Friday 29 February 2008

Sunday, March 2nd







Well, I wanted to use this post to show you a few pictures I took of my classroom (and my classroom cat, Gorey) and a few of my students.

As I assume you know but I'll tel you anyway, I work in a buxiban, which translates to "not a class". While buxibans are schools, they are all private and exist independently from a student's normal curriculum in public school. There are English, Piano, Dance and a number of other types of buxibans, but almost everyone goes to an English buxiban.

My first buxiban was a JOY School, one of the larger chains... the McDonalds of English, if you will. Looks good and smells good, but it sits in your gut... a huge focus on memorization of vocabulary, usually.

There are a number of chains across the island.. JOY, Giraffe, Sesame Street, but they're outnumbered (for better or worse) by the small independents.

My old bosses Ainjali and Axel (a Taiwanese woman and her German husband) started a buxiban well over a decade ago and have about 300 students. My current school was started about 4 years ago and has about 80 students. I teach four classes there, 2 hours each, twice a week, so 4 hours a day + prep time.

We also teach out in AnPing. That school's only 6 months old... I teach a number of classes there, Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Saturdays, I teach a broad Science class which has been fun. This is where Gosia teaches --- she teaches two classes four times a week.

These schools are in converted houses, which is very common for a buxiban.

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Wednesday (Thursday), February 27th (28th)

Well, it is Year of the Rat... so I suppose today was good luck? We've had an on and off visitor of the ratty variety -- there are numerous ways for one to get in... the drains, the door in the kitchen to the small outside trash/water heater area... it's not as creepy as it sounds. Taiwan is a rabies free zone. But still.

So, we were cleaning and Gosia opened that kitchen door and in it scurried, freaked out, and ran into the small kitchen bathroom, where it knows of a drain escape route. However, apparently, it has been dining well lately because it's fat butt could no longer fit through the drain!

It dove down, wiggled about, then came back out looking befuddled.

So we sent in Ethyl Merman to catch the rat... she sniffed it out, but then we became worried for the great dame's safety so we got her out. Then Gosia went in with the rat trap we'd gotten months ago and trapped it with the aid of a plunger.


Eli and Rhiannon watched the whole thing, Eli armed with a stick.

Then began the discussion as what to do with it....

Rhiannon was thrilled and suggested now it could live in their room, they could feed it and care for it and the like.

Eli just didn't want to kill it, since it was just doing it's thing and just made a mistake by coming inside. The rat squeeked it's own appeals for decency.

So, Eli and I got on the scooter with the rat and drove it over to the local recycling center/basketball court/mini dump and released it there.

Eli wished it a good life, and that's that.







Sunday 24 February 2008

Sunday, February 24th





















So, Saturday was a rainy day...

Calvin and I went out to get some sweet potatoes off the blue truck across the street... All of the livery trucks here are required to be painted blue -- some say because the drivers tend to take 'liberties" with road safety, don't sleep enough, and are hyped up on betel nuts, the law was passed so people could see them coming... but that may be a myth.

Often, an independent seller of various goods will open up shop out of the back of his truck on the side of a road. Often for culinary purposes. On our stretch of road alone we have a roasted chestnut seller (the roasting is done on the flatbed truck), an orange and fresh orange juice seller (squeezed on the truck) and the roasted sweet potato guy (also done all on the truck)...

One thing for Taiwan is that small businesses seem to be a heck of a lot easier to own than in some other countries I could name. I don't know what the class issues are exactly like-- many of the livery drivers and truck shop owners smoke endlessly and have the traditional red teeth, but it's a life, and the guy across the street has awesome roasting methods...

Today started cold and rainy (it was a cold, white knuckle drive to Mass!) but soon turned quite warm and sunny. I got to spend some time with out next door neighbor, who grown bonsai. He knows a lot about it, all the ins and outs of crafting a beautiful tree -- he learned it all off the internet, from somebody's blog! He's got 40 plants now, and he gave one he grew himself from a clipping to Rhiannon.

Some of the older ones he owns, he's found among the abandoned houses of old soldiers -- throughout the oldest areas of town, and this is the oldest city here, are mini towns of soldiers houses: tiny, I suppose two or three rooms houses, built maybe 100 together in a grid. All of the retired soldiers were given these houses, and now as they're dying off or are given newer apartments, these communities are being torn down to put up apartment building complexes.

To me, it's a bit sad. The houses aren't the best living environment, I'm sure, but anytime a whole way of life, however small or chilly, is flattened to make way for progress, however warm and well lit, the artist in me gets a bit depressed.

No amount of apartment buildings and townhouses can compare to the well used alleyways, the old water hand pumps, the trees grown through whole brick walls, and layers and layers of wires, posters, masonry and human life.

Well, anyway, a couple pictures of Rhiannon watching my neighbor and Angel working on the bonsais.

And today was Tomato Day!

I chopped the onions first, 5 of them, put them in a bottle's worth of vinegar boiled with mustard seeds, red pepper flakes and various spices + some olive oil.

Then Rhiannon and I chopped up 15 tomatoes and a cup of garlic. I sliced them and she diced them. She's dicing while watching the Simpsons.... Tomatoes are sold green and red here. I'm not sure what the green ones are used for exactly, but it's pretty common and they work fine. They're actually a little tougher than the red ones so they have a nice texture to absorb all the delicious vinegar.

