Culture Class and Black Typhoon

Black Typhoon - August 12, 2009

Hello, again! The typhoon is all the way over now (for Taiwan anyway; Morakot might still be roaming around China and the other countries near it). Everyone in the dorm was alright, and there was only some very minor flooding in Olivia's and my room becase rain kept blowing through a screen door and began leaking down the hall. Other rooms had worse flooding/leaking. My friend Annie's room was leaking from the ceiling and another friend, Emily, told me her room was damp and still had water in it from the typhoon and that even if she used towels and opened the windows it wouldn't dry. In other parts of Taiwan there was a lot of flooding, mudslides, and roads washing out. A few villages and smaller towns were hit and people have died and gotten injured. Xue Lan's family (my host family) live in a Hakka village but I think they came through alright; she said she had talked to them, at least, but I heard from Xue Lan that some of the roads around them washed out. It was/is pretty bad...the workers and helpers started cleaning the place up pretty quick though, on Monday, and by this time they've gotten a lot of the branches that fell down off of the roads and ground, and the roof on the scooter and bike garage that fell over has been moved somewhere else.

My friends and I were going to class Monday after the typhoon and I stopped when I got to the hallway that led to the classroom because a few of my classmates in front of me were looking at something. I got closer and saw that it was a sharpei-looking puppy asleep in the hall. There was a box nearby that puppy and three puppies were sleeping in it. My friends told me that the mom was hanging around and would bark at anyone who got close to them. I thought that the puppies were born during the typhoon but I saw one closer later when he was awake and his eyes were open. I wanted to go see them really badly but since I saw the mom again I didn't want to go near them and make her upset or/and get bitten. I went for a walk but found the mom in some red star flower bushes and she barked at me so I left. A girl in another Chinese class, Casey, went to the box when she heard a puppy crying from it and picked him up and he started sucking on her finger. Since we thought the mom was gone, Casey asked Jackie Chang when she came by if she could help them get some milk for the puppy. He stayed in the English Department office for a few days and I went up there once to feed him milk from an eyedropper (not regular milk, I heard it was soy milk, and when another student named Emily and me fed him he kept drinking it). He didn't like the eyedropper so you'd have to stick your finger in his mouth and keep it there before you gave him milk with the eyedropper. He's a strong little guy, he starts sucking on your finger and doesn't let go.

Emily, one of my friends, fed him first then asked if I wanted to feed him so I did. He was really squirmy so you had to hold him or else he'd crawl all over the place. We both got a lot of milk on him so he had a moustache...or beard. After I fed him he fell asleep in my arms and took a little nap. He is so sweet.

A U.S. student named David named the puppy 'Black Typhoon' since we found him after the typhoon, but I think something like Blacky or Sun Bear is better. Sun Bear might sound kind of wierd, but there's a bear that is black and has a crescent of white fur on the chest (a Sun Bear). The puppy was colored almost the same way and so he reminded me of that kind of bear. Maybe his name could be Sun or Bear (if I was naming him). He did kind of look like a bear, the way his ears and face were. He is so sweet though and loves to crawl around. Someone in Pingtung (I'm not sure who) is going to come and take him home Thursday. Casey wanted to take him home even though there would be all the legal stuff and quarantine she'd have to do, but someone else might already be his new family. I am not that sure. I heard from my roommate's friends that travellers come to Taiwan and adopt dogs because there are so many strays.


Well, since the blog is getting long, I'll post a picture and some videos. The first picture is of the Tai Chi Master who came to see us on Tuesday for Culture Class and the video is of Wu Shu (a type of martial art) and a video of the Taichi Master going through some movements of the 'Push Hands' Tai Chi style, which I studied by taking a class from Melissa :) I like the Push Hands style, it is the one I've learned the most of so I am not that knowledgeable in Tai Chi but I like the style because I still remember some of the poses now because of the Culture Class and it is slow and it relaxes you. The Tai Chi Master asked a few students to punch him in the stomach, and they did, one student (Mike-who isn't the guy in this following picture--that is Clark) did really hard but the Tai Chi Master didn't even look like it hurt. His stomach was really hard because it had a lot of qi (chi, if you heard the Japanese, which is like...breath, or energy) in his stomach/abdomen. It was still hard to watch though and I didn't feel like punching my teacher :( Plus even if I could actually punch someone like I meant it (I doubt I could) I still don't think I'd do that much damage.


