A Day in The Goggin

You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave - win or lose. -Gordie Howe

Passion is a funny thing. It can drive you to travel the world, to dedicate your life to a cause, and it drove me to get to The Goggin at 7:30 in the morning. We were playing Michigan State of all teams. It was not a huge game, it was not a particularly important game, but it was a Miami hockey game, and that was enough to get me to drag myself out of bed and walk to The Goggin before the sun rose.

For those of you who have not been to The Goggin early in the morning, it really is a tranquil place. Walking in while the lights are still off, I feel incredibly peaceful as I begin what will become a very long and tiring day. Unsurprisingly, there is no one else in line; in fact no one else is walking around except for a few employees. I set my stuff down and take a deep breath. I love the Goggin early in the morning. There is just me, the ice, and lots of hope for the evening game. There are some young girls in the rinks practicing figure skating to an old show tune and the place becomes filled with life for a few brief moments while the song plays. And then, again, silence. The cold linoleum tiled floor offers little comfort, but the life on the ice, that is the true Goggin. It is not the bricks, the stairs, or even the ice that make that building what it is, but the things that happen there. It is the games and the skaters on the ice this define that building; it is the little kids running around with excitement before they take their beginning classes.

I have never been able to get my homework done in line. I spend on average seven hours in line for a hockey game, and never manage to do any work. So this seems an ample opportunity to finally accomplish something. My productivity lasts less than half an hour. I have one friend who is almost always the first person there. She is a fiery, passionate person who loves hockey and dedicates her entire weekends to the RedHawks as well when the games are at home. In fact, she has probably motivated most of us in our “Hockey Family” to truly appreciate RedHawk Hockey. She arrives at 8:00 and from that point on, I do not do any more work. She walks up wrapped in a Wall-e blanket, her sweatshirt hood pulled above her head, and carrying a pillow wrapped in a green pillowcase. If you want to see true Miami Hockey fans, don’t wait for the game to start, come early in the morning when there are two people sitting at the top of the stairs, curled up in balls trying to sleep.

Time in line is a chance to socialize and catch up with friends. It is a break from busy work schedules, classes, and stress. We sit together with shared hopes and excitement and create strong bonds and friendships. We realized last year that for our entire time here, the people who have been most dedicated to RedHawk Hockey, who have showed up and sat in the same seats for years, waited for hours and hours in The Goggin, were always the same people. So we began talking and spending our time together rather than apart, eventually creating the network that is now our “Hockey Family.” We spend all day together in line waiting to get our wristbands and sprint to back to our respective seats. We still keep our places, the same seats we have sat in for years, but now we have a network, our Family, spread about the arena to look at, yell to, and with whom we can share silent jokes and looks during the game. But I should get back to that particular day.

My friend and I watch as little kids flood into the building. Children run up and down the stairs and hallways laughing and screaming while their parents follow in tow. We get looks of surprise, approval, and disbelief as they follow their children to take them to their lessons. I recognize some of the kids from the entertainment in between periods, especially one boy who is the only male in a figure skating class. I happen to think he has the best trick of all. He manages to waddle forward on the ice, waver a little, and then bend over and put his hands on the ice as he basically uses four limbs to stabilize himself while moving. It is impossible not to smile while watching this kid. Other kids run around with miniature hockey sticks hitting pucks down the hallway while girls go up to the pictures of the synchronized skaters and admire the sparkling costumes and twinkling smiles. There is so much life and hope, and excitement in this building not just for the nightly hockey game, but for future games, and future dreams and aspirations. The boys who want to play Miami hockey and the girls who want to skate like the synchronized skating team are as much a part of this building as the fans who sit here in the morning watching them.

More of the “Family” shows up throughout the day. In fact the first group of people who were not a part of the family shows up at noon, four and a half hours after I first entered the building. The line does not really grow until 3:30. But that is the nature of lines in the arena. If you come with the masses, you take a risk. By the 6:30 on our side of the arena, half an hour before they hand out wristbands, the line extends down the stairs, out the door, and all the way to the parking garage across from The Goggin. There are limited seats in the arena and the lines are so dense that only those inside the arena have a chance at seats. The others will have to stand in the back for the entire game.

We spend our time talking, watching movies and coming up with random ideas and innovations. For example opening a food station somewhere in the building while the people are in line seems like a very lucrative plan, and yet the school has not, nor has an aspiring entrepreneur. And sometimes we come up with crazier ideas, inspired by lack of sleep and hours on end of fluorescent lights gleaming off linoleum tiles, such as ordering thousands of foam blocks, filling the lobby with them, and jumping from the second floor into the soft, foamy glory. Eventually though, slowly or quickly, time passes in The Goggin. The lines become more crowded and people get angry as others join their friends, or come back to relieve others from waiting shifts. It is a tense balancing act, maintaining order and sanity in that line, with all of the emotions built up in hundreds of fans, but we make it work.

We celebrate my friend’s birthday at this particular game so time passes fairly quickly. We sing much to her chagrin, eat cake and gluten free cupcakes (which for the record were as delicious as normal cupcakes), and joke with her for turning thirteen (one of the staff workers once told her that based on her looks, she could not be more than twelve years old). We work out runners who will get seats, laugh a little at new students who know little about hockey, and drop our jaws as one girl walks in wearing a rainbow colored poncho, short neon orange shorts, and neon green plastic sun glasses. This oddity is more descriptive of the school as a whole than The Goggin in particular.

We get our wristbands, rush into our seats and finally realize our exhaustion. After a little under twelve hours of waiting, we get to our seats feeling weak and tired. We sit down and wait as the arena fills up and get our second wind as soon as the team skates out onto the ice. There is no exhaustion during the game, just adrenaline and exhilaration. The games themselves are incredible and individual. I could not possibly describe them in this post, article, whatever this stream of consciousness is, but we dedicate our weekends to them. We watch as our classmates, who have devoted their lives to hockey, play for their pride and futures. We watch as our school’s most successful team (currently) vies for another opportunity to go to the NCAA championships and finally win the title that we deserve. Our moods on “hockey weekends” are often decided by the outcomes of the games. And sometimes, fifteen hours in The Goggin ends in dissatisfaction.

We lost that game to Michigan State 3-2 in overtime. After an incredible comeback to tie the game, the Spartans managed to break through our defense and get one last shot through our goal. Heartbroken, our fans felt anguish wash over them as our long day of waiting ended in defeat. Most left, but the Family stayed in our sections and claped for the team as they circle around and finally skate off the ice. In victory or defeat, we are Miami Hockey fans and we support our team. We may get frustrated, we may get upset, and we may feel that our whole night has been ruined. But in the end, as we sat together in Buffalo Wild Wings that night and blamed “Poncho Girl” for everything, laughing away our disappointment, we all knew that we would be there to do it again at the next game and the next, for the rest of the season.

Back to School

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." -Oscar Wilde

I’m sitting in my new apartment at school a little more than a month after I got home from Taiwan and about three weeks since Typhoon Morakot hit Taiwan. I can’t really help but thinking back. It is hard to get information about what is going on. Sean told me that Kaohsiung was hit hard but that he was safe. Cash told me that Taitung was hit very hard and that they were very busy trying to help people with recovery and everything. But it was pretty hard to get a lot of information from them as they are clearly busy. What other information that I have gotten so far is rather disturbing though. Apparently two of the villages I visited were washed out into the pacific and another covered in mud. Da wu, where I saw the butterflies was cut off when the bridge leading there was destroyed and Jeff was stranded there helping people to function and survive on air drops until they could get them out of there.

This is the information that I get from people who are there; the news sources are just as troubling. Almost two hundred people have been reported killed and five hundred are reported missing and will likely not be found. Over a thousand schools were destroyed and billions of dollars worth of crops lost. It is difficult to find more information on this. I’ll search Taiwanese newspapers and talk to people in Taiwan but still information is hard to come by here and I worry. Alex, one of the kids in my class, was from one of the aboriginal villages and his home and village were both lost. According to Mrs. Kao, Alex’s mom would ride her motorbike with three kids fifty minutes every day into Taitung city just so she could take them to the English classes that Mrs. Kao was teaching. And now they have nothing. It is unimaginable to me.

