COOKING!!!

I had a stress problem last week and, being an introvert, I desperately needed to both be productive and not have to interact with anyone while feeding myself, so I turned to my new oven for salvation.

Like a boss, I marched down the street into the local grocery store and started picking things out. I had no plan, only manic desire to create my own sustenance for the night. As I began selecting ingredients I realized there were parts of my brain waking up that had gone unused for months. Decisions were made in a flash, and I was a little astonished by the number of things I was evaluating and deciding upon in seconds. Chicken? Yep, good standard, I can cook that sixty ways into next week. Vegetable, I need something--potato. Chop, cook, done. Yes. Now for a topping, because potato and chicken are bland and they'll need flavor. Campbell's cream of mushroom soup with corn. Yep, that sounds like it'll have enough flavor, plus moisture to cook the meat and potato.

I got home and couldn't begin cooking fast enough. I was about to use a metal pan but switched it out for a glass one because I figured there was less chance of anything burning and sticking to the surface.

I washed the pan with dish soap, turned on the oven to let it heat, washed the potato, and started chopping.

That up in the corner is my amazing knife, which has a wicked-sharp serrated edge and nearly drew blood the first time I tested it. I love it to death. It made quick work of the potato (shown here in the metal pan, pre-pan-switch), which I spread along the bottom of the pan. Next came the soup, which had the consistency of paste. I spread it over the potatoes, then added what was probably a half cup of water and mixed it in to ensure there was enough moisture to go around.

Next, the chicken, which I sunk into the soup.

Then I put the pan into the oven, which was giving off massive amounts of heat and making me a bit nervous. (Nothing caught fire, though, so this story has a happy ending.) I was a little unsure of how to keep the oven at a particular temperature, but it generally hovered around 300F and I've cooked enough chicken in my life that all I need is a visual check of the inside to determine if it's safe to eat, so I didn't worry about that too much.

There is no good picture of the finished product in the pan because I was too busy eating it out of the pan (still in the oven) as soon as it was ready to remember that I was documenting anything.

I had no fork. I didn't care. The potatoes were soft and the chicken was tender and the soup added just enough salty flavor to make this the absolute best thing since everything ever (at the time). I'm now planning to attempt apple crisp for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because if there's one fall holiday tradition I intend to cling to, it's apples. Plus, given my experience here, I think it'll be decently easy.

As a side note, I ate most of the chicken/potato-thing that night and devoured the rest for breakfast and lunch the next day. I haven't had the chance to cook in forever and I had no idea how much I missed it. I'll be doing it again as soon as I can!

i found my soulmate (teahouse)

This place has giant glasses of tea, giant toast with Nutella, good wireless internet, and outlets for plugging in your computer. It's about 25 minutes from my house by bus.

Is this heaven?

voyagers

I am slowly and luxuriously chewing a mouthful of melted cheese mixed with pasta, tomato sauce and mushrooms. After swallowing, I reach for my glass of iced green tea to wash it down. Recorded piano music is playing and people are talking casually in Chinese. The tables have the dark, striped look of wood but the solid, flat feel of plastic. The chairs are big and sturdy and coffee-brown, with the appearance and texture of faux alligator skin.

I'm in Silly Boy, a restaurant near my home in Xinzhuang, Taiwan. I'm American, and I wouldn't be here if I wasn't a certain kind of person.

There's no reason for me to be in Taiwan. None. Five months ago, despite the absymal state of the job market in America, I had finally secured a decent job three years after graduating college. The office environment was friendly, my coworkers were fantastic, the pay was decent, and the job itself wasn't hard if you were talkative, friendly, and hard-working, which I am. Since securing that job, I'd begun to look at apartments, and with time, dedication, and perhaps a roommate, I could have found one that would serve me well. I could have worked hard, advanced within the company, and either reached a high point in that career or quit and taken my skills to a place that paid better or was better suited for me.

But because I am a certain kind of person, the prospect of doing that terrified me. The thought of achieving success this way was, for me, unthinkable.

Since accepting a job halfway around the world and diving into a culture whose language I don't speak and about which I know nothing, I can honestly say that my most miserable days here have fulfilled me far more than some of my best days working anywhere in America.

There are others like me. I've known many of them as friends, but I didn't realize that this particular personal trait existed so acutely within anyone until I came here and discussed travel with others who'd taken that leap. 

The other night, while chatting with a friend in a burger joint in Dunhua, the topic of why we decided to start travelling came up, and I realized that the response I was hearing from this friend mirrored those I'd heard from two other friends not a week ago in a tea house, and was very similar to what I'd heard from a friend in a restaurant the week before. Regardless of the fact that one friend was from Taiwan, one from the American midwest, one from the American far west and the forth from New Zealand, all of them expressed the same sentiment: they couldn't imagine living their entire lives in one place, encased within the comforting cocoon of one cultural experience, and never exploring beyond what they knew.

