My Classes!

So I just recently discovered the Facebook group which serves as the resting place for the hundreds of photos my school takes every week and thought I'd share my classes with you! At my job, I teach every kindergarten class once a week to give them a science lesson (there are 10 classes overall). However I also have three of my own classes who I work with for 6-7 lessons a week and who I actually consider to be my classes (although they do have Taiwanese teacher who is their primary teacher) and thought I'd share them!


The pictures aren't great-partly because I went for the group photos so you could see the whole class...

K2D-This is my youngest class (ages 4-5)

K3C-This is one of my two older classes. The kids are 5-6 (some claim to be 7, but I think they do age differently in Taiwan. I've heard you are considered to be 1 year old when you are born which may have led to this confusion...)

 In this photo you also get the privilege of seeing my Halloween costume as the 'Little duck with the feather on his back' from Raffi's Six Little Ducks!

K3D-Also aged 5-6!

Welcome to Fuzhong

Fuzhong (府中)

    I'm sorry that I've been absent from my blog so long! But I've had numerous requests about a post talking more about where I'm currently living and have finally gotten around to photographing it to give you an idea of my daily life!

I live in New Taipei City in a district called Banqiao, which I have circled below on a map of the New Taipei City districts. I'm about a five minute walk from my nearest MRT (Metro Rapid Transport), which is called Fuzhong. Though not in central Taipei city itself, I'm only a 15 minute ride on the underground to Taipei Main Station, costing me only 20NTD (a little under 50p). If you look on the map of the districts, you can see the Touching district which borders with Banqiao and is where I work. Every morning I can get a bus which drops me off directly outside of my school, so it's pretty convenient!

I live in a small one bedroom apartment which comes equipped with a mini fridge, a small couch, a desk and a chair, a wet room (a common kind of bathroom in Taiwan where the shower isn't contained in its own cubicle) and a double bed. It's not amazing but the location is great and it's comfortable enough!

I live on the 6th floor, but luckily I have an elevator which can take me there. Here is the entrance to my building!

My bedroom! The good news is that in an effort to tidy it and make it look more photogenic, I located my long missing iPod under a pile of receipts! (Taiwan has this strange concept known as the receipt lottery to encourage businesses to give out receipts. Every receipt comes with a lottery number and every two months they announce a new winning number, which gives you the chance to win anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of NTD. As a result, I have an enormous amount of unsorted receipt scattered around my room in piles.)

Another view of my bedroom!

My room faces onto Jieshou Park, which despite being a park is fairly lacking in grass. However, it's pretty cool to look around and adds a nice touch of greenery to the area, especially as I have a nice view of some of the trees from my window.

Here is a temple which is also just outside my house. It's currently under construction and I don't know too much about it, but it's an impressive looking building nonetheless!

Another smaller, more modest temple which is next to my block of apartments. 

Fuzhong itself is home to the National Taiwan University of Arts. As such, it has a fairly large population of students and has a pretty large variety of clothes shops. In between my house and the MRT there's a long side road packed with street food stalls and open walled clothing shops. 

This alley way also contains one of my favourite places in Taipei. A small food cart which sells this flaky Taiwanese pancake called Zhua Bing. I normally get it with egg and chilli sauce and it's one of my favourite Taiwanese foods! I forgot to take a picture of the cart, but here is a picture of the  zhua bing itself. The photo doesn't do it justice, so you'll have to take my word for it!

Not an especially interesting photo, but Fuzhong also has an abundance of wedding shops and it's hard to walk anywhere around my house without seeing one. Here is just one of about twenty examples!

About ten to 15 minutes walk from my house on the other side of the MRT there's another area called Fuzhong road where there are some more temples, shops, street stalls and also a 24/7 Carrefour (which is a surprisingly comforting place to go if feeling homesick!)

A temple on Fuzhong Road. Outside they have a big pot full of incense and people often stop to bow three times when passing.

Some street stalls near Fuzhong road.

Another view of Fuzhong road. As you can see, Taipei begins to light up with bright neon lights as soon as the sun goes down. The architecture of Taipei can be a little dull in the day time, but once these lights are lit, I find the city takes on a whole different character and becomes much more exciting to look at.

Banqiao's local night market is located in Fuzhong and is about ten minutes walk from my house. It's known as Nanya Night market and offers a large selection of street food stalls, restaurants, clothes stores and fair games. One personal favourite of mine is a restaurant you fill a giant bowl with fresh vegetables which are then stir fried with a meat of your choice for NTD120 (included in the price is all you can eat rice and all you can drink tea). There's also some great dumpling stalls, a fruit stand which a huge array of colourful tropical fruits and even a shawarma stand offering a Taiwanese take on the shawarma. There's also a sesame chicken restaurant which the night market is allegedly famous for. (Most night markets are 'famous' for a certain food stand and these can usually be quickly identified by the huge line of people queueing outside of it.) I wasn't in love with it the first time I went, although it was tasty and the smell is becoming increasingly appealing every time I walk by.  There's still plenty of food I need to try at Nanya Night Market, and hopefully I'll dedicate a full post to it at some point!

The food area of Nanya Night Market. See if you can spot the shawarma stand!

One of the many game stalls near the back of the night market.

Nanya night market also has a pretty long alleyway crowded with clothes shops, largely aimed at the student population of Fuzhong offering a pretty varied selection of clothes at equally varied prices ranging from 100NTD to in the high hundreds. 

One of the many open restaurants which border the night market.

Finally, out of the night market and on the way home, I pass this road which leads towards the MRT. I thought I'd show it to give you an example of how the streets really come alive with neon lights at night time. You can also see some of the many scooters which cover any available surface of the streets and sidewalks in Taipei. 

