Nostalgia

I'm starting to go through the "lasts" process. "Last time I go to school here.... last time I see this person for who-knows-how-long... last time I travel on this bus... last time I eat this... last time I drink that..." It's been hard to get used to the thought that my life is going to change again soon, but since I haven't finished learning Chinese (as if one can ever "finish" such a thing) I know I will be back. I just don't know when.

So as I glare at the calendar, wishing it to stay forever February so I can stay here a bit longer, I am slowly saying bye to people and filling up my last few days here with appointments with friends around the city to go shopping, eat out, sing at KTV, and just hang out.

People ask me if I'm more sad to be leaving or more excited about going home, and I have to say it's evenly split between the two feelings. I'm excited to be going back but how can you be excited about leaving a place where you have made so many friends who care about you? So I tell them I'm only saying "see you later" and it's much easier that way. In the event that I don't return, at least I'll have these memories of them to keep forever in my memory album.

One thing I will not miss is this awful weather. It's been rainy for what seems like an eternity. As soon as the weather gets warmer and I pull out my short sleeves and start looking for summer shoes and sunglasses, the weather takes a turn for the worse and rains down a storm of blustery cold and I have to take to hibernating in my winter boots again.

But one thing I will definitely miss is the bubble milk tea (tea with milk and tapioca pearls). You have to try it to understand why it's so good. I think the sugar has something to do with it.

But what will I miss the most? My friends and their smiles as they say "hao jiu bu jian" or "long time no see" and ask me how I'm doing and warn me gently to dress warmly because they just checked the weather report and it's supposed to get colder.

I will miss dashing to class and then seeing my teacher smile and talk animatedly about Chinese culture and grammar. I will miss being part of a university and seeing all the students milling about buying food from all the little cafes on campus. I will miss hanging out with my classmates and snacking on pastries from the bakery after class, discussing grammar or what to do for the next holiday.

I will miss wandering the streets of the night market at 10 pm and feeling at home amongst the bright lights and smiling faces of the various vendors. I will miss the food vendors who recognise and greet me every time I come by.

I will miss making new friends randomly while standing in line to buy fried potatoes. I will miss the friendly strangers who tell me I just dropped money and quickly pick it up for me, or who ask if I'm lost when I'm looking at a map, or ask if I need help when I can't decide what to order from the menu. All these things and more I will miss greatly.

Until I return,

c u  L8ter :)

Still Smiling

It amazes me how sometimes you feel that your smile is forever gone, only to have it reappear without warning, bringing with it a happy feeling that somehow, someday, somewhere, things will be ok.

I'll be leaving soon and the transition between countries is always hard, but for some reason I'm still happy,  and while I am not sure why, I am grateful.

As I write I am being serenaded by crackling fireworks in the distance, and as I type the jingle of my new bangles from India are mixing in with the slight sounds of the TV, adding some music to the atmosphere. Thanks to my friend who gave me the lovely green and gold bangles :D I really like them.

Last night I went bowling with some friends, but one thing I refuse to tell you is my score after my second game of bowling. Needless to say, it is a number that I can count to in about 4 languages, and most of you know that I only know 1.25 languages, so that may tell you something significant about this number.

After bowling we headed off to a restaurant where apparently you can "hookah" - only I thought that was the name of the restaurant since I was told it was a Vietnamese restaurant. I was unprepared for the fact that there was such a place as a this, where you not only eat, but you smoke from these long pipes connected to large glass containers filled with flavoured tobacco and water, the latter which filters out the nicotine.

Anyway, in turned out that I left early and never got to watch my friends "Hookah" which was too bad. But I had homework and some things to take care of, such as finding my way back home. As soon as I left my friends, I headed in the general direction I thought we had came from, and promptly got lost. I was supposed to be heading to the MRT station but instead I found myself wandering around the night market area in downtown Taipei, finally finding myself nose to nose with a Mexican restaurant I had never seen before, so being the adventurous spirit I am, I went inside and ordered a vegetarian burrito. About 25 minutes later a small burrito appeared, stuffed with what appeared to be a salad mixture of coleslaw, onions, salad dressing, nacho cheese, and wonder of wonders, these delicious fried veggie meat cubes. I decided then and there that in the event they were not vegetarian, I would make an exception to my vegetarian preference and finish eating what I called the "meatlettes." The taste was, in my opinion, exceptional.

