Settling into Taiwan

I'm at my apartment alone listening to music and relaxing. I feel a little bad sitting around the place so much when my roommates are off working, but once school starts I should be relatively busy, too. These past two days I've been able to wind down from all the hustle and bustle of touring and setting things up, and I've had a pretty good time doing it, too.

Yesterday I was going to go onto campus and talk to the scholarship lady about making sure everything is set with my scholarship money coming. I decided against it. Instead I stayed in most of the day, relaxed, and did my laundry. (Good news, though: I washed the stinky bag I bought and it doesn't smell horrible now!) At about six or seven, Amanda and John came home. John wanted to go to this one night market he heard about, so we all headed out as a group.

If you are my mother, don't read this next part.

I took a ride on John's moped to the market. At first I was scared, but eventually I got used to the dodging through traffic and other maneuvers John did. It didn't help that on the way we saw a moped accident. I don't think going on moped rides is really for me, I'll stick to MRT and walking first.

Okay, Mom, you can start reading again.

After we found our way to the night market we were all surprised by the size of it. The market, called Wufenpu, concentrates on selling clothes. It takes up three alleyways long and three alleyways wide. I didn't do much clothing shopping (mainly because my frame isn't very Asian), but Amanda bought a couple of T-shirts. John said that he'd probably come back some time in the future to see what he could get. After the market we went back to our apartment and, since John and Amanda had to work in the morning, we quieted down pretty quickly.

Today I had orientation at the Mandarin Training Center (MTC) at the National Taiwan Normal University (Shida). I went early so I could time my trip (about 40 minutes from leaving my apartment to the classroom floors of the building I'm in) and so I could talk to the scholarship lady. As it turns out, if I had gone Thursday my trip would've been rather fruitless; I can't turn in the paperwork I've gathered until Monday at the earliest. Fortunately, I did find out that they changed my school on the list, so I'd be able to get scholarship money.

The orientation was done in a lecture hall by one of the secretaries whose English is amazing. The 150-seat lecture hall was filled and many people were standing. We watched a video and went through a few slides of what we need to do and what's coming up (visa renewal, culture classes, etc.). Afterwards everyone filed out of the lecture hall to pick up their schedule and then buy their books. My class meets every day from 2:10 - 4:00 P.M. We start at the first lesson of the second book. I'm not completely sure, but this may mean that I placed at about a second- or third-year level. I looked at a few of the lessons and it doesn't seem very difficult - I've went over similar material before. The big question on whether or not the class is suitable for me will be judging how the pacing of the class is. If it's definitely below my level, I'm allowed to switch after three days. We'll see.

After that I grabbed a little boxed meal and caught the subway home. I stopped at the market to get supplies for making spaghetti tonight. Other than that, I've been pretty laid back. I think I might get started making dinner out of lack of anything better to do. They don't have ground beef at the RT Mart, so I'm trying to make do with sausage in making the spaghetti sauce. Let's see how that turns out.

Until next time, folks.