Taiwan Day 16 and 17

Day 16:

My first Chinese class originally had 4 kids, now there are 2, because 2 of the kids switched into a different level. This is very good cause now I get to speak even more in class, ahahha >:D In my 单班棵 today my teacher asked me who my favorite artist was, and I said Wang Xizhi cause he is the most famous calligrapher of all time. And she just goes, "...why are your tastes so old-fashioned?! You look so young but your favorite artist is Wang Xizhi?!" I'm surprised she was so surprised because I usually bring this up at all the parties I go to and people generally agree with me. Wait what. 

I should probably get out more....

Had lunch at a fried rice place which was very good, but I've been forgetting to take pictures lately, I guess because now I feel like a student and not a tourist. 

Got bubble tea with Audra and Matt, and had to sneak it into the library cause no food is allowed in there, so we were just sketchily standing between these bookshelves trying to silently slurp our bubble teas cause there are cameras everywhere.... The things we do for bubble tea.

After studying a bit, I went to Far EasTone to replace the minutes on my phone since apparently I used all 350元 worth in less than two weeks...But I managed to do the whole thing in Chinese all by myself, MWAHAHA. +1 survival skills for me. So now I guess it's only around -500. That time I accidentally walked away from my apartment and took the MRT back probably counted for a lot of negative points :( 

Went to a Vietnamese place which was soooo good but I may be biased. Then Dylan and Logan thought it would be a good idea to eat a handful of the peppers that were on the table.

I wish this photo accurately conveyed how Logan looked like he was going to cry

Fell asleep right after dinner cause I ate too much, which would have been a good end to the day, but then I woke up and had 4+ hours of homework waiting for me TT___TT. Good thing I went to the library earlier at least :P

Day 17:

It's finally Friday!! I feel like I've been in school forever. Also, in my first class today, I realized that I, for the first time ever, COMPLETELY IGNORED a homework assignment. I looked at the homework for my two group classes and saw that each one said 第一棵演讲 (1st lesson's speech) and for some reason in my mind, I thought it was referring to the same essay, because I guess I literally could not fathom the idea of having two essay/speeches due on the same day. So I guess I just completely didn't hand in an essay for my first class. Oops. :( 

During lunch, ICLP hosted a speech about this Chinese learning software that can analyze your speech patterns and break down exactly where your pronunciation, emphasis, tones, etc. are wrong and how to fix them. It was really cool, and they gave us free downloads because we're ICLP students; I think this is the website (http://www.myet.com/MyETWeb/SubPage.aspx?fn=MyCT-Intro.htm) They told us that they based this off of internet games, which they said is perfect for 宅女, aka people who stay home and don't go out aka me (Melissa just taught me this word the other day, because she said it described me/us so well HAHA). 

Later in the day, ran into my 单班棵 teacher at Gongguan station! It's surprising how much you run into people despite Taipei being so large. She is so nice and cute, ahhhh. Met at the huge mall in 台北车站 called Q-Square since we wanted to go see Monsters University! But since it was opening day, the 6PM movie sold out :( so we had fiveeeeee hours to kill before the next showing. So obviously we decided to eat food. All the food court food was surprisingly good, especially Chirei's!!

又便宜又好吃！！

Chirei and Eric left to go do something so Matt, Daniel, Char and I just walked through the underground mall and ended up walking like two MRT stops away where we resurfaced and found a shaved ice place. 

Shaved ice with strawberry, red bean, grass jelly, and passion fruit, mmm

Very happy people

Played Egyptian Ratscrew for the last hour, during which Matt wiped the floor with all of us, despite being all like "blahhh I'm so bad at this game I never win blahblahblah" -__- So he basically just hustled us. 

And finally it was time for the movie! I love seeing English movie posters in Chinese for some reason. Look at how the first character has the monster eye inside of it instead of having it inside the "M" like in English. 

I want to go to this university :(

It's also interesting to see how the subtitles translate the English (the parts I could understand, at least). Also the movie was so good and funny! I definitely recommend it, it was like reliving childhood all over again. Also can we talk about how the original movie came out TWELVE YEARS AGO?! How am I even this old. I can see my mom rolling her eyes like she does every time I complain about how "old" I am. But actually, at this rate, the sequel for the Incredibles won't come out until I'm 22...Booooo. Whatever, I will still be watching animated films then. NO SHAME.

I would also like to point out how it's 3AM on Friday night and Connor/others are out clubbing and I just watched an animated kids' film and then blogged about it. I know I lead a pretty exciting life, don't be too jealous guys.

