I know it's getting old, this topic, but this morning I woke up to face my pain. My cold shower. I poured hot tea water in the sink, did my luxurious sink-bath, then sprayed chilly water over my poor body to rinse off the soap. I'm finding that I am now able to almost totally relax under even this chilly water. But today, just before I was about to turn off the water, I noticed something. The water was suddenly not quite as cold, could it be? Within moments I was smiling and cheering. Hot water. I was late to school because I took such a long shower. But I don't feel guilty, I just smile a dreamy smile with that far away look in my eye, that hot shower look.

I thought my roommate had it fixed, when I got home I jumped out onto the awning and checked the water heater. No. It looks like the heater just started to work for no reason, I think it might have something to do with the weather, since the heater is mounted right to the front of our building, right in the rain. It has a rain cover over the top of it, but not the bottom, so any splash from the rain splashes up into the guts of the heater, into the electronics. It's amazing it has worked for this long when you consider how much it rains here.

So my news is only half good. Until we figure out how to get it fixed: every time I step into the shower and turn on that faucet I'll be wondering if today's the day that the hot water will go away. So I must shower every hot shower to it's fullest! Because it may be my last for awhile.

Also in class today my teachers warned us all to be careful tomorrow they said the temperature will drop to 12 degrees, which is 54 degrees Fahrenheit. We could catch a cold they warned. "Don't wear short sleeves" my teacher cautioned me, pointing to my short sleeved shirt. So tomorrow I'll bundle up in my long sleeved shirt before I brave the elements to go to school. But in all honestly I may indeed be shivering tomorrow, they don't install heat in buildings here. Maybe I'll wear shoes instead of sandals. (edit 485) Permalink

Tonight we ended up in a familiar place, eating familiar things, with familiar faces. But some new faces too.

We were nine strong tonight, we couldn't just eat at any restaurant, they had to have room for us. We've been much more than nine before, but tonight 5 of the nine were not regulars, 4 entirely new. The language of the night was Chinese, even though most of our nine strong were Korean. They often feel comfortable enough to use mostly Chinese for conversation. I believe their Chinese is better than mine anyway, maybe better than Esther's too, I'm not sure. Esther and I fell into English often enough, I'm certainly not very good at being sarcastic in Chinese. But I'll work on it.

Esther has a German surname so we spent a lot of the time, over our rice and meat bowls and our seaweed soup, talking about German, all of us. I think I may have been dominating the conversation tonight, since I'm the one who took a year of German in high school, also because I did most of the talking. If you want to dominate a conversation, a form of greed and selfishness, sit in the middle. When I sit on the end I spend most of the time wondering what's going on and picking up on the punchlines of funny jokes. "What was the first part? What did he say before? ... oh never mind"

You never know what sounds are hard to say for others, and they think it's funny when you can't say their special sounds too. Not every language has a distinct 's' and 'sh' sound, for example Taiwanese and Japanese, or so I've heard. So you often hear the two sounds swapped in Chinese or English, which makes 'four' and 'ten' sound exactly the same, so '40', '44', '14', '10 10 10', and '4 4 4' all sound the same to those of us who are deaf to tones. And I, have a hard time with the u and u sounds, yes I meant to type the same letter. Also 'l' and 'r' are very hard for me to say in Chinese, they are backwards and overlapped sometimes, but not other times. I'm sure I've blogged about this not too long ago now, but I like to blog about things that are relevant to me at the time, and I'm still struggling with those sounds!

Pronunciation! If you can't pronounce it how can you remember it? There is a young girl in my congregation who's name I have been trying to remember for about 6 weeks now, I had it down (sort of) for a few weeks, but tonight she caught me. I had forgotten the last syllable. You might be thinking that there are probably long strings of difficult syllables making up a Chinese name. This is the opposite of the truth, they as a rule have a single syllable surname and a two syllable given name, and the syllables are always just common words. So you just feel like a piece of driftwood when you can't remember their name... for the 16th time. But after about 15 minutes of careful, patient, coaching by these two girls I was able to say something close enough to their names to satisfy them and get them to stop laughing in sheer amazement at my inarticulations.

