I overheard an interesting exchange the other day. I happened to be following a couple of girls down the hall and heard them chatting. When they saw me they switched from Chinese to English, as the expectation is that the students speak only English when they are at school. Ha! There is no real consequence for speaking Chinese in the hallway so the vast majority of conversations are in Chinese. These girls, however, attempted to follow the rules and continued on in English.

They were gossiping about their friends and, what was funny to me, every time they had negative things to say, they switched back to Chinese.

Girl 1: "Did you see what Meredith was wearing today? "
Girl 2: "I thought it was cute."
Girl 1: "Maybe, but [insert Chinese]."
Girl 2: "Justin probably thought so too."
Both girls giggle.
etc, etc.

I am very jealous of these kids' ability to switch between the two most commonly spoken languages so easily. I try tell my students that, even though it may be hard for them, what a gift to be able to speak both Mandarin Chinese and English. Many of these students also know Taiwanese and a smattering of Korean, Japanese, Spanish. My high school French, on the other hand, only helped me briefly in Vietnam to know when a restaurant may be serving French cuisine. Not what the foods are, of course, since that would all be in Vietnamese, but I recognized Chez Joseph on the sign outside.

I had hoped that I would be able to continue with Chinese lessons this year but I allowed too many obstacles to get in my way. Maybe I'll find a written Chinese class when I'm back in Connecticut and learn more about writing characters. Anyone want to join me?

I should be saying what a gorgeous spring its been. The sun has been shining, the temperatures have been in that wonderful 70 degree range that feels perfect, the flowers are blooming (okay, there are always flowers blooming here). What sucks all the joy out of this seemingly lovely weather? The pollution.

Pretty much every day since Chinese New Year break has been over, the pollution levels have been in the red zone - unhealthy for everyone. The reason the air was good during CNY is that the schools and most of the factories were closed down for the vacation week so there was less crap getting spewed into the air. I tried to get my students to care about this - get your government to care about your health! Get them to enact some change! You have a say in how your environment is taken care of! You'd think I was talking to a bunch of 13 year olds who only care about themselves. Oh right, I teach middle school. Sigh.

I am pretty proud of myself. I managed to throw Lee a surprise party and he didn't catch on until the guests started to arrive. I can still surprise him, even after 30+ years. Yeah me!

Lee has been saying that he would like to do a 7-11 pub crawl - go from one 7-11 to the next having a drink at each one, which can be pretty impressive considering there's a 7-11 every two blocks and they sell a wide array of alcohol. But in the next breath he'll say he really would prefer to do his drinking at home. So I figured I should throw him a party that combined 7-11, home and drinking.

The problem with throwing him a birthday party is that his birthday is in June, after everyone has disappeared for the summer. So instead I chose the day that was 7 months and 11 days after his real birthday (7-11, get it?) but that didn't work out. The next idea was to combine it with our tentative plans to celebrate the anniversary of my not getting killed in a bike accident. It made a great distraction from the surprise of it actually being his birthday party.

My friend Jen made decorations for the hall.

Guests were instructed to bring a food to share, purchased at 7-11 and, if they chose to bring a gift, they had to have bought it from 7-11 and spent less than 200NT (about $7). The food table was mostly covered with chips and microwavable chicken pieces. Mmmm.

 I gave one friend special permission to break the food rule so she could bake birthday brownies.

You'd be surprised by what can you get at the 7-11 for 200NT. First off, "Benign Girl," from the Sweet Delivery Girls Series by Jie Star.

But also this...

many varieties of beer including mango flavored, choco pies, ginseng, essence of chicken, essence of clam with ginseng, many varieties of coffee, squid flavored fish floss, briefs, t-shirts, a raincoat, face masks and a plastic canister you can get for free if you save up enough 7-11 stickers in a month. These are true friends who can present you with such a bounty.

Lee took himself to the ER Saturday morning to plead for better cough medicine than we had at home. It turns out he has pneumonia. After an IV dose of antibiotics, a handful of other medications and an appointment for a follow-up visit in a few days, he came home and started the long road to recovery.

He didn't really want me hanging around watching him rest (or at least that's what I heard him say), so I ditched him for the rest of the day and headed to Taoyuan with some friends to see the official Taiwan Lantern Festival. One city on the island is designated as the official site and this year it was a couple of train stops south of Taipei, about one and a half hours north of here on the high speed rail.

