Week ending January 27, 2004

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On Friday, last, I really felt like everyone had fled the country, and many people had, but I've actually managed to stay pretty entertained.

The first night N had me over to her place for a movie night. We watched Infernal Affairs 2, the second part of a series I'd already seen the 3rd part of, but still haven't seen the 1st of. We also watched legally blonde and a couple episodes of Sex and the City that prompted me to borrow the first season and later the second season of that show. I would have borrowed the third season. I had lots of lofty ambitions about practicing calligraphy, working on my Go, and trying to learn GRE vocabulary words over this break... but, uh, no.

Saturday I just watched 12 episodes of Sex and the City in a row.

Sunday I went and met N for basketball in the morning and tutoring in the afternoon, before I went back to watching Sex and the City season two. Sometimes I go out for food, sometimes I bring it in, sometimes I cook.

Really the only thing I could tell you about Monday was that I had a Go lesson. I got there late because I hadn't counted on the huge traffic jam, but we ended up going an hour late chatting in Chinese again afterwards.

Wednesday morning I was woken up by N calling to drop off her scooter, this is the first day of the break which I can really differentiate as a full fun and interesting day. N showed me how to turn the scooter on, how to break, how to fill up the gas, how to lift the seat (there's a compartment underneath), how to use the kickstand, how to turn on the lights, etc. I took a spin around Jin Hua Jie (my street), and then she announced that she had to go to her grandma's house.

She is lending me the bike for the week....

She didn't want me to drive for the trip to her grandma's house, probably because she didn't really trust me with her life, just with her scooter, I was actually fine with that.

It was good because I became better acquainted with the scooter driving laws as we progressed. I also think it was good because it put me in a sink or swim position; if I wanted the scooter, and wanted to get it home I'd have to drive it there. It turns out it is actually really easy. Traffic in Taipei moves really slowly, not because it's so crowded, but because a lot of the traffic is scooters and buses, and there are a lot of stop lights, so you really just can't go that fast, plus there's people and bikes. It was especially nice since for the new year people had finally left the city. The whole weekend and up till Weds there had actually been terrible traffic like I hadn't yet seen here. Apparently everyone was buying presents for their families. There were little orange trees everywhere, an auspicious gift, as well as gift baskets of apples (I bought one of those for my Go teacher's family), pineapples, oranges, wax apples, red envelopes, dried pork gift baskets, etc. People were also buying food for preparing lavish new years dinners. This was the commotion I had missed around Christmas. Whole families out together preparing for the holiday. So after I got the hang of the scooter, I decided not to go straight home but rather to take a spin around the city and check out all the red lanterns and decorations.

I arrived home with enough time to get ready for dinner at my Go teacher's sister-in-law's house. It was a pretty cold night, but at least it wasn't raining. I brought my camera but didn't take any pictures because no one else had a camera and I was embarrassed to break mine out. I arrived at the MRT station where he was going to pick me up 20 minutes early, but they were pretty quick to pick me up, despite a little exit number confusion, anyway.

When I got there the food was pretty much ready so we, the adults, sat down to eat. All three of the boys just kept sitting in the living room watching some anime movie or tv show. I didn't hear them say three sentences combined all night. Whatever, teenage boys are teenage boys in any culture at a family gathering I guess. Everything was in Chinese.

The girls shyly tried out a little English on me in the beginning, but soon ran out of things to say, so they just used Chinese too. So, although the food was good, there were a couple dishes that were challenging for me. Besides the vegetables, which I have no problem handling, and the sweet and sour pork, there was chicken still on the bone, though hacked up, and a fish with small bones stuffed with really hard fish eggs. Mr. Y had already eaten his dinner before us since he is a vegetarian (practicing Buddhist), so he just sat beside me and made conversation.

It was kind of weird because they'd run questions through him in Chinese, which he would still ask in Chinese, and then they'd talk about me in Chinese (things like, "does she need a fork?" which I would respond to in Chinese if I understood, but they'd still keep doing it). I found it hard getting over the cultural differences in eating styles, I think because my teacher had nothing better to do than closely monitor exactly what went on to my plate.

Basically the whole evening was good for me on the language front. Sure there was plenty I didn't understand, but as the shy foreigner guest, I wasn't going to lead every conversation anyway. Whenever I talked they were all appreciative and attentive.