I am sitting here in my nice new apartment at school, comfortable, reasonably well fed, and reasonably happy and my image of Taiwan is still the cities, towns and villages that I left just a short while ago. It is unfathomable to me that some of them no longer exist.

I have gotten a few new emails from Cash and Sean, Cash letting me know that the children are fine and that the TFCF is working hard and Sean letting me know that Kaohsiung city is fine and he is getting back to his intense studies (if he can work so hard to learn English, I must put in at least as much effort to learn Chinese). But I am struck by one line that Cash left me with-“Just pray for us, and everything will be better.” I am picturing all of the work ahead for them. Getting temporary housing, rebuilding roads, bridges, villages, clean water supplies, electricity, schools, and hundreds of other issues large and small that still needed improvement before this catastrophe. And she says just to pray, and it will work out. I pray, they work, and everything is better? That is not enough. To you twelve people who may or may not read this, but mostly to myself, I must say that I have to do something. I cannot simply sit idly by. I still have a proposal to work on after all and a hope of helping people, but that may have to wait for the weekend when I have a little more time. We shall see.

As for school, I suppose I should share some of my happenings here since this is my first school post. I am taking a light load this semester, just five classes instead of my usual six, however two of them are rather advanced classes with a lot of reading and large papers (as classes in my senior year should be) so I still have my work cut out for me. I am taking classes centered around East Asia and China to finish off my East Asian Languages and Cultures (focus on China) double major.

The apartment is great. I like being separated a bit from the school. I can always walk there whenever I want, but here I have my space, to remove myself briefly from the hectic life of Miami University. I am living with three of the best guys at this school all of whom have been putting in their share of cooking and cleaning and we have so far had a great time living together. Or at least I have had a great time. I should not speak for anyone else. My room is a bit sparse, the usual furniture, a bare floor, and some pictures and a flag on the wall. But still whenever I look up I see a little bit of Venice and a little bit of Taiwan, and I still see a bit of it in myself. It is easy to get sucked back into the same school mode and routine that I have had and not really liked, but I can feel the changes from the summer, and as long as I am conscious of them and work towards my new goals, I think I will be very happy here in my last year.

I will have much more to say later and I do not like to force posts since it tends to produce uninteresting results so I will end this now, but I will be back soon with new thoughts and ideas no doubt. College here is like living in a bubble (cliché, but true) and I am trying to break free while still remaining a part of the institution in my final year. So I am branching out to try many new things, even in my senior year to see what I can experience and what I can learn. I will share them as they come.

Kaohsiung

We travelers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.- Mary Wortley Montegu

I am currently in the port city of Kaohsiung, having taken a three hour train ride through mountains, from coast to coast. The city is so different from Taitung and different from Taipei as well. Taipei is more modern looking, but it does not not have the same cosmopolitan feel. Here, I can tell from the way people dress, from the nice restaurant (nice and inexpensive) where I got pasta with pesto, that there is more youthful influence and perhaps a foreign one as well.

I’m staying in Mrs. Kao and Celeste’s Aunt’s home in a Japanese style room. Therefore, I have sliding screen doors, nice wooden floors, a low wooden table at which I sit on the floor and read, write, type, and do whatever other work I may have. My bedroom adjoins this little sitting room with its own set of screens and my bed is literally a mat on the floor. I prefer this though to the mat on a frame. If I’m going to sleep on a mat, it should be on the floor. It is much more comfortable that way, though I will admit, I had a little difficulty falling asleep last night.

I went out with Celeste and Shawn (who is back in Kaohsiung from Taitung for summer school classes) to see the new Harry Potter film in an incredible new complex. Much of Kaohsiung has been rebuilt for the world games being held Right Now in the city. How do I know they are being held here? Well aside from the plethora of commercials on television, the billboards plastered all over the city, and the new metro system that was built with its own world games stop (this system rivals Taipei’s, I think it is actually better), I have been running into random athletes coming back from training, perhaps events. I have yet to talk to them, but I might try to strike up a conversation next time.

There are a fair amount of tourists here for the games, so I am no longer the only white person in a million, which is kind of nice, but at the same time, I am not there just to see the world games. In fact, I am only passing through, and the fact that it happens to coincide with the world games is pure coincidence, and I like it that way.

I’m off to enjoy a day of relaxation and perhaps exploration in this new, hot city. If there is anything eventful, I will let you know.

Butterflies

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. -George Moore

I walked into a fairy tale the other day. I went for a hike with Cash and Jeff into one of the mountains along a trail made seemingly of old rail ties. There was not a single bird in the entire place, only hundreds of butterflies. As we started our ascent we were surrounded by groups of yellow butterflies that gradually turned into groups of black butterflies as we got higher and the light grew dimmer. We emerged into a pavilion that looked out on the ocean and the mountains in all their glory, made more powerful by the contrast with the dark mountain woods. As we began our descent down the other side, the butterflies changed to dark emerald and blue and were much larger than their yellow and black brethren. But as we got further down the other side, they turned again into the yellow butterflies that had welcomed us initially. It was very surreal.

Welcome the Harvest

A child on a farm sees a plane fly by overhead and dreams of a faraway place.
A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home. -Carl Burns

The past couple of days have been pretty eventful, though all days here are eventful really. But I’m pretty sure most of will you not have read about something like this before…I had certainly never done anything like this before. Yesterday we moved up to the fourth floor of the building since there was a meeting being held in our classroom that we weren’t told about until that very morning fifteen minutes before class started. No worries though. The fourth floor has good accommodations for the class, so we all piled into furnitureless room (it reminded me of home), pulled out chairs and cushions for the closet and laid out. We did some worksheets and vocabulary at first, but eventually we began watching Monsters Inc. in English with Chinese subtitles. It was a big hit.
That afternoon Mrs. Kao and Celeste went to work at the shelter for girls who had been physically and sexually abused. Concerned that my presence there may be more detrimental than helpful, we decided it was best for me to stay back at the center. So each afternoon I go downstairs and eat lunch with the other employees. Cash insists on getting or making lunch for me every day (like I said, coolest woman ever), and I have to struggle to let her let me wash dishes or help out.

Anyway that afternoon, since I had some free time, I met a couple of the secretaries from the second floor who were anxious to speak English with me. So we talked a bit in Chinese and a bit in English (our skills were fairly comparable) and then I was off with Cash to go shopping for ingredients for the next days baking. We went to an underground department store/supermarket to buy our supplies. Food is expensive here. With the exception of fruit which is grown locally, the prices are intimidating as Cash pointed out several times. Cereal, dairy products, chocolate, and especially peanut butter are all incredibly expensive. We bought eggs, butter, and some fruit for the pancakes and waffles we planned to make and headed back.

Cash explained more of the work that the TFCF does for the children, which was very tiring and difficult for her since she did not know many of the words in English, so I really appreciated her talking to me. I know exactly how frustrating it is to try and carry on a conversation in a foreign language and one as serious and technical as this one was incredibly daunting, but she tried anyway. We used Google translator actually to get some of the technical words.

So if I haven’t already explained this yet I really should. The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families provides a plethora of services all over the island and here in Taitung makes an incredible impact on the community. They provide health and nutritional aid, education services to young children, sponsor older children to go on to high school and university, take care of orphans, physically and sexually abused children, send out a mobile library to the surrounding villages in the mountains and much more. I could not possible explain everything that they do. But it is absolutely vital to these people’s lives. The people who work at the center are completely dedicated; the social workers are on duty twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Cash originally worked in the government but left to work for the TFCF and works to help teach parents about saving money and basic accounting and money management. It is this function that we are hoping to expand as well by incorporating a micro-credit venture in the existing infrastructure that offers the necessary education to support the project.
So hopefully you guys found that interesting, but if not I promise it gets more intense from here. We went to a village in the middle of the mountains today to celebrate a festival for the harvest with one of the tribes. The second we got there we were greeted by a drunk sixty-six year old lady dressed in tribal celebratory garb who grabbed Celeste and me by our arms and marched us to a nearby house all the way saying “I love you, I love you” (in English mind you). Cash couldn’t stop laughing at her, at me, at the situation really. It was incredibly bizarre. We asked her name but she said just to call her Ama (which means grandmother). We were thrown into a circle of people dancing around and left to follow everyone else. It was incredible, and awkward, and exciting all at once but we managed to escape after fifteen minutes. Of course, our escape was momentary.

