Complaints!

I have been receiving complaints that my tone and attitude in this blog has been entirely too positive.  People either don't believe I'm being truthful about my time here, or they are just bored of reading how damn cheery I am.  It is for these people that I dedicate the first half of this post entirely to things I Hate about Taiwan.

1.  The Weather. (天氣)  I have alluded to this previously when I mentioned that time it was sunny, but let me address it outright:  The weather here sucks.  Call me spoiled, coming from a severely drought-ed Texas where it was sunny and beautiful for 360 days of 2011, but every day here (except that one) has been disgusting.  It rains at least once a day, sometimes just lightly enough to be quietly depressing, other times enough that my shoes, socks, feet, and bottom half of my pants are incurably cold for the whole day.  Right now we're on a long weekend but the thought of going out to do anything other than sit in my dorm is totally unappealing.

Look how gloomy!  Still a nice view, though.

Plus, it's cold!  I was keeping tabs on the Taipei weather before coming, and although I knew I saw a lot of rain, the temperature always seemed quite warm.  Well, it doesn't feel warm.  And the dorm doesn't have heating, and most of what we do involves a lot of being outside, so I am perpetually too cold and without a winter coat (because I smartly packed so light, remember?).  And there are all these things I want to do and places I want to go around Taipei or Taiwan, but the weather is just too cold and gross and depressing to do anything.

The rain of #1 brings me to...

2.  The Overuse of Umbrellas.  Because of the perpetual threat of rain, everyone carries an umbrella with them at all times.  Which is fine.  The only thing I have a problem with is that then, out of instinct, even when there is NO RAIN FALLING FROM THE SKY, these people will open their umbrellas and use them!  And then out of umbrella peer pressure, everyone else follows suit, and there is this completely ridiculous parade of people using umbrellas even though it isn't raining.  This annoys me enough if that was the end of it.  But it gets worse.  When we're walking in groups, these umbrellas become a safety hazard, and I am constantly getting poked in the face, eye, or head with other people's umbrellas.  To make matters worse, sometimes, when people see me walking umbrella-less, they will often try to (very nicely) share their umbrella with me.  I know this is coming from the goodness of their heart, but I have really come to hate sharing umbrellas with a deep fire.  Getting poked and prodded by the umbrella is unavoidable, and also the person will be walking too close and at the wrong pace and they won't let me get any personal space because then - god forbid - I might get rained on!  Sometimes they half-heartedly position themselves just so I am poised directly under the runoff from their umbrella.  I have now started carrying and using my umbrella strictly out of self defense.

3.  The Overuse of Creepy Seafood.  Again, I mentioned this briefly, but I am sick of eyeballs and nasty fish-like things staring up at me from my plate.  I don't want to be culturally insensitive.  But it's gross.

4.  The Relationship Between Cars and Pedestrians.  In America, cars have their places, and pedestrians have theirs.  Here, a car will squeeze past you on the street just the same way a fast walking person would on the sidewalk, but without muttering "excuse me".  Sometimes in the jam-packed streets at a night market, one naive car will try to get through and will just be slowly plowing a few feet at a time, hoping the poor innocent pedestrians in front of him will notice and get out of the way.  Every time I cross the street I lose years off my life, and I walk in constant fear of being hit by a scooter (who, like bicycles in the US ride either on the sidewalk or the street! Ahhh!) or bus.

5.  The Prices.  This label is a little misleading: the prices are, in general, much cheaper here than the US, so I'm not saying that I hate all the prices.  I am frustrated, though, by the confusion of switching currency.  It's confusing because not only do all the price tags look different (I'm not paying $300 for this crap! .. oh wait) but because the relative price of food to non-food items is very different from the United states.  So, if I translate everything into US dollars, the food seems very cheap but everything else is about equal.  Instead, I think of all non-food goods in terms of Taiwanese meals, and it seems COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS to pay the price of ten dinners for a book or a pair of shoes.  When in reality, many of my dinners cost just $2 or $3 in American money.  Anyway, it all throws me off, and I feel like I have no perception of much I have been spending or should be spending, or what is too expensive versus a good deal.  And I hate feeling out of control of my money!

