Tidbits from Taiwan

10:58 in the Morning
Living Room :: Host House [01]
Zhong Shan N Rd :: Taipei :: Taiwan

Subject relaxing on couch; typing.
No mysterious actions reported other than
eating an above average number of yogurts.

Hello again.
I'd just like to say on my defense, those yogurts are fantastic. They are not just any yogurts, but chinese mini-cup yogurts popular throughout Asia (and unknown to the US). They come in a tini plastic cup, and are actually liquid. I really don't think they are even yogurts, but thats what all the chinese people like to call them, so I do too. But they are great. They can but finished in one gulp. But enough of my lactose fascinations. Here's your weekly report.

Right after I wrote last week I went out with my classmates to watch Deuce Bigalow, the male...person. Instead, due to the fact we were late, we ended up watching Flight Plan. Turns out all the movies here (unless they are made in Asia: few and far) are in English with Chinese subtitles. Since my classmates didn't speak much english and I didn't speak much Chinese, the evening was full of mistranslations and pointing wildly at things. I also noticed I am starting to over exaggerate my verbal responses in order to make things more clear. It would look strange back in the US I am sure, so I better no how to stop.

I met some kids in the park near my house the other day while walking home from Liz's birthday "outing". I happened on them because I heard one of them playing guitar (in english) and singing some Red Hot Chilli Peppers song or something. Most of them go to the Taipei American School but a few go to a British school. It was interesting cause there were so many different ethnicities played up. There was a girl part Taiwanese and Scandinavian?. Though she lived in Taiwan all her life and spoke English and the other language from Europe, she didn't speak much Chinese. There was a Mexican boy that spoke perfect english, and kids that were half Taiwanese and half British. They were all pretty friendly and I talked with them awhile before realizing I was 30 minutes or so late, so I headed home.

I also met, a couple nights later, two Americans in the same park. One of them, the guy named Reed, was doing Poi (almost exactly like glowstringing). The girl named Lauren was hoolahooping. But they told me about a group of people that get together every Friday night at 11pm at a Coffee Shop (prolly outside it) and spin balls of fire round their bodies. It looks fantastic. I might just have to put a video of it up. I won't however be able to see the fire-twirlers as the time is after my curfew. Nuts. Coincidentally I came across a street performer doing fire-poi the other night in Ximen as I was going home. He was from New Jersey (but with chinese parents) living here for about a year and learned fire poi and the body ball thing (rolling a ball around your body, really cool) both offline and from friends. I think I shall have to learn the ball thing now. For anyone interested... [ http://www.homeofpoi.com | http://www.glowsticking.com | http://www.contactjuggling.com ]

I had my first lesson with the Grand Master of Calligrahy (Mr. Lin), heh. He drove me to his house 5 minutes away by motorscooter (Yeya) and my homeroom teacher arrived a little later. He owns stories of an apartment, the top one full of tables laid out with calligraphy brushes and and ink stones. The whole place looked awesome, like an ancient chinese palace or something.

This past Friday, instead of going to Ping-Pong club I went with Liz and Elisa to the Pool club which took place at place full of pool tables five minutes away from school. I was whomped, I tell you, whomped. I had no chance. Another activity I have to practice. To satisfy our pool sharks' sweet toothes we headed to the candy store two shops over. We filled up a couple bags of sweets and sat munching for a while, while watching more pool. Afterwards I headed out to dinner with my classmates at a Barbeque type restaurant. You sit at a table with four holes, one in front of each person. They put a metal pot of water in the whole and it starts boiling. You boil the vegetables and meats you picked out from the All-You-Can-Eat type section and eat. The food was fantastic. After eating almost all of my food save for some noodles and lettuce I was full. Everyone else had finished all of their food and were looking at me. They told me that the restaurant had a rule that if you don't finish your food you are charged 100NT for adults and $50NT for children. This rule is to teach people a lesson about finishing their food they said. Wow. Well I finished my food.

Yesterday Liz, Elisa and I headed to Danshui with some students from the 501 class. {{HA! No way. Let me interrupt this to just say this famous singer guy singing a really romantic taiwanese song, that I am now watching on TV, is sporting the mole and hair thing on his chin. Those hairs (no joke) are about 3~4 inches long.}} Anways, we went to dinner at a three story restaurant were they were only about 8 different kinds of bowls you could order. It was fantastic food though. Then we headed across the large lake in a boat and got on some of those (what they call in the US) crouch rockets and rode around the park for an hour.

My next host host is coming up. I move on the 6th of November to an apartment maybe 10~15 minutes away, I forget. The family has a daughter a couple years younger than me and a younger son (don't know his age). I visited their house previously and on that occasion I had loads of fun with the brother playing PlayStation and shooting his BeeBee gun in the kitchen. They are nice people, so, looking forward though I will miss my current host house. Its so relaxing here.

Have a nice day.

hey, nice to see you're still posting, God, school has been crazy, I'm just not used to all the work (since I didn't do much when I was in Taiwan, haha) I gotta take the SAT soon as well....
Looks like Tim, Kaity, and I have a good chance at going on exchange again next year, but we have to finish our senior years well before we do that.