More stuff! (Pictures, too!)

Yet another Saturday night I'm staying in. Considering the fun had last night, however, it's understandable.

My week at school was short (I had Monday and Tuesday off), but it was pretty productive. This chapter we're studying the stock market. Since I'm not much of an investor, a lot of the vocab words I'm studying are relatively foreign concepts to me, even in English. It's interesting to learn about the stock market through another language, though. On Thursday we ended class early and took a field trip to a place where they displayed the stock market. Most of the people there were retirees looking to do some day trading. I thought it was cool, despite not really knowing what was going on with all the stocks.

Last night my roommate Amanda invited John and me out with her friends to go to Luxy, which is one of the more upscale nightclubs in Taipei. After some pregaming in Amanda's friend Chelsea's studio we headed over to the club. It was expensive getting in ($600 NT, about $18 US) and drinks weren't cheap, but it was quite the scene. Here are some pictures I took with my cellphone camera.



That's not very clear, but it's a bartender throwing around a bottle of liquor with the top on fire. Classy.



Some guys rapping up on stage. Other than live music, the club had dancers and breakdancing.

Oh, and funny thing. I ran into one of my classmates from the Tianjin program, Molly. I knew she had been in Taiwan, but I didn't know she was still here. How's that for crazy?

Kickboxing is still fun. Today, since Anders (the main instructor) had to work (because of the day off, some schools made up the day on Saturday), one of my fellow kickboxers and I taught the class. I utilized my martial arts background and gave some pointers on how to put power into the strikes. Amanda (from kickboxing, not my roommate, different person) utilized her triathlon training background and gave us a hell of a workout. I hated it while I was doing it, but I know it was good for me. Afterwards Amanda, Jon (another kickboxer, not my roommate), and I went to Starbucks and a Singaporean restaurant. We exchanged China/Taiwan stories and quirks about learning Chinese. Good times.

Well, I've got some household duties to attend to. Be sure to check up frequently!

Oops

I apologize for my lack of updates recently. I've been meaning to make one, but it slips my mind. However, it's not because my life is starting to get more humdrum; quite the opposite, actually. Let's take a gander!

School has been going well. At first I thought I was going to be struggling for a while, since my classmates all seemed to have a really good grasp on Chinese and my rustiness combined with traditional characters and Taiwanese slang I didn't know, I could be in for a long semester. However, I've been working hard and improving. On my first test I got an 86 (the lowest grade in the class), but on my last test which I took yesterday I got a 92. It's not a huge improvement, but I was the only one in the class to have their test score improve. Despite my frequent errors during oral parts of class, I think the teacher is aware I'm trying hard and want to improve.

Speaking of school, I get Monday and Tuesday off! It's for Mid-Autumn Festival. Mid-Autumn Festival is in many ways like Thanksgiving: it's in the fall, the family gets together, and there's important meals. However, instead of turkey being the main attraction, it's moon cakes: a semi-sweet small cake with an egg-based filling. In addition, everyone gets together at night to look at the full moon (it's always full because the holiday is based on the lunar calendar). I don't have very many big plans this weekend, but I may go for a day or evening trip to some of Taipei's hot spots.

I started taking a kickboxing class. It's a lot of fun. The guy running it, Anders, made it in response to health clubs charging NT$3000 (about US$90)/month for membership, and members would have to wear makeup and look presentable while working out. The club is free to join and the workout is rather intense. I got totaled the first few days but now I'm getting used to it. The club is gradually growing, and there are a good mix of males and females. Most of the people are studying, but there are a few English teachers. The class meets at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, which is a large public area. A lot of people there practice dances, T'ai Chi, and various other things, but it seems we get more funny looks from passerby.

Last Tuesday Taipei got a day off for a typhoon. I knew I wouldn't get any snow days here, but that's a welcome substitute. I just stayed inside all day and despite getting a little stir-crazy, it was a decent day.

I found a language exchange partner. His name's Ivan, and he's a Business Management major. His English is very good; in fact, better than almost all the English-speakers I've ran into on mainland China. We went to Starbucks and chatted about our respective countries, natural disasters, religion, and politics. It was refreshing being able to get a Taiwanese person's perspective on many issues I've only read about, like the way Taiwanese think their government is ran and their opinion of mainlanders. Hopefully I'll get to hang out with him again sometime soon.

My room is getting a little more home-like. Yesterday evening I bought some computer speakers and an office chair (the folding chair I bought is currently of questionable structural integrity). I think I'll be able to hang out here for another eight and a half months.

It's Saturday night here, but I haven't much in the plans. Anders (the kickboxing instructor) said he might be doing something, so I can potentially call him. If not, there's definitely some deep cleaning I can do around here.