I'm out of practice for Tai Chi though. I was ok, but when everyone did the poses after the Tai Chi Master showed us, when I did it with them I lost my balance a few times. But I realized I still remembered some of the poses after I started doing them. If you practice enough at Tai Chi your body will remember the poses and you'll automatically do them--you don't have to think 'Ok, now it's this step', you just see the pose in your mind and then let your body go through the pose (did that make sense? That's kinda how it was for me when I took Taichi anyway). The video file is too big to be put here I think so I'll put it on Youtube and give people the link. Well I'm eating dinner now--Hokkaido Corn Soup from a restaurant called Sub Buddies that has some Italian stuff, and some vegetarian curry from a restaurant I have been to a few times but don't know the name of and I keep forgetting to get a name card from the place. But I will be going there again and I'll remember to get one (I hope haha). Just in case you go to Taiwan and want to get some vegetarian curry, which is really good by the way, say 'Su si gali' (Sue-suh-gah-lee). If you want takeout vegetarian curry say 'Wai dai su si gali'. (Why dye sue suh gah-lee). I might not have really spelled it right but some people here can't read Pinyin (English letters, Chinese word) so it probably doesn't matter. Bye for now! Have a good week and weekend!

Storm Post

August 7-9, 2009 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)

Ok, I'm done with the food posts for now. I am not a pig, seriously ~-^
Well, the typhoon is going crazy. The wind is really strong and the small puddles from the rain that were in the hall are now...bigger puddles. There's a screen door right where the puddle is and rain is blowing in from outside. I want to go see how deep the puddle is but if it keeps raining I'll probably be able to find out sooner or later once it comes to our door. It's been raining nonstop since the typhoon started. Xue Lan told us the raining and typhoon would probably continue for a few more days, so I'm not sure of the status of class Monday, but the storm will probably have died down by then.

The President of TUSA got everyone in the dorm MacDonald’s food on Saturday and Jackie Chang (who writes to the students to make sure they’re doing OK and grades the culture journals we’ve been writing) ordered everyone in the dorm boxed meals for dinner. There were boxes of MacDonald’s stuff and bags of boxed lunches...they went to a lot of trouble because they got all the food during a typhoon and I really want to thank them somehow. I was kind of speechless when I saw that they’d gotten all the food for everyone. I bought food on Thursday to eat through the typhoon and didn’t know they’d get everyone meals. I’m grateful that they did, don’t get me wrong. I also hope that the people who delivered it were OK since the wind and rain were really bad.

I just went for a walk (Sunday 5:23) and saw that a lot of tree branches had fallen down, some trees were tipped over or their branches were cracked. One of the things that was damaged a lot was the roof over the scooter garage just outside of the dorms; the end of it fell forward and is touching the ground, blocking some of the scooters and bikes that were under it, and the next section bowed in the middle (a better way might be to say that it slumped forward after part of it fell and hit the ground) but the rest of the roof is still straight. It’s easier to show than explain but I don’t really feel like I should take pictures of the destruction.

It’s still a little windy and it was raining when I went back inside. A long time before I went outside for the first time since the typhoon started there were people walking around, riding bikes, scooters, and driving cars. I saw a couple people flying a kite like I’ve seen them doing in normal weather although...Taiwan usually has lots of typhoons...so I guess it’s still normal weather now.

