First, on Wednesday night I went with some classmates of mine to the Lantern Festival at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. I talked about a sky lantern festival last week, but this is less of a "lantern" festival than it is a demonstration of floats. Except unlike in parades where the floats drive past you, you walk past the floats.
Diana, a friend of mine pretending to be Elvis next to Elvis-mouse. (You'll see many mouse reference since it's now the Year of the Rat.)
The next day in lieu of going to class our teacher took us to the Zhang Daqian Memorial House. Zhang Daqian was one of the most important modern Chinese artists (or so I'm told). We weren't supposed to take pictures inside, so I didn't. He has a pretty cool garden area though.
After the Memorial House I went to the Palace Museum with a few of my classmates since we were about a ten-minute walk away. After World War II, the Nationalists (Kuomintang, KMT) and the Communists had a civil war. When it was pretty clear the Nationalists had lost, Chaing Kai-shek (the leader of the KMT) and his buddies headed over to Taiwan. They brought along 600,000 important Chinese cultural artifacts. Thus, the Palace Museum (which is semi-modeled after the Forbidden City in China) was built to display them all. Unfortunately, they also had a no-camera rule so I didn't snap much of anything there.
Friday night I went to the Taiwan Beer Factory with my kickboxing friends. It was NT$550 (about $16-17) for a gallon jug of beer. That's pretty close to Wisconsin prices for beer! Everyone had a good time.
They had a live band. It was too loud for some of the time but it added a lot of fun to the atmosphere. They even played some songs in English!
This sausage was really good. And it wasn't like "I had a few beers so anything I eat is really delicious." Wait, that's exactly how it was.
I later danced on stage and some friends of mine sang. We had quite the merry time.
Anyways, down to brass tacks. I've decided on what the rest of my stay in Taiwan is going to look like. It's not completely my decision, though.
Most of it is a visa issue. I recently tried to apply for a Resident Visa (which is what all the foreigners who work here have), but at the office, the clerk helping me said that I had a few parts in my application that would probably lead to rejection of my ARC. However, she did tell me that since I left the country and returned in December (my Singapore/Malaysia trip) that I could renew my visa one more time. The only issue is that I have to renew it this week and I'll get another 90 days. That's just barely enough time to stay in Taiwan until the end of my next quarter of school.
So in short, I'll be leaving Taiwan in the end of May.
You may be thinking, "Hey Ted, didn't you want to find a job in Taiwan so you can stay there longer?" I did, but in the process of applying for a job I noticed two things:
- I may have trouble applying for a Resident Visa (there's a requirement that a college graduate must have two year's work experience after graduation in his home country to apply, which I don't have). I don't think this is a real problem (since I know many English teachers who don't fulfill said requirement) but I was turned down for a job interview here for that very reason.
- Taiwanese salaries are very low. Starting salaries are around NT$50,000/month, which comes out to around $20K/year. I know cost of living is lower here, but I would be able to bank more money if I work in the US or elsewhere.
So that's what's on the horizon for me. I love Taiwan and I'm having a lot of fun here, but I need to make some of my own money and get my career on a good path.
However, I still have three solid months of fun left to have in Taiwan. I guess I'll have to go all out!
2 comments:
man that really sucks.
maybe you could just go ahead and try and get an ARC? you never know.
well in any case make these three months count.
are you going back to wisconsin?
Wow... you should be able to get the ARC more easily than that. It seems like they give it to anyone... or maybe just anyone who's female and has blonde hair. I dunno. Of course, I do have like 5 years of experience working in the US since I am *that* old.
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