農曆新年就要到了

So, I'm currently sitting in my room waiting to get ready for a Rotary meeting. A bit nervous because I don't exactly know if I, along with Kenese and Heitor (other exchange students at my school), are in trouble or not. I'll let you know how that goes eventually. ^^;

I'm sitting in my bed because it's the only place I can sit without freezing to death. It is so cold here. My friend from Michigan told me it felt cold enough to snow even though it technically isn't. It's only about 40-50 degrees farenheit here but the humidity and wind make it feel sososo much colder. Lately I've been wearing two shirts, two sweaters, a jacket, a scarf and gloves just to survive inside of this house seeing as they don't have a heater. Kill me.

My maid is out in the kitchen talking to somebody on the phone in Indonesian. It's a weird sounding language. Maybe that just goes for all the southern asian languages. I'll have to try to learn one eventually. hah.

The major upset in my exchange right now is our Australian friends leaving. Their exchange year is different from ours in that it starts in the beginning of the year not in August, so they come in January and leave the next January. It's upsetting because they were like Gods to us when we first got here and they came to be our good friends, and now they're gone. We do have new Australian students coming, though. One is coming to my school and another lives very close to where I do. I hope they're chill.

I'm about at the stage that Ben and Eva (Aussies) warned me about a couple months in. You're out of the honeymoon stage and the culture shock bit and now things get to just be a tad annoying, and you realise, oh poo, I have a whole more five months here. I still love it, don't get me wrong. Things can just get irritating.

This aside, life is good. I realize because I'm so lazy I never posted about how my holidays went in glorious Taiwan, so bear with me and I'll share now. Christmas Eve was spent at school during the day where we had our regular classes followed by parties. After school I attended a Rotary meeting that was all eating, drinking, and karaoke. I can now say I spent Christmas with around 50 drunk Asians singing horrible Taiwanese songs. Is that something to be proud of? It was funny and entertaining in its own way, especially when you've had quite a bit of wine yourself. ;) Actual Christmas day was okay. Got up to skype the family and I opened my presents that meiyouyong. Internet connection was so awful that we stopped. It was okay, though, because when I went to my friend's house for the day I got to skype them there and they opened the presents I sent. :) I got to watch in amusement as they all tried a piece of the Taiwanese gum. It's crazy, the mint gets up in your nose.

New Year's Eve was better. Surprisingly, even new year's isn't a big celebration here. Everything is saved for Chinese Lunar New Year. Which is coming up now. :o Crazy times are about to begin in Asia. My host family had some people over last night and they were teaching their niece's baby how to wish a happy new year in Chinese along with the hand motions. It was entertaining to see the baby do it for two seconds, then go off to play with a bunch of wrapped candy or start crying. :P

Well, apart from today's meeting and having to go to school randomly this Friday, I'm on vacation! Hope it goes well. :]

聖誕快樂？還不知道。

Been a while, haha. hao jiu bu jian, duibudui? :P I think I just won't apologize for my infrequent blogging anymore because all of my posts start like this. Gonna have to deal with it. ^^ Well, I'm settled in my new host family. I'm really happy here, too. It's me, host parents, two host brothers, and their maid. The host father is a Chinese herbal medicine doctor and the mother apparently teaches flower arranging as well as helps her husband with his job. I don't really know how it all works, but they're rich. The house is a three story apartment in Guting, (I'll post pics soon) which is a very convenient part of Taipei because it's pretty much in the middle of everything. My host brothers are both nice. One is 18 and attending high school, the other is 22 and goes to university but comes home on the weekends. They have a maid who's from Indonesia but has been working with them for 10 years. Her Mandarin is very good, but she does have an Indonesian accent so it's a bit more difficult to understand her sometimes. One thing that confuses me about the maid situation is that she only gets to visit her family one day a week and her bedroom is about the size of a large closet. It doesn't even have a proper bed. Maybe this is okay for a maid? I'm not sure. Not gonna question my host parents.

Like I said, I'm happy here. I'd probably cry if I had to go back to my first host family and I probably will when I have to leave this one as well. Although, because of my first host family I'm really paranoid they secretly have beef with me. I doubt this is the case, because I think I'm being better now, but still. I talk with the maid a lot and the host dad and younger host brother some, so I think I'm okay. They're all really nice. :] My host mom is too but she's somewhat odd. She just returned from California today, she spent the last week there for business, so I haven't spoken with her much yet. Shouldn't judge so quickly, Isabel! We were just eating dinner and she told me my nail polish is too red for my age and that I ought to use pink instead. She also insulted American food.. how dare she? :o

Tomorrow is Christmas eve and I have to go to school. The only reason I have Christmas off is because it's a Saturday. :/ Oh, well. My plans for tomorrow are to bring my laptop to school and goodies for watching Christmas movies. First period we'll have origami, then mahjiang, then class, library, then lunch. After lunch we have several little Christmas parties to attend around school. For dinner after school I have a Rotary Christmas party! Ooh, sounds like fun, right? Hopefully I get money and good food. x) Christmas day I'll wake up and skype my family and open Christmas gifts. Eat breakfast and give the gifts I bought for my family and maid to them, then pack on up and head over to Savanna's house. She's grounded because she's naughty and I'm saving her from a lonely Christmas, ohh, I'm such a good friend. That night I'm not sure yet. Maybe dinner with the host family or going out, I dunno. Sunday I'm gonna go shopping with Arantxa and dye my hair! I've decided it! It's going to be a cross between dark purple and red. :D I've gone cray cray. It'll be pretty.