We then ran into the village chief, equally drunk, who desperately wanted to give me “a huggie.” He only gave me a handshake fortunately but none of us could really understand what he was saying. And so we escaped yet again, walking past a house where children and adults were playing a drinking game where they stripped off their clothes. It was only the beginning of the game though I think, since no one was nude. Like I said, it was an interesting experience.

We went next to the only school in the village, an elementary school where there were children playing in the back. From what I could see, it was a good facility and it was nice to escape from the excitement of the festival for a little while. We met and played with the local kids, who were shocked by how white my skin was compared to theirs. They were really curious about me, about whether I could play baseball and drive a car. They also wanted my stuff. It was funny when they asked for my hat, a little less funny when one of the kids maybe five years old sincerely asked for my eyes.

Jeff, the guy from the mobile library who used to be in the military took us to the ancestral home of the village where there was a medicine women and the village elder. The medicine woman (who had a master’s degree and had just one an award from the government for being one of the most influential community activists in the country) performed a ceremony to the ancestors, explaining who we were and why we had come. Then things got a little tense. The village elder, who was also drunk, asked Jeff and Mrs. Kao what we were doing there and was worried that we would disgrace the ancestors. Jeff and Mrs. Kao explained why we were there, what we were doing, Jeff explained that he was half aboriginal and that we all worked with the TFCF and the elder said that he would give an offering after we left to appease the ancestors and apologize for us being in there. The medicine woman was from a younger generation than the elder and so though she tried to speak and explain that it was alright, he held rank above her. But then there was a rather rapid transformation and the man invited us to look around and take our time. It was very confusing. It was only later that we learned that the man was not the village elder but just a drunk man pretending to be and having a little fun. But since he was still from an older generation than the medicine woman, she could not speak out against him. It’s kind of funny actually, but it did reflect a change going through the community, a balance between modernization and tradition.

In the past, the tribes were self-sufficient, grew their own crops in the mountains, and hunted in the mountains for their food. After the government came in and introduced running water, electricity, even satellite dishes for limited television, there also came taxes and the hunting grounds were closed as nature preserves. Modernization has brought better living conditions, but the traditions are dying. The middle schools and high schools are both boarding schools in other villages or in the city, and once the children leave, they can never really come back and keep the traditions.

As we were trying to leave, Jeff and Mrs. Kao were approached by the principal of the school (also drunk, yes just about the whole village was drunk), who kept talking to them and wouldn’t let them go, asking why no one every came to his village to teach the children for the summer, they needed help, the village needed help. Mrs. Kao couldn’t promise anything, the TFCF cannot afford to send teachers out to every village, and she can’t speak for them anyway. It was sad that we couldn’t help them, but the principal kept talking and talking until both Jeff and Mrs. Kao were desperate to escape. We all did eventually and hopped in the van to head back down the mountains. They view really was stunning. I am still constantly impressed with the beauty of the peaks, or of the ocean peeking through a gap in the ranges.

Like I said, it was an interesting and unforgettable day. If any of you ever get a chance to participate in a traditional festival do so, but be prepared.

Farming

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. ~G.K. Chesterton

Ben the farmer, not exactly what I had in mind when coming here, and not really something that I have ever imagined, but it felt really good to just do some hard labor and to give back a little to Cash and her family for the food that they had given us. There were a few things to know about planting rice in her fields. One, it gets hot, so keep hydrated and be careful not to get sun sickness. Two, there are some pretty nasty snails that likely have diseases and eat the crops, so we don’t like them. Supposedly there were some bloodsuckers too, but I didn’t see any of them. Third, learn to walk through the mud, or else you will get stuck. Anyway, I learned a whole bunch of lessons on my morning of work. Cash and her brother Eric supplied me with boots, gloves, a poncho (for the first couple of hours when it rained) a thumb tool to dig into the grass and plant it, and Shawn gave me a long sleeved shirt to wear.

I did four jobs for the most part. Cash’s father ran the machine, which takes the rolls of grass and seeds and turns gears in the back to plant rows in the field. However the machine is not perfect, and turns around the field tend to mess things up, so it was our job (Cash’s and mine) to go through the paddies and plant by hand where the machine had missed. I can understand why this would be back breaking work when working from five in the morning until seven at night as Cash and her family did. I only worked four or five hours so I didn’t feel too bad. They were all worried that I might crumble, but I’m a bit tougher than that, even if I don’t look like it. So I planted a rice field by hand, that was pretty cool. After that I took a rake and walked along the fields and removed excess sticks and debris that would get in the way of the planting. Then I used a hoe of sorts to go through the fields and spread out clumps of mud so that the machine would not have difficulty getting through and planting. This work was pretty difficult, especially navigating through the mud while not stepping on any of the rice. I almost got stuck a couple of times, but I made it out and around without too much difficulty. The last job I did was the most difficult and probably the most frightening. I got on the back of the machine while Cash’s father was driving and fed the rolls of grass into the back as it planted them. That machine bucks and moves so erratically that I almost fell off several times despite having good balance. I really thought I was going to fall at first. It was terrifying. Fortunately, I never fell, and I got the feel of the machine after a minute or two and was able to help plant the field. I watched as the grass levels go lower and then grabbed a role, positioned it in the slot and fed it down a little chute. It was more tiring than bending over in the field.

The time went by fairly quickly. Before I knew it, we were taking a break for lunch and local motorcycle ice cream salesmen had come around to sell his merchandise. That is a brilliant idea. Going around selling ice cream to sweaty farmers has to be a successful method. I’m not sure what kind of ice cream I ate, it didn’t look normal, seeing as it was brown and purple and red, but it was cold and it tasted fine, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Cash, her father and mother, Eric, Shawn, Mrs. Kao, and I all sat in the shade eating bento boxes for lunch and chatting (they mostly chatted, I mostly listened), and then we were off. They would continue in the fields and I would continue on with my day.

Tonight had one interesting point. There was a parade and festival going through the city tonight honoring one of the local gods, (actually apparently the god is from China and is here visiting and the festival was a sendoff) asking for rain and good crops. It was really cool. There were trucks with lots of people playing traditional music with large drums, cymbals, and statues of the god. It was a really cool feeling to walk down a street with signs written in Chinese, a festival to a foreign god going by, and the sounds of a foreign city. It felt really surreal. Then I heard lots of pops. People from the trucks were sending fireworks up into the air about ten feet away from us. I’m really glad that woke me, otherwise what came next would have been too much of a shock.

I saw them before I heard them. Large brightly colored trucks with thousands of flashing lights and floats and animals and dragons and phoenix’s which would have been cool and traditional except that they were mixed with crazy looking pigs and reindeer and random assortments of things. And blaring from these trucks was intense techno music that was in complete contrast to the traditional part of the parade that had preceded it. The parade was circling the city, which is not too large, so I kept running into it wherever I went. And there was no escaping that techno music. Little children were covering their ears, people were just laughing. Even the locals thought that the techno floats were weird and ridiculous.

So yeah it’s been an interesting day. I planted three rice paddies this morning as an undocumented laborer and saw a festival that comes once a year tonight, so I’ve had a couple of unforgettable experiences. I don’t know if I will do any more farming in the future, but Cash’s family was nice enough to invite me back to work for the harvesting season.

School and More

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~Lin Yutang

Classes are going well, but I think my favorite work, albeit the most tiring work, is going out with the mobile library. We visited one village where about twenty-five to thirty kids came out too see us. They were all really excited to see me and kept asking again and again if I was really American. We had a lot of fun. A little girl read a couple of books to me, the boys jumped on my back and played around and they all drew pictures for me. They were a lot of fun, and they were so excited for the mobile library to come around. But at the same time, I had to put things in perspective. These kids who looked so happy, only got this experience once a month. When at home they were helping their parents with work and taking care of siblings. They live in small, often dirty homes, and they have an immense disadvantage to students in Taipei or other cities for pursuing careers in the future since their schools are under funded.

