Ben+Taiwan=<3

Pre Xmas post

ok well lets get you guysd caught up to speed cuz well taiwan if taiwan has made me lazy then so be it. I've been out fished my little taiwanese women with stick a string, i've been officially grown up in terms of a confusius ceremony, I've went paddle boating twice, I've eaten thai food on halloween, I've played on the beach, been to birthday parties, aboriginal dance shows with my class, Been broken into slave labour by the means of break dance, bowled, played pool, skateboarded, been hit by 3 different cars, ate terrible food, went hot springing, chased by dogs, swore at my schools general (by mistake), and last but not least have been having an amazing time. Ok now that that's outta the way (prolly forgot something) i can start posting a little more frequently.

I changed houses back in november because of this whole ordeal with the mexican exchange student but things worked out perfectly, i love my new house and she seems to finally be happy. So now i live with my host mother, sister and brother, and a brazilian exchange student who was supposed to go home last weekend but got suprised by his parents and aren't leaving until January now. it was to bad i didn't get to see his face to because they told him the day before he was going tog et on the plane hahaha i personally think thats a horrible time to tell someone after they've spent a week getting prepared but he couldn't be happier and was actually able to throw together a quick guitar song for our really awsome xmas [arty but ill tell ya more on that later. So everyone speaks english in my family except my mother and they have all been exchange students....except my mother (gawd she really needs to get with it ;). So it makes things way to easy for me but thats not to say my chinese isn't picking up fast. I've been proud of myself lately because i was able to speak for 10 minutes with my classmate at that horrible new movie with the robot actor keeanu reaves, but i haven't seen a good movie at the theaters in awhile cuz they've all been plagued with horrible stupidity, annoying midgets, chiwawa's, and general defiance of physics like transporter which i saw last night. Taiwan is definatley making me a lazy boy though, the first house ruined what ever room cleaning skills i had (spent two day sleeping on plastic cuz i was to lazy to put the sheets back on, but end up having to because when i jumped on the bed i totaly popped the thing and was getting cut by the ripped plastic) and my room looks like i left my window open during the typoons we get. i tried blaming it on that once but my host sister just smacked me and told me to clean. and my house is right downtown next to a donut shop with the best freash made donuts ever right next to it and i no longer have to make plans around a 30 minute bike ride to get anywhere.

Ok so during the past month I've been to taipei twice. once was for the Confusius ceremony which officially marked us becoming adults, this was so great minus the amount of rehersal because i got to meet all the exchange student from around taiwan and because i got to where a really cool hat which my dad told me i looked jewish in (I was considering being a jew soley for the purpose of explaining my huge nose and of course the oxymoron it would create with my last name). and the second time which was two days ago to go to our rotary xmas party which turned out to be a blast, it was ashame we only got to see the exchange students for like 5 hours but that always happens with rotary. We all showed up and started talking and getting ready to show off our dance to everyone and started to get information about everyone elses dance, we were over prepared mainly because we had 3 performances (2dances and 1 sign language thingy) everyone else had like 1 and we practised every day for a month were most people practised 1 day a week but who cares that just means we have nothing to worry about. well everyones dances turned out AWSOME!! except for some unfortunate but hilarious shoe flying and my trip but it was so much fun and i must say our secretary is really unorganized, i wont go into details but it made for some good frustration and me not getting to carry my flag.


DANCE!! (ignore camilla and Zeh)

