see sights

2 trees a week

2010-10-16T08:34:00.001-07:00

I don't know how to plant a tree really. Gonna work on my green thumb back at home.

But just some quick research says that each American's 20 pounds of carbon emissions can be off-set with 100 trees a year.

I'm kind of interested in this idea, though. Maybe it's the basis for a portfolio project. Maybe I turn it into a mini company? I don't know. Just early thoughts.

Name thoughts. Hmm.
1 week 2 trees
100s a year
Centree

Hmm. I dunno. Something like a club. People can track their progress and others' progress online?

What a week!

2010-10-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe that I've finished saying goodbye to all my students. I'm a little emotional right now. It's been a whirlwind week of goodbyes, photos, cards, parties, a Phil Collins serenade, and even a field trip to McDonalds.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into coming here. I feel really lucky to have experienced teaching these wonderful students. They are all so special to me. They will have a million foreign teachers, but they will probably be my only English students. I'll definitely never forget them. Almost two years teaching most of them.

I'm so touched by the gifts and handmade cards. The cute pictures and the sweet letters. I want them to know how much it means to me. I really hope they do.

It was also pretty amazing working in each class with a Taiwanese co-teacher. I learned so much from them about so many things, especially how to teach. I think it's actually a pretty rare opportunity to learn how to teach in this style where every teaching moment, you are working with an experienced, talented teacher who can help you along. Great people and a lot of fun, too.

Here are some pictures of the week of goodbyes:

2010-09-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

This is the first of a series of 2. I'm painting from a photo of an old man. I really like painting old people. I guess that sounds strange. I like the texture in their skin (and someday mine!). There is a wealth of stories and experience living in those textures.

The accompanying painting will be of an old woman.

I like the idea of painting people I don't know. And I envision hanging them on my wall like they are someone important. Maybe they are. I don't know. Probably to someone. I like the humor and mystery of it.

Mad Libs with my High School Students

2010-09-19T23:54:00.000-07:00

I don't remember "studying" grammar. It's just too long ago. It's pretty accepted around our school that foreign teachers are terrible at teaching grammar. It's second nature to us, so we have trouble explaining it. And so much of learning grammar is through application, mistakes, and correction until is just becomes natural.

I DO remember, however, hours on end of Mad Libs. We LOVED Mad Libs growing up, and I swear it's the only reason I know the parts of speech (okay that and being raised by two English majors – Mom being an actual English teacher and Dad graduating from Yale) . So, when it comes to teaching parts of speech, I feel quite confident.

So, with my older students (pictured above – a trip to TGI Friday's), I really enjoy activities doing Mad Lib variations. We did this on Saturday with sentences and each sentence starting with the name of a student in class. Here are some good ones:

1. Billy found a monkey reluctantly in the desk because there was a thing barking at somebody.

2. Alan plays frog happily in the amusement park because there was a god hugging a bear.

3. Katie builds a hole in a lovely way in the toilet because there was an elephant cutting a finger.

4. Leo hurt a chair in a lively way under the bed because there was a pig robbing a baby.

And my favorite:

5. Penny eats teenagers carefully in my house because there was a toilet drinking some alcohol.

Oh fun. Word play. Love it.

台南

2010-09-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went to 台南 to see Taiwan's oldest city/former capital. Bobo's (Bobo is my roommate/Chinese teacher/awesome friend) sister picked me up from the Bus Station at 2am and took me to her house. Yet another example of how wonderful Bobo's family is, and how hospitable and kind Taiwanese people are.

The south is known for being a little more religious. Houses usually have a small shrine set up inside and Yaya's house had a neat little one. There was soft temple music playing when I came in. That was cool.

台南 is the spot where the Chinese first came over about 400 years ago and ousted the Dutch presence in Taiwan.

I saw the temple dedicated to Zheng Cheng-Kung (Kongxinga). Very old and really beautiful. Below are photos of the temple and some with me, Yaya, and Kenny (Yaya's son):

Next, we went to Taiwan's first Kong Zi temple (Kong Zi is how you say Confucius in Chinese). Also about 400 years old. Pictures!

Then my camera lost its charge! Oh dear. After that, I went the fort where the Dutch were defeated. And I saw this amazing little show at a Temple for a God's birthday. There were drums and firecrackers and costumes. At the end, a Taiwanese woman grabbed my arm so I could join the rest of the people running toward the god to grab lucky cookies from his necklace. Fun experience.

Really great trip. Tasted lots of delicious food and spend time with Bobo's sister's family and their mom. Such sweet people. Used a lot more Chinese. It was really fun. Love Tainan. Great little city.

A new painting idea about love.

2010-08-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure how to work this one out yet.

A strange question popped into my head. Have joking, of course, but how can we really love if there is space between our atoms. You will never really and truly get close to someone. There will always be space. A really small one, though. I guess that literal albeit minuscule space is a metaphor to me. You never really for sure know what someone is thinking, right? Love means you're putting a lot of trust in another person. You are taking a risk, however, a risk that is well worth it. But there's always going to be that little space between your atoms. Which isn't bad at all.

I might make this various cell shapes with varied scale (some large, some tiny). Weaving in and out of one another but never touching.

Hmm.

我不相信我學中文.

2010-08-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

我不相信我學中文

Wǒ bù gǎn xiāngxìn wǒ xué zhōngwén.

I can't believe I study Chinese.

Just though I'd write a quick note about Chinese. I simply can't believe that my path took me here. I never thought I'd study Chinese. I once a week walk out of my bedroom and to the dining room table for Chinese class (I live with my Chinese teacher now). I never really had much interest for Chinese either. But now, even though I can barely communicate with a nine year old, I am really fascinated to study the language. I'm pretty bad about speaking, but I read Chinese everywhere and I love learning a new character and then seeing it around the city. I've gotten to the point where my Chinese teacher and I will have conversations only in Chinese (but it's not a real candid conversation because she's acutely aware of which words I know, and I know she speaks slowly and clearly for me to understand). Still pretty fun, though.

Sometimes I look back on the crazy thoughts I had when I first got here. I actually thought my students would be grateful to be introduced to English. I thought they would be happy to study a language that looks like it sounds. Looking back, it's a really stupid thought. It's stupid because I didn't realize the extent to which English breaks its rules. To them, English is as mysterious as we think Chinese is.

I love listening to people describing a character. 有一個大裡面一個口. There's a big in a mouth. Like we have compound words, they have compound characters. A complex character could be made of 5 or 6 smaller versions of other characters. And the characters are combined in a way that makes sense or tells a story. Or sometimes I just see a story that makes sense to me without knowing if it's how the character evolved or not. Like garden:

園 :土,口 and 衣 in a 口.

The character for garden is enclosed and has the character for earth, mouth, and clothes inside. And what is a garden but an enclosure where our food and clothes come from. SO cool. I love it.

很意思.

我即將離開我的台灣家

2010-08-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

Wǒ jíjiāng líkāi wǒ de táiwān jiā. (I'm leaving my Taiwan home soon).

I'm getting all reflective and stuff. Almost two years (by the time I leave) here in Taiwan, and the time before I left feels worlds away. I've met so many wonderful people and learned a lot.

So, for the next 2 months and 10 days, I'll be going about my Taiwan days wistfully looking at everything I do here. Or wistfully having my iPod camera look at everything. I'm taking lots of crappy video and will make a crappy movie later. I'm really looking forward to having video of life here to look back on as years go by. But here are some screenshots of a fun little city drive and market walk that I had today.

Tree thinking

2010-06-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

After a little bit of googling, I found that the average American gives of about 54 pounds of carbon a year.

The average tree sequesters 10 pounds a year.

So, if people plant around 6 (maybe more just for fun?), they could offset their carbon emissions (of course there are also other emissions like methane – and it's not just the cows we eat that give it off).

