In school vocabulary words are piling up like unwanted spicy dumplings. I wish I could remember and use every single Chinese word in our text book, but that dream is gone. In it's place is my confused face, a regularly seen thing in room 331. My Korean class-mates called my face "Mong" which is a misspelled Korean word for something about "a blank stare." But things are not all disappointment and dismay, today after our substitute teacher pointed out that I was the only male and American in the class, my 4 female class-mates laughed and told me that I was a flower. So I guess I should be happy about that, no one's ever called me a flower.

Today after school, after the sun had set, I had a goal: I looked at my little goal list, nodded my head to myself, slipped on my sandals, puffed out my chest and charged out and down the already familiar narrow sidewalks of TongAn Street towards 7-11! Once I was there I had to pace myself, so I went first to the ATM, easy, not a challenge at all! Ha! Then I located a pack of gum, not my goal, not a challenge (unless you want something other than the 2 kinds of gum they have there.) Now I was ready, I had done my research, looked up the words in two on-line dictionaries, and practiced them. I handed the checker girl my package of Wriggleys mint gum, looked her square in the eye and asked her if she had any garbage bags... She replied in a somewhat complicated 5-8 word sentence, but I heard a word I recognized, and I guessed that she was asking me which bags I wanted. Ha! I was ready. 300 kuai. I knew this was not a real bag price (I should have asked for 297, which any Taiwanese person would know.) But I think she knew that I knew what I was doing, I'm sure she was impressed, so she whipped out two packages of bags for me to choose from. I confidently pointed to the bigger more expensive one, I knew I could fill it, after all I come from the king of garbage making countries. The rest was a daze, money was passed, garbage bags were passed, I think I passed another gape mouthed customer on my way out, (how did this foreigner get those bags?), but it's a haze now. When I got home I filled one of my very own official City of Taipei approved garbage bags full of my own garbage tied the top expertly and put it against the wall near the front door. My room-mate wasn't long in getting home after that, I could see the approval in his face. He even asked me how he would say "throw away" in English, he could tell I knew how to say it. (edit 293) Permalink