What's the deal?

OK so here are the basics of my trip.

My college roommate came to visit me. It's the furthest she has ever been from home (of course) and the longest she has gone on a vacation that didn't involved her parents.

I already told you about our first couple of night so I'll skip to the rest.

Sunday is where the fun started.

Meghan and I grabbed some dan bing (geez, I can't get enough of that stuff) and we hopped on a plane to Manila. After a moment of confusion and stressing out over the fact that we didn't have pesos so we couldn't use a pay phone to call Meghan's cousin who was meeting us at the airport, he found us.

Thank goodness, because I get a little panicky.

Manila was relatively uneventful, which I guess is a good thing.

Honestly, it was just a little different than what I expected. We were staying with her cousin who is an American businessman living in The Philippines working for a company in Hong Kong. He has this fabulous house, amazing (and gracious) wife, two adorable sons, three maids/nannies and a driver.

That's living the high life. And thus, we lived the high life for a couple of days to.

When we arrived that afternoon, Troy and Loren (his wife) took us to Tagatay. It's an active volcano with a lake and an island in the middle.

Unfortunately, the clouds had set in by the time we made it up there, so this is what we saw.


If you squint really hard you can see the ripples in the water, but the island is pretty much impossible to see. It was still pretty and peaceful though, so we had snacks.

The next day we pretty much just hung around for the morning. We were woken up with a gigantic (Western) breakfast. Eventually Meghan and I decided we wanted to go to Intramuros.



Intramuros, inside the walls, is the oldest area in Manila, built by the Spanish, most of which was destroyed in WWII. You can still see parts of the wall, Fort Santiago and a couple of super old churches.



They have this amazing shrine to Dr. Jose Rizal. After his execution by the Japanese, the Filipinos rose into rebellion. I honestly couldn't repeat the whole story, but it's a very romantic story when you hear it told by a Filipino tour guide. Ours was actually quite excellent. He did the whole tour in a horse-drawn carriage for 250 Philippine Pesos per person. I recommend it.

After Intramuros we headed over the The Hobbit House. This is a bar staffed almost entirely by little people. Yep. Just think Hobbit. It opened in the '70s and is basically Lord of the Rings themed. It's owned by an Irishman and therefore sells hundreds of amazing beers. Unfortunately we chose to go on a Wednesday night in October, so it was dead.

We also went to a wet market (you know how much I love open-air markets) to buy tons of fresh-out-of-the-water seafood. A restaurant right next to the market cooked it all up for us. It was such a nice night.

Then it was off to Bohol for our beach time.

Now remember all that panicking I was doing? You know how I was obsessing over the weather?

Well, it all pretty much disappeared as far as The Philippines went (though Meghan didn't have one cloud-free day in Taiwan).


Alona Beach was gorgeous and everything I hoped it would be. We had a room at an awesome resort and it wasn't crowded at all. I highly recommend Alona (on Punglao Island) if you're going to The Philippines. It's so wonderful.

The only thing that bothered me is that people kept saying that we were rich because of the resort we were staying at. It baffled me because I'm anything but rich and honestly, I found a fabulous package deal.

We could have actually done stuff cheaper, but I didn't know that at the time considering I had never been there.

I found this package that got us three nights stay, breakfast everyday, a one-hour massage and a tour of the big Bohol tourist spots. All for about $600/each. I'm happy with that. Like I said though, we could have done it cheaper, but this was safe and easy. You pay for luxuries like that.

On the tour we went to the Blood Compact site, Baclayon Church (also known as Immaculate Conception Church), Loboc River (where we went on a lunch cruise through the rain forest on a bangka), the Chocolate Hills (which were beautiful) and the Tarsier Sanctuary.


Either way, at the beach it was pretty much nothing but watermelon margaritas and San Miguel Pale, a ($5) massage every day and beautiful views.

The Philippines were amazing. The people were so nice and it was kind of nice to take a break from thinking in two languages all of the time.

Is she back yet?

OK, I have been having some severe problems with the Blogger editor and since I was on vacation I didn't want to stress over them too much. But I promise you that I have been dying to tell you all about my trip and seeing my best friend!

