The holidays are here! Well, they were here. When this episode was taped. In this installment of my video blog, I take and show you what Taiwan is like during the holiday season. What’s cool is, here we get to enjoy longer holidays (sort of) than back home. We get two consecutive New Years – Western and Chinese – and a Christmas somewhere in there. This, I guess, sort of makes up for the lack of Christmas spirit around these parts. Although the shops are open, the decorations are up, and the Jingle Bells is being played on every corner, ironically, the Christmas spirit is absent. First and foremost, because the Taiwanese WORK on Christmas. Yes, that means the white folks work, too.
For New Years Eve and Day, we usually get these days off. Even if they fall in the middle of the week, which is nice. The Chinese New Year is the best time though. A lot of people get a whole month off, and most get around two weeks. They are pretty generous with vacation time here. This is no America for you. And not to mention the LOADS of national holidays and other random times that gives you days off. For my Chinese New Year trip (as most take one), I traveled back to Moscow with Val. I haven’t been back in over a decade and it was insanely great to see all my family and friends again. However, I left this part for the next episode.
On a technical note, the past two episodes have been rather lengthy, so I decided to cut back and return to my initial set timing of ten minutes per episode. I also shortened the transitions and lengthened the content itself. This way, it should be more enjoyable to watch. I just personally enjoy mixing the music and videos for these transitions and sometimes get carried away.
The idea for the title came from childhood memories. I used to watch many of Audrey Hepburn movies with the family and one of them (the more famous one) is Roman Holiday, so I thought it’d be appropriate to do a little play on. Some of the highlights include our Chinese class presentations, teaching jobs and Christmas shopping with my Chinese Christian friend, Paul Gao. Oh yeah, and of course more partying – Russian style!