Well dinner boxes were delivered for supper and I just finished mine. Instead of staying in my room I watched TV with some American and Taiwan students. I’m glad I hung out with them since I’ve been a recluse this weekend. Earlier a few people ate lunch in the student lounge and played Mah-jongg while watching Wall-E. I left partway through and took a rest but that was fun. People asked if I wanted to play Mah-jongg but I said no; I know the very basic rules and it's fun but I just wanted to watch. For any kind of game, I sometimes space out, and I felt like I'd be doing a lot of spacing out if I played. Watching was fun too.

The Mah-jongg set they were using was probably one of the sets people won in the Mah-jongg competition Thursday.

Well, it was a lot shorter than before, but I’m going to finish writing now. I finished my homework on Thursday and finished my slideshow for the Talent Show yesterday; I just need to make sure the timing is right and the captions stay on the right slides or else it won’t make sense. I uploaded the video on Youtube to show it to people and the caption order changed; if it stays on my computer and isn’t uploaded it probably (hopefully) won’t happen for the actual talent show. I hope I can get some footage of the Talent Show for you guys, as well as the skit my group’s doing if I won’t be on the stage for everything. Megan, Serge, and Annie (we were on the same home stay together) and I are in a group together and they have really good ideas. It’s fun how creative they are; I think we’ll have a good show because of them. They liked my slide show but I like their ideas a lot. Everything we did will make it neat a good performance.

Well, that’s it for now. Until next time.

Final Food Post

Well, I think this is the last food post until I take some more pictures of good/interesting stuff. I might make another food post because I think this one might be long like the others.


I was out with my roommate, Olivia, and a few of her friends and I noticed we were passing by a bakery. We went inside (yay!) and there was a lot of good looking stuff. The first thing that caught my eye was a cute (and delicious) looking cake.


It had strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate cake. There were chocolate sprinkles around the edge and it was soooo good. I got some other cream things and Olivia told me that the people who owned Domalie (the bakery) said that I should eat the bread before the next day or else the cream stuff in most of them would go bad, so I gave one of the pieces of bread to Stan, who comes sometimes with the menu at lunch. I think he was happy to get it. That's what it looked like; it was probably sweet bread (really good bread that's like dessert bread).


The last thing I got was a doughnut with chocolate frosting stuff and chocolate sprinkles on top. I had it for breakfast (nutritionists everywhere gasp hahaha) and it was really good. It's funny I've lost a little weight since I usually try and get some bread/chocolate item to eat for a snack.


This is another view for the patchwork cake. I got another one like it the second time I found a bakery but it looked like a neopolitan ice cream bar instead of a quilt, but still had strawberry-vanilla-chocolate cake.



I went with a girl from the U.S. named Tina, a Taiwan student named Betty, and two other friends of hers to a hot pot restaurant. It was really good, but I didn't finish everything; there was a lot. I got vegetables and fish with mine. You just pick whatever you want from the plate they give you and dump it in a little round pot in the bar surface that you're sitting at. It starts boiling so the stuff you have gets cooked. The slices of fish I had cooked really fast and they were good. You can put everything in at once or just a few things. It's fun because by the time you've put a lot of ingredients in the pot you have a soup that tastes really good, with flavors from whatever you put in.

I had a mushroom that I put in the pot; it puffed up like Remy's mushroom in Ratatouille (haha another Ratatouille reference, have you watched it yet?). I thought it was cute and I actually ate it. I used to not eat mushrooms that much. It was really good and so was everything else. I liked the little skinny white mushrooms too. There was even a piece of pumpkin with my ingredients and I didn't eat a lot of that but I ate my piece of sweet potato. I love sweet potato now. I had a sweet potato on the homestay at it was still in its jacket and the potato was really yellow. It was soooo good. I saw a sweet potato like that first in a movie called Ip Man, who is the guy who trained Bruce Lee in martial arts. Never knew that.