Alas, I have class in an hour and a half, so for now I will leave you with some glorious pictures of all our fun. I'll actually write about everything after class. (I've had a few cups of coffee today so I'm nearly positive I'll have enough energy.)

I'm so excited to get back to work today to see my babies.

Oh and one last thing before the picture parade.

I am now officially a student correspondent for GlobalPost.com. My first story went up with the pre-launch copy and now the whole Study Abroad portion of the Web site it up and running. The Study Abroad site compiles stories, photos, video and other multimedia from students studying abroad and recent graduates (ahem) who are traveling over seas.

Check out my story. Then check out some from the other correspondents.

There are some very talented young people involved in this project and I am so excited to be a part of it.

Now for the picture parade:

Fort Santiago at Intramuros in Manila City.

Wet market in Manila where we bought the yummiest seafood and had a
nearby restaurant cook it up for us and make it even yummier.

Me at Baclayon Church. The tour guide told "You are dressed to sexy," as she
started to drape me with these little satin pieces of cloth.

Loboc River. We took a little lunch cruise and it was absolutely beautiful.


The Chocolate Hills. This place is gorgeous and it goes on and on forever.

Why did you hit me?

So the stress related to my trip to The Philippines is taken care of. Meghan's cousin said we're still good to go and it's safe to come to Manila. He will be picking us up from the airport on Tuesday!

One week!

Any suggestions for what to do in Manila? I spent a lot of time researching Bohol and beaches and such but I didn't think about Manila.

Back to Taiwan and my current life though.

One of my kids hit me today. It's kind of my fault and kind of his. We play a lot before class and during break. We always Paper Scissor Stone and the winner usually acts like we're hitting each other (though we never actually do).

At the end of class we were all up dancing and singing but he kept putting his jacket over his head. I pulled it off and took it from him and he just kind of smacked me in the top of my chest.

This is the same child who tried to kiss me before class.

I don't think he meant to hit me as hard as he did and he probably meant it to be more playful than it came off, but I still had to put my foot down. Putting my foot down means getting Angela to translate and tell him he can't do that because he's still too young to understand me in English.

I told my kids in my second class that I wouldn't be there next week and they thought they were getting a new teacher. You should have seen their faces. They were devastated.

It's good to know they like me that much.

I cleared it up pretty quickly too.

I had an awesome Tuesday. I love that this week is going so well.

Ni xi bu xihuan wode shin fa shin?

So I got my hair cut yesterday.

I've been itching to get it done for awhile but I was terrified to. I've heard horror stories from other foreigners about massive amounts of layering, helmet head and ultimately, "They don't know how to handle white people hair."

I showed the girl a couple of pictures and another stylist translated for me as I told her what I did and didn't like about the cuts. I like the way it turned out.

It was a pretty good Monday though. I really love my very first class of the week. It's huge btu they're so smart and active.

I know, I sound like a broken record.

But they even told me that they really like my haircut (and taught me how to say haircut in Chinese).

Otherwise, I am just counting this week down until I can go to the airport to pick up my Meghan! I'm so excited she's coming.

The only bad thing is Tropical Storm (now Typhoon) Ketsana just blew through The Philippines and flooded 80 percent of Manila. Even areas that never flood flooded. This could make our two days in Manila a little difficult.

We're waiting on news from her cousin to see if Manila is still an option. Otherwise we might just go straight to Bohol. For that matter though, I'm waiting to hear back from the hotel to find out if Bohol was affected by the storm.

If so, vacation Philippines may take a last minute change to turn into vacation Thailand (which would still be awesome) and my roommate Tess will be there. (Though Ketsana is also forecast to bring a ton of rain to Thailand as well...)

So much to worry about! This is what I get for traveling during monsoon season.

It's OK though, I get to see my sweet babies tonight! I'm pretty sure Tuesdays are my favorite days of all because I love both of my classes.

Would you rather I call you or teach these kids?

Apparently I've been uber stressed out.

I'm sure it was the demo I had on Saturday, which is finally over.

I think someone from head office spoke to me everyday this week about this demo and I even had the hiring manager leave a message for me to call her while I was in the class that I have right before the demo.

Um, would you rather I call you or teach these kids?

