Ben+Taiwan=<3

Taiwan day....cuz all i'm all that, WORD

Well it’s called Double tenth day around here, because October is the 10th month and it’s celebrated on the 10th day but they call it double tenth because they aren’t officially separate from china yet so they can’t have a countries birthday if there not separated but either way it made for great fireworks.

Lets start here, because it’s a holiday we have no school so my classmates invite me to go bowling them and too bring a bike because they want to play volley ball afterwards. So I ask my friend to give me some simple directions after the bridge to get to the bowling place. Well my completely reliable friend from America who wants to be a philosopher tells me to take a left at the bridge. Well I’m sure you can see what’s coming because I’m taking a decent amount of time to set the situation, HE MEANT RIGHT!!! So a wrong turn is usually correctable if it happens close to the destination but he sends me searching all over the wrong side of town but it give me time to grab an egg mcmuffin at a Mcdonalds. So I soon realize I’m lost and I’m like what evs I got a cellular telephonic device I can use that WRONG! The cellphone I got from my sister (oh ya when she arrived at my house in Taipei she gave me this sweet touch screen cellphone just before Willy completely broke mine on the train back) is broken as well and only works when it feels like it and I’m not moving, which is hard to do when your searching for place that you think is close to you. So I spend the better part of the hour cursing at my cell phone and doing some serious U turns as I ride around the wrong side of the city on my bike. Now being white here is enough to turn heads, you should see how many stares you get doing this. Luckily somewhere amidst the weird flashing signs, random street vendors and squinty stares I see one of my classmates about to board a bus SHIT YEAH! But theres a catch she doesn’t speak English somewhere between my arm flailing and broken Chinese she said she was going to phone Alex to phone me. OK so at least he knows I’m coming….so I ride around the town some more, cursing, sweating, and without a clue of wear I’m going. Then I happen upon the one girl from my old classroom who used to translate for me, I would have missed her if she didn’t wave at me but anyway we talk (even her mother speaks English) she points, her mother says something about the train station and long way, I say xie xie (ty) and head off in the opposite way I had been searching with a little more of a clue. So I make it all the way to the train station which definitely was a long way away. I know I’m close so I just do a very beautiful zig zag pattern back and forth up and down the roads, after a couple minutes I’m like “please don’t tell me I’m lost for a second time” but then god rains down a miracle in Brazilian form and Willy flags me down, we talk, I explain, and he says

Willy: “You know that movie theater right across from the bowling alley.”

Me: “ya.”

Willy: “Well it’s right behind me”

and points and I can see the corner of the showtime sign. Now usually I would feel like a huge idiot but fuck it I finally found it, I said thanks fast and pulled up to the bowling alley.

So I meet up with everyone, explain what happened. meet there girlfriends and play from 11:30 to 3:30 .
One thing I learned from this, Taiwanese love to play bowling and it shows in there scores, all high 100’s including the girls. I was either 2nd or 3rd . So we talk and giggle, and just as we’re going to play beach volley ball, something I was looking forward to, my phone starts working and I get a call from my mother, I guess I have to go back to my mom’s house because we’re going to a firework party at 6:00pm but it’s only 3:30pm but what ever so I say good bye and head home, I find my way home relatively easy and get home, it’s a long bike ride like 40 min’s as soon as get there the Brazilian girl arrives and I guess she’s staying the night and coming to the party. RAD I have someone to translate between me and my sister and she’s a good friend of mine anyway. So we meet up with Palm, and Hugo then take off to the Dinner at that winery me and my mother usually meet at which is right by the stadium where all the fire works take off. So we giggle and talk while eating “normal” Taiwanese food all the while I’m wondering why can’t they cook the skin, take out the bone and serve the chicken hot. So then my sister and the one girl Sunny who took me bowling and stuff at the start of the trip arrived and we caught up on stuff, what I’ve been doing and what she’s been doing (studying). Then we were lucky enough to see the fireworks which were un-fucking-believable. They lasted around half an hour, some would blow up in to shapes like hearts and smiley faces, others would blow up multiple times to make a bulls eye or would just blow up awhole bunch in general and probably my favorite was the one that blew up like a normal firework but each of it’s pieces fell from the sky swinging like lanterns. When it was finished I was left in jaw dropping amazement, the conclusion fireworks are definitely better in Asia hands down.

After this we piled in to the Mercedes and attempted to make our way through the sea of people outside the complex. Because these we’re the only ones in all of Taiwan for some reason there was almost the whole country in like a 3 block area it was nuts, making the traffic move slower than me playing basketball. So after finally we break through and are on our way, moving as fast as possible which in my mothers terms is 10 km below the speed limit….Mayra, my sister and I decide to make a stop at 7 11 and pick up close to a truck load of snacks and stuff because we don’t feel like sleeping tonight. Long story short we didn’t fall asleep until 7:30.

