Wu Jie hosts an annual costume competition for its students and faculty. The students have to cobble their costumes together, I think, which they do during breaks between classes as orchestrated by their homeroom teachers. The teachers, however, rent costumes. And that is where I went tonight—to Taipei in a car with four other teachers on a mission to bring back show garb for themselves and some others in the office. I don’t know the name of the store we were at, but we were in a general shopping area known as Ximending (unless of course that is actually the name of the store) where Taiwanese teenagers like to go to pick up cheap and fashionable attire. The store, as far as I could tell, was U-shaped, with long tables covered with books full of pictures of costumes (think beauty parlor hairdo books). These costumes ran the gamut of Snow White to flight attendant to Elvis to Playboy bunny to Incredible Hulk to kimono to characters out of Chinese operas. And then some. We had a lot of fun pointing to muscle men suits and the like and commenting on which teachers we’d rent it for. Most references were to Hao Chuan and the principal. The walls were crammed with costumes like the ones found in the books. The entranceway had some hats and fans, which Jessica and I posed with while our rentals were being settled. The short part of the U had some more wigs and a stairway leading upstairs, which I thought would feature a changing room only. Along the other side of the U were more costumes, these generally more elaborate accessories like masks and ceremonial Chinese hats. It seemed to be more for storage than anything else, though. We pointed to the pictures of the costumes we wanted, and I thought that was it, but then we went upstairs for fittings. It turned out the upstairs was a crazier hodgepodge of everything downstairs. Whatever was out on the bottom floor was probably just there to tickle our imaginations. The real stuff was up here. Upstairs were numerous sets of each costume, varying by color and size. I had originally said I wanted a kimono, having seen a gorgeous one at the entranceway. Jessica agreed (we’re going as a two-person team), but when I flipped through the costume books and saw all the lacy and embroidered European style gowns, I said that would be fine, too, and that’s what we ended up choosing. Upstairs, we went to the section with the gowns, and Jessica and I tried on several to see which color and style suited us best. So much fun! Jessica went with a dress with a lovely flower pattern in reds and yellows. I got a crimson and cream dress. A bit ratty from being rented out a lot, but it’ll still be fun to sweep around in that skirt. I’m not quite sure what the other costumes were. I saw a paper mache head in our bag of loot and when we were about to leave, one of the teachers turned back to pick up some legs. It was all fun and games at first with three of us holding large bags filled with gowns, jackets, giant stuffed cartoonish heads, etc, and Jessica and me walking along either side of two giant blue wing-like things with styrofoamy pink tulle at the edges (you open and close these like butterfly wings—I saw it in a parade here). I kept looking around to see if people were staring at us but I think it takes a little more to surprise the Taipei dwellers. Well, anyway, it was all fun until we had to fit it into Yi Hui’s sedan. Hahaha. The bags went in and out of the trunk a few times, then out one last time while Yi Hui rearranged all the stuff that had originally been in the trunk. The bags made it in, the giant head went in the front seat, and in the back we put the blue wings, which ran the width of the car and rose to a height that probably blocked most of Yi Hui’s rear vision. I wondered what the ride back to Yilan would be like, how much room we’d have for our legs.
Leaving the car in the parking lot, we went to Fei Tian for hot pot. Amaaazing. I once remarked to a fellow ETA how incredible it is that everyone’s so excited to go to hot pot restaurants and pay to cook their own dinners. But it is so much fun. First you choose a soup base, in which you will steep everything you eat. Then, bring it to a boil and go scouting for stuff to boil. We filled platters with all sorts of raw and frozen stuff. Then, plop the stuff into the pot and wait for it to soften. Be careful when eating, since the food is extremely hot and, if you got a malaguo, unbelievably spicy. I ate one thing cooked in the malaguo half of our hotpot (this restaurant had pots with two sections, so you could have two different bases). Some juice from the spicy food dripped into my personal bowl, though, where it poisoned everything else and eventually I had to pour out all my liquid since I could not stand the burning spicy heat anymore. Sooo delicious, but let me specifically recommend corn on the cob for this. It comes out very sweet. My first piece I tried to hold between two chopsticks and did manage, though I dropped the corn a lot. Then Jessica showed me how to skewer the corn on the tip of a chopstick (so it looks like shish kabob or a roasted marshmallow). Very functional…but is this cheating? Does this trample the resplendent history of the chopstick? I have noticed that the Taiwanese will use spoons for things I would have thought were purely for chopsticks, such as rice and noodles. (Although, when eating noodles out of a soup, it is helpful to have a spoon to support the noodles you are trying to eat so that they do not fall back into the bowl and splash everyone.) Well, we ate our fill and then some. The hot pot is not an economy meal. And then it was time for dessert! Jessica and I filled our plates with an appalling amount of cakes and fruit. The kiwi and cheesecake were out of this world. I joked that her last name is Zhu (which sounds like the word for pig) and that I am a pig. After that, we went back for some ice cream—Haagen Dazs! That and a Fanta soda, and I’ve eaten my best meal in a while.
The ride back was quiet. I can’t comment too much on it, since I fell asleep myself. : ) It was a bit squishy in the back seat, but quite cozy, especially when Pei Yi brought the giant head in with us so that Yi Hui could see out the windshield. Jessica took longer to fall asleep. She was so excited to go out for fun. I awoke to see the car swinging around sharp angles in the dark, skirting rice paddies. Blearily concerned about toppling into the water, I soon saw that we had arrived back in front of Wu Jie. We all applauded and thanked Yi Hui and headed home. I got back at 12 midnight.
That’s the exciting part of today. Other features: taught my class “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. But they didn’t understand what I was saying or what the poem was about, so that was disappointing. No internet in the morning, so I couldn’t prepare my first lesson. Instead, I did an animated story with them, taken from a DVD given out by Lotus, a local junior high school teacher. That went well enough, coupled with a short activity I had thankfully brought along just in case.
During my second class, one student picked up my cell phone while we were split up to play pick-up sticks and dialed his phone from mine. So he has my number now. And he called me during lunch, though I didn’t answer because 1) I refuse to and 2) I didn’t even see it ring since I was meeting with students. But this is kind of disrespectful of him. Grrr.
Also finally mailed out dad’s car registration. I had a “fun” time trying to find some envelopes. It turns out that it’s very simple and you just ask the clerk at the window for an airmail envelope. I am very grateful to the clerk for accepting my sloppy handwriting done in a mixture of Traditional, Simplified, and botched characters.
I also bought paper for the Thanksgiving bulletin board at Li Ze AND gave advance notice that I’d be 15 minutes late to meet everyone to rent costumes (the post office took longer than expected since I don’t know my way around it yet), but was only something like 7 minutes late. We didn’t leave till later anyway, but I still felt pretty good about that.
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