Josie's Taiwan Exchange

One of the greatest things about Taiwan is its markets (food markets, night markets, shopping districts).

As I’ve been increasingly able to deal with the problems I’ve had in Taiwan, enjoying the country and life here has gotten easier. This morning my host mother asked if I wanted to tag along to the market to buy some vegetables. It ended up showing me for the first time in a great long while how interesting and full of life Taiwan can be.

We took a bus together to an area near QiZhang MRT Station. I’ve never taken the bus with my host mom cause they have two cars and use a specific taxi company, so it was fun. We had a nice conversation about education. (As usual, it’s just her talking and me asking questions).

Then we walked leisurely (is that correct grammar? Should it be “leisurely walked?” or something else?) to this outdoors food market she frequents. On the way, we saw two or three stores with super cheap clothing (a whole bin where everything was only NT$50 (US$1.50)! Those have gotta be the cheapest clothes I’ve ever seen in my life. They were pretty ugly but bearable. Actually, I don’t know if you know anything about poor people fashion, but to someone who’s gotten almost all her clothes for her entire life from Family Dollar or donations, I can see the immense value in them. It actually warmed my heart to see them… kinda strange, right?) Okay, sorry, moving on.

We looked around and had a good time window shopping together. The funny thing about clothes shopping with Taiwanese is that they think the ugliest clothes in the world are “cute” or “good-looking.” When you just wanna throw up on it. So, the Taiwanese person is always like

Host mom: “Josie, come look at this!” [English translation: Josie, you should seriously consider buying this. It’s so great.]

*shows me a hideously cropped, bright pink shirt with lots of fake “diamonds” and bows and childrens characters and bad english and…*

Me:  “Uh… yeah… ‘cute…’”    -_-’

Host mom: “?” [English translation: you’re saying I was wrong?]

Me: O.O’ Oh god… “Uh, hahaha… It’s so great! I’ll go try it on!”

[fyi, this is an exaggerated version of the stories happening all across the island to exchange students]

You have to be careful with this kinda stuff. You never, ever wanna tell, indirectly or directly, a Taiwanese woman she’s wrong. Trust me.

Anyways, she ended up buying me a nice dress made of stuff similar to bathing suits. I’m gonna wear it tonight when I go for sushi. Later on she bought me a little purse.

Then we get to the actual market thing. I love this stuff. I don’t know why, but I get a lot of energy from this “renao” kind of setting (it means like bustling, busy, noisy atmosphere). There are tables with a certain kind of food on them. We first stopped by this vegetable stand. The weather was perfect. It was sunny but not bright, it was hot but not unbearable (just enough to where you’re sweating but you can still breathe [around 80 F] ), people were all around but it wasn’t too crowded. It felt like early summer even though it’s still March.

I didn’t have my camera so I took pictures with my phone. Even nearly 7 months into being here, I’m still discovering strange and exotic-looking fruit and vegetables. Today I found a giant cucumber-type thing that looked a little like a small watermelon, a lettuce-like thing with tall “roots” coming off of it, HUGE carrots, long, slightly twisted purple things, and much more. I’m adding it to my collection of pics of small orange pear-shaped fruit things, giant orange fruit that looks like a pear, an orange, and an apple combined, and “yellow-fleshed” watermelon.

I am most definitely gonna miss the fruit and vegetable culture here. Everything is so fresh and local. You can see the fruit of the farmers’ labor and it’s beautiful to me. And vegetables and fruit are such a huge part of the culture here. I don’t know about you, but I never ate vegetables except the few times I ate them out of a can. And fruit was also pretty scare in my household for most of my life. But here, vegetable preparation is like it’s own world/league. -_- Bleh. Can’t explain it. They eat veggies every meal and in fact vegetables and tofu are the main dishes (outside of rice). Meat is either not present or presented as a complimentary side dish. I gotta say, I’m really loving it.

Actually, food in general is one of the best things about TW. I’m gonna cry everyday for like 3 months in the US due to missing a lot of the food here. I’m addicted. I really dread living the next chapter of my life without them. T.T

Another really great aspect about these markets is the human interactions. The “laoban” (the people who sell the products, literally “bosses”) are almost characters in a story. (I used the word “laoban” because the English equivalent of the word doesn’t do it justice. It doesn’t sound right and most definitely doesn’t have the same connotation. Some things are just meant to be in Chinese, like “huai ren.”) Watching them be is in itself an adventure.

