Also on Monday the school hired an unrelated, different new teacher. If you're keeping count, this is the 4th new teacher in 2 months. Then on Friday, they let that new teacher go. So guess who's back? Me. Not that I felt like going back, but I do like the school, the moneys, and the kids even though I was really surprised when the staff treated me like that. The supervisor apologized to me and said some really nice things so I will continue to work there... but I'll never forget!! In fairness, she looked like she'd had a pretty rough week too, she thinks she's going to lose her own job, and I think she could sense the uprising that had started to develop as a result of her decisions.
So, enough about that. Saturday was Parent's Day at the school, and even though not one single parent came to speak to the international staff all the teachers (except me!) had to spend most of the day there. Work on a Saturday? Booooooo. On their lunch break, Mel and I went to a restaurant owned by a guy from Montreal where I bought a poutine! I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only restaurant serving poutine in the country. It was pretty decent too, with an interesting twist- they melted the cheese by oven-baking the fries in a casserole dish (although a little overpriced- it was about $5 CAN).
On the way home we got off the bus in Sinjhuang in the middle of a random parade. Of course we had no idea why there was a parade, but we showed some pictures to a student later that day and they said it was a god's birthday. Woo! Can't wait until Christmas.
I loved the big tall puppets wearing rain bonnets, who started throwing candy into the crowd. I wasn't paying attention and a dozen chocolate maple leaf coins from afar flew directly into my face. You wanna be startin' somethin', giant Asian puppet guy!?
Amazing video of awesome dancing giant puppet men.
For supper we had reservations at the oddly titled DS Music restaurant in Taipei. The restaurant has a hospital theme! This country has such a love affair with theme restaurants- first it was the toilet place, then the dinosaur restaurant, now hospitals.
The theme is more subtly worked into the place than those other two restaurants, though. Our table was normal but some of the tables were set up like hospital beds with curtains around them.
At least the food didn't taste like hospital food! It was really good, actually. Also, the waitresses were all dressed up like nurses and the drinks were stored in an IV drip above our table and poured into our cups through a tube. FYI: the bathroom was labelled "Emergency Room".
Our waitresses were named Sunny and Cola. Jeremy and Marie, it's still not too late to name the new baby Cola! Sunny chatted with us quite a bit and after a little while she showed up at our table with these 12 test tubes of lemon vodka, on the house! "Welcome to Taiwan," she said. Woot!
We also ordered these delicious looking syringes of vodka shots.
Then it got weird! We were told that around 8:00 a "show" would start. Well, Britney Spears' "Womanizer" started pumping from the speakers, the lights went down and a bunch of half dressed women strutted out into the room! What!!! They proceeded to go from table to table dancing on all the men (I am under a gag order in regards to anything that may have happened at our table), then they brought a couple of guys up on a stage and stripped them nude, with only a plate covering their crotches. It was the most random 10 minutes at any restaurant I've ever visited. This doesn't happen at Modern Toilet!
So, as I found out this week, on any given day you win some and you lose some. I started out the week getting laid off and I ended the week watching showgirls perform at a fake hospital. How was your week?
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