The fifteenth day of the new lunar year is celebrated by the Chinese Lantern Festival. In Taiwan, there are many different celebrations in different cities, ranging from the dangerous firecracker extravaganza in Tainan where you can, for a small fee, have firecrackers aimed at you to bring you good luck, to the giant zodiac lantern carnival with a huge parade of colorful animal lanterns. We decided, however, to visit the Pingxi Sky Lantern festival, where each year, thousands of people flock to Pingxi to watch the hundreds of paper lanterns being released into the sky.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR! I’m really not one for crowds, so when I first found out that people would wait for hours to watch the fireworks for New Year’s at Taipei 101 (now the world’s second tallest building; although, at the time was the world’s tallest building), I was not really planning on going so close to see it. Taipei 101 is kind of like Taiwan’s Times Square event. And somehow, in the end, Deborah convinced me to go. So, from Shi Da, we slowly walked towards Taipei 101. We made it in time to hear a good portion of the concert at Taipei City Hall, including S.H.E. and a bunch of other groups that we weren’t familiar with.
When the time came, there was an awesome count-down. It was really cool to hear the countdown in Mandarin instead of English. And when the last “yi” was said, the fireworks began! It was definitely crazy to see fireworks being shot off at every angle and level of the tallest building in the world. Three minutes later, it was over and then after a while, Wang Lee-Hong’s concert began. Yes, you heard me right. Wang Lee-Hong!
Dec25
Words can’t describe how proud I am of my students and how much of a high I am on right now. We actually pulled it off! The school-wide Christmas performance that we’ve been working on non-stop for one whole month is over and boy, was it an adventure! Each of the eighteen homeroom classes of students had to sing and dance to an English song of at least 3 minutes long. Of course, they also wore matching costumes, included crazy props, and the school hired a professional lighting company to come in and provide appropriate amounts of smoke, bubbles, and laser lights to add to the performance. I mean, obviously, what would an elementary school Christmas performance be without laser lights and bubbles?
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It never occurred to me that Taiwan elementary schools would celebrate Christmas more intensely than America in its entirety. But, I was clearly fooled. Not only do they decorate like crazy, we of course have an extravaganza of a Christmas performance. Since no one actually celebrates Christmas here, the performance is on Christmas day…so I will be literally working all through Christmas.
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Nov20
So I have to admit that being a Fulbrighter does come with its perks. Like being invited to the fanciest Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever eaten in my life, hosted by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and its director William A. Stanton. We had everything from brie & crackers to smoked salmon to gourmet mashed potatoes, soup, crispy sourdough bread rolls (which are like impossible to find here in Taiwan), pumpkin pie, and a real Caesar salad.
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