Ok this story was by far my favorite so far and I hope you guys like it.
I’ve been missing you all a lot and hope everything is going great

Word,
Ben

posted by Ben @ 12:22 AM Comments: 1

SRYSRYSRYSRYSRY

UPDATE: Ok i'm going to be turning about awhole bunch of stories in the next week so keep watching. I'm so sorry it's been a month but god damn am I lazy

Ok I'll be honest (seldom seen on the internet)I completely blanked on Turkey day haha so I guess its a belated happy turkey day this year by about one day your time 2 days mine. but what better way to make up for me forgetting and well not being there than with a BLOGPOST!! YAYA

Ok so in about a week I will be at 2 months :O!! pretty irrelevant to this post but just a fun fact.

Taipei

I left you guys somewhere before i randomly got dropped off in taipei with my friend willy (Brazil) for a couple days, it was supposed to be 1 night but i got hit with a wicked typhoon. So one day my mom decides to ask me if I want to go taipei, of course I say yes, so she tells me on saturday morning I'm going to taipei and meeting willy at Taipei main station, so I'm super excited on this and even more so that my mother actually is doing this for me because usually I'd have to be more around 9 or 10 and there would be a flurry of phone calls when ever I asked to go anywhere. My mother, her friend Brenda and I jumped on a train at 11 that morning, and spent the two hour long train ride train sifting through some of the shit cody put on my iPod for something i like, it was funny I did end up finding some new music i liked and I had some good laughs with some of the stuff i found absolutely horrid (insect warfare) plus some good memories on the side. So i get broken outta the daze by Hana saying this is where i get off, she hands me some money for food and tells me to phone willy then waves good bye. So i give Willy a shout and after navigating my way outta the station and into the main hall i finally meet up with him and his two friends. So we spend most of the day in and out of computer shops looking for a new laptop and a cell phone for me, which I must say these stores are way different then the ones we got in Canada, there about 4 floors packed to the tits with anything electronic you want it’s nuts. Oh and we made a stop at subway and absolutely nothing is different about the one here than in Canada, from the wall paper to behind the counters it's all the same. Some where in here we tagged up with two of Willy’s Brazilian friends who had been here for like 7 months already. We walked around some more, and finally picked out a mac book for willy and then went off to meet some more exchange students after Willy ran off to have dinner with his friend’s parents. We met all the French ones at a Shisha bar then after this we met up with the brazilian ones at mc Donalds and went to explore Taipei’s malls, random side shops. Two of the brazilian guys I was with played rugby and beaked my league because I was a number 1 haha. But Taipei is def a cool city at night, the lights, the sounds, the huge buildings and random tattoo and clothing stalls.

The next day I got trapped inside with Pauline (the Rotarian who picked me up at the airport and who is now hosting me for my stay in Taipei) because a huge Typhoon was hitting Taiwan. So usually when a typhoon is hitting people seldom go outside but we ended up running soup around Taipei. Now this was no easy task in huge winds which would knock the car all over the road when you turned corners. And I swear we we’re going to crash because the rain was coming so fast that the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up at all it was crazy. The wind even ended up tearing my umbrella to bits when I was trying to put it down coming into the car. But after that the rest of my day was spent watching some really bad HBO and getting frustrated at easting slippery noodles with slippery metal chop sticks >:(

The next day I get woken up by my host sister Lana calling, me being the over thinking type of guy I figure I’ll ignore it and grab a shower so I’m not forced to run outta the house all smelly to meet her because first of all I wouldn’t be able to tell her I want to have a shower and secondly Taiwanese never shower in the morning the preffer there showers at night. I will never understand this mainly because well what the point in having a shower before you go to bed in a filthy bed and just sweat again but what ev’s. So I’m feeling all clean minus my face because I thought I was going for one night so stupid me didn’t bring a razer and I’m looking mad scruffy. So I get outta the shower, Pauline is gone and someones ringing the terribly annoying doorbell Pauline has (a mix of a horrible classical song in doorbell form that is turned up to loud for a small apartment), so I crack the door open and wada ya know my host sis, WORD! So we say hi she tells me we’re meeting Willy at Taipei main and that I should call him. So we sort stuff out and next thing I’m out the door wearing the same clothes I was wearing the other day and into MRT. Me and Lana (yes I know Lana and I is proper English but your in my blog) spend over an hour giggling and talking while we wait for Willy to show up, he finally arrives, I say good bye to Lana because she’s got to study and head of with Willy and his friend to switch up our tickets to 8:25pm.

Next we head off and meet up with Willy’s friends again and he takes off again with his friend and me and two exchange students from Brazil spend a pretty uneventful after noon of laughing in mcdonalds and sharing music and playing video games in Starbucks. Then I meet back up with Willy, trains delayed and we’re taking the slow all with me having to go to school the next day. We stroll back in to Hualien at around 1 a.m., I hop in my car hoping that she speed so I can get some sleep since I got school at 7:30 that morning 

posted by Ben @ 7:43 AM Comments: 1