Adventure is out there!: Baoshan and the last of Daan

Since October, Andrew has been serving his yearlong mandatory military service. Because he lived abroad for a long time, he was eligible to be placed at a school assisting with English education. Most of his work is administrative, but he's gotten to teach some English classes and regularly tutor students in different subjects, including history and violin (his #2 and #3 true loves, after cats).

I was excited to get to visit Baoshan on Friday to see where he'd been living for the past few months, and to meet the students he'd been telling me all about.

Andrew and I met up with my dad at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial to head over the train station. After being unable to find each other for 40 minutes (the pavilion is massive), we finally reunited by the steps of the memorial.

There were massive posters for a Frozen screening on the pavilion.
Chiang Kai-Shek is currently rolling over in his grave.

When you're stuck waiting at a pre-arranged meeting location,
you have nothing to do but take selfies and watch other tourists

Buses from Taipei to Baoshan are very common, and the trip itself was around an hour and a half (although we had pretty good traffic). The bus was freezing.

The bus dropped us off a couple of blocks from the train station in Hsinchu, the closest city to Baoshan. We were getting a ride from the Hsinchu train station to Baoshan (~15 minutes) from the father of some of the kids Andrew was tutoring. In a development that will shock and awe no one, it was raining, so we were soaked by the time we reached the train station.

Hsinchu is like Taipei but with more space

But getting to see the school was so cool that I didn't really mind the rain.

The building where Andrew lives has pictures of different natural disasters
(and their names in English). The staircase also has English phrases on each step
like "Danger!" or "Call for help." I appreciate the Addams-family vibe.

Andrew told me that when he attended middle school in Taipei (at a school mostly comprised of children from wealthy, well-educated families), he had classes from 7:20am-8:30pm with breaks for meals. That made me feel like a lucky slacker for my American educational experience; having an extra four or five hours of middle school probably would have been my 4th circle of hell. His school in Baoshan is only from 7am-5pm, though students can come back after dinner for optional extra lessons.

The school is in a very pretty area, even when it's raining. It's famous for its archery team, which practices in the hallways after school is over. The captain of the archery team is a very formidable girl who, in a victory for feminism, apparently can cream Andrew at arm wrestling.

learning can be dangerous

There is also a drumming club, which we didn't get to see practice because it was Friday. But one of the students who Andrew tutors did a little demonstration for us and it was incredible. It seems to require a lot of control, coordination, and upper arm strength.

These drums are super loud when even one person hits them

When we first arrived, the students were on a 5-minute cleaning break. In Taiwanese middle schools it's common for students to pitch in with keeping the school clean instead of having janitorial staff. But the town is small enough (and foreigners are rare enough) that a lot of the students seemed more interested in us than cleaning. Andrew kept pestering them to go to class.

Everyone was super nice! The only things I could really say in Chinese were hello, thank you, and nice to meet you (the latter of which I now have forgotten how to say), but all of the students and staff members we met seemed very sweet and appreciated my terrible Mandarin.

This deceptively quiet hallway was photographed before they found out we were there

We also tried to get a picture with some of the students. I say tried, because my dad kept accidentally taking videos and so what we got instead was a six second video that went exactly like this:

My dad: Alright.
Me: I think it's video recording again
My dad: No, it's n--it shouldn't be--okay.

After spending a couple of hours in Baoshan (and getting bubble tea), we went back to get a late dinner in Daan.

Saturday and Sunday weren't super eventful, which was wonderful. We did go to the underground mall again (and managed to spend less than $1000NT on 3 fate/zero figurines). Store owners sometimes get annoyed when you try to take pictures of their merch, but I sneakily got this one of some of the cats in Neko Atsume