The common theme among these people, and which I've realized is also in me, is that this need to move beyond familiar boundaries is not simply a wistful desire or a lifelong longing of what could be. It's a fundamental part of what shapes our beliefs, of how we approach the opportunities in our lives. Some people are driven by corporate success, or the fulfillment of settling down and creating a stable, happy environment within which to live their lives (or raise their children). I think (and this is only based on my personal experiences) that people who are driven by the need to explore and travel are fulfilled by feeling slightly unstable, by always being a little (or extremely) baffled by something in their lives.

That I am like these people is the only reason I am in Taiwan; it is the only reason I will one day live in Japan, and why I may one day live somewhere else as well, should the desire for exploration strike. I could have stayed in America, lived a good life surrounded by my friends and family and done well for myself, but I know now that I would have died unhappy and unfulfilled.

Which, I guess, might, not only be a reason for me to be in Taiwan, but the best reason of all.

chicken hearts

The other day, myself and the other Shane teachers, Dennis and Jason, bade a sad goodbye to two of our TAs, who are going back to school.

Naturally, this called for going out and sharing epic food: BBQ.

This place is very close to my home by bus. We had to make a reservation, since it was Saturday, but once we were all there and inside, it was awesome. Each little dining area was on a raised platform with space under the table for your feet, and you took off your shoes before sitting down. We had a six-person table with two grills, one for each half of the table. The grill was literally a metal bowl with live coals in it and a grate on top. For NT$500 each, we were allowed to keep ordering as much raw food as we wanted to cook: beef, pork, seafood, vegetables, etc. We were also given a soup , which sat on a little gas burner between the two grills. Everyone got a little bowl and a shallow dish filled with sauce.

Once we sat down, we had two hours to eat as much as we could. We got down to business immediately.

 Yes. That's bacon.

 The white ones are abalone, I believe. I ate one, it was yummy but chewy.

It was great. We talked, we laughed, we ate lots of good food. I ordered pineapple cream puffs at one point that disappeared among us in seconds, and I saw whole fish half a foot long being cooked on the grill on the other half of the table. The grill that Angie (one of the TAs, I've changed her name here) and I dominated mostly ended up with brightly colored food, like whole shrimp (they started out grey and turned a scorching orange), abalone, and strips of meat. The other grill was covered in piles of food all turning crisp and brown, usually with one of the whole fish's tail sticking out on one side, with little flames licking through the trage. Angie and I had beauty-contest food, while our dinner companions had hardcore grilling action goin' on. :) BBQ is serious business!

Which brings me to the chicken hearts.

I knew what they were as soon as Angie put them on. Angie is stupendous; she's already traveled and worked abroad, she's fluent in English, and she is incredibly adventurous. She encouraged me to try a chicken heart, and I did. I couldn't help making faces while I ate it, which Angie and the other two girls thought was hilarious (and it totally was). Angie also had me eat chicken with soft bone in it (edible and safe, otherwise they wouldn't be serving it) and a piece of abalone. These are all things that I was hesitant to try, and although all three were exceedingly weird in texture, they weren't at all revolting in taste. The abalones were chewy, but tasted like regular white fish, which I like. The chicken heart tasted like chicken. The chicken bite with bone was a little like eating rubber, because I had to work to chew it up, but it wasn't bad.

Later that evening, after we'd all gone home, I thought about how I'd been reluctant to try the odd food, which hadn't actually been odd at all--just things I wasn't used to. They weren't even in the realm of eating bugs or domestic animals I'm more used to seeing as pets (for example, there are places in the world where guinea pigs are food, not companions)--in other words, foods way way outside my realm of experience or comfort. I eat chicken all the time in America, just not the hearts, and for some reason the very idea of putting an animal's heart in my mouth, chewing it up, and swallowing it grossed me out a little.

So tonight I bought some with my meal, because I think it's crazy for my brain to be influencing my opinion of perfectly edible food. I don't want my own hangups about what should be eaten get in the way of what I eat. I'm sure the aversion to eating unfamiliar or "odd" foods outside my culinary experience is an important survival trait, only eating what I've been taught to by my culture. But what if, given time and enough consumption, I end up liking chicken hearts? (My stomach churned a little at that, so I think I've a while to go.) For example, tofu is now a major part of my life. I eat it without thought. If you tell me something is tofu, I trust it. Everything from the taste to the texture makes sense to my palette. Experience, I think, is the key: if you have enough experience with something, be it a culture or a food or a type of person (race, gender, ethnicity, fashion sense, religious beliefs, etc.) you then know what to expect. Knowing what to expect is comforting. Too many surprises can be stressful, and not knowing what will happen if you eat a food or do something that's "normal" to you in a foreign culture or say something to a type of person you're not familiar with could have unexpected consequences, and without enough experience, you have no idea what those consequences might be.