Taiwan Day 15

On the way to school, we passed by the front gates of NTU and I saw a wallet laying on the ground with 1000 dollar bills (around 30 USD) literally spilling out of it. Luckily, we were right next to NTU's campus police station place so I just took it there and told the policewoman "I found this on the ground" but then she started asking me all these questions in Chinese that I couldn't understand, so she took me by the arm and pulled me inside, which was at first kinda scary. Usually in America when you turn in a wallet, that's pretty much the end of it. Here, they counted all the money (twice) and recorded it, and had me fill out a form, that was all in Chinese. So obviously, there were troubles.

[in Chinese]

Policeman: Can you read this?

Me: Um...no. (Charlotte and her classmate also tried to help me read the form, but it was all very technical stuff like "what should we do with this money if no one claims it in 6 months, with very similar looking answers).

Policeman: Are you not Taiwanese?

Me: No...

Policeman: Do you speak Chinese?

Me: A little .___.

Arghhhh. It's just so frustrating when you think you're making so much progress, like being able to order your own food or ask for directions, but then you get thrown into a real-life situation and you are literally useless. I ended up just telling him to pick where I should check, and just signed where he told me to, which I would NOT suggest as a safe method for life in general, but at that point I really didn't know what he was saying, I just wanted the guy to find his wallet since the TWD + Japanese Yen totaled to at least $800 USD... What's funny is there was also one single USD in there, haha. Anyways, there were currency exchange forms in the wallet as well,  meaning he was a traveler who had just changed his money, and lost his wallet at the worst possible time. I felt horrible, but the police seemed really thorough, so I was pretty sure the guy would come back and ask them about it at some point.

Anyways, this whole adventure meant that I was late to class on the second day, but I explained to my teacher afterwards, and showed her the picture I took of the form, and she explained to me that the checkbox I marked meant that if no one claimed the wallet in 6 months, the money would go to the school. So good thing I didn't sign away my soul or something.

Class itself was pretty good, we had to recite the entire text ourselves using the vocabulary and grammar words as prompts. So memorizing isn't necessary, but you still have to know the text pretty well, and how to use all the vocab and grammar. I'm already learning a ton of new vocab just from listening to my classmates talk, which is great.

During lunch, we went to a Japanese restaurant by ICLP. I love it when I try to take candid pictures, and only one person realizes that a picture is being taken, hahahah. See examples below (Dylan and Matt):

All the food looked really good~

Udon!

Afterwards, had my second group class, where I found myself spacing out, even though the textbook is really interesting. I think I'm still adjusting to the constant deluge of Chinese, and it's hard to process it all, gahhh. And that brings me to my next point: my one-on-one class. Which is VERY STRESSFUL! Not in a bad way, because I love my teacher and she is super cute and encouraging. But because there aren't any other students, you have to be attentive and thinking and on point FOR FIFTY MINUTES STRAIGHT. And you don't really have time to process new things you learn, because you're already talking about the next thing. At this rate, I'm not surprised ICLP improves your spoken ability so much just within 7-8 weeks.

Charlotte and I tossed her frisbee around for a bit outside to relax after class, until I started getting devoured by bugs. So then we ran into Audra and got some bubble tea ^__^

Yes, that is in 3 cups of bubble tea in front of Char, since she finished what Audra and I couldn't, haha

Pictures of the bubble tea place, and cafeteria

Went to a curry place by our house for dinner, which was pretty good. Each dish cost about 5 USD, which I initially thought was expensive, until I realized that in America it probably would've cost twice as much, if not more.

Isn't Daniel charming.

When we came back, Shui's son was in the apartment, doing his homework etc. He had this pen that was clearly a pen that shocked you whenever you clicked it, even though he pretended like it wasn't. He kept laughing but saying in Chinese, "look! I'm pushing it and nothing's happening!" I knew it would shock me but I still wanted to try it. So I told him, "If this shocks me and it hurts, I'm going to cry." and he goes, "OK, cry then." SO SASSY. He's 10. Haha. So I tried it and it was horrible and fell off my chair and he just laughs at me -.- Curse you, curiosity.

Afterwards, studied more :(

OH! And the guy who lost his wallet eventually called me and thanked me for finding it. Yay!

Taiwan Day 13 and 14

I've decided that since school started, I can't do a blog post every day, since I have no time to go to fun places and take fun pictures, and I don't think anyone wants to read extensively about my Chinese classes. That being said...

Monday was the first day of classes, which is weird, because after two weeks of playing in Taiwan, I kind of forgot that we were going to go to school eventually. But I LOVE IT. Chinese allll day. Not actually though, each class is only an hour. I have my class on 今日台湾 (Taiwan Today) first, and there are two other students. My other textbook 中国文化丛谈 (Talks on Chinese Culture) has two parts, the 合班 (group class, with three other students) and my 单班 (one on one class) so I think this textbook will be much harder, since I really don't know much of the vocabulary, as opposed to the Taiwan Today textbook. I love the small class sizes, especially the 单班, because I'm less scared to speak 哈哈.