Apparently my meal came with "potato salad" which I kept looking for until I realised that I had just eaten it - a teaspon-worth of creamy potatoes hidden under a tablespoon of nacho cheese.

After my meal I decided I needed to eventually find my way home, so I set off in search of some form of transportation to get me there. I wandered around trying not to look lost, until I emerged from the maze of streets and surfaced to a main street, where I suddenly discovered where I was - about 40 minutes away from home in another part of town and quite far from the original MRT exit I had originally been at with my friends.

Thankfully I have enough vocabulary to tell people I need to find the MRT station, and thankfully, between pointing and gestures and words, I am quite sure I would understand anyone's directions, although following them would be a different story. But this time I didn't even need to ask, which made me even happier because it meant I am getting to know at least some parts of this large city.

I remember at the end of last year when my class and I were still in book 2 - the low intermediate/high beginner book. The "Orange Book." We have since advanced to the Blue Book and I feel very much an upper class man just for the fact that my book has changed color. Anyway, when we were in book 2, we were still practicing basic vocabulary and sentence structure, and I remember one assignment our teacher gave us was to ask three different Taiwanese to give us directions to three different places near our University, and our assignment was two-fold, practicing using our Chinese vocabulary for that lesson (giving directions) and, understanding when people gave us directions, and seeing if we could follow those directions.

Our assignment was to ask for directions and then follow them........ Our teacher however had somehow forgotten to take into consideration that we were in the middle of Taipei, one of the most foreigner-friendly cities I have ever been to, and guess what happened when we asked for directions? Two of us were personally escorted to the places we had asked directions to, as our new-found friends didn't want to see us get lost in Taipei with our limited Chinese skills!

So much for practicing our language skills. Our friends happily spoke to us in English :|

But it taught me that I never have to be afraid here if I get lost, because more likely than not there will be someone who takes pity on me or who just wants to help me out and will quickly point me in the direction I need to go, and may even walk with me part-way to make sure I don't get lost :)

But speaking of getting lost, I really need to end here because tomorrow I have to give a presentation on the geography of my home country (it was quite a task picking one). So I need to do some research and then translate that into Chinese vocabulary that I have. That will take a while as I need to first dig around and find my limited vocabulary...I think I left it in sitting on the teaspoon in that Mexican restaurant...

So until next time :) take care!

Has it really been three months since I last wrote? Unbelievable how fast time flies when you're looking back.

The past few months have seen many changes, changes in my language ability, changes in the weather, changes in the date/year, and a change in the Chinese symbolic animal for the year (this year is year of the Dragon).

I am trying to think of something cultural I have done recently that I can report on so you can feel you really are reading about Taiwan, and the last thing I can remember is walking down what is known as "Snake Alley" in a semi-drizzle during a very quiet New Year holiday a couple weeks ago. Snake Alley is near a famous "Dragon Temple" which will be even more famous this year as it is year of the dragon. But Snake Alley is famous for what its name suggests, except rather than a reptile house in the zoo, Snake Alley is a street of restaurants, and they sell every imaginable dish of...yes, snake.

I saw one particularly large, anemic looking snake perhaps twice the thickness of my arm, sitting slumped in a small glass cage at the front of one such restaurant. A huge handwritten sign up above the snake's head warned "No pictures" in large bold letters. Off to the right were several smaller cages, a couple filled with smaller sized snakes, and a couple filled with fidgety bouncy tiny white mice who kept running around in circles. I suppose the mice were for the snakes and not directly part of the menu (although indirectly they were).

I will say that was quite a cultural experience, but I am afraid that I have started to settle down so much so that I spent most of my holiday relaxing at home rather than traipsing about the country getting every little spot of sight seeing in.

But since I mentioned settling down, perhaps I should mention what my schedule looks like these days so you know what "settling down" means to a Taipeitian, at least a foreign one who is studying Chinese.