In my life in Taiwan, there are specific kinds of  Taiwanese worlds I interact with. One world is the world of youth. Another world is the world of rich middle-aged people. Another that I’m not as involved in is the world of working class people. This one has gotta be my favorite to observe though. Each world is in its own bubble and it’s really really easy to get wrapped up in it and forget that there are other worlds out there (that’s something I’ve been really struggling with. For long periods of time, I only see, hear, deal with lots of negative aspects of TW that I forget that there are many amazing things outside of all that).

The markets and this area of TP particularly represent the working class world. I really like being among working class people here. It’s so different and alien to me. The middle class and beyond have always been alien and weird to me, but now even my own class is unrecognizable. I love this. I get to compare my life to them (not in that douche-baggy, condescending way), try to figure them out… it’s like a puzzle.

In the US, it takes me one or two glances to figure out working class things. I “know” people I’ve never talked to just because I can see them in their behavior. (Remember that siren I told you about a long time ago that goes off? It’s kinda like that for everyday stuff too, just not so urgent and panic-inspiring).

The “clues” I used no longer apply, people’s interactions with each other are utterly foreign and inunderstandable (that’s not a word…) to me. I just get to sit back and observe and not participate. It’s a great feeling. I hope you all get the chance some day with your own classes.

The interactions between the laoban and the customers is one of the best parts of these markets. I can only try to describe it with an example and hope I do it justice. My host mom goes up to this table that she might frequent a lot because she kinda bee-lined it to that one and all the other tables look exactly the same to me. On the table are dozens of disgusting-looking “appetizers.” (I don’t know what to call them. They are a purely Chinese creation. Basically, you buy tiny “appetizer” things and serve like 5-10 of them at a table and that’s dinner. Okay, later I’ll do a post of the “round-table” meal experiences and maybe then you can get a visual.)

When she’s looking down at them (inspecting or whatever) she suddenly just holds her hand up and waits. The laoban then does this quick, frantic-looking-in-my-opinion movement and produces a bag that’s been “aired out” and kinda just throws it in her direction. On top of the food. My host mom looks up, grabs it, and starts stuffing it with food, and throws it back at the laoban who then ways it. Btw, she’d been handling all the food with her bare hands, taking some off, handling the money with her hands, then adding (using her hands) extra “bonus” food to the bag after my host mom had paid.

It was a semi-aggressive, marvelous aspect to behold. My eyes were wide and moving back in forth between them. It was absolutely fascinating. In the US, this kind of interaction would be considered rude. But here, it’s not. Not only that, but there are rules, methods, behaviors, and much more dictating these interactions. I was completely out of the loop so I can’t tell you what they are, but man. It’s systematic. I know everything has it’s own cultural-understanding-based rules and whatnot, but this is the first time I’ve got to see this so obviously. Needless to say, in the US I know all of the unspoken agreements between everyone in my culture so I don’t see or think about it. In Taiwan, I read about a lot of their unspoken stuff, so I was prepared and expecting it. But this was completely off the map alien to me. Loved every minute of it.

Afterwards, we ate at a brunch/sandwich/coffee place that my host mom’s been going to for years. (Also, apparently my younger-older host brother who goes to college in the south loves it and always brings his friends here. I don’t know how true her description was though because TW women exaggerate EVERYTHING, especially when it comes to their children [the centers of their world and value].)

I gotta say, those were the best cooked sandwiches I’ve ever had. Tomato, cucumber, chicken, and whatever else never tasted so good. It was tiny and expensive but worth it. I at 1.5 of the small sandwhiches and my host mom only had .5. Then we split a delicious cheese, meat sauce, and other stuff piece of bread. I knew my host mom barely ate, but this woman is borderline anorexic. It makes me feel sad for her.

