a quick run down of how things went so we can remember when we look back.

We had Saturday off, that was when we had had the massive ice cream/shaved ice. Sunday it was right back to training and we went through one of the curriculums for the older kids. We had to prepare this for our final assessed demo on Monday morning. I was exhausted by Sunday night. Renalda, "Yorkshire" Dan and I sat in our room and prepared our lesson plans.

By 12 I was finished typing mine up and I ran down to the...guess what...7 eleven, to print my lesson plans out!! You can do ANYTHING at a 7 Eleven here!

Just a quick aside, so far we have seen 3 different convenience store brands, 7 Eleven, Family Mart and OK Mart. Taiwan has the most convenience stores per capita in the world. There is something ridiculous like 1 convenience store for every 1500 people here, which is insane. In Taipei, there is literally one on every corner.

Anyway, so I printed my lesson plans after midnight at the 7 Eleven across the street, showered and went to bed, I was exhausted, and starting to feel a little bit of a cold creeping up on me again. Renalda, bless her, stayed up for another hour and a half prepping her lessons and doing other stuff. I woke up in the morning and all the relevant pages in the books I needed to use were marked with sticky notes!

We had had to prepare for 2 lessons, for Monday and were to teach only half a lesson as a demo. I think everyone was quite nervous to get the older curriculum, Renalda and I certainly were. We got to work early and this time got a good heads-up on what sections we needed to teach for our demo. I "lucked out" as the Americans say. You would think this meant I got bad luck, but apparently it means my luck was good, I got the younger kids lesson. Renalda on the other hand got the exact section she didn't want to get and was not very happy about it.

We were both pretty nervous, I think Renalda more than me. She put on a brave face, stole my notes for that section 😉 and delivered a good lesson. I hit all my steps and was quite happy with my delivery. Most importantly it was over and we weren't fired ☺. They "treated" us to pizza, I groaned. We have been eating the "local" food 100% of the time and have been loving it. Almost everything is served with rice, which I generally have a little bit of, but it's easy to avoid wheat and carbs in general. The lunches so far had been "lunch boxes" which included some rice, some vegetables and some meat. Pizza however gives you no option to avoid anything. Both Renalda and I had the first stomach aches since we had arrived in Taiwan after eating Western food...oh the irony.

The rest of Monday and the whole of Tuesday we went through the final curriculums and generally just got early nights. Yesterday (Wednesday), we went through all the policy and contract related things and generally wrapped up the training. We signed contracts with our branches and had a bit of a cocktail party and then it was time for us to pack our bags before going to KTV. KTV is basically a karaoke club and the tradition for Hess NST graduation is to go out to KTV and sing.

Put westerners in front of a mike after a couple of drinks and things go pear shaped! It was pretty funny and I also had a few beers and ended up with a hoarse voice singing cheesy songs as loudly as possible. We managed to get ourselves home before 12 for our early morning and the train ride south to DaJia, where our branch is.

Interestingly the branch management has decided that we should be at the same branch. We had originally thought they would put us at different branches so that we can take leave together. They seem to think that won't be a problem anymore, so we will just have to apply for our leave well in advance.

I'm nervous and excited about the imminent learning curve. I think because we are at the same branch we will have preschool kids, which I thought we may not have had, but we chose the contract option which included them. I'm really looking forward to getting going and learning some new skills. I have no doubt that it will be a lot of hard work, but I'm also sure that this will most likely be one of the most rewarding things I've done yet.