But I'm far enough into this Chinese stuff that I wouldn't even know how to give up now if I wanted to. I'm addicted. (edit 484) Permalink

I can't help mentioning it: I'm still taking cold showers. But during a recent conversation someone used the word basin which got me thinking. The sink in any bathroom is a modern equivalent of a an ancient wash basin. I used to wonder why old sinks had two faucets: hot and cold, but not one that mixed the water into warm. It never made sense to me because you'd either have water that was too hot or too cold. But eventually someone with experience and knowledge of such things told me that in the old days they mixed the hot and cold water in the wash basin and used the water out of the basin to shave and clean, almost like a mini-bath. This inspired me once I heard the word basin. So I took my tea water heater, a handy device that keeps water nice and hot for tea, and dumped half of what was left in it into my water basin and added some cold water to it from the tap. I had a sink full of nice warm water!

I'd much rather take a shower, but using warm water again, after five days is just wonderful. I gave myself a cowboy shower, I guess that's what you'd call it, I cleaned myself with a wash cloth and warm water, wonderful stuff. Afterward I gave myself a thorough rinsing with that nasty freezing cold water. I notice though that the cold water didn't seem as bad after my warm wash cloth bath. I was even able to let my muscles relax, they normally tense up in protest to the torture. And I must say too: warm water does a much better job of cleaning, I haven't felt quite clean these last few days, but today I felt clean and renewed. So I guess I've found another way to adapt and acclimate to this place. So if you're ever stuck with cold water for showers, remember the hot water mixed in the sink trick. You might be able to boil a pot of water or something. Tonight I filled my tea water heater to the top, so I'll have about 5 times as much hot water in the morning. I'll be able to take a luxurious sink bath tomorrow (followed by a cold rinse shower) and have water left over for tea.

I saw something tonight I hadn't see here before. After meeting five of us made the short journey through the rain to the Shida night market and chose a new place to eat. We ended up talking about James Bond and Leonardo Dicaprio over our meat and rice dinners. But after the meeting I walked to the bus stop, on my way home, with Leah and Sanae, two Japanese sisters that are permanent and active members of the after-meeting-dinner club. Right before our paths separated us we passed the MRT (subway) entrance and saw a couple leaning against the side of the entrance with their faces hidden in each other's faces. Or you could say they were "making out" or "kissing." And they were doing it for a very long time too, and it looked like they were enjoying it. I'm not sure how I could tell since I couldn't see their faces, but you just can tell I guess.

Normally I would see that, smirk, then forget about it. But I guess I haven't seen that since I was back in America, a land semi-comfortable with PDAs (Public Displays of Affection), not common here at all. The phrase is supposed to be "Sometimes you don't miss something till it's gone," but you could also say, "Sometimes you don't miss something until you see it again and realize you hadn't seen it in a long time." I feel kind of weird, especially as a single guy, saying that "I miss seeing people kiss each other," but for some reason I wanted to yell encouragement to them. Maybe you'd have to go for nine months without seeing a single kiss to appreciate it. This may be one of those blogs that I'll regret posting later.

I had a nice 25 minute walk home too, it's a bit longer walking back because I walk much slower from the meeting than to it. But I didn't watch my shadows this time, but I did listen to the sound track of the 1989 Batman movie on my MP3 player. I think it would be extra scary being chased by Batman in the rain at night than if it wasn't raining. Which means it would be extra cool being Batman when it was raining. I don't know if Taipei really needs a Batman, but he would have lots of tallish buildings to jump off of and tight little allies to chase bad guys down. But he'd have to change the Batmobile for a Bat Scooter. I wonder how his gravely voice would sound in a tonal language like Mandarin. (edit 483) Permalink

Taiwan has changed. And so have I. We're both much colder. It's in the 60's these days, a little wetter, a little cloudier. I wear pants now instead of shorts. I wear two shirts instead of one, I even wore a jacket a few days ago. I've started using a double sheet thing almost like a blanket instead of using just a fan to cool myself off. It's just cooler here now, not so hot and tropical anymore.

