Decisions, decisions…

After 14 long months, I am finally free!  Without question, this last year has been the busiest time of my life, as I completed 16 classes (15 plus a CLEP exam, actually) all while teaching full time.  It’s been three days now since I finished my final class, and I still can’t quite understand this feeling of not having any books to read or papers to write – what will I do with all this free time?

Unfortunately, not all is well.  When I last posted I had just learned that I would need a gum graft.  Well, it is now 12 days after my first (and hopefully last!) gum graft, and things are still rather frightening.  The procedure itself was not so nightmarish, aside from having to keep my mouth wide open for about three hours.  It’s the recovery that has been horrible; for the first week, I lived off of juice, soup and over-cooked pasta.  I had a follow-up visit after 7 days, and at that point everything looked fine.  But, we won’t actually know until three weeks if the graft has taken, and since that visit the pain has been almost unbearable.  Two teeth were grafted; one is fine, but for the other, it kind of feels like someone is digging a hook around under my gums and tugging at the root of my tooth.  It is a horrible sensation, and I can’t stop thinking that the graft has failed – why would I still be feeling so much pain after nearly two weeks?  I will know for certain next Friday.

Now that I have finished my studies, however, I am looking at the next step of finding a new job.  I had settled on a job with King Saud University in Saudi Arabia.  It would be a rough place to live, but the contract is only 10 months and the benefits would be excellent – free housing, tax-free salary, free airfare.  Matters are slightly complicated because I’ve just been offered another job in Kuwait.  The salary is lower, but the contract length is negotiable (3 months and up), and Kuwait is undoubtedly a more comfortable place to live.  So, should I go for cash or comfort?  Any suggestions will be appreciated!

And now I leave you with pictures of a deserted beach that Nok and I rode to several weeks ago – it’s about 30 miles south of Songkhla.

The view from a rocky outcrop. The beach stretched for miles and was lined with nothing but trees.

An old pagoda sat at the top of the hill, overlooking a little island.

A shot towards Songkhla. The furthest hills in the distance are in Songkhla city -- you can see just how far we rode that day!

Scroggins makes a bed in the sand.

We grabbed a tasty lunch of oysters and papaya salad before heading home.

Scroggins at the Park

My weekends are pretty much always spent indoors now reading my stack of text books and writing various assignments.  But this Sunday I decided to take a break for a few hours, and Nok, Scroggins and I headed out to the Taichung Metropolitan Park.  The park sits on a big hill that encloses the city along its western edge.  It’s quite a large park with plenty of grassy open spaces.  It can get a bit crowded on a Sunday afternoon, but once the sun goes down it becomes deserted.

Scroggins at Taichung Metropolitan Park on Sunday evening.

Scroggins takes in the swarms of people and dogs at the Metropolitan Park.

Scroggins discovers the joy of a belly scratch.

If dogs could smile, it would look like this.

Watching a kite as the sun goes down.

Scroggins

Nok and I are suckers for animals.  After the unfortunate passing of Jeebo last month, we swore we wouldn’t get another animal until we were in a position to settle down in one place indefinitely.  Our plans haven’t really changed in that we won’t be in Taiwan for more than two years and will probably continue moving from country to country for the foreseeable future.

Yet here we are today with a new dog named Scroggins.  We got in touch with a group of foreigners here who run a handful of dog and cat shelters in Taichung county.  They had tons of dogs looking for homes, and after visiting one of the shelters we chose an 18 month old mutt previously named Maui.  He was found living on the city streets as a puppy, and he would have stayed there if he hadn’t been picked up by the government animal catchers.  Since the government shelters eventually put to sleep the animals they find, these people rescued Scroggins from the pound and took him to live on their spacious, no-kill shelter at the top of a lovely mountain on the edge of Taichung City.

Nok and I went out to that shelter last week, and it’s a pretty interesting place.  The road gets incredibly steep, narrow and windy towards the top, so much so that our taxi refused to continue and we had to walk another kilometers pretty much straight up.  Scroggins was delivered to our home the next day, and so far he seems to be adjusting well.

Scroggins in our apartment just after he arrived.  He is one of the shyest dogs I’ve ever seen.

 

Nok hugs Scroggins on the floor of our apartment.

Scroggins on the roof of our building.  I tried to get him to sit for a picture, but he’s so clingy he just kept following me when I backed up to take a picture.  This was the best shot I could get.

Today we took Scroggins for a walk at the school behind our apartment.  The tall building behind the palm trees on the left is our building.  I don’t know about the quality of teaching inside the school, but facilities of the schools I’ve seen here are far superior to any schools I attended as a kid.  This is an elementary school, yet it has a massive athletics field complete with a nice, new, rubber-topped track.

A shot from Go-go mountain, where Scroggins’ shelter was.  This was taken from where the taxi dropped us off, on top of a massive abandoned Buddhist monastery.  The monastery was condemned after the massive 921 quake.

Another shot from on top of the old monastery.

For those curious in the how things are going regarding my recent bicycle mishap, for the most part it’s good news.  My wound seems to be healing well, though most people I’ve spoken to agree that the doctor who stitched me up did a terrible job.  It’s incredibly sloppy, and even though the wound covers almost one whole side of my ankle, he used only three stitches spaced very far apart.

I was also concerned because my foot and lower ankle have gotten pretty swollen over the last few days.  I’ve seen five different doctors since the accident, and only today was I able to get a reasonable explanation for the swelling.  Apparently, in addition to the nasty gash I also have pretty serious ankle sprain, which explains why I’ve had so much trouble walking around.

On the legal side, I’ve been referred to an American ex-pat who’s lived here for about thirty years and specializes in representing other foreigners in Taiwan. I’ll let you know how it goes.