Penghu Pt. 2

When we first arrived at Penghu on Wednesday the 29th (it took me one week to post these because 1) I'm lazy and 2) I knew there were going to be a crap ton of them) we took a ferry out to a place called Bird Island, which houses a fishing village. It was overcast and the breeze off of the water felt wonderful, unfortunately, this is also where we got the most salt over us. But just watching the water was very calming. I think I know why so many people love the ocean now. I'll spare you from the amount of pics I took of the water.

The statue in the entrance to Bird Island.

Dried fish (tastes like fish jerky) and a sorting table for them.

A tiny orange Crab on Bird Island.

The fish BBQ we had in the fishing restaurant.
I felt sorry for the puffer fish since it was out of the water, but at least I got a pic with it. It was subsequently returned to its home. I guess since it has people feeding it everyday, it could at least give people photos with it.
Sorry my hair is a mess. It was an extremely windy day.

I want a giant incense burner!

A wall of Buddhas inside a temple.

Bird's nest outside a ferry house.
If you look closely, you can make out the smiley face in the lower right firework.


Some guy brought his big iguana to the fireworks. It was just chillin' on his shoulder! He let me hold it for a photo, sorry for it being sideways.

A less busy beach where we were able to ride a lot more water rides.

I'm standing in a square with a roof made entirely from the branches and roots of a single tree. Many of the roots grew long enough to touch the ground, making tall root-columns.

Steph and I in front of an arch of Penghu's great bridge. Apparently a lot of people around here know about it and take a pic just to prove they were there, so here's my proof.
A geology center for the basalt and other rock formations of Penghu.
Whale's eye cave near the geology center.



This pumpkin is huge, but not quite as big as the pic makes it out to be if you consider the bucket and the table in the background, haha.
These are special orange flowers that only grow at Penghu.
We stopped at a village inhabited by people with the same last name of Chen. They strive to keep traditional Chinese architecture in their homes and workplaces.








Some native cacti.
The sunsets on these islands are famous, and I can tell why. :)


On the last day we were there, Saturday, we went to the other side of the island to look at this watchtower and find some of the beaches. On the rocks, there were fisherman and woman catching their dinner. We went to a much sandier beach, but at that point, it was the hottest part of the day and I wanted nothing more than a cool drink and to sit down. Apparently these people had never heard of sitting out the hottest part of the day in an air conditioned place. While they were prancing around in the super hot sand, I relaxed in a shaded gazebo and read.



One of the happier times I had on the island was when I got to go off on my own for a little while and search for some place with air conditioning. Apart from many stores, I stopped inside one of the temples to look around.
A wall of rocks that looked pretty cool.
An offering to the ancestors and the gods can be made in the form of soda and oatmeal.
An inner-temple store where you can buy said soda and oatmeal.

A really fancy calligraphy set in the temple.

All of these guys are life-sized statues found inside the temple. Well, they're a lot bigger than me, at any rate.





Did you know that the train platform to Hogwarts is actually in Taipei? I didn't think so.
Giant Beetle. This was a friend of Yu who was kind enough to take Steph and I in with his mother after we got back to Hualien really late. Here we see a giant beetle really liked him.

As far as I can tell, they store giant Letter H's on the beaches and then throw them into the water in order to ward off something. Or they're just barricades for flooding. :P

This is a wall of coral and ocean rocks that people have taken and used to build in their structures. The rock is difficult to shape, so they just threw the rocks together as they were.

You can find Buddhist temples everywhere on the Penghu Islands. The people are in danger of storms when they live on the Pacific Ocean, so the temples give them a feeling of protection.

Back in Hualien

It’s hard to believe I’ve already been here for almost two weeks and it somehow has managed to not blend together. Ever since the Penghu Island trip, we’ve been more focused on teaching and getting to know the city (Steph and I, that is). It hasn’t cooled down and probably won’t start doing so until November (when it should be beautifully cold in Illinois T_T), but I think my body is starting to get used to it. I thrive in cool-to-cold weather. I would willingly move to coastal Oregon, Washington, or Canada if I could.

I don’t want this blog to be full of me complaining about the weather, so unless I mention otherwise, my lovely readers can assume it’s been another miserable hot and humid day that the Taiwanese with their magical tan bodies can handle but the little Chicago-girl can’t.

Yesterday Steph and I went to find a cell phone store to see if we could activate a phone that my manager (whom I will refer to as “Yu”) gave to us. After some riding around and asking directions in butchered Chinese, we found a cell phone store. Unfortunately, they needed our passport and other photo ID to give us a phone. Call phones must be holy territory or else why would they want to make sure that we were actually Americans? Maybe they would get in trouble if we were actually Canadians posing as Americans.

We saw a huge Buddhist Temple on the way here. All of the temples on Penghu Island were relatively small, but there were a ton of them. Also, 7-Eleven is really popular in Taiwan. They offer obscenely cheap stuff and can be found on every corner. Did I mention I got a pack of twelve batteries for the equivalent of 3 US dollars?

