Pavilion in the mountains
colin's school closing was a huge blow to him, both emotionally and financially. you see, colin had two things working against him; firstly, he was illegal and secondly, we had already booked our tickets ... we were leaving taiwan on december 2. no school would want to hire an illegal teacher who was leaving in two months anyway. but he was lucky enough to have a friend who found him some work at his school, but it was only a few hours in the afternoon.
at least i still seemed to be doing better physically. i was feeling so good, in fact, that i had started going to the dentist once a week. i had to have twelve cavities filled and taiwanese law states that if the dentist uses anaesthetic he is only allowed to fill two cavities at a time. these dentist visits were pretty stressful as it was a long taxi ride to the dentist and back and then all the drilling in my mouth created stress on the blood flow in my brain. but i felt i had to do it, i was only trying to be responsible.
there were dentists who were closer to the flat, but i chose to travel further to go to a good dentist who had been recommended by another south african. i chose this because most taiwanese dentists are terrible! i had always wondered why taiwanese people, in general, had such bad teeth when there were so many dentists around and dental work was so cheap and then i discovered why. a few months back, while still in our old flat, i had gone to a dentist down the road from us. she had cleaned my teeth and then done extensive fillings on all the molars in my mouth. i should have realised something was wrong when the fillings started flaking and coming out, but she just told me i was brushing my teeth too hard. huh! what bullshit!
when i finally started going to this 'good' dentist he told me that the other dentist had not actually filled my cavities correctly so, the cavities had been getting worse and worse the whole time i had been walking around thinking that they had been fixed! the other thing that i discovered is that many dentists in taiwan will do extra work on your teeth, just so that you have to keep coming back. this is a way for them to make more money. anyway, i started going to this 'good' dentist once a week to slowly try and fix the mess that the other dentist had made of my teeth. this dentist was definitely better and i felt proud of myself that i was finally getting my teeth sorted out properly.
during this time we were also grazed by another typhoon, typhoon whipa, on tuesday, 18 september, but this one didnt really hit taipei very hard and colin didnt even get a day off work, which was a good thing considering he was now earning so little money! the rugby world cup also started on september 7, but you couldnt watch it at home, you had to go to a bar at 2 am to watch a game. so, colin started going out to watch as many south african games as he could, especially when south africa started doing well. and me? i stayed at home alone.
View from the mountain pavilion (with Taipei 101)
but i will leave that for another post and rather end on a positive, victorious note. i finally managed to make it a short way up our mountain to a viewing pavilion. monday, september 24 was a beautiful day and we had friends staying over (as it was a long weekend) so we decided to make the short walk to the pavilion and have a picnic. it was wonderful, i was exhausted, but exhilirated afterwards and felt freer and physically stronger than i had in a long time. we also took these friends to see the beautiful temple on tuesday, september 25 and i took some wonderful photos that weekend, which made me very happy. in fact, it was really nice having these two particular friends come and stay with us as they didnt take drugs or drink a lot so we had a relaxing, friendly long weekend that i felt i could participate in (for a change!).
Dragon wall at the temple
i was quickly losing patience and respect for those people i knew who took drugs and drank all the time ... but it was an unfair emotion fuelled by jealousy, loneliness and bitterness.