For me it means waking up sometime before 10 am, doing at least an hour of Chinese homework (if I don't do it the night before), traveling by MRT (metro/subway) 20 minutes to get to my university, then sitting in 3 hours of class which is broken up by 10 minute breaks every hour. Perhaps I mentioned this all before. Anyway, this is a new term, and it is still the same schedule. The breaks are fun because it's the time to socialise with all my friends from around the world and set up times to do exciting things like eat stinky tofu in the night market (haven't done that since last year though).

After class is usually time for another meal and some more socialising and discussing the day's class and the grammar with fellow classmates, and after that I may go to the library and try to study in between checking my e-mail, or I may go home and relax and do some homework or watch a Taiwanese drama online (with English subtitles).

If I feel like it I can stop by a night market on the way home and walk along the brightly lit up streets filled with other Taipeitians or visiting tour groups from various other Asian countries.

The nice thing here is that night life is always exciting and always full of people and things to do. If you want to buy a drink, you will pass by at least a dozen tea stores before you finish the end of a long street. And if you want to eat something, you only need to think of what you would like to eat, and then walk to the nearest place selling that item, anything from deep-fried mozzarella sticks, to freshly cut fruit, to recently baked yams, to a sit-down meal in the somewhat famed Toilet restaurant where you receive all your food in toilet-shaped dishes and you sit on a toilet-shaped seat.

But back to the language learning. As I write and think, I sometimes switch to Chinese in my mind because sometimes it's faster to say something in two Chinese words than in 5 English words. That's when I get excited, when the words just come to mind when I am trying to express a thought, becauseI truly am beginning to have the vocabulary to express myself in Chinese. I have never had the experience of speaking in a second language, and I must say it truly is fun!

While I am happy about my progress, I am still woefully behind when it comes to speaking ability, since most of my friends and I speak English to each other. So about once a week I meet with a language exchange partner and we teach each other English and Chinese for a couple hours, talking about anything we can think of and practicing our new vocabulary.

My class recently finished the last lesson in the second book and started the third book in the series of textbooks most every university uses here in Taiwan for Chinese teaching. We are now discussing more exciting topics such as meeting roommates, or applying for scholarships, and our vocabulary is getting deeper and we're moving from words such as "almost" and "grapes"  and "picnic" to more "advanced" words like "rent," "government," and "earthquake" (not that they are related in anyway :)

Yes, life here is exciting and I realise I have grown to really like this city and the friendliness I am surrounded with everyday, from smiling restaurant owners, to random people who politely tell you to close your backpack because it's open and your stuff might fall out, to helpful 7-11 staff who will assist you with buying a phone card when you don't understand enough Chinese to use the machine on your own, to small kids who pass you on the street and immediately practice their English on you "Hello!" and then walk off giggling. Yes, it's hard to put into words the specialness of this place. I really wish you could see it for yourself. Maybe next time I will be able to describe it in more detail. If you ever want a personal tour of Taipei, I promise your tour will include the best budget vegetarian restaurants you can imagine :)

until then,

 :)

Change your first impressions

So this post is more about first impressions of things you see around you than for meeting people, although traveling to other countries always gives you a chance to change your first impressions of people.

But this particular road sign caught my attention from the very beginning. Perhaps it was sometime last year, when the bus to church took on a new route due to the International Flower Expo, and you would find yourself suddenly hurtling at top bus speeds (not that fast) into a lane usually reserved for oncoming traffic.

A couple weeks ago I saw a blue road sign that loudly proclaimed the lane below it as a "Reversible Lane" and I had to stop and think about it. Did that mean the lane itself could turn inside out like a jacket? No, it couldn't be. Then did the lane turn around? Of course not. The only explanation I could come up with was that the lane could be used for traffic coming in either direction, thankfully though, despite the many many confusingly parallel roads here in Taipei, it is usually very well understood who can use the reversible lanes, and when, and so far I haven't heard of any collisions in such a lane. But I still keep thinking of reversible jackets when I see the sign.

Another unique thing about Taipei is that I would say it is one of the few, if not the only place you will find on your cafe menu something like "Camellia Sinensis Tea," or, green tea. Actually usually green tea goes by its color, and red tea does as well, but some lesser-known teas are given even lesser-known names when they are placed on the menu.


