I think spring is officially here and that I can finally put my heater away. The weather has been in the 70s this past week. Apart from a couple torrential downpours, it’s been fairly nice and sunny. I’ve been sick with yet another cold this week, but it’s not too bad. I have been working out a lot. I’m continuing with yoga, of course, but the weather has allowed some good runs by the river in the past couple of weeks. My city is just across the bridge from downtown and there’s a good running path on my side of the river. Well, I call it a running path, but I think I’m the only person I’ve ever seen actually running on it. There are some walkers, and just a few people passing through on their scooters. Of course they look me up and down, bewildered by why a girl is running there. Exercise? It’s a foreign concept for many here. I actually made it back to the night market I used to go to all the time in the fall. I hadn’t been there in months! I think I’ve just been too lazy to 1. walk there after work and 2. deal with the crowds of people strolling through (those that know me well know that I do not stroll.) Anyway, hopefully now that the weather’s nicer I will get there more often.
Language exchange is going well. In these past two weeks I have mastered colors in Chinese. I really have a lot of admiration for people who really learn the language. It’s so hard! For example, my city is Young Ho. You’d think that would be fairly easy to pronounce, but NO! It seems that every time I get in a taxi I have to say it about 10 times for the driver to understand where I’m talking about. In my best Chinese pronunciation I say “Young Ho” (pronounced in Chinese it’s more like “Young Herr”.) And they’re like “Huh?” and I say it again and again and finally they’re like “Oh! Young Ho!”…like exactly they way I’ve been saying it for the past 2 minutes. Ah! Anyway, I doing language exchange and helping my partner out with her English. And I feel that I am getting some Chinese out of it, as well.
I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading the whole time I’ve been here, but realized I never mention it on the blog. I just finished A Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. (My Dad actually sent it to me from home.) It was written by a Chinese girl (from mainland) who studies in England for a year. She writes about all of her experiences and especially about her relationship with an English guy she meets there. At the beginning of the book she writes in very broken English. But by the end it’s pretty good. It was interesting for me to get some more insight into what it’s really like to learn English. She talks a lot about the language and why it was so difficult for her and about the things that just don’t make sense to someone learning it as a second language. Now I am reading “Eat, Pray, Love.” Mom and I bought it in Hong Kong. A 30-something writer from New York gets divorced and decides to take a trip to Italy, Indonesia and India for a year (spending 4 months in each place). She has a specific thing she wants to get out of each place (“the art of pleasure” in Italy, “the art of devotion” in India, and “the art of balancing the two” in Indonesia.) I’m about 100 pages into the book and it’s a really good read so far.
In other news, Taiwan elected a new president yesterday. Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party won. It was expected to be a very close race, but in the end he won about 60 percent of the vote. He supports better relations with mainland China. For example, he would like to establish direct flights between mainland and Taiwan. (As it stands now, there are no direct flights between Taiwan and mainland.)
Yesterday I went to the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine just north of the city. (Thankfully, was nearly empty due to it being election day.) The complex, which honors those who have fought for Taiwan in war, is full of buildings and greenery. We were there in time for the changing of the guard which was also cool to see. I’ve added pictures to my “Out and About in Taipei-The Second Half” album on my photo site.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m off to Japan in about 10 days, so my next post will probably be about that. Happy Easter to all at home!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
And the second half has begun…
Hard to believe I’m over halfway through my time here at this point. I am keeping really busy. This past Thursday was a national holiday, Peace Memorial Day or “2-28.” Some friends and I went out to a town called Ilan about an hour bus ride out of the city. One of my good Taiwanese friends is from there and took us all around. We rented scooters, ate food, drove out to a hiking area, and went to an amazing hot springs hotel in the nearby town of Jiaushi. Hiking was great because the air was so fresh out there. The hot springs hotel was amazing. Hot springs are extremely popular with the Taiwanese. I’ve been twice now, once to a public one north of the city, and once on my trip down south to Kenting. Neither were nearly as amazing as this one. The complex had one large pool with different types of jets for different parts of the body, a few smaller pools for different things (“beautification,” muscle pain, pure mountain water, and one scented pool), and a water slide. But the best part was the pool just for your feet with small fish that swarm and bite the dead skin off of them. It felt so weird at first but then I got used to it! It was so fun and so cheap (about $7 US). We decided we’re definitely going back (possibly next weekend.) I've posted pictures of this trip on my photo site.
