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