We went out for dinner that night with the director to a restaurant atop one of the mountains. It was a traditional aboriginal restaurant, so while we waited for our food, in the center of the place (it was all outdoors by the way) there was traditional music and dancing. I took more video, though not too much to be obnoxious, and sat and enjoyed the full moon, food, and dancing. It was a good meal. Once again, I was limited by the rapid Chinese being flying across the table, but I understood that the director was leaving for Mongolia, this coming week now to work at a TFCF chapter out there. He told us about a trip where he once hunted coyotes with the people there after Mrs. Kao mentioned that a coyote had once eaten one of her cats. He is a funny guy. Always joking and laughing, but he does very serious work and has seen some sad and terrible things with the children he helps.

The next day we went out with the mobile library again and there was one girl very eager to improve her English, so Celeste and I helped her read through an English storybook. She did pretty well. I liked this girl a lot and I really hope she can get out of the life she is in right now. If she works hard in school and gets into a University maybe she can, that’s why TFCF exists really. Her dream, or at least what I could understand of it, was to get into hotel management and to one day visit Finland. I don’t know why she wanted to go to Finland but why not, we all have dreams…her name was Winnie. I really liked Winnie.

Anyway, I thought I should share some of the food that I have eaten on this trip. Perhaps I have mentioned some if it before, I lose track, but I know there is a lot of stuff to add. I have eaten shaved ice with red beans (I personally prefer the mango kind, but this was pretty good), duck feet, fresh octopus, sea cucumber, “100 year old” black eggs, and chicken in a thick rice wine sauce that tasted…well it is an acquired taste and I have yet to acquire it. There are others as well that will come back to me I’m sure. I have eaten chicken heart soup (though I didn’t eat the hearts), numerous vegetables and fruits that I cannot for the life of me name, and just about every day I try something new.

Speaking of something new, Celeste and I tried drumming with the kids. The school has a set of snare drums, tom toms and bass drums that the kids and teachers learn to play from the only black person I have seen on the entire island. I don’t know where he is from but he looks like a stereotypical Rastafarian who teaches the kids to drum and dance in enthusiastic Chinese. Chinese with a Caribbean accent is pretty cool.

As different and incredible as all this has been, none of it would have been possible without Cash. Cash has driven us to every location, gotten us meals, made us meals, brought us food from her family’s farm, helped out with kids, equipment, everything. The other night, about seventy kids from the TFCF were going on a camping trip. So we went out to help set up tents and cook meals. I helped Cash prepare a soup in the largest pot I have ever seen in my life. It would have to be since it needed to feed 70 kids. She lit fires, played with kids, cooked; she’s awesome. That night was fun. I met Shawn that night, a TA from the school last year with Mrs. Kao and Celeste, and he came with us to camp. So after we helped to cook the soup, we set about cooking our own meal. It was fun sitting around our little campfire roasting meat and vegetables. All of the kids routinely brought us food from their fires and then ran away shyly, giggling. It was pretty cute. We tried to buy marshmallows to teach them how to roast them, but all we could find were fruity knockoff marshmallows that tasted more like candy. The kid liked them though, so we managed to give those out and everyone was happy.

We found out that Cash, who had just driven us up a mountain and made soup for seventy people, was getting up at four in the morning the next day to plant rice on her family’s farm. I really wanted to give back in some way, to thank her for all she did for us, so I started my next great adventure…I offered to help plant rice in her fields. I didn’t get up at 4:00 am with them; I started at 8:00 instead. I think they would have been too worried if I had started working with them at 5:00. They constantly worried I would collapse the heat, but I actually handled it quite well. I have a new, educated, respect for farmers and their work and for Cash and her family. But I should probably tell the full story.

Taitung

It is not down in any map; true places never are. -Herman Melville

The train ride from Taipei to Taitung was about 5 or 6 hours, but the scenery was beautiful. We rode between two mountain ranges and then along the ocean, passing small towns in the mountains, and islands on the coast. I loved looking at the mountains. Covered with trees and rising up from the foundations of the earth, they looked ancient but welcoming. The ocean was breathtaking. I have not had too many sights of the ocean, only from an airplane, and once from a car in Vancouver I believe, so I was really excited to see the immense expanse of water.

On an unrelated, but still interesting note, before I left that morning, I did everything I could to find an ATM that would give me money. It was 5:30 on a Sunday morning, every bank was closed and I went to 10 ATMs and not a single one would give me service. So I left for Taitung with 300 NTD (about 9 dollars). I was a little concerned about that, but I have since corrected that issue. I was borrowing against Mrs. Kao for a while but I have found an ATM that works. I can’t believe I found an ATM in a small city in Southern Taiwan when I couldn’t find one in its capital. But I digress.

So I eventually got to Taitung train station and was picked up by Cash, whom I would later learn is one of the coolest women on the planet. But at this point, I knew nothing about her, only that she spoke a little bit of English and asked often if things were OK. She drove us to the house where we are staying where met the owner. She had a pretty good story. The owner of the place went to the School where we are volunteering when she was a child and it had such an impact on her that she wanted us to stay here free of charge. It was really very nice of her. But I didn’t know this at first, so it was a little intimidating to begin with. She spoke very little English, my room was small, and my mattress was little more than a bamboo mat with a sheet. At least there was air conditioning though.
We were supposed to have internet, but the wireless doesn’t work with our American computers for some reason. My bathroom and shower though, now that is a sight. My shower is a hose that connects to my sink about 2 feet away from the toilet in a 3x3 room. So as you can imagine, showering is a bit of a challenge, however, it inspires me to take quick showers. We also didn’t have towels the first couple of days, so we had to improvise a little. We have since rectified that. There is the bug issue though. There are enough bugs here that we need to put on bug spray before we go to sleep, but unfortunately we also found flea eggs on the sheets on the beds. Fortunately I have brought my own sheet and so I’m not using the sheets or blankets provided, but that leaves me with little to sleep with at night, so I don’t sleep too much really. Celeste has also been getting mysterious bug bites every night and we can’t figure out where they are coming from. I recently got a couple myself but I’m not too concerned. We are managing as best we can; after all, these are better accommodations than some of the places around here.

I started teaching at the school the next day. The school is actually pretty nice with a large air-conditioned classroom with desks, AV equipment and the like. The kids speak very little English but there are some really good students who are miles ahead of everyone else. All of the students at the school are from single parent families, whether it is because of the death of a parent, or one is in prison, or abandonment, or several other stories. Also about 50% of the kids are aboriginals and the other 50% are either native Taiwanese or Han Chinese each with their own social worker. Cash in fact works as a social worker for the TFCF, but I don’t know if she works with any of my kids.

I work from 9:00 am until 12:00pm teaching the kids English, using Free Rice to give them random vocabulary and help them donate rice to other needy children, and then we do several projects, or read stories and such. Usually we throw in a movie too since it lets them hear English in a more entertaining way. In the afternoons, I go out with the mobile library to the surrounding towns. It’s an amazing trip to get there we. We usually drive along the coast up the mountains until we get to a town.

On my first day out with the library I met two inspiring people, both of whom are aboriginals who help run the project. All of the villages we have visited have been aboriginal villages. Apparently the library can only make it out to each village once a month since they don’t have too much funding, but they make do with what they have. They pack books and tables and chairs into an ingeniously designed truck. Anyway, the two guys who do a lot of the work have really interesting stories too. The first one was in the military but left to become a social worker for aboriginal kids, taking a 50% pay cut. He has a great personality and an infectious laugh. The other guy is the son of the Chief of one of the tribes (the Paiwan tribe) and he teaches the kids traditional weavings. He showed Celeste and I on the first day, and we did our best to weave with him. It was cool, but extremely difficult.