In between my first and second class, we went to go get lunch, and I realized I have given up on menus that don't have pictures. Since I can't read anything, I end up just telling them what I want, based on what I see. So in today's case, I was like "can we just get noodles and pork?" since I saw noodles, and just like pork in general. This horribly backfired when she responded "this is a pork noodle place. All we have is pork and noodles. Can you be more specific?" HAHA. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly sure how to be more specific than that in Chinese, so I did what Connor does and just said "just pick your favorite dish." Again, good thing I have no food allergies/eating restrictions.

After class, went to the cafeteria to get bubble tea for a studying snack, then straight to ICLP's library to start the homework. I'm trying to at least learn to read traditional characters here, so it's twice as hard, since I have to look up every other character on Pleco. That, plus the fact that the workload is already huge, and I'm not sure I should be in 400-level aaaaaaaargh.

Bubble tea and cute 文具 - the best study motivators

For dinner, ICLP hosted a fancy dinner for the students and teachers, in a very nice hotel. 

Cute desserts!!

They had a pasta bar where they had almost every kind of pasta, and you just put it in a bowl and told them what you wanted in your dish and they just made it for you in a pan right away. It was so cool. I pointed at a lot of things and was like "what is this?" but since all of the answers were pretty specific, like "scallops" and "Chinese watercress" and a bunch of other food vocab I don't know, I'm not too 清楚 on what was actually in my pasta, but it was good.

Mystery noodles, mmmm

This is a picture of me and my 指导教授 who also teaches my 中国文化丛谈合班 and my classmate Matthew. Of course I am eating ice cream, as always. The food was sooo good, especially the desserts.

This is a picture of my name tag which I included because 1) it made me feel official and 2) because multiple teachers have asked me my name, and they either say it is 很特别 (special) or 很好听 (sounds nice). I don't know if they just say that to make me feel special or they actually mean it, but it is nice of them regardless.

After studying for wayyy too long, I went out to the living room where Char was studying, and this conversation happens. This is pretty much verbatim.

Me: How's studying?

Char: Do you want some yogurt? There is no sweet.

Me: Wait. What?

Char: Look! *points at her mug* It's butter lion. It's but-ter-y. And lion.

Me: Charlotte...I think you need to go to sleep.

Char: I...yes. I...no. No. You BOTH need to go to sleep. I come in four minutes then you both sleep. You and I sleep.

OH MY GOD the sleep-deprivation delirium is already happening. It's the first day of school. What is life.

Photo for reference to our conversation. Courtesy of Char.

Char went to sleep. I went to bed at 4 and woke up around 9 to study some more. BLEH. This is probably not sustainable.

Tuesday, class is speaking based, so I didn't have to focus so much on characters, even though I have to know them eventually. Ate lunch by myself in the library to study some more Q___Q 

After dinner (which was at the Veggie Paradise, which has now become my most frequented restaurant despite the fact that I'm not a vegetarian?!?) I went to the ICLP dorms to study with Matthew which was very productive, especially because there was a Taiwanese student who could speak English who kept helping us when we were stuck, wahaha. 

Megamind reference, anyone?

Now more studying, because I would love to go to bed before 2 AM, seeing as it is only the second day of school -_____- Luckily my first class isn't until 11. Yeah!!

Taiwan Day 12

This morning I headed to Taipei Main Station to meet up with Melissa, who I have not seen since I graduated from high school. Luckily, she's in Xinzhu for the summer so she came to Taipei today to hang out with me! :) We took the MRT to the Sun Yat-sen station because we were trying to find a famous dumpling restaurant. We walked around outside in the hot hot sun for at least half an hour through all these alleys and stuff, but 我们找不到 :( So we asked people for directions and ended up walking in a gigantic circle, and ended up where we started and still couldn't find it...then I saw some really small yellow sign on the corner, and I was like. WAIT, there it is! And...it was closed. Bwaaaaaaah. 为什么。。。很辛苦。So I guess if anyone is ever in the area, please eat at 王家 and tell me if it's any good :P Instead, we found a Vietnamese restaurant, which was exciting cause it's the first Vietnamese restaurant I've tried in Taiwan.

Came back to my apartment for a bit, and then it started thunderstorming like crazy...but we didn't just want to sit at home so we decided to go to Longshan Temple. Despite the torrential rainfall, there were still tons of people at the temple praying and offering food.

Melissa later tells me, "the news said that the lightning occurred 700 times in the northern area during the storm." Oooops.

We got away from the rain for a bit shopping in the underground mall (one of many) then went back to the apartment to play Kemps. I would like to casually mention that Matt and I were the best team and were very sneaky and won :P

Went to the Sichuan restaurant near our house for dinner, and took this cute picture.