Speaking of menu, a couple weeks ago I took an adventurous turn and decided to try to order something I couldn't read, which meant of course that I had no idea what I was ordering, except that I knew it was either noodles or rice or soup. Thankfully I could ask if something was vegetarian and thankfully they understood me this time. There have been times that wasn't the case, but I prefer to forget those times :)


Well I still have some homework to do. Until next time,


:)

Dr. Dolittle

So I am a bit behind in my movie reviewing, but the other day as I was walking home from school, deep in thought as I usually am, little bits of sounds from conversations around me filtered through my subconscious until I suddenly "woke up" and realised with a start that I knew what those conversations were about! For the first time in my time in Taiwan, I was understanding pieces of what people were saying as they walked past me or talked on the bus. It felt like someone had opened a door and suddenly transported me into another world where suddenly what was previously just different, yet familiar sounds, suddenly turned into meaningful conversation. I imagined it to be a little like how Dr. Doolittle must've felt, hence this blog's title. This isn't to say I compare conversations here to the ones of the animals in the film. My analogy is purely single-faceted, connected only to the 'ear opening' aspect of the film.

I must say, it is exciting to learn Chinese, or any second language for that matter. To be able to converse and think in a different way is fun! It can be challenging though. We struggled greatly when we were introduced to the idea that "who" could also be used for "anyone" and "where" could be used for "anywhere." So now our sentences became more confusing for we still thought of those words as "who" and "where" - so when we said "everyone likes to drink tea" it sounded to us like "who wants to drink tea" except there was no question mark. And when we wanted to say "I can go anywhere" it sounded like we were saying "I can go where." It was highly confusing, but once you switch your thinking around, and hear the new use of an old word often enough, it becomes a little easier to grasp.

If you ever do come to Taiwan, don't worry about not knowing what to talk about when you arrive. Even though it's considered a boring topic to discuss, you can still fall back on the weather as a topic for conversation. And you will never run out of things to say for the weather is always changing. One day it may be summery and hot and humid, and the next day it may be blustery and cold and rainy. It all depends, on something, (I never studied earth science so I have no answer for what that 'something' is at the moment).

The last two days were getting a bit cold and I thought I needed to look for my winter jacket, but today, even though it was rainy and dreary, the humidity crept back somehow and was in full force today and still is this evening. If you don't have ramrod straight hair, you're in trouble. I know from personal experience. I always compare my hair to velcro when it comes to living in humid climates; it's awful.

Oh, on my way up the Yang Ming Shan mountain today, I saw a large black beetle, along with a jumpy lizard who kept trying to climb a vine to get away yet couldn't quite manage it. The beetle didn't seem to take any notice of me. Then later I saw a reddish beetle of sorts, and felt glad that I live in the city and not in the country. I have seen the larger-than-your-hand spiders and feel this is indeed a tropical jungle. Anyway, if you'd like to see a picture of what the beetle looked like, you can find a picture on this website:

http://www.beetleshop.net/forum/english/english%20forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1770

And on that note, I think I shall end :) Thanks for checking in and I wish you a wonderful week. Oh, and I had internet issues, and moved house and a few other things, so that's prevented me from writing. But things seem to have calmed down a bit and I now have more reliable internet access, so all is right with this side of the world right now :) until next time!

So this seems to be the week to get sick. In three days we've had three different teachers, and unfortunately I'm able to use our new vocabulary from book 2: "我感冒了" or "I got a cold." Or perhaps is 我生病了, I got sick. Either way I'm feeling under this dreary weather. Apparently the temperature is supposed to drop from its lofty 32+C to about 21C this weekend, but I haven't confirmed the fact. I have rarely experienced such temperamental weather.

But besides learning how to say I'm sick and my throat hurts and I have a serious illness, I've also been finding Taiwanese dramas to be quite interesting. Of course the English subtitles are one of the reasons.

