I am now accepting suggestions for the excuse I can use to quit my job. Special credit will be given for creativity and/or hilarity.

St. Patrick's Day is a holiday wholeheartedly embraced by all the foreigners in Taiwan, but not so much by everyone else. We went to the only "Irish" (?) pub in Taipei, which was pretty laughable. And as it is when you dont know many people, we got belligerently drunk and made the best of it. The night was certainly enhanced by the promoters of the upcoming Kenny G concert in Taipei. These over-enthusiastic supporters of the great (? haha) saxophone genius (haha) dutifully decided to line several city blocks surrounding Taipei Arena (site of the 2009 Deaflympics!) with Kenny G flags. A solid portion of the night was spent attacking these poles and stealing the aforementioned flags. Dave and I could be found the rest of the night with pockets jam-packed with Kenny G, handed them out as gifts to thankful (?) new friends and attempting to wear them as capes, which I think was the best idea I have ever had. We also ran into Dave's ex-flame (hahaha) Tina aka Tbone, who we insisted appear in a variety of pictures with us and Kenny G:




Anyways, we were both somewhat surprised to wake up with a pile of about 10 Kenny G flags on our floor on Sunday morning, so if you want one now is the time to put in a request. I do remember walking home though, and thinking how funny it would be if I got mugged and all the thief got out of it was an assortment of Kenny G flags.

You can add the name Hawk to the list of hilarious english names. my question is, what baby name book got sent to Taiwan? Names are: very dated; somewhere in the ilk of Momo or Coco or some other o-o name; accidentally named after some sort of trait, like Unique or Mystery; or an animal, such as Hawk (a 45 year old insurance salesman) or Bear. Fantastic.

Dave and I are both very ready to leave, especially as we plan routes and destinations all over the place. I would say that, for me, living in Taipei has been an unqualified success. Living in such an insanely different place, the night markets, etc... has been really great. However, the teaching, and particularly my bosses, have made that part of the experience less than amazing. It is especially frustrating, because there are times when you have the greatest kids who make everything fun and worthwhile, and other times when you get a kid with a lisp who spits in your face when he talks, whines constantly and creepily rubs your leg as you mark his quiz (this means Ken aka my nemesis, who I'm certain is in for a long and fruitful life in a methodone clinic). If I can, I would like to briefly note that I am also very, very impressed with the whining ability of the children here. Without stopping to take a breath, they can go on with a "Nooooooooooooooooooooo, Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii dooooooooooon't waaaaaaant toooooooooo teeeeeacher Duuuuuuncan" for 60 seconds plus. With the poor quality of the air here, I am very impressed with their lung capacity for such small children.

I told my bosses I wanted a lot of hours, and they responded by working me almost 40 hours a week, which becomes about 50 when everything is included. All right, I realize that that doesn't sound like that much compared to most jobs, but little Dodo needs my attention at every possible second so there is no rest. Despite all of my hours and busyness level, if there is ever any small complaint by a parent, as there is bound to be since I a) have no idea what I'm doing and b) will go to any length to avoid marking quizzes or homework (apparently including dropping them in a urinal), I get demolished in broken chinglish by the bosses. As a result of this, I get to spend even more time with my teacher trainer and his slicked back hair, numerous skull rings and cocaine pinky finger nail. Isn't that some sort of an injustice? I get yelled at in a language I don't understand for not teaching little Hopper how to speak ingrish good, and Skull-rings is getting high in the squatter toilet stall. Anyways, my Irish friend at work has pointed out that I can take solace in the fact that I am probably earning more money than all of my bosses due to my high volume of hours, and the irony in that is that the more hours they give me, the sooner I can quit my job and run away from them. By the way, if you are every thinking of coming to Taiwan/China to work, I recommend that you learn Chinese first, so as to eavesdrop on all of the things everyone is saying about you, both the bad and the overly good that you dont want to actually hear from the frightening secretaries.

Now that I finally know how to put videos on here, this one is gorge swinging at Vic Falls in Zambia:



Until next time...