CKS Memorial TaipeiHey everyone! sorry for the very delayed post… as you may have read, my laptop broke down a few hours before we left, so I didn’t have a computer for the first little while; and I waited until I got a decent amount of pictures to tie in with the post. I ended up buying a mac (macbook, 2.4 ghz 4gb ram) for the first time, and everything has gone great with it so far. We live in a smaller city next to Taipei (the capital of Taiwan) called Taoyuan. It’s a small city (compared to Taipei), but by no means not busy… the ‘downtown’ area is bustling with stores and shopping malls and the streets are filled with scooters and cars. Traveling by scooter is the main choice for people in Taiwan because they are relatively cheap to buy/ maintain… you can buy a used one for little as $300 CDN. Our English school provides free living accommodations in the dorm which has been pretty decent so far, and the other teachers living here have been great and have tons of advise for us. I think we may move out soon because living in a really nice apartment can cost as little as $130 a month — I will keep you posted.

Let’s begin with the positives so far. Food is really cheap here comparatively to Canada, you can pretty much eat a really good meal at a restaurant for around $5-10 CDN, or the many street vendors with a big plate of fried rice or chow-mein for $1.50.  There’s many all-you can eat ‘hot-pot’s’ where you cook all your food for $6… they have really good… and for alcohol drinkers, I have been told there’s many all you can drink bars for $5.  There’s also plenty of fruit for dirt cheap at grocery stores and markets nearby our place; there are so many interesting and different foods you can get at the markets… It’s also been really great weather with only a couple rainy periods, averaging 25-29 Celsius here during the daytime and still warm enough for t-shirts and shorts at night; It’s not even ’summer’ time yet, so we’re in for some hot weather coming up.  Also, when it rains, it pretty much pours.  Taking a bus here is pretty cheap too, $.75 for a one-way ride and they have very nice comfortable ones at certain destinations.

Although nothing has been really bad so far, there have been some minor issues that we have run into. We haven’t been able to work many hours yet because our work permits haven’t been processed yet, so not much $ has been made so far. We are taking it easy and using our free time traveling to Taipei on the weekend, taking teacher workshop classes or just vacationing.  Another issue for me is transportation. Twice a week I have to take two buses to get to one of the schools I teach at, and it eats up bit of my time, but it’s fine for now since I have a lot of free time. There are a lot of scooters around so the air pollution can get to you a bit, but for the most part the air isn’t bad, but many people wear mouth-masks when driving on the street. I don’t mind the air quality but it’s not even close to back home. Also, of course the purchase of my new mac put me back about $1500. I think the first two issues will be sorted out in the next few weeks… I’ll keep you posted.

As for traveling, we’ve only gone to Taipei which has been really nice. It’s a real big city, and we have barely explored it but from what I have seen so far it seems like a happening city to live in with lot’s to do there and many parks around. We went to the Taipei 101 Financial building, National Palace Musuem, the Shilin night market and CKS Memorial building. I have posted all our pictures so far HERE (with a comment explaining the pictures). Oh and one more thing, everyone assumes I speak chinese (mandarin) which I barely can… I’ll be studying hard and let you know how that goes. Also, Nat sticks out like a sore thumb here in Taoyuan… you dont’ see many foreigners on the street let alone a blonde one. Also, remember you can click on the ‘Grab our RSS feed’ link on the top so you can see when my site gets updated. Talk to you all soon!!