For today, a short quiz on the traffic laws of Taiwan.

You are sitting at a red light, waiting to turn right. Who has the right-of-way?
1. Everyone. It's a free-for-all!
2. The cars on your right and left, because they have the green light.
3. The scooter with the red light turning left.
4. You.
5. The pedestrians.

1. Incorrect. This is not Ho Chi Minh City, after all. I may be unhappy with the traffic here but I have seen worse. Much, much worse.
2. Correct. But they better look first, just in case number 1 is in effect.
3. Correct. Because the scooters always have the right-of-way. Or at least they always take it. They usually drive slowly enough that the accidents that happen are relatively minor (except for the scooter that hit me last spring, but that's another story).
4. Correct. The law says there's no right on red but most traffic laws are mere suggestions, right? I am less-than-native since I, at least, look first, but there's usually a scooter lane you can slip into, so it's okay. Lee says I'm picking up some bad habits.
5. Incorrect. Pedestrians never have the right-of-way. Never. You just have to believe you're going to make it across and maintain a steady pace. It's like being a gazelle on the Serengeti. Don't make any sudden moves and the scooters may leave you alone.

That is the end of the quiz. I hope you enjoyed it.

As a friend once said, I've never met a Friday I couldn't get through. Today marks the end of the first third of school we've all settled into the routine, which sometimes feels like drudgery, like today. But we got through it in the best way we know how - an evening at the Wakey with friends and a stop for dessert at the 7-11. What, you may ask, does the 7-11 have in the way of dessert foods? Only the best, I answer. Happy Crispy Cups and 7-11 shots, in this case Black Pearl (coffee and vanilla cream liqueur) and China White (butterscotch and cream liqueur).

Life is good.

Congratulations Zach, or should I say Dr. Zalinger? My pride reaches from one side of the world to the other. We can't be there to celebrate with him today so we'll have to wait until Zach and Cierra arrive in two weeks. You can't tell but I'm beaming from ear to ear. Well done.

Halloween in Taiwan. You wouldn't think it would be much, but of course we work at an American school, so we like to celebrate those traditional American holidays. The lobby of the school was elaborately decorated for the festivities, thanks to the PTA, who spent a bit of money to hire a crew of professional balloon decorators.

The elementary kids got dressed up in costumes and spent the afternoon playing games and trick-or-treating around the offices and the middle and high school classrooms. My ELL colleague and I decided to skip teaching in the morning and had a little middle school party of our own with our students. We found some mildly terrifying videos to show them, in English, of course. This is ELL class, after all. We also fed them candy and taught them the history of Halloween. Sometimes it's nice to teach outside of the box.

On Saturday we went to the beach. The excuse was to celebrate a friend's birthday but you don't really need an excuse to watch the sunset on the beach on a beautiful Saturday evening. It's starting to get a tiny bit chillier in the evenings but it was very nice to swim in the warm ocean water on the last day of October.

In addition to a lovely sunset there were people nearby setting off fireworks (of course there were, as there are nearly always fireworks going off somewhere) to add a nice touch to our little party.

I'd like to share a little commuting home story. I was sitting at a red light, waiting patiently with the rest of the crowd. I was on my bike, of course, with about 10 or 15 scooters. It was a long light so there was plenty of time to take in the sights, so to speak. Oftentimes the lights have countdown timers so you know exactly how many seconds you have to wait. This one was counting down from around 90 seconds, which is a really long time when you're waiting for the green.

Anyway, one of the scooters that was waiting had a dog sitting at the driver's feet. That's a pretty common way for people to transport their dogs. They've got the dogs pretty well trained. I've seen scooters stop at a light, the dog jumps down and pees on the curb, hops back on and they're ready to go before the light turns green.

This evening, however, was a different story. The dog on this scooter was just hanging out, waiting for that green light, just like the rest of us, when a stray dog wanders down the street and stops to investigate the interloper. It starts out with just a little growling but by the time the counter is down to 20 seconds or so the snarling had begun. I decided to get myself out of the middle of the dogfight before it really got out of hand and was ready to high-tail it (get it? High tail) as soon as the light was green.

I didn't turn around to see but I could hear the fight escalate. No one else was quite as quick as me across the intersection and the woman with the dog never did catch up. It certainly livened up my ride home.

We went to the International Food Festival at the Dream Mall yesterday. It was pretty forgettable. We almost missed it because it was only a couple dozen tents set up near the back of this massive mall. There were craft booths, jump houses and sand castles packed around the front so it was easy to miss the food tents stuck around the corner.

We often see these random statues at events like this. It may not be so random if you know what it says on the base of the statue, which I obviously don't.

 Lee and I did have a couple of tasty hot dogs. Lee's was salsa and mine was teriyaki with seaweed and sesame seeds. It tasted better than it sounds.

We spent a wonderful morning with our friend Junior up in the mountains about an hour or two outside of Kaohsiung. Way back when we first came to Taiwan the school sent the new staff on a day trip up to Sandimen, one of the centers of the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan, and today we went back to that region to the Maolin National Scenic Area.

The mountains in Taiwan are pretty impressive since they rise out of the plains at not much higher than sea level and reach over 3000 meters in the center of the island. What that means is when you drive into the mountains it's one switchback after another and pretty soon you're several thousand feet up. Driving (or sitting in the passenger seat) around here is not for the faint of heart. But, boy-oh-boy is it beautiful.

Junior has a favorite spot to stop for local pork barbecue and steamed rice. Unfortunately we arrived too early for the sweet potatoes to be ready.

The rice is steamed inside bamboo stalks with millet and spices and it was delicious. Lee and Junior didn't care for it so I got to eat it all. The pork was also delicious, especially with the chunks of onion and garlic. Part of what made it taste so good was the location. We hiked a little ways from the car and were rewarded with a lovely waterfall and swimming hole.

 I assure you that's not a dead body I'm watching over, just our friend enjoying the cool water. There were a few other people who made the hike in and they were dumbfounded that we were actually in the water. The Taiwanese do not swim. They don't even seem to wade very much, although a few people we saw did stick their toes in. We, on the other hand, explored a series of swimming holes downstream that felt like no one had ever been to before. It was magical.