I've noticed lately when I wake up I almost feel like I'm back home in Washington State. The thing that confuses me though is when I see the actual temperature, like 66 degrees, and yet I feel chilly. I think all that sweating and acclimating has made me intolerant to the cold. Since when is 66 degrees cold? They wear scarfs and hats here when it's 66 degrees. Soon I'll be doing the same I guess. But I'll probably still melt when it gets hot, forever caught between my cold weather ancestry and my sweltering environment. This is the price I pay to live here, a loss of my old "temperature comfort zone."

After school today I went to the Shida Night Market, to the same place I went two days ago after school. This time I asked the girl who took my order from if what I had marked off was spicy ("La de" in Chinese). It was spicy, but it was not the particular item I wanted, the one I want is dumplings soaked in some sort of chili oil, this was more like sweet and sour soup with dumplings. But it was pretty good anyway, I might order it again someday. I plan to go there tomorrow and order the next item down on the list, until I get to the bottom of the list or find what I've been trying to order. They do have an English menu, which she showed me today, but I dismissed it because she told me already that it was spicy. I didn't imagine that they had two (or more?) spicy dumplings on their menu! I'm also afraid that the English menu won't help me anyway. After all, all I know is that they are "spicy dumplings" and I just ate "spicy dumplings" that are not it, we don't have words in English to describe all the different kinds of dumplings and noodles they have there. Or maybe I should say: I don't know those words.

Tomorrow we will be starting our dialogue. Each chapter we cover, about one per week depending on the length of the chapter, has a dialog at the end. We read through the dialogue a few times out loud, ask any questions and then after a day or two the teacher asks us questions about the dialogue. I am usually clueless about what's going on in the dialogues. I find that I have to use all my concentration to repeat each syllable that the teacher says, or to read the Pinyin. So the last few chapters I've been trying to read ahead, imagine that, and figure out what the dialog is about before we cover it in class. I use that little 0.28mm ball point green pen of mine to write little notes and definitions in the margins for any words that I've forgotten, which fills most of the margin. Last time I wasn't quite able to finish previewing the dialog before we covered it in class, this time I'm a little more ready. This time I'm excited that I might know what's going on. I wish I had started doing this 8 months ago, I'd have better Chinese. But now I know. Now I know at least one trick that I didn't before.

Also my roommate tried to contact our landlord today about our hot water problem but he said "She was already resting." Unless I misheard him, I think that means she had closed her restaurant for the day, so she's not working, I guess she's resting then. I bet she has hot water down there. She has one of those restaurants that has little fans behind the stove that blows all the steamy cooking odors onto you when you walk by on the 2 foot wide sidewalk. That way you smell like you've been cooking Taiwanese food by the time you get wherever you're going. (edit 482) Permalink

Somewhere in the world I believe there are men who wake up each morning and without whimpering and procrastinating hop into icy cold showers and subject their bodies to the torture I endured again this morning. Those men do not feel the need to proclaim it to the world, blog about it, or discuss it in Chinese class. To those men it is a part of everyday life. Those men are to be feared. (edit 481) Permalink

I haven't blogged about it yet, but since Friday we've had no hot water here in our second floor dining room of a restaurant apartment in Taipei. This is not the first time we've lost our ability to shower and breathe in and out at the same time, I think it's the fourth time actually. But this time it's different. The first time I wondered if some gas bill hadn't been paid, but was surprised to see my room mate climb out of his second story window onto the awning, surprised it supported him, behind the sign for the restaurant below. He had a single "D" cell battery in his hand. I leaned out of my window and saw him open a little door on what I've since learned is our water heater. After he replaced the battery we had hot water in only minutes.