Okay, so those are my main complaints.  And they are all real and serious.  But I am still having a great time!  And am very happy!  Now, here are some things I bought:

I wanted to get a kid's book to help me learn Chinese.  This one is way too hard and I am not exaggerating when I say I will never be able to read it, but the illustrations were really beautiful and amazing and so I got it as motivation to get really good!

Just look at this illustration!  Avoid looking at the 10,000 characters I don't know on the right hand side.

I also got this book - easier, and also very cute.  A story about three hedgehogs.

The cutest calendar ever!! It's all handwritten-style in Chinese and has pictures of Taiwanese kids being adorable.  A must-buy.

Saturday we had the CIEE annual scavenger hunt!!  It was unlike any scavenger hunt I've been on in the past because it wasn't timed, intense, or a competition at all.  It really felt more like a day trip than anything else.  It was nasty and cold and raining (surprise surprise), but other than that it was a lot of fun.  We went to an adorable bagle shop that also sold things, including the calendar above, and later we ate these really tasty and expensive (but covered by CIEE! yeeeah!) dumpling-like delicacies.  We also went to Taipei 101!  It's not the best place to shop for cheapskates like me, but here it is up close:

2nd tallest building in the world!

We all agreed that from up close, it really doesn't look all that tall.  From the dorm though, it is very clearly the only visible building that far away by a long shot.  We didn't get to go to the top (too cloudy anyway), but it is still a good-looking building and a Taipei landmark!

I also spent a large part of the day taking creepy pictures of cute Taiwanese kids:

I was trying to be subtle but these kids knew what was up

In other news, I have been watching this Taiwanese drama, Hana Kimi.  It is so much fun.  It's very over-the-top and silly, and it's the show that the song Zen Me Ban is from!  It also features the lead singers from hit girl band S.H.E. and hit boy band Fahrenheit.  It is really fun and it has both English and Chinese subtitles so I do think it helps my Chinese at least a little.

The whole Chinese-learning thing is still a constant adventure, and I am learning more and more characters every day.  It's a lot of fun and people have been very generous with compliments about my tones and pronunciation, both of which would be a lot more useful if I actually knew enough to form sentences.  It is coming along though, and for once I find myself INTRINSICALLY motivated to study and get better just for the sake of getting better.  So that's pretty cool.

Another thing I've been meaning to mention: the talking elevator that I take every morning from my dorm has this slight mistranslation in their English version, so every time you get in or out, it says, "The doors are wanting to open" or "The doors are wanting to close."  It is an amusing reminder of where I am every time I use it.  All the English-speaking Taiwanese students get a really big kick out of it too.

Lastly, this is my student ID!

That's right, Rice.  I'm a student of NCCU now!

And if you look under my picture, that's my name!  It's pronounced dai (4th tone) an (1st tone) ya (3rd tone) , and it's written like this:

戴安雅

Nice to meet you!

Surviving Classes: Week 1

There were some things I meant to put in my last entry that I forgot.  Here they are:

If you can't read the note, it says, "Hope you'll like it - Elaine" -- she left me breakfast one morning!! She is absolutely the sweetest girl in the world!  (and, for the record, I did like it.)

On the topic of food, another thing I wanted to mention from our trip was the single most unpleasant thing I have eaten so far.  It was a small fish, about the size of, I don't know, a tampon.  Of course the head, skin, eyes, bones, etc were still intact.  And it was frozen.  And covered in some basically barbeque sauce.  My instinct (as trained by my dad, who always told me as a kid that if I want to know if something is good, "there's only one way to find out") was to give it a try in case it was a really superb delicacy.  And then, something in my brain said, "Are you crazy?? This is a fish popsicle!! There is nothing more horrible and disgusting sounding in the world!"  I ignored this voice.  Instant regret.  I swallowed the one bite I took (the head) with much effort and vowed to never be an adventurous eater ever again. 

Also, I was walking up the hill to my dorm the other day and I noticed this sign:

Houston?? Rice University??