There was lots of "gan bei" (cheers). There was rice wine, possibly my first since getting here, whiskey (I don't know why, but whiskey is really popular here) and a grape liquor from south Africa I thought was wine, then I thought was port, but after tasting I think it was just liquor. No one was satisfied with the amount I ate.

I tried to eat as much as decorum required, but I had had a very late lunch (after N had woken me up and I'd taken my spin around Taipei, so just a couple hours before I got to their house), and it really was hard and embarrassing to eat anything besides the soup, the vegetables and the pork, so I just risked the scorn of repeated inquiries as to how full I was, directed at me, and my teacher, and to each other.

Plus I knew there would be a couple more courses after I had insisted I couldn't put down another bite anyway, and true enough to my past experiences there was a sticky purple rice dessert, the fruit's (apples, guava, and oranges), Chinese flaky pastries, Japanese snacks, and some small chocolates, all of which were literally impossible to refuse. As we were having the last courses back in the living room, the parents distributed their hong bao (red envelopes) to the kids, and I got two, despite my insistence that I was in fact an adult. Really I just came out even on my fruit basket investment at the end of the night. We watched some New Years special in Chinese and Taiwanese. I understood very little, but I think all there was to understand was various famous actors and singers were giving new years wishes. After awhile they switched it to Karaoke. I tried to sing a couple songs cold, just read along, no one was terribly impressed, unlike my time for my birthday. Oh well, they were all actually Taiwanese people, not overseas Chinese, they take it more seriously.

When everyone was reassembled we went down to Xindian, the southernmost part of Taipei, along a river. I'd been down there with G, that's where we did the swan paddle boats. Although it was a bit cold, since it was a clear night it was a good place to see fireworks. They've supposedly cracked down on fireworks this year, making them illegal in Taipei. But there were still plenty. We got there around midnight. We walked over the extension bridge and saw plenty of professional caliber fireworks, but here in Taipei there is no official show like in America for new years, it's a free for all of privately bought fireworks, either set off over the river for the civicly responsible, or from rooftops for the more daring, less caring. We bought only one firework, it was the type that is a big crepe paper balloon with a bunch of wax boards at the bottom suspended in the middle with wires. You can write wishes or messages on the balloon, but we didn't have a pen, when you light the wax boards the hot air fills the balloon and it lifts off. We released ours a little too close to the bridge, and although the bridge didn't really have that much wood, there was still a slightly harrowing moment when it got caught up in one of the suspensions, but it fried it'self, fire and all, without real incident. As the guest, I got to light the wax. There were people with sparklers and smaller fire works too, but given the impromptu nature of the event, the display was pretty impressive, though not at all coordinated. The whole place sounded and smelled like a war, but an old fashioned war, complete with incense (for a more pleasant smelling beheading). Actually the fireworks had started a couple days before, and are still going on. I think the only fireworks the government successfully banned are just the ones on a string that used to be put off at street level, I believe to scare away bad spirit's. When we'd had our fill my teacher and his wife dropped me off at home since the subway had stopped running.

They called to invite me to come up to Tamshui with them. Tamshui is the opposite of Xindian, the northern most part of Taipei. We spent a long time trying to discuss how to meet, because my Chinese on the phone is still light years behind my Chinese in person, and eventually I just agreed to meet them down by their house again.

When they picked me up from the subway station with the usual "so you're full?" and I replied that I hadn't eaten yet they quickly took me to the nearest McDonalds, and I tried to fight A (14 yrs old) to pay for my own cheeseburger. But the cash register woman took her side and wouldn't take my money so I accepted another meal. I had my lunch/breakfast, and we waited for my teacher and the other aunt and uncle and their two kids to come. When everyone was finally assembled we walked to the MRT together (no boys today, they all decided it would be more fun to stay home, which really didn't seem like a huge loss).

