Sunday Parade

 Last Sunday the nurses invited us to what they called a "temple party."  We weren't sure what quite to expect.  It turned out to be a celebration of the 100th anniversary.  Of what, we aren't quite sure.  I think it was the hundredth anniversary of one of the temples here.  It was like a parade but a little different.  People dressed up like different gods and walked from temple to temple.  The purpose of this was to invite the gods  to visit each temple.  When they got to the temple, they would do sort of a performance--some would bow, some would dance, some would sing.  They say that noise is important so that the gods can find the temples. Many of them play as they walk.  Sometimes they light off firecrackers after the presentation to make sure the gods hear it.   It was pretty noisy!  We tried to explain to them what a parade is like in the US.  They were surprised when we talked about throwing candy!

It's not that great of a video, but kind of gives you the idea of what it was like. They are carrying a god in a chair to present at the temple.

Weekend at Hualien

This past weekend was really fun. We went to a place called Hualien. It's a smaller city, but it was really nice. It's more of a tourist destination , so more people there spoke English, which is always really nice. I didn't quite know what to expect, this whole trip people have been asking, "Have you been to Hualien?" So now I can say, that yes, I have.

When there I stayed in my first hostel. They gave us one room with 5 bunk beds that all nine of us piled into. It wasn't bad. We had a community bathroom for the whole floor. It was actually kind of fun to have all of us in the same room.

Our first day we spent hiking in Taroko Gorge. We hired a taxi to drive us around for the day. It ended up costing about $70 US dollars for the day for all of us. Totally worth it. They drove us first to what they call the Bridge of 100 lions because there are 100 marble lions carved into it.

Almost all of the gorge is made of marble, so there is a lot of marble all throughout Hualien. For example, many of the sidewalks are paved with chunks of marble. Next to the bridge is the start of a hiking trail. There also was a sign that made me kind of nervous.

I guess we were in a rainforest, after all! I was on the look out for bees the whole time! We hiked for quite a while. The area is in an Aboriginal reserve--something similar to our Indian reservations. We past a couple of spots that looked like they were farming, but out of respect we weren't allowed to leave the trail.

After hiking the drivers drove us around to major spots along the gorge that we explored. They were things like look out points, shrines, and we even stopped at one Buddhist temple.

One evening we went to the market and walked around and got souvenirs which was fun. Hualien also is famous for having a stone market which we went to one night. I splurged and bought myself a jade bracelet. All the nurses here wear jade. It is supposed to bring luck and protect them from disease. I just think it's beautiful. The stone market was really cool. Besides having tons of jade, they also have a ton of other stones which were fun to look at. In between all the shops there was a stage where later in the evening we were able to see a performance. Some aborigines came and performed traditional dances. It was really interesting to watch. On some of the songs they came to the audience and invited some of us to dance with them. I'm such a bad dancer though... I don't think I figured out what the steps were until the song was over.

This picture isn't that great, but you can sort of see me in the back wearing blue

It was a wonderful weekend. I could never get over how beautiful everything was around me--the trees, the water, the mountains, the warm rain. It was great.

Clinicals!

The other day Matt asked me what I'm actually doing here. He said, "you only talk about the fun stuff!" So I thought it was about time to post something about it. It's true--we are doing our fair share of tourism, but three days a week are spent doing nursing things.

I just finished my first two weeks. With 4 weeks total here we spend two doing community nursing and two in the hospital in an oncology unit. Community nursing has been quite interesting. The nurses drive to each patient's home and we take care of whatever the particular patient needs. Most of the time we do things like put in NG tubes or change catheters.

Me putting an NG tube in

The nurses visit most patients about 2 times a month. The doctors visit about once every two months. A couple of times I was able to be there when the doctor did rounds. Afterwards he took us out to lunch.

Taiwan has a universal health care system that covers almost all of its residents. From what I've seen this really simplifies things a lot. The nurses know how much each visit costs the patient and the patients pay right then in cash.

I was really impressed with how strong family ties are here. Rarely are people put in nursing homes. Some people would be in their seventies but still be the primary caregiver for their parent in their nineties. While talking to the son of one of our patients he said that all of his sisters had moved to the U.S., but he felt that it was his duty as the only son to stay here and take care of his mother.

While many family members serve as caregivers, many others hire live-in caregivers. These caregivers are equivalent to a CNA in the US. Most of the caregivers are Indonesian (about 70%) the rest usually are from Vietnam or the Philippines. They usually come for 3 years at a time, leaving their families at home. They can make about 10 times the amount of money here in Taiwan then they can at home. They work and send the money back. Lots of them even have young children at home.

The woman on the left is a Vietnamese caregiver. She was cute. She was really excited to meet us and was thrilled when we agreed to take a picture with her. The man on the right is the patient's son.

I've liked community nursing because I've gotten to see how the people live. Some of our patients live in really nice homes. One patient had a five story home. Others live in very small, crowded homes.

I learned a lot in the community setting, but I'm excited to see what things are like in the hospital tomorrow.

Some say love, it is a river...

