Home sick today. Figured that as I'm sitting around doing nothing waiting for Kill Bill to finish downloading, I might as well blog.. seeing as I haven't in what appears to be almost two months. Hah.
A lot has happened. Obviously. Unless you're not environmentally aware, you already know about the disasters that happened and are still happening in Japan. There are a lot of scares about radiation here in Taiwan and therefore many exchange students' parents, or themselves, are freaking out and going home. Most of the scare is rubbish and exaggeration, no radiation increase in Taiwan has been detected, so I won't be going home early. I have less than three months left now and unless something here blows up you'd have to force me home to leave before my time's up. That being said I am now extremely excited to go home. So excited. I love it here in Taiwan and love just about everything in Taipei, but half of my friends have gone home. I've already decided that I will be coming back to Taipei for a year or so for college, so these months won't be my last ones here either.
I'm changing host families next Tuesday and I'm more than just a little bit worried. I love my host family that I'm in right now and I'm scared to go back to a host family that doesn't like me. I've discussed it with my current host family and they told me they're taking me there to have lunch together and they'll tell them how good I am. It makes me less worried but not completely content. We'll just have to see. My third host family is also the farthest from my school. I have to take a bus, MRT, then bus again to get to school. We're talking one and a half to two hours here. 3-4 hours a day of commute. That's just ridiculous on Rotary's part for family/school location. I mean come on.
School's chill. We have our new Australian exchange student, Claire, with us and it's been fine with her. She's half Chinese so she doesn't get the same kind of experience and attention from the classmates as Kenese, Heitor and I do. She says she's enjoying herself here and it's good to learn Chinese, of course. It's also fun for me because I now have somebody to talk nerd with concerning the amazingness that is Lord of the Rings. She loves it too. :D
That's all I can think of for now. I promise there won't be another two month gap between blogs. ^^;
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
恭喜發財！
So, today is Chinese New Years day. :D The year of the rabbit has begun. :o gong xi fa cai! xin nian kuai le!
My winter vacation has gone well. One thing I've really enjoyed is spending more time with my host family. They're all really chill and I actually enjoy doing things with them. They're really different from my first host family in that my first one would have simply expected me to spend a lot of time with them, whereas this family doesn't expect as much from me and are happy if I choose to stay home. :) Different experiences. It also helps that I'm major crushing on my older host brother, haha. xD He's so cute and such a gentlemen! The open and close the door for you type. Yet, just my luck, he's already taken. His girlfriend isn't even pretty. Sorry, I know that's rude, but she's not very nice either. :/ Ah, well, I'll come back to Taiwan and steal him someday. ^.^ A girl can dream.
Hmm, I hope my host family doesn't look at this. Hah.
How my Chinese new year went down;
New year's eve I woke up to eat luobogao. Which is a type of turnip cake that's really good. I'll fry it up for you sometime, promise. My host mom then called me upstairs to see them hang up their good luck banners around their door. After this my host brother told me the story of New Years and the traditions behind it. The Chinese legend is that there is a big scary monster that comes out only on New Years and likes to eat people. This Monster is scared of red, fireworks, and a lot of people gathering. So on New Years they decorate with a lot of red, including the door banners, fire fireworks, and get together with family. It works! :) I then helped my host family prepare all of their food (more like carry the food Rinny, the maid, prepared to the shrine) to offer to their ancestors and to worship. They didn't have me worship because they think I'm a hardcore Catholic and I'm not gonna tell them I'm not. Oh, I forgot to mention to my mum that I've been going to church these last couple weeks! It's a Catholic church and the English masses have a different priest, usually from a different country, every week. It consists of a lot of foreigners, not just Americans. They don't have wine. It's not in a basketball court. We get free coffee afterwards. Taiwan Mass > Vista Mass. But yes, I watched them worship then had lunch with my host family. Chicken soup with rice cake type noodle things in them. Also good. After this I watched tv for a while. I then helped once again to bring food to another alter in the house. It was so much food. The point behind the food is that they prepare a lot of it and set it out for their ancestors to eat. So they put it out and wait as their ancestors eat the food. While waiting we just sat around and talked. Thennnn, came the money burning. Yes, money burning. They have a lot of this special paper money that they burn in order to offer to their ancestors. They go outside and burn it all in a metal trashcan like thing. They also burn money for the souls who have no children to burn money for them so that they won't steal their ancestors' money. After the money, dinner. So. much. food. It was all good, not extremely delicious, in my opinion, but good. They thought it was amazing, though. It was extremely expensive dishes. I know because they kept on telling me. xD
What we feasted on; jellyfish with cucumbers, beef and cow stomach, cabbage, this really expensive fish that was 5 thousand NT (170 US) per kilo (two pounds), more vegetables, shrimp, sausage, wine and brandy. Oh, and to finish it off, shark fin soup. :D hao chi, hao chi. I then went downstairs with my host brothers to play majiang with their friends. I played until about 11:30, then went upstairs with my host brothers to receive our hong bao, then went back downstairs. I played until 2 and with the assistance of my host brother won 2 thousand! Yay! Then slept.