We had a nice time together. Plus, like I think I’ve said earlier, she is a good Chinese teacher. She explains words with other chinese words, she speaks slowly most of the time, she repeats stuff for me, and she’s started “quizzing” me on different chinese words. I LOVE this last one. She’ll be talking about something, use a word, then a few minutes describe that word in other words and ask me which word she means. It really keeps me on my toes. I’ve learned so many different words from her (like “sunlight” and “troublemaker”) cause she talks so much.
I also got to meet the man whose dumpling-type-bun shop my host mom repeatedly buys from. I LOVE this stand’s buns (actually, I don’t know the right English word for this. It’s “baozi” in Chinese, but “bun” is the only thing I can think of. It’s a special bread that I’ve never had in the US with meat and veggies or disgusting sweet stuff inside). My school sells really great baozi but I actually kinda like these better cause the meat quality is better. My school’s are disgusting because you always find weird hard things in them and it looks really gross. Okay, enough of that. Actually, while we’re on the subject, never buy baozi at 7-11. They’re absolutely disgusting. Taiwanese love sweet meat, so that’s what you’re gonna get. Don’t do it.

Gah… I wrote it but never posted it… I’m sorry!

Hello again!

So, I’m just gonna work backwards,

-I moved host fams. For some reason, I only have two fams while most others have 3. I’m okay with this though.

They’re really nice, this one. My previous family consisted of me, my host mom, and my host dad (their daughter was on exchange to Japan so I don’t count her so much). They are extremely wealthy and let me be pretty independent (and gave me a lot of things). There was a lot more that went on with them, but I’m not gonna talk about that here.

So, this fam is pretty different. At one point there was me, a host aunt, two host parents, two older host brothers, a host grandma, and a housekeeper all living together. But now the aunt left cause she was just visiting (she lives in Hawaii). The brothers literally completely ignore me (one’s 19 and one’s 20-something), I never see the host dad, the host mom is really nice and it’s good to practice Chinese with her, but she’s a bit of a micromanager sometimes, which really bothers me. The grandma is nice but a little… hard to deal with, for me. I’ve never had to deal with old people here so I have to get used to it. They have near-deity status here, so I have to learn how to behave with them. She’s friendly and likes to show off a lot. She speaks fluent Japanese and we practice Japanese a little. Haha! Sometimes I don’t understand what she says and my host mom translates it into simpler Chinese. XD The aunt was nice but a little skiddish in my opinion. The housekeeper is nice but she has an accent cause she’s from New Zealand so we can’t understand each other at all. And, she micromanages too much too. She asked me 10 times if I wanted to eat and I told her in 6 diff ways that I wasn’t hungry. She’s not the original housekeeper. There was a 20-something year old woman from Vietnam and I REALLY liked her. She has an accent too, so we didn’t completely understand each other, but she has such a beautiful smile. She left cause her husband is sick in the hospital. I really hope she comes back.

-uh… Soon (on Feb 12) I’m leaving for a trip to the south with Quentin and his friend who’s visiting from France and some rotarians. I’m pretty excited.

-I traveled to the south and middle of Taiwan for a week. 😀 We went to two theme parks (SOOOO fun! One ride had a 90 degree drop and we sat in the front and after I felt so invigorated but probably lost some years off my life). We also went to a sheep farm, Sun Moon Lake (a really famous place, I’ve been there twice now), Gaoshiung (the second biggest city in TW), and some other places. We went to a hot springs but I didn’t go. Now I wish I had!!

-We’re on vacation from school for one month (almost all of Feb and the end of Jan) for Chinese New Years. I’m REALLY excited to see the celebrations and do some ritual stuff.

-We had two Korean boys stay with us for one week. They’re adorable and I adopted them as my little brothers. XD One’s 13 and the other is 17.

That’s all I can think of now! XD Okay, see you guys. I hope you’re all well.

[UPDATE] Okay, so actually I now have internet again. 😀 My host fam let me borrow a laptop from somewhere else (don’t ask, don’t tell XP).

I know I suck at updating this blog, but now its gonna get worse. 

In my new host family, not only do I have no access to the internet but I don’t even have access to all the videos and pictures I’ve taken. So… this blog is gonna get even slower. That’s ok, right Friends and Family? You don’t mind? Good! ^^ Cause you guys are obligated by blood-ties to be nice to me. I’m sorry but be sure I’m taking lots of notes on stuff here.

Happy new year to everyone. XD I know that’s really late. Actually, merry Xmas too.

新年快樂 is Happy New Year [pronounced: sheen nyehn kwai luh]

聖誕快樂 is Merry Xmas [pronounced: shuhng dahn kwai luh]

So! Was it good for you? Mine was good. Okay, so where did I leave off?