I still don't know what it says or why there is a sign about Rice on my campus, butI thought it was pretty neat and worth sharing.

Also, an interesting difference between the US and Taiwan:  here they have coffee in cans!!  Served from a vending machine!! hot!!! I have never seen hot things in a vending machine in the US (at least never a real classic one like this), let alone cans of coffee.  I had one today; it was quite good.  Yesterday I thought I was getting one but after one sip I discovered it was actually peanut rice milk.  What a shock!

View from the Elevator

Yesterday was beautiful.  Look at the landscape I see every day!!  Haha, I'm just kidding, this is the landscape I see every day that it's sunny.  So actually I only saw it that one time.  But still, so beautiful!  Hen piao liang (漂亮)!

Afore, while showing me around the campus last week, pointed out a tall building on campus.  She told me that, legend has it, that building is haunted.  Many people have committed suicide off it and their ghosts remain, blah blah blah, and if you go in there when you are too stressed out, you might commit suicide too.  I assured her that I would steer clear of it, ESPECIALLY when stressed out.  The next day I found out that every single one of my classes is in that building.  Oh.  Okay then.

Despite Afore's warnings, so far my classes are all going fine.  The teachers are better at English than I expected.  Yesterday I had Industrial economics and competition policy, and it was really interesting when we went around the class and said our names, majors, and what countries we're from.  Since it is an English-taught course, it is mostly made up of exchange students.  And at least 10 countries were represented!! It was amazing!  We had several from Germany, Spain, Korea, a few from the US and from Mexico, some France, Canada, Japan, etc etc etc.  It was very cool.  My other class the night before had a similar breakdown of nationalities.  Today, when I walked into my International Finance class, I got incredibly nervous when the classroom was fully of chattering Taiwanese students.  "Is this International Finance?" I asked, tentative.  The girl gave me a puzzled look, and then understood and nodded.  There was no possible way that I was in the right place and this was an English-taught course.  Until the moment the teacher actually started speaking English I was continuing to doubt myself.  But, fortunately, I was in the right place and it was in the right language.  This class was very interesting for a number of reasons.  For one thing, so far it seems the most translatable to Rice - like it would be an econ class I would take if I were still there.  And I know I shouldn't be, but I am still amazed that they teach the same things the same way across the world!  Maybe not everything, but the professor did casually say "as you all know, Y=C+I+G" (which, of course, it does in the states too), and there were drawings of Edgeworth boxes on the board behind her.  I thought that was pretty cool.

Another interesting thing (which has actually been true in all my classes, but especially this one) is sitting there as an American.  This may not come as a shock, but Taiwanese economics classes mention the US a whole lot more than the US economics classes mention Taiwan.  In one of my other classes, the professor mentioned "the current global recession that was triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in America," as I slumped in my seat.  Today was worse.  

What the Taiwanese learn about America

I know that is hard to read, but it is a figure reading "US Capital Account and Net Foreign Wealth" with a sharply down-sloping graph charting the world's biggest debtor, America.  I found myself feeling embarrassed the whole time!  Like I wanted to make excuses for my country to these people!  And I definitely avoided making eye contact with anyone around me.

Also, as this professor went over the syllabus, she introduced our main assignment for the semester, a group project and term paper.  I dreaded the group selection process, seeing all these chattering friends surrounding me, but figured I could ask the professor to stick me in with some unlucky group.  Just as I was damning myself to being the leftover reject, I was approached by not one but two students inviting me to join their group!!  (see video).  Whether it was out of pity or something else, I felt very lucky and it only reinforced the feeling that every single person in this country is incredibly sweet and caring.  Once we were dismissed, a complete stranger from the class offered to lend me her umbrella since she saw I didn't have one!  We got to chatting and she invited me to hang out with her and her friends and teach me Chinese, so hopefully we will all be hearing more from her in the future!

I am starting to accept that I guess I do stand out here.  Although, as previously mentioned, there are plenty of international students, I have yet to see a single fellow redhead on the campus...  Will definitely keep my eyes peeled and will report back with updates.