Apart from the Night Market, there's also plenty of restaurants within a reasonable distance of my house where I typically eat dinner. Some personal favourites include Noodle Inn (a Burmese restaurant), an award winning Beef Noodle restaurant and a place called Tiger Dumpling Northern Chinese Delicacy Restaurant (I'm sure the name sounds more better in Chinese) which offers a variety of dumplings, soups and also pancakes filled with red bean or taro paste, which taste amazing. I've also recently discovered a Thai restaurant very near to my place whose Pad Thai will definitely have me back soon enough.

So that's Fuzhong in a snapshot! It may not be the centre of Taipei but it still has a lot going on and is a pretty cool place to live. I will try to keep you more updated on my going ons and hopefully update a little more frequently. Until then!

Bayan Hot Springs

Taipei, despite being a sprawl of concrete, swarms of scooters and masses of people also happens to be completely surrounded by lush, green mountains. So no matter where you are in the city, it is never too difficult to leave the hustle and bustle of city life and escape into the countryside.

This Saturday, my work colleague Eliza and I decided to visit the mountains, heading north to Yangmingshan National Park. Here, among many other things, is the Bayan Hot Springs. Taipei is known for having many hot springs in the North, particularly in its Beitou district, but whereas these can supposedly be crowded and touristy, the Nayan hot springs offer a slightly different experience. This is because they are technically unofficial, being illegal to visit. The path to them is marked with signs reminding visitors of the NTD15,000 that they can be liable to pay for visiting the springs. However, the springs still do have a regular number of visitors and from what I have heard, even on the off-chance the police do come to the springs, the fine always fails to materialise. So we thought we'd check it out!

Unfortunately I forgot the battery for my camera which I had left to charge the night before, but I did manage to take some photos with my phone.

At the end of half hour bus ride which spiralled up a mountain, we found ourselves in a completely different world. At the beginning of the path to the springs there was a small collection of modest houses surrounded by farmland and vegetation.

And there was also a very scenic pond!

Along the path we frequently came across markers that we were nearing the springs. The path was littered with these clusters of burning hot, bright yellow rocks of sulfur which filled the air with steam and a faint smell of rotting eggs. 

Here's one of the warning signs surrounding the springs. You have to go around a gate to get into the area which leads to them.

But that doesn't stop people from going anyway! The springs consisted of various pools of varying temperatures which flowed downhill from different streams. Some of the pools were boiling hot and impossible to sit in whilst others were ice cold. However one or two were just the perfect temperature and were like sitting in a really hot bath or a hot tub. Very relaxing, especially with all the jungle surrounding!

When we got to the springs, loads of people were covered in a silvery mud. This Taiwanese guy led us up a steep hillside to find some which we then covered ourselves with. Here we are, covered in the mud, at a waterfall near the top of the springs.

Another view of the mountains. There's a small pretty derelict looking collection of buildings in the distance, but we never got close enough to check it out.

Part of the path to get to the springs (all in all, it only took about 15-20 minutes to get to and from the bus stop area). 

Finally, after heading back down into Taipei city, we came across this pretty cool looking park close to the MRT! Taipei has a variety of small 'parks' throughout the city, of varying degrees of interest, but this one looked especially attractive so we checked it out and took some photos.

In other news of Taipei life, I have officially moved into my new apartment! Watch this space in the next few day for photos of the apartment and also Fuzhong, the area where I live.

Longshan Temple

Today was a national holiday, celebrating the Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is a day where families celebrate togetherness and people have barbecues and eat mooncakes (cakes with a salted egg yolk cooked inside-it sounds a little weird, but we got given one at school which also had pineapple in it and it was surprisingly tasty!) People also worship the Moon Goddess, Chang'e (you can read about the story of Chang'e online-we did a skit for the kids at school for this during assembly on Friday). 

The Moon Festival is typically a more intimate holiday and not widely celebrated publicly. However, I read that many people go to pray at temples and bring offerings and burn incense, so I thought I'd check out Longshan Temple, which is arguably the most famous in Taipei. It was originally built in 1739, but the temple has had to be rebuilt numerous times because of bombings, earthquakes and fires. The temple itself is dedicated to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy but also has dedications for other Buddhist Deities as well as Taoist deities inside and is shared by both religions.

I got a little snap-happy, but there really was a lot to look at!

The front of the temple

Inside the temple itself.

The roof was decorated with loads of ornately carved dragons, animals and people.

The temple was filled with people carrying around incense and walking around bowing to the various depictions of deities. About ten minutes into my visit, everyone also broke out into song and this, along with the smell of incense, flowers and fruits which filled the temple really gave the whole place an amazing atmosphere!

People brought flowers, fruits and cakes as offerings to leave at the temple. The big green fruits are pomellos which are typically associated with the moon festival.

People brought flowers, fruits and cakes as offerings to leave at the temple. The big green fruits are pomellos which are typically associated with the moon festival.

At the front there were fountains filled with koi and covered in greenery.

This depicts the Fool Holding Up the Sky. Apparently the 'fool' is meant to represent the Dutch settlers who occupied the island in the 1700s.

At the back of the temple, there were lots of chambers which had statues of gods, where people would go with their incense sticks to pay their respects. I couldn't get a great look at these and didn't want to linger too long trying to get a picture since the temple was pretty busy and I didn't want to disturb the people worshipping, but here's one I managed to take.

I took a video as well to capture the singing, but it won't let me upload it at the moment! Hopefully I'll get it up at some point...

Happy Moon Festival!