I'm going to make it a goal to plant 6 trees this year. Somewhere. Somehow.

I guess this oil spill is realllly getting to me. Makes me really sad. But things like this make me happy. There's hope.

At the end of the Cradle to Cradle book, they ask you to think back to what the world was like 100 years ago. Crazier changes have occurred, and I imagine in the next 100 years, we will have some crazzzzzzy changes, too (for good).

Blahhhh.

I'm on a bus!

2010-06-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

A few teachers and I did a photo shoot for our school a couple of months ago. Here we are on a bus!

*I sort of feel bad posting this just after a post about a painting that talks about how wasteful we are as human beings. This is just yet another example, isn't it. I'm just holding out for a day when a huge advertisement like this is made from biodegradable materials that end up being a nutrient for the Earth (or maybe for ants). That's what McDonough is doing, and I hope there are many other innovators and designers following suit.

Ants weigh more than humans

2010-06-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite, favorite books is Cradle to Cradle. A really wonderful fact (of many) that I got from reading that book was that the ant biomass is greater than the human biomass. McDonough uses this idea to compare our impact on nature with that of ants. Ants have a natural way of interacting with the environment without harming it (despite the fact that there are so many of them, more than humans). In his work, McDonough works to change the way we design things in order for humans work with the environment in a similar way.

The results he has had are really amazing. Water coming out of a factory cleaner than it went in, fabric from chairs that is so chemical-free you could eat it (he doesn't recommend eating it though), and office buildings with windows that open to allow fresh air to come in (this project was so monunentally different that it made headlines). The best part about his work is that it usually ends up being cheaper because of all the waste and destruction that is involved in our current industrial procedures. Another good part is that his buildings and factories are beautiful. And another good aspect about what he does is that he works with big companies who are doing so much of the harm and companies that reach mass audiences with the idea that these sort of changes will become infectious.

So...while realizing that art is not exactly environmentally friendly (trying to think of ways to fix or offset that. hmm), I hope for this simple idea, expressed visually as a painting, to ignite changing opinions, ideas, and practices for anyone who catches a glance.

I plan on submitting this to artSPARK. Fingers crossed!

August 15th

Didn't make the artSPARK deadline, but here is Ants Weigh More than Humans. Finished. I wasn't sure about it a little but feel pretty good now. Trying to echo the fragile but simultaneously strong idea of ants/humanity/ and the world.

Fresh Lychees!

2010-06-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

Nothing like fresh picked lychees from a student's grandmother's house. Deliciously delectable.

Ignite

2010-06-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do a painting for artSPARK. Due June 30th. That gives me 25 days. The theme is extinguish/ignite.

I'll keep thinking about this one and the best way to approach is. Fun to have a new painting to start.

In the spirit of SPARKcon, the artSPARK Gallery will feature juried 2D and 3D artwork based on the theme(s) IGNITE/EXTINGUISH. Interpretations of this theme may be literal, metaphorical, abstract, or anything in between. Artists of all levels working in any style or medium are encouraged to apply! Click the link below to apply online now! Deadline: June 30.

Ouch

2010-06-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

So, this idea comes up a lot in my stay here. Some mundane sort of thing that you do a lot back home is very intriguing when done abroad. There are just a bunch of little differences that come up that catch your attention.

Today was an opportunity to do some cultural observation...in the Emergency room. Yuck. Nothing serious, but a glass of boiling water shattered on my leg. OUCH. I ran around the apartment screaming (my roommate was very confused), and after icing for a minute, found blistering 2nd degree burns. Nothing to crazy but it hurrrrrrrrrts.

The hospital feels pretty similar to back home. They took pictures of all my burns. I don't know if they do that back home, but that was interesting. The nurses and doctors were so nice – wracking their brains to use that English they studied probably forever ago but don't need to use very often. As an English teacher here, I wish they knew how much I really appreciate the practical application of their hard work.

I've lost my health card so the whole visit without insurance was 130 American dollars. I can go back and be reimbursed once I get a new card. But speaking of prices, I noticed at the checkout that one night's stay in a hospital bed here costs the equivalent of 3 American dollars (but without insurance, it's 30 dollars). I know there are many different opinions on American health care, and I am not well-informed enough to have the best opinion either way. It just makes me wonder exactly how ours can be better in terms of cost . I really don't know the answer, but Taiwan seems to have it figured out in a way that works pretty well (for them that, is – the two country's situations would certainly not be congruent). Again - I'm not the most informed. This is just the reaction of a combination of a different anecdotal situations.

OUCH. Boiling water and leg do not mix.

Raju

2010-06-01T00:22:00.000-07:00

Justin came back from Nepal with stars in his eyes (well, I couldn't exactly see him because we were instant messaging...but I could tell). He's seen a lot of wonderful things traveling, but it seems like this trip was especially good.

They were having some down time in Pokara and decided to volunteer at a children's home. He had a real connection with this adorable child, Raju. I thought Raju would be a nice painting to do.

It brought me back to a similar day in Costa Rica at a children's home. A really nice memory. There's something really amazing meeting children like that. Children who oftentimes have had to overcome difficult things at a really young age. To see their happy spirits and resilience is pretty inspiring.

September 15th.
I think I might be changing the name of this. It might be called "Injecting myself into someone else's story. This is Raju." I really like having long painting titles. Maybe that is stupid, but I like it because I think it makes the painting more like a story.

The depiction of Raju is my own. I am only re-living Justin's amazing experience second-hand thus injecting my own thoughts, feelings and ideas into what Justin has told me. Hence the checkers. Checkers are me. I don't know why exactly. They are a powerful image that I have always been attracted to. They also illustrate an idea that I am constantly intrigued by, an idea dealing with polar opposites working together to create something that is whole.

So. This is where I am with Raju. I'm liking him a lot more lately. His face wasn't quite right, but now in combination with different visual elements, he is feeling more alive.

Or something I dunno. Still not sure about grad school stuff. I think I can have enough, but I'm also worried that now isn't the time. That I need more development. Ohhhh dear. We'll see.

Numbers

2010-05-31T18:16:00.000-07:00

In class the other day, we were talking about numbers and somehow the conversation went from 1,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000,000 (just writing random numbers on the board and trying to say them...they were probably telling me how many stickers they wanted me to give them).

Well, I realized that I had no idea what came after a trillion. So I googled it and found there are a lot of numbers.

quadrillion
quintillion
sextillion
septillion
octillion

and allllll the way up to 10 to the 100th : a googol (There's even a number called a googolplex that is 1 followed by a googol zeros).

I remember being little and we would talk about a googol. We probably just knew it was big and liked saying it. Fun to know now that it's a real number.

I guess these numbers aren't exactly useful. I remember reading a book in the 2nd grade that says it would take 29 non-stop days of counting to reach just one million. Numbers are big (or very small). They boggle my mind.

Fun Taiwan day

2010-05-30T02:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of Selina and Ken (the picture is a screenshot from a video where they sang Happy Birthday to my mom):

I just started tutoring them on Saturdays, and they are so wonderful. Their English is really good, and today the family took me out for Japanese food and coffee. It was such a wonderful day. Selina, 8 years old, quizzed me on my Chinese vocabulary (she said I speak very well – which was an overstatement considering her English has about 3 years on my Chinese). It's really nice to get to know Taiwan through a Taiwanese family. They are so kind and welcoming.

In July, I move in with my Chinese teacher. I will speak English with her children, and she will speak Chinese to me. Hopefully that will improve my speaking, and I think it will be a really culturally rich phase in my Taiwan life. I really look forward to it.

Taiwan

2010-05-19T01:29:00.001-07:00

I feel overwhelmed trying to explain almost 2 years of living abroad doing something I never thought I'd be doing (teaching English) learning something I never thought I'd be learning (Chinese) in a place I never thought I'd be (the other side of the Earth).