That's what's up. I'll try to take pictures around the campus area to give you a more accurate view of what life's like for me. Thanks for checking in!

First week of classes down, on to week 2

So, last time I posted I said I was going to switch classes. Well, I did. It took some time (I didn't go to any classes on Thursday and on Friday I had to wait two hours before I could find a class with space in it), but I'm in a more challenging class. The class is third-year level.

Now, back in America I completed third year, but there are multiple reasons why I think I should take that level again in Taiwan. One is that there are many characters I need to learn. In Taiwan there are more complicated characters (since China simplified theirs in the 50's) and Taiwanese slang (for example, "drive the night car" means to stay up late and study, which thanks to my misunderstanding caused a few laughs in class). In addition there are some characters that have been covered in previous editions of the book series they use which I haven't studied yet.

Another reason is that the teacher's expectations are higher than what I had in America. My professor in America, Zhu laoshi, encouraged saying something in Chinese that made general grammatical sense more than saying exactly the correct thing. My new teacher (I'm not quite sure of her name yet) wants us to "use beautiful Chinese", which means we must strive to say things in the proper way it'd be written in a newspaper. On one hand, I like this; it will definitely make my Chinese much better. On the other hand, it's going to be a lot tougher. Tonight I spent four hours doing homework, as opposed to last week spending no more than two hours a night.

Despite these hardships, I say bring it on.

This weekend was on the tame side. After doing nothing Friday night, Saturday night I decided that I was sick of having to sit on my bed to use the computer and that I'd solve the problem. I stopped at the RT Mart and bought a desk and a folding chair. Totally it cost me less than $20 US. I assembled the desk and I'm typing on it now. Definitely a proud accomplishment for me.

I still haven't brought the wireless router into working condition. I never received an e-mail back from the router company, but I checked online and figured out the problem. One of the main problems is that there are some settings on Windows Vista that you can only change with an Administrator account, which is only available if you turn off User Account Control and type a long command into the command prompt. Rather annoying, if you ask me. However, I've been able to log on to the router and set up a wireless network and wireless security. However, I'm unable to connect the router to the Internet. The Internet runs on a PPPoE connection and when I type in the login name and password and try to connect, the connection fails. (I'm only saying this in case some tech-savvy friend of mine knows how to fix my problem.) I'm going to try to call the Internet company sometime this week and see what they say; if nothing good comes of it, I'll just have to return it.

Tonight I went all out on dinner. I had chicken burgers, but with lettuce, tomato, cheese, pickles, sautéed onions and mushrooms, and Heinz ketchup. I also baked some French fries. I think I should do fine if I ever crave American food.

Tomorrow morning I have class at 10:20. I'm thinking about waking up around 8-ish, showering and breaking fast, and heading over to class so that I'm 20 minutes early or so, so I can prepare properly. Goodnight, y'all.

Quick update!

I'm going to try to make this quick because I'm already up way too late.

I started class on Monday. As I suspected, the class is not at a suitable level for me. I'm in the process of switching classes, but I'm trying to decide between three levels of classes. I'm probably going to go with the middle road. I believe I'll be at a level somewhere on third year, which should be appropriate. However, I really like the teacher I have for second year. He's an older guy who's really good at getting material across. It's a bummer I can't have him for another level.

The past three days I've been taking a pronunciation course. The good news is that thanks to the course I've become more comfortable with the Taiwanese way to pronounce Chinese characters. However, since the class is geared towards first-time language learners, it's quite boring and basic. Luckily it's not required so I don't have to show up to it anymore.

Cooking in Taiwan is taking a little bit of getting used to for me. I cooked the spaghetti with sausage in the sauce, but the sausage tasted HORRIBLE. Fortunately it didn't ruin the whole taste of the sauce, so I was able to remove all the meat and have a couple of meals out of a batch of spaghetti. This past weekend I tried stir frying. I cooked some meat first, and after tasting it, realized that it too wasn't very tasty. I learned from experience, though, and didn't add the meat to the stir fry. So far I've figured out a few frozen items that work well in meals (dumplings, chicken burgers, fried rice packets, mushrooms and broccoli in stir fries) and figured out a good Lo Mein recipe.

We chipped in on a wireless router tonight. I've had trouble setting it up. Hopefully I get an e-mail reply from the company and I can get it to work, since I'm basically confined to my room if I want to use the Internet right now.

I still haven't bought a desk and chair. I asked my roommate for a suggestion, and he said that I should keep an eye on furniture people leave out. That would certainly be a cheaper solution, but it's really bothersome that the only way I can use my computer is either lying down in bed with the laptop on my lap or bent sideways with the computer on my bed.

I'm going to get some sleep. I'm going to scope out the classes I'm looking at tomorrow to see which is best, which means I'll have to head on to campus a bit earlier. Later!