Good News

After 29 days of pointing out to these people that I could only stay in Taiwan for 30 days if they didn't get moving on my working visa, it finally came through. I don't have it in hand yet, of course, but the logjam appears to be broken. I hope the others who are having similar problems manage to get what they need also.

The next step is a physical and an application for an Alien Registration Card (similar to green card), which, when received will make it legal for the school to pay me. Won't that be nice? I am so glad that I worked for a bureaucracy for 20 years so I don't take all this as personally as some of the younger teachers in the program who seem to think this is an al Qaeda plot! It has been extremely aggravating but the best part was the support I got from my school.

Now that I have a television, I feel a little more connected to the world.. Getting the BBC version is only annoying since they don't cover American football at all. Soccer games from ALL over the world, also American tennis and American golf, but football isn't mentioned. Thank heavens for washingtonpost.com or I would never know how bad the Redskins lost!

9/11 commemoration events got big play but I couldn't find any students who had any idea what happened that day, and precious few teachers.

I have also found 3 movie channels which are mostly in English but where do they find these movies? I was so excited to find "The Hunt For Red October" the other night, I stayed up until 1 AM to watch! I now know why I only had basic cable in the states.