I'm fairly certain that the battery provides some sort of spark to ignite gas, and now that I've braved the flimsy corrugated sheet metal awning myself, I know that the "D" cell also powers a tiny little green box, a controller for our water heater. And like I said, in my 9 months or so here, he's changed it about 3 times. I don't know why they put it out there.

But it's amazing what laziness makes you go through, the pain, the icy showers. This morning I skipped my shower all together. I was already stiff in the neck from a bus ride yesterday and didn't want to see what my stiff neck muscles did when that cold water touched my skin.

There are advantages to taking cold showers. I had to take several cold showers at Khyree and Jake's place when I stayed with them for several days, they had to replace a propane tank to get water. But all we had to do was replace a battery. The advantage to taking a cold shower is the warm feeling you get when you're done. Your body and skin feels warm like it's glowing, I'm sure it's very good for you, your heart or your circulation or something, but your skin is most likely just so happy that it's no longer being tortured by frigid water. I shorten the experience as much as I can manage by rinsing in the water, then stopping the water, lathering and soaping and scrubbing without the nasty cold water, then rinsing all the soap suds off. I hate it, even though it feels good when I'm done. I'll type it again: I hate it.

So today, after my failed after school nap, I went into the bathroom and straddled the toilet, facing the tank. Yes, not only do I shower cold, but the toilet hasn't been working for a whole week. It actually kind of flushes, but it doesn't do it with the enthusiasm that you expect, the enthusiasm that you take for granted in toilets that work properly. The issue was the tank, it didn't fill, actually it did fill but only after about 3 hours as if it were only filling because of some leak in some valve, which you could hear, an annoying running water sound.

I've messed with toilets before, the chains that pull up the flap sometimes get caught on the ballcock, which is very annoying but not very difficult to fix. But this toilet does not have a ballcock that I recognize, it's a modern toilet, I was not able to find any pictures of it's mechanisms on the Internet. So without trying to explain all the pipes, valves, and levers that I discovered in the back recesses of our low swung modern toilet, I'll just say that I narrowed the problem down to a rubber gasket in a valve that I have since identified as the Tank Refill Valve. The whole process of figuring all this out took about 5 hours spread across 3 days, 30 minutes of which involved trying to research toilets on the Internet. The Internet sites I found told me that I needed to replace the Tank Refill Valve or the gasket. Well I certainly don't have any of those things, and searching for a hardware store did not appeal to my laziness, even though I had already spent nearly 5 hours, at least most of those hours were spent sitting backwards on a toilet lid, but better than walking for miles in my opinion.

I'd also like to throw another detail into my Toilet Repair story: I cut myself twice. There really aren't sharp pieces in the back of a modern low swung toilet, but when you're convinced that some wet plastic piece or other should twist off, or move, or wiggle, your hand can easily slip and get itself punctured by almost any of the squarish or pointy objects in that small cavity behind the bowl. If that seems disgusting to you, you're not alone, even though the water in the tank doesn't come into direct contact with the bowl it's just scary to me to think I have toilet water from any part of the toilet possibly having had entered my bloodstream. But so far my hand hasn't changed color to green or white or anything so I think I'll be OK.

One of the reasons for my blogging this story is a huge sense of satisfaction I've gotten from fixing this toilet, only a few months after fixing my friends toilet with chewing gum and a coat hanger. I may try my hand at plumbing when I get back to the States just because it's so satisfying to hear a good solid flush when you're done.

So instead of buying and replacing the Tank Refill Valve: I improvised. There was a small hole gasket membrane thingy to allow a small about of water through to let the pressure on the top push the gasket back down and stop the flow of water, which was why my tank seemed to never fill. The only water it was getting was through that tiny little pin hole. So I put a piece of black electrical tape over the pin that pushes itself through that hole, making it smaller and tighter so the pressure be higher underneath than above to let water through underneath into the tank. It worked, yes I soon had a toilet happily refilling it's little tank. Once fixed I flushed it twice for no reason just to enjoy the site and the sound.