Last night we went to the movie theater and saw 愛, or, ai, or, Love.  Thankfully, it had English subtitles, but it was a very sweet Taiwanese chick flick about Love.  Basically a Taiwanese Love Actually, minus the Christmas stuff.  It was very cute and a lot of fun, but I don't think it improved my Chinese the way karaoke did.  There is nothing like karaoke.

No class tomorrow!  Holiday on sun-tues!  Five day weekend!!

To those Rice students approaching spring break: shut up.

Photos!

Our art!

Off on our bike ride!

scenic bike ride!

At the monastary

Could I be paler?  Here I am with Afore and Buddah

Group in front of lanterns

The main lantern

Excursion Recap + Classes Begin!

So.  I am pulling out the itinerary from our trip so that I don't forget anything vital.  This also might give the misleading impression that I remember/ever knew the names of most of the sites we visited, which is certainly not the case.  I am also going to try not to linger on the less interesting parts of the trip and focus on the really important ones (like, obviously, the karaoke).

We got on our bus on Friday morning, and this bus was pimped out.  It had curtains, karaoke-enabled televisions, and essentially a light show going on for when it got dark.

Photo courtesy of Phuab

The bus took us to our first stop, Taoyuan Tashi Old street.  We took a guided tour of this nice little park that had some kind of historical significance (related to Chiang Kai-Shek in some way), and then hopped into a temple (smaller and more vacant than the impressive Longshan temple that we already visited) and took a tour of the old street in the town.  It was a pleasant stroll and a nice place.  We ate lunch in that area, and I, for once, sat at the vegetarian table.  And boy, what a good decision!  The vegetarian food was amazing.  Christie (our resident director) told me that Taiwan is "a vegetarian's heaven", and she was really right.  We had, for the table, something like 12 different vegetarian dishes!  And let me just say, the vegetable dishes are far less risky than the carnivorous dishes, which always involve some kind of creepy mystery fish with eyes and bones still inside.  We had ginger spinach, bamboo with greens, squash, tofu (always), bitter melon, broccoli, even fake vegetarian fish balls.  And at least five other courses.  I kind of don't get why everyone talks about Americans having huge portions... Here, we get courses upon courses of huge portions!  And individual sizes are still enormous!  But what confuses me even more is how everyone here is still so skinny after eating all of that!

Anyway, lunch was outstanding, and then we got back on the bus to head to back cihu, another park connected with Chiang Kai-Shek.  We had another guided tour but he spoke only in Chinese, so I spent most of the time looking around.  And this park was beautiful!  It was full of green trees and mountains and lakes, and we only ran into one or two other groups of people.  I pictured myself building a little cabin somewhere along the tour route and living there forever.  This kind of scenery is the reason I chose Taiwan over the other study abroad programs I was considering.  Here are some stolen photos (from Phuab and April):

We then watched this dramatic changing of the guard ceremony, and then took a quick walk through of Chiang Kai-Shek's tomb.  The next part of the park was totally surreal.  The story is, just a few years ago when the DPP came into power over the KMT (opposing political parties), they set out to eliminate all of Taiwan's statues of Chiang Kai-Shek.  The KMT and many other had some issues with this goal, and so many of the statues were moved (I'm not clear whether it was the DPP's relocation or the KMT moving them for protection) and consolidated in this one location.  The result: a very creepy army of hundreds of Chiang Kai-Shek statues all in one place.

It was a very strange sight!

After our time at the park, we left for our hotel, located a couple of hours away.  The hotel was amazing and adorable, very traditional style, and we got to rent out a whole building to ourselves.  When we first arrived (after eating a delicious all-vegetarian meal, featuring many interesting and tasty courses including these plant leaves that were dipped in honey - incredibly juicy and both sweet and sour.  So far they have been one of the most unexpected delicacies I have encountered on the trip so far.

After our meal we had to find our way to our rooms/building.  It was freezing, foggy with about five yards of visibility, and pitch dark outside, and we had flashlights and we were navigating up rickety stairs to the sound of girls squealing and giggling.  Although people may have said it was like something out of a horror movie, I thought it was one of the most memorable and magical fragments of the trip.