The next day was fairly eventful. I met the director of the TFCF who is a really goofy guy, but cares deeply about his work and the kids. We talked about plans to raise money for future endeavors and projects that they are looking into. More memorable that day, and more influential on our subsequent days was Celeste’s accident. She tripped on a step outside of a Starbucks and hurt her ankle pretty badly, so she has been unable to walk well for much of the past week. Her leg is steadily getting better though after a few days rest and a trip to the local Eastern Medicine doctor’s office. That was really…different. There were posters on the walls explaining Chi flow as a cause of health issues in different parts of the body. The doctor put a salve of some sort on Celeste’s leg (which she described as the ultimate icy hot) and then bound it carefully. It was a fascinating place.

I also went to visit our landlord’s shop in town. It has everything you can imagine, though I don’t think any of it was made in Taiwan. It has merchandise from the US, India, France, Mongolia, Nepal, you name it, but I’ve yet to see any special Taiwanese merchandise. But the owners, our landlords, are incredibly nice. The husband, Sonny, was really excited to meet me, and actually spoke decent English. He was really into Jazz so we bonded over that, and he lent me a bunch of great CDs to load onto my computer.

I’m constantly busy, so I’m really appreciating this down time, despite the hundred-degree heat. I have done so much in such a short amount of time it makes me wonder why I waste so much time at home or at school. I like the work and keeping busy. It makes me appreciate relaxation far more.

Last Day in Taipei

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road. -William Least Heat Moon

July Fourth in Taiwan meant little and I really should have thought about going to the American Institute in Taiwan for part of the day to see what they did. Maybe if I find my way in Taipei again I can go visit, but instead I wanted very much to go out and explore and take pictures. Not pictures for the sake of proof, but pictures for the sake of good, maybe even artistic, shots. I had gotten pretty good at getting around the city on my own. I could take the subway anywhere, I was good at wandering, meeting people, and when necessary, asking for direction. There is a lot of freedom in being able to go around a foreign city alone. It was fairly lonely at first, especially when everything was intimidating and difficult. But as I got used to the city and my terrible, terrible Chinese, it became more enjoyable and I came to cherish my time alone, traveling through the city. I don’t doubt that I would have had an incredibly fun time if I traveled with a friend or two; so if anybody wants to travel, or needs a travel buddy, let me know. I think traveling is a great way to really understand someone.

Anyway, so on July 4th I first went to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. It wasn’t too far from my hostel and I had studied Sun Yat-sen in my Modern Chinese History class so I thought it would be really interesting. It was, and it was also a beautiful place. There were gardens and trees surrounding the building where old men were doing Tai chi. My favorite sight from the whole place though was an older man standing in front of the memorial hall flying a kite hundreds and hundreds of feet up in the air. It was amazing; I’ve never seen anything like that before. Then again, there a lot of things that have been new to me, but that one particularly stood out for some reason. Far more unusual than that though were the teenagers gathered along the walkway outside the entrances of the memorial hall. They all had boom boxes and were practicing dance routines. I couldn’t figure out why they gathered where they did, but it was fun to watch. I filmed some of it if anybody wants to see.

The memorial hall itself is pretty much a giant museum. As I walked in a young woman approached me and asked if I wanted an English tour, so I figured it would be better than just exploring on my own. She showed me all of the exhibits on the main floor and explained some of the history of Dr, Sun Yat-sen. She was really surprised that I spoke Chinese (I thought rather poorly, but she was very nice) and thought that I was an American who lived in Taiwan. One of the coolest things that I saw in the place though was the changing of the guard ceremony. In the middle of the memorial hall is a giant bronze statue of a seated Sun Yat-sen and in front of it are two guards facing each other, perfectly still. It is very similar to the British guards I guess, and they only move once an hour when they change places. There was a rather elaborate ceremony that went with it and I was glad that I got a video of some of it. There was a lot of twirling rifles and marching in place and slowly moving to the pedestals where the new guards stood, equally still, for the next hour. It was pretty cool. My tour guide was surprised to hear that guards in the United States are allowed to move.

We parted ways after that and I explored the rest of the museum carrying the touristy souvenirs that she had given me. I say museum now because there were art exhibits covering that top two floors that had nothing to do with Sun Yat-sen. But they were really cool.

I had a little time before I was meeting with Professor Shih and his students, so I went to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall. If I thought Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall was large, it was nothing compared to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. It was massive, absolutely massive. It housed several parks, the large memorial hall, the national concert hall and the national theatre and large open squares. They must have been setting up for some festival or event since there were tents and inflatable everywhere. The memorial hall was the most interesting place by far. Underneath there was a large museum that had a lot of Chiang Kai-shek’s possessions as well as decorative war medals from a lot of countries. I don’t know if they were his or not, but it was really cool to see all of the different styles of medals of honor and such. Afterwards, I climbed up the steps to the memorial hall and saw a massive statue (it put Sun Yat-sen’s statue to shame) looking out over Taipei, also guarded by two men. The lack of subtlety was pretty amusing. I mean having a massive statue high above everyone else looking down upon all of the people is perhaps a little haughty. But he didn’t build it so I shouldn’t blame him. Anyway, the view from the top was spectacular, but I was running a little late so I had to rush home to find my way to Professor Shih

It was a little complicated finding his apartment. I took a train and a taxi to a local hospital that was supposedly nearby and waited for one of his students to find me, and it eventually worked. I went up to the apartment and met Professor Shih, who was an incredibly interesting person and very nice. He is one of the most connected Professors in the country and is the Chair of Taiwan’s Political Science Foundation. There were four other students there including the one who picked me up, all older than me. The one just one year older than me and I got along really well. He is working for a newspaper in Beijing this coming year so we had a good talk. One of the other students had just returned from Wales (where he got his PhD) and it was fun to ask him to try and pronounce Welsh words with a Chinese accent. He said it was incredibly difficult. The last student was the most interesting to me though and proved that no matter where I go, it is a small world. He had just returned from Cornell where he was pursuing his PhD and had just TA’d and shared an office with Danielle. I mean come on. I go to Taipei, meet a professor whom I have never had contact with before this summer, go to dinner with him thousands of miles away from home, and in attendance is one of my sister’s colleagues. I couldn’t believe it, but anyway, we obviously had a lot to talk about so we sat across from each other at dinner at talked about political science, all of us did in fact, Professor Shih as well, and it was a lot of fun. Sitting in a Japanese restaurant in Taipei talking about soft power with a professor and four other students is a memory that I will not forget easily.

(I hate doing laundry in a foreign country, with no dryer, and no clue how to read the washing machines…my clothes are going to be destroyed.)

Oh yeah, one of the topics of conversation at the dinner was the 1992 consensus in which the then Kuomintang government signed an agreement agreeing to the existence of “One China” though with little specific definition. Apparently the man sitting next to us at dinner was one of the men responsible for that agreement. He was a very high-ranking secretary who personally made about 10 secret trips to Hong Kong between 1991 and 1992 and negotiated the agreement. After the Kuomintang lost to the DPP (the Kuomintang is now once again the governing party) he slipped out of the limelight and quietly bought a company so as to avoid any attention whatsoever. So that was a really cool chance encounter.

I was really excited that night preparing for my next day of photo adventuring. However what I hadn’t remembered, since I hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Kao and Celeste for a couple of days, was that we were leaving for Taitung the next morning at 6:30. So I hastily packed and set a couple of alarms and trudged my way to the train station the next morning with my luggage. And thus ended my adventures in Taipei, very abruptly, but on a good final note with a good dinner, good conversation, and a few new contacts.

Back Briefly!

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. -Anatole France


I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post, I haven’t had consistent internet access for a week now, but I have so much to share. I’ve traversed much of Taipei, traveled from Taipei to Taitung by train, and done a lot of work for a week here now. There is a lot to share and I’ll do my best to write everything while my abundance of dirty clothes wash outside. (Now being shared from a local Starbucks…they are everywhere) Enjoy!