Let’s see,

-I’ve been going to the gym twice a week, but for the last month I haven’t been going but once or not at all cause of how busy I am. 😦 But, I’m back on it now. 😀 It’s super cheap. One hour is NT$50, so that’s like US$1.50. And to rent a locker is NT$10, so that’s like US$0.33. XD Isn’t that crazy? I do two hours a week. Which is nothing but it’s better than absolutely nothing!

-I read Slumdog Millionaire. That’s a really good book. I want to watch the movie now.

-I watched a famous Taiwanese movie called Cape No. 7 and it really sucked. XD BUT, the scenes in the beginning were my favorite. It’s SOOO Taiwanese. I’m gonna buy it just to show people back home what TW is like. Some of the places they were at I’ve been at!

-I’ve passed by TWO movie filmings! It’s so cool to be in Taipei!

-The language: Well, it’s been four months. I can hold really basic conversations and my Chinese class is all in Chinese, so I think I’m in pretty good shape. Speaking is my best area, but I still have a long way to go. ^^ If people speak slowly I can understand a lot, but I still have that problem where I know that like watermelon = shigua but when I hear “shigua” from someone I’m like “What is that?” The English to Chinese is good but the Chinese to English is not good.

-I have a really good ticket to go see Super Junior (the whole group, not part of the group like I saw last time) if and when they come in Feb. 😦

Unfortunately, their having some problems cause one of the members wants out of his contract. 😦 They better not disband!! I’m gonna kill someone if they do!

-Wait, did I tell you guys I saw Super Junior M (a subgroup of my favorite band Super Junior)? They were amazing! XD And, their Korean and their Chinese is better than mine! I’m gaining on them though.

-Xmas: Uh, we had a party at school that me and the 3 other exchange students (aka YEP) made. We actually had school that day. Can you believe it? Actually, now that I think about it, the party was on Christmas Eve. Then, on Xmas day (a Friday) me and Miguel went to school and the two Frenchies didn’t. We got presents from our classmates (cards and cookies) and then we skipped after like first or second period. A few days ago we’d planned to skip and go watch a movie, but we ended up walking around the city, checked out a new cinema complex, and just aimlessly walked some more. We were waiting for another French girl to be able to skip (she couldn’t till like 12). Then we met Manon (the French girl at my school) and Nora (a German girl) in a park and sat around some more. It was pretty fun. Then the French girl came and we were gonna go watch a movie, but right as we were gonna leave I got a call from one of my TW classmates asking where I was and that the teacher had a gift for me. So, I had to go ALL the way to school (took me an hour) only to sit in class for the last period while everyone took a test. 😦 But, I did get a couple more presents (one edible, one a pair of socks. XD I love them).

Then, I went straight home to prepare for a fancy dinner with my host parents and two other YEP (Quentin, the French boy at my school, and a Japanese girl named Ayumi). It was super delicious and I gained like 6 kilos because of it. XD My host mom gave me a cute gift. She gave me a stuffed dog with an ipop speaker inside so I can sleep on it and listen to music. I don’t know if I mentioned this in the beginning or not, but she gave me an ipod touch a long time ago.

-New Years!!!! XD Me and other YEPs went to the tallest building in the world at the time, Taipei 101 and watched it explode. It was so great! We had a great spot and lots of fun. Afterwards, cause of the traffic, we spent most of the night in two different McDonalds sleeping. XD I don’t have any pics or vids cause I broke my camera. :((((((

-I went to a puppet museum. Puppets are so awesome here! They’re beautiful and full of lots of traditional things and they make entire movies and tv shows with puppets!

That’s all i can remember! My journal is filled with really boring daily stuff about my life, so I’m tired of sifting through it.

Let’s see… we have my school trip coming up. I’m not sure what we’re doing or where we’re going but it’ll be fun. Then, right after, I have a three day trip with Rotary somewhere. XD That’ll be fun too. Then, we have Chinese New Year! I’m so excited! Then A MONTH OFF FROM SCHOOL~~~!!!!!

Oh! I forgot to mention, in the beg we took a test on Chinese to see what we know and I was in the bottom of three classes. We just had our midterm and I got moved to the top class! Yay!!!!! ^^

I just wrote a big ‘ole update here and it somehow got deleted. Which is really, really annoying. Let’s see if I can remember all of it… *pissed off*

That being said, I’ve gone to write here many times, but I never do because of this predicament. But, I really want to share my experience with my other family members, so I will try. 😦 I know it’s been a couple months since I updated, but I hope I will update more regularly here. I write a lot about TW in my journal but I want you all to know about it.