the day before we got to spend the day in taipei 101 and snake ally. first after we got off the train we got our stuff together and headed off to PP Paulines house to drop off our stuff and get ready to go up the tallest finished building in the world (f u dubai) so we pack togeth and head off onto the train. Me and Hawk get sexy to the hiphop cd our teacher gave us on the train and ball all the way over the to bus stop where me and giovana start our own dance party to some justice. all the while were taking some sexy pictures of my mother and talking some chinese with some random folks not to mention playing with some bus traffic briefly before my mom yelled at me. SO once we finally get there (oh ya taipei 101 is the big building in the background of the blog)we can really see how big it is like my head is tilted up to the max and im sitting there hoping to god theres a place to drop a penny. So we get inside and look at all the fancy shops me and Hawk are talking about how we need to see the lacoste store and hugo is salavating over books but first things first....TOOO THE TOOOOPPPPPPP!!!!!. we get to the fifth floor and make a dash to the line and pay our 10 dollars to the top. We stand in the zigzaging roped of line for the elevator and wait but it was definatley worth it. once you get crowded in the elevator you get a light show and a little movie as you shoot to the top in 37 seconds in the worlds fastest elevator (iknow exciting eh?) 5-89 in 37 seconds. we get to the top and go exploring, trying to resist the almost 10 dollar icecreams at the top even though we have cupons to get 5 cents of them (DEAL!). take some embarassing pictures with taipei 101 pictures and me on the toilet (really, dont ask. word of my dong is going to travel the world now) wait and go to the top where we really do get a spectacualr view of the metropolis that nearly blankets everything in all directions with view super bright billboard poping out all over. you really do feel like your at the top of the world at this point. the cool thing about the 91st floor is that it wont open at 4 because that is the death hour and there both superstitious and afraid of superstitous people who might try to commit suicide at that hour. so we finally take in as much view as possible and head down. mayra stops to look at how we can get some perfesionall pictures taken (you knopw those really lame, super imposed ones...the ones that make you look like king knong on the tower) so were all like F that and told her we'd be going downstairs to shop cuz we only have a half an hour left but theres one thing we forgot to take into consideration about mayra...SHE HAS THE NAVIGATIONAL SKILLS OF A SHEEP!!!! a dead sheep to be more specific. so she freaks out and now realizes she doesn't know where her cellphone is (it later turns up in her jacket pocket) so before she even attempts to go downstairs and look for us she finds a random person asks to use thier cellphone and phone the only person who's card she has...the distcirt governer (headhoncho of the whole thing) no wonder rotary here treats us like were 5. so fianlly as shes freaking out and we thankfully stumble into her and make some good laughs at her expense and clear it all up but i thought it was good and lacoste sucks same with most of the stores in there. so we go outside and take some pictures with the love statue and just horse around, we get to meet santa who was btw the worse, most depressing santa i've ever met ( he was saying in a really bitter, depressed tone (ok kids, one picture each, make it quick i'm here for 5 minutes and no crying) so he totally ruined my day and left me thinking why doesn't santa just retire and give the position to oprah.

So next we all get on the bus which could amazingly hold like 100 people in less space then banffs new green busses and head over to the dreaded snake ally. we show up and i start thinking (wow this is just another really lame night market) well, that was until we turned the corner and found the real underbelly, there was snakes everywhere matched with huge signs that said no pictures, there were decapitated turtles with both there head and bodies still moving, snakes eating mice. and the worse one was by far the snake shots. the guy would whack the snake on ground to daze it a little bit then tie it up in a nose. cut it head to toes with a pair of scissors (remember the whole time this thing is still floping around)made a quick cut under it's heart and poured the blood into a container while yelling at tourists not to take pictures (we did anyway hehehe) then cuting some more and getting the snakes semen and turning that into more shots so some bitch is a fur coat can pay 10 dollars to drink it while the poor things heart is still beating and it's still floping around for a good 30 minutes because he cut below the heart so the things brain would remain alive. to be honest it was some of the worse thing i've seen. After us all being horribly traumatized we went down a few shops for some freshly blended juice, which didn't turn out much better cuz i had to argue with the shop lady cuz she said my mixture of apple, orange, pineapple and kiwi would be bitter and i wouldn't like it. so finally i just told her look im paying you money give it to me, she frowned but who cares it was definatley not bitter and everyone agreed it was the best drink out of all ours. so we told her to suck it and left to grad some food and go home to sleep for the ong day we had tomorrow (the xmas party i already talked about) and i slept great cuz i recieved everyones letters and they made my day really great).

so ya guy sorry its been nearly 2 months since my last post but i hope ya enjoyed this one and ill hopefully get off my lazy ass to tell you about how my xmas goes on this end ( not many people celebrate it here but the exchnage students are all going to my first host families place for two days to enjoy it, and hopefully the wont ambush us into cooking for 30 rotarians again

LOVE YA ALL,
Ben

posted by Ben @ 7:11 PM Comments: 3