At Tamshui it started spitting rain and was even colder than the day before, but it was the most fun I've had there. It was crowded with families enjoying the vacation/holiday, and it was nice being there with a group of nine Taiwanese people. They wouldn't let me pay for anything of course, and insisted I eat one of everything. We got lots of food from the stalls, which I would have had less of had I known we were also going to have a sit down meal. I tried a sticky rice dessert with chocolate sauce for the firs time which was good. I got one of the Chinese style hot dogs (spicy), fried mushrooms (sooooo good, they have a thin white mushroom here I don't remember seeing in the states, but I'm going to look for it when I get back), quail eggs on a stick, tea pickled eggs, etc. Then we had a sit down meal of oil tofu with fish paste surrounding rice noodles in a pink sauce and a bowl of fish ball soup with four different brightly colored fish balls each. Considering I'd had an extremely late breakfast, I think I gave a much better performance, the "are you sure you're full?" comments were less and more compulsory than injured sounding. We walked around the boardwalk and got some tea, and I took some of those booth pictures again, this time with A, she was apparently the most excited about having an American for New Years dinner and has been very attentive to me if I had any questions. I think the adults all wanted her to try some English on me, but they would settle just for her helping me. She is what they call "gui" here, dear or expensive. I guess it's the hosting daughter's role to be most attentive, I've seen in that in a couple families here. I guess they're preparing them to be hostesses on their own. When I tried to ask today if the girls played any sports I got encouraging answers from them about what they were doing in PE. Then I finally got the stock answer about them not needing to know how to play sports when they could be learning how to make a nice home. Sigh. We saw some more fireworks, since we were on the water again, but not as much as last night.

I fell asleep on the subway ride home and ended up getting a ride back to my scooter from my teacher again around 9. I was a little bit tired, but rather than just go home I wanted to take the scooter for a spin so I headed up to Ximen for some shopping. Although riding the scooter around on a kind of cold day is a joy, driving it around at night in the rain is less of a joy. I'm glad I chose a reasonably close destination. I got there without incident and did some fine shopping, mainly for Rae since she was so gushing about the clothes I sent her recently in her birthday card to me. I hope that wasn't sarcastic because now you're getting a bunch more. I also bought myself a Lego calendar and a new big purse, for carrying my many Korea purchases in style. (I'll send your new clothes after I get back from Korea because undoubtedly I will find something there that I want to send with the current gifts and Thailand ones I haven't yet sent, yay belated Xmas and you thought I just didn't care.)

In buying the Lego calendar I was halfway to asking the sales attendant for his phone number. He was a remarkably cute half Taiwanese half Japanese young man who seemed to actually be able to pull off the long hair. That would have been an unprecedented move on my part, but we were having a good chat, me especially confident after spending two full days in a row working out my Chinese. He was especially complimentary of my language skills since when he had first gotten to Taiwan he had lived with Japanese kids in my program who didn't sound as good as I did. But then he dropped in the "I'm already married."

So I just bought my Lego calendar, finished off our chat and went on my merry way. Oh well, it was an ego boost at any rate. I was actually just looking for a necklace. I want one of those jade circle necklaces. It's proving remarkably hard to find. Jewelry stores seem to either be modern or second hand, the modern ones don't have it, and the second hand ones have weird sized jade pieces, or overly bejeweled ones, oh well I have a month left to keep up the search. I got some dumplings at a stall and headed home only as the stores were pulling down their gates. The ride home was cold and wet, but without incident. I watched an hour of Braveheart, but decided I'd better write this email now or it would never get written.

Week ending January 20, 2004

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On my actual birthday I didn't actually do much besides tutor. G bought me a piece of chocolate cake and some tiramisu and we watched stupid movies together instead of doing homework.

On Monday I finally went to Ma La Huo Guo (spicy hot pot). I've been to Huo Guo before which is just hot pot, and it is fun because, as far as I can tell, its always all you can eat buffet style where you boil raw food in a big pot in the middle of your table. You make your own sauce with japanese and chinese ingredients. There are lunch size servings too actually come to think of it which aren't all you eat, but you get the idea. Its kind of like shabu shabu. But the Ma La part is what I've been wanting to try for some time but couldn't find people who wanted to do. We only got Xiao La (a little spicy) which is the second least spicy option. I guess it was a good amount of spicy but I would have preferred zhong or da (middle or big), but I didn't want to fight the group, so I just put some extra chili sauce in my own personalized sauce. You can get a whole pot spicy but we got ours half and half, so there was one side that was just regular boiling water. It was delicious. We had a lot of beef and mushrooms and some fish balls, and everything basically. O's aunt is really nice. O tutors her in English sometimes, and her English didn't sound half bad, but she was more comfortable in Chinese, so we spoke in Chinese for much of dinner, which was fun and good practice. I kept up just fine unless I got distracted and then I sometimes lost the conversation topic making it harder to jump back in.