Although right now I can actually understand what people say some of the time - make that a very small percent of the time - there are myriads of topics we haven't yet discussed in our uh, beginner-intermediate level. But! I now have some friends in book 4, "Class 4" as I like to call them, and as I hang out with them I get to hear their conversation, which makes me envious of course, since they can talk about anything from shopping to drugs. But it's incentive for me. I only hope to one day be able to really converse on their level with them. 

Yes, there's only so much you can learn in one day. Today after class one of my friends said "Don't! Don't talk in Chinese! I've just had 3 hours of class and I had to speak almost half of the time and I just can't take it anymore!"

So there are times when you've had just about all the language learning you can take before your brain tells you firmly that it will not be accepting any new information. That has happened many times to me, where I've stumbled out of the classroom dazed and weary and unable to form a proper sentence in any language.

But I'm pleased to see improvement in my speaking. Except, today one of my friends asked me in Chinese about my language improvement, and I had to ask him to repeat himself many times, so sadly, I think my improvement, while existent, is still slow and sometimes slower. But I press on! Mostly because, um, I did pay for the whole term :D oh yes, and because I enjoy it!

Right now it's evening and my energy is slowing disappearing. The weekends always get busy, but this weekend I'm afraid I'll have to stay and rest a bit. Argh. I hate missing the social life. Well perhaps I shall blog about it. Perhaps tomorrow morning when I wake up again at 3:30 I shall write a blog about the 半夜 or midnight (I think).

(Because Chinese has so many similar sounds and detailed characters, if I write just one line a little shorter than it's supposed to be written, it could potentially change the whole meaning of the character :) Details are important in writing Chinese characters, as I am finding out. Sometimes I tell myself stories to help remember, "the ski character has snow on top and a pair of skis below." 雪

And today we learned why in Chinese you always say East or West first when giving directions, instead of saying north or south first like we do in English. For example, instead of "northeast" you'd say "eastnorth." The reason our teacher gave us was because of the sun going from the east to the west, so the directions follow the sun :) I thought that was very interesting.

There are other interesting stories in Chinese characters that make so much sense when you hear them. The character for day 日 originally was the shape of a sun with a dot in the middle, and the character for moon 月 was originally shaped like a moon. It's fun to write the characters!

Well I shall go in search of some food and then get some rest. Have a lovely weekend on all sides of the globe!

until next time!

What time is it? 現在幾點?

I'm doing it! I'm writing in Chinese! The nice thing is that I've learned a lot of handy repeatable words such as "he/she" and "want" and "don't want" and some other random nouns and verbs, so I can write a nice essay, and if you couldn't read it you'd be impressed, but if you could, you'd quickly see that I'm basically repeating myself and my 30+ words :D hehe. Ok, maybe I know more than 30 words, but the more I learn, the more I want to express myself, and the more limited my vocabulary seems.

The first week of class was exciting - I was actually getting to talk in Chinese! I hadn't done that in years The second week of class was even more exciting - I was learning new vocabulary and was able to talk even more about my daily life! The third week of class I began to feel more comfortable with speaking, and now, the 4th week, I'm beginning to become impatient, "Why can't I express myself more clearly?" I demand to know. But when I stay up too late at night, endless checking friends' posts on facebook and writing long e-mails home, a thought manages to crawl into a tiny space in my brain that's open '24 hours' and make itself known that perhaps lack of sleep is one obstacle to my learning at a faster speed, that and the fact that I decided to tackle Chinese, one of hardest languages in the world I've heard, or 聽說, in Chinese.

So right now I'm not sure why I'm awake at such an unearthly hour, and writing about the consequences of staying up late, of all things. Why am I not resting? Who knows. Taipei doesn't seem to sleep at night, which makes me want to stay up too. Why miss out on something exciting?

Except tomorrow I have another dictation quiz and we're starting on book two! I am so excited! Oh the simple joys of a beginner language student :D so now I'm not sure what time it is, but as I peer through half-closed eye lids, I think my computer clock it says it's almost midnight...hm...how do you say that in Chinese? I forgot. No wonder, my brain must've fallen alseep when we learned that in class. Hm.

Ok, I'm convinced. I shall go to bed. After I finish checking my 3 other e-mail accounts of course...

until next time,

:)