Week 18: Coldmen (Kinmen but Cold)

This whole week's been pretty cold. Although temperatures have only technically dipped into the 40s (Fahrenheit), the wind chill and lack of central heating account for a lot. The cold hasn't (completely) stopped our cohort from hanging out and going to local events though!

On Monday, I didn't feel well, so I took a sick day and stayed home. I didn't do much: laundry, groceries, work. It was a pretty laidback day. Then I had a presentation in Chinese class, then scooted home.

Tuesday was my first day of the work week back at Jhou Huan, so waking up was a little hard. The weather, which was windy, rainy, and cold, didn't help either. I taught all my classes and got my lesson planning done, then just did errands and whatnot.

Wednesday and Thursday were similarly miserable in terms of weather. On Wednesday, I wore four layers of shirts, two coats, and two layers of pants. Unfortunately, I was still wet and cold for most of the day.

I taught in the morning at Jhou Huan, went to a workshop in Jinhu, then came back to JHES for Chinese folk dance. The girls were running dress rehearsals in their costumes, and they looked absolutely lovely! I now understand why my mom loved taking photos of me in my costumes as a kid.

Thursday was pretty relaxed—teaching was relatively smooth, and for part of the afternoon, the whole school just watched the documentary "Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above". During my lunch break, I went back to the Little K honey shop with my partner, and we learned the name of the cat who lives there. His name is Orange!

I'm not sure if teaching's getting easier, but I think that on average, the kids are less rowdy than they were a couple weeks ago. Some of them are definitely burnt out, though.

Back at home, my partner and I tried a new fried chicken place for dinner, then scooted to class. Thursday was our last class before our exam, so the whole class was a review. Even though the exam isn't meant to be particularly stressful, I'm definitely at least a little stressed about it.

Friday was another EV day. Myself and the other Friday EV ETAs did our teaching, got lunch, taught our review session, and also helped prepare for Saturday's Christmas teaching event. Pretty chill. Later that evening, we had a movie night at the Jinning apartment, and we watched Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love", which was pretty good.

Most of our weekend energy was spent on Saturday. One of the other ETAs and I had our community service storytelling at the Jinning library that morning. It went well! We read "Caps for Sale", which is a classic English children's book about a peddler who sells colored caps and the monkeys who steal them from him.

Even though the kids were a little shy at first, I think they had a fun time listening to the story and playing games. We also colored paper hats and even taught a couple of the older kids how to fold them.

After us and a couple other ETAs had lunch together, I did some work, then drove to the Christmas festival in Jinsha to meet up with some other ETAs. There were performances by local dance groups, a tree lighting ceremony, and a little market. I also got to check out Shamei Old Street, aka Little Morocco.

Once I'd had dinner at the Indonesian restaurant, I went back to Jincheng and got ready for that evening's cohort event: the pair party. One apartment of ETAs had arranged everyone in the cohort into pairs, then had each team draw a theme to choose their costume. Throughout the evening, all the pairs competed in various events, including a blindfolded obstacle course, stacking cups using only balloons, and poor man's Just Dance.

My pair partner and I were given the theme "Kinmen/Taiwan", so we dressed up as the Kinmen bridge! Among other costume themes, the other pairs had dressed up as idioms (to hit the sack), myths (Paul Bunyan and his blue ox), and infamous duos (Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani). Even though my pair partner and I didn't win, we did pretty okay, and we won one of the rounds of the drawing game.

Sunday was the coldest day of the week, so I spent 90% of it huddled by my space heater in my apartment. I mostly just did work and vibed, but also briefly ran errands. Hotpot night was especially cozy since the weather was so cold. We reserved our usual room, then chatted for a while. Among other things, we ended up with a new nickname for the ETA who has family from Harbin: Harbaby. 10/10, would make an excellent rapper name.

Besides the temperature, the week was pretty good. A little tiring, but good. Honestly, it doesn't feel real that it's about halfway through December. 2023's in a couple weeks! Unreal!

It's been a good year, I think: lots of firsts and lasts. I had my last semester of college, first real apartment, and last summer in Pennsylvania (before Taiwan). This year's also brought my first time living abroad for longer than a month and my first time in Taiwan. It's been fun.

Writer's Note: This post was originally written on Tuesday, December 20th, 2022.