Ben+Taiwan=<3

DAY 2+3=word

Day 2

Well lets see after day two was definatley alot more relaxed than day 1. since i have no idea what time is due to jet lag, i think i got up about 6 and showered and shaved then went out for a walk down the road to check things out. since i'm in a village kind thing outside Hualien city there wasn't much to see a whole bunch of half finished buildings, a few people checking out the ocean and some fishermen doing some work. After i came back no one was up or they had already left so i sat down and started reading through the Wired magazine I bought back in Calgary, which had a pretty interesting and sound concept on the future of a ecologically friendly automotive industry, can't explain much but it's called Better Place (Click here for website) and it makes the industry more profitable and cuts emissions buy at least 60%. then my auntie came and got me for breakfast, Jenny made me an awesome soup and some kind of ham and cheese sandwich. My mother got home somewhere after that and told me we we're having lunch with some rotarians, so i finished up some more of the magazine and we we're off. first we stopped at one bank than other i assumed one was for her businesses and the other her personal funds (the male clerk at the second one said i was very handsome and i can't say i disagree with him it just felt strange coming from a man :P). Then she showed me her beautiful Chinese fashion store which i though was very well displayed, with a whole bunch of fine expensive silk women's clothing. After she checked up on how things we're going we were off to lunch at a winery Eagle (a rotarian) owns, attempting to make some small talk along the way.

We arrived at a beautiful temple looking building and while we waited for her rotarian friends I had a history briefing on the Aborigines of Taiwan, and i found out that people wish they we're aboriginal unlike in Canada where it's the exact opposite. After there being no space for us he let us into the private bar area, where my host mother her two friends, there daughter sunny and I ate some incredible Chinese food. I tried to make as much small talk as possible but was shoved out by the gaggle of women talking, I was told my chopstick skills our outstanding (haha I told ya I practiced dad, I was even eating peanuts with them). We talked for a bit, and after a little bit of laughing and pointing at me they came up with my Chinese name v3 (they tried twice before but didn’t like it after awhile) so I am now named Chou-yu-yao. We laughed some more, and later I was served iced green tea which I don’t think the glass was fully rinsed because at it taste like soap and the top was extremely bubbly, they didn’t even pop or dissolve away even after I finished but I still drank it incase that was the way it was supposed to be. Then after for a bit I walked around with Sunny trying to have a decent conversation with what little English she new and what little Chinese I knew, all in all it turned out pretty good. Once we got back the girls decided they’d laughed enough and it was time to go. We said good bye and sunny gave me her msn, they told me how to say good bye but I’m still having a difficult time remembering all these weird sounds in order. I can’t say the day was very interesting past this, we talked some more with what words we knew, ate dinner together (she is an amazing cook btw still not as good as my actual mother though :P), oh but we did go on a bike ride up to the top of the hill and got a spectacular view of the ocean.


Day 3

This was an amazing day, Jenny came and got me in the morning for a delicious breakfast, then I put on my beach stuff and walked down to the beach, I couldn’t go swimming but that wasn’t a problem since every single rock on the beach is perfect for skipping, so I sat there and listened to some tuneskies as I huked some rocks at the water. I had originally intended to walk to the end of the beach but it was so far and the sun was so hot any thing a few meters a way was distorted by rise hot air, so I decided against because heat stroke really sucks but I do intent on going some other day because at the end theres a huge cliff where the wave hit making a huge kind of geyser effect. I wondered back 30 some odd minutes later to find my mother was up and about. Oh ya and the night before I ended up talking with Sunny, after awhile she offered to take me to a night market if my mother said it was ok. So after some explanation she phones up sunny and now we’re going to a Chinese tea house for lunch, then to a movie. So I clean myself up and we head into the city to pick sunny up. After we pick her up from the apartment her and my mother talk for abit and she translate a few things from my mother to me about I’ll change my American tomorrow and that she’s paying for this. We get dropped off at a pretty fancy looking Chinese tea house. We got upstairs and Sunny had to order for me because well I’m Chinese impaired and it’s not like Spanish were some word look similar….it’s all completely new characters haha. After the food arrives needless to say the tea was amazing like absolutely awesome. After we had our tea the food came out, again in rather larger potions and I’m going to have to admit I was unable to finish my Beef noodle soup  but shit don’t phase right :P.