Anyway the actors were eating sweet potatoes in the movie Ip Man and I wondered what they were; now I know, and they're a new favorite vegetable. I hope I eat them more when I get home (I never ate them before). When I watch movies sometimes I think "Man if you're an actor they don't just pay you, they give you food! You get clothes too but if you get food in movies and have to eat it for a scene you'll almost certainly get to keep it!" LOL.

Well that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know if there is anything you would like to hear about. I am open for questions and I like when people ask. I know there's a problem going on with the commenting system, so don't worry about that, though. If you have my email or know someone who knows me then just email me or ask them to ask me a question. Take care, everyone!

Picture Post #2 - Stinky Tofu is REALLY stinky sometimes

Sunday July 26, 2009
I'm back! And you know, I wish I'd taken pictures of the vegetarian meal everyone had at Fo Guan Shan Temple. It was some of the best food I'd had. There were two soups; one was sweet and had cauliflower and a bunch of other veggies and some vegetable that looked like crab but probably wasn't. The other soup wasn't sweet but maybe more tangy and I can't remember what it had in it. Noodles or rice or something. It was good too though. There were apples for dessert and a bunch of other really good stuff. I think there was corn in one of the dishes. This is why I wish I had taken pictures though--I can't remember what what was there to eat now. But if I could cook vegetarian meals like the people at the temple I would become a vegetarian in no time flat. It really was that good.

I went to the night market in Kaohsiung in the second week. It was huge. There were people on top of people. Well, right beside each other anyway. You have to push through or else people will just keep going in front of you (which is what happened to me). My friend Tina told me that I'm too polite and she's right. But it was okay. We got separated a few times (mostly because I was leading) but we always found each other. We ate at a good place and got a mixed dish of meat (this was before I'd had the super awesome veggie meal) with gravy and noodles. I took a picture of it and the flash went off, which startled my friends and a few people nearby. I was using the 'Indoor Sports' setting on my camera which always flashes so I switched it to 'Food', which doesn't flash and takes really clear pictures.

It was good and very steaming hot when I got it. My friends all got the same thing. It was crowded in the eating area too and really cramped (not a good combination). I got at least two drinks in the night market because it was so hot--they were watermelon smoothies and they were really good. I like watermelon now in cubes but the smoothies didn't have seeds but tasted just like watermelon which was a plus.

I had stinky tofu for the first time at the night market. This batch wasn't so stinky, and its taste was alright, mostly bland, so there was some hot sauce looking stuff with it (which I didn't use--I'd already set my mouth on fire once and didn't want to do it again). I had stinky tofu on the weekend of my homestay when my host family and me went out to sightsee. We went to a restaurant and got stinky tofu and it really did smell stinky...it smelled a little like...well, it smelled kind of like sewage. So I guess that's why it's called what it is. I only ate one piece that time. I was walking down the hall in the dorms last night while doing my laundry and smelled the exact same smell and was glad I had something just cleaned to sniff at. I also had another first--I drank coconut milk for the first time. I had the same host family as another American student, Annie, and so she and I hung out over the weekend. We got coconuts that time and the lady who gave us them put a hole in the coconuts and we got sprayed with juice.

Xue Lan's (she helps with the program) parents were our host parents. Xue Lan has a brother and she told us he was shy. He seemed nice but we only got to stay a weekend and didn't really have an opportunity to get to know him better. But they were all very kind and Xue Lan's mother wanted to make sure we weren't hungry. She told us that if a mother's kids go hungry it's the mother's fault, I think even if they're grown up. Or that was just how Xue Lan's mother was. Xue Lan told Annie and me that her mom still treated her like a kid. Xue Lan really helped me when I was there--I was sick then and she gave me Chinese herbs to help my throat. It was powdery and tasted bad but I think it helped a little. The food we ate at Xue Lan's parents' house was traditional Hakka food (they live in a Hakka village).

