"But I at last with weary feet...

Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My even-rest and sleep to meet."

Well, it has been a decidedly good weekend. Saturday was the Inbound orientation... while parts of it were boring speeches (the one about the history of Taiwan was excellent) the chance to meet with scads of inbound students (instead of the usual dearth of bàirén) made it all worthwhile. I learned the names/faces of many students; however, I forgot [when meeting again] Cindy from Wanfang High School. Afterwards, Scott, Claire & I went to an "eslite" bookstore to kill time.

There, we discovered that bookstores are kind of like libraries. That is, it's really quiet in them, because many people are reading; prices are comparable to stuff at Chapters (I mean like $10-25 CAD) so some find it cheaper to read there. Scott & I each bought a copy of what could quite possibly be the best book in existence: certainly more hilarious than the Mad Russian's Crime & Punishment.

There was a small party afterwards, dinner was ok--I finally worked up the testicular fortitude to eat a lot of the gross-looking chicken (which tastes like regular chicken, except they cut it weird, so there are bones and skin and yucky stuff). Also, I discovered that, indeed, old people here can speak Japanese [due to a long occupation of Taiwan by Japan]. Scott also mentioned that he thought 'indeed' was a pretentious word. I kind-of forgot Rtn Vino, because the last time I had seen her was 2 weeks ago at the airpor--managed to salvage it, though not before offering her my card again. D'oh.

There was a grandfather there who made us all a calligraphy thing, where it has our chinese names, & the maxim "Hao Xue Bu Lei" -- something along the lines of "Like studying & you will not tnire" or "Study hard & tirelessly." So I said "Anata-wa shoodo-ga joozu desu." He was surprised... but unfortunately I still suck harshly at Chinese. On the MRT back, Scott and I spoke to some random white people, who turned out to be Rotary Exchange students from another district. Now, about today:

I agreed on Thursday (as a Rotarian insistently volunteered herself) to go places today. I planned to get up at 9:00 AM, then meet her at the MRT station 70 meters away at 9:30. My mother woke me at 9:15, as my watch-alarm failed to wake me. Consequently, I rushed breakfast to make it on time. Once I arrived, it turns out Alice brought her good friend (also from my club) ... since I had actually "met" her by shaking hands and exchanging cards, I managed to remember her name (which made her happy).

We headed immediately towards Linshin station so we could visit the prestigious "National Palace Museum." I have heard part of the reason it rocks so much is because the government which fled to Taiwan in the Communist revolution stole all the good artifacts from mainland China; however, regardless it must be said that it rocks a lot (if you like Chinese stuff). I took some pictures but it was dark so many are blurry. I saw really sweet stuff, like imperial seals. A cool thing was this famous painting & poem "ode upon the red cliffs".... in the painting there is a little boat containing the scholar who writes the poem. Somebody made a replica carved out of an olive stone. The pit of an olive. With 8 little people inside, 4 articulating latticed doors, and a tea service on the table inside, with the poem carved on the bottom. All one piece. Insane.

Lunch was good, but expensive. I didn't realise for a while that everything was shared by everyone so I tried to order like one thing. Also, the staff brought me a fork again, which pisses me off. Alice's friend Stacey taught me the correct way to hold chopsticks, but it really sucks because it kind of hurts my hand and I'm not so good at it. Here's the picture I took off my camera before the bitchy batteries tired out again:

Another thing I saw which was really sweet was this decorative ivory thing... somehow, out of all one piece, they made an object with 9 latticed balls, one inside the other. The technique is now lost, but I saw it with my own eyes and it r0x0r3d my s0x0rz. There were also ridiculously small latticed boxes connected with chain, all made out of one piece of jade or ivory. Much sweetness, I am going back at least twice more. Imagine carving links of chain (interlinked and