Some of my early memories of Asia were Looney Tunes cartoons where they would dig a whole and out came a person from the other side of the Earth - a stereotypically Asian person (things were much less PC back then, weren't they?).

There is just too much to say about living in a culture and learning to understand a culture that is so different from my own. It brings me back to square one. I'm in Taiwan and it's upside down from where I'm used to being.

I painted an upside down photo of myself from my first night in Taiwan. It's a very concise way of saying that I've turned my world upside down, and it's one of the most unexpected yet worthwhile things I've done in my life so far.

Hitler was an artist?

2010-05-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

Just came across this and had never heard it before. After artistic rejection from the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, he moved on to what we all know he did. Below are some really striking (not in the good way) quotes of his.

"All my life I have wanted to be a great painter in oils ... As soon as I have carried out my program for Germany, I shall take up painting. I feel that I have it in my soul to become one of the great artists of the age and that future historians will remember me not for what I have done for Germany, but for my art."

"As for the degenerate artists, I forbid them to force their so-called experiences upon the public. If they do see fields blue, they are deranged, and should go to an asylum. If they only pretend to see them blue, they are criminals, and should go to prison. I will purge the nation of them."

Just a quick thought.

2010-05-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

It's fun teaching, observing children and reminiscing what it was like to be that age.

Remember what it was like to want to run everywhere you went. Run to turn in a worksheet at school. Run when you see your parents to take you home. Run to the water fountain.

Funny. I'd probably look crazy if I did that now, but it's funny to watch my carefree students (they have a baffling amount of energy. Seriously. I get tired just watching them).

The present doesn't exist.

2010-05-12T02:27:00.000-07:00

I think that it might be more common to think about infinity in the sense of things getting bigger. But my dad brought it to my attention that if we try to pin-point present time we will find that a moment can be infinitely split and divided. A specific moment in time doesn't exist presently, right? The present, at its most precise, does not exist. We need a pause button to find the present.

I thought this was a really, really fascinating idea. Not exactly useful. Not incredibly important, but for some reason it is really fun for me to think about.

In the painting, I decided to simplify this idea giving the visual a didactic graphic quality and using a diagrammatic color scheme to represent a linear timeline. Time exists to the left, it exists to the right, but not in the middle (big red X).

Just a simple fun one. Hmm.

Conversations with a Scientist

2010-05-12T01:38:00.001-07:00

This is a representation of a scientific slide that my dear scientist friend gave me. The painting is based on her very interesting study of Kaposi's Sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) - a cancer causing herpes virus. She experiments through adding and substracting of receptors to see how the virus gets into cells. The goal is to have a better understanding of transmitting the disease and eventually a vaccine.

This painting also represents a really interesting on-going dialogue about human inquiry and curiosity, about how scientists chip away at ideas and pass information along, and how this is all done in the interest of improving the world and our lives.

The starting point on this painting came from a quick comment Laura made that completely and perfectly summed up what I think human inquiry and science are all about - her phrase was "If I've learned anything so far, and that's a big IF..." I loved the humility and awareness this PhD candidate had in describing what she does. She's quite intelligent, but she also knows that there is so much to learn in our vast, complex, constantly evolving and changing world. So, I started with a literal big IF painted in black. I used impasto technique to lay colors on the canvas (the colors respresenting DNA, the virus, and receptors).

With certain paintings, it is my goal to tell stories that I think should be told. Having a particular story of a really interesting person who is doing something really worthwhile and impressive live subtly in the paint is my focus for these kinds of paintings. Laura was the first in hopefully more paintings like this that are based on meaningful and enriching conversations.

Exquisite Corpse

2010-04-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

This was a mail art project that some friends and I did right after school. We mailed the poster around and added to it one at a time. It's called Exquiste corpse and it was popular with the Surrealists situated in France in the 1920s.

For us, the idea was just make something, make anything. Free and fun. I think some really fun things happened and the combinations of different elements produced an interesting flow of information. I think I'll take this one step further and repurpose the elements we created into a different medium and add this to my list of paintings.

I am also playing with the idea of keeping this the way it is to have a different sort of piece in my portfolio, but I dunno. Hmm. We'll see.

Brain

2010-04-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

I always start a painting by writing the word brain. This idea teeters on the line of playful and serious. I am intrigued by a four-step process alternating between the brain as a concrete and abstract object. I start concretely with the idea of brain the organ, the entity creating the story I am trying to tell. The next step is transferring the actual word brain on to the canvas. I view this step as illustrating the human linguistic abstraction of words representing real objects. On the canvas, the word brain becomes concrete again as a starting point in the visual organization of the structure and composition of the painting. I end this process with the painting as a painted abstract representation of the brain signifying the story with which I began. Here, specifically, the story is going to be about the brain in relation to humanity and how the uniqueness of this organ allows us to live the complex, interesting, lives that we live.

I think as I paint this, I might pick up The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It's a book about evolution, and I was told it might coincide well with my fascination with the idea of brain.

This painting is meant to be very simple visually. I am playing with the idea of changing the name to Flashcard 1. I might make this a series. I've chosen black helvetica on a white canvas because the look of it reminds me of the flashcards I can remember using growing up. Brain is the answer, but what is the question?

60

2010-04-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

A common theme around Taiwan is how fast time is going. It gets faster and faster all the time. Our weeks just fly by here. Being away from home for a long time leaves you in this strange place mentally. Time is passing here, but it's also passing at home, but you don't really see it passing at home the way you are used to. It makes Taiwan time sort of feel like a dream.

This really hit me the other day when I realized that my mom's approaching her 60th birthday. I will be working on a painting for her dedicated to a specific way in which she's inspired me for my entire life. In a way, the subject of the painting (which I'm not going to show or write about until after her birthday in May) sums up who she is and how cool and special she is.

I'm going to call this one 60.

Happy almost birthday, Mom!

April 21st
As I'm painting this one, I'm thinking about the many "ugly" art conversations that my mom and I have had ever since I started drawing and painting in high school. We've had a lot of interesting conversations about it.

My mom has an appreciation for modernism and expressionism, but when it comes down to it, her preference of style in art weighs more heavy on beauty than mine. I tend to have more of an appreciation for what she jokingly call ugly art like my college art project where I took an engine out of a broken down car and painted it.

I really like that she kept me thinking critically about these things. I still love "ugly art." Scary Goya paintings, graffitti, comics, Francis Bacon, etc. I still love experimental ideas. I have a profound respect for an artist doing something brave that's never been done before, even if that brave thing is shocking, uncomfortable, or "ugly". I see visual art as a massive broad area that simply by its own nature welcomes any expression (however, there are certainly varying degrees of skill or achievement).

Yet, while maintaining an appreciation for the experimental, I like that my mom has nutured an appreciation for something that is simplistic and beautiful. As I paint 60, I'm looking for a way to combine these two ideas.

Hmmmmm. Funfun.

Finished!

2010-04-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

1000 years

Poems of a Beekeeper

Food

Conversations with a Scientist

The present doesn't exist.

Taiwan

ants weigh more than humans

injecting myself into someone else's memory
I've decided that it helps to have these paintings live together for the quickly approach portfolio deadlines, so I'm going to keep posting as I finish each one.

Taroko Gorge

2010-04-12T00:44:00.001-07:00

My corny word-play loving sense of humor must get this out of its system. Taroko Gorge was gorgeous (that deserved cringe level reactions).

Seriously, though. I had an amazing trip to the site that about two years ago help me make my decision to live in Taiwan. I remember getting a postcard from Josh of Taroko gorge, and that's all it took.

It's beautiful in pictures and mind-blowing in real life. We stayed in an old church that was hidden up on a hill with beautiful gardens. I had to use a lot of Chinese which was really fun. Probably the most I've had to use. It was so cool, too, because Justin has started learning enough Chinese to converse with people as well.