Short post because I'm a day behind so I have homework because school started and I'm tired :( 

对不起。。。

Taiwan Day 11

Connor and Charlotte both decided to go on (separate) long bike trips today. So I decided to spend a nice relaxing day inside instead :P Planned to go see the National Palace Museum instead! Before meeting up with Arran, Daniel and I got lunch together, which cost me a whole 23元 which is like 75 cents. Charlotte showed me a place you can get 鲜肉包 for 13元 each, and then Daniel and I went to the Vegetarian Paradise again, where I only spent 10元 because I had already had the 鲜肉包. 

Also, the woman who works at the Vegetarian Paradise is an angel. Whenever she speaks it is just so soooothing! And when she saw that I barely got any food, she was like, "妹妹！太少了, 太少了!" which is just so nice and cute. Daniel and I are planning on eating there frequently in attempts to become her friend. 

Met up with Arran at 台北车站 and traveled to the museum. We didn't plan it, but apparently Saturdays are free admission for students, and extended hours, so it worked out perfectly. The one downside of free admission, and it being the weekend, was the museum was ridiculously crowded. 

I would not be surprised if there were thousands of people in the museum at a time, because it is gigantic. Plus there are different buildings, we only went to the main one.

Since it is a museum, I obviously couldn't take any pictures, but the museum is just as amazing as people say. One of my favorite galleries was the Painting and Calligraphy gallery. It was extremely extensive, and I got very very excited, because the guide map had a picture of Guo Xi's Early Spring, which is one of the most famous pieces of calligraphy EVER and I have mentioned it in at least three of my art history papers. 

I have analyzed the crap out of this painting

So I ran through literally every room in that exhibit looking for this painting, but I could not find it. Eventually we asked a museum worker and they said THEY DIDN'T HAVE IT. Apparently they just have the picture and caption in the map guide "for reference only" and we had to "refer to actual exhibit items." Why would they do that. That is horrible. Remember when I was talking about my dreams almost coming true and being taken away (in reference to the wishing pot on the mountain in Jiufen)? YEAH THIS IS IT. 

After I recovered from this tragedy, I enjoyed the rest of the museum, despite the enormous crowds. The other galleries I liked were "Compassion and Wisdom: Religious Sculptural Arts" because it had lots of Guanyin and Bodhisattva sculptures which I also learned a lot about, and "Rare Books and Documents" because...books. <3

One of my favorite pieces was this one:

The most expensive bok choy you will ever see

This is a piece of jade that was carved into a piece of bok choy. It is so famous because the original piece of jade was very unfit in terms of carving jewelry or whatever else people make out of jade and had all these imperfections and stuff. But then the artist looked at it and was able to hide all the imperfections in the folds and make the weird coloring of the jade make sense, by carving this veggie. So it's really famous cause it's all transforming something ugly into a beautiful work of art. I think I just like it because I really like bok choy and I'm glad it's getting the fame it deserves.

Blogger won't let me rotate these pictures >:( But anyways, I got these posters at the gift shop, but then when taking them out later, I ripped them. Bwaaaaah :(

Afterwards, we went to see the adjacent gardens, which were really pretty. 

 

Checking out the giant goose

The highlight though, was the GIANT KOI POND! There were so many Koi! And they were gigantic. Some were probably like 30 pounds. They were also such fatties. Because people feed them all the time near the bridge, every time someone walked near, even if they didn't have food, they would swarm together and you could see them gulping towards you with their huge greedy fishy mouths.

Look at how big they are in comparison to the people! But then of course I wanted to feed them XD And the fish food was only 10元 :P I was so amused! They literally would splash all on top of each other to get to the food. They were so aggressive. And then they followed me as I walked down the bridge.

Fish whisperer!!

The pond itself was really cool too, even minus the fishies.

 

Afterwards, we met up with Eric, Logan, and some of Eric's Taiwanese friends, and went to the Nanya night market off the Banqiao station. The night market was really nice, I think because it was mostly locals. And the girls knew all of the good food places to go to!

They even got us to try stinky tofu, ahhhh. It really isn't that stinky once it's cooked! And it's actually kinda good... D:

Had a lot of other food, including fresh watermelon juice, beef stew, and this mango shaved ice.

I also got some really yummy dumplings, but because I messed up while ordering, I got super spicy sauce on them, and couldn't eat them. Entirely my fault, but still sad :(((((

Also got a new phone case, and Daniel haggled the price down for me, wahaha! I'm surprised anyone still sells cases for the 3GS :P

And...it's pink.

So I 非常 enjoyed my day of limited physical activity. And it turns out Connor's bike trip was over 6 hours, so I am not even slightly upset that I did not go, because I would have actually not survived. But I also only saw Charlotte and Connor for like 10 seconds the entire day. Womp.