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!