After I fixed the toilet I was so energized, my chest puffed with the pride of handimandidness, I put on my sandals and a coat with a hood, due to the rain, and went out to be even more productive: I bought a pack of 2 "D" cell batteries, a chocolate bar, and then went to my favorite eatery and ate my favorite dishes of fried rice and greens.

With my life looking optimistic, handy, and with a great sense of being responsible and adult, instead of letting my room-mate take care of it, I hopped out on the awning that I mentioned in the opening of this blog. But all I can say is that my day went downhill from there. I replaced the battery, and went in excitedly to test the hot water. None. I gave up for awhile wondering if there was some other secret step that my room-mate preformed behind that little metal door on the front of the water heater. My roommate walked in the door right as I was testing the hot water. I went into my room to get the second battery to show him that I had changed the battery. Props are nice when you don't know how to say things like "battery" or "hot water heater" in Chinese. I must have been distracted by my computer or something because by the time I leaned into his room to tell him I changed the battery I saw him dropping down from his window, he held out my shiny new replacement battery to show me that he had just changed it... not 15 minutes after I just had done the same thing. I told him I had already changed it.

He spent the next twenty minutes or so out on the awning yelling back to me to try the water again and again. Eventually he came back in, with his flash light and expressed that he had given up.

After a few minutes, I found myself back out there on the awning myself holding the sign behind me for support, checking the battery contacts. Then it started to rain hard, in moments my T-shirt was soaked through, but I didn't give up. The Taiwan twist to this story is that as I was standing on the awning I was above a sidewalk hoping that the couple under me that were busy putting on their scooter rain gear wouldn't notice me and freak out and tell me that it was dangerous to be on the awning and call the police or something. Although I don't know if people call the police here. People across the street could have seen me too if they had thought to look up to the second story and slightly the the right of an unremarkable yellow sign with Chinese that I assume names the restaurant I live above.

I wish this really was just a story that I was telling, I'd be taking a hot shower, but it's not, it's just a blog entry, a journal entry of my day to day struggles. I could not fix it. Tomorrow I will probably sleep late due to the dread of waking up and having to take a cold shower. I did peer into the inner workings of the water heater and noticed that distinctive green fuzz on the wires that lead into the little plastic controller box perched inside the heater. I suspect there is a lot of corrosion in that water heater preventing the flow of electricity that would initiate the charging of some sort of capacitor that would charge up and release that spark that would spark that flame that would heat that water that would mix with that cold water in my faucet and produce that lovely balance of warmth that I find so enjoyable each morning that I forget how good it is... until it's gone.

But I fixed the toilet! (edit 480) Permalink

Tonight was a pretty good night, we had meeting, a talk and Watchtower study. I recorded the talk with my camera, it has an audio-only record feature. During the talk I accidentally turned off the camera, but I was able to turn it on, open the audio record screen and press record all in between two sentences. I didn't miss a word.

I was also able to get in a comment during Watchtower study, I read it from PinYin and didn't actually know a lot of the words I read. I only knew it was the answer from cross checking my English magazine and guessing that the meaning was the same. But not much goes unappreciated by my congregation here. A few of my favorite Chinese girls, the Ling sisters, came up to me as a pair to thank me for my comment and test my Chinese conversation skills. I don't remember what they said, probably something about my not being here for much longer, but felt the urge I leaned towards them and spread my arms wide open.

They are both very small and I'm sure I could have hugged four of them and still had room to adjust my watch band behind them, but I was really only kidding. Giving them a big hug would seem out of place here. Even though I'm at least 17 years older than the oldest sister (They are just little girls) she quickly warned me that I couldn't hug them. It isn't appropriate for a man to hug girls here. Then she asked me if we had cross-gender hugging in America. I told her yes, but not too often or for too long. At that moment, even though I wasn't really planning on hugging them, I missed home a little bit more. It breaks my heart that I can't hug my cute little friends here, or hardly anyone else, but at the same time I can't quite imagine it ever feeling quite right to do here either. I guess that's one of those things they call culture. If I had remembered at the time I should have told them about the first time I was kissed good-bye by two people I had just met in Venezuela. I can see the look of horror on their faces now. I can't wait to tell them.

