Monday, February 05, 2007

Chinese New Year Holiday, Part 1

The reason I have called this post 'Part 1' is because I and all the other foreign teachers were meant to get two consecutive weeks of holiday during Chinese New Year in February. However, my school had other plans. Our contracts read that 'teachers get two weeks of holiday in CNY'. Well of course, we all believed that that meant 'two weeks together'. However, the school said that we had misunderstood our English contracts (which were written by a native English speaking person) and that 'two weeks of holiday' does not necessarily mean 'two weeks together' and that it was our fault for making that assumption. The funny thing is, that 'two weeks of holiday in the Summer' does mean 'two consecutive weeks'. Mmmmmm, strange that!

So instead, we had to put up with having one week of holiday in Jan, coming back to work for two weeks, and then leaving again for CNY holiday.

So part 1 of my holiday was spent in Chiayi and the area around it. On the first day, Leeza (another teacher) and I drove to Chiayi to meet Helena and Craig (who used to work there before joining our lovely school in Tainan!) Props to them for being great guides, thanks to them we saw such great sights as the, the 'abo' (aboriginal restaurant), the earthquake building (an apartment block with great views but built upon a fault line!), a fantastic bagel shop, a great bakery and the much hyped 'M store'; where teachers gather at night to chill. And I have to say, I really enjoyed driving around Chiayi, its a great little city, very chilled, lots of countryside nearby and lots of old alleys to explore.

The next day, we drove up to Ruili, a tea growing village in the mountains. Whilst there we wondered through tea fields, did a bit of KTV, walked through bamboo forests (actually, it was just I who went to the bamboo forest, nobody else seemed to share my enthusiasm for taking photos of bamboo!) and obviously, drank some tea!

The last part of the trip was spent in Alishan, a National Park famous for hiking, its mountain scenery, giant cedar trees, and the view of the sunrise. To get there, you have to ride the super special train (only three of its kind in the world!) which works its way up the mountain. I'm told the scenery is amazing, and I would have gotten photos had I not fallen asleep!
Alishan was great, I did a bit of hiking through the forest (didn't get any good photos of the trees as none of them really showed how tall the trees were) and woke up at 5am just to see the sunrise. That would have been great, were it not for the guy with the megaphone describing every detail of the sunrise for 30 minutes. Still, when the sun began to rise, he finally shut up, and let everybody enjoy it.

The scooter gang
















That speck by the tree in the sky is an eagle









Bamboo forest
































The local convenience store in Ruili
















Sunset over Ruili
















Tea fields
















































The night sky in Alishan


















Sunrise in Alishan

























Leeza in her Taliban disguise
































Alpine and giant ceedar trees

























The Alpine train

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