Happy Taiwanese Halloween!

Here at the school, we had our Halloween party on Friday as there's a lot of students that aren't here on Tuesdays. So we set up lots of games and face painting and also invited the parents to come and watch. Lots of kindergarten age children, hopped up on sugar and parents with cameras acting like the paparazzi. But fortunately not as chaotic as it seems.

Halloween here always makes me miss fall in Newfoundland and the George Street Mardi Gras.

And yes, it was my birthday on Sunday but it was pretty quiet as I returned from Nepal with a nasty stomach bug which made its appearance last Monday and wiped me out all week. I actually went to the hospital last Monday as I couldn't keep anything down and was really dehydrated. So no big party for me...yet. I might have one in the next week or so. Got some very nice gifts (thanks for the Tragically Hip cds Liz!) and emails and people keep taking me out for dinner, so it's great! And I'm still one year away from 33, the other big celebrity death age after 27 (Jesus, Jim Belushi, Chris Farley, there were all 33!). Gotta be careful about these things.

Off to do work related activities, will post more soon.

Bridget

Web album full of pics from Nepal

These Picasa web albums are wicked, thanks Liz. If you want to see more of my photos from Nepal, you can click on the album in the sidebar. Warning, I managed to narrow it down to 97 so you might want to use the sideshow and save yourself some clicking. I'm going to try and get some of my older pictures up in web albums soon as well.

Bridget

Mountainpalooza

Whoo-hoo! Big honkin' snowy mountain. I love my zoom lense.


This is Cohpagnya who was my porter. Trekking guides and porters are a male dominated business in Nepal, but there's a organization called 3 Sisters (www.3sistersadventure.com) that provides female guides and porters. They train women to become guides and focus on enpowering Nepalese women - Nepal is one of the only countries where men outlive women, on average a Nepali man works 8 hours a day, a Nepali woman works 12. Cohpagnya hardly spoke any English, so I asked my guide about her. She is 23 and was going to university in a small town, but the Maoists moved in and she ended up having to leave school. Then she was part of a group that got kidnapped by the Maoists and held in the jungle for a week - the military showed up with helicopters and the Maoists took off. Afterwards she ended up in Kathmandu doing a sewing course when she heard about the 3 Sisters and decided to join them. She's looking into studying music.


Clothesline, palm tree, purple flowers, snowy mountain.

This is back in Pokhara, I took a boat across the lake and hiked up to the stupa and pagoda on the top. There was a nice view of the Annapurnas before it got too hot and steamy.

Stupa and purdy purple flowers.

More trekking pictures

Here's some more photos of my cloudy trek.



Rooftops of guesthouses.

This is me with my guide Cohmilla (left) and Cohpagnya (right). We're blurry! That German tourist didn't know what she was doing man.

Nothing like hiking uphill for 3 days to stand around in a cloud. This little peek was all I could get of the spectacular views at 3000 M!

Ominous cloudy valley. It started to rain shortly after I took this picture.

Then on the last day, the sky was clear! They put those poles together like that to make swings for the kids.

and some more......

Here's a few more from around Kathmandu and my trek.



Pack horses comin' down the moutain. You have to jump out to the way so they don't step on you.

Temple action. While I was taking this picture, there was this dog following me around and barking and snarling aggressively. That dog hated me. So I didn't stay at this temple very long.

Pigeon and temple roof freaky head.

Shiva the Aggressor!

Ladies hanging out at the local stupa.

People pics

Alright, I'm back in Taiwan and I can finally get some pictures up on ze blog.



Street vendor selling different colours of sindur which is a powder you mix with yogurt and rice to create a tika on your forehead.

Bird's eye view of vendors on the street.

Ladies selling beads and sequins.

This guy with his prayer beads kept motioning to me at the Annapurna Temple. That hat is called a topi.

By the way, it' s not cool to just run up and take pictures of people in Nepal, so I gave a couple of bucks or bought something from all the people in these pictures. Except for the market, then I would have been broke.

Bridget

Last day in Kathmandu

I'm outta here tomorrow, I fly to Bangkok at 1:40 and have to stay the night there. Then the flight to Taipei leaves at 7:00am, which means I'm going to have to get up and leave around 4:00. Ugh. But there's a spa at the hotel which I think I'm going to check out.

I have no energy today. Part of me feels I should go do more sight-seeing....but a bigger part of me feels that I have to work on Monday and start organizing a big Taiwanese Halloween party for the students and I should just sit as still as possible while I can. The big part has won, so today I'm just going to bum around in cafes. And maybe go back to the hotel and lie on my bed and watch Bollywood movies.

I tried to upload more pics, but this time the computer won't acknowledge my camera. If it's not one ting, it's anudder. So next week will be Buckets of Nepal Pictures Week.

