bear has a message for you...
well im flying out of taipei tomorrow and am pretty excited about it. the gmat is done, the 97Litre bag is packed and the redhaired csi guy is being left behind, i hope, forever.

i am going to the philippines in a few short hours where im being met at the airport by mama bueno. i think thats an experience in itself. i'm going to be living with mama bueno, her husband papa nelson and their family for a little while and working in a hospital in a city called lucena 3 hours south of manila. im really looking forward to this leg of the trip and think it will definitely be a unique experience. and hey, why not toss a little election-time violence and targeting of white people to make things a little extra exciting? anyways, i promise that this blog will become more exciting over the next few months than the past several months of bitching about teaching and taiwan has been.

anyways, to rap up the aforementioned bitching about teaching, taiwan and children, the last little while has been pretty uneventful. i was working hard attempting to study for the gmat, and that actually turned out surprisingly well. unfortunately, the test fell at the exact same time as game 7 of the canucks series, so i was getting somewhat frustrated with myself as i would read a question and then wonder in my head if the sedins were still trying to grow playoff beards. i can also honestly say that i was way more nervous opening my computer to find out that score for the game than i was when the score came up at the end of the gmat. i was also much much happier with the result.

went down to kaohsiung this weekend to see a few friends down there. for those of you who are wondering, geoff martin is now completely domesticated, living in the taiwanese suburbs in a 4 story house with 2 dogs, a girlfriend and a cookbook. kaohsiung is much warmer than taipei, similarly polluted and possibly more dangerous with its incredible glut of scooters. i expected the bus ride to be a little more aesthetically pleasing, but i guess when i had that thought i had forgotten i was in taiwan. man have they really fucked this island up. you can tell it used to be quite beautiful, but now it is just a concrete mess from north to south. i suppose i never saw the eastern side with the mountains, but im thinking it couldnt really make up for the rest. i guess that means that i no longer feel guilty for condemning taiwan just because i had only seen taipei. but, i guess taipei is pretty indicative of what you will see elsewhere. and for those of you who were waiting, go ahead and file taipei under "M" for "mother fucking polluted city with unsmiling locals and nerdy, crazy foreigners living under threat of invasion from a large, scary entity". and for those of you keeping track, we now have taipei and hamilton filed under M.

actually, speaking of china taking over, we were all a little confused to hear a shrill siren for about a half hour going off the other day. turns out this is the "china is invading, stay inside and start praying" siren. the hilarity of the concept of this siren i think speaks for itself, i dont even need to make fun of it.

anyways, i have to go to bed, but here is a video of sam, the most hilarious/not the brightest kid i taught. i swear i taught him "what is your name? my name is sam" 600 times over the course of the last few months, but i guess he panicked on this one.