Oh herro,
You know, I feel sorry for all of the other students in my class that has the kid named Bear in it. I seriously spend 50% of the class incredulously yelling "BEEEEAR!!! You are the man!", yelling at other kids for not giving themselves such creative names that bring me happiness, or doing my secret handshake with Bear that mostly involves him growling at other kids. Incidentally, Bear is dumb as a rock and has pretty much no idea what I am ever talking about. There are plenty of hilarious kids that can make teaching for many many hours a little more bearable. For example, there would be Sam, who I think is about 4 years old, wears baby blue gigolo pants everyday and spins around in circles on the floor when he gets excited (although this may be because I think he is slightly handicapped, but he is great all the same). There is a little girl named Anita who is great too, as atleast once a class some asshole kid named Hans pisses her off and she rocks him with a hard kick to the shin. She weighs maybe 55 pounds soaking wet and Hans is scared shitless of her, she's my enforcer.

yesterday i gave the kids in one class a quiz, and during the class break went to listen to some music and mark their tests. on the way back to class i had to go to the bathroom and yada yada yada urinals yada yada yada momo didnt get her test back because it is now a little wet and fragrant, but she was rewarded 100% due to my efforts. Momo, far from the sharpest knife in the drawer, has a slight discrepancy in the quiz marks that appear in the grade book now: 32, 41, 23, 100 (wetness incident).

we havent really been partying too much because we are trying to save our money for travelling pretty much exclusively. however, we decided to make night of it on saturday, and walked around taipei for awhile. we bought some jim beam in a 7-11 and held court outside on the steps outside with a guy who was so drunk that the cycle of his night went: wake up, be so drunk that he couldnt hold his head up, knock himself out on his own knee, then wake up again. actually, to slightly digress, it amazes me how difficult it is for asians here to a)hold their liquor b)know when enough is enough. in most of the clubs they have large basins in the washrooms actually reserved for vomit and there are inevitably 3 guys passed out, hanging over the sides. anyways, we were drinking jim beam outside of 7-11, making friends by speaking broken chinglish with passersby, including the bouncer from a bar impressively named "Night Person" and I can still confidently state that it is still a novelty to see white people in Taiwan, as you can see.....


and i can also say that it is a novelty for me to see whities too. in fact, when we finally got to the bar seeing a white girl with blond hair so surprised me that i blurted out "Whitey!!!" It wasn't too hard to get her attention anyways, as her 200 pound frame didn't really have suitors clamouring for her affections, but she responded enthusiastically by grinding with an inwilling morrison for the remainder of the night. dave and i were also really excited to make friends with what we thought was a normal white guy from san diego. however, it became quickly apparent that he had no interest in meeting girls, or guys for that matter, he just wanted to dance. and dance he did, all night long, by himself. what is with taiwan that it attracts such odd people? since the big boned girl was monopolizing most of dave's time, i spent most of the night attaching myself to dancing circles of taiwanese people and jamming a fake microphone in their face so that they would shout out the lyrics to a song in hilarious broken english: "i amn't no hollering back GIIIIIIRL". to which i would respond enthusiastically with my one chinese word "DUUUUUAE" which i think means yes. twas a good nite indeed.

i have a few adult classes and spend alot of them just chatting with my students about life in taiwan, their political leanings, travels, etc... One of the most interesting things I've talked to them all about is what they think about China and their own desires for Taiwanese independence. I was really surprised by their feelings about it, especially since I, for one, certainly thought that all Taiwanese people really wanted to terminate their affiliation with China. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the popular belief in North America assumes the same. However, from what I gather, most people here are quite content with the current arrangement. Realistically, they all feel that their island is sovereign in everything but name, and it wouldn't be worth the bloodshed to secede from China. I think, if they had a choice to become independent with no ramifications from China, they would choose to do so. But, they all seemed very certain that it would be unwise to go to the trouble of angering China just for some international recognition. Pretty interesting...

One more thing, I guess recently 2 young women, a canadian and an australian, were killed in a hostel fire in Chile. while I didnt know either of them, I guess it really struck a chord with me because the Canadian girl, Emily Longworth, was from West Vancouver and went to Queen's as well. While they weren't doing anything inherently risky, maybe it is worth remembering that travelling abroad in itself is inherently risky. It is unfortunate, but the culture of backpacking often brings with it constant attempts to one-up other travellers. If it isn't a contest about who has been away from home for longer, it's about who has done the craziest shit or seen the most genuine stuff. This tragedy underscores the importance of avoiding the need to do inappropriately dangerous things to impress other people and to just do things that you love to do along the way. It is worth using these 2 deaths as a lesson in remembering that no destination or story is worth getting hurt far away from home.

anyways, with that in mind, we are now trying to nail down our travel plans, but it's a little hard to figure out visas, flights, etc... we are pretty sure we are going to give indonesia a complete miss in the interest of not getting blown up, but hope to go to malaysia, malaysian sarawak, 'nam, laos, cambodia, thailand and possibly buuuurma time/ethical issues notwithstanding. so, i am going to quit my job around april 21st, explore taiwan a bit and head to the south of the island to see geoff martin, and craig pollock and his new fiancee. in may i am hoping to head to the philippines to volunteer for awhile, but that is all still a bit up in the air. get the new arcade fire album, it is rad....