The Night Market is only a couple blocks away from the preschool and is really fun to go to. It’s like a daily carnival; it has games, foot stands, and little restaurants where you can have a sit-down meal. I wonder if a lot of the families that sell the foods can make enough money to live off of by just owning a stand in the night market. Every night it’s PACKED with people. One of my favorite places is a fruit stand where you can get fresh juice made. So far, my favorite flavored juice is apple and kiwi mixed together. And it doesn’t hurt that they have an English menu. Last night I also had a cheese potato (spelled Patata on their sign, haha). It was like a baked potato with corn, cheese, broccoli, cucumber, and pineapple on it. I called it the Super Patata.

So far, our lesson plans for teaching have revolved around colors and shapes with a few body parts and animals thrown in. The 4-6 yr. olds are fairly easy to teach since they pay more attention. The three-year-olds are a bit harder since you have to really simplify your lessons for them to understand and they get distracted easily. This morning we played a bowling game with a colored ball and a stack of cups made into a pyramid. They had a ton of fun with that activity. This afternoon, I hope to teach them a few rhymes (including the Squirrely, Shake Your Bushy Tail Song).

Penghu Pt. 1 (Pics to follow)

This entry may have to be split into two or more parts because of its length. There was no internet connection on Penghu Island to speak of (at least, not wirelessly), so I wasn’t able to post, message, or surf the web since Wednesday morning! I knew that Mom and Dad would prolly be plenty worried about me if they hadn’t heard from me in four days, so I got to an internet café and sent an email to Mom. It went along the lines of an SOS message and I wanted to title it “SYK,” for “Save Your Kim,” but alas, I didn’t get the opportunity.

Penghu Island is part of a larger archipelago that lies in the Pacific Ocean. One thing that I knew but didn’t realize until I got here was that the ocean is salty. If you get even a few drops of water into your mouth, it tastes like you’ve drunk an entire glass of salt water. And not only that, if you get splashed by salt water, it leaves a sticky residue all over your clothes, your bag, and your hair. So if you go to the ocean in the morning and get splashed by the water, chances are you will be feeling the salt on you for the rest of the day. That’s how it’s been for the past several days.

We met the other teacher (hereafter referred to as Steph) at the Penghu airport when we arrived. She comes from BYU (a given as that’s where this program is offered, the fact that I’m in it can be seen as somewhat of an anomaly) and is following in the footsteps of her sister, who also did the same program.

Wednesday was spent getting acquainted with Penghu Island and taking a boat ride into the Pacific to visit Bird Island and see the rock formations that were caused by volcanic activity in the past. I’ll be putting up pics of the rock formations when I get the chance to get on Blogspot.

Of course, seeing as we are journeying between islands, the #1 food available is seafood. I’ve eaten dried fish (small fish that’s literally been dried in its original state, kind of like fish jerky), oysters, mussels, shrimp, fish soup, fish biscuits, and lots and lots of fish with and without bones. I know I said I liked seafood, but all this seems like a bit much…When I got to a place on the island where they actually sold some kind of American food, I ordered French fries and chicken. Hopefully it served to remind my body where I came from.

We’ve been to a fish farm, where we focused on feeding the fish (including huge fish and squid, although the squid were apparently more interested in playing the clarinet than in what we had to offer) and a floating restaurant where we could fish for our own food. Most of us didn’t catch anything. I’m convinced it was because of the large number of people fishing at once in the same spot. It would confuse the fish. That, and the people on board were constantly shuffling around and kids were yelling. That scares fish away, you know! Pity, too, because that was the first time I’ve ever been fishing.

We went to a beach on an island called GBay and went on some water rides. Not the kind of thing that my family would normally think of when I say that, though. Think of it along the lines of jet skiing and various balloon crafts that are pulled behind said jet skis. The balloon rides are the things that we would ride. We were only able to ride two when we went to the Gbay beach, though, since that is a favorite tourist spot.

The real havoc didn’t begin until our third fishing trip, when we were taught how to catch fish underneath rocks with our nets. We had to wear rubber shoes and gloves to protect our hands and feet from ocean wildlife as we waded into the water. Unfortunately, they didn’t offer a place for us to leave our things, so I had to take my messenger bag and Chinese-style hat with me (the wide-brimmed kind with the draw string that you can tighten underneath your chin). I bought it to help protect my face from the sun, which it does quite well…when it’s not being blown off my head by the wind. My bag, my hat, AND my hair got in my way of the net fishing, which was steadily pissing me off more and more. I wanted to keep things dry and as relatively salt-free as possible, which was very hard to do given our task. Add to that the fact that I was tired and my legs were starting to get sunburnt and it makes for a very unhappy Kim. Worst part was, if I had my family with me, the entire unpleasant experience would have been made easier because I knew I could complain to them and make myself feel better. As our family says, “One should never suffer alone.”

But everyone around me either didn’t understand English or lacked the cynical sense of humor to sympathize with me, so I was left trying not to curse my head off in front of my manager and the other teachers even though I was hot, tired, and pissed off. I wonder if it’s is a mark of personal growth that I can restrain myself like this.

We’ve also seen a fountain light show set to classical music (and, strangely enough, a US patriotic song) and a fireworks show since it was the last day of a fireworks festival in Taiwan. The fireworks show was the best I’ve seen in my life because of the close proximity and the variety of fireworks they included in their show. They included shaped fireworks, like a smiley face, butterflies, and one that was apparently supposed to be Taiwan. I got some clips from the show that I will be posting onto youtube soon.