Emily and I did do a few notable things. A Taiwanese friend, Jasmine, invited us to her extended family’s Chinese New Year Eve dinner in Keelung and that was a lot of fun. We had some great food, played mahjong and poker, and sang our hearts out on their karaoke machine! And they even gave us each a hong bao. We were so grateful for their hospitality and including us in what is normally a family-only affair.

Another fun thing we did during the week was visit a hot springs we’d never been to before. Emily was stir crazy even before the break began so by Tuesday she had cabin fever bad. Even though it was raining we saddled up our trusty steed, Bessy, and headed out with our friend Nan to find and enjoy Ba Yen hot springs up in Yangmingshan National Park. It took about an hour and a half of driving on our scooters up over the mountain to reach the trail head and then about a twenty minute hike back to the (technically illegal) natural hot springs, which weren’t too crowded and simply fantastic for their beauty, water temperature and general awesomeness. We spent a few hours soaking and enjoying ourselves and chatting with other bathers before getting suited back up for the ride home in the dark and rain…and thankfully hot showers upon arrival. Sitting in the hot springs made me realize that there really is something to all the people who install hot tubs in their backyards. Soaking in hot water outside when the weather is cold is fantastic. I definitely have a preference for the natural hot springs though! Too bad every place can’t be so volcanic huh?

Saturday it didn’t rain…yay!!!….so Emily and I went out to Xizhi City (world headquarters of Acer actually), east of Taipei, to do a little half day hike. We found the hike (number 6) in Taipei Day Trips Volume 1 by Richard Saunders. The hike started at Tian Hsiu temple and took us past Hsiu Feng waterfall before reaching the overlook on the top of “Big Sharp Mountain” (literal translation). The waterfall was pretty romantic and the view from the top of the mountain was beautiful. Great place for taking wide shots of Taipei! All in all the hike was only about 3km and pretty family friendly. Not super strenuous, but you still felt like you had gone on a hike, afterwards.

Once Emily and I get back to Michigan we’ll have to invest in traveler’s guides like Lonely Planet and all that. We want to discover Michigan like we’ve discovered Taiwan.

In the last four and a half years in Taiwan I’ve done a number of different jobs that have been making me reflect on the whole expats are zoo exhibits principle. For example, last week a friend and I put on an English seminar for Nike’s Taiwan employees. We spent three hours teaching English to thirty adults using basketball as the theme. It was great! I’m too embarrassed to even say how much it paid, and we felt like rock stars at the end. If I wasn’t a foreigner who also looked like a foreigner who also was a native speaker of the world’s language who is also okay with being seen as a cute, adorable monkey, to an extent, this would not have been possible. I guess what I’m trying to say is that as a foreigner strange opportunities come along way more often than one would expect.

Here’s another example. I’ve been asked more than once if I want to do modelling. Now, my mother and father are extremely good looking people, but I am no model and I’ve always turned these offers down. The mere fact that I’ve been asked is weird enough. Other people say yes. One of my former classmates (a dude from Brazil) was regularly in commercials here as was one of Emily’s classmates (a girl from New York). When I went to buy a rain poncho I saw another of my classmates (a dude from the USA) pictured on the packaging looking oh so happy in his awesome rain poncho. The closest I ever came to modelling was during my first year here in Taiwan. Through a friend I got hooked up with an advertising agency that had landed an account with Dewars to increase brand awareness in Taiwan. The campaign was simple. Get a foreigner to dress up like a Scotsman (including a kilt that was so short I had to pin up my boxers) and take the “Scotsman” into groceries stores all over Taiwan to pose for pictures and hand out free samples of “Dee Wars” mixed with green tea. That’s right folks. I dressed up as a Scotsman and made a fool of myself for two days at six different grocery stores, incorrectly pronouncing Dewars and offering people pretty good whisky ruined by green tea (actually it doesn’t taste too bad) while offering to pose for pictures with their kids who would take one look at the man with a beard in a skirt and start to cry….all for money. Thankfully there is no photographic evidence still in existence….that I know of.

Then there are the entertainment jobs. One of my good friends (a guy from Zimbabwe) is a pretty decent hip hop singer and he landed a gig as a regular DJ at one of Taipei’s more prestigious clubs. Anytime I wanted to get in he always had my back. I don’t even remember how many people I know that are “promoters.” Basically, they hand out free entry and free drink tickets to tons of foreigners for different clubs, etc., so that the club will get a reputation as being a cool spot because it is frequented by lots of cute, adorable monkeys.

