Thank you for stopping by. This will be serving as my Journal for my year long stay in Hualien city, Taiwan. So I will make sure to keep you guys all in on the crazy adventures I get into. Btw my Skype is: Juice.is.good
12.22.2008
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
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
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
Hey guys I'm back. sry I haven't written in awhile but between10 hour long school days and sleeping its been tough.
We have another typhoon coming our way which i'm getting excited for and i get to visit taipei city with my family tomorow to go shoppping, hopefully i can find that elusive rugby ball (all they play here is basketball, and all the shops sell are basketballs, it's getting absurd). I was looking to find a club to play rugby as well but the closest one is a mens one that is a 2 hour train ride away so it looks like ima have to make my own. School has been great, I've made alot of new friend and the girls have settled down a bit. In gym class i fail hard at basketball so i just impress them with my running haha, it's really just so i dont get fat because my mother feeds me truck loads of food, and when i only eat a little the chef is like ni bu shi hwan(you dont like) and i'm like wo shi hwan, wo si bow lei (i like it but i'm full) and it continues like this until one of us give up or i sit and eat more. I haven't found much time to longboard but there are some wicked hills near my house and i still have to put together my second board so i can go cruise.
I now take aboriginal dance, potery, weaving, drawing, woodcarving, photoshop, computer animation, computer programing, math, english, chinese and i also teach an english class on fridays which is pretty fun, i get to choose how i teach and i must say i'm pretty wicked at it. Oh and in addition to being a chick magnet i'm also i dude magnet :9 i have 4 gay guys that hit on me but i'm thinking after this is all said and done i will not have a homophobic bone in my body unless i get raped.....
Me and the exchange students get along really, well most weekends we'll watch a movie since all of our school mates are in weekend school haha, the last one we watched was really bad. You know when you barely understand a thing that goes on in your everyday life you really look forward to see a movie in english where you will be able to fully grasp everything....well it's a huge let down when you don't and the movie sucks ass. something about swearing britihs people that kill priests, and then by accident kill a baby. in the end a movie star, heroine addicted, racist, prostitue loving midget gets his face blown off then a guy kills himself because he though the midget was a child and said he had to stick to his principles because he was trying to kill the guy that mistakenly killed the kid.
I dunno i hated it then i went to play bowling with every one. We played a game of pool, South America vs North America and sadly we went down hard, i think Brasil payed America to take the dive, dirty cheating Brazilians. I got the high score on the punching game by fluek and i got the high score on the hammer game (the one where you hit a button with a mallet as hard as you can) because of my Canadian wood chopping skills. then we all take off to a rotary dinner. me and the exchange from California joke and giggle like school girls like we would back home which is awsome i actually had a few tears in my eyes making fun of British saying the word cock and racist midgets.
This week we went to watch fight Club after school and me and Hugo got lost in the city trying to find block buster for two hours. finally we found it by fluek and found out that absolutley no where has fight club, so we ended up settling for God father part one. When we got back to hugo's house i felt so inclined to take off my pants and make myself comfortable because uniform really do suck as much as people say. I soon realised i had made a mistake when Hugo's host father came home and it became really akward hahaha. I had to leave early because my mother needed to pick me up because it wasn't safe to ride home at night even though all the streets are lit, my bike is yellow and my shirt is white. I think she was mad because i didn't come home first but i called the maid who speaks english, who passed the message along to her becauseI needed clear communication but like our house is a 20 min bike ride from the city so it would be to much wasted time. I dunno i don't want to argue because is really kind to me and she is gracious enough to take me into her home. It's just culture i think because here parents hold the kids hand right up until there done university.
Well maybe I'll get more freedom as it is only the first month but I miss you guys and I hope your making the best of the grad year and to my family i will try to keep this as up to date as possible and try to send more emails.
that went by so fast haha. well lets see ima have to do this quick. i got moved to the aboriginal class because i guess some people said something in chinese to me that the teacher didn't like but shit don't phase, my new class is a little hot but the people are fucking hilarious and super nice. The gay guy that hits on me in the class is a little unnerving but what ever. oh and i found out that in addition to being a chick magnet i'm also a dude magnet because i also have 2 other gay guys that hit on me in the weaving class haha.
I've come to notice that being gay isn't looked down upon in anyway out here same with being a man really haha (no offense intended). Like guys where make up sometimes, there constantly fixing there hair with mirrors in class ect, now that is of course culture and it's deffinatley different from home. The families are a little more strict here, you study all the time and alot of students go to cram school at night after there 10 hours of public school. it's crazy also in unrelated news taiwan has the one of the highest suicide rates :O
everyone has a scooter and most people live in there businesses. typhoons happen regularly (I'm in one right now and the waves are HUGE) and I felt my first earth quake, it doesn't feel like shaking it fells more like everything is waving up and down. No one speeds, they actually drive 10 km/h below the speed limit and the police are really nice, well to me anyway.
Last week end i ended up going to Taroko gorge with Hugo (American Exchange student), Palm (Thai exchange student) and my mother. It was so beautiful i can't even describe it. but i can give you some picture. Oh we also visited the Budhist temple there and i though it was kinda funny that the monks sold little trinkets and had a bar set up.
well lets start this off. i woke up around 6:30 so I could get my self all cleaned up and looking/smelling good because school starts here at 7:30 am, yeah i know WTF. So once i get my shit together, me and mom head out the door in the benz and my new rad school uniform. we roll up to the school with the huge cross hanging in the door way, yeah boi catholic school. one problem though my belt is failing....HARD. so after my mother and i try to figure this stupid thing out we had to ask some of my new school mates to help me do it up, now i don't get embarased to easily but jebus it was deffinatley not the way i wanted to make friends haha.
