Rainbow Village Revisit & KTV

And back to Rainbow Village we go. 

We set up another play day with our friend April and her daughter Yara, who was one of our students. This took place back in the second week of November which is now exactly one month ago. Yay behind blogging!

Sara and her daughter Ariel, who is also one of our students, joined the fun on this day.

Kim and Josh came along this time and they were not there when we went to Rainbow Village back in August so we went again. I didn't mind at all because Rainbow Village is adorable.

It was Oscar Wilde who believed that "life imitates art", and I take that as literal of a challenge as I can.

Kissy kissy

Frowny bug eyes

Stoned and happy to be here

This is dog. His name is, "doggo". He has a red nose.

Kim and Josh brought their nice camera and with the vibrant colors of Rainbow Village the afternoon became an impromptu photo shoot. Kim was kind and took many nice photos of le me.

Alright girls, we are going to take a picture. Ariel, you stand on the far side. Yara, you come in the middle. I will be on the end. All you have to do is stand there, look at Kim, and smile.

Yara, your eyes are closed.

Girls, stop being funny. We need to get the picture.

Uh, oh! Didi is moving into the shot.

He's really into this whole camera thing.

It's broken. Everything is broken.

Didi wins the award for "best entrance".

Girls, remember that time when we tried to take a picture earlier? Well we are going to try again. Get in front of me and Josh. Go ahead and look at Kim.

That's....that's not looking at Kim.

Oh, Yara wants to do her angry pose?

Alright, angry pose!

Girls, why are Josh and I the only ones doing angry pose?

This photo is broken too, isn't it?

Everyone just do what you want at this point.

Real pictures with 6 year olds are not possible.

Good try, girls. Let's move on.

"Careful". Always something good to keep in mind.

A view of the village and the occupants of the day.

I have to make Kim take pictures with me because she hates actually being in front of the lens.

Well, if she's not looking...

The cute couple.

Josh jokingly proposed to Kim and the girls at the "proposal wall". People started whipping out their cameras because they actually thought it was real. Awk...

These butt heads right here....they're actually pretty great....

I like them.

Meow

Everything is A-O-K!

These girls have more style and swagger than I ever will. And they are 6.

This is the cover of our 90s band album. Album name: "Straight Outta Changhua"

For the record: Kim made me. She made me do the dabbing. In all honesty it actually turned out to look pretty good.

Rainbow Village, why you so cute?

My first visit to Rainbow Village was in August and it was insufferably hot and crowded. This time it was November so it was overcast, cool, and there weren't nearly as many people there. Basically, it was perfect. The sun wasn't shining, but honestly I didn't feel like flirting with getting sunburned this day anyway so I didn't mind.

Alternative cover for our band album

Back of the album. 

Oh,Yara bo barra.

Did I get the cat pig face right? 

Kim told me to "work it" These are my best attempts at such an act.

After Rainbow Village we went to the Jade Market. It was all indoors and had many floors. We were there fairly early for the market (around 11:00 a.m.) so many of the upper floor stalls weren't even open yet. 

The craftsmanship that we saw was incredible. I can't believe what some people are able to do with Jade and other stones. We weren't able to photograph many of the more elaborate works, but we saw sculptures of jade that we made in the images of trees and creatures that I didn't believe was possible with such hard material.

Here is one stand with all of the stones available for purchase as well as some "bonsai trees" made of amethyst and other stones.

Craftsman from other corners of the world were there too. These were handmade by a man from Europe. We didn't linger at his stand long, because he was excited to see Westerners and wanted us to make a purchase, so I can't recall exactly where these were from. I want to say the Netherlands.

After the Jade Market, we were all famished. That meant that it was lunch time! Sara, Ariel's mom, considers herself a "foodie" and took us to a restaurant that she is familiar with. Everything on the menu looked yummy but I opted for the classic beef noodle soup. That's a fairly common dish in Taiwan but every place has their own take on how to make it and I have to say that this way by far the best beef noodle soup that I have ever had. It was a cool overcast day so the warm soup was just what I was after.

The beef hunks were thick and cooked medium rare, so they were perfect.

Ariel certainly likes her food. Maybe a little too much. 

Yara

But what to choose, Precious? 