So, anyways, lots has happened.

I don’t think I ever explained my school sit. I go to Yong Chun Gao Zhong, a high school on a freaking mountain, so everyday I have to climb around 8 stories of stairs multiple times a day. -_- Yeah.

I go with 3 other exchange students: Miguel (boy from Mex), Manon (girl from France), and Quentin (boy from France). I really like all three of them, and I like some of the other exchange students not in my school, but I don’t get along with most of them. W/e though. I was really upset by it in the beginning, but I’ve gotten over it. The ones I hate most are Americans, and they’re really, really American- in the bad way. Arrogant, full of themselves, douchbags. -_- We’re not all like this, but for some reason the people who are most like the stereotype other countries see us as are here in TW.

Some things that have happened:

-I got a makeover (I guess that’s what it’s called). My hair is permed straight on the top and the bottom is permed curly. I cut my hair and got red highlights. 🙂 Pics on FB if you haven’t see it already.

-I got the autograph of a famous Taiwanese singer named… uh… Xiao Jing Teng… I think. 😀 I only know his English name (Jam).

-I’m going to my 3rd concert in Taiwan this weekend. I saw a famous TW band, a REALLY famous Korean band I’ve liked for a few years, and now I’m going to see a SUPER famous Korean band that I’ve worshiped for a few years. XD

-My closest friends include Justin (a TW boy), the other 3 exchangers at my school, Corinna (a German girl), Aurelia (another French girl), and Rebekka (an American girl).

-I went to the top of Taipei 101, formerly the tallest building in the world. 😀 It was cool but windy. Haha!

-I went to a wedding recently. Kinda boring. I think that’s because all of the women at my table ignored me and fawned over Quentin.

-I had to represent the US and get future Taiwanese exchange students to want to come there. I think it went okay.

-Thanksgiving was just another day, but since I hated TG for most of my life, that came as a relief.

-It’s not too Christmassy now. 😦 They don’t really do Xmas here.

-I’ve tripped in front of 100s of people on the school stairs in my skirt and again in front of the hottest boy in school. I’m officially the lamest person in my school. -_-

-I did a cute dance with my classmates but cause I didn’t have any memory space on my cameras, no pics or vids. I’m very sad about this.

-My Chinese is coming along. 🙂 I know 600+ words but because most people are really impatient with me when I speak Chinese, I never use it. They interrupt me, finish my sentences, and say “Just speak English.” -_- Yeah…

-And I saw a professional dance competition! I was so great!!!!!

That’s all I can think of… I’ll update more regularly, I promise. Maybe once or twice a month.

Happy Moon Festival Day!

Hello all,

Right now I am doing the very typical exchange student in Asia thing–I am in the library with the other inbounds on the computer talking to people back home. Yep, it’s a new low for me. BUT, I will be eating lunch with my class and I do spend half of everyday with them, so I don’t feel like a complete loser.

I will begin with school. Thankfully, the administration has realized our intense boredom and told us we could chose classes for the second half of the days we don’t have our other schools. That means, instead of spending 8 hours staring at book of Chinese trying to study in the same room someone’s lecturing in (with a microphone and amp I might add), we are allowed to take badminton (sp?!), music, art, and French. 🙂 We have study time too, so now I can study in peace. My poor ipod cannot survive 8 hours of continued service to me. Plus, there are teachers whose voices are so loud and shrill that I cannot concentrate even with earplugs and music.

Since the Deaflympics (Olympics for deaf ppl if you didn’t catch that) are going on in Taipei right now, every class in school is going to some event to cheer them on. After lunch, the F4 (as I refer to us exchange students. Get it, we’re four foreigners… Okay, enough with the Kkotboda Namja references) are going to watch the basketball games. (Yay!).

Speaking of F4, Boys Over Flowers airs here every Sat and Sun at 9 and 10 pm resp. Of course, reruns run everyday. XD Rain’s drama, Full House, is on every weekday on Channel 41 at 7 pm. I have yet to get to watch it.

So, I now have a group of friends in my class of 202 (like virtually every Asian country, the kids stay in the class while the teachers move). I still don’t know all of their names but we took Purikura together, so that automatically makes us friends. So far I know Wenti, Tsai, Julie, glasses girl, girl who sits next to me, girl who sits in front of the girl who sits next to me (also known as cosplay girl), girl in front, and Wei Yun. This one guy gave me a delicious cookie that he made, but I don’t consider us friends.

