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!