There was something like 60 acres of open space (a huge parking lot when it's not being used for the lantern festival) that was filled with fanciful paper and nylon lanterns. Think Christmas decorations that people have in their yards that you fill with air, like a bounce house. These are that shape and size but made of wire structures covered with colorful fabric - paper, or cloth - and lit from inside with lightbulbs. The shapes were everything from traditional Buddhas and Chinese zodiacs to Minions and superheroes. Not to mention the ubiquitous paper lanterns.

One of my favorites - the unexpected Picasso

There were Minions everywhere!

Jen and Linda, traveling companions extraordinaire.

We had an earthquake drill at school yesterday. Imagine, the school secretary comes on the pa system and calmly tells us that there is an earthquake. The students all crawl under their tables for the allotted 30 seconds, then file out of the front door and down the street to a big open field where they get yelled at by the superintendent because the high schoolers didn't take the whole drill thing seriously. Then all 800 or so of us file back up the street and into school where the teachers dutifully admonish the students for the need to take drills seriously.

We'll do the same thing again today, except it will be a fire drill, so no hiding under the tables. I guess practicing is a good thing but it's hard to get much teaching done, what with all this walking down the street and hanging around in the sunshine. Hopefully those pesky high schoolers will be more serious today.

Now that our friends, the Pragers, are visiting us, I think we've got the visitor itinerary down pat.

Visit KAS with a walk around Lotus Lake, ending with dinner on the deck of the Wakey, overlooking the water.
Bike on Cijin Island. (Because the Pragers are bike experts we biked from the apartment down to the harbor, took the ferry, and biked the length of the island. Not all of our visitor are bike savvy enough to be trusted biking on the streets, although bike paths are fine for general audiences.) Be sure to stop to watch the kites and fishermen, and smell the food stalls along the streets. Buying squid-on-a-stick is optional. Fruit smoothies are highly recommended.
Hike up Monkey Mountain. Monkey sightings guaranteed, or your money back. Today I did not heed my own advice to skip bringing a snack and had my bag of almonds snatched out of my hand by a very quick monkey. My scream of surprise brought both concern and laughter from the crowd nearby.
Tour the harbor area. Include the Pier 2 art installations, Banana Pier with the kite flyers, and a walk up to the former British Consulate. If time permits head back to Cijin Island and visit the bike path tunnel to the tip of the island with a walk up to the lighthouse. On the way back stop at the mango ice store. Even if mangos aren't in season the ices are one of the best foods in Taiwan and the banana ice is a decent substitute for the mango.
No visit is complete without a trip to the night market. Stinky tofu is always an option but my favorite food is the scallion pancake. We stopped for a neck massage, which makes trips to the night market even better.

We will be entertaining the third son to visit, one sister and two nieces in the next few months. Good thing the itinerary is all set.

Before I get too far behind let me catch up with last weekend.

In an attempt to escape the nasty pollution here in the city we escaped with some friends to the southernmost tip of the island, near the beach town of Kenting. We've been to Kenting a couple of times before, including an overnight last spring, but this was our first time down there this year. What a difference in air quality. Once we drove around the tip of the mountains that form the spine of Taiwan, the pollution dropped three levels, from red, unhealthy for everyone, to green, satisfactory. We were pretty satisfied. I can't wait for the spring winds to arrive and start blowing from south to north and bring Kaohsiung more of that sweet Kenting air.

First we hiked up to a lighthouse that marks the end of the island. Here are Lee and Chris admiring the view back towards the town of Kenting.

One of the displays told the story of a Japanese ship that crashed into the rocks here back in the 1800's. Most of the crew was lost and of the few that made it to shore, all but one was killed by the natives. The Taiwanese were rather inhospitable back then. 

The clouds in this photo make it look like the weather is pretty inhospitable too. It was actually a really nice day with a lot of wind and this quick rainstorm that blew through and dropped a few raindrops.

Next we drove around to a lookout on the east side. That's where the Pacific Ocean (rather than the Taiwan Strait on the west coast) stretches out for thousands of miles. The wind felt like it had been picking up speed all the way from Hawaii. We were very careful to keep our steps on the trail so we wouldn't get blown off the cliff.

The view was beautiful. This photo is looking north towards the spot where we hiked in November 2014. That hike was exhausting and one of the most spectacular hikes I've ever been on. It was along the rocky coastline where the huge ship had run aground. This time all of the crew survived. The Taiwanese are much more welcoming now.

Our last stop in Kenting was at the aquarium. It's the best one I've ever been to. (I'd love to get to the Monterey Aquarium, since I've heard that's pretty spectacular too.)

This is the view from the back of the aquarium. If I had a car I'd be driving down here every weekend. It's probably just as well that I'm not contributing so much to the pollution problem.