We got in and had a fun night of karaoke, card games, and hanging out.  Both the bus trip and the evening brought me to the same realization: Karaoke is the single greatest educational tool when learning a language.  After just a few hours I am now practically fluent in Chinese!  But seriously, it was so much fun, and I was able to pick up a ton of characters by listening and watching them go by.  Plus, all the ciee students like bestowing their extensive knowledge on me, so they are tremendously helpful.  At one point, several of the students and I sat down and read through almost every title in the karaoke manual to see if we could find one that I knew all the characters in.  We didn't, but I learned a bunch of new ones along the way.  For the whole night as people were singing, I would sing along to every character I knew - maybe 1 in 20?  And I (and some of the others) would get very excited every time one came along.  As I confessed to my dad, the only problem with this educational tool is that most of the karaoke songs are about love, and it would be much more practical if they were about ordering in restaurants.

Karaoke is also where I discovered my new favorite song in the whole world: ze me ban!  It is so unbelievably cute!  I also learned the chorus to another classic by the same group, superstar.  I am a new lover of Chinese pop music!

Anyway, our hotel was adorable:

And in the morning we dyed pieces of cloth with handmade nature dye (called something that I can't remember).  It was basically tie dye, but it was a lot of fun.  We then went to a monastery, and had delicious (and free) (and vegetarian) food amongst the monks and other visitors.  We had another guided tour of some amazing statues, photos to come (I think I have posted too many photos for this entry and I am unable to post more, so I will follow it with another one of just solid photos).

After the monastery, we went strawberry picking!  The strawberries were all really good and it was a fun change of pace.  Next, we drove to the Lukang to the lantern festival!  The offical festival was a few weeks ago but many of the lanterns were still around.  Interestingly, a lot of these lanterns are apparently made by - of all people - prisoners!  This festival definitely challenged my previous perception of "lantern" - most of these are made of thin cloth into crazy shapes (taipei 101, buddah, dragons, spongebob squarepants, etc) and have many colors and lights.  The main lantern, a dragon, was lit ceremoniously at 6:30 pm and had a dramatic show as it changed colors rapidly and circled around.  It was pretty cool.  We spent a while roaming and looking at lanterns, but there were thousands of people there and it was very cold and windy, and I was a little cranky for most of it.  Still, it was cool, and I'm glad we went.

Our hotel that night was an amazing condo in the suburbs - one of the bathrooms was about the size of my dorm room, and included a bath for two and other spa features like steam and stuff.  It was extravagant!  It was beautiful!  And we had another fun night of staying up late, playing games, sharing revealing stories, and bonding.

The next day, Sunday, began with a really fun scenic bike ride.  On the first stretch, it was totally effortless and the weather was beautiful (much warmer than the freezing cold of the last few days!), and we passed scenic views and went through a tunnel, and it was overall extremely pleasant.  The way back was too, although we all discovered that the reason it was effortless on the way over was because it had all been downhill, and we were now suffering the consequences.  By the time we returned I think we were all a little more tired and sweaty than we had hoped, but overall it was beautiful, fun, and a great way to see a new part of the country.  Plus, we were encouraged to strike up conversations with strangers, so I got to practice my, "mei nu"s and "shuai ge"s (pretty girl and handsome boy - common greetings in Taiwan, or so I'm told by my giggling peers).  I got a few responses but mostly blank stares... limited success, overall.

We then took a tour of a Ramune factory.  (Did anyone else go to Japanese restaurants as a kid and get those sodas with the marbles inside?  That's what this is.)  We got to make our own ramune and it was another fun way to experience Taiwan.  After that we piled back into the bus and headed back to taipei.  I tip my hat to those who planned the trip - I think it was the perfect combination of activities, sightseeing, nature, culture, food, touristy and non-touristy... They really picked a good balance and the trip was just about perfect.  And most of all it was great spending time with the people on the trip because they are all amazing and wonderful.

