Hi Matt, I like your site!
I just landed a job at a language school in Taiwan, teaching both kindergarten and elementary age kids. I found the job through IACC.
I have a few questions:
Taiwan
Ask Matt: Studying Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan
Dear Matt,
I am trying to find a Mandarin course in Taipei, Taiwan which starts in October (anytime) for myself and my husband. We have never been to Taiwan and do not speak any Mandarin. We have found a course which starts in December, but we just can’t wait that long to go!
Check Out This Month’s Action Asia Magazine
Check out this month’s Action Asia magazine for my profile of one of Taiwan’s most prominent and longstanding foreign paragliding pilots, Malcom Vargas.
Yenshuei Fireworks Festival 2010 Photo Gallery
The Yenshuei Fireworks Festival (Yenshuei Fong Pao) is a festival held in the Yenshuei township in Southern Taiwan every year. During the festival millions of fireworks are shot out of large hives into crowds of revelers dressed in heavy clothing and full-face motorcycle helmets. Each hive may contain as many as sixty thousand fireworks. If proper safety precautions are taken, the activity is not very dangerous. However, each year some people are injured. To learn more about this festival, read my post Standing in the Fireworks.
Riding the Crocodile V2.0
Note: This is a heavily reworked version of an article that originally appeared in Highway 11 Magazine. Don’t miss the photo gallery from the farm at the bottom of this page!
I tipped back my cowboy hat, which I had brought to wave in the air while riding the crocodile, and sized up the dinosaur-like behemoth. His head looked like that of a crocodile, but his body looked more like it belonged to giant mutant toad. His belly spread out on the pavement beneath him like a green leather sack of water.
Learning to Fly: Paragliding in Fang Liao Taiwan
Recently I’ve been working on a series of articles about paragliding in Taiwan. I’ve been learning how to paraglide, and about the evolution of paragliding in Taiwan, from Malcom Vargas who is, as far as I know, the only certified foreign paragliding instructor in the country. These are some photos from one of my first outings with Malcom taken while he taught two other students: Tim Hillebran and Paul Wesson.
Help Me Pick My Best Travel Photos
For the last few days I’ve been working on my application for the Glimpse Correspondent Program. I’ve gone through all of my old photos, picked out my favorites, and touched them up. I now have a total of thirty-three pictures. The problem is, I need to narrow my submission down to twenty. If you have a minute, it would be a great help if you could look through the photos and leave a comment telling me which photos you think I should keep, and which I should trash, and why.