After meeting, as is common, a bunch of us wandered around the night market in the rain bumping umbrellas in search of food. I eventually made YiQi share his with me so one of didn't get hurt. I'm sure one of those umbrella spokes could put an eye if aimed right. I don't remember much of the conversation, maybe because I was too tired and it was mostly in Chinese, but I remember bringing up paragraph 16 of our Watchtower study. The sister that came with us was trying to learn how to read some Chinese from her magazine. I guess, according to Sammy, Chinese doesn't really have a word for nudge, although the word they used conveyed the same idea. As you can imagine, during this conversation, many of us were nudging each other with our elbows to show what we meant by nudge or whatever other word they were using. I guess Korean has a word for nudge, but doesn't have a word for listen, at least not that means that you're really listening. Which is a word commonly talked about in the magazines, but I told him that the word isn't always very clear in English either. I'm always curious about the gaps that languages have, like the gap English has with you and you (plural) (as in you guys).

But the best part of tonight was the ice cream cone I got for 10NTD15NTD at Burger King on the way home. There is just something incomparable about a soft serve ice cream cone. The ice cream cone was not only delicious (A word they love to use in English here, I don't think they realize that we usually just say "good" when something tastes good) but it also helped keep my left arm from dangling down low, out of the protection of my umbrella. My arm wasn't so wet when I got home, but my belly was full of creamy sugary icy deliciousness. (edit 479) Permalink

Yes, it was up to 88 degrees Fahrenheit today, and yet it's November. It wasn't that hot during ministry tonight, but was hot! It's hot a lot here, often. I assumed it would get cooler in November, and I guess it did. But that's OK, because I might not like the cooler weather, my body has acclimated to heat and humidity. Pu Jiemei harassed me about my "too big" back pack, which only contained a folder, a bible, and a 2 liter bottle of water. The water was too heavy she said. But by the end of ministry, after two hours, it was almost entirely gone. That's how I've acclimated to this weather, by sweating profusely. It seems to be working.

I'm becoming a common site in the third floor lobby at school, I sit closest to the elevator, almost blocking the door, studying my lesson, reviewing and previewing. I like to use my little green 0.28mm ballpoint to write short little definitions in the margins. I draw little numbers next to the words in the dialog that I have trouble with. That way if I'm reading it I give myself the chance to remember the word, give my brain a chance to do it's job. If that doesn't work I can quickly look over in the margin at the numbered list. The teachers and students that know me still like to say "Jiayou" which as far I can tell means "Add Oil", which is an encouragement to keep working and studying hard. Usually 2.5 hours after class a little signal is sent from somewhere in the recesses of my brain to the conscious part that it's about to lose consciousness or most of it. So I pack up my books and my collection of fine point ball point pens, hook my umbrella to my shoulder strap and push the little button pointing down, waiting for the elevator. If my eyes aren't too tired I'll watch the flickering segments of the what floor the elevator is on display. At least one of the lamps in the seven segment display is completely dead, but sometimes it's fun to guess which floor it's trying to tell you it's on, or guess which lamp is dead. I have a bad memory so the game never seems to lose it's excitement from day to day. Sometimes I accidentally get on an elevator that's on it's way up. But I've seen other people make that same mistake.

