So Saturday morning I got up bright and early to go to Tapei, a little too bright and a little too early for me, but whatever. Got a ride to the meeting point from a friend of a friend which was a little slice of heaven, since it was a good 25 minute hike from my place. My little group of travelers split off from the main group almost immediately; whereas the other students headed off to see Taipei 101, my group did not pass go, or collect two hundred dollars, and we went directly to Danshui. Now I'll be completely honest, I had no idea what Danshui was or where or what would even be there. I pretty much just get on the bus and see where it takes me, and in this case, it too us to Danshui. It was one of the most useful ports in Taiwan long long ago when all manner of Europeans used it as a trading base. In fact, you can still go see the Spanish turned Dutch turned English fort way up on a hill, and although the hike is murder the view is spectacular! We wandered around Danshui for awhile eating all manner of questionable foods, including this famous egg thing that was described to me as an egg that is "boiled, then sun dried, then boiled, then sun dried, then boiled, then sun dried" over and over and over. This results in a normal chicken's egg turning the rough color and consistency of a bike tire... and maybe the flavor too. I gave the egg a fair shot, but I felt less like I was eating a snack and more like I was a dog gnawing on one of those Kong toys. Meal time was relatively safe otherwise though, and we spent a good chunk of the afternoon walking around the fort and surrounding college area. Of course, then I found that my traveling companions knew the location of Asian pop star Jay Chou's highschool, and we were right in the area. Bouncing around like a pack of giddy fangirls (which we all were), we probably spent two hours walking around the gorgeous high school campus making moony eyes and taking ridiculous pictures. All of our conversations started off with "Can you believe that Jay Chou _______ (ex. walked down this road, played basketball on this court, failed a test in this classroom)? We're just that cool. Finally, we headed back down towards the main foody areas of Danshui, where my Chinese friends spent a great deal of time trying to cajole me into eating squid balls and tofu cakes. Sneaky sneaky, but my self-preservation won out. Of course by then we were all pretty much exhausted, so when I saw a few members of our group that were planning to go back to Taichung instead of staying the night, I hopped boats. Probably not the proudest moment, but I had a lot of homework to do and I worried about not getting it all done in time. We went our separate ways, but I did have a consolation prize... before heading back to Taichung we got to go to the big night market in Taipei and eat shaved ice! Good stuff!!
Got back to Taichung super late, and thus most of my Sunday was spent lounging around watching Independence Day online and sporadically accomplishing school work. I was a bit jealous of all the people that had fun without me Sunday, but seeing the dragging faces Monday morning kept me in check. I knew I would be heading to Kenting the next weekend, so I figured it was important to do the right thing and be productive, at least for a day.
As for the rest of the week, the biggest highlight was starting Chinese classes, which for some inexplicable reason start at 9 in the morning. Some of you out there with kids and real jobs might say, "Nine? What a reasonable time to start studying a foreign language!" but for a girl like me, who's regularly online doing homework or something until one or two, it's pretty much hell on earth. I dragged myself to class on time pretty much every day, but staying active (and awake for that matter) was a lot harder to do. The way the classes are set up is that we are supposed to take 15 hours of Chinese a week, three hours a day, five days a week. Sadly, this scheduling did not work out for me. Most students at the CLC (Chinese Language Center) don't have to take other classes around the school like I do; in fact, many of the CLC students aren't even college students! The other three people in my class are all at least 10 years older than me - an American missionary with a wife and a baby, a married Korean woman with two kids ages 8 & 4, and a French/Englishman who's probably as old as my father. All have been living in Taiwan for several years, and all have taken classes through the CLC before. This means when we got into class, they were ready to go at chapter five, whereas I didn't have any of the vocabulary from chapters 1-4. For each hour of class, we are taught by a different teacher, and move about from room to room, and for this first week they mainly did a quick run-through review. It could have been worse I suppose, but my input was limited because I knew none of the vocabulary. If they had started talking about the Great Wall or the semantic elements of Chinese characters, I probably would have been set. Instead, they talked about useful things, which only solidified my belief that the book we last used in Chinese class was a fantastic waste of time and energy.
That aside, I nearly laughed when the third teacher suggested that I do all the homework for chapters 1-4 overnight so the teachers could see that I was up to speed. I gave my best "are you kidding me?" face, which apparently didn't translate too well, because she asked if I had finished it the next day. That time, I actually gave a rather well toned response of "umm, I have WAY too much homework already to be expected to do an ENTIRE SEMESTER'S worth of Chinese in a day." She smiled, nodded, and asked me to finish it soon. I smiled, nodded, and thought "no way in hell." Then of course, I got lectured for not being able to do all 15 hours of class a week. At Tunghai, the maximum amount of hours any student can take is 25, but unless they have a death wish, most students top around 18 or 20. With my ten hours of other classes (including one graduate level class), I decided that 10 hours of Chinese a week would be the maximum I could do without going completely insane and jumping out a window. My choice apparently wasn't as appreciated, as I was reminded again and again that I'd be missing out on content that my classmates were going through. I appreciate the fact that they're trying to help me, but I can barely keep on top of the work load as it is, and we haven't even gotten to midterm week. We'll see how this struggle turns out...
Other than that, nothing else new is really going on. Heading to Kenting for the weekend, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in Asia. My friend Tiffany was worried for me, because apparently the weather is supposed to cool down to a low of 27 C, high of 31. For those of you who don't know how much that equates in Fahrenheit, it's a comfortable 80 degree low, possibly dipping into the 90s. Tragically cold.
That's all for now! Time to actually get some homework done for next week!
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