The donuts here aren't sweet at all, and the Taiwanese students at my school think Hershey Kisses are too sweet. Hold up one second--about the Kisses: for one, their name is deceiving, which always ground my gears. Secondly, Hershey's chocolate is chalky in texture, namely its "milk" variety, and was therefore long ago, filed alongside those marshmallow peanuts, Necco wafers, and that hard, strawberry candy with the cute wrapper but the gooey middle in my memory's "Ooh, you nasty!" folder. I love candy! And the philoso-foodie in me loves discussing candy! So I tell my high school kids that the sweetness of Hershey Kisses is only a surrogate argument for those concerning the chocolate's much deeper flaws. If my opinions on sweets were downloaded files, I'd need an external hard drive in order to store them all.*
All Geek Squad jokes aside, my love relationship with sugar has changed since moving to Taiwan. Not that we both got busy, or that it facebook IM'd me one day when I was away from my computer and then I was too lazy to ever respond via message and eventually just suppressed the guilt--no, no, none of that. I am still eating and drinking more sugar than my mitochondria (look it up) can handle, I just "don't know" that I am. For instance, I was enjoying a very tasty breakfast pastry on a moderately regular basis until one of my 9th grade students translated the Chinese characters upon my asking of the question: "Hey Ann, will you read me the nutrition facts on this wrapper?" I'm not going to talk about the weight I've gained. Every young American blogging from abroad blogs about that as if it were some strange phenomenon happening to them, and the subject is tired. I will simply take you along on my quest to find sweets that I actually like here.
Asian Sugar Adventure, Part I: Milk tea, bubble tea, or in Chinese pinyin, "jin ju nai cha." There are rumors among Taiwanese women that milk tea makes you fat. Well, the condensed powdered milk I could care less about, and, after two months of being here, God has finally given me the anointing to at least be able to utter "only half the sugar" and "I don't want sugar" in perfect Mandarin. But the starchy tapioca balls are where they get ya on calories, as I've learned from www.nutritiondata.com since writing the sentence before this one. More than worrying about the nutrition facts of my jin ju nai cha, I struggle to understand how the oh-so-satisfying, chewy, yet slippery jin ju "pearls" have not caused enough people to choke to death, so as to have them made completely illegal across the entire continent of Asia. Maybe it'd be a good thing. "'Mongolian tapioca cartel investigations replace those of illicit opium in 2018' -AP, 01/24/2019." No, but seriously, I've come close to inhaling a pearl through my giant straw more than once. Scary stuff, man.
Asian Sugar Adventure, Part II: Fruit. The Grace Christian Academy school cafeteria does not serve desserts, as we Americans know dessert. But there is fruit every day, and biologically speaking (or "The Maker's Diet"-ally speaking), our bodies are designed to break down fructose quite well, whereas table sugar, not so much. Supposedly. But Asian fruit is better, so I don't miss dry cafeteria brownies that much, anyway. Some of you have already been subjected to my boastful exaltation of jujubes, which I don't think are imported into the U.S. They should be, though. They are like apples, but much crispier, not as "mealy," easier to bite into and chew, and the sweet hits a different part of the tongue, and a never-struck chord of an American fruit-lover's heart. Besides the bananas being smaller (yay, GMO-free eating!), I've found that most fruit here tastes better than it does in the States. Some in-Asia-only fruits that I don't care for that much are wax apples, whose name advertises a ballpark idea of their flavor and texture, and certain species of yellow Asian pears whose peels taste like the same cardboard box they arrived to the grocery store in. Bleckh!
Sugar Adventure Part III [Overview]: Taiwanese patisseries are filled with nomnoms, "Glutinous" (pronounced just like "gluttonous") rice balls filled with peanut butter, the Sprite tastes more refreshing here, and yet another breakfast disappointment, to find out that what I thought was a pre-packaged simple white bread and blueberry jelly sandwich, is literally cake, and to find that I liked it enough to still eat it for breakfast even after knowing this information. And "GIANT" Pocky Sticks, nearly a foot long and half an inch in diameter! Not to give you fine folks the impression that I lack self control or something, because I definitely do...but food is one of the biggest obstacles to assimilating into a new culture, so...throw me a frickin' bone, here. That reminds me: remind me to tell you about Taiwanese dogs and their poop in the next blog. (That was to ruin your appetite, in case you were getting hungry reading this...and to use the word poop for the first time in my blog.)
*My classroom and office are right next to the tech-crew computer guys' room, so I am slowly learning words like "terabyte" and colloquial phrases like "deep space nine."
Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!
The young lions suffer want and hunger;
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
-Psalm 34:8,9,10.
3/11/2011
Transit. And, about the not-sending-any-post-cards-yet part: j/k. I'll send 'em soon.
Hope you didn't mind that I included the prologue in the title. That was a writing first for me.