Since then, everywhere we go I am searching street signs and notices for characters I recognize - it's a type of knowledge that is very easily applied - and I have been keeping track of the new ones I learn.  It is great! Pretty soon I might even be able to live a self-sufficient life without demanding the services of my interpreters!

I signed up for my classes, and today I even had my first couple.  I had my first Chinese class with April.  This is a little misleading because it's not so much a class as a lesson - since Phuab and I are the only two in the program and we are each on different levels, we are both getting one-on-one instruction for 6 hours a week.  So today April and I listened to ze me ban 15 times in a row (but not before I listened to it at least twice with Avalon) and wrote down the pinyin so I can learn the lyrics.  She's also teaching me to write my name, which is a really weird throwback to pre-K.  (My Chinese name - given to me by NCCU, unbeknownst to me - is dai an ya, which means something like "wearing tranquility and elegance".  I argued should be changed to something more like "wearing sarcasm and obnoxiousness," but they wouldn't have it.) I also went to a graduate course in the economic development of Taiwan.  Tomorrow I have another Chinese lesson and a class called "industrial economics and competition policy", which is at 9 am, so I automatically hate it.

I am nervous now that orientation is over, since I won't have my life busily planned out for me.  I had this same worry at the end of o-week my freshman year at Rice, but this time, I also won't be constantly surrounded by people that necessarily speak English.  It is nerve wracking but everyone is really helpful and soon I am confident my Chinese will be at least good enough that I can go places without escorts.  In the meantime, I can only hope that my fellow students and ambassadors aren't sick of me yet!

Pictures on the way!

Three Day Two Nights Trip

Well, I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is that the trip was amazing, beautiful, and lots of fun.  The bad news is that I forgot my camera memory card in my dorm, so it essentially never happened.  Many pictures were taken by others, though, so I hope to steal some of those and will share them when I do.

I am running off right now to sort out some student ID issues and get dinner, but I will update with many longwinded details later.  For now, suffice it to say that the trip was really, really great, and I love the people in the program, and I love this country!

Also!  I met my roommate for the first time last night!  She is amazingly nice and sweet.  She even offered me her comforter when she could tell I was cold.  And she offered to share some of her food with me for breakfast.  She is the best.  And just to quickly reiterate - it is a giant relief that her English is pretty good!

Will update later... clear your schedules, it's going to be a long one!

Fun Food Day!

My most notable adventures today were all alimentary, my dear Watson.

First on the menu: Stinky Tofu.

You can practically smell it from here.

We went to some district/area that is famous for their stinky tofu.  Before coming to Taiwan I had heard lots about the stinky tofu, and definitely mixed reviews.  When we first arrived, I caught a whiff of it, but it wasn't nearly as fragrant as I was expecting, and I thought it smelled more like food that smelled like feet than the intense dumpster odor about which I had been warned.  Our group sought out the stinkiest of all the tofus, this barbequed style with lots of stinky sauce.  This is not the only way to serve it; they also make it stewed in sauces or fried.  The picture above was the actual slab of stench that I myself purchased.  There sure was a lot of buildup - and we all took pictures of our first bites.

Mmmmm!

I took my first bite, and I have to say, it was not what I expected.  That is primarily because everything I had heard about stinky tofu was that it smells really really bad but actually doesn't taste bad at all.  My first experience was the exact opposite.  It was a little pungent, I admit, but I only got the full blow of the stink when I actually took a bite.  And boy, was it stinky.  As soon as I swallowed, I informed the rest of the table that it does in fact taste like poop.  Not that it was the worst thing I had ever eaten, just that it had a definite poop flavor.  Two of the other CIEE students at the table took teeny bites and promptly spat them back onto a napkin.  I then tried a second bite, which was actually worse than the first, but only because the other girls at the table were whispering things about how it tasted like vomit and looked like diarrhea and the like.  Phuab was the only American at the table that actually gave it a good try, and she proclaimed that "it was okay."  At some point we looked over, and the other table of students from our group (visible in the background of the photo above) had all finished theirs and were already leaving.  Perhaps it was this realization that inspired me to give it another try.  I had a few more bites and it did actually get better, especially when I scraped some of the sauce off.  My final evaluation was that it did grow on me, and wasn't actually that bad, but I didn't really much like it.  Try though I did, I only got about half or a third of the way through it, but did make some progress, as shown:

