First Week of School: No Sharp Objects Allowed

That's right, and before we started school this week I was reminded once again that no sharp objects are allowed in my house as the pre-semester suicide temptations started to creeeeep into my head last week.

That's OK though. I've got a bottle of red wine with my name on it. It's on a shelf in a supermarket right now, but it'll be in my backpack as soon as I make my way down the hill and away from my uni. Satan's Hill that is. I'm not joking. It's in part because there is a cemetery located directly and I mean immediately adjacent to the property that the school is on. The Taiwanese are scared to death of ghosts and consequently cemeteries so that is the main reason that the students call the hill my uni is located on Satan's Hill. Actually I think the literal Mandarin translation is Devil Mountain.

Anyway, it's not just about the graveyard next door. It's the school too. It's one of the worst in the Taipei area. Gangsters in training for students. Drugs being sold in the bathroom. Students saying "fuck you" to me when I pass them because I'm a foreigner (not students from my department). I always blank them. Don't even want to get into the rage that could ensue if I acknowledged the utterances. Might end up on the evening news. Or in jail.