Today I got up and ate another kind of cake for breakfast, don't quite know which type, but it was good. Then practiced my Chinese listening skills when my host brothers discussed how their majiang playing went last night. The younger one lost quite a bit so he was a bit upset. While dressing I tried my hardest not to put on black, which is difficult for me, because my Chinese teacher told me you shouldn't on new years. So, I followed this rule, only to go with my host mother and brother to longshan temple while they both wore a black something. Before longshan temple we went to a less famous one where I was randomly given a hongbao with 1200(40 US) in it. At longshan there were so many people my host mom & brother just decided to do their worshiping outside before we left. I then got a call from Arantxa who asked me to go shopping with her. I originally told her I couldn't because I was going to my Aunt's sister's house for the evening, but my host mom told me it'd be a good idea for me to go with her because I would be the only one there. I still don't know exactly what my host family did tonight if I was going to be the only one at her sister's house.. hm. So, I went shopping, then went to Arantxa's host family's house for dinner where I got 1000 NT more in hongbao! Yay! I lost 50 NT playing majiang. Oh, how quickly my luck left me. D; Hahah. Well, all in all it was a good Chinese new year. Not that I have anything to compare it to, haha.
Happy rabbit year!
My winter vacation has gone well. One thing I've really enjoyed is spending more time with my host family. They're all really chill and I actually enjoy doing things with them. They're really different from my first host family in that my first one would have simply expected me to spend a lot of time with them, whereas this family doesn't expect as much from me and are happy if I choose to stay home. :) Different experiences. It also helps that I'm major crushing on my older host brother, haha. xD He's so cute and such a gentlemen! The open and close the door for you type. Yet, just my luck, he's already taken. His girlfriend isn't even pretty. Sorry, I know that's rude, but she's not very nice either. :/ Ah, well, I'll come back to Taiwan and steal him someday. ^.^ A girl can dream.
Hmm, I hope my host family doesn't look at this. Hah.
How my Chinese new year went down;
New year's eve I woke up to eat luobogao. Which is a type of turnip cake that's really good. I'll fry it up for you sometime, promise. My host mom then called me upstairs to see them hang up their good luck banners around their door. After this my host brother told me the story of New Years and the traditions behind it. The Chinese legend is that there is a big scary monster that comes out only on New Years and likes to eat people. This Monster is scared of red, fireworks, and a lot of people gathering. So on New Years they decorate with a lot of red, including the door banners, fire fireworks, and get together with family. It works! :) I then helped my host family prepare all of their food (more like carry the food Rinny, the maid, prepared to the shrine) to offer to their ancestors and to worship. They didn't have me worship because they think I'm a hardcore Catholic and I'm not gonna tell them I'm not. Oh, I forgot to mention to my mum that I've been going to church these last couple weeks! It's a Catholic church and the English masses have a different priest, usually from a different country, every week. It consists of a lot of foreigners, not just Americans. They don't have wine. It's not in a basketball court. We get free coffee afterwards. Taiwan Mass > Vista Mass. But yes, I watched them worship then had lunch with my host family. Chicken soup with rice cake type noodle things in them. Also good. After this I watched tv for a while. I then helped once again to bring food to another alter in the house. It was so much food. The point behind the food is that they prepare a lot of it and set it out for their ancestors to eat. So they put it out and wait as their ancestors eat the food. While waiting we just sat around and talked. Thennnn, came the money burning. Yes, money burning. They have a lot of this special paper money that they burn in order to offer to their ancestors. They go outside and burn it all in a metal trashcan like thing. They also burn money for the souls who have no children to burn money for them so that they won't steal their ancestors' money. After the money, dinner. So. much. food. It was all good, not extremely delicious, in my opinion, but good. They thought it was amazing, though. It was extremely expensive dishes. I know because they kept on telling me. xD
What we feasted on; jellyfish with cucumbers, beef and cow stomach, cabbage, this really expensive fish that was 5 thousand NT (170 US) per kilo (two pounds), more vegetables, shrimp, sausage, wine and brandy. Oh, and to finish it off, shark fin soup. :D hao chi, hao chi. I then went downstairs with my host brothers to play majiang with their friends. I played until about 11:30, then went upstairs with my host brothers to receive our hong bao, then went back downstairs. I played until 2 and with the assistance of my host brother won 2 thousand! Yay! Then slept.
Today I got up and ate another kind of cake for breakfast, don't quite know which type, but it was good. Then practiced my Chinese listening skills when my host brothers discussed how their majiang playing went last night. The younger one lost quite a bit so he was a bit upset. While dressing I tried my hardest not to put on black, which is difficult for me, because my Chinese teacher told me you shouldn't on new years. So, I followed this rule, only to go with my host mother and brother to longshan temple while they both wore a black something. Before longshan temple we went to a less famous one where I was randomly given a hongbao with 1200(40 US) in it. At longshan there were so many people my host mom & brother just decided to do their worshiping outside before we left. I then got a call from Arantxa who asked me to go shopping with her. I originally told her I couldn't because I was going to my Aunt's sister's house for the evening, but my host mom told me it'd be a good idea for me to go with her because I would be the only one there. I still don't know exactly what my host family did tonight if I was going to be the only one at her sister's house.. hm. So, I went shopping, then went to Arantxa's host family's house for dinner where I got 1000 NT more in hongbao! Yay! I lost 50 NT playing majiang. Oh, how quickly my luck left me. D; Hahah. Well, all in all it was a good Chinese new year. Not that I have anything to compare it to, haha.
Happy rabbit year!
Monday, January 17, 2011
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. :]
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. :]
Thursday, December 23, 2010
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!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
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. :)
Monday, November 22, 2010
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.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
萬聖節。。不太快樂。
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!
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