Christmas Island

Living in Taiwan has provided me with a lot of "first time" experiences. The first time I've taught. The first time I've been self sufficient (mostly, anyway). The first time I've eaten pig's liver or blood congealed in rice (which is surprisingly flavorless). And this week I realized it's also the first time I've spent Christmas away from home.

It hasn't been terribly off-putting, partly because I've been distracted this week by adding ten teaching hours to my weekly schedule and partly because the atmosphere here isn't quite Christmas-y. I have been engaged in a number of Christmas activities, and in honor of the season I'll share them now.

1. Baked cookies with my classmate, Amelia, and her two roommates. Lots of (burnt) sugar cookies and more successful ones made from oatmeal and jam. While we waited for the cookies to finish in their Easy-Bake-sized oven we did arts and crafts decorations for their tree using spare passport photos and construction paper. We also looked up tons of old Christmas movie songs online (Amelia - Mr. Magoo; me- Muppet Christmas Carol).

2. TLI, my Chinese school, had a Christmas party, complete with turkey stew, chocolate fondue, deep fried sweet potatoes and curried vegetables (just to cover the highlights). One of the school officials got things rolling by blowing a Horn of Gondor she bought in Israel (my apologies to religious studies folk, I've forgotten the instrument's name) and singing carols in Chinese.

3. Christmas brunch held by a friend of a friend who is now a friend. Eggs and veggies, country hash browns, raspberry and cream cheese stuffed french toast alongside mimosas and coffee and Bailey's. All before hurrying to work. The event was changed from ladies-only to "almost ladies" to accomodate me and another guy. I've never before been grateful to be considered an "almost lady."

4. Joy, the buxiban where I teach English, also had a Christmas party. All teachers and students brought a dish and a gift, respectively for potluck and raffle. When two Chinese teachers asked if I was bringing hamburger and french fries I indignantly decided to make use of the packaged Cajun food I got in my birthday care package. While the smell of instant red beans and rice gave the apartment a homey smell, the pot cooled to a pretty solid mass by the time of the party itself. Most of the kids snubbed it. Sure, they'll eat tofu that is literally rotten (cho dofu) but what I do with beans is weird. I won a glitter pen in the raffle though. The boy who contributed it doodled a skull and crossbones in the attached Christmas card.

5. That same night I was introduced to a wonderful holiday tradition - Christmas Adam. The celebration follows the logic that December 24th (Christmas Eve, if you will) is for family, so the 23rd is for friends. Mostly the same brunch crowd with many extensions, and I have every intention of passing Christmas Adam along to my friends once I'm back home.

6. Christmas Eve at Katie Beth's, Christmas morning at Elizabeth's (yet another expat from New Jersey) and Christmas dinner (after seven grueling hours with children) prepared by Maggie, a very sweet Taiwanese woman engaged to a burly South African named Dawid. Taiwanese food, wine, Love Actually, and then a 3 am phone call to the US to catch the Darby Christmas party.

It may have been an unusual Christmas, and potluck fried rice may not measure up to my dad's green beans en brouchette or my uncle's stuffed potatoes, but Taiwan made for a pretty good Christmas. At the very least, I wound up with a glitter pen and a knit cap (thanks, Elizabeth). Now let's see how New Year's will measure up.

Happy holidays, everybody.

Big Gun

2012 seems to be the most discussed movie here in Taiwan right now. This is pretty disappointing since I haven't heard a thing about it that seems worht discussing, but whenever one of my English students, or Chinese teachers, my roommate or anyone else for that matter, tries to bring it up there's a moment of confusion about what exactly to call it. My students in particular cant sort out whether to break it into smaller numbers - Twenty Twelve - or just take it on one digit at a time - Teacher, have you seen Two Zero One Two?

We started talking about movies in my Chinese class, and our teacher brought up "The Day After Tomorrow." In Chinese there's an actual word for the day after tomorrow - "houtian" - so Tiffany, one of my classmates, joked that it must have been really easy to translate when it opened here. Our laoshi assured us that while in mainland China they just directly translate movie titles, in Taiwan they try to be more poetic, and to capture the essence of the movie. So instead of just "Houtian," in Taiwan they called it "What Will Happen After Tomorrow?"

"Also, like, 'Top Gun,'" she said, "In China, they just call it 'Big Gun.' Here we call it, oh I don't remember. But it's much better."

Winter in the City

Although the temperature gets a bit lower, and the sky gets a little hazier from pollution, winter in Kaohsiung is more an idea than a season. And the people here certainly try to live up to that idea - on the streets and sidewalks people are bundled tightly in scarves and down jackets and acting as though the island isn't tropical. I've donned a jacket a few times myself, but more often than not it's for riding on my scooter since windchill is a vicious thing when there's no windshield or heater to protect you.

The most visible natural sign that it's winter is the haze that's settled over the city. The last rains for the year are over, and the dust and pollution from the streets have risen into the air to wait for the February rains to wash them out again. Mountains in the distance and skyscrapers nearby are nearly invisible, washed out by the grey that's been creeping higher and higher from the horizon over the past few weeks.

Every store is decked out in sequins and holly, and in the past few days it seems like every coffeeshop I find (and I have the supernatural power to find them anywhere) is playing Christmas-y pop music. I even hung around one shop after finishing my cup just so I could listen to all of "I'll be Home for Christmas." Even the cram school I work for has started to hang up fake pine boughs and cover walls in construction paper to make the main office look like a giant gingerbread house. Since few of the kids actually know anything about the holiday, I'm wondering if I can riff off the Hansel and Gretel story and tell them that Mrs. Claus puts children who scream in class into pressure cookers to render them down for candycanes.