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.
Josie's Taiwan Exchange 
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