Holiday?...What Holiday?

So being from Canada, all the family wants to Skype for Christmas and New Year's. They all want to know what are your big plans. The truth is...nothing. Christmas is not a thing here. All the foreign teachers either take the day off and are forces to look for a substitute teacher (so they can have the day off). It's really just a regular day. So regular, that in fact I had forgotten it was Christmas. I went into work and a student came up to me and  said "Merry Christmas" and ran off. I had given Matthew his Christmas gift early, a pair of hand knitted slippers, so I had forgotten the real day.

I did have yesterday, January 1st off. I went to work like any normal day on December 31st. The big cities throw big concerts but we had no idea. No one had mentioned we'd have the day off until the night before. No one had any real big plans either. All my co-workers had the same plan: buy lots of food, turn on the TV and watch the countdown, then go to bed. Some people left the office earlier than usual but I stayed until 9:30pm. I figured that if I finished writing my lesson plans for the next few days, I could have a real day off on new year's day.

Matthew and I don't have a TV and I looked for a live stream of a Taiwan countdown but couldn't find any. I found one that kept advertising as a "live stream on youtube", but it wasn't live. It even said in small font "on a one-hour delay". I don't know what the word "live" even means in that case. So, I found a world clock and stared at that for the last minute of 2013. Then I did some knitting, watched my own silly television show and went to bed. The next day Matthew and I went out to eat, bought some groceries and I practiced some more motorcycle driving skills.

I can now walk the bike around quite comfortably, but going backwards is still a bit awkward. I can also start the motorcycle and drive it in both first and second gear. My top speed thus far has been 13km/h. I have also stalled it on numerous ocassions while shifting into new gears. Perhaps when I return to Canada I won't bother getting another car but maybe a motorcycle instead. I think this has been the most boring post thus far, but I just wanted you to understand how irrelevant the Christmas holidays are in some countries. I hope everyone back home enjoyed theirs.