I'll think I'll have another coffee.

Bridget

Back in Kathmandu.

I've given up trying to post pictures for now as no computer wants to co-operate with me. Things are great, I took a hike up the stupa (like a pagoda) on the other side of the lake in Pokhara yesterday and got some nice shots of the Annapurnas hovering over the hills. And I shopped. Too much. Now I'm at Boudha which is a center for Tibetan Buddhism in Nepal just west of Kathmandu. Tomorrow I will go back into town and I may go see some live music as right now "Jazzmandu" is on. I hope they have t-shirts.

Bridget

Annapurna South

Well, it seems that every time I try to upload several photos at once, it conks out on me. So we'll try one at a time. Here's a money shot of Annapurna South, early Tuesday morning.

Few shots of Nepal....

Alright, it took freakin' forever to upload these, but here's three, count 'em, 3 shots of Nepal. I have over a hundred on my camera and will try to upload some more later when I have nothin' but time.....


Kathmandu! As seen from the top of Bhimsen Tower. Busy place...
And of course, I forgot to bring the stupid book with me to the internet cafe and can't remember the name of this temple right now, but it was really cool! Pigeons and cows (and most animals) are sacred in Hinduism, hence tons of pigeons.
In Pokhara, hanging out by the lake.

So, I just got back from a 5 day trek and am in Pokhara right now, heading to Kathmandu again on Monday. Nepal is wonderful and I feel like I'm in a movie. I'm alive and well and haven't fallen off a mountain or been kidnapped by Maoists (although I had to pay them a tax thing, more on that later). I'll post again soon.

Bridget

In Kathmandu!

Hey, I made it! I'm saying in a cute little place called Blue Horizon Hotel in Thamel, which is the touristy area of Kathmandu. Tomorrow I fly out to Pohkara and arrange a trek around Annapurna. I should be hungry, but I'm so full of nervous energy right now, I'm just going to go stomp around with my camera and see what's what. They served chicken tandoori on the plane! Good sign.

Will post more later, I am alive and well!

Bridget

When 9 year olds write tongue twisters.....

I'm teaching a writing and public speaking class once a week for a group of kids in grades 3 and 4. We had lots of fun making up tongue twisters last week. First, the kids made lists of words that start with the same sound (like chick, chat, cheese, etc). Then the labeled each word as a verb or noun or whatever and tried to make silly sentences with them. I told them it didn't matter if it didn't make sense, it just had to be hard to say.

It worked out really well and I want to use them in class all the time as a warm-up exercise. I might take little Jean's out though. She used bl and oo words and came up with this;

"Black Blane blows a bamboo baboon in a blue balloon."

Try saying that 3 times fast.

Few more pics from Friday and Saturday

Here's a few more pictures from last weekend. On Friday, I went to see a band at Grooveyard, which is a local bar that has regular live music. It was a Johnny Cash cover band actually, so we were all in good spirits. After the band stopped playing, we couldn't find anything else going on, so I took everyone home with me. Well, me and 7 friends. And we just hung out in my apartment and drank beer and listened to music. 4 of the 7 passed out in various places around the apartment and sauntered out the next day. Good times.

Jason and Jeff, long haired men looking bemused. Yes, I have light blue walls and apple-green curtains in my apartment. I call the decor "clash-fantastic."

This is my friend Ash from London, he's so pretty. That's Laurie in green. She's very pretty too, but she didn't look at the camera.

Me and lovely Emily. I love my black and white setting.

And then it was Saturday and barbeque I posted about earlier. Laura is the girl in red and Mirium is eating a barbequed squid on a skewer.

Start of Moon Festival

Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival has started up which means BBQ madness. My building had free barbeque for all the tenants (if you signed up beforehand) which means you got a little barbeque, some hot coals and a big bag of raw food to cook. There were also roasting a full pig out on the street (which I didn't get a photo of, sorry). My scooter was parked close by with my helmet on the handlebars and the next day, it was covered with ashes and a thin layer of grease. And my helmet smelled like bacon. Nice.

There was live music too, it turned out to be a great night.

Daniel and Jeff, cookin' and eatin'.
From left to right, Geoff, Phil and Faye, all from the land of Canada.

That's PJ's, one of the pubs at the bottom of my building. Faye is playing and the little boy is rocking out.

And that was Saturday......

I can't believe I'm going to Nepal in 3 days! AAAAhhh! So much to do.... Have to change large amounts of money into different currencies, make a schedule for the upcoming Halloween party so it's set up for when I come back, make sub plans, clean my apartment, find someone to water my plants and go to a few more barbeques. And pack. Right now the plan is to do an 8 day trek in Annapurna, so I'll be packing light. I'm mad, I know.

Okay, will post more later.

Bridget