Daily Living in Taiwan

Daily Life:

Now that we’ve been here a few weeks, Aaron and I have begun to settle into a little daily routine. We go to work every day from 8-4, beginning our days at the crack of dawn. We take turns making a simple breakfast of either eggs and toast or oatmeal with this nutrition packet that tastes like almonds and is very popular here. Then we ride to school with the 3 other teachers on our team. (3 more will be joining us at the end of December). We all drive 30 minutes to our school in Pingling, which is the “Tea Capitol” of Taiwan.
We work, and talk, and play with the kids, and prepare lesson plans, design, and materials for our new school. Our school is under construction and is supposed to be finished in time for our grand opening in December, but we’ll see if that happens (photos coming!).
We eat every day at this noodle shop owned by one of the kids’ parents, and they have a chubby little 3 year old that bosses us around each time we come for lunch. The food is probably one of the consistently best that we’ve had, and they invent new vegetarian items every day-always something new to look forward to.
Then we go down the street to 7-11 to get some juice or chocolate and then head back to school to finish up our work. Right now, I’m designing logos for each room, a website with videos, pictures and a blog, as well as attempting to create a cute map for the kids to navigate around camp.
We drive home each afternoon at 4 an right now are practicing holding our breaths in the tunnel. Lara found David Blaine’s secret breath-holding techniques so we’re putting it to the test on the ride home. Aaron and I do a 2 mile lap of the town each evening and sometimes pick up a meal of either a grilled tofu brick, noodles, or vegetables, and then we head home to clean our house or catch up with the latest Office or Glee episode.
The weekends are really fun because we go into Taipei and see the other teachers. We explore different Metro stops and try and get more familiar with the different neighborhoods and markets.
Two aspects of daily living that have been a little trouble to get used to is our tiny fridge and oven, and our always damp laundry. The small kitchen forces us to shop almost every day, and we’re pretty limited in baking because of the size of the oven. This could be a good thing because it forces us to exercise to the store, and restricts our consumption of delicious baked goods. (check out my first attempt at cookies! However, I forgot that our oven is in Celisius and cooked the cookies at about 500 degrees F).
Laundry takes 3-5 days per load, and consists of washing in our machine, laying out or hanging to dry and then several flips and turns and modification through the house as we pray for the mildew to hold off a little longer. Our house is sometimes a jungle of jeans, shirts, and underwear. I’m trying this new thing where I wear my clothes longer than I normally would, just because I’m sick of doing laundry. It’s a little stinky but I can handle it and hope the people around me can too.

That’s just a snapshot into what it’s like here!

Oh, and one of our favorite things is the signs in English and their use of English translation. Most of the time, it's a little off but definitely hilarious-check out the J-Walking sign!.