We drove into the gorge on a scooter that we rented in a seaside town about half an hour away. It was pretty amazing to be welcomed into Taroko that way. So many tunnels and curves and beautiful sites.

We did a lot of hike and spent our nights relaxing on huge boulders with a couple of beers or wine. It was a really nice vacation and really nice to get out of the city and see some nature.

Pictures!

I like it when my students make me stuff

2010-03-28T21:20:00.001-07:00

From Sandy:

From William (it's an oragami piano):

Taiwan will touch your heart!

2010-03-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

All those tourism commercial videos and songs are kind of ridiculous, Taiwan's having a Tim Rice's Lion King-esque feel to it, with the chorus screaming out, "Taiwan will touch your heart." This catchy Taiwan tune has a tendency to give us wai guo ren (outside country people) a chuckle or two – especially at our most cynical or on a bad Taiwan day, but today, I had an actual Taiwan will touch your heart moment.

I decided to scoot over to a nearby mountain for a morning hike with my coffee. Get some fresh air and listen to NPR's Fresh Air. I ran into a few of my students out with their families. It's always funny to see them in a different context. Tough guy, Eric, becomes a little less tough and a little more innocent as he hides behind his mom too shy to talk.

About half an hour into the hike, I was stopped by a Taiwanese kindergarten English teacher, and we had a nice converation. She was with her mom, and I could tell her mom was proud to hear her daughter hold a long conversation in English (I could just imagine all the years of taking her daughter to expensive cram schools and probably at that moment really happy to see the hard work come to fruition in such a practical way). So...that moment "touched my heart."

In the middle of our conversation, a woman comes and says some things in Chinese to the English teacher. It turns out, that woman saw me at my scooter from a distance, then walked past it and noticed I had left my keys in seat! She hid them in my front storage compartiment, so they would be safe. She wanted the woman to tell me where they were. That moment "touched my heart" as well. So thoughtful.

People really go out of their way to help others in ways that I don't think we do. Maybe we do sometimes, but I see it here so much more often. My roommate left her wallet at a bar, and someone found her resident card, looked up our school, found the address and mailed it back to her. Or yesterday, my other roommate was trying to go to the skin doctor (and walked into a skin laser treatment place by accident - it's tough not being able to read). The people working couldn't speak English but went out of their walk to walk her out of the office and done the street to the place she needed to go to. I feel like foreigners back home are sometimes met with more hostility, but here they are very kind to us.

I think many of the foreigners here have moments of misunderstanding. It's difficult in ways you might not expect. You get tired of feeling strange and awkward. You get tired of not understanding why they do things the way the do. You get tired of being stared at. And over time you begin to pick up on things that you might now have noticed at the beginning. When it comes down to the really important things, I really love Taiwan. It will touch your heart (as hokey as that sounds).

Poems of a Beekeeper

2010-03-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

My newest painting is a dedication to my great-grandfather.

I grew up around his stories and feel that an interest in his life has been important in my artistic foundation and very inspiring for my creative curiosities.

He was a banker from England who moved to the Jersey shore of the states and ended up settling there with his family. There is a joke that he could have eliminated WWI "spark" which started the war (apparently the Archduke Ferdinand fell from a chair Evie's in his office and bumped his head quite seriously - if he had just bumped his head a little harder, his impending assassination would have not been the first of a string of events that started the war. This is just a joke and funny anecdote...don't really mean it seriously, but it did happen.). He was also responsible for creating an insurance policy which generated the funds for Episcopal priests to have a pension. My mom always likes to tell our priests at church about that.

I grew up hearing about Evie traveling to Egypt. There are remnants of his travels throughout our lives from the beautiful screens my mom keeps in her living room to the some ancient Egyptian figurines (that my mom keeps in an old suitcase). I felt a kindred love and fascination for Edinburgh, where he went to school, and realize that my time there in high school helped ignite my passion for travel.

But what has had the most impact, I'd say, is his book of poems. I first came across the book, which he self-published, in the fourth grade. I memorized one of his cardinal poems for a class about birds. The book is called Poems of a Beekeeper and has some really beautiful poems. Nothing very obtuse, sometimes cute and melodic, and sometimes sweet of thought-provoking.

I like that although he was a successful banker, when it came down to it, he would have rather been remembered as a Beekeeper. I would like to keep that memory going with a painting of a honey bee, as a thankful homage for the ways in which he inspired me. I also intend to communicate the importance of having a passion for preserving nature. The honey bees are in danger. They are such important creatures. I hope to conjure up thoughts and ideas for one of the many thoughts and challenges we are facing these days. I never knew you Evie, but thanks for the inspiration in this piece.

March 24th
I've been trying to remember some of these poems that I memorized a long time ago, and this one just hit me. I think it's such a pretty poem:

Fleeting Love

They met in the summer
And loved for a while
Then drifted away
Each with a smile.
Drifted away
Into the hours
Like butterflies over
A garden of flowers.

I also love one about two trees looking innocently in love and it ends with something like be truth be told their roots are commingling in the clay.

I'm enjoying this one. It's a simple idea with a lot of personally sentimental meaning.

March 24th
Something felt really wrong with this once I had finished. I just didn't like the background where the bee was living. It didn't feel right or natural. It felt too static, which is not really cohesive to the idea of keeping the memory of Evey and his poems alive. I tried a few things and came back to a sort of spinning, buzzing radiation of color spinning around the bee sort of dynamically (I hope). I feel much better about it, but I think I'll have touching up to do once I'm finalizing pieces to put in my portfolio.

Yum Yum

2010-03-08T06:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get excited when I throw together a quick meal that looks sublimely Asian to my eyes. The simplicity of Asian aesthetic is sooo beautiful, especially in the way food is presented. Not too toot my own horn (cuz I'm not...didn't make the sushi. Got it from a to go place). I know that when the time comes that I don't live in Taiwan, I will miss these simple pleasures the most.

Ahh, the produce. I'll reallllly miss the produce. Passion fruit. Guavas. Bell Fruit. Mangoes. Dragon Fruit. Custard Apples. Love it.

Happy Birthday, Cous Cous Goose!

2010-03-07T00:43:00.001-08:00

I just came across this today and it just happens to be this guy's birthday. Thanks for showing me Taiwan, Josh!

我是妹妹, 我是姐姐

2010-02-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

In a lot of Asian languages (I know Korean and Chinese for sure), there are different words from older sister, younger sister, older brother, and younger brother. I enjoy thinking about language and culture. The absence or presence of a particular word within a language says a lot about a culture.

So, learning about a culture that necessitates words for older sibling and younger sibling has lead me to think more about these relationships that I probably would have normally. I'd say sociologically and psychologically, this idea of pecking order within a family has a lot to do with typical personality types and development. I think it's interesting that Chinese identifies with this idea with specifity in a way that English does not.

Coming from a big family, sibling relationships been a pretty important aspect of my foundation. Growing up I was always called "the baby" and then at age six, Jim came along and my title was prefixed – "the first baby." And with this, I became both a 姐姐, 妹妹 (a jie jie and a mei mei). I've learned a lot from the examples of my three older siblings (my two 姐姐 and one 哥哥). And now I have a 哥哥-in law. I've learned a lot from him, too (starting with how to take an engine out of a car). And my one 弟弟 is pretty awesome, too. He's taught me a lot, too. They've been really good examples.

Great people. Love 'em. Miss 'em.

Always fun to get something in the mail.

2010-02-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

Especially from Justin from Hong Kong.

Food

2010-02-03T01:53:00.000-08:00

Dilemma was the working title. This is going to be about the dilemma of deciding to be a vegetarian. There are so many questions that go along with this decision in terms of whether or not it's worth it or healthy. Does it make any difference? If not some kind of physical difference, does it make a difference in swaying social consciousness? Should I even being trying to sway it? Is it self-righteous? Is it judgmental? Who am I to question what people have been eating for thousands of years?