More from Taipei

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. -Mark Twain

So things have been incredibly busy here. There are a lot of things to talk about, dinners and adventures and random occurrences galore. Mrs. Kao happens to be old school friends with the CEO of a large electronics corporation, so I met him and went out for Thai food in the city. Not surprisingly, it was delicious. I really like family style dinners- lots of different dishes, and of course everyone wants me to try everything, and I am quite happy to oblige them. That comes with risks though, since I tried duck feet the other night. The soft-shelled crab was good though, and the curry. That dinner was interesting. Mrs. Kao and her old friends chatted the entire evening, all in Chinese. In fact, they spoke maybe two words of English the whole night, and though I wasn’t able to keep up with too much of their conversations, I was able to catch more than I would have the first couple of days here. So my listening is improving, if only a little so far.

Earlier that day I found myself in a bit of twilight zone moment. I walked out of my hostel/apartment only to find the streets completely empty and still. There were no people, all of the cars were parked, some abandoned in the middle of the street and others lined along the roads. I tried to walk to one of the main roads to see what was happening and I was whistled back by three police officers. So I wandered around in an incredibly busy city that appeared entirely abandoned. You know those movies where there is one person left on the planet and everyone else has mysteriously disappeared…yeah that was me. It turns out, every year, Taipei has a drill where they evacuate the vast majority of the population into a secure area to prepare for an attack from Mainland China. That’s not an experience I’m likely to forget any time soon.

The next day Celeste, Mrs. Kao, and I went to the National Palace Museum, which houses the greatest collection of Chinese history in the world. Apparently many of the exhibits were smuggled over from Mainland China right after the Communists took over. I think as a result the Taiwanese government is a little paranoid and they force mainlanders to visit only in specific tour groups going along specific routes under close supervision. There were a lot of tour groups, but I enjoyed the exhibits. I saw lots of jade and ivory and porcelain. After the museum we headed toward National Taiwan University and ate lunch around there. We went to a small sushi bar across from the campus. The sushi here is great; I got 12 pieces for about four and a half dollars. After that I met another of Mrs. Kao’s friends who is in publishing. He offered me any book off his shelf (he actually ended up giving me two) and they caught up while I perused his incredible collection. We left; I explored the campus on my own, found my way back to a train station, and went back to my place.

The train system is absolutely incredible. Supposedly it is the best system in Asia, and though I haven’t seen other systems elsewhere, I would not be surprised. I am able to get anywhere in the city quickly and with little difficulty because of the MRT. What is unfortunate about this large, busy city, is that it is/was impossible to find a new stick of deodorant ANYWHERE. I went into department stores, drug stores, convenience stores, I looked for hours, I even dedicated an entire afternoon of errands to hunting down deodorant, but to no avail. I looked everywhere for a Watson’s around me where Danielle said she found stuff in Beijing, but I had no luck around me.

I’ve spent a lot of my time doing my research for my meetings. Through a referral I have set up meetings with professors and even a member of the ministry of foreign affairs. So I did research, focused my questions, practiced, and prepared. In between my preparations though I had some nice distractions, especially last night. We went to another university to visit more of Mrs. Kao’s friends. They are all very nice, and all impressive. In fact every one of her friends that I have met is a US educated PhD and the couple I met last night were a dean of engineering and the vice president of a company. They were really humble and nice. I never would have guessed their occupations of levels of education from their demeanor, but that just goes to show that you can never tell who someone is until you get to know them. The husband laughed every other sentence and his laughter was infectious.

They took us out (yes the free meals are wonderful) for traditional Taiwanese cuisine at a small family owned restaurant. It was delicious, actually my favorite meal so far. It beat the delicious seafood, Thai food, and sushi; it was just very good. I couldn’t begin to name the dishes that I ate, only that there were rice noodles, a beef dish, vegetables, a fish dish, rice, soup, tea…like I said, family style dinners are fantastic. We also went out for dessert afterwards. I can’t remember the name in Chinese, but it was essentially a large mound of shaved ice in condensed milk with mangos on top. It was the most refreshing thing after a hot and humid day. I might try to make it back home if I can. It’s pretty simple, but so satisfying. As soon as we left to go back it started pouring (of course) so we made it to a covered bus stop while they went to get the car to drive us back to the train station. I didn’t mind the rain from our covering, but Celeste didn’t like sharing company with the mosquitoes and the largest spiders that I have ever seen in my life. I’ll have pictures up eventually, but they were about the size of a half dollar, and fat.

So far, I’m going over my experiences day by day, which while interesting is something that I had been hoping to avoid in my blogging. I didn’t want to trivialize anything that I did by writing a list of things that I did. But because everything is so new to me, it really is all experiential, whether its meeting new, humble and impressive people, or trying new foods, or finding my way around a city completely on my own with a pretty substantial language barrier. I have confidence in getting around the city on my own now but I am still a little nervous about trying to get to new places on my own, especially when it is for something important, like my meeting with the member of the ministry of foreign affairs (or MoFa as she called it).

I had an address and nothing more to go on and no contact with anyone who new Taipei, not Mrs. Kao who has had her own business, nor Celeste who has presumably been with her, or lounging on a couch watching television. I found the nearest train station, hopped a train until I got there and then grabbed a taxi relatively close to the address. Two things about that taxi ride. One, he was so happy to see that I was an American. He was confident that I would be a fare when he saw me, and it gave him an opportunity to play the country CD that he had in his car. I mean come on. He was whistling along to the songs as he was driving through Taipei, and nothing that I have experienced clashes more with Taipei than country music. The second thing that I saw, that made my day, was a Watsons a block and a half past the train station. I added that to my mental map and made my way to my meeting.

He dropped me near the place and I walked down a random street only to get to a large gate with a small entrance. All I could see was a tall building in the background, and a metal door with a small glass window. I peered in only to see a guard look back with immense confusion. He opened the door and I said the name of the person I was going to see and he motioned me inside. I walked into the building to see more guards and a large sign that essentially said the following:
2nd Floor: embassy of the Republic of El Salvador, 3rd Floor, Embassies of the Republic of Nicaragua and the Republic of Guatemala, 4th Floor, Embassies of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Saudi Arabian trade office, 5th floor,
Embassies of the Republic of Palau and St. Christopher and Nevis, 6tb floor, Embassy of Burkina Faso, 7th floor, Embassies of the Soloman Islands and the Republic of Paraguay, 8th floor, the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti, 9th floor, the Embassies of the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Honduras, 10th floor, the Embassies of the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe and the Kingdom of Swaziland, 11th floor, the Embassies of Belize and the Republic of Nauru, and floors 12 through 15 belonged to the International Cooperation and Development Fund, where I would be meeting my contact.

That is quite a bit, but obviously it caught my attention. This was my first time in a government building in Taiwan, and all by myself and was surrounded by embassies. I thought that was pretty cool. I went up to the twelfth floor, a little nervous to meet with my contact only to find that it wasn’t as intimidating as I had thought it would be. She (the project manager of the Technical Cooperation Department) technically works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I had sent her a list of questions the night before and we sat in a small lounge area drinking good coffee from somewhere in South or Central America, I don’t know where because she didn’t know where. But it was pretty casual. She was in her late twenties or early thirties and had been working on several development projects in Central America and Africa. Since she is technically an employee, in fact member, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she asked that I not quote anything that we discussed in anything that I write and I will respect that in my blog even though the readership is quite limited. But she provoked some very interesting thoughts on the roles of non-profit organizations and the necessity of working, successful development models for certain small countries without international clout. We talked for about an hour and while I haven’t cemented my thesis topic, she gave me a lot of ideas of things to research further when I get back home.

The most important part of my day was to follow though. As I exited the cab back at the train station I marched on straight past the entrance, down a block and a half and bought a stick of deodorant for the same price of my fifteen-minute cab ride. But it was worth it, it was worth just about any price, as I realize it is a rarer commodity that I had suspected. That or I am hopeless at finding things here. But either way, I am safe. Deodorant may be a small, unimportant comfort, but it is not insignificant. I feel so much better right now.
So needless to say I will continue this busy pace that I have set for myself, though tonight has been fairly relaxing. Tomorrow night I will be visiting a professors apartment to listen to a discussion on Richard Little’s The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models, and then discuss my topic with him and several of his graduate and PhD students. On Monday I head out to Taitung to teach for two weeks, which should be as different as going from New York City to Appalachia. I’m excited though. I’ll fill you in on everything when I get the chance.

