My Taiwan Adventure

I just found out that there really is a Taiwanese barbeque, complete with local ant colonies. We packed 2 van loads of kids off to the local mountain-side today with killer views of Taipei city. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera out or I would have broken my cycle of not taking pictures.

The day was hot, muggy and fun. There was a handful of stone animals sprinkled around the mountainside for the kids to climb over which seeme to provide endless entertainment. For the boys there was plenty of gravel to huck around until Teacher ME told them to stop it. Then I stopped them from burning bird feathers and chopsticks in the fire. Yup, I'm a joy killer.

Food consisted of grilled fish patties, pork, tofu and sausages. All on skewers. Barbeque with chopsticks. It felt odd, but right for Asia. There were even foil wrapped mushrooms and green beans. Yummy? *shrugs* It's up to your own personal taste I guess. The great thing about this job is that I get to learn all kinds of new things that I didn't learn in my more traditional school setting last year.

Today is also the day for the "Ghost Month" parade in the north of the county. Basically the concept is that on the 15th of August the gates of hell open and all the ghosts get to run around freely until the end of the month. Taiwanese take great care to "entertain" their ancestors while they're roaming about. You can read more about ghost month in the Lonely Planet article. Or check out Taipei's novel idea to provide trash bags full of ghost money to alleviate problems with pollution from the burning money curb-side. I'm toying with going to the parade, but sleep has an equal pull for me right now.

Am feeling slightly more optomistic now. Hope you are all well.

Cheers,
T. Destiny
Teaching Taiwan's Tots

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