Taipei 101 still wins

Although Taipei 101 has recently lost the title of "Tallest Building in the World" to Burj Dubai (just barely, see graph below), the bamboo-shaped building in Taiwan's capital city still has a few things left to boast about. 

Directly Translated 3

I have to keep stressing the fact that the direct translations I'm brining up aren't actually translated incorrectly. They do have a tendency to be used incorrectly, though, so there are plenty of instances where it will be incorrect. Like this example:

Just like Aunties and Uncles, any person that is maybe a little bit older than you can be called "older sister" or "older brother." This especially includes cousins. While there is a word for cousin, it is much more common to hear an older female cousin referred to as, "older sister," directly translated.

Once, back in the days of the Squirrel Class,

Strawberry Fields

As a rule of thumb, I'll eat just about anything that's pink. Candy, cake, bread, you name it. The chances are it's strawberry flavored.

Last year, the word got out that strawberries/strawberry flavored foods rank somewhere in my Top 1 Favorite Foods list, and my students brought me tons of strawberry food items for my birthday. If it was customary to give kindergarten students letter grades, of course they would have all gotten A's.

Last weekend

Parallel Universe

The weather is changing. It's getting warmer. That's great, except that means the kids are getting sick. Every kid needs a mask.

At lunch time, the masks are next to the bowls as the students are hurried to finish their rice and vegetables, interrupted only by getting up to take a tissue to dam the constant flow of snot.

One by one, they finish and bring their bowls to my co-teacher for soup, then take a piece of fruit.

"If you're sick, you don't eat the fruit," she orders. Caught off-guard by that statement, I glanced over at the tray of fruit. It was orange slices...

I proceeded to ask about why, when the kids are sick, they are to be deprived of oranges, or any fruit for that matter. I got a brief lesson in how cold fruit when you are sick is bad "chi," which apparently trumps any scientific proof about the nutrition of an orange.

So the healthy kids eat oranges, and the sick kids finish their soup and the masks go back on.

I scratched my head over this for the whole day, and pretty much forgot about until the next morning. The breakfast tray came into the class and it was full of cake. Each student got a slice of cake that had some sort of pudding filling.

Once I was reassured that the kids needed to drink some water after they finished their cake, I confirmed with my co-teacher that they weren't going to be eating any fruit that day.

Amazing...

Chinese New Year

My week off, in pictures (click for a better view):

[more pictures from Yehliu Geopark]



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Where's the cream filling?

Sorry to spoil it, but this post is not about those funny Hostess commercials.

This past weekend, my school had it's annual staff dinner. Much like the lavish hospitality that we experienced in Hualien, we were offered an all-you-can-eat buffet of the finest dishes at the sparkling Splendor Restaurant in Taipei.



A few glasses of wine later, I found myself staring at $500 and a bowl of soup. Sitting proudly in the soup, nestled snug in the noodles, was a single chicken testicle. For those that have never seen one, let alone eaten one, it's actually quite impressive. Taking into consideration size relative to proportion, that cock had plenty of doodle-doo.



To make a long story short, I've never been one to let down a crowd of spectators, or to turn down doing something for money, so I spooned the nut from its burrow in the noodles and braced myself. I had to devise a quick strategy; it was definitely too big to safely swallow whole. I didn't want to end up in the hospital for choking on... well, never mind. Of course the last thing I wanted to do was bite it, but I made up my mind that one swift bite through the center would be the most efficient way to get it down.

Trying my best to think happy thoughts, I slid it into my mouth and followed the plan. Only, I didn't know exactly what to expect. My teeth severed the testicle in half, allowing for its grainy, mushy insides to fill my mouth. While the taste really wasn't so bad, the texture did nothing to stop me from gagging slightly before it disappeared in a quick gulp.

More wine and all-you-can-eat Haagen Dazs was enough to remove the oily aftertaste from my mouth, but nothing will ever change the fact that I ate a testicle.