Getting out of your comfort zone can be tough. I'm sure some people are better at it than others. I like taking the time to mull things over before deciding what I think. I need time to think, process, and absorb. I prefer to think something over for a while before going ahead and trying it. But sometimes, such as with the chicken hearts, it just needs to be accomplished right when the opportunity comes up, and not later when you "feel like it," because who knows when that will be? I'm glad Angie was there to push me into eating chicken hearts, and abalone, and chicken with cooked bone ("Chew, chew, chew!") because I'll remember it then next time I'm presented with the opportunity to try something new, and I'll be much better equipped to let go of my reservations and eat the proverbial chicken heart.

thirst

One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of drinks available in Taiwan. Tea, milk, drinkable yogurt, fruit juice, coffee, and many combinations of those. While out with friends this evening, we stopped at a tea stand to get drinks. Then, later, I was in the grocery store looking at all the drink options available because I was thirsty, but I didn't want to just drink water. This made me wonder if maybe the reason there are so many different liquids to drink here is because people need to consume lots of water, and drinking water all the time would be just plain boring.

Think about it. How much water do you drink daily? Maybe 20oz? 40? That's at least 2 standard-sized bottles of water. What about on hot days, how much do you drink? What if it was that hot almost every day for five-odd months at a time? How much water could you really consume on a daily basis before you said, "Man, this is DULL. I wanna drink something different."

I think this is in the States a bit already, what with "flavored" water and all, but I still think it's more like a treat, a way to make the chore of drinking water tasty. Around here liquid is essential to your day. Some mornings I sweat a profuse amount just getting from my front door to work. Then I sweat when I'm in the classroom, and when I go outside for lunch, and then when I go home, and again if I go outside for dinner... See where this is going? Plus, when you're moving around so much, I think you lose more water anyway, so drinking something to put water back in your body is really important.

And that's my random thought for the day.

english is stupid, difficult, hard, crazy, blah blah blah

The title of this post is the official stance of my CE12 students on the subject of the English language. Considering English just another class they have to take after having been at school all day, I don't blame them. Still, I don't think that's reason for them to not get something out of the experience of learning another language.

The students took the test for this unit last week, and there was no official material to complete today, so I winged it. I let my students make a list of what they thought of English, and it was hilarious that they were using English to tell me they thought English was "stupid, difficult, hard, crazy, blah blah blah."

I used my Mandarin dictionary/language guidebook to illustrate what Chinese literally translates to in English, so they could see the differences between how they construct sentences in their language and how the same thing is put together in English. I doubt it changed their entire perspective of English or made them love it. (*hysterical laughter*) But I think it's important to take time to discuss language as a language, and examine it from a perspective you're familiar with. Although there's a policy of "no Chinese in the classroom!" which I personally enforce as best I can, I thought it was important today to let them bring a little of their language in so they could compare it with what they're learning.

They caught on, too. I wrote sentences like "I have a camera." and "They need to go to the toilet.", then the literal Chinese translations, which were "I have camera." and "They need go toilet." I had the kids tell me what a few other sentences would be directly translated from Chinese, and then we went over the words that are omitted, like "to" and "for" and "a" and "the," and the ending "s" for plurals. In Chinese, you have 1 dog or you have 5 dog. You don't have "a dog" or "5 dogs." The kids very often leave out words that don't pertain to the main idea of what they're trying to say: "Yesterday I play computer game." As far as their language is concerned, they know the word for the "when" (yesterday), the action (play), the who (I), and the "what" (computer game). In English, though, this sentence is a total mess. WHEN did you play computer games? Did you play 1 computer game, or many? Did you play specific games, or just computer games in general?

English has a demand for specificity in the structure of the sentence that the kids aren't familiar with, so they have a hard time remembering when they need the "s" or where the prepositions go, or what tense they're in and how they'd change the verb to convey that. A lot of beginning students struggle with he/she, because in Chinese there's just "ta." In their language, there is no reason for them to differentiate between the male person and the female person when discussing someone else, so remembering they have to do so in English frustrates them.

So what I hoped to do today was get them thinking, at least, about how the languages are different and how they are the same. I told them flat out: English is crazy. I wrote, "I buy shoes every day." and "I bought shoes yesterday." Then, "I walk every day." and "I walked yesterday." I pointed out walk/walked vs buy/bought, and asked them why one had "ed" and the other changed completely for "yesterday". They gave me the "Teacher, it's because your language is f***ing loony toons" look, and I said, "Because English is crazy."

I pointed out to them, though, that Chinese has four or five different ways to say many words (such as ma), and that to me, that was crazy. That was hard. So even though languages are different and can be hard to learn, they're not stupid, although they are difficult and crazy and blah-blah-blah.

I have no idea if they got anything out of this, but I hope it makes them think. I hope it opens a window for them mentally so even if they never like English, they can see it as a language in its own right and start thinking about it as something they have to approach with an open mind.

1300 views!

I have a confession: I'm a bit of a view-count watcher. I've been watching the number of views my blog has gotten and it hit 1300 today. It's probably from about five people viewing it again and again, but still, I'm glad I've put up enough stuff often enough that you guys still find it interesting, so hooray!

visuals

Pictures taken nearby Taipower Station in Taiwan.