Tidbits from Taiwan

First and most importantly, Happy Birthday Mum!

So, after a month of failed attempts (due to sleeping in), I finally got myself up earlier enough to get to the Muzha mountain [suggested by the German girl I met at MRT Station] to drink tea with some friends. It was a 2 hour journey, but somehow, using a business card with sketchy directions in chinese, I got our group of five up on the mountain around 11:30 AM, and we stayed till 3:45 PM. You might ask how we managed to drink tea for around 4 hours and 15 minutes, but we just took our time. We sat there chatting and passing around the yerba mate' gourd (S. American Tea) and filling our glasses with hot chinese tea. Aside from looking out from our roofed patio on the rain and fog settling on the lush mountainous view, we sat and listened to countless chill songs on my iPod with portable speakers, watched a Chris Rock comedy show on Zach's computer...yes, he brought his computer...and played some cards. The entire trip including drink, 2 hour transportation for everyone, and some delicious noddle cups, cost around $15 for five people.

Afterward we headed to Taipei 101 to the bookstore (largest English bookstore in....Taiwan I guess) and then headed to the Warner Brother Movie theater to watch Zorro...kinda good movie, but...neh. Point being is that one movie for all of us cost about the same as the many hour trip to the tea mountain place.

Today, thats when all this happened, was kind of my reward for finishing the chinese exam; that being a short (2~3 minutes) speech, in Chinese, to the class about a topic of your choice. I chose Calligraphy as I have been learning some recently as I have said before. It went reasonably well, though ten minutes before we were to start the instructor told me that my BabelFish-Translation (online translator) of my speech was completely devoid of coherent logic and flow. So I spent that ten minutes redoing the whole thing with her help. The magic of computers...

Speaking of Calligraphy, I had Calligraphy class again this week, and this time we started writing. After slooowly churning the ink stick in the water held in the ink basin 200 times (No joke. After finishing 200 times, he looked at it and said, "3 more times"), Mr Grand Master had me practice an old chinese poem. The rough translation of the poem is..."When you understand a good book, it is midnight". Stunning Genius. Heh, but the calligraphy is sweet.

The BreakDance Battle flopped, and no one knew why, or at least they couldn't muster up enough english to tell us. So, sorry, no cool dancing battle videos.

I just finished Watership Down. Great book, I don't know why I stopped reading it half way through a year or two ago. But, business finished, I am now on to "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, as I have been told countless times of its underrated superiority to Dan Brown's more well-know book, "Da-Vinci Code".

SAT is coming up yet again in...next week I think. Yes, I am taking it yet another time...I like it that much...but seriously, whehf, I am already starting to memorize the Proctors' little "fill in the bubbles completely. Any stray marks will..." speeches.

The school had a basketball tournament this week between all the classes. It got seriously intense. Lots of injuries, falls, and shouts of "Zou! Zou! Zou!" by the crazed supporters. For a low key bunch, they would do wonders as Football Super-Fans.

This thursday instead of school, all the Rotary exchange students will be viewing presentations put on by younger students at another school in Taipei and then heading off to some hot springs to enjoy some heat.

Happy Halloween and coming November!

Hey there little guy, I finally get to catch up on your blogs after not having internet for 10 days. I still don't have power at my house and I'm not guaranteed it till at least the 28th of this month. I hope you're happy and it was wonderful to talk with you on the phone. Make sure to keep practicing english so you don't forget the difference between no and know. I love you, take care of yourself. I miss you a lot didi. si jian. -Mike