Besides modelling and entertainment the biggest employment sector for us monkeys is teaching English. Granted, we are teaching and all that. However,  the monkey element enters in here too. Most of the jobs are with after school buxibans (think after school group tutoring centers). Buxibans convince parents to pay them tuition by showing them all the wonderful cute, adorable monkeys that their children will spend time with and learn how to speak the world’s language from. If the kids don’t learn English the parents will stop paying. But, if the kids don’t have fun the parents will also stop paying. The supply and demand principle enters in and what you get is that a lot of “teaching time” is games and just making sure the kids have fun, while in an English speaking environment of course. This isn’t true for every buxiban, but definitely the norm. It’s not uncommon for teachers to be told to play more games.

And the pay is ridiculous. Starting pay teaching English is, on average, about 600 NT an hour. That is about $20 USD. Not bad right? How hard is it to be an English teacher you ask? The requirement set forth by Taiwan’s gov’t is to hold a bachelor’s degree, any bachelor’s degree. And, even with the high pay and low requirement there are still tons of jobs to be had, which means that if you are half way decent with kids and are able to show up on time consistently you are labeled an awesome teacher. Pretty good deal right?

To make a just comparison I should also note that minimum wage in Taiwan is only 100 NT an hour. So that means that starting wage for teaching English is six times greater than min wage. To put that in perspective Michigan’s minimum wage is $7.40 USD. Six times that is $44.40 which comes to over $92,000 USD a year! If kids straight out of college made that kind of salary consistently in Michigan we would be shocked right? Crunching these numbers gets me every time.

So there you have it folks. Come to Taiwan and make a lot of money as cute, adorable monkeys.

PS- I hope none of what I’ve said comes off as offensive. Every culture is different and values different things. I’m not making judgments here, just sharing experiences.

As Emily and I read in A Farewell To Arms this evening we came across the line above and I knew I should get on here and write something…even though it seems there is nothing to write…even though I know that isn’t true.

It’s been just shy of two months since my last post. Since then Emily has been tutoring and teaching up a storm all over Taipei. She’s constantly going to this person’s house and that coffee shop to meet up with kids, adults, everyone, to give them a first rate hour of English instruction, and then on to the next place. I’ve been teaching as well. I’m working at two different cram schools now. It was three nights a week, but I just picked up some more hours so it will be every night of the week, which is good!!! I was also taking Chinese classes at the MLC, or Mandarin Language Center. I had a great teacher and a class with only six other students with three hours of instruction, five days a week, plus homework. I was learning a lot and moving fast. Unfortunately, I stopped going to try and find a morning teaching job and then when I didn’t find a morning teaching job I was too far behind to go back….oh, the regrets we rack up in this life….oh, well….I can console myself with the fact that I am still looking for a morning job….moving on.

The MLC was great and I thoroughly recommend it. It is cheaper than the other popular place to learn Chinese, NTNU’s MTC. Plus, I had heard ho hum stories about how at the MTC sometimes the teachers care and teach well and sometimes they aren’t so good. My short stint at the MLC now makes me an expert and I steer everyone that way!!! So remember don’t go to the MTC, go to the MLC.

I also finished another video since my last post. This one was for Our Friends Orphanage (OFO) in Takeo, Cambodia as a way to show the world what they are doing with their free after-school English classes. You can see it here: http://youtu.be/dM4NTCUX49A

A couple of months ago I posted an email from Samnang about all the flooding there in Cambodia. The water has receded now, thankfully, and lots of the farmers are scrambling to replant and get everything back to normal. I’ve also been contacting Samnang recently regarding concerns raised by Jen, another OFO volunteer who commented on one of my other posts. It is difficult sometimes to know how to communicate clearly with Samnang…and people from very different backgrounds from myself in general. We have such differing ideas about so much and that doesn’t even include the whole language difficulty. It makes me realize just how much simpler it is to communicate countryman to countryman.

Okay so I’ll make the last bit quick. Emily’s mother’s visit has inspired others and we are excited to hear that Emily’s brother is planning on coming for a few weeks in March! We are hoping for another great time with family! We also recently got to visit with our old friend Jonathan Williams and his beautiful fiance Katia Chen who were in town on a tour of Asia. Great times!

Lastly, if you know us on facebook you already know this part: After lots of thought and prayer, Emily and I have come to the conclusion that it is time to move back to the USA for a while. We’re going to miss all our friends here in Taiwan, but following Jesus is always the best. We haven’t bought tickets yet, but most likely it will be around the end of March when our lease is up. We’re still getting used to the idea, even though it has been a while in the making. Oi vei…sweet and sour my thoughts they wander.