Monday was also an interesting day in Go. After our lesson I spoke Chinese with my teacher for the first time. I'll be going to his sister-in-law's house for the New Year and we discussed that, and some other stuff. I think I ended up coming off as an Imperialist when we started talking politics, but its hard to get the subtle shadings required to discuss international politics at my level of vocabulary. Oh well, I think he understood. Next lesson we're going to try and use some Chinese in the actual lesson. We'll see how that goes.

On Tuesday we didn't have calligraphy because our teacher is already out of town for the holiday. So we all went out to get beef noodles for lunch and then O and I gave his friend E a tour of Shi Da, but O had to do language exchange for two hours so E and I wandered around Taipei together for awhile. We've decided to do a similar trip to San Francisco or Oakland China town when I get back to the Bay Area since he's at Cal and says he doesn't have friends interested in going, which I find hard to believe, since it seems like all these friends of O's only run with all Asian crowds... but whatever it will be good practice and good fun to go to Chinatown with someone whose spoken Chinese is so much better than mine. He did his undergrad at Harvard and spent a summer in Hong Kong in a Mandarin program as well as speaking it with friends and family.

Anyway, we walked around the ShiLin nightmarket area but it was too early for shopping so we just wandered around a park and a temple. Then we saw a massage place so we stopped in because it had a picture of some famous actor (I dunno some Asian guy) out front. We didn't get the foot reflexology massages we just got head and neck, but it felt really good. I think my masseuse found a pressure point on my head no one had ever pressed before because my own reaction surprised me, I felt like if she's wanted to press harder she probably could have made me unconscious. As we were walking around we also found a mahjong store, which was good because I actually needed the rulers for my mahjong set as well as the brown paper to play on (to prevent the table or tiles from getting scratched). It was also just cool to see all the different types of Mahjong sets, different sizes, weights, colors, etc.

We went back down to Shi Da to pick up O and then we headed out to Ximen, which is a shopping center. O took us to a noodle place that is apparently quite famous. There is nowhere to sit so you just have to eat standing up. There was something I couldn't identify in the soup, after I tried it I was informed it was intestines. I'd been purposefully avoiding eating intestines, but I'll admit it wasn't actually that gross. Really chewy, but it just kind of took the flavor of the soup.

Then we decided to get pictures taken. I've already sent you both sets we did. The first time the three of just hopped into a booth and didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know when it was going to take the picture, and then the directions afterwards were in Japanese so we didn't know how to do all the putting on boarders and adding stars and choosing which pictures and what not. So we got kind of crappy pictures (the ones of all three of us in our read jackets, a funny coincidence that lead us to consider ourselves a gang, and O wanted us to tag stuff in Chinese calligraphy in homage to our missed calligraphy class as well, but we never really got the chance or any inspiration). The second time we asked the girl working there to help us. We also put on wigs and got props from the prop room. She put us in a chinese language booth with a countdown so we knew when the pictures were going to be taken, then she did all the adding hearts and rainbows and teddy bears herself and we just stood around with our jaws on the floor. She was really good at it. Obviously it takes practice. There is a timer counting down the whole time, I guess to keep you from being there all day, but you actually only get a minute or two which is not that much time to pretty up four pictures. We got three pins made and wore them proudly for the rest of the day. It was really funny. I'm glad I finally did that, for the experience as well as the cute little pictures that resulted. We got some dinner from the various stands and I tried squid balls with spicy sauces for the first time. Yum.

Later we reconvened for my first night of Mahjong. As always everyone trickled in slowly and very late. Nancy showed me how to play and then we played a couple rounds, but it was already getting close to 1:30 and all of our hosts were in pajamas and not playing so we decided to end for the night. Hopefully I'll get a few more games in before I leave, which doesn't seem like it will be a problem, everyone seems to know how to play here. I think there is potential for me to get much better, especially since playing fast is valued highly here.

Wednesday I had lunch with J. We went to a cute little place in Yong Kong and he introduced me to a new kind of beef, spring onion roll with a plum sauce that I never would have known to order on my own. I'm glad we had the opportunity to chat since I haven't really seen him since our cooking class. Also after doing all group lunches for the last four months, give or take, it was nice to have a calm one-on-one lunch.

