Shopping Concourse

Here's a shot of shoppers walking out amongst glowy trees covered in blue lights! This concourse is about 3 city blocks long, and ends around the Taipei 101 building. 

Glowy Trees!

A close-up shot of some of the glowy trees. This isn't for Christmas, they're always like this. 

City Hall One

Taipei City Hall trying a very fast shudder speed to compensate for the natural moment of the human hand. It worked better than I expected, but there's still some blurriness to it. 

Taipei City Hall

A more straight-on shot of Taipei City Hall. Still burrier than I'd like. 

The 101 Shopping Concourse

Near to the base of Taipei 101 they're building this massive shopping concourse which will seemingly consist of nothing but clothing stores with other odd things mixed in. It's about 50% done, and is one of the grandest shrines of materialism ever constructed by man. Who they think is going to buy all this stuff, I have no clue. This place screams "money pit", but I wish them luck!

Looking up at 101

A look up at the world's tallest building, and another reminder that I need to get a tripod for any night photography unless I want it to be blurry. 

Darkness Falls

This moody picture is of a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower that sits in same business park with the statue of the hand and rose, the bear family, and the weird color-coded buildings. It's about 12-15m tall, and this picture reflects my mood of the day. I was feeling a little depressed and homesick at the time, and somehow this picture seems to reflect that. Feeling MUCH better now, though! 

W-2 Writing Crew First Try!

So, tonight I asked a student from another class to take a group picture of my Friday night writing class, but unfortunately those pictures turned out to be too blurry to be worth putting up. (They looked like we'd all just watched a cursed video and been told we'd die in 7 days.) So I took two more pictures myself, although I'm still not pleased with the results because some of the positioning is wrong. In any case, from Left to Right they are: Thomas, James, Johnny (man of mystery), Lynn (next to Johnny at the back), Laura (in red), Anny (ned to Laura), Sandy (behind Anny), Yvonne (over Sandy's shoulder), Young and Emily. There are also two people missing besides me, so we definitely need a new class picture! (Although I doubt we'll have everyone together again, but we'll see.) 

The W-2 Writing Crew Second Try

Another picture, still not to my liking. I'm going to try to take another picture of the class (including me!) in one of our two remaining classes for this session. 

Ebony and Ivory

On my way back from lunch today I passed a petshop with this cage out front that had these three little cuties sleeping inside, so I grabbed a quick picture of them. I'm not really sure what they are, Labs I think, 2 golden and 1 black, but regardless they're a bunch of little cuties so it was worth taking the picture of. 

Lien and Associates

If you have a legal problem, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...Lien and Associates. Pictured here is Rob backed by his crack team of lawyers, from left to right they are: Cynthia (she only smiles when she knows she's going to win) , Mr. Lien (the man himself), Jasmine (short, cute and deadly), and Robert (whose picture speaks for itself). Wednesday nights from 5-7:30 they tackle the hardest English and face their greatest challenges. Fast action, fast English, hard grammar. Life doesn't get any better than this! 

The House that Geiger Built

Every day I pass this structure, it sits in front of a megamall near my home, and it gets uglier and uglier as they add on more and more bizzare pieces. At this point, I have no clue what it will look like when it's done. I'll keep you updated! 

Team Tomen

For a very long time (my second company to work at, in fact) my Tuesday and Thursday lunches have been spent at the Tomen Chemical Trading Company. We have a great time studying business english, and they're one of my favorite classes to teach. They are: Back: YiMin, Me, Jimmy. Front: ShiSho, Mr. Yu, Jane and Grace. 

Tuesday Nights at Edison

On Tuesday Nights I teach a beginner-level class in YongHe at the Edison Opitical Corporation, the same place I also teach on Thursday nights, but a different group of people. Their level may be low, but their spirits are high! From Left to right, they are: Jhong-Han, Amily, Alice, Peter, Me, Vincent, Jiunn (in front of Vincent), Simon, King (in front of Simon), Mark and Roger. (It's also only an accident that the word "stingy" is written behind Amily, she's not stingy at all!)

In my never-ending quest to photograph Taipei statuary, I present to you the bear family. This one is from the same industrial/business park where the hand holding the rose comes from in YongHe. 

On Saturday afternoons for the past two months I have been teaching at the nearby NeiHu branch of KoJen (pictured above). I've been teaching a group of primarily teens writing skills and forcing them to spend a Saturday afternoon studying English instead of running around like they could have been. They were a good group of kids and we did our best to make learning fun and have some good times together.

Here is the half of the class which showed up for the final day, the rest being at school parties and festivities. From left to right they are: Tom, Elva, Howard, Jenny, Charlene, Me, Angel and Cedric. 

The first picture I took of my beautiful Connie with my new camera, it turned out rather well I think. We're in a nearby Thai restaurant enjoying some expensive, but delicious food! I have a confession to make, for the first time in my life, I, Robyn Paterson, ate frog legs last night. Tasted like bland chicken, actually. May all my former pet frogs now in heaven forgive me! 

Connie is shocked by how good the book she is reading is! And, what is this book? Why, The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas! After much pestering by her annoying boyfriend, she started to read it, and found out there was a reason he loves this book so much! 

I found these little lovebirds sitting on a steetcorner waiting for mail! I have mentioned before that modern Taiwanese seem to have a love for statuary, and I will try to capture more and more of that on this blog. Too bad the one mailbox door seems to have been broken, when I checked inside I found it was filled with Junk Mail!