Today was the last day of the term. Next week I might have new teachers, probably not, but I know I'll have at least 2 less classmates. We may be down to as few as 4, and in a few weeks with me gone it'll be 3. I haven't been staying after school these last few days, I guess I have what we used to call senioritus, the closer I get to the last day the less each day seems to matter. But I certainly haven't quit, my Chinese learning is far from over.

It's funny how on the first day of class, you meet a room full of strangers, strangers that seem that they will always be just that. But after 9 months you know each one of them pretty well, and they know you pretty well too. They all know that after the first hour of class I stand up, check my pockets, grab my umbrella if I think I need it, and head off towards the near-by 7-11 to buy an egg, some sort of rice snack, and something to drink. They all know that I forget words easily and often don't know what page we're on.

I'm already starting to miss this place. With it's scooters, it's laundry adorned window cages, and it's half sized pet dogs that wear shoes.

And I know I'll miss my congregation here too. Today I was scolded by two of my Taiwanese moms for leaning back on a big metal roll-up door while we were waiting for the ministry group to reassemble. They told me the roll-up door was dirty, I checked it and it wasn't even dusty, but one of them brushed some imaginary dust off my back for me. I said "Sorry mama." You'd think I'd sat in a mud puddle wearing a suit by how excited they were. I'll miss my Taiwanese moms.

I'll miss the convenience of this sprawling city, paying all my bills at the 7-11 across the street, cheap cell phone service (They think it's really weird that we pay for both incoming and outgoing cell phone calls in the U.S.), cheap utility bills, cheap good food, being able to go anywhere in the city with my Easy Card, three dollar taxi rides, cheap good food, night markets, cheap good food. I'll also miss the little green guy that walks faster and faster at every street crossing. I'll really miss being able to walk in the middle of the street, cars probably spend half their time driving behind pedestrians, there is not often room for sidewalks on the side streets. This city is ruled by pedestrians and scooters, with cars squeezing in between when they can. I've never seen a traffic jam here.

I even made sure to record the voice of the MRT lady that tells you in English to get off the train and which stop you're at, and to yield your seat to those in need, and to mind the gap when alighting the train. She has an American accent. The one in Hong Kong has a British accent. I've already forgotten what the Bangkok subway sounds like. I bet the Taipei Metro girl has s a successful romantic life with a voice like that, she could calmly give commands like Mind the toilet seat when alighting the bathroom or Please take out the garbage for those in need. It would be hard not to obey mindlessly. Although she may get annoyed with guys like me, I'd always ask her to say things like Here we are at the 7-11 by your house when we entered my 7-11 together (I always thought it was funny how the MRT voice says Here we are at...) or if we ever got serious (only if we were engaged of course!) she might cancel our engagement wondering what my real reasons for dating her really were because I'm sure I'd try to get her to say something like Thank you for kissing the Taipei Metro System.

Come to think of it, the idea of kissing the Taipei Metro System, even though Taipei has the cleanest one in the world, might ruin it for me too. And so my odd shallow fantasy has already come to a sad ending.

By the way I spent an hour typing up a different blog entry only to have my browser (Google Chrome) instantly blink off the screen without so much as a cryptic error message, taking with it an hour's worth of blogging, never to be recovered, completely vaporized. It's the second time that's happened using Google Chrome. I might never use it again, at least not for typing my blog entries. I've never seen an application crash so fast, I only blinked, usually they slow down your whole computer for a few minutes before they take your precious data with them.