March Madness

another day in my Taiwan life.

It's like a Taiwanese "Buena Vista Social Club." I saw them yesterday at Yao Min mountain, in Taipei County, where I went with my host mom Kendra, her son Cliff, Mary, my friend Nell, and Doris and Sean (Nell's host mom and her son). I thought that video was so awesome I had to put it first.

Yao Min mountain was nice. Everyone was there for the cherry blossoms, so the bus ride from one side of the mountain to the other was Asia crowded. Everyone was pushing and yelling, so then me and Mary just started shoutin random things in English like, "syncopated!" "Gross Domestic Product!" and so on.

The other highlight of the weekend was the Taiwanese version of March Madness. Me and my co-teachers entered into a basketball comp for all of Yilan County. The tournament, I was surprised to learn, featured former semi-pro players, and was not made up of middle school deans and biology teachers (like our team is). Suffice it to say, the first game was rough going.

When I walked into the gym, it was immediately 2pac status, all eyez on me. An American at a basketball tournament in Taiwan is like an African-American at a rap battle in Poland. And although everyone in the room assumed I was gonna 360-dunk it everytime, I quickly dissuaded that kind of crude, stereotypical thinking by shootin up an airball from 3. We lost the first game, I'm not exaggerating, 80-20.

Second game was a lot better. We had had a few too many Taiwan Beers in-between games (we had to regroup, you know?), but my co-teacher wasn't worried. "Just drink this Green Tea," he said, handin me a huge cup. It worked. We all came out playin hard, yours truly in particular, and we won our game by a comfortable margin. We advanced to a third game the next day, but I couldn't make it bcuz I already had the Yao Min plans with Kendra. I heard it went much like the first.