Always an Adventure...

Tuesday, October 18: My poor little old scooter had a rough day today! It has been through a lot in the 3+ years I have owned it. Since I bought it from a teacher who was moving back to the U.S. for about US$200, it has driven me through rainy Yilan winters, made it all the way around Taiwan, and carried many guests, including my grandma, not to mention getting me to and from all the various schools I teach at. This semester, I need to drive almost twice as much and started thinking about upgrading a little, after all my little scooter was already 12+ years old when I bought it.  Now 3 years later, I was thinking it was time to switch. But I was still a little hesitant, did I really need a new scooter? Was this a good investment? I’d been to look at some secondhand scooters last week, and still hadn’t reached a decision. Then two very odd things happened today. First, when I went to drive to school this afternoon, I found that my rear tire was almost completely flat. I ended up...

Maybe this post should be entitled "You know you've become a Taiwanese driver when..." I made a couple of observations last night about my driving that may interest or alarm you. Scooters are the vehicle of choice in Taiwan, and as you know, I have my little 125cc "old faithful" that gets me around Yilan. I remember thinking my first year in Taiwan that the main goal when driving here seems to avoid using your breaks if at all possible, which sometimes involves coasting to a stop, or more often, running red lights. There are two main inconveniences when driving a scooter. The first is parking. You know those square puzzles with only one piece missing where you have to shuffle all the pieces around without removing them until you get the correct picture? Yeah, I've always hated those, but that's what parking my scooter reminds me of. Sometimes it takes quite a lot of maneuvering before you can get your scooter into a very small space, and other time...

南部 First thing to take note of is the drastic change in wardrobe!  On the first day I was wearing: A hat An undershirt A long-sleeved shirt A hoodie A scarf A thin jacket A raincoat Jeans Rain pants 2 pairs of socks As you can see, by the third day a t-shirt was just fine. The weather was awesome! I asked myself...why don't I live here?? I really haven't spent much time in southern Taiwan, but I've enjoyed every trip I've taken down there. It seems like it's always sunny! I don't know how I would do in the summer heat, but it's a great winter escape. There was also a lot of great food to try, including mountain pig and wild hen (or some kind of small wild bird), and giant shaved ice! I love this place in Kaohsiung! 

I was reading stuffwhitepeoplelike.com for amusement as I was thinking about blogging an observation I made yesterday. There are a LOT of things I could list, but here are 5 things off the top of my head. I can also reflect on how local I've become through this exercise... 5. Scooters : they're everywhere, fast, easy to park, and get their own lane on many highways. Though I waited quite a while before I got one, I also like scooters. In fact, I'm going to go for a little cruise when I'm done writing this post. 4. Red bean : Not salty but sweet, these beans find themselves in the traditional cold soup, desserts, ice cream, and now in Costco muffins instead of chocolate chips, much to my dismay (I DON'T like red bean in case you didn't gather that, though I HAVE started to enjoy Taro in some circumstances, which is another Taiwanese favorite) 3. Pearl Milk Tea : Zhen Zhu Nai Cha, is a must-try here in Taiwan, with a number different shops claiming to have inven...

Sinlaku is moving sluggishly over Taiwan . It was only moving at about 4km/hour at one point! This means that we are getting downpours and wind from it for much longer than usual, effectively ruining the Moon Festival weekend. I ended up riding this one out in Taipei , since I didn’t want to brave the trip back to Yilan, and I didn’t want to try driving my scooter through the wind and driving rain. It was fun to have company during this typhoon, and so far I’ve: made a salad, watched some episodes of the Office (not sure if I love it or hate it), braved the rain in search of a tea shop, went to Lisa and Peter’s for an indoor BBQ, and watched the Bucket List (fantastic movie). Tomorrow I’m hoping the typhoon will move on so I can go home! I might have left a window open…….. Other things I’ve been wanting to blog about: I finally got my scooter license!! Being my first full license ever, I was very proud of it! So now I can drive legally in Taiwan . And I love it! Things I L...

Well I'm officially the owner of a scooter now after more than three and a half years in Taiwan! Most people don't wait that long, but I do enjoy riding my bike, and I had complications with getting my license last time if you recall... I AM planning to get one soon though, don't worry! The transfer was really quite fast and painless. I was surprised! Thankfully there were no issues with me not having a driver's license. The funniest thing about the whole process was that the people at the motor vehicle office couldn't seem to tell me apart from the girl I was buying the scooter from, even though we looked NOTHING alike! She was holding our photo IDs and asked "whose is this?" Another funny thing about living here...

My good friend Naomi and I had a lovely weekend getaway that started very, very early on Friday morning. We went to Penghu, which is a set of islands off the west coast of Taiwan. It takes about 45 minutes to get there by plane from Taipei. Because of available flight times we went at 6:30am on Friday morning and came back at 7:45am on Sunday. Two days was not enough to see all the islands had to offer, but we did get a great sampling! The first day we were able to rent scooters, which we'd been a little doubtful about. Here's how the conversation went: "Do you have Taiwanese drivers' licenses?" "No." "How about an International Driving license?" "No." "Oh... well do you have a drivers' license in Canada?" "No." (neither of us do by the way! I've found a kindred spirit!) "Ok.. well just give us your passport number and we'll get those scooters ready for you." We drove over 30km from one end o...