Taiwan: Beginnings

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” -Cesare Pavese

Dear loyal followers, I apologize for the delay in postings, it has been quite a busy few days and I am always so tired at night that I haven’t had the opportunity to write entries.

So without further ado, from Taipei, AHHHHHH!

Okay so that was just the initial impression, but as far as culture shocks go, if you have never been to Asia, and you are traveling with two other people, one who is Taiwanese and the other who is Taiwanese-American, you don’t gain the full comfort of company. Not to mention that I am staying at a hostel by myself in Taipei, so I am literally alone, but I’m getting ahead of myself. From the beginning I suppose.

It started with a thirteen hour, or so, flight to Tokyo. Aside from a few terrible movies and bad courses of airplane food, the flight was uneventful. I had a three-hour layover in Narita airport in Tokyo, which was made far more eventful by the flashing TV screens covering Michael Jackson’s death. Everyone was shocked and chattering and trying to figure out what had happened.

After traveling for nearly twenty-four hours, I finally made it to Taipei. We took a taxi from the airport and eventually found my place. Fortunately someone (Joyce) else who was staying there was just coming back and let me in. She was actually my roommate for a night, rather unexpectedly, but it worked out well. She was from Tainan, here in Taipei for a conference for work. She helped me with my Chinese a bit and I helped her with her English, it was a good compromise. The next morning Joyce and I went out for breakfast. She was really eager to try this place that served American style breakfasts, so I ate a very good vegetarian omelet for my first real meal in Taipei. Not much of a culture shock there, but that came quickly. The woman who runs/lives in the hostel is very nice, but does not speak a word of English. Her name is Ling Mama, or at least that is what I’m supposed to call her. She is interesting from what I can tell of her. She apparently converted to Christianity after a leg injury of hers healed. She likes me because she thinks I look like Jesus, or so she said.

That first day I went out with Mrs. Kao and Celeste to an outdoor jade market and flower market. They were really cool. There was a ton of merchandise in large tents covering at least a block. I was clearly the only American in there, and I got some stares accordingly, but I’m getting used to those. As we were walking past a department store a little girl maybe ten years old looked out with the most shocked look on her face when she saw me. The stares follow me everywhere I go. We managed to miss a typhoon that was heading towards Hong Kong, but caught an outer thunderstorm, so we went and waited a few hours at Celeste’s grandmother’s before heading out to a couple of night markets.

The night markets are filled with random merchandise and lots and lots of food. There are sweet smells, bitter smells, and in a few cases, the most pungent smelling tofu that I have ever smelled in my life. We were out for a couple of hours and then made our way back to our separate abodes for the night. I meant to go to sleep as soon as I got back, but the girl who had been staying in the room next to me, Kellie, from Seoul, was up and we talked for a while. I was a little uncomfortable to be honest. My Chinese is not very good, and even though some people tell me that it is decent, I don’t believe them. I can’t understand half of what anybody says and I can’t really hold a good conversation. But I’m learning, and managing as best I can.

The next day I wrote some emails to get in contact with some professors to meet this week to discuss my thesis. I’m really lucky actually. I’ll be meeting with two professors at National Taiwan University and the man in charge of foreign aid at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the afternoon I met Mrs. Kao’s friend who drove us to her home in Keelung where she introduced me to her husband and her son Albert. If I got everything right, and I’m pretty sure I did, Albert is 24, just finished medical school at the top of his class, and is about to enter into his one-year conscription as a medical doctor. The family was very nice and after I had expressed interest in a shrine in their house, they took me to a temple nearby to show me around and explain things to me. It was very interesting, a large, and complex. After that, they showed us to a second home that they have nearby, and generously offered, should I ever come back, to let me stay there. But even more generous still, they treated us to dinner at a very nice seafood restaurant. I had never seen food quite like this before, but I’m always up for trying new things. I had lobster and crab and sea bass and duck, rice and sashimi, I just kept eating since they kept offering me food. They were very nice.

It was cool; at the same restaurant there was a wedding party. My hosts wanted me to go spy on them and see what a Taiwanese wedding was like. Supposedly the bride changes into three dresses during the, well I don’t know if it was ceremony or meal, but I saw her in two of them at least. Everyone was happy. After that, we were driven back, and I crashed for the night.

The next day I tried to meet with Celeste since Mrs. Kao was busy seeing people. We failed pretty miserably since we had no cell phones to get in touch with each other so I ended up going and getting lost on my own. I went to the Longshan (Dragon) temple and explored a bit. It was impressive. There were waterfalls in the outer courtyard and then a series of shrines in the interior. It was a beautiful place, but weird that it was surrounded by a very cosmopolitan area. It was like finding a large temple in the middle of the loop. After that, I was anxious to get away from all of the busyness, so I went on the train further west, off my map actually, until I got to woods, and parks. I was going to go to a nature preserve, but the weather looked a little questionable, so I figured I would head back. I was pretty tired anyway.

I had never navigated from the train station back to my hostel, and I entered the MRT in a different location from where I exited so I got fantastically lost on my way back. It took a couple of tries asking for directions, but eventually I made my way back. There is a whole underground infrastructure that is pretty impressive. Not just the subway, but there are underground pathways to get under busy streets, and malls under ground between subway stops. It’s pretty easy to get lost, but there is just enough English on the signs that I can make my way around.

This is all one crazy adventure. We’ll see where it takes me. I have 5 more days in Taipei and then I’m heading out to Taitung to teach English, so we’ll see how everything goes. I’ll do my best to fill in updates, but my internet is a bit patchy and I don’t know what my status will be in Taitung. But rest assured, when I do have time to write, I will have some crazy stories to share.

Zaijian!
Ben

Finire?

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - G.K. Chesterton

The “end” of this experience has felt both very long and very short at the same time. We spent two days putting our presentations together. Shun decided to make them group presentations, placing me with Melodie and Anisha to try and describe our experience, our time with the very loose outline of pre-conceptions and re-connections, but I thought that transformations was a more appropriate word for my experience, and neither Melodie nor Anisha really cared for re-connections. It was two fairly grueling days of working out ideas and putting together power points, messing around with Photoshop (for Melodie) and getting about 2 hours of sleep. Then we woke up on Friday to give our presentations, rehearsing a little in the morning and then finally presenting once our guests (Ferdinando, professors from Torino) showed up. It was an interesting presentation, my first real review from architects, and second from my peers. My portion was very different from everyone else’s, my presentation was more dependent on my speaking, my projection, than my PowerPoint. The others, knowing far more about PowerPoint and Photoshop than me produced incredible effects and displays to convey their ideas. I gave a rather passionate presentation, then Anisha gave her part in her very clear and concise speaking pattern, and Melodie finished with her incredibly oratorical presentation style. It sparked a lot of discussion, all good, and Melodie at least was very happy with how it went, saying that it was a good review. I was happy certainly, and a little relieved.

We were all prepared to crash after that, but there really wasn’t any time. The Businaro’s had set up a rather nice surprise for us. We were attending a charity event as Ferdinando’s guests, an event at his girlfriend’s father’s villa. I got to ride with Frederico (Ferdinando’s older brother) in the front of his very nice jaguar (I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t take the Maserati…so was he) and we talked about his travels, his work, and surprisingly his love life. He was very open about that. I think he really is a romantic at heart, and him and his brother are very clearly generous and giving people. Eventually we made it to the event all to be shocked for the entire evening. It was a massive Palladian villa, far larger than the one that we have been working in, and we were surrounded by rather fancy suits and glamorous dresses (and some not so glamorous dresses). I was constantly surprised by this experience, and much of that was thanks to the Businaro’s generosity. In attendance were an Italian count and the Archduke of Austria, both of whom gave a short speech far outdone by the master of the villa, who gave an apparently hilarious speech in rapid Italian.