But at the same time, there is so much wrong with how we eat. As a conflicted vegetarian, I am certainly included in that group. And I certainly don't have a viable worldwide solution for what is wrong. But I really have trouble looking at a peaceful animal like this one in the painting, who eats and sleeps, lives and breathes and cares for its young and not feel somewhat connected.

Blahhhh. I just don't know. I'm stupid. Gonna keep not eatin' meat.

Here's ongoing process:

I think this is just going to be named Dilemma.

I was having trouble with the composition. I'm thinking about how there are two sides to this issue. I am swayed more towards one, but I can also see both sides. And I feel like there is lost information on both sides of the issue. Kinda like the thing where you close your eyes, but you can still see the shapes of the last thing you were looking at. So, I felt that each side of the painting needed to have remnants of the cow where the image was shifted up or down. That's where I am now.

March 14th
I renamed this! It's now called "Food." The color palette is beginning to have a mostly fresh, idyllic feel; however, the composition has a little bit of violent shifting and fragmentation. Some of the twigs in the original resemble claw marks a little. I am enjoying the contrast of a serene field setting with the idea of the kind violence that goes along with simple day to day nourishment – food. Plant life and green colors (a color that very often symbolizes life) are weaving in and out of the cow shape slicing through it body in a violent but pleasant way which, to me, represents the dilemma of what we eat. Because even if you look at eating meat in the way where everything is connected, it's not an awful idea. Eventually we all become food. We give ourselves back to the earth from which we have taken so much (too much these days). Hmm. Strange ideas, but also really basic ideas about life and living. I think the painting is trying to express that idea too. Life is violent and beautiful. In a way this painting has made me feel more comfortable with being a vegetarian, while at the same time feeling very comfortable with people who choose not to be vegetarians.

Things that are different.

2010-01-22T22:28:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while something happens here that throws me off. Nothing bad, but just something that is so different from back home in the States that I'm really confused for a moment.

I walked out to my scooter the other day, and there was someone sitting on it with her friend sitting next to her, and they were having a conversation. I said excuse me in Chinese and we all sort of laughed. I wasn't mad at all. It was more funny because I was thinking about how that's something I don't think I would ever see happen back home. I've even had my scooter moved to other parking spots while I'm in a store. That definitely threw me off. And I've seen homeless people sleep on rows of scooters. That was a little strange. I think people at home would flip out to see someone sleeping on their scooter (or car since we don't have many scooters), but it doesn't really seem to be much of an issue here. 有意思 (You Yi Si, interesting or literally has meaning).

Not a bad thing at all. Just makes me chuckle a little bit.

1000 years

2010-01-16T22:30:00.000-08:00

This was Justin's Christmas present. It's called 1000 years based on a conversation I had with my dad about how humans and dogs have been evolving together for about a 1000 years. It's a pretty special and amazing relationship with have (I'd have to say with this little dog in particular).

It's the first piece I have finished for the quickly approaching portfolio deadline of next January! Yikes!

back in the taiwan.

2010-01-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

Wow. You know that sinking feeling when you realize you just did something really stupid. That was me about 20 hours ago sitting down in my airplane seat at JFK.

Leaving went pretty smoothly. No complaints. The plane was on time, no confusion; I even had a moment to stop and relax over a smoothie with my dad before going through security.

It wasn't until I realized that I have $1.75 in actual cash in my wallet after forgetting to make going to the ATM possible since I forgot to get the PIN for my new debit card. I had lost my phone and couldn't think of a single way to find phone numbers of my school of friends here in Taiwan.

I got to the airport and exchanged my one dollar bill (since the don't take coins at the exchange window) and retrieved my 31 NTD. I had to ask a million places how I could get home with everyone only taking cash and no cards.

So, I found Ubus which for exactly 30 NTD would take me to some train station that I thought was in my town. It wasn't really.

At the train station, I was told there was a free shuttle to my city center (thank god)...which took me on a million stops with none of them being familiar. Finally the bus driver said a bunch of stuff in Chinese and everyone got off and so I did too.

LUCKILY, the stop happened to be about a block from one of my schools (but an hour walk from my house with a bookbag and 2 suitcases). I was just glad to be home in beautiful Taoyuan, and now nice and cozy in my comfy apartment.

Did I mention that it was also raining. Geeeezzzzzz.

家!

2009-12-17T10:59:00.001-08:00

Here I am in Seattle. I'm one year into the Taiwan adventure and I think I'll keep doing it after a break at home. Can't wait!

Words I know now

2009-11-19T09:17:00.000-08:00

您貴姓李先生我叫好是美國人嗎不英你什麼名子哪呢中他她誰台灣早張小姐好久不見啊佷謝謝也這太天氣熱去上課們忙再冷喜歡看電影電視都有沒汽車要買可書日本筆德報法文東西懂一二三四五七八九十枝多少錢種分幾兩塊零给請找個杯共半位那家爸媽的像片兒老師對哥還弟女孩朋友些伯貓狗男學妹相想新照機問了舊得大百便宜只賣知道千萬真校錶夠

a new painting

2009-11-11T02:20:00.000-08:00

This is a sad one. I'll write more later about it, but it's about a sad story of a sweet girl who took her own life recently. I wrote brain in Chinese in the background (腦) – actually writing brain in one language or another is going to be something I do in every painting. Anywho. I should definitely go plan my lessons now.

Process 1 below:

Process 2:

So, I guess I'll write a little about this. The story comes from a really amazing special trip with Justin to a beautiful, tiny island between China and Taiwan. It was a really beautiful place. A really, really nice trip. I know it will be a really fond memory. But that memory is always going to be a little clouded with the memory of Claire. I don't know why this hit me so hard. Maybe it's because this teaching abroad experience is so emotional for me. I was really affected by Claire's hanging herself a couple weeks after we met her. I don't mean to hijack someone else's sorrow or grief by feeling sad about this. Because I didn't really know Claire. She's just a person who I encountered who briefly had an impact on me and who I knew I would never see again. I was just feel really sad about what happened. Sad for her family. Sad that her decision is so irreversible. I wished there was something I could have said. I hate thinking about people being sad. And when I thought we were having pleasant conversations, I just didn't know how deeply troubled she was. I wish I had, though.

Claire was really sweet. She did all the translating for her mom and dad at the hostel where Justin and I stayed. Her English was really good, but she said it wasn't. She really reminded me of my sweet teenage students. Justin and I have done a lot of traveling in the past few years. There are always people we briefly encounter who we talk about as part of a really fond memory, whether it's Kauai or Europe somewhere or in Peru. Claire will be one of those.

So, this is Claire, and I thought I would paint my memory of her.

Redoing the face. Too scary before. I think I'm going to bring in flowers and tradition Chinese patterns into the background and overlaying her face in subtle ways. Hmmm. I'll probably pull some of the beautiful ornate patterns from the Penghu temples.

This is one of the hardest paintings that I've done in a long time. I think the both the story and process were a struggle. It made me sad to paint it. I was a weird sort of emotional thing. I didn't like painting it. I think it was an important painting to get through.

The photo above is bad and taken from my computer (broken camera). The process for this ended up working out pretty well. The colors have been inspired by the temples we saw all over Penghu. The use of red is intended to be violent but is meant also be in conflict with the idea of red being a color of good luck in Chinese culture. I struggled with Claire's face. That could be deemed a failure considering that this is a portrait of her face but I'd rather not call it that. I had to paint it over again a couple of times. It never felt right to paint a realistic face, so I ended up with this face with yellow, red, and white. White being a color symbolizing death, yellow symbolizing her Chinese culture, and red, again symbolizing violence and conflict. The word treacherous comes to mind when I think about this story and I couldn't help but (even though I consciously tried to avoid it) showing this treachery in the painting itself.