I wish everybody a feichang hao Christmas!! :D I'm learning how to sing jingle bells in Chinese! :D

Merry Christmas!

換家庭。

Soo, I'm changing host families the day after tomorrow! I'm really excited because I know they're really rich (:D) and live in a good part of Taipei, but I'm also nervous. I had some drama with my host family that I won't go into, but I'm really settled where I am now. It's a bit scary to shake that up. I know it'll be fine, though.

I realize I've had a bit of an odd exchange experience. Like, I didn't get any culture shock at all the first few months here, I guess it was more of a honeymoon stage. Everything was fun and all. That's all over now, however. Culture shock has hit me full force. Hah, it's nothing I can't deal with, though. It's mainly just me getting sick of how things work for Taiwanese people when dealing with problems or official things. There are so many secrets and nothing is clearly stated, you're supposed to just know. Whether you made a mistake or anything.. I knew it was this way beforehand but it just hasn't affected me until now. :/ Just gotta stay strong.

Hm. It's Christmas time! D; It's okay, though. I realize that this time would be a lot harder if I was in a country where they actually celebrated Christmas. Hardly anybody does here so there aren't many things up to remind me. Even the stuff that is, it's all just for show so it doesn't feel Christmasy. The closest thing is Starbucks. Hmm, I'm also working on a package to send home to my family for Christmas.. So they should appreciate it! It's hard work! :P

Well, tomorrow is gonna consist of a lot of packing and working on my family's xmas box as well as writing thank yous for my host family. Busy busy so I should sleep! Wish me luck with my next family. :)

韓國的音樂。:D

Okay, okay. I think this is the longest time I've gone without blogging. I'm terribly sorry but if this doesn't make up for it I don't know what will.

Latest song from SHINee and it's all over MTV right now. They are soo adorable. :D At least 100 of the views on this video are from me. Heeh, the most popular music here tends to be Taiwanese, S Korean, Japanese and American. The boys above are Korean, of course, the best ones are. xP

Ooh! I got an idea! I'll show the difference between the Eastern Asian languages, because I know quite a few probably can't differentiate.

Chinese: 我是美國人

Korean: 난 미국인이다

Japanese: 私はアメリカ人だ

They all mean the same thing but they all look really different, right? Once you compare them, they do. Yay~! You learned something today. xD

Okay, well, what have I been up to lately? Nothing really significant has happened in the last couple of weeks. Yesterday we had a culture fair with Rotary. All of the exchange students from my district got together at a school and each country got their own booth to show our culture. It was awfully boring. We had to be at the place by seven so I had to be up by five in order to get there. There were a lot of Americans so I mainly stayed at other countries and pretended to be from there. I was Spanish for a couple hours and Brazilian for a while too. Hahah, it went so long. We had it so that Taiwanese out bounds could determine which countries they wanted to go to. It was supposed to be over at five but us exchange students being rebels left at four, oooh, we so bad.

This week I have Wednesday and Thursday off because my tongxue have exams, which is perfect because of Thanksgiving! Should be fun, celebrating the day with the family that is my fellow exchange students.

I also just found out that I will be changing host families on either the 11th or 18th of December. It's supposed to be 11th but there's a Rotary meeting that day so it might not be. I'm excited but I'm nervous to change! I'm settled here. Hopefully they'll be an at least okay host family. Eep, wish me luck.

萬聖節。。不太快樂。

So, Friday I got up early to give me enough time to put in the red contacts and eye makeup because I knew it would take forever to do properly. I got them in, cried for a little while, then did my makeup. I looked pretty dang ridiculous, judging by the strange looks I got from the Taiwanese on my way to and on the MRT. I just stare back when they stare at me, it's funny to see them get nervous and finally look away. x]

At school I was the only one dressed up, even the other two exchange

students didn't do anything. And one is American.. can't believe him. xP They don't celebrate halloween here so a lot of them were confused by my choice in dress which led me to have to explain that it's halloween coming up. In English chat room class we discussed the Taiwanese Ghost Month, which is in September, and Halloween. This English chat room is a bit pointless now for me, at least, I just end up speaking Chinese with them. Unless they're in English major these kids don't really care about learning English, and theirs is quite bad, so I steal this as a learning opportunity for me. :D

Later that night after school I went out with the exchange students for dinner and to hang out. I was quite happy that Friday. :]

Then Saturday! Saturday was the day of our Rotary Halloween party as well as the gay pride parade for Taipei. We went to Ximen first to buy some last minute things for our costumes and also the watch the parade. I was so proud of myself when crowds of gay boys would walk by screaming "wo men shi tong xing lian!" and I understood that it meant "we are gay!". Hah, tongxinglian is a big word for gay.

look how cute. ♥

Awww. I got angry when walking through Ximen, looking around and seeing an odd amount of attractive men walking around, momentary happiness, then depression when I realized that they're from the gay parade. Oh, woe is me.