Next on the menu: Pig's blood.
For dinner we ate at a night market and went to this crazy restaurant where you take a basket and fill it with all the fresh vegetables, meat products, noodles, tofu, etc etc, that you choose from a stand, and then they cook it in front of you by sticking it in a boiler, and then toss it on a plate and you're done.  The whole experience was actually really stressful because we were in a group of three Americans and one ambassador and we were holding up the whole line, all asking Una (the ambassador) what every single item was... and boy, did they have some stuff!  Chicken testicles, pig intestine, cow tongue, lots of crazy food.  I did not choose pig's blood - I didn't even see it up there.  I got a bunch of stuff (some good, some definite regrets), but it wasn't until I asked what the mysterious greyish blob on Jessie (an ambassador)'s plate was that I encountered the pig's blood.  She told me I should taste some, and so I did.  I found that it didn't really have much flavor on its own, it just tasted like the sauce.  The texture was pretty much like jello, so it was alright, but not something I expect to be getting a craving for any time soon.

Last on the menu: Lucifer.
Psych! sort of.  But this really was exciting because it was (momentously) my first legal beer in Taiwan!  Not that I was drinking illegal beer in Taiwan, but just that I will be legal from now until forever, and this was the start of it all:

I wasn't kidding about Lucifer

After the night market, we went to a bar, which was really more like swanky cafe.  This was my first and only beer of the night.  And I didn't even get carded! ;)  Exciting stuff.

Those were my food adventures of the day.  But it does bring me to a point I have been wanting to make.  As most of the Rice frisbee team knows, I like to show off my chopsticks skills.  But the truth is, I have been awesome with chopsticks.  We use them for every meal (except the Italian food - I asked they used forks instead of chopsticks, and Afore said, surprised, "Why?  Do you eat this with chopsticks in America??"), and I have been a total champ.  The very first time I used them, on that first day with our first meal, I had a moment of panic when I picked up my chopsticks and though of how embarrassing it would be if I struggled, and I even took a second to fit them correctly in my hand, but since then it has been totally smooth sailing and I don't even notice them anymore.  I know I am bragging.  But I am so pleasantly surprised with my performance, and if I can't share that here, where can I?

Here are some more photos from today:

Street near campus, waiting for the bus

Here's some of the group at dinner - site of pig blood consumption

School kids on the bus

Scooters are popular here

Tomorrow we embark on our "three day two nights" trip.  I am really excited - it involves some sightseeing, lantern festival, a scenic bike ride, cool hotels, potentially karaoke?  Anyway, I am not sure if we will have internet at all, but I will be taking lots of pictures and will share all about it.

Sleepy but Happy

I am so tired, and could write at least another 10000 words, but will have to do that part later.

Despite the thin mattress, I slept like a rock last night.  Perhaps not surprising.

Today was very busy and exciting and fun!  We went out for breakfast, took a campus tour, went to some information/orientation sessions, had lunch, learned about the upcoming CIEE-run excursions (including one this weekend, which I am really excited about), visited Longshan Temple, visited the site where some movie was filmed, and then went to a sort of night market where we strolled around, tasted some interesting things, had dinner at an "authentic" italian-style restaurant, went window shopping, and did what feels like at least 100 other things before hiking back up the mountain to the dorm.  I was planning to elaborate on most of this stuff but I might be too tired to do so today.  But there are a few things I did want to say:

I have communicated with my mysterious roommate!  And I am so happy for two reasons: 1) she speaks English!  and 2) in my mind, the fact that she was never in the room and didn't (unless I slept through it) come back last night was indicative that she was too cool for me and was probably really mean.  But she is not.  She is wonderful.  But of course we haven't actually met yet.  I wrote her a note before leaving the room this morning.  I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was something along the lines of, "Ni hao!  I don't speak Chinese so I am hoping you speak some English.  I just moved in as your roommate, hope I get to meet you soon!"  When I returned to the room, I couldn't tell that she had been back except my note was gone and there was a response on my desk!!