This is the last picture until the next Picture Post. It's another lunchbox I ordered at school. It was salmon with some kind of glaze and the yellow thing in the picture is lotus root. It was a slight mouth pucker kind of sweet. I only ate a few of them. The black thing to the right of the lotus root was a mushroom, and the other black thing above the mushroom was a pickled plum which was really sour so I didn't eat it all. Some people pickle their own plums (in Japanese they're umeboshi but I don't know what it's called here) and those are super sour so I've heard. There was a miniature omelet with my lunchbox that time and it was good. I ate almost everything. Except all of the broccoli. It was a forest of broccoli...I couldn't finish it.

Well, that's all for now. I'll put another post up later. Bye!

Picture Post #1

Sunday July 26, 2009

Well, I decided to mostly put pictures and videos up and talk about them but when I am in a writing mood there will be more journal entries. I thought because I take so many pictures I needed to focus more on them. Usually I only put a few up. I want to show you them too because there are a lot of interesting things around here. So welcome to Picture Post #1. And keep in mind that I'll make Q&A Posts too so ask any questions you have and I'll answer them ASAP.

First off may seem kind of off topic, but I'l going to start by talking about lunch boxes and food in general. There are a lot of places around Pingtung where you can get food and if you do take out the food comes in cute little boxes with drawings of...stuff. Sometime's it's kids, sometimes animals (like Hello Kitty), and sometimes there are poems on them.
This is one of the first lunch boxes I got after class. Someone will come into the classroom before lunch with a lunch menu and we can pick something from it. It always costs 80 Taiwanese dollars which is a few dollars in U.S. I usually get them, but students from the U.S. have stopped getting them and mostly go out during lunch and bring something back (meals out are 30-70 Taiwanese dollars). I just want food because usually by that time I'm really hungry. The time in the picture I had pork, veggies, rice, some egg thing, and brown pieces of tofu. It was really good (I loved the rice, tofu, and egg thing). I have gone out a few times during lunch but now I'm just ordering from that menu since I don't want to go out and have a coughing fit.

Yeah, I managed to get sick. I got sick late the second week and am still sick now. I went to the Student Health Center though and they gave me four pills (three of them were huge) to take at each meal and I got six packets of them. I have taken them all now and I don't know if they helped, or if I get worse before better. But enough of that. I'm going to tell someone I'm not really getting better and see if I can go there again.

There is a bakery and coffee shop place around Pingtung (and probably all of Taiwan) called 85 Degrees. I don't know if it's in Celsius or Fahrenheight but all of the cakes they have in there would still be melted on both of them. They have some really good cake and it's my dream come true. I got a chocolate cake with chocolate wafers between the layers and it was really good. I got a milk tea afterward at a tea shop (I was worried at first that it was a bar). I went with three male Taiwan students and a male American student named Ryan. He isn't the Ryan that I know from back home (as some of you know). It was fun going out that day; the guys played cards...something called "Rat". I didn't know how to play and I'm not that good at cards anyway (especially not new games) so I just watched which was fine with me. I was having fun drinking my milk tea anyway (milk tea is my new favorite drink).



85 Degrees is a really good place. It has tea and cake galore. It even possibly saved me because I had a coughing fit there and a very nice person named Clark bought me hot tea (the cake I had was cold and I forgot that it would probably make me cough) and didn't let me pay him back. He's studied Chinese before and he's in the class a level or two levels above me. He learned a famous song in class called Ni Shi Wo De Hua Buo (You Are My Flower) by Wu Bai and China Blue, and everyone at my house probably knows it by now since we had a WebCam Dance-Fest last night (there is a dance with the song). If you're interested I'll give you a link to the video I took of Clark and Mike and a few others dancing to it on the bus to Canting and the actual music video for the song so you can see the dance in all its entirety.





To wrap up the first part of the Picture Post and food talk I'll say that there was SO MUCH Tiramisu at 85 Degrees! I should get some next time (and eat it with a long spoon). I could have gotten a big box of it or a round cone shaped piece of it as you see in the picture but the box was a party cake box (though I could just throw a party sometime) and I've already resolved to try the Tiramisu cone next time. There is an 85 Degrees near the dorms. I should probably eat it out though because, thanks to me, whenever I eat in my room little sugar ants come. I'd say more about them but what I have to say would have to be censored. They crawl on me, they crawl on my computer, they crawl on my things, and I think they have even crawled in my clothes. But I kind of asked for it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this Picture Post. I'll be making more in the future. Goodbye for now!