I've had the apartment to myself, which has been a little weird. Not that G and I talked constantly or anything, I spent plenty of time in my room or in the living room without her even in the apartment, but it just feels different. I've been watching a lot more television, even though there is plenty of studying or email writing I could be doing. Or online Go playing, or calligraphy practicing, or GRE practice book preparing. Oh well, a week or two of more tv than usual won't kill me, it just shows me that perhaps I'm not quite ready to live alone, alone quite yet.

Today I was going to pay my rent after class when two of the Japanese women from my class caught up with me at the light. They asked me to come eat with them, and I tried to explain that I had an errand, and they said they'd come wait with me at the bank, and I know they were polite enough to do it, but I decided I'd still have time afterwards (I had a tea date at 2) so I just went directly to lunch with them. They took me to a Thai restaurant I'd heard about but never been to. It was kind of a hole in the wall with enough room to sit maybe 20 people, among those people were another Japanese woman talking to another American girl (Claire from Yonkers, I introduced myself as our respective Japanese hosts were exchanging pleasantries) and as we were leaving another kid from our class also came in, so I guess everyone knew about it except me. I definitely want to go back. Great food, cheap. Our whole lunch conversation was in Chinese, we talked about travel, food, leisure time activities, their husband's jobs. Not a bad conversation really, I don't think the subject matter was hindered by any language barrier. I went to the bank, and as I'd feared the line was a lot longer since the lunch crowd had let out, but I called Gammie so it wasn't too bad. Then I called mom and dad, but I thought it might be too late to call Rae-Rae.

I did actually end up being late to afternoon tea, basically a small going away party for J, but they were just getting their first round of desserts when I arrived. The deal is for $6 you get a drink (coffee, tea, milk tea, etc) and all you can eat desserts. Any additional drink is 75ish cents more. A pretty good deal. The cheesecake and Jell-O were the highlights for me, they also had some lunch type foods, breads and pizzas mainly, but I'd just eaten. Anyway, I am sad to see J go. In this group she is the other person who could be counted on to arrive places on time and be organized in other aspects of life. She was also a good planner of fun activities. She's not sure when she's coming back to Taiwan so it might be after March 1st in which case I'll miss her homecoming, but I figure we'll probably meet again, either on the Mainland or in California. I almost feel undeserving of her friendship, a beautiful model who went to MIT with celebrity friends and a contagious smile, I'm glad I got to hang out with her even for half my time in Taiwan.

After tea J went to run errands before her flight, I was going to just go home, but then as I was passing the shops on the way to the MRT I decided I'd rather go shopping. I needed to buy a jacket for Korea and there I was in a good shopping neighborhood. I decided I might as well get a brand name jacket rather than one of the cheaper generic ones off the street because I didn't want to freeze in Seoul, or have to buy a second jacket, so I went to the puma store and bought a big fluffy black one. I think it should do the trick, I should probably get gloves too. As long as I was there I also picked up a sweatshirt, and I got some new New Balance shoes to because the ones I brought here have been falling apart lately. I was going to buy a necklace too as a birthday money gift from Nonnie, but the stores were either too high-class or didn't have what I wanted, so I think I'll go back to Ximen for that next week.

Today, as the white German girl I talked with a couple weeks ago pointed out sometimes happens, I was having one of those days were everyone compliments your Chinese. At the dumpling shop, buying the bracelets, in the cab, everyone couldn't believe how great my Chinese was. I know they're exaggerating, and just being polite as is the custom here, but its still nice from time to time to hear it from everyone you meet. I guess I have to be in the right mood, because some days I just find that ingenuine and embarrassing, but not today.

Tomorrow I have a test on the vocabulary that describes the difference between Chinese and Taiwanese politics. There was also some discussion of American politics, it was nice that I already knew all the events in English so I didn't have to learn the history as well as the vocab as some of the kids in class had to do. Studying seems more and more tedious. I'm looking forward to this break, and then maybe I can study with renewed vigor for my last month. We'll see.

Week ending January 13, 2004

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Happy Birthday to me!