Five weeks in. My favorite thing about living here remains the MRT, Taipei's subway system. I beep through the automatic gate with my convenient MRT card, head down the escalator, put my headphones in and choose one of my many newly downloaded....what--what's that? oh, yeah--Taiwan has no download laws. But uhhh...then again, what do I know? I jay walk, I stare at strangers, even smile at some. I don't know the laws or the culture, I'm an American! A lot of Americans here get around riding "ghost scooters." They'll buy a scratched-up $500 Vespa with no license plate, no riding license, no nothing. Often the police will pull over a scooter-er for the absence of plates, but once they flash their U.S. driver's license, and kindly say "I don't speak Chinese, I'm an English teacher here," the policeman will usually smile back and let them go no probrem. I've considered getting a Vespa.Whether the Ghost Scooters will accept me after our top secret meeting this weekend is still in question. OH! Back to legal transportation, the MRT. So then I'll put on some good music, sit back, and let the sight of hundreds of Taiwanese people just getting off of work or going to visit their grandfather soothe me. I'm so inspired by this new-found medium of people-watching. Suddenly my journal pages are filling up with people poems, written in my illegible quick cursive.
Most people I know love to people watch. I know where this awe comes from. Out of everything that God created, people are the only thing, or beings, created in his image. And since God is the most beautiful sight, or being--whatever, well, that puts you and me in a very close 2nd, my friend. I heard somewhere that for every male-female human combo (...how's that for Christian high school birds and bees lingo, eh?) there are six billion different ways for their DNA to combine to make up that of their offspring. Six billion. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made." It must take God a long time to decide on which combination of genes would be best for every baby that is born. And we girls think making decisions at DSW is hard.
I haven't sent any postcards yet. But riding on the MRT while my Taipei 101 postcards sit in my desk drawer waiting for me to care about someone back home has caused me to realize something. When the thought occurred to me, it was a WWJD moment--and probably the first moment since 1999 that I've classified a realization as such: If the Lord went to a foreign place and sent you a post card, there wouldn't be a photo of snow-capped cliffs or a white sand coastline, or even an orangey-purplish sunset (although those get me every time, don't they you?) on the front of it. The post card photo would be a snapshot of someone from that country. Of anyone. Not even a pretty person, per-se. Just someone. Because they're created in his image. And they are his most precious possession, his most time-consuming masterpiece. So while we eat Snyder's of Hanover and "ooo" and "wooow" over the Travel Channel's "World's Top 10 Beaches," God is "ooo"ing and "wow"ing over you, and over the short, plump, gray haired lady dozing off on her way home, or to who knows where, on my MRT.
Five weeks in. My favorite thing about living here remains the MRT, Taipei's subway system. I beep through the automatic gate with my convenient MRT card, head down the escalator, put my headphones in and choose one of my many newly downloaded....what--what's that? oh, yeah--Taiwan has no download laws. But uhhh...then again, what do I know? I jay walk, I stare at strangers, even smile at some. I don't know the laws or the culture, I'm an American! A lot of Americans here get around riding "ghost scooters." They'll buy a scratched-up $500 Vespa with no license plate, no riding license, no nothing. Often the police will pull over a scooter-er for the absence of plates, but once they flash their U.S. driver's license, and kindly say "I don't speak Chinese, I'm an English teacher here," the policeman will usually smile back and let them go no probrem. I've considered getting a Vespa.Whether the Ghost Scooters will accept me after our top secret meeting this weekend is still in question. OH! Back to legal transportation, the MRT. So then I'll put on some good music, sit back, and let the sight of hundreds of Taiwanese people just getting off of work or going to visit their grandfather soothe me. I'm so inspired by this new-found medium of people-watching. Suddenly my journal pages are filling up with people poems, written in my illegible quick cursive.
Most people I know love to people watch. I know where this awe comes from. Out of everything that God created, people are the only thing, or beings, created in his image. And since God is the most beautiful sight, or being--whatever, well, that puts you and me in a very close 2nd, my friend. I heard somewhere that for every male-female human combo (...how's that for Christian high school birds and bees lingo, eh?) there are six billion different ways for their DNA to combine to make up that of their offspring. Six billion. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made." It must take God a long time to decide on which combination of genes would be best for every baby that is born. And we girls think making decisions at DSW is hard.
I haven't sent any postcards yet. But riding on the MRT while my Taipei 101 postcards sit in my desk drawer waiting for me to care about someone back home has caused me to realize something. When the thought occurred to me, it was a WWJD moment--and probably the first moment since 1999 that I've classified a realization as such: If the Lord went to a foreign place and sent you a post card, there wouldn't be a photo of snow-capped cliffs or a white sand coastline, or even an orangey-purplish sunset (although those get me every time, don't they you?) on the front of it. The post card photo would be a snapshot of someone from that country. Of anyone. Not even a pretty person, per-se. Just someone. Because they're created in his image. And they are his most precious possession, his most time-consuming masterpiece. So while we eat Snyder's of Hanover and "ooo" and "wooow" over the Travel Channel's "World's Top 10 Beaches," God is "ooo"ing and "wow"ing over you, and over the short, plump, gray haired lady dozing off on her way home, or to who knows where, on my MRT.
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