With our bellies stuffed with food we then went to Ariel's grandparent's home. We dropped Ariel off, but first we walked around their "neighborhood". The streets that you drive on to get to each home's driveway were very narrow and along these narrow streets were cement walls. On these walls were these beautifully pained images depicting the progression of Taiwan's history. It was random but we all really liked it so we wandered around for a while and took more pictures.

Workers planting rice by hand.

The advancement of the steam engine rendering the ox cart obsolete.

This one shows a little shrine but that exact shrine was, in real life, right next to the painting.

We were told that these are the names of those that you wish to pray for. You hang their names next to the shrine and burn incense and other things to help them.

The incense at the entrance of the shrine.

This is the shrine in that painting.

The side of the shrine.

Our play date with April, Yara, Sara, and Ariel ended after this.

Thank you, April. The Day was wonderful, as always.

~A few hours later~

IT'S KTV TIME!

KTV is karaoke in Asia. It's where you pay to rent a room for a certain amount of time, the time is usually within the 3-5 hour range, and you sing to your heart's content. 

The view of the door to the hallway from within our room.

You can see the TV from this view

Couches lined the three walls around the television so even with a large group everyone could fit and stretch out comfortably.

Our DJs getting the songs set up. That little panel is where you choose from the library of songs.

Some people in our party wanted to have access to the buffet, so we each paid an extra 50 NT to have some eats. The food wasn't high quality by any means, but it was there. Some of it was watery spaghetti entree style food and others were side dishes like honey cakes and rolls. I didn't snap any pictures of the buffet but it really wasn't much.

There is a funny story that happened on this night that I don't want to forget. So we get to our room, drop our stuff on the couches, and then decided to go get some food from the buffet which is located in the lobby outside of our soundproof room. Megan leaves the room first and I am shortly behind her. As she is walking through the hallway toward the buffet she comes up to these three men who have their shoulders interlocked. When I say interlocked I mean that it looks as though the man in the middle is injured and needs help walking because he has both of his arms around each man to his sides and they each of an arm slung over his shoulders, but he isn't injured at all; they are just walking this way for the heck of it. So the three of them are walking down the hallway locked together and Megan is walking toward them and as she goes to pass them they turn their bird-like formation and start trying to talk to her. (Seriously with how they looked it gives a whole new meaning to the word "wingmen".) The conversation goes something like this:

Wingmen: Are you from, America:

Megan: Uhm....yes?

Wingmen: *Over enthusiastically* OH! We LOVE America! Yeah!

Megan: .......................................................okay.........

And then Megan laughs and keeps walking past them. Now, at this point I had a solid 3 seconds to decide what I was going to do. They hadn't seen me yet so I could either A) turn back around and go to the room to wait it out until they passed or B) I could proceed with my intended trajectory full well knowing that it would initiate a similar interaction with them. Well, duh. Of course I went with option B! As long as they are harmless I am always up for more hilarious and potentially cringe worthy awkward stories.

As the Wingmen are still looking at Megan I start to walk past them and this is how my interaction goes:

Wingmen: Oh. OH! Are you from America too?!

Moi: Yes, I am!

Wingmen: We! W-we LOVE America! *They all start nodding their heads almost furiously*

Moi: I love America too!

*I start to continue walking slowly past them but maintain eye contact and continue to smile*

Wingmen: Oh-ho! *One of them raises his fist like a total bro*

Moi: Woooooo! *I raise both of my fists in the air and continue around the corner*

By the time I got to the food I heard them whooping and hollering and even a clap of some kind. The interaction boosted their spirits and I certainly got a kick out of it.

After 4 tries Kim and Megan finally looked AND smiled at the same time for the picture.

Whatever music video was playing on the television made us look whiteeeee. I mean I am white anyway but it even whitewashed Kim.

This is the touch screen panel where you choose your songs. Here are some of the ones we sang.

The instructions were all in Chinese so when we wanted to add more Western songs we had to have Grace, our friend, come help us out and tell us which buttons to press. That was only after pressing the wrong buttons for a long time, of course.

Megan, our KTV queen. She was the star of the night. She wanted it and she owned it. If only we could all be as cool as her.

There are many videos of us singing but I will refrain from putting them in the blog and spare you all the pain. Just know that we all sounded like angels. (Megan most of all)