Then we headed to the Rotary party. Started off pretty boring. We did an hour's worth of a fashion show where everybody showed their costumes, then had a break to eat almost cold pizza, then went back to our fashion show. When it was over we were all so bored we wanted to dance, because that's the fun thing to do at parties. We started a rebellious congo line and ended up being able to dance for five minutes, then rotary was all you have to stop now. We were then told to split up in groups with Rotex (young taiwanese who went on exchanges before) where we were asked to talk about our problems in Taiwan or our host families. I just pretty much blew up. This was my friend, Sammy's, last night in Taiwan, and this didn't end up being even a party, is was a meeting therapy session. Not only was it therefore boring, but it's ridiculous to have Sammy's last night here be talking about his problems when he's going home anyway. If we had known before hand what this was going to be, nobody would have come. Ugh, I was angry. So we pretty much just ended up leaving.

Sunday, I got up at 5 in the morning to go see Sammy off at the airport. I had to be at Taipei main by 6:30. I got there and called Derrick and Arantxa and they were looking for the buss stop and they got there before me and bought their tickets so they had to leave then. So I ended up walking around Taipei main, Derrick on the phone with me the whole time, trying to find this bus station. I eventually found it and made it to the airport. I'm not gonna go into detail about why Sammy's going home, he didn't do anything bad, he just didn't really like it here and his Rotary clubs were bad. So yeah, he went home. At the airport all the exchange students started crying and hugging him and talking while his host family just stood there, practically emotionless. I don't understand some people.

Later that day I went to a concert my school was participating in and saw some of the bands. It was a legit screamo concert and a lot of the boys were wearing makeup and metal type stuff. It was either one of the coolest or funniest things that I've seen from my classmates. Oh, and practically all the Taiwanese students smoke here. I think it's just because they think it's cool and it's the easiest way for them to rebel in Taiwan. After this I met up with exchange students and just had an emotional and fun day, trying not to be sad about one of my good friends leaving. :[

Week at school was pretty typical, except that I'm really trying to stop spending a lot of my money, so I was pretty broke until Friday when I got my Rotary moneys. :D Today I'm going out to Taipei City hall for some strictly window shopping. I'd like to save some more money.. ughh, so hard. D; Wish me luck!

萬聖節!

Halloween is coming up! How fun! They don't really celebrate it here but we're having a rotary party this Saturday. Ooh, fun fun. I'm going as some creepy person thing with fun fun makeup. I've got red eye contacts and loads of makeup. Add some fake blood and you have total awesomeness. I'm gonna dress up Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Should be interesting to be dressed up like that at school.. Ooh, fun weekend coming up. :D

The last few days have been your typical fun stuff. Lemme see if I can remember what I did. Ice skating! So fun! There's a small skating rink in Ximen and I went twice in the same week with exchange students. It's hilarious because when you get there you discover that most Taiwanese don't know how to ice skate at all.. They're all clinging to the sides for dear life. I'm okay at ice skating, but it definitely doesn't compare to the magic that happens when the Europeans hit the ice. Them and the Canadians.

Kenese and I have gotten into the hobby of walking around campus during our "self study in library" periods. It's mainly because we crave attention and think it's funny when all of the students freak out when they see us pass the classroom. Well, not all freak out.. Some just stare. I wonder if they'll ever catch on that we mess with their minds for fun. Hope not.

Just this Sunday I went with the Danish girl in my Rotary club to KTV along with a bunch older Rotex (previous outbounds from Taiwan). It was a lot of fun. Julia, the Danish pastry, is excellent at English so we sang a bunch of songs together. It was a lot of older music and it inspired me to download my beloved Backstreet Boys again. Oh, the memories. It was a girl's birthday so we had traditional Taiwanese cake. It was so good. It had like pudding and taro in it. Mmmmm. Hao chi.

Today I went on a shopping spree for all of my halloween stuff! So excited! Tomorrow I think I'm going to go out and get my hair done again. I can't take it much longer. Ugh. I'll let you know how it goes!

Daddy, 祝你生日快樂！

Daddyyyyy! I love you and I hope you have an awesome birthday! :D

I think I will send a package home soon with some stuffs in it for the family. :]