Next we walked over and she said we still have time before movie, so we looked up and saw a huge add for bowling . She asked if I knew how to bowl and I told them I was trained by a master (a.k.a. Jordan) she giggled and we went inside. It was up on the second floor and as soon as we got out of the elevator I noticed something….Bowling is rad in Taiwan, there are tons of asianed out teenagers and bumping rap. I was pretty excited. Once we finally got a lane, we sat down grabbed some balls and I guess I was up first and I was kinda nervous because well there was some to rad for life guys next to us playing pretty well and eyeing me up lol, plus this was the first time playing 10 pin. I line up throw and boom strike, I was pretty happy. So the game goes on Sunny didn’t do so hot the first game and I was on fire 172 haha even though the ball did slip off my finger and go backwards and I did end up hitting my calf and gutterballing. So I start showing her how to bowl, instead of dropping it and hoping it makes it, and she start bowling great she broke 100 this time I was so happy, she even got a strike. The game finished up and needless to say I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun bowling…EVER. So we take off to the movies and it turns out the only two movies that aren’t full Chinese are Mama Mia and Mummy 4 (it says Mummy 3 but Jet-Li was on the poster so it must have been a mistake or something), I ended up choosing the lesser of two evils and decided to go see Mama Mia because I had already seen the Mummy 4 and it was god awful. After grabbing some popcorn and talking some more the movie starts up and it was just as girly as I thought but it was interesting thinking what life would be like if everyone randomly burst into perfectly choreographed song and danced. Oh btw I wont ruin it but the ending does not make sense what so ever, maybe I need a vagina or something to understand. So we leave and phone up Mama Hana to pick us up, we talk for a bit and try and figure out what style of dancing these people are learning (they we’re in a fully glass encased room on the second floor of a building, I thought it was kinda cool). It did take awhile for my mother to arrive mainly because she drive pretty slow, I personally think it’s because of the classic Disney movie music but I enjoyed the time soaking up the city life. She finally arrives in her ford sedan, and we go drop Sunny off at home, I think she wants me to teach her how to longboard and go fishing sometime. I’m glad that I’ve actually made a friend, yay for me :D. So I arrive back home and Hana say she’s going to a party so I get to sit and eat with all the restaurant staff and you know what? It was unreal, I sat with this little Aboriginal girl named Amen and David, I listened to them make fun of each other like Hannah, Erin and I do and surprisingly I got in on this and we started ganging up on each other surprisingly not in English, I can’t really describe this but the short version is I was having a freaking blast, they said they’d take me to some fun places in Taiwan and maybe go surfing.

This goes on for about 2 or 3 hours, rad all the way through, I got to bed and ya here I am in my room writing this up for you guys.

Moral: TAIWAN IS AWSOME, I still miss you guys dun worry Taiwan wont take your place

<3 Ben

posted by Ben @ 5:12 AM Comments: 3

DAY 1

Well here I go, after a heart breaking good bye at the airport to my friends and family who turned up in record numbers, I was off weeping and trying to find consolement in a couple snikers bars I bought after security. Now I’m going to say not sleeping for like 3 days definitely amplified my anxiousness, I truly did feel bad for the guy who was in the stall next to me in Vancouver international’s washrooms. Luckily I was able to snag a whole row to myself on the plane and practically slept like a baby all the way to Taipei. As I was passing through customs I was like “hey, that girls bright red blazer is absolutely stupendous.” So we started talking and apparently she’s a rotary exchange student from Saskatoon (who’d a thunk it, eh?). So we helped each other cross the border, and collect our bags. As soon as we stepped out my counselor, host mother, sister, brother and a exchange student that had just came back from Canada were there holding a huge banner with my sexy face all over it, so we introduced and swapped business cards.

I ended up driving with my counselor to her house because my host family had to still wait to see my brother off because he’s off to Thailand on a rotary exchange as well. So as we drive for about an hour trying to converse as best we can in a 1 to 9 mix of English and Chinese, we end up stopping for groceries at a Morning market which was an absolute overload (still only a taste of what a night market was supposed to be like). Chickens getting awped by the meat cleaver, yelling, scooters amazingly weaving through lanes as wide as a grocery isle but packed with people, my eyes wildly wondering over new territory as half the stuff I saw I was wondering “WTF is that?!” Oh and if you want fresh fish this is definitely the place to be, nearly all the fish lying there were still breathing as people stared at them trying to find something for dinner tonight.