If you can't read that, it says:
Antonia:
Hello!!
Oh~That is so amazing!  I was surprised when I entered the room.  I moved in a few days ago and went to my uncle's flower shop for Valentine's day.  It's nice to be your roommate; while now I'm going hoe so we'll meet each other when the semester starts.  Hope you have good days in Taiwan!!
Elaine

So, she's great!  And I am so happy.  And I can't overstate how relieved I am that she speaks English.

Also, while on the campus tour, I started to realize that not only is NCCU (National Chengchi University - the students all call it either "NCCU" or usually "Zhengda") a university, like Rice, but the two have eerily a ton in common.  In fact, they are just about interchangable.  For example, how Rice has the north and south colleges, NCCU has the top of the hill and bottom of the hill.  The schlep is about equal to the distance from Jones to Wiess, but uphill.  There is also a bus system, just like the inner loop shuttle, that runs until 11 pm or so, just like the inner loop shuttle.  Here it's not free, though - it costs a whopping $1NT, which is equal to three US cents.  During the campus tour the tour guides indicated a building that you enter on the fourth floor - Sewall Hall, anyone?  They even have weird coffee-cup-inspired art outside the campus coffee shop!

Coffeehouse's next installation?

And - I'm not even kidding here - on your birthday, they have a tradition of throwing you into the campus fountain!  It is like I never left!

Which brings me to: ways in which I can definitely tell that I left.  For one thing, the toilet paper here isn't on rolls!  I guess in the public toilets it is, but mostly we use sheets that come from basically an oversized pocket-pack of kleenex.  Also, there is a PA system that goes into all the dorm rooms, which is very unnerving to me for some reason.  One of the reasons they use it is to announce the presence of another one of the weird differences: the garbage truck.  I know we do have garbage trucks in the US, but this one comes twice a day and you have to run out and bring your dorm room trash, instead of leaving it out for the truck.  It also plays music and is easily confused with an ice cream truck... a mistake that I obviously didn't make because that would be really embarrassing.  Also, Lilla may be happy to hear, I did have my first (and second!) experience today with hole-in-the-ground squatter toilets.

I am not very good at this yet

Okay, I am too tired to say more, though there is much more to say.  Oh, one last thing.  Everyone here is obsessed with Jeremy Lin.  His family is from Taipei and actually one of the women associated with CIEE claims to be his cousin!  When I say I'm from New York, especially, people ask me about him.  One boy even knew the term "Linsanity".  Now.  Here are photos!

Breakfast!  That on the left is like an omelette in pastry, above that are fried dumplings, and below that is soy milk with black tea.  Everything was tasty!  We also had this fried mashed white carrot patty with peanut sauce... I don't know.  But it was really good. 

lol

This runs through the campus and is on the way up the mountain!

Campus - pretty!

Distant mountains in the fog!  This is more of the campus.

The hike up the mountain...

Beautiful room on campus for lectures and important speakers

Um, yeah.

The very tall building way in the fog is Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world!

The menu advertised "profitable set" - a pretty good translation that you would absolutely never see in the US

Surprise! this is me!  Outside Longshan Temple

The temple was amazing!  Lots was amazing!  And all the food is incredibly cheap - my dinner was just $80NT, less than $3!  I have a few more photos and more meals to describe, but so far everything has been good.  Everyone is really really nice and they are all enjoying trying to teach me Chinese phrases (with yi dian (a little) success).  I also am struck by how, despite cultural stereotypes and even a language barrier, the Taiwanese students have the same types of personalities as back home.  There are the same class clowns and smartasses, and I can tell who they are even when I don't know what they're saying.  I think tomorrow is going to be as crazy and busy as today and I need to get to sleep (10 am central time = midnight here).  I will keep taking pictures and hopefully one day will get enough down time to give them some context!  Goodnight world.