I’m not really sure how to describe the event. It was rather overwhelming. There was a full orchestra in the middle of the courtyard playing Waltzes by Strauss in honor of the archduke. There were tables of appetizers filled with delicious breads, cheeses, fruits, and seafood. There was a long (three hour) dinner where we sat and talked, and ate, and enjoyed ourselves. We were in the main room on the second floor and were entered into a raffle by Ferdinando to win prizes from the Rotary Club that was helping sponsor the event (which was to raise money for cystic fibrosis by the way). Two people in our group actually won jewelry, it was really cool. There were fireworks shot off of the balcony just across from where we ate, there was a night filled with dancing on a dance floor that had been set up where the orchestra had been earlier in the evening. We all danced together and even Shun joined in which was absolutely hilarious and incredible. That is a sight that I will never forget. We stayed until about 2:45; we were some of the last guests there with the Businaros. We were then driven home only to wake up the next morning and wonder if it had all been real, if it had really happened. This whole experience has been incredible, and the Businaros welcomed us all back to Il Palazzetto any time, sincerely. And I do believe we all want to take them up on that offer some day. I know I will be back, eventually.

I’m off now to take my last trip to Venice before I go to stay in the airport tonight to catch my 6:30 am flight. It will be a shame to say goodbye to the city and to Italy in general, but it will be very nice to be home, if only briefly before I continue my adventure.

Brion

"The best way is to walk lost" -Giamba

In the past week we have gone out to the countryside near Treviso in a town called Altivole. It was quite an experience out there, very different from Venice, but eye opening and enjoyable. After taking the train out to Montebelluna, we waited for Shun and Robert to go pick up the rental cars, and also waited for Giulia, our “TA” (who is not really a TA but a PHD in Architecture who is providing another point of view on Brion and our experience).

Shun and Robert arrived with the cars and we met Lucio, who owned the Agriturismo where the girls stayed and then Giulia arrived. We drove out to Lucio’s and met his family and saw the house where we were told the girls were going to be treated to incredible breakfasts every morning, made by Lucio. The guys were going to stay at Francesca’s Agraturismo. It was nice, on a cherry orchard and vineyard, but the breakfasts could not compare to Lucio’s.

We spent the majority of our time at Brion cemetery. The cemetery was commissioned by the Brion family and added on to a public cemetery. We staggered our entrances so as not to ruin people’s first impression. Some people entered through the public cemetery, but I entered through Brion’s entrance. It was a very surprising place. Everywhere there were complex, Escher-esque, concrete structures built in different heights and layers. Scarpa used a stair motif going up and down, in and out in every direction so that everything seemed to lead somewhere. At the same time however, there was green space everywhere, grass and trees and bushes. There was life everywhere. Trickling water and ponds filled with Koi, lizards crawling all around, and birds fluttering about. It was a very weird contrast for a cemetery- so much time, so much life. The walls along the Brion slope inwards so that you cannot see the corn and farmland outside. All you can see is a dream world, a special, isolated island of paradise.

There is a corridor, similar to a soto portego that leads both to the public cemetery and also through a gate to a little peninsula set on the pond at the back of the private cemetery. Beppi, the caretaker let us through the gate and into the chapel in the cemetery so that we had full access. It was very fortunate.

We spent four days in Brion, first getting used to the space, then exploring it individually to try and understand it, then observing it in groups, and finally one last day for closure. I was too overwhelmed by the space to get anything concrete. There was just a flood of impressions and thoughts but it wasn’t until the second day that I was able to describe anything. The second day I explored and sat and thought, realizing how bizarre it was to have such a dream like place next to a cemetery. How odd it was, that a place that felt so natural and so comfortable could be a place for the dead, so starkly different from the cemetery adjacent to it. We partnered up (I was with Reem this time) and discussed that place only to break up into two groups of five to discuss with in front of the whole group later that day. We sat in the chapel and talked for about an hour and a half before leaving that night for Asolo for dinner.

Asolo is a beautiful little town up in the mountains. Apparently it used to be a place where artists would go to for inspiration and it was easy to see why. Looking out down the mountain, at the lights, and the trees, out at the moon and the stars, it was a very expressive scene. It seemed so perfect, so fixed, but it was all the more special because it was natural, real. I ate dinner with Melodie, Shun, Giulia, and Anisha that night at a fantastic restaurant. The food was good, the conversation was good, and we were happy to be away, briefly, from the full groups setting. A ten-person group is small enough for the work we are doing and the discussions we have, but ten people at every meal can be a bit overwhelming.

The next day at Brion we got back into our pairs and explored and studied and thought again, to have discussions with Shun and Gulia about what we observed, what we thought. Of course there was more sketching on everyone’s part too, and more photographs, but the battery on my camera died, and while I tried to sketch, it is certainly not my forte, so I took lots of notes, and comments about the place. I realized on the third day that the natural calm was not so natural. Someone designed the entire place, in great detail and passion. While it may have felt natural, it was entirely constructed. What was real was the corn outside. So to me, this contrived place was built to direct thought in a particular environment, not necessarily a natural one. This sparked an interesting conversation with Shun and with some others. Ira and I also managed that day to climb up on top of the chapel and walk along a little pathway built up there. Scarpa designs parts of his work even where it may never be seen- plants on the roof and a sliding sky light that can only be accessed from 20 feet in the air with no clear way up.

On the fourth day, we went back in the mid afternoon one last time only to get caught in an incredible storm. The wind was blowing at around 50 miles per hour, the rain was falling in sheets and water flew in every direction, through all of the openings in the concrete, dancing off the steps and the grass. It was absolutely beautiful, and wild, and torrential. Then came the hale. It was small initially, about the size of a pea but soon it began to fall the size of a half dollar or so all over Brion. We were in the shelter of the chapel, but I couldn’t help but run out into the rain (before the hale began) and see Brion in such a wild state. It was very different from the calm, tranquil, dream world before.

After Brion, we left Altivole to head back to Venice for two nights to relax, and rediscover Scarpa in the city. The Biennale had begun; tourist season had begun, so the city was very different. But we did not feel as rushed as our first week to the city. Maybe we were used to it, maybe because we had no check in deadlines, but time seemed to go by much more slowly. I revisited Campo Ghetto and my other favorite parts of the city and finally got some touristy shopping of my own done. It was weird to feel like everyone else for once. The way that we have been traveling and exploring has made me feel a little elitist compared to the other tourists who come for a day to see San Marco and Rialto and leave. It felt different to be acting like everyone else in those parts of the city. But that was fleeting. At night I saw the tides come up and embrace the city, flooding San Marco, the edges of the Rialto, and the edges of every fondamenta and rio terra in the city. It was an incredible site.
The next day we went about our way again without any assignment aside from keeping Scarpa in mind. I traveled with Anisha for the most part, running errands and continually exploring and then we met up with Melodie, Ira, Mahati, and Juliet to go on a Gondola ride. We owed Melodie for her connection with Giamba, the gondolier who took us around. He took us on the longer route for the price of the shorter, and he was remarkable. He told us the history of Venice as he rowed us down the rios and the Grand Canal. He had an incredible voice, and an incredible way of telling stories. He was a true orator. While we heard music from other gondoliers, I couldn’t help but feel that we had gotten a special experience from Giamba rather than just an expensive, romantic outing that other people experienced. I suppose I forgot to mention one last odd part of our two-night stay in Venice.

We stayed in a convent. I had certainly never done that before, but it was very nice, if not very secure and secluded. The doors locked precisely at midnight and opened precisely at 6:00am so the few people who didn’t make it back on time stayed outside and slept elsewhere. The rooms were fine, but the best part was the courtyard and the balcony. There was an internal courtyard with tables and chairs to relax but on the second level there was a pure concrete patio with a couple of benches where you could lay out at night and watch the stars and the moon. It was a full moon just a couple of days ago so the moon was still particularly bright and lit up the city beautifully.

And now I am back in Monselice, preparing to start my final project (which will be explained tomorrow) and we will work in the Villa all week until we present on Friday. So there may not be anything interesting left until then, but then again there may be. This place constantly surprises me, and something exciting can happen at a moments notice. For now though, I will go to sleep again dreaming about the questions floating in my head from Brion, and Venice, Il Palazetto and IUAV, and see if I can incorporate any of them into my project.

Buona Notte.