PS Wu Bai and China Blue are going to sing and dance at the World Games Closing Ceremony tonight. I REALLY wish I could be there...I totally know the dance now! I would record it for you guys but sadly I'm not going. Olivia, my roommate, is volunteering there so she'll probably see it--well, she will be really busy. Hopefully someone in the audience will record it and put it on Youtube. Thanks to mom for telling me that they would be singing in the Closing Ceremony. They'll have their own fireworks show while they're dancing too.

Well as I promised here are those videos. I'll put the music video first and then the footage I took so you can see where my friends got it from. :D Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-GJl6chhes - You Are My Flower

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqYMWejBrE - The Tour Bus Version

Fake Post #2 (LOL)

Okay, this is my second fake post. I am using it to answer questions that people asked on the comment page since although I have an account here I can't answer back for some reason. Cranky little site. But it's more fun to answer questions this way.

OK first, I hope you're still curious, sorry that the answers are overdue:

Starting from the most recent one about the Opening Games.

To Ralph: Yeah, I'm staying out of trouble. Oh, wait...is the weather staying out of trouble....ahaha yeah it is. There was still a typhoon because it was inevitable at that point but it curved off and didn't directly hit us. It did give us a lot of rain and lightning and thunder; Lulu would not have been happy. I heard the rain and knew it was a storm so I ran to get water from the machine in case it shut off the next day and lightning flashed when I was in the hall so I got water and ran back to my room.

To Elaine: I was thinking about that just today actually....it's a good thing the sculptor didn't mess up and forget to join the fingers together. But Buddha wouldn't flip people off! Lol ;) And I got some business cards from places I went so I can tell you the address there (if it's not in Chinese, or if it is, maybe I can just send a picture of it or something). Talk to you soon, but I bet you're really busy huh? When do your summer classes end?

To Ralph: I'm not sure what the mermaids are representing, really, but I could look it up. And I think she has a fan that she's writing the study guide answers on to use for the next test. ;)

To Caroline: MONKEYS! I haven't seen any yet, but if we were in Japan and it was winter, we might have been able to see some hot spring monkeys. Look their picture up because they're pretty cute. They're fuzzy and have red/pink faces.

To Elaine: Yeah, I got a name. :) It means 'White Beautiful Flower', if I remember right. I can't put the accent marks in on the computer, but I can write it...I might try and look for the characters and put it here. Or just write it and take a picture of the paper and upload that.
And yeah, it was a realy pretty sunset. And I think I maybe am getting less shy, little by little. I'm glad ^^
I haven't gotten bit by a lot of mosquitoes, but when I do they itch like crazy, even worse than Pocatello ones. But Xue Lan (works with the TUSA program and her parents were my friend Annie's and my host parents) gave me some green liquid stuff that's like the muscle cream--it's cold and tingly. It also worked really well; the bites didn't itch for the rest of the day and the one I used Neosporin on is still itching a little.

Well, that's all for now. I think I got all the questions. If you have a question you want to ask then leave it here or write me if you have my email and I'll put a new post here. Don't worry about asking; I think it's fun and I might use pictures to help answer a question. Goodbye for now! I have class tomorrow and I have to go to bed now.

Not Broke Anymore

I'm a little behind in journals but I'll start writing tomorrow. I just got back from my homestay. A girl named Annie and me had the same host family and they live in a Hakka village. One of the people working with the program lived in the village too and it turns out that our host parents were her real parents. I wonder if we can be siblings. She has a brother and her dad was one of nine kids if I remember correctly.

It was really fun and I'll put some pictures from the trip here after the journal post.