I'll start with birthday related news. My birthday party, went quite well. On Friday we went to Costco after lunch to buy dinner and snacks. It was a lot of fun, just like being back in America. For dinner we got ribs (haven't had in four months), roast chicken (a relatively cheap way to feed a dozen people), gouda and brie (oh my god, I've missed cheese so much), foccacia, and we bought some romaine lettuce, crutons and dressing and made the first real salad I've had since I've been here. We also got cookies and cheesesticks and other snacky food, but dinner was really great. The usual crowd showed up for that at around 7 and then around 9 everyone else started coming. J has a lot of entertainment industry friends here, so it was actually a fairly star-studded evening, as long as you know your Asian performers, which I didn't as much at the beginning of the night as I do now. I got a mahjong set as a big joint group present. It looks like a really nice set. I don't know how to play, but I'm looking forward to learning. It seems everyone else here already knows, and it is apparently something like gin rummy. The key in playing here is playing fast. When I get good I can play for money. They got J an MP3 player, and since the majority of guests were J's friends she also got some other stuff. Around midnight we all went over to the nearby KTV were J had reserved a room, Friday night is a popular Karaoke night in Taipei. This was the best Karaoke experience I've had thus far. There were so many professional singers that the caliber of the singing was not even comparable to our past trips.

Then J's friend from the band Tension came, and also this woman named V. V is apparently almost 30 though she looked about 18. She showed up with her hair over her face and a big hat. Apparently she is the equivalent of Julia Roberts here according to J. She has been acting for over a decade and also singing. She sang one of her own songs at KTV and I recognized the video from TV. She was super cute and nice, pictures later. Best of all when the bill came she covered everyone, which was nice. And she also brought this really cute candle that started off as a bright pink fire and then opened up this lotus with each leaf having a lit candle while it played the tune to "Happy birthday to you" or "Zhu ni shengri kuai le." Besides the famous people and good singers there was the usual poorly sung English songs. I even sang "Pengyou" (chinese) which got me a partial standing ovation. I sang a couple duets with J, who can also really sing it turns out. And for the first time some people even sang in Japanese. Although some people trickled out, we were still going strong at 4 am when our time ran out. It was quite an enjoyable evening, and a memorable birthday.

Yesterday I slept in until 2:30 and then watched old movies on TV. I was going to go out and do something in the early evening, but I decided it would be better to stay in so I could take out the garbage which had been stinking up the kitchen since Wednesday, more on that in a minute. So I waited until 8 and then after taking out the trash I checked out a new (to me) dumpling place on our street not too far from our apartment. Not bad, but I think I like the one on the other side of us better since they have fried and boiled. I thought there was a steamed buns place too, but I guess it was closed by the time I showed up.

Today, my actual birthday if it stops raining maybe I'll go for a run in the park.

Last Wednesday we had B come over to cook again like he hasn't in awhile. It took B around 2 hours to prepare everything, as always there was a soup, a chicken course, a dry tofu course, and some beef and broccoli. This time he also made a Costa Rican salad of tomato and cucumber with parsley and onions and lemon which was also quite good. Hopefully we'll have at least one more of these if not two before I leave Taipei.

So yeah, that's my birthday week 2004.

Week ending January 6, 2004

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Happy 2004! It feels like we were partying like it was 1999 just yesterday.

Anyway, I rang in the new year at Party Room. It was the best time I've had at Party Room actually. The place was packed. All the clubs and streets were packed. Even though Chinese New Years is the 21st and a much bigger deal for people here, or at least I think it will be, they were definitely out in numbers to celebrate western New Years as well. Supposedly there was a fireworks display at Taipei 101, but it was super crowded, and kids were lighting sparklers in the really dense crowd which irked some of the westerners I know who went.

Sometime around 2 or 3 we moved back to O's place as everyone was getting pretty danced out. We ate fruit and left over desserts from Christmas and chatted in his living room. As more and more people started falling asleep I decided to head out, I shared a cab back with a girl I met that night who did her undergrad at Cal and is on a break from doing her grad stuff at Stanford. Lots of Cal and Stanford kids around.

Thursday we didn't have to go to class. So I slept a bunch. Wrote some emails, made some crappy food for myself. Slept some more and did some reading. Now I've finished the other Harry Mulisch book I have here, Siegfried, and am reading something by Salmon Rushdie who I've never read before.