I might go back to this one some, but I think it's time to move on to something else for now.

I think this is "done." I might come back later and do some detail work. This has been one of the hardest paintings I've ever done. It's sad. It's a struggle. And I think the best part of this painting is how the struggle of completing it mirrors the struggle that was going on in the poor, young girl's mind.

Moving on to my cow painting at full speed! Based on my "timeline" cow should be finished today. Not going to happen, but I have some other paintings planned that will go much faster.

simple taiwan pleasures

2009-11-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

I've been really taken with the fresh food here, with the abundance of markets and trying to eat meals with really pretty colors. Here's a cucumber/pepper salad with dragonfruit. Oh my goodness. I love dragonfruit.

Miss you.

2009-10-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

It's probably because there are a lot of people I really miss right now, but sometimes I get overwhelmed thinking about all the people I love. You are all great. I miss you.

(I apologize for the unsolicited sappiness).

Cute teacher moment

2009-09-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

I am just falling in love more and more with my baby beginner class (well not baby, but they are the youngest age group at my school - 6 to 8 or so).

It's crazy to think when I first got here, they were learning the alphabet and singing crazy songs without really understanding much and now, we're having conversations and making jokes and things like that.

One student, who was so shy she didn't want to talk or play games and would cry whenever her mom left, has really blossomed. She jokes around with me and laughs and has a smile to die for. Absolutely adorable.

Well, today was kind of cute because one of the students in this class was able to translate a conversation from Chinese into English for me. Just basic stuff like how old are you and translated my answer (which was, of course, as it always is, 100 years old) back to the a girl who just started learning English last week.

I was really proud to see one of my babies using her English in a practical real-life conversation. Good Job, Cherry!

1000 years

2009-09-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

That's what I'm calling this painting. It's going to be about our 1000 years or so of living with our domesticated dogs, and it's dedicated to dear Kona. Below is the photo I'm using and under that will be process photos.

(maybe someone might be getting this for Christmas.)

paintpaintpaint

2009-09-08T10:02:00.001-07:00

process shot 1

process shot 2

process shot 3

process shot 4

process shot 5

There is a line in a Bright Eyes song where he goes from a pretty melody to "Let's f*** it up. Make some noise." I sort of felt like doing that here. I am getting a little tired of this color palette. I always get stuck in it. I think I will buy some a red and blue (instead of magenta and cyan). Just to switch it up some. This still feels like my practice painting. I think what I might do next is really realistic paintings of scenes here in Taiwan. Not necessary touristy sort of things but maybe. More as a record of sights I see and what has been happening here on the other side of the world.

haha...this has turned into a tag team painting where we can all just throw stuff on it. it's called "the lady lives in the paint"

drawings...

2009-08-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

This is a famous magazine cover from Germany. So pretty. I had to draw it.

Frog Book Lesson.

2009-08-26T02:30:00.000-07:00

Whoa...I had Chinese class today and it was just Bobo and me. We read two really cute books and I learned a TON of new words. I'm going to post some of them, so I can't try and remember them. We did a frog book lesson and then a lesson about a mischievous boy named Little Hair.

So, here are some words from the Frog Book lesson (the actual words were too difficult for me, so we just talked about the story using the pictures).

The first word we ended up learning was "forgot" because when Bobo asked me what the Chinese word for frog was, I realized that I forgot and that I also did not know how to say forgot in Chinese.

So, here it is:

Wo shou wang le hen dou.

Next we did the word for frog. I kept wanting to say wing cha. But that's a little backwards.

Then we learned jump. Because qing wa like to jump.

And they like to jump in the water, too.

So, we learned the word inside. Because it translates to Frog jump go water inside. I love how different English and Chinese grammatical structuring is from one another.

Next we learned scared because there was lightening, and the qing wa were scared.

We also learned rock. The qing wa were sitting on a rock.

And I learned the word for above.

This was a little strange because apparently you have to say "Frog on rock above." I don't know if it's correct to just say the frog is on the rock, or if you have to say "on top of" specifically.

So, I have to check with Bobo on some things. I've got words from the other book coming soon.

New_Word_2

2009-08-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

New word!

Louti. So, lou was in dalou. It means floor. My new word is stairs. Louti. So, stairs something. Don't know what ti means. Second tone, first tone. 2, 1. Note to self: REMEMBER!!!

New_Word_1

2009-08-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Wo xi huan you yong chi.

Oh, it's sad how basic my Chinese is. So, today I learned how to say swimming pool. The radicals are all pretty familiar to me. I find that it takes a lot of practice to memorize writing a word, but with a little practice words become familiar enough to read.

I'm really bad at remembering tones. You yong chi. 2nd, 3rd, 2nd. Fun.

Trying to learn words.

2009-08-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

So, right now I have 2 ideas on how to learn Chinese a little better. One is to write a post about a new word. I think a conscious effort to write about the word and think about the word will help it stay in my memory better.

My other idea is to every once and a while compose a digi-illustration about a new word and the character. This idea is sort just more for fun and will give me a chance and reason to play in photoshop.

A whoa where am I moment.

2009-08-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I forget where I am. Sort of. I get so tied up in my daily routine that I forget that I'm very far from home.

There was an earthquake at about 8 this morning. It woke me up, but I quickly fell back to sleep (probably because it felt more like swaying in a hammock than a life-threatening situation). I had even forgotten it had happened until my roommate asked me if I felt it.

Then I was playing on the internet only to come across this ad.

It's not monumental or anything, but it was just a quick reminder that I'm far away. Crazzzy.

Love this quote (from Tess tanx)

2009-07-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

No is for Wimps

"The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say."

-David Eggers

Not home sick, but...

2009-07-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

Several different things have been happening.

Boyfriend is en route to Taiwan. Haven't seen him for almost 7 months.

He's so cute.

Family went to the vacation home that I've been to every summer since I was two...cute pictures as follows:

Dad's 59th birthday!

Just moved from crazy dorm to a nice homely apartment with two sweet girls.

Love Taiwan more and more everyday.

But I miss you. That's all I have for now.

A scooter record breaking moment.

2009-07-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday getting ready for girls wine and cheese night at the Romantic Paris Mansion (that's where we live), I had a record scooter pack mule moment.

2 long stemmed lillies
2 bottles of wine
roquefort cheese
camembert cheese
cheddar cheese
a box of chocolates
a baguette
a loaf of multigrain bread
a trashcan
8 hangers
4 kitchen knifes
a watermelon
a papaya
2 kiwis
a bunch of grapes
a guava
a flower vase
a chinese class book
a chinese class workbook

Let's just say that I was not able to put my feet on the floor board. All I needed was a ladder and a golden retriever, and I might have felt just a little Taiwanese.

For anyone wondering what I do at work

2009-07-23T00:48:00.000-07:00

It's a little hard to read, but here's a quick lesson plan. My favorite part about my day is doing things like teaching the phrase "hold your breath" (thanks to Megan for the idea) and giving a star to whoever can hold his/her breath the longest.

Language is promiscuous (to put it politely).

2009-07-19T08:29:00.001-07:00

I'm reading a book by Henry Hitchings called The Secret Life of Words. It's kind of fun teaching English and finding myself back in the lexical world like I was up until college when I found design. I am forever intrigued by the way language and design work side by side as two disciplines which just about as closely linked as they are different from one another. I love design, but it's really fun popping into a different kind of world for the time being.

Anyway, I'm babbling.

The reason I'm writing is because teaching English has re-immersed me into the word world, and I'm really liking it.

The Secret Life of Words is so interesting. It mentions the way languages over the centuries are very promiscuous. I haven't gotten very far, but the book takes various English words and reveals the way they traveled into the lexicon.