Today our second hour teacher returned from her Macau vacation (In case you don't remember, Macau is a small island country less than an hour from Hong Kong, they speak Portuguese and it's a popular place to gamble) The substitute teacher we had yesterday was pretty cool, she was an older lady who gave very good explanations. Many of us are late to the second hour of class, sometimes our ten minute break isn't quite long enough to run to 7-11 or one of the nearby vendors and buy some coffee and breakfast. Three of us had food halfway to our mouths when she turned to us and said in Chinese: "Yes you can eat in my class, I have a relaxed class." I don't know about the other two but I felt embarrassed about eating without asking, as our other teachers are used to seeing us eat, and sometimes even partaking in our mini feasts. I tried to finish my little meal inconspicuously after that, which is not really very inconspicuous as you might hope. One of the other students commented later that he thought she was a good teacher, that she explained things very clearly. I tried to reach across the table to hand our regular teacher who had returned her books and tell her that we had decided to replace her with the other teacher, but my Chinese faltered and stuttered and the joke was lost.

So now that I have less than a month of classes left, unless I sign up for a partial quarter, I'm finally getting the hang of studying well for class. I think that's one of those constants in the universe, that things start to go better and better right before you have to leave someplace. Even so, even though I'm far from feeling like I've accomplished my mission of learning Chinese, I do look forward to seeing old familiar faces and eating old familiar things. (I'll spare you a detailed list of the things I look forward to eating.) (edit 478) Permalink

The atmosphere in Taipei was a little extra exciting, with everyone asking excitedly about the elections coming up. Yes the same elections that people talk about over there, the presidential elections in the U.S. Being a Witness of course makes the elections significantly less exciting, and maybe less interesting. But I'm sure I'll take note who the president will be next year once it's decided, I think last time I didn't know for about a week, I must have been busy that week. But recently I've been trying to keep up to date on world events, trying to be more aware of the world around me.

I'm trying to think of something worthy of blogging about, all that comes to mind is the bus. I took the bus part way to the meeting on Sunday, the English meeting. This is new, I found out which bus to take from Amanda and Corey, a new couple who came here to teach English, it's bus 225 (In case you were wondering). As a rule I stay off buses, I like them OK, but I have a hard time figuring out where they go, there are so many of them and bus maps are hard to find. They are easy to ride if you have an MRT Easy Card which just put next to the reader next to driver and wait for a green light to flash followed by a beep or two, this means money has been deducted from your card. I'm not sure what the difference between one and two beeps is. Maybe I should set that as a goal, to learn enough Chinese to figure out the difference between one and two beeps. One needs to set goals to motivate one's self. To start off: How do you say beep in Chinese? I can assure you, it's not beep as you might believe to be obvious. After all dogs don't say ruff ruff or bark bark here. No. They say wang wang. It's obvious to everyone here that they say wang wang, anything else would be silly to them, probably as silly as wang wang sounds to you, which is pretty silly isn't it? So don't ask for beef by saying Moo. It won't work. And if you try to pantomime a cow by making horns, well, that just means your angry in East Asia universal pantomime language. Anything with horns must be angry.

The other problem with the bus is where to get off. Not only do most streets look the same here, but you can't see them when you're standing on a bus. Usually all you see is the sidewalks and cars down below. But, despite these tremendous issues and obstacles, I took the bus to the meeting. And I was ten minutes late. Next time I'll leave earlier. Oh, and by the way, usually I just take the MRT, which involves 3 trains so it takes almost an hour.

I know, I know. I should learn the buses, I've been here for about 8 months already. But where should I go?

Class is about the same. We had a substitute teacher today, she had a soft pleasant voice. That's not always the case. I wonder if she was secretly shocked at our casual class-room atmosphere: Students taking meals during class, complete with greasy napkins, drinks, bags, and chopsticks, some food still sizzling and smoking, bought from some near-bye vendor. Students taking phone calls during class. (Most of the students in our class have jobs and get important phone calls they have to take, though they usually leave the room) Side conversations and jokes. (I make it a rule myself to not talk when the teacher is talking, but I can't force my rule on everyone!)

