Fancy Fish

Last night to celebrate my roommates Asian departure, the entire dorm traveled in a pack to a Japanese restaurant nearby. The restaurant was only a small bar, so to fit all 10 of us we had to help carry out tables and stools to set up camp on the sidewalk. We ordered a ton of food and beer and sat in the street enjoying our treats.

The food was amazing, but today my stomach was a wee bit crazy. I did some googling and found out we were eating a fish called Escolar, aka 'Butterfish', which wikipedia says has 'potential health problems related with consumption of the fish'. I guess this big guy is unable to digest the waxes in its diet, so its skin is up to 25% oil. Although it is delicious because of its buttery fatty flesh, it's probably not the best choice for dinner. It has actually been banned in a few countries including Japan and Italy, so I think in the future I may steer clear.

After consulting with my roommates, it turns out we all had an experience similar to this.

No smoking, No dogs, No ninja farts???

Seen outside a Vietnamese restaurant in Jhongli...

Thanks For Clearing That Up

Seen on the MRT in Taipei:

My Daily Walk To School

Near the Neili school where I teach almost every day is a street lined with a muraled wall. The other side of the street is a lot of abandoned buildings that look like they burnt to a crisp.

Most of the mural shows happy pictures with people smiling and trees and rivers, but at the very end in of the wall is a much more somber mural with people crying in the windows of burning buildings.

This is one of my favorites. It shows the trucks that drive around to collect garbage. So that people know they are coming and can come out and throw their trash in the back, the trucks constantly blast ice cream truck like music. In this mural you can see people holding their ears in pain as the truck drives by.

White Fungus

This was for sale at a Thai restaurant in Jhongli. Sounds delicious.

5 Second Rule

My mom used to make sun dried tomatoes every year, slicing them and putting them in a dehydrator in the kitchen. I guess it never occurred to her to use the railings on the deck, or the sidewalks for that matter. In Taiwan it is a common site to see sliced veggies drying in the sun. Sometimes they are spread on a cloth outside a house or business, but most of the time they are scattered on the sidewalks and road. Recently someone has been drying some unidentified vegetable on the wall outside my dorm. Appetizing isn't it? I hope that goes into my dinner tonight.

My prettiful students

At certain milestones in the curriculum here we have to put on a big song and dance to show off to the parents the massive amount of English we have taught their kids. These demos are a mix of games (using spelling, phonics, speaking, answering questions, etc), songs, little plays, and then each student has to go up and give a self introduction into a microphone. I just had demos in about 6 classes recently, and after one I got some of my students to show me their self intros on camera.

This is Alice, my smartest student in the class.

And this is Randy, not as smart, but very spunky.