One of my favorite tidbits so far comes from the section that talks about French and Latin/Greek influence is words we still use commonly today and how we often have three terms for the same thing, one Anglo-Saxon, one French, and one from Latin of Greek origins.

Anglo-Saxon: neutral connotation
French: sophisicated connation
Latin/Greek: learned from a text rather than from human contact, abstract or scientific

rise, mount, ascend
go, depart, exit
fire, flame, conflagration
holy, sacred, consecrated
word, term, lexeme

These are words that are so common in our minds and day to day, but so I was really interested in considering a more precise description of their meanings and their origins.

Here's another gem from Hitchings on resisting semantic evolution:

Should we have fought to keep this words in our vocabulary?

bicycle = wheelsaddle
forceps = nipperlings
pathology = painlore
concert = glee-mote
butler = cellar-thane
ressurection = gainrising

Hitchings says probably not, and I think he has some really good reasoning.

"We frequently hear pronouncements about what words 'ought' to mean, and these often make studious reference to etymology, as if words must cleave to their etymological roots. But could we find anyone who would insist, in a spirit of etymological nicety, that a candidate must be dressed in white, or that a school should be, as it was for ancient Greeks, a place of leisure?...None of this is to say that we need no guidance on matters of usage. There are compelling reasons for punctuating and spelling according to a particular conventions, as there is a wanting a degree of stability in our language. But fighting battles about individual words and tiny increments of semantic change is bootless."

So, that's about where I am now. It's a really good book.

something cute.

2009-07-09T22:52:00.000-07:00

I'm getting the feeling that my students here might be especially good at drawing. When I look at their drawings, I see details and embellishments that I'm not sure I see in children's drawings back home (unless I just wasn't paying enough attention back home). It makes sense to me that this would be the case because their written language requires so much attention to details and is so much like drawing. So, I am continuously intrigued by this in my day to day, and I had a cute little moment with a student in one of my favorite classes where she showed me this:
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This is going to be Justin's first taste of Asia.

2009-06-14T09:03:00.001-07:00

One of those surprising days.

2009-05-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

I quickly read about some kind of art show in Taipei called Young Art Taipei, and I honestly thought it was just going to be high school students or something. I imagined it would be kind of cool, but when I got there, I was SO amazed. Turns out, it was really amazing artists under 40 years old from all over Asia. It was in this really beautiful hotel the different galleries filled the hotel rooms with art. If I had been wearing socks, they would have been knocked off. Here are pictures.

This is the Sun Dynasty Hotel. It was a really cool building with really beautiful old fashion looking elevators. The art show was on the 15th floor which made for pretty views.

Some kind of rice thing.

2009-05-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

I don't know what this is called, but it's sold everywhere. It's a rice thing that is wrapped up in a leaf and tied with string. It's really cool looking, but I can't decided if I like the flavor or not.

Staying true to my Mexican roots.

2009-05-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because we're teaching children, but I'm worried that my maturity level is on a slippery slope downward. Oh well. Fiesta game night birthday theme party was pretty fun.

Some thoughts on characters.

2009-04-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

I am having so much fun learning about characters in Chinese. I like learning to speak, but now that we've gotten into writing characters, I am SO much more interested. They are sometimes like little logos to me. Not always, though. Most of the time the characters have evolved so much that you can't see a correlation between the form and the word's meaning.

It's so interesting to learn about a language where the written words seem to tell a story. In comparison English has started to feel like math to me.

I just came across this character today, and I think it is so interesting:

It's the character that you add after I, you, he, and she to make we, you all, and them (so to pluralize pronouns). I think it's so fascinating because to me it looks like two people having a conversation in a house, and it's so appropriate that this character's purpose would be to signify more than one person. Whenever I come across characters like this, that tell a story, I can't help but wonder if, thousands of years ago when the language was in development, this character was meant to look like its meaning. Or maybe I'm just assigning the meaning to something based on my own personal interpretation. Either way, I think it is really cool.

Here's a character that does have a correlation.

This is the character that signifies a question (ma). And ma is the same word for horse but with a different tone. It looks like a horse, right? Soooo cool.

Another interesting couple of characters are he and she (ta and ta). In speaking they are the same, but in writing, the characters are different.

They are pretty similar, but the first is "he" because it looks like pants and the second one is the "she" because it looks like a skirt.

It's been really fun learning to write (draw?) characters while I'm teaching people English because I can observe my students' learning experience from the opposite perspective. I had a conversation with one of my students about the characters for "Taiwan." I was kind of baffled by this character because it seems SO complex to me. It almost seems ridiculous that it would be so difficult to write the name of your own country.

It's almost 30 strokes to write "wan" all by itself. And this "tai" is a simplified character for the original "tai" character. So, when I was talking to my 12 year old student about this, she just laughed and said, "You think it's difficult to write 'wan'? It's so easy!" But my students struggle with reading words letter by letter the way we do. It's not really natural for them to sound out words the way it is for native English speakers. The two languages are so different. It's really neat learning about it. I love it.

More Taiwan drawings.

2009-04-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

Just a typical day.

2009-04-15T02:20:00.000-07:00

I love getting up early and being in a magic show and then driving to get Buddha food and then going to wire money to the US and seeing another foreigner there that I know and then going to Starbucks and buying a Starbucks Taiwan Travel mug and then going out to my scooter on the side of the road to see that it's not on the side of the road and having a lady from FamilyMart point to a bunch of Chinese written in chalk on the asphalt and then write it down on a piece of paper for me to give to the cab driver who takes me to the scooter impound where I can retrieve my unregistered, uninsured scooter for which I have no license all for the price of 150 NTD.

Zoo Day.

2009-03-22T21:56:00.001-07:00

We went to the zoo in Taipei yesterday. It was really fun. Beautiful day! The big thing there are the new pandas. They were a gift from China whose names coincidentally mean reunification. They were adorable, but the exhibit wasn't too great. I expected them to be living in a more natural habitat, but they were beautiful. Overall the zoo was really fun. It was nice to get out of the city a bit and see some nature.

Peach Garden.

2009-03-20T07:30:00.001-07:00

The name of my town here means Peach Garden. I drew this little picture for a COD open call exhibition. It's some scribbles of some of my impressions here in Taoyuan.

Bappy Hirthday, Josh!

2009-03-07T22:52:00.000-08:00

I made this for the Joshers. It's a page from our school book that "fell out", so I drew a didgeridoo man on it (cuz Josh loves didgeridoos).

i scoot.

2009-03-03T19:12:00.003-08:00

I kind of love driving here. I'm probably still in the honeymoon stages (see exhibit a. and b.), but I think I really like the natural water-like flow traffic has here. When I first got here, I thought it was INSANE. I was laughing in disbelief riding on the back of a motorcycle because I really couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Now, I'm seeing that's it's just a very fluid style of driving. Everyone sort of just goes at the same time and everyone is careful not to run into some else. If someone pulls out in front of you, you are ready to slow down or swerve to the side a bit. It's no big deal. No one really gets mad or road rage (at least as far as I can tell). These are just first impressions.

exhibit a. This is my scooter Elijah at Tiger Head Mountain. It was Josh's friend's scooter and has sat in the basement for 2 years without starting. Josh took it to the shop and got it running for about 60 American, and now I have a scooter. I love it. It's a 50 cc but can cruise up a curvy mountain road like nobody's business. For real, man.

exhibit b. I'm smitten.

my first demo.

2009-02-26T21:30:00.001-08:00

These were props I did for my first demo with parents. It went pretty well. It was a really good class and they did these little mini-plays about a kid who spent all his money on snacks and didn't have enough left for school books. And another about not wanting to help mom clean the house. It was cute. Then we had a parents meeting. I was kind of scared, but it went well.

p.s. The hot dog and hamburger are soy meat, and no one even noticed.

Gone drawin'.

