Canadian Thanksgiving in Taiwan

Well, I have to say having multiple days off is wonderful. Thank you Taiwan for the moon festival, which statigically landed on my b-day, as well as 10/10 which is like their Canada Day here, all that wrapped into one weekend made for a nice 5 day weekend. I've had a great day today not really doing anything for once in the last couple of weeks. I've been sick for the past couple of days from food poisoning, and today I felt a little better, which was good. I didn't get sick from my yummy thanksgiving meal though, it was from my stupid lunchbox I had for lunch on Saturday after I taught my Focus class (ok maybe it wasn't exactly 5 full days off, but almost). Yeah I can't even go there and tell them their food made me sick because, well I can't communicate with them, so instead I'll just send mean glances there way when I walk past them on my way to bushiban. Yeah, power to the ignorant foreigners!

Anyhoo, back to my Taiwanese Thanksgiving weekend. Well Saturday after my Focus bushiban class I headed out to Taipei, and for once I didn't get ripped off from the taxi's here which was nice. Maybe I'm not giving off the stupid white girl vibe anymore that tells cabbies here they can over-charge me and get away with it, who knows. But I took the train there and the trip was really nice and scenic. There, Krista from my training group had prepared a salad with blue cheese, a bree appetizer, mashed potatoes, candied yams, and a veggie stir-fry. I know for all of you back home that doesn't sound like much, but when you eat rice and noodles everyday for at least 2 of your meals, you realise how much cheese means to you. Oh cheese....and salad how I've missed food like that. All in all the food was great, yes I threw it up a couple of hours later (sorry for the details) but for those few precious hours it was great. I was also really nice to reconnect with everone and bitch about our job with everyone. It's hard knowing who here has been brainwashed and who hasn't so you can't always trust people when you talk to them about work. Also I don;t want to get caught-up with the gossip scene here, so it was noce talking with people who all work at far away branches and feel the same as I do. The next day everyone went to Danshui to look around, but I felt sick so I headed home. Also Wendy lives there so I had already seen all of the touristy things there, been there, done that. Last night Japie and I hung out and went to Starbucks for a frapp. We were going to go for something to eat, but he had been feeling sick as well since Saturday. My theory is that HESS is secretly trying to poison us slowly, maybe from the air in the staff room.... Today I slept in, read the rest of my Bryce Courtney book called "Tandia", very good I must add, went downtown to buy some hairspray and light bulbs, and tonight I'm off to dinner with a bunch of HESS people to meet the brand new NST's. I'm not the new girl on the block anymore, which I'm very excited about. I'm somewhat knowledgable now...well somewhat. But enjoy my pictures. They're mostly of the dinner and the area around Krista's place. She lives right next to a University campus, and it's really beautiful. She actually has sidewalks! Real, clean sidewalks! It was very exciting for me. Seriously if you sent me a picture of a sidewalk from back home I'd probably get really excited, yes I'm a sad person.

-Lindsay

PS- As a lot of you know I can call you now from Skype. The website is skype.com I think and all you have to do is download the program, add me as a contact (lquinnell) and then we can talk to eachother over the internet for free. It's a little delayed as a lot of you found out which is a bit of a pain in the ass, but then I live in Taiwan and it's better than nothing. But see if your computer can handle the software, download it, but a microphone that you can plug into your computer and then we can talk to eachother.

PSS-ok blogger isn't letting me add my pics right now, but I'll try adding them later