—-The following is written after the previous part——

This day brought with it a new friend! ^^ Freaky hair guy and I became friends today. He’s been trying to talk to me for a few days now, but all he’s managed to do is walk up to me, say hi twice in a row kinda awkwardly, and turn around and walk away. But, yesterday he accompanied me and two other girls to the exchange student welcome “party” (it wasn’t really a party as I was lead to believe). And, today, after when we went through the whole strange ritual, I forced him to share a seat with me and we talked in simple Chinese. 🙂 It was fun.

I almost forgot, I made another friend today too. Her name is Jean and she and I met at the Deaflympics basketball game (which was pretty cool). She goes to my school and is in my year (year 2). She lived in Seattle for two years starting from when she was 5, so of course her English is good. 🙂 We talked about basic Taiwanese and US politics (I don’t know much of either) and she asked me a million questions. I really like her. Get this–she said I was cool. For liking and knowing so much (read: too much) about Asian popculture. I’ve never been “cool” and certainly not for my fangirlism. Taiwan is too much.

Jean kinda flipped out that I’m going to Brown. She was like “Omg! I always see on TV people say ‘I’m going to Brown’ and I think ‘Impossible!'” XD She’s cute. She’s an artist and is trying to get into an art college. And she’s obsessed with Gossip Girl and Yamapi (seriously, who here isn’t?). Everyone at school calls her Zhang Xia, which is the Chinese reading of the characters of Yamapi’s last name. Haha!

Once again I walked/rode the subway home with a group of French-speakers. That’s never fun (well, it is fun in a way. But in a way it’s not). Not only am I left out, but they’re really loud and violent/inappropriate (but hilarious), so it’s awkward being crammed in the MRT with them while Taiwanese are looking at us disgustedly.

Titi Margie: You are so adorable!  I love you and hope all is well. And of course you can come to the salon with me!!!!!!!

Ni men hao!

^^ As you can see, it’s 10:37 pm right now. And I have school tom (6 am I get up). So, that means I must make this quick.

I’m shocked at the lack of time I have. 😦 Okay… where to begin? Oh wow… I never finished the orientation explanation (rhymes!).

Okay, so in orientation I discovered that I’m not the type to be best friends with someone in 2 days, that Taiwanese ppl are HOT, and that Taiwan is the most beautiful country in the world! My group (Group Shi (pronounced “sure”, means “10”)) came up with a cute dance around the word panda (panda was our team name). I have a vid I’ll upload eventually. It goes: To the bingo song– P A N D A, P A N D A then we chanted Shoma Shoma~! (panda in Chinese), pan pan pan, Shoma Shoma, tsun tsun tsun, Shoma shoma, We are the best!

Okay, enough with the useless details…

There was also acapella karaoke on the train.

So, that was Fri and Sat in a nutshell. Sunday… I was suppose to visit my school but our plans were ruined (long story) so my host parents just showed me how to use the bus. Then we went shopping (I am now the proud owner of a ton of cute Taiwanese (and American…) clothes, shoes, accessories, and an ipod touch) all day.

My host mother hates to cook (she says she’s not a real woman b/c of that. LOL!) so we eat out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. GOOD ass food too. Not the Chinese stuff. The Thai and Korean stuff. MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmMMMmmm. There’s this little stand right outside my house where I eat breakfast. They sell the best breakfast food in the world for as cheap as US$0.48 to as “expensive” as US$1.00. XD Today I ate a “breakfast burger.” It was one of the most delicious things I have ever had (and I grew up on Puerto Rican food, okay?).

Mon I sat for HOURS to apply for my alien registration and staying visa. Another YEP (exchange student) was there so it was fun. Chris from Canada. Pretty funny. His host mom teaches Chinese to foreigners (cha-ching!). I ate icecream at this cool trendy place and they had Obama Chocolate Brownie Icecream. I’m having that next time.

Tues I got my uniform and went to school. Then shopping. Again. XD I’m so lucky!