2009-02-15T05:05:00.001-08:00

Please excuse the shoddy cropping (and drawing).

Kids* are funny.

2009-02-15T00:08:00.000-08:00

So, something that I've had to get used to here is being stared at. I'm normally used to blending in, but here in Taiwan, that is certainly not the case. It's not that hard to get used to, but pretty much everywhere I go in public, I'm being stared at.

A cute thing is that kids don't quite limited their stares like adults do. They are a much less subtle.

And even cuter (and more startling — it's happened a few times), is when I'm sitting in a coffee shop by a window, and I let my mind wander and turn to stare out the window and I jump. AGH! There's a little kid with face and hands against the window staring straight at me. I guess at that age it's hard to remember that windows are 2 ways, and I can see them too. Seriously, I'm talking they are about 5 inches from me with the window as the only barrier. Kids are so funny.

* a side note: if my mom is reading this, I meant children because sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell.

Around town.

2009-02-02T09:20:00.001-08:00

Tallest building (for now).

2009-02-02T07:34:00.001-08:00

This will be changing soon, but Taipei 101 has been the tallest building since 2004. I went there the other day. I haven't gone all the way up yet. I definitely want to do that soon. It is 1,670 ft tall, built in 2004. But, it won't be the tallest for long. Burj Dubai is catching up. It's under construction but is already taller than Taipei 101 at 2,684 ft. So, 101 will have a few more months to enjoy its superlative — Burj Dubai should be done in September.

Dogs and shoes.

2009-01-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've only seen this once so far, and I almost laughed out loud. From what I've seen here, people do like putting clothes on their dogs (and I admit that there have been occasions where Kona is shivering, so we put on her fleece jacket). So, I'm not poking fun. But when I saw shoes on a dog, I thought it was a little ridiculous.

Then I started thinking some and started to consider some cultural tendencies – like how people never wear shoes in the house here. I think it's really nice. And when I went over to someone's house, they had guest slippers for us to put on which was also really nice. It was so hospitable and comforting. So, now when I think about that poor dog walking around Taipei in sneakers, it occurs to me that there's a possibility that this may have been done for cleanliness and not fashion. If they prefer to abstain from bringing filth from the street into their homes, wouldn't they want their dog to do the same? But, I think that the bright pink puffy jacket and fake feather hoodie was over-doing it just a little bit. Just a thought. Who knows?

Danshui.

2009-01-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

This is a cute little city on the last subway stop of the MRT. It's at the mouth of the Danshui River and has had a lot of history of Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese settlement. Along the river are neat shops with a boardwalk sort of feel (but without an actual boardwalk). The rest of the city winds up and down steep hills. There are tons of adorable cafes with beautiful views of the river and nearby mountains.

Taipei

2009-01-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

I just barely started seeing Taipei. It's about a $3 round trip fare into Taipei from my city. Train and bus travel here is very economical. It'll definitely take some time to get to know this city, but I had a really nice time strolling around Chiang Kai-shek's memorial and the National Theater and Concert Hall.

I have traveled back in time.

2009-01-23T23:18:00.000-08:00

I was very confused leaving the ATM at ChinaTrust bank the other day. I thought it might be a computer glitch, but it turned out to be completely accurate — in Taiwan the year is 98. Yeah. Apparently, they started the calendar over in 1911 (I didn't know one could just do that) which was the year of the founding of the Republic of China. Some of my receipts use 2009 as the year, like 7-11 and Starbucks, but it makes sense that ChinaTrust would be compelled to use 98.

Some thoughts on language.

2009-01-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

I feel so guilty. Something I love about English is that is doesn't just belong to England itself. It is everyone's language. I feel very lucky (and a little guilty) to have acquired this language naturally because as I teach it to I'm realizing have difficult it is.

Things that are different (part 2).

2009-01-15T22:12:00.000-08:00

I never would have thought counting on hands would be different. It seems more like sign language. I see the logic in each number (well, all but six. I don't know what's going on with six), but it's just so surprising because I assumed counting on fingers was something that would be universally similar between different cultures. Very interesting (to me, at least).

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Things seen on scooters.

2009-01-13T23:49:00.000-08:00

1. A family of four
2. Someone drinking a soda while driving
3. A golden retriever
4. Babies
5. A man with 3 massive propane tanks
6. A young child sitting on the back with no helmet, no shoes, and not holding on
7. Someone texting
8. A person with crutches
9. A big macho guy with a bit of a scowl on his face riding a pink hello kitty vino
10. A person riding with their dog and the dog was on his hind legs with his front legs up on the handle bars.
11. 2 people riding and the person on the back was holding an umbrella to protect them from the rain while driving through the market
12. A scooter that had a plastic grass floor added on.
13. Another dog one — 2 people on the scooter. One dog on the floorboard. Another dog running alongside on a leash. They were beagles.
14. A woman sitting on the back of a scooter not holding on riding side saddle (because she was wearing a skirt, of course).
15. A person with his helmet not on his head but hanging from his handlebars.
16. A person with an industrial sized 3 sink structure strapped to the back of his scooter so it was about 10 fit up the air. It's the first thing I've seen that made Taiwanese people do a double-take.
17. A construction worker holding a ladder an 8-step ladder under one arm and driving with the other.
18. Someone scooting with their golf clubs taking up the entire floorboard.
19. 12 blown up balloons - on my scooter, too!
20. A massively large remote control airplane.
21. A person with their dog on the floorboard with a largish dog in the front basket.

Things that are different (part 1).

2009-01-10T22:05:00.000-08:00

I'll start with a crazy one. I find this really strange. Every few nights or so, or maybe once a week, you might hear Fur Elise coming from something that sounds like an Ice Cream truck. The first one I heard, gave me an ice cream craving, and I was confused that the kids in the class I was observing at the time did not react at all. But what it actually means is that you are supposed to scurry out to the street with all your trash to hand it over to the garage man. Yeah. Fur Elise = Take out the trash. Beethoven would be very confused if he knew this, but I do think that my mom would be amused because my Granny has SO over played that song that she can't stand to hear it anymore.

Another difference that is pretty typical between different cultures is the animal sounds. This always makes me laugh, but I found out that ducks say gua gua gua. Cows say mua mua mua. And chickens say goo goo goo. Seriously? Not to be ethnocentric or anything, but I think cluck cluck cluck sounds a lot closer than goo goo goo. Wow. This place is so fun. I love it.

Night Market.

2009-01-09T18:00:00.001-08:00

This city never sleeps
.

First few days in Taiwan.

2009-01-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't been here too long. I've mainly been setting up my new room, observing classes, and meeting my dorm mates. I've gotten here in the rainy winter season just before Chinese New Year and during a cold snap. It's been about 50-60 Fº. I'm still trying to learn Celsius.

I've enjoyed watching classes so far. It's an night time "cram school" for the students to get extra practice in English. I don't know how the children here have so much energy but they are in school until very late – nine or ten at night. I watched the cutest class of ten year olds last night. They were practicing an English introduction of themselves that they will be presenting to their parents soon. They basically said, Hello my name is _______. I am Taiwanese. I am 120 centimeters and 27 kilos. My best friend is ______. My parent are an office worker. and so on. I get the feeling that these classes feel sort of extracurricular and we're directed to keep the lessons really fun. Play games. So far it seems like a dream job, and everyone says as long as you like kids this should be a really fun job. I'm almost in shock that this is what I'm doing, but we'll see how it goes. It's a lot of information but people say after the first month, it all starts making sense.

We might be going to Taipei this weekend. That will be fun. I've seen so many pictures. I can't wait to see it in person.

In preparation.

2008-12-22T19:20:00.000-08:00

First Post. This is my taiwan travel blog. T minus 15 days. I guess that's a little while, but it doesn't seem like much considering how much I have left to do. Yikes.