Today, one of my supervisors at the school said to me with her Chinese English accent:
"You have beautiful ears."
At first I thought I misheard her (a common situation here), but no, she said ears. So I said,
"Haha...thank you!?"
She then further explained that the size of my earlobe and the overall shape of my ear means, in common belief here, that I will live a long life of wealth!
On Tuesday we went on a field trip to the Zhunan Train Station.
And surprisingly we saw zero trains!
Oh well...it was nice getting out of school for a few hours.
This is Winnie. She's my favorite (but don't tell anyone that). She reminds me of my niece Lori in that she loves and knows how to work the camera.
Here's a video of us in the "bus":
Also, kids wear face masks here like accessories. It's very normal and common to see them. Even teachers wear them. So if someone is talking English to me with a thick Chinese accent with one of those things on...forget it! I need to both see and hear to understand some of the people here.
*Funny story insert:
Once we're at the train station, we get to the main platform outside where they bring the big speaker and the microphone. They do some announcements of sorts and then they say, "And now Mr. Craig will do his exercise routine with us! 3...2...1...Press play on the music!" And I was like, "WHUUUH?" I had no time to think about anything other than handing my camera to a Chinese teacher and said "click away!" because this is a memory.
Why is it a memory?
Because it was performed in front of the ENTIRE downtown Zhunan...
Hello busy city behind me!
My exercise routine is now a pop culture phenomenon. Kids are singing "tiki tiki tiki tiki tiki tiki room" allll daaaay loooong.
Me with my class.
Winnie and Ashlee.
Melody and Yvonne.
Frank and Betty.
Alex and Benny.
Yuki and Emma.
Thomas and Evan.
Doris and Joan.
Alison and Junie.
Martin, Wayne, and Nini
After we toured the station lobby we went ouside and the kids were able to run around for a little bit. (About halfway through this video the sound gets really low because I accidentally put my hand over the microphone while holding my camera):
This weekend I did the first really touristy thing since I've been here. Near where I live there is a giant Buddhist Temple that I think is called the Wugu Temple. You can see it from the apartment and pretty much anywhere within a mile or two radius.
It was a very interesting experience. I had obviously never been to a Buddhist Temple before (and apparently they're all over the place here in Taiwan) so I'm looking forward to visiting more. It was very quiet, relaxing, smelled like incense, and very beautiful. The attention to detail was amazing and the colors were awesome. There was tons of symbolism that I obviously don't know and probably never will...but it was still cool.
I asked of course if we were allowed to take pictures inside and they said yes.
This is the temple looking from probably a 1/4 mile behind it. That's Wugu sitting up there. I believe he's a Buddhist God of sorts.
Getting closer.
Wugu Street.
The entrance.
Not sure what this was but it was very detailed.
Incense burning.
I felt semi-bad photographing these two praying...but it's such a cool photo.
Smaller Wugu statue.
The artwork was incredible.
Sacred text.
An awesome lighted wall.
View of the entrance from the upper balcony.
All the way to the top now and super close.
Pretty cool view.
It was a lot of fun and very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing more sites like this.
