It's official, the Republic of China (Taiwan's Official Name) has allowed me to stay another 60 days without leaving the country. My visa has been extended, this time the full 60 days instead of 45. I've also determined that showing up a little late to the Immigration offices pays off, I was there all of but 15 minutes instead of the usual DVD-like hour that I was last time. Every time I get that stamp on my passport I feel a great sense of relief, today the lady who was looking at my paperwork seemed to have trouble with it, she made two phone calls, I assume to either the school or to some other branch, but then she gave me a stamp that says "2008 July 31" It's beautiful. But that's the last allowed extension, in 60 days I'll have to leave and come back, I'll probably go to Hong Kong then fly back the same day, unless I can think of something I want to do there.
Next week I start the next term of classes. This time, it's been confirmed, I'll have over 10 class-mates. I'm a little annoyed about it, but I'm not entirely sure it'll make much difference either way, so we'll see. Also it's in the morning instead of the afternoon.
Also today: I saw a girl tickling her boyfriend from behind him on a scooter, he was laughing. I thought it was funny, but at the same time, would you want somebody tickling you when you were driving a scooter? There was no accident.
But yesterday was a bit more eventful, yesterday was the last day I saw Eric and Anita, they left today. We went to a "European" restaurant, I guess it was, it was good. Usually here you don't really have a "waitress" as you might have in the West, someone might bring you your food then clean off your table, but they don't really wait on you. But at this "European" restaurant I got to experience people leaning over me all the time trying to refill my water glass or somebody else's. Also the waitress who took my order, in English, seemed to be worried that I'd only ordered sausage. One of the meals was just three pieces of sausage, I guess that was pretty unthinkable for her, she made sure I knew it really didn't come with anything. Then it turned out it did come with a little piece of potato and some peppers. But about half-way through my meal of "sausage" which was pretty good, I realized that eating just sausage is indeed, even to us Westerners, a strange and unsatisfying meal.
After our European meal, which was with about 10 other local brothers and sisters, Eric, Anita, and I took two little kids with us and went shopping for some junk. But we stopped by a pet shop first to point at all the cute animals. I think I like the mice the most, but they had some sort of sting rays or some kind of rays in a fish tank, they were cool. During our little shopping trip Eric and I observed how we'd both seen here more than once brothers who got along with their little sisters pretty well. The kids we were with were about 13 and 11, a boy and a girl. We jokingly wondered what was wrong with them. It's nice to see.
After a little shopping, where I bought some mild cheddar cheese, we came to the point where it was time to say good-bye. We talked about how we wished we could stay longer, in Taiwan, a few months isn't long enough to learn much it seems. Then I hugged Anita good-bye, then Eric and I walked off towards the MRT, which I needed him to help me find. After saying good-bye to Eric, I sank down into the earth on a Taiwanese escalator, towards the MRT train that would soon take me home.