In other news, I’m going to Japan for a five day trip in about 4 weeks. I have a friend from R-MC who is teaching English a couple hours outside of Kyoto. I will probably spend about two and a half days seeing Kyoto which is apparently amazing. Hopefully I will get to see the cherry blossoms, too. Japan was one of the top places on my list of things to do here, so I am very excited.
I’m going to start volunteering at an orphanage on the outskirts of Taipei. I just visited it with a friend of a friend yesterday. She’s been volunteering there for a year now so she took me along to meet some of the staff and see what it was like. It’s run by a Catholic organization and the facility houses kids of all ages. I am going to be volunteering in the nursery for the smallest babies (under 1 year). There was one baby who was sleeping the whole time I was there who was just about one month old. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went there, but was surprised to see how nice the facility is. The babies want for nothing and are very well taken care of. The youngest ones share cribs and the older ones have their own larger cribs. They are bathed, fed and changed on schedule, and they all look like very happy babies. So as a volunteer I will be holding them, playing with them, and helping with feeding and changing. Most of them are orphans, but some have mothers who are trying to get on their feet and come in to feed and visit them. Really the only thing they lack is one on one attention and human touch and contact, so I think that’s really where the role of the volunteers comes in. I held some of the smaller ones and took a couple of the older ones out of their cribs to a play mat together. They are all so adorable and it was so fun to see a huge smile come to their faces when I started to play with them. (And a few started to scream and cry when I put them down, so sad.) I will be going once a week for two hours.
It’s warming up here finally and the best part is it has stopped raining every single day. It rained for 40 straight days and finally stopped last week. Thank goodness because that was really getting old. So it’s back up in the 60s and 70s now. Hopefully I can put my heater away for good soon! But I’m sure I’ll be complaining when it’s 90 and humid soon enough.
In other news, I’m going to Japan for a five day trip in about 4 weeks. I have a friend from R-MC who is teaching English a couple hours outside of Kyoto. I will probably spend about two and a half days seeing Kyoto which is apparently amazing. Hopefully I will get to see the cherry blossoms, too. Japan was one of the top places on my list of things to do here, so I am very excited.
I’m going to start volunteering at an orphanage on the outskirts of Taipei. I just visited it with a friend of a friend yesterday. She’s been volunteering there for a year now so she took me along to meet some of the staff and see what it was like. It’s run by a Catholic organization and the facility houses kids of all ages. I am going to be volunteering in the nursery for the smallest babies (under 1 year). There was one baby who was sleeping the whole time I was there who was just about one month old. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went there, but was surprised to see how nice the facility is. The babies want for nothing and are very well taken care of. The youngest ones share cribs and the older ones have their own larger cribs. They are bathed, fed and changed on schedule, and they all look like very happy babies. So as a volunteer I will be holding them, playing with them, and helping with feeding and changing. Most of them are orphans, but some have mothers who are trying to get on their feet and come in to feed and visit them. Really the only thing they lack is one on one attention and human touch and contact, so I think that’s really where the role of the volunteers comes in. I held some of the smaller ones and took a couple of the older ones out of their cribs to a play mat together. They are all so adorable and it was so fun to see a huge smile come to their faces when I started to play with them. (And a few started to scream and cry when I put them down, so sad.) I will be going once a week for two hours.
It’s warming up here finally and the best part is it has stopped raining every single day. It rained for 40 straight days and finally stopped last week. Thank goodness because that was really getting old. So it’s back up in the 60s and 70s now. Hopefully I can put my heater away for good soon! But I’m sure I’ll be complaining when it’s 90 and humid soon enough.
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