Ah, vinegar!

Favored drink of Roman soldiers everywhere!

And a picture of the end product at the bottom... it should hopefully last us two weeks...


....and a movie at the very bottom!!



Wednesday 20 February 2008




Well, it's Lent in the Cur Family household...

We've given up coffee and the like, Eli and Rhiannon have given up crappy cartoons, and Calvin's given up cigarettes and whiskey.

So, Lent puts me in a sentimental mood. Aside from the more traditional reasons, it's the lead-up to Calvin being born. I thank God it was Lent when Calvin was born, and then Holy Week right after. It made it somehow more do-able, being surrounded by those days. For a while I resented Easter for leaving me behind. I felt like it should just stay Good Friday for the rest of the year.

When I took Gosia to the hospital, the only two things I grabbed for myself on the way out were my cell phone and my rosary beads. I don't know how many decades I must have said milling around, waiting for the fifteen minute surgery that turned into a three hour surgery to be over.

the whole pregnancy I'd just had this feeling that something was coming, something was going to happen. They took Calvin out of the Surgery room first, in a life support incubator, surrounded by doctors and nurses who were using a hand pump over his mouth to manually breathe for him until they could get him upstairs to the ICU... he was so pink, he seemed alive... at least they were honest with me, though. They did tell me how bad it was.

And then waiting, and waiting. I think I just prayed the Joyful Mysteries over and over again, the Birth of Christ, over and over again.

And when i finally got to see him I was surprised there was a baby under all the wires an tubes, and his life signs were all over the place. He was constantly having seizures, nothing was stable. I remember staring at the monitor, trying to will it to be stable. Just three breaths that look like one another... and he was so pale, by then, too...

And then Gosia was out of surgery, and after running around the hospital filling out forms and paperwork, I could finally see her, and I didn't know what to tell he so I told her everything, and then we could just try and deal with it somehow. But there was this gigantic hole.

We had him baptized in the ICU as soon as we could. Our priest, Father Joseph, came to do it. One of the nurses and myself helped, and I cried through the whole thing. He received Baptism first then Anointing of the Sick second. Gosia couldn't even be there, she hadn't been able to see him yet.

Days later, the first time Gosia saw Calvin, the first time he heard her voice, he jumped. He started breathing so deeply that it set off an alarm on his machines...

But that's what Lent is for me, and I was stuck in Lent for weeks after Easter... I'd say the rosary every day when driving to the hospital, back from the hospital, and it was always the Sorrowful Mysteries. For weeks, I prayed them over and over, not out of self pity-- it just held me in there. I was able to function because of that... because of those Mysteries. It kept me balanced, in perspective. It kept me from getting swept away into fear and wailing or the like.

Then finally, after a few weeks, I was able to let go. I was forced, or moved, or forced myself to let go and say the Glorious Mysteries... and nothing changed, but there was a cycle again. Birth, Death, and Resurrection.

And Calvin did come home, and now he's going to be two soon... But Lent is this big river of memories for me. Very vivid memories. Memories I still feel like I can walk through.

So, now I guess I got something out of my system... Electronic catharsis...

Sunday 17 February 2008

Sunday, February 17th



It's been quite nice during the day here, kind of like Spring... but at night and early mornings, it's pretty cold. These houses were NOT made for this kind of weather -- there are water pipes through windows in the bathroom and the like, so it's impossible to close a bunch of the windows... the floors are ALL tile (tile is a very popular building material here, it's all over houses, interior and exterior... and marble on the stairs) which I suppose is cooler for the Summer, but they've been rather chilly now.

This has been the coldest Winter in anyone's memory here. You can even see your breath on some nights... But the days are nice.

Also at the bottom are pictures of Calvin, post hair cut. We attacked his mop with scissors a few days ago.

Also, of Eli and Rhiannon conversing over how if they combine their New year's money, they can get an even bigger Transformer... They like playing Transformers together...

well, Sunday calls, so I'm off!












Tuesday 12 February 2008

Wednesday, February 13th

Well, it's back to teaching... New Year is behind us, I have a new class, Gosia has a new class, Eli and Rhiannon will be starting their classes... I still think Eli would be happier tending the goats, but for now it's grammar and writing.

At least goats give you cheese, all grammar ever gives me is a curdled headache -- at least now I get to share it with my students.

It's been cold (don't put your Winter blankets away until after Dragon Boat Festival!) so that's no good for Calvin.

He seizes up which makes swallowing tough, plus gagging/vomiting is more common. But he's doing well. He doesn't like it, but he's doing well.

Anyway, a picture of Eli and me watching Simpsons, and a couple of Ethyl Merman who likes to eat fried crunchy peas.

Our other two cats had to get surgeries, too. The brown one had a hemotoma (blood buildup between the skin and the cartilage) in her ear, and the white one is a male... he was starting to court Ethyl Merman and I'll have none of that, so we neutered him.

Plus a movie of Calvin at the bottom: he's in his chair, and you can see whenever he sort of drifts away, that's him having seizures. And after that... well, Calvin fell asleep on the floor in his anti-roll device...