July 15, 2009
Good news! I found a working ATM and I’m not broke or in massive paralyzing debt anymore. Well, I wasn’t to start with; I only owe a few dollars or so to my friends. The thing is finding those friends because I don’t see the same people every day. Today there wasn’t a Culture Class or study companion time because a few of the students who came signed up to teach English and that was today. I’m not sure if they were teaching college students or little kids but anyway, we had a free day today. We have a free day Friday too; after Chinese class from 9:00-12:00 we are done for the day (probably because this weekend is when we go stay with our host families). We leave Saturday at 10:00 and get back Sunday I think. If I remember and heard correctly, my host family lives in a Hakka village. I’m going to take extra water with me; usually I fill up my water bottle in the morning but it’s empty by lunch. I have some leftover water bottles that I’m going to use (and that mom said to not use if they had just been lying around but they were—sorry mom!


Sometime, I’m not sure when, I’m going to go out with a few of my friends to have dinner and then to go see the Harry Potter movie. SWEET. I want to see the Transformers one sometime too—if not in Taiwan then when I get back home. I wonder if it’ll be out on DVD then. I really like Shia LeBeouf! Whether or not people say he’s a good actor I like him. The spell checker thought his last name should have been spelled libelous. Did you hear that? They insulted him! Well, that just does it. Sorry, but I won’t be using Word anymore. I’ll move to Notepad.


Not really. That was a probably sad attempt at a joke.


Anyway, I am planning on going over my vocabulary when I get back from the outing. I’m still procrastinating, even in Taiwan. I took a quiz today and did alright on it; I need to practice a little more before my vocabulary words sink in. It probably didn’t help that we didn’t have study time today. I’m hoping to find some flash cards to use, and a new umbrella (since I broke mine recently...).
Last night was really fun, but I found myself thinking I should have asked my friends where we were going. I did feel a little more uneasy because they were boys (sorry Ralph, sorry William). I rode with one of the boys on his scooter and we went to a nice restaurant for dinner. It was the kind of place where you picked your main entrée thing and then picked three vegetables. I got corn, some spirally green vegetable that was spicy, and something else...can’t remember. Maybe seaweed. I had seaweed today at lunch (I went to the beach earlier and just took some home).
No, actually it comes with lunches and a few of us do takeout when one of the Taiwan students, Stan, comes to class with a menu. It’s always 80 Taiwan dollars (which is 5 or so dollars) and at first everyone ordered something but I guess once they got wind of the other ‘cheaper’ restaurants they decided to go out to those instead. Usually when you go to a restaurant you find stuff that’s anywhere from 20-100 Taiwan dollars—not very expensive. Stan told me that he found out American students don’t think that’s too expensive but I guess it is for Taiwan students. College students everywhere are, sadly, probably broke.


Although I have always bought the 80 Taiwan dollar lunch...I don’t see why five dollars is so expensive, whether it’s in Taiwan or the United States. Maybe I don’t have a sense of money but if it’s food and I can eat something and not be hungry then hey, long at it’s not 3000 Taiwan dollars (90 dollars, which I have spent as a group and I didn’t like doing that).


Olivia just got back and she got me a cell phone strap (like keychain) that is in the shape of Taiwan and it’s made of some hard leathery stuff. It has ‘Sarah’ on it, and a green oak leaf above the name (or a similar leaf), which is the symbol of Pingtung University (it is supposed to protect the students). She also gave me a cute hair clip with a pink flower on it. She says I can wear it next week for the excursion to Canting (I think I got the name of the city right, and I think Olivia did mean a city, otherwise I just wrote ‘restaurant’ in Chinese).

Well I’ll finish up because I don’t know when I’ll leave. The boys were really nice and responsible (although one was acting crazy and I found out he loves to swear...colorfully). It doesn’t bother me (much) but I think we turned some heads. He also said some things in Chinese that I doubt I should repeat either, even if I could, which I can’t and don’t want to. He’s the kind of person who would learn the rude way to talk before the polite (and I’m the opposite). I don’t really know him though, so I’m not sure what I think about him, although I didn’t feel that comfortable around him.