On Friday I had to give a presentation on why I supported beauty pageants. I'd done a draft before hand and given it to the teacher to correct because I was uncertain of a lot of grammar and vocabulary. She covered it in red and I had to stay late on class on Wednesday to go over it with her, and she wasn't entirely complimentary of what I'd written. There was no "atta girl, Shi Mei Rong" it was more like "so, uh, you finished all of big one right?" (we're 8 chapters into book 2 now) "these don't look like book 2 problems, they look like book 1 problems" etc. And then she accused me of not having any Taiwanese friends. Which I don't. Aw well. The presentation actually went fine. There were two of us arguing for and two against. The other girl arguing for and misunderstood the assignment and just did a history of beauty pageants and one of the other girls who had argued against didn't really say that much and used a lot of vocab we didn't know without having explained it before hand. I at least took the time to explain my new vocab in Chinese and write it on the board, which the teacher complimented as a good presentation strategy. After class we went to the vegetarian 69 NT place. I had to go back to school to get a transcript and print out some stuff for my China application, and then I played Frisbee. Da'an park isn't actually all that well suited for Frisbee since it is full of trees and the ground isn't that level, but we still managed to have some fun. The weather and changing leaves made it feel very autumnal. After they had to leave I did two laps around the outside of the park. Its not as big as I thought it was from my times wandering into the middle and getting lost, I think now I have a better sense for how its laid out. On my way back from the park I saw G talking with a seamstress in our neighborhood. I knocked on the door and went in and joined them. The seamstress was really cool. A 74, I think, year old woman, raised in Japan decided to leave when they got into a war with China as her family was overseas Chinese, moved to the mainland, went to check out Taiwan because she heard it was culturally more like Japan, and then got stuck there after the Communists closed the doors on people coming back. Her Chinese was very clear and easy to understand. She talked a lot, but with one or two vocab exceptions I followed her perfectly. She talked about the girls who used to work in her shop and her son and all the Japanese customers she has. She showed us pictures and got out magazines with pictures of herself and her shop. She was really adorable. G gets some hemming and other work done there occasionally and has taken to just stopping by, I'm glad I happened to catch her there.

I got some boiled dumplings for dinner and fried up some kong xin.

Today G and I made a day of going out in Taipei like we hadn't done in awhile. We went up to Tamshui to see the freak animal show. That was pretty odd. It was kind of like a Ripley's Believe it or Not thing, with pictures and a couple weird animals in formaldehyde, but nothing really as outrageous as the pictures or drugged snakes out front would lead you to believe might be inside. We walked around for awhile got some shaved ice and then took the subway back down to the Contemporary Fine Arts Museum, or something like that, by the Confucius Temple. It wasn't as cool as the Contemporary Art Museum, but there was some interesting stuff. The bottom floor was installation pieces by this wacky old, bald German guy in the "zero" school of art. Lots of white paint and nails and big rakes, and sixty words from the Old Testament in Chinese with their German translation. The second floor was permanent collection stuff. My favorite picture was probably this anime girl with flowing (back lit with actual light) blonde hair in front of a blurry crucifixion scene. There were some scrolls and oil paintings. There was a room full of black and white paintings of nude, phallic or otherwise sexual paintings with four character phrases some of which I could read, some I couldn't. The top floor was split between a memorial for a Kaohsiung artist who died recently who liked oil painting and sketches (mainly beaches, flowers and people). His work was pretty and his colors bold, but his subjects weren't particularly interesting or creative, but damn was he prolific. And the other part of the top floor was dedicated to some other Taiwanese artist who was into combining art and architecture. Apparently he helped design the Donghai campus (the one I visited in Taizhong) as well as the Luce Chapel, the funny shaped church I sent you guys a picture of. Apparently that campus and church are the biggest architectural accomplishments in Taiwan, so I'm glad I saw them. He also did a lot of scrolls with themes like "monkeys" and "eternity." I bought some postcards, so maybe you can look forward to getting those soon, or maybe not. The museum itself was also very interesting, architecturally. It was all white and made of these huge blocks that jutted out, forming some of the galleries, then there was an open space with a stepped courtyard with some bamboo and a coffee shop on two of the layers. There was also some pretty interesting sculpture work around on the various jutting out parts, like a huge silver orange with two slices removed and a man with no stomach.

We got dinner by the bookstore. G got McDonald's and I got Napoli's pizza. Much more satisfying than Domino's pizza, so it finally satisfied my need for pizza, but at the same time it just made me want to get home to real western food.

When we finally got back here we were both tired. We watched Kiss Of The Dragon on TV while thumbing through all the prints I got made of my pictures from my digital camera and then I slept for two hours. I'm about ready to go to sleep again.

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