I got through it though.

Although it still went super fast (I ended up with the same number of kids as my other News Camp demo) we managed to drag it out a little bit. I had to do give comments about each student to the parents. Although, I didn't realize I was going to have to do that in front of everyone.

Naturally I thought I would speak to each student and his or her parents one-on-one.

I tried to do the usual give a compliment and an area to work on.

A couple of the parents were actually really nice. One mom even told me that her son called her and asked her not to come because he was so embarrassed so she was just happy I managed to get him to speak in front of everyone.

After the demo I played scattergories with the kids using different sections of a newspaper as the categories (i.e. national, international, entertainment, sports). After watching that the parents commented to Anita that they think the kids really did actually learn a lot.

After all my classes I came home starving. The only thing I had eaten all day was an apple at 8 a.m. By the time I had returned to my apartment it was almost 7 p.m. Of course, despite my hunger, I managed to eat the tiniest bit of pasta and then I just wasn't hungry anymore.

The exhaustion was setting in.

I watched The Hangover and passed out waking up about an hour later when one of my roommates came home.

I still didn't end up going to sleep for the night until about 1 a.m. I find that a bit disappointing.

I was supposed to go to Yangmingshan to go hiking today but I opted to stay home to rest and read. I realized how stressed out I had been when I woke up and realized my body was as stiff as can be from clinching my muscles all night in my sleep. Obviously I wasn't well rested and definitely not rested enough to climb a mountain in this heat and humidity.

I probably would have been awake enough once I got to the mountain since it would have taken a couple of hours to get there, but I was just not in the mood to travel.

Instead I slept and read on and off all day until I decided I was hungry enough to make myself finally eat something besides the bowl of cereal I ate this morning while I contemplated whether or not to take the hike.

I went to Debbie's (the little American-ish diner nearby) and then Starbucks for some coffee. I still only ate half of my tuna melt and a couple of french fries.

My appetite has been strangely small lately. I honestly have no idea why.

I'm going to force myself to resume yoga tomorrow. I bought a ribbon and a couple of other accessories to make it a better workout. Hopefully I can get into a routine.

I'm also debating a hike up Tiger Head mountain a couple of times a week. It's close and a relatively easy hike (according to everyone else at least). I think would be nice to do in the morning time.

Besides, if I'm going to be hiking in the Chocolate Hills in The Philippines in a month I had better get in shape!

Why would you buy a shirt that doesn't make sense?

Today was such a long day.

I had seven hours of classes with only a 30 minute break. I don't understand how these kids go to school all day like this. I'm exhausted!

My news camp went a little better today thanks to Breaking News English. They actually have full lesson plans for ESL classes that revolve around a news story.

We had a fairly thoughtful discussion and even one of the girls who never talks in class actually got in on the conversation. Her brother was still non-participative. Oh well, you can't win them all I guess.

I think next week we're going to have to start working on demo stuff though.

I had two yellow book classes tonight. The second one is the class that the administration has been freaking out about. Apparently, the kids and the parents didn't like the past teachers' styles. They wanted someone that was more fun? Warmer? I don't know. I actually got mixed information on what it is the parents want to change. That's unhelpful.

We had a lot of fun in that class today though. We played a lot of games but still got everything we needed to done. I feel like they probably liked me. It would be nice to have another regular class.

After class I walked from school to the night market. It's kind of a far walk — about 25 minutes — but it felt pretty nice out. Ya know, considering I'm in Taiwan.

On the way, I stopped at this street vendor to look at the shirts. Taiwanese fashion is so... hilarious. I bought this long shirt (almost like a dress). It has big silver letters that look like they belong on a sign at a record store and it says "Time 2 Make 2 Street Burn." It almost makes sense, but it falls just short.

I know it sounds ridiculous: "Why would you buy a shirt when you know the words on it don't make sense?"

Because of the Taiwan-fab party at the Romantic Paris Mansion tomorrow night!

The other awesome thing that happened today: Meghan bought her plane ticket to Taiwan today! Meghan is my roommate from college and she is one of my best friends. I convinced her to blow tons of money on coming to Taiwan in October and we're going to The Philippines together.

Vacation is now certain!