Wed (today) was my first full day of school. In short: school is on a mountain, so I literally have to climb over 8 stories of stairs several times a day. -_- They couldn’t have found a worse place to build a school. I have 2 friends: Wei Yun and Julie, who both speak English and some ppl I talk to. Manon (Fr), Quentin (Fr), and Miguel (Mex) all go to school with me, but where in diff classes (thankfully). I like all of them very, very much. Miguel’s bday is this Friday so I’m buying him a little treat. A bunch of YEP are going to celebrate but it’s at the beach and anyone who knows me knows I’d rather die than be seen in public in a bathing suit.

The yellow and green uniforms are as ugly as predicted but the skirt is way cuter in person. 🙂 And a little side note: I have now taken two diff routes to and from school by myself! 🙂

Okay, so now for the grand finale! 🙂 Tonight was our welcoming party from our host club of Hsientien (Quentin (Q) and I are hosted by the same club so the dinner was in honor of us). We ate at this SUPER swanky restaurant with lots of ppl. In short, I got a cute Chinese pencil bag, NT$4000 for my month’s allowance (it’s about
US$125), and a FREAKING SUPER JUNIOR CALENDAR! Turns out one of the rotarians owns a major printing business and they get to make SJ calendars. He gave me and Q a calendar and is going to give me a poster. I LOVE it. Another rotarian owns a major cd company (I don’t know the details) and he gets tickets to concerts for free. Last year, he took another YEP to see SJ in concert. XDDDDDD (SJ came to Taiwan a few weeks ago for Taiwan’s major music award show… and I wasn’t here yet….). The bad news is I didn’t get to meet this powerful man. The really good news is, I’m going to the movies with this SUUUUUUUPER hot Taiwanese boy who went to Hungary for exchange this past year and happens to be this rich, pwrful, SJ-granting man’s son (I didn’t know this till afterwards).

If I come home married, you all know why! XDDDD

In other news: I saw SJ on MTV here in the salon, I’m going to dinner with a TW classmate tom, I found out that one of the exchange boys (I won’t say who b/c of privacy) not only likes boys but thinks SJ is really hot (he really likes Hangeng– watch out Lisi!). I was like:

Me: “Look at them! I love them! *starts naming them one by one*”
Exchange boy: “Hot, hot, not hot, kinda, HOOOT…”
Me: “You… you like boys?”
Exchange boy: *grins* “Sure, why not? *pulls out ipod full of pics of hot boys*”
Me: O.O *dies and goes to heaven* <333333333 *fangirl squeals*
Him: “Are you okay?” *fans me with paper*

XDDD How lucky am I? This boy and I are very close so far, so I hope we can fangirl over hot TW boys together.

Also in other news, I can recognize a couple of signs in Chinese on the MRT (like “Tienmu” and “Taipei Main Station.”) Yay!

Okay… I have to sleep!

Love you all with all my heart!

P.S. Alian (the SUUUUUUUUUUUPER hot TW boy I’m going to the movies with) says that if SJ comes to TW again while I’m here, we can go see them together.

God, what did I do to deserve all this?

Good morning~! (Good evening for those back home)

XD Just an update. I have been incredibly busy!! I’ve decided that I will seperate this blog into Updates that just let you know what I’m up to and Articles that are more, uh, focused on one particular subject. 🙂

Today is Sunday! 🙂 Today I am supposed to visit my school for the first time (I hope we get the uniforms today b/c school starts on Tues) with Zhang Yao, a friend of Coco’s who I emailed before I arrived. Then we’re going to his house to play with their Wii with his little sister Joy (she’s so cute!).

Yesterday and the day before was my official orientation in Taiwan hosted by rotary. It was at a super swanky, famous hotel in Huanlien, which is 3 hours south of Taipei. Huanlien is famous for it’s “mochi” (pronounced mwuh-chi) desert. Mine was pretty gross. It was filled with grainy sesame… The Brazillian girl’s was good. I think I can come to like it. I also bought an icecream mochi filled with vanilla but it melted before I could eat it. 😦 I bought my host family some Okinawa brown sugar mochi.

The orientation was fun. We saw an aboriginal performance group called Pakalangay (?) of the Ah Mei tribe. The men wear these really gorgeous, elaborate short skirts in this society and the women wear long skirts. It’s also a matriarchal society, so women have the power. 🙂 It was super neat. Their dances and songs were great. I have video, so look out for it.

I only have 7 min left. 😦

Look forward to more updates on the past few days and some articles on:
Money
Food
My Host Fam
Exchange Students
Notable Differences
MRT
An event that was like I was in a drama

Love you all!