So once we get inside my mother starts walking ahead of me, i assume she must be taking me to meet someone other than the dean we met the day before. so i start following her all around this massive school with everyone either giggling or saying hello, but then i noticed she was looking a little lost mostly because we went up and down the same set of stairs three times and she was asking students for directions. I try to help and take her to the Deans office but she ignores me and keeps walking around but I don't mind, this way i get to see more of the school. Finally the Dean comes and saves my Mother and me and takes us to the office I was trying to take my Hana to all along. We figure some stuff out, she hands me my schedual which looks something like this.
Monday
1. Math 2. Chinese 3. open 4. open 5. Program design 6. Program design 7. Chinese 8. Chinese
Tuesday
1. English 2. Math 3. Self Taught? 4. English Listening and Speaking exercises 5. Program design 6. Database 7. open 8. open
Wednesday
1. open 2. open 3. Math 4. Chinese 5. Life Ed 6. Training 7. Chinese 8. Chinese
Thursday
1. Math 2. English 3. open 4. open 5. Chinese 6. Nation Defense (Yeah Ima fight for Taiwan) 7. English 8. Computer Animation
Friday
1. open 2. open 3. Database 4. Database 5. open 6. open 7. Chinese 8. Chinese
So this is how I'll be reping my days for the next week, I think I might drop National defence though and maybe the computer stuff (Its pretty hard...even more when your teacher doesn't speak english btw Database isn't as interesting as it sounds). So i find my class room and after having a nice embarassing introduction, my councellor making people move for me and assigning people to help me out i finally found my seat at the back of the class. No one really spoke english so i tried to make some friends, i think I did haha. So after this class which i think was self taught because the teacher did nothing and everyone was studying something different, like the kid on my left was looking a design magazine and the kid on my right was studying the M16 rifle. After all this I'm told I can go to the library because i have an open, I make my way through the crowds of staring people and giggling people and finally get to the library where i see Palm the Thai exchange. We sit and talk for a bit as i look through a arcitectural design mag....i really wish i could draw tbh. So after i look at the cool pictures because it's all in chinese I play some games on his cellphone, which I'm horrible at and then a group of junior highs come in. All the girls piled in at our table and some kid that really wanted to learn english. So i try to help him and he help me with some chinese and the girls are asking me for my cell number and email while there teacher tells me not to give it to them. It was pretty funny how many people want to be my dick puppet, I mean Girlfriend (LOL). So after all this i head to my next class which is english, ractise which thankfully is in my home room, so our teacher comes in, some kid says my name and she focuses all her attention on me asking me to come up and introduce myself. I made it short because i really didn't want to be up there but then she made it worse by forcing students to ask me questions haha. Row for row so i had to answer about 7. The first was do you have a girlfriend, next do any of us have a chance to be your girlfriend and next which was who is your perfect girl, then it broke down into generic what music do you like and whats your favorite thing about taiwan oh and the one loud guy in the back ask how long is was HAHA. I told them my perfect girl is 10 feet tall and 400 pounds with curly red hair because what the hell do you say to that. So after all that I finally get to sit and just enjoy the class, I joke with some friends and learn that the english teacher really can't speak english that well.
After a long boring class the bell rings and it's time to roll out to lunch, one girl asks if i want to eat with her, of course I say yes and me, her and one of the guys thats supposed to help me walk down the hall with all there friends. I show up at the cafeteria which is a little building in the middle of the compound, the girl asks if i like rice and run of into the sea of people with my money. So i stand outside and try to talk with some people, she comes back with some rice topped with some kind of mystery meat and i end up walking off with some guys back to the class room. I sit down and start looking around because i guess you bring your own utensils but someone was nice enough to give me a spoon so i sit and eat and try to make some small talk with some people, and then the bell goes and absolutely every one starts to clean. LIKE EVERYONE! people are moping the floor, cleaning windows....it's absurd.
So after I finish up the blackboard, we all sit down and a bell rings and I'm like oh cool another class but the lights turn off and everyone put there head down and has a nap. A few kids look out the window but when a teacher walks by they all hide haha this school is weird not to mention there's a military base next door so you hear the sound barrier being broken in the distance, so i found it kinda hard to nap.
Ok well in the morning i signed up for some computer stuff and i thought it would be easy shit like we learn back home, no my first class is program design where Hugo (the usa exchange) and I input alot of script into some visual basic compiler to tell us if a number was the same forward and backward or not. Next was Database which is alot lamer than it sounds, basically we played with a program that help us manage accounts, contacts, sales and purchases of a company. So after a long time of plugging in numbers and wonder what i was doing the bell finally rings and i sit in the library for 2 hours before i can go home. AT 5:20 PM >:(
All in all school is strange in Taiwan maybe it's just because it's a catholic military school.
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
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.
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.
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.
I'm currently 16 years old and live in Banff, Alberta which is located deep in the rocky mountain range of Canada.
I currently should be heading into grade 12 and graduating with my friends in a little under a year but I have chosen to take a little vacation as a rotary youth exchange student in Taiwan. I currently haven't left yet but plan to on August 22nd and hope to have a fun year and a great adventure.