Each year the nurses take the students on a trip. This year they took us to a city called Kaohsiung--about a 1 hour train ride from where we're staying in Tainan. They were so nice, they spent their whole Saturday showing us around. It was really nice to have them order for us at restaurants too. The first thing we did was go to Monkey Mountain. There is a long uphill road to get to the hiking trail. We saw a lot of people riding bikes up it. I guess it is called Long Life Road because people get such a good workout going up it. They also stopped at a few viewpoints on the way for us to take pictures. Kaohsiung is on the ocean and is a major port for Taiwan.

Monkey Mountain is home to thousands of macaque monkeys. There are hiking trails that go though it. The monkeys are everywhere, and will swing through the trees and sometimes land right in front of you. We saw some cute little baby monkeys playing together. In addition to the monkeys, the hike itself was beautiful. The mountainside was lush and green.

After our hike, the nurses treated us to my new favorite dessert: tsua bing! It is shaved ice covered in fresh fruit, whatever you want to order-kiwi, bananas, pineapple, mangoes, guava, papaya, the list is endless... The top it with a kind of fruit syrup and then drizzle sweetened condensed milk over it. It is amazing! The nurses ordered one that they said was supposed to feed ten people, but I think it could feed more like 20. It was huge!

Here is a normal sized one (yes, I've had this multiple times):

We then went to the beach and watched the

sunset. It was beautiful. The water was warm and the sand was soft.

Afterwards we walked back through the market and got dinner.

Love really is a river. After the beach we went to Love River Park--it runs along the riverbank downtown. I asked several people, but no one could tell me why it was called Love River. There were lights in the trees and several boats that had lights as well that take tourists up and down the river. There were also cafes and live music. It was funny, we taught all the nurses how the difference between liver and river. They would say, "We go to Love Liver." It was really nice-a fun atmosphere and beautiful lights.

Bikes and Shoes

On Friday we went to Anping, a district of Tainan. We came to see a fort/castle, Fort Zeelandia, that was built by the Dutch. (Taiwan was a Dutch colony in the 17th century.) They built the fort to defend the island from the Japanese. Very little of the original structure remains. After establishing the Dutch East India Company, they set up in Taiwan to establish a base for trading with China. The Dutch were the first to introduce brick building to Taiwan. The mortar they used was made of sticky rice and ground oyster shells.

We also stopped and looked a Taoist temple. There are temples everywhere here. You could be in the middle of the busiest part of the city and turn around and see a temple. They are very beautiful and very ornate.

I wish I could read Chinese so that I could read everything and know what is going on. We saw a man praying and throwing moon-stones (crescent shaped rocks). However the stones land indicates the answer to their prayer. From what I understand, each temple has different gods to pray to.They also burn incense to help to send their prayers to heaven.

While visiting the fort, we saw a place that rented bikes and so decided a bike ride would be fun. It cost 50 NT for the whole day--less than 2 American dollars. We had a lot of fun riding around. Anping is close to the coast, so there is an inlet of water that goes through the town and a bike trail that goes around it. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, but there was a cool breeze coming in over the water.

While biking we came across a huge statue overlooking the water. She is the goddess that the fishermen pray to for safety. The story goes that she was once a real human. Her father was a fisherman and she would hold out a lantern each night so he could find his way home.

We turned our bikes in at what they call the tree-house. From what I could understand, the building used to be a storehouse but was abandoned sometime in WWII. Since then, a banyan tree has completely overtaken the house. There are roots coming up through the floor, branches going through the walls--the house has almost become part of the tree.

A former door-way

After that we decided to go to the market. Anping's market is fairly large and well-known. We had fun walking up and down the streets looking in the shops and trying new kinds of food. I was most excited about coming across a little shoe shop. I ended up getting some custom made shoes for only $14 US. They had different wooden bases you could choose from and different hand-stitched fabric tops. The shop-keeper then would fit the fabric to your foot and nail it to the shoe. It was pretty fun.

After all that bike riding and walking around we were all pretty exhausted and slept pretty well that night.

Night Market

Every weekend Tainan has a big night market in the middle of the city. It's the biggest one in all of Taiwan, so people come from all over to see it. People set up booths with food, drinks, clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc. On Thursday, some nurses that we've worked with came to pick us up and take us to it. Once we got there we ran into a group of people who were members of the English club at a local university. We teamed up with them and decided to break into groups and went on a scavenger hunt. The English club people were great. They explained everything to us and made us try everything. As part of an attempt to win "weirdest food" for our scavenger hunt we tried chicken feet. (We didn't even win, by the way--another group tried duck brain!!!) The chicken feet were nasty--very scaly and bony.Another part of the scavenger hunt was to win a prize at a game... ...and we did!

After the scavenger hunt we just spent a few hours walking around and shopping. The night market is a great place to get souvenirs and gifts, everything is pretty cheap. Our English club friend, Jui, taught us how to say, "how much does it cost?" (Doe sow chien?--not sure how to spell it, but that is how it sounds to me), and "that is too much! (Which I can't remember how to say). After that the vendor would reply "For you, I have a special price," and take it down a few NT. I think I got pretty good at asking how much things cost because they would reply to me in Mandarin and I would have no idea what they were saying. I still have to learn my numbers. I've got 1-10 down, but that's it. I tried to by a pair of shoes there. The ones I tried on were too small so I asked them for a bigger pair. They didn't have any! Never in my life with my size 6 1/2 have I felt like I have big feet!