But, believe it or not, despite my descriptions of our unruliness and goofy offy ness, we do in fact spend the great majority of the time learning new Chinese words, phrases, and sentence structures. So slowly but surely I'm finding I'm able to hear strings of odd sounding Chinese syllables and respond with an even odder sounding strings of syllables, which may or may not be considered Chinese syllables by the Chinese ears listening to them, and then to have the teacher nod her head approvingly meaning that wonderful thing: "I understood what you just said to me." But then again the teachers are very good at understanding our halting crazy backwards Chinese sentences and our upside down tones. Sometimes I think they are able to "see my heart", which is how you'd say "read my mind" in Chinese. It's amazing to watch my third period teacher listen to my sentence constructions intently, then pause for a moment looking up and to the left in thought(or is her right?) and then repeat my sentence slightly modified, polished and "Chinesified" for the whole class to repeat. Sometimes, on magical special days, you might get a sentence repeated back to the class exactly the way you said it, meaning you said it exactly right. I usually make a mini victory scene when this happens. But I don't feel bad about making a scene because it's not often that it happens, making the victory that much more sweet when it does. (edit 477) Permalink

A week has already passed me by since I tried to look over The Strait of China and see China. A week and a half has passed by since I watched my shadows spin out from under me in the alley ways late at night. I feel my time here in stinky Taipei (said affectionately because of stinky tofu) winding down, or winding away, however we say it in English. English, whatever that is, a tangled mass of broken rules, that's what it is. As for Chinese, I think that languages were never meant to be learned, only absorbed by children through a mysterious natural process. It's a miracle to me that information of any meaning is ever transmitted from one human to another. It only seems possible for one to understand the meaning of a sentence if they already know the meaning of the sentence. But maybe that's what makes it so fun to learn.

I'm not sure how hot it was today, but I think it was in the mid 80s today, some of my classmates also commented on how hot it was today. The body gets used to it though, I think my body will complete it's final stage of acclimation December 24, 2008, the day before I leave for home. Maybe my body will never be the same, I'll forever be one of those people who can't stand the cold, forever trying to close windows and doors and adjusting heat knobs.

Today I successfully Twittered from my cell phone which you should be able to see to the right on the side bar, I guess the message I sent is already gone, it said that I was blogging from class and not paying attention. Just what the world needs, another way to interact with people electronically. Someday we'll be able to send smells to each other electronically, or maybe a Internet heart rate monitor so people can check to see how excited we are at any given moment of the day. If we could get restaurants to cooperate we could have an electronic public record of each meal we've eaten. I guess I already have that here. I don't need no new fangled mealblog.

Other than my quick little Twitter during class I can't say that there was anything special about class today, or this week. The first hour we learned new words, the second hour we were tired and drowsy, and the third hour we were obnoxious and rowdy. My teacher asked me, due to my trying to do an exaggerated Valley girl accent in Chinese to Jason across the room, if it was "showtime." I think today was especially chaotic in class. Maybe it's because it was Friday, maybe we're all just getting to used to each other. Maybe the teacher student dynamic is just all messed up when half the students are adults, even if they don't act like adults, or at least that American student who never knows what page we're on...

I guess I'm running out of things to say about Taiwan, things to blog about. I no longer notice the narrow sidewalks or the animal part shops selling animal parts, cut anyway you'd like. I don't hear the hustle and bustle of the street below my bedroom window. I don't smell the cancer causing incense wafting down the street from the innumerable temples on every block in this city. I don't notice Chinese faces anymore, I notice foreign ones and wonder where they are from or what they are doing here. No nowadays I'm in my own world, disrupting classes, watching my shadows, trying to write as small as I can with my 0.28mm tipped roller ball green pen in my New Intermediate Chinese Dialogue textbook, I can write entire definitions in the white spaces between lines of text! Using green instead of black helps it to not blend in with the other text.

Yes. I guess I can say that I've successfully conquered Taiwan, by spacing out. What country shall I conquer next? Will I one day find myself in Africa drawing eyeball pupils in all the letter o's? Or will I find the perfect way to arrange and align the contents of all my pockets somewhere in South America? (edit 476) Permalink