The streets in Taiwan are clean, and surprisingly Modern which was a nice feel like I was still kind of connected to home. After we arrived at her sparkling apartment, I cleaned up and we both had a nap after watching some animal planet. I wake up and soon after my host mother and sister arrive, they say we’re all going for lunch. It turned out to be literally right next to the apartment building. Inside it’s very modern, with all the employees wearing earpieces and microphones. We start eating and the menu is exactly like the Silver dragon lunch special with 1-4 options in tier’s of service. The only difference……THERE IS A LOT MORE! I started off with seafood salad, then a plate of giant mushrooms, some soup, salmon rice balls, some beef then finally a vanilla flan dessert cake. Even the drinks came in tiers, first you had tea, then a small shot glass of some sweet slushy juice around the time that the salmon arrived then near the end of your main course they bring out your drink of choice (iced coffee for me). Needless to say I was stuffed but before I could dig in to the delicious looking cake infront of me, my host mother looks at her watch and starts yelling at the waitress to get the bill. So we run out of there, me and my sister go to the apartment to grab my stuff (btw running with 100 pounds of stuff isn’t the greatest). We run outside hail a taxi and me and my mother are off to what I’m assuming is the train station, she throws some money at the cab driver and we take off running, myself amazed that I can actually move with all this stuff on me. We fly down the escalator, me knocking some people into the railing with my large duffle bag. When we get to the terminal I see Hana (mother) frantically talking to the train attendant and I notice there’s no train L. The train attendant shows me to a bench and Hana runs off up the stairs, I pop in the ipod to try to avoid thinking of home but it kinda made it worse because I decided to play David Bowe –Just Dance (listened to it right before I left). Thankfully she arrived back relatively quickly and instructed me to run up the stairs (I’m sweating profusely by this time), she’s trying to say something about a plane as we get to the main floor where I wait by the escalator in the middle of the entrance with everyone starring at me either wondering what I’m doing or wtf is a white teenager doing there with all those bags. My host mother comes to rescue my again saying I’m very, very lucky and we go back down to the original terminal. We sit down and the train attendant brings us some hot tea which really wasn’t helping me after all this running with extra weight in the incredibly hot humid air.

Once the train arrives, we pile my bags on board and find a seat. We spend the next two hours of the train ride trying to have a conversation with what little English and Chinese we know and try to figure out all the rules and stuff I have to do, I also get the number of a girl who lives in Hualien (my host mother did all the talking and I guess her name is Linda). Once we arrive I am greeted by all the rotary exchange students in Hualien country which made me feel awesome, they all seemed super awesome and helped me with all my bags. We talked for a bit as my host mother and here sister figured stuff out and took pictures with each other (this really took care of my dreadful home sickness, I was pretty darn good at hiding it though). We said good bye and I was off in my Families Mercedes-Benz!!! with my Mother and Aunt, we converse again and I find out that my mothers music of choice is classic Disney movie songs :D. We arrive to a stunning ocean view and I meet some more people, who work at my Families restaurant. I find my room (my host brothers room which is vacant because he is now on exchange in Thailand) which is perfect, I can make it a meat locker with the air conditioning, there is a TV, dvd player and a very stiff bed which I actually like. It seems like my brother liked camera because part of his wall is covered in Magazine camera ads and it looks like he’s learning to play guitar, the only thing that threw me off was the hordes of cosmo and fashion design books. After unpacking I go into the restaurant with Hana and meet some of her Rotarian friends who are eating there. We eat ice cream and I go back to the room to figure out why the internet’s not working which proved unsuccessful. Later Hana and I walk down the bike path along the ocean talking some more, along the way I see an old man playing the flute at what I assumed is a platform for meditation and yoga. When we get home we sit down outside and Jenny makes us another massive plate of seafood lasagna (I’m going to be Buda when I come back I swear).

Ok now I’m back here in my room, there’s a rather large spider creaping in the corner and I’m exhausted. Ima sleep and you guys are just getting up wtf is this.

posted by Ben @ 3:02 AM Comments: 1

well fack

I just got back from the hospital after the last 3 days of the couch being my new home and bad movies on cable being my new friends. and do you know what i fucking found out? I HAVE MONO. MONO for god sakes like what is that?!? I feel like shit, it wont be over until like 3 weeks into my exchange. I can't drink myself stupid for a going away party or pretty much do anything.

God is and asshole,
Ben

posted by Ben @ 1:27 PM Comments: 3

Almost there

This is my first post in a series of many, hopefully Brilliant jaw dropping posts. Naw I'm kidding most of it will probably be about what i just ate :P

Ok so I'm leaving Calgary International at 11:30 PM on August 22nd to Vancouver where I have a 2 hour stop over around midnight then I'm off to Taipei where I assume I'll be picked up by my host family and be driven or take the train out to Hualien city on the east coast of the island.

I just want to let you guys know that I promise to miss everyone of you from Taylor <3 to my Boyfriends and Girlfriends to my Parents and that i hope you know that I'm going to make the best of it and have a great time.

also good luck to all my fellow exchange students and I hope you make or are making the best of you trip.


Take care,
Ben

posted by Ben @ 8:08 PM Comments: 2