A table near the street, in our old familiar place...

Kindy graduation is over at last!!

Saturday night had its ups and downs, of course. The ups included seeing all the kids with their very proud parents, all of them doing their best to thank us in English for teaching their children, and watching "The Ugly Duckling" go off without much of a hitch, and us teachers doing our big star turn in our "Lollipop Lollipop" exercise routine - punctuated by yours truly telling the audience "thank you on behalf of the group and myself and I hope we passed the audition" in my best John Lennon impression. (Yes, I was and am aware that most Taiwanese people probably wouldn't get the joke.) The downs included one of the older kids' plays in which one of the main stars didn't show up, so "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" became "The Two Billy Goats Gruff," and then one of the two billy goats got into a fistfight with the kid playing the bridge.

But on balance, it was a great evening. We had everything squared away just a bit after 9:00, and since the five of us were uncharacteristically dolled up in suits and dresses, it called for something other than a quiet return to Longtan (the ceremony was held in an auditorium in the neighboring town of Pinjen). So it was off to downtown Chung Li for a pleasantly grown up dinner. We ended up at a nice upstairs place with comfy booths and romantic lighting and...an American-style cover band playing in the corner. Just about perfect, if you ask me. The salads and dumplings were great, but the only-in-Taiwan moment came when somebody happened to look closely at the English menu. The last page featured a long list of wonderful sounding cocktails, replete with some unfortunate misspellings: among the choices of mixed drinks were a nice "gasshopper," or a "sexy on the beach," or a "long iced tea." There were others, but those are the only ones I remember offhand.

And the heading of that page? There, in big block letters, it read "COCKTANS."

I got a priceless picture of a friend and colleague holding the menu up and pointing at the unfortunate word with her immaculately manicured finger. Too bad I didn't think to get one of myself holding it, then I could post it here.