We went to dinner, then a café place (which I was worried was a bar and the crazy guy has been out drinking before, probably a lot) but I was relieved to find they had milk tea (my new favorite drink). In Taiwan people usually get half sugar in milk tea and it tastes really good, not too sweet or bland or anything. I don’t like green tea much because it’s bitter, especially when cold, but I’ll drink it hot. I’ve gotten used to it hot, but not cold (I don’t think it’s very good cold, and some people in Taiwan don’t like it either).

I got a nice cake last night and it was in a cool bakery place that was open to the street (meaning people just drive up onto the curb sidewalk with their scooters and park, and then you just have to walk a few feet without opening any doors to get to the front counter). They had boxes of Tiramisu cake that I wanted to get for you guys but I knew it’d be nasty by the time it got home (if I’d even be allowed to take it with me). I took pictures instead. The people running the place had cool Tiramisu cakes shaped like cones—I took pictures of them too. I’m uploading them now, along with some videos of elementary school kids playing a game called ‘Diabolo’, which I thought was ‘Diablo’ at first.

You have two sticks with a long string between them and you put a goblet-shaped thing on the string and roll it along the string. You pull your right hand up and down and keep your left hand still to make it spin faster. If I can figure out how to put the videos on my blog I will but in the meantime you can go look on Youtube at this video. It’s a fun game but really hard at first. The kids could do it so well and some had only been playing it for a few months. You can see what it’s like on the video. I found out that uploading them goes off without a hitch from the previous post. :) So I’ll keep that in mind and take more videos for you guys when pictures won’t cut it.

See ya!

I already put the Diabolo videos up so I'll put some different pictures and videos here. I have to say one thing though. Around the Hakka village area there was a place to eat and shop and stuff, and at the end of the shopping area there was this guy playing instruments. He was really good and I liked how he played. I even think that his playing made my headache go away. But this is the kicker. The things he played were a saw, a newspaper, a syringe (without the needle thankfully) parts of a recorder, a small bottle, and he had lots of other things he played. Some were fishing line, a banjo with a pot lid for the round part, and a paper lunch box with rubber bands on it that were like strings. The saw sounded like an er-hu (and sometimes reminded me of alien music), the newspaper sounded like a trumpet, the syringe like a flute, and the bottle sort of flute like too. He said if you cover the bottle a lot it's high notes. He also played a toothpaste tube with water in it. He'd squeeze it and it would sound sort of flute like too. I got a DVD that is two CD's and it has 100 or something instruments he plays. It wasn't that expensive either I don't think: it was 350 Taiwanese dollars for two DVD CD's and I remember that the first day I went shopping I spent 500 Taiwan dollars which was like 16 U.S. dollars (so pretty cheap for some reason! It seems like it'd be more expensive since it was two DVD CD's). I asked (Well, Xue Lan--our host parent's daughter--asked for me) if the format would be ok for U.S. DVD players and she said it should be. I'm going to try it now. If it works on my laptop I can show you when I get back.

Now, new pictures! Enjoy! :)


Mmm, look, this is my yummy dinner tonight of a boiled egg. Let's crack it open.


I can't wait, it'll be so good.




Aaaah! What happened to it?! I only bought it today!



Well since I bought it I'll just eat it.

MMMmmmmMM good.



Well you've guessed either that it wasn't really rotten or that I was just crazy. This egg might have been the 'Thousand Year Egg' that my friends in Pocatello told me about. They said something like the egg is buried for a while and the yolk is black and the egg is brown, but it tastes just like a normal egg. I don't know if this egg was made like that because when we bought them they were on a barbeque sort of buried in coals instead of underground. This egg was good, a little different than a normal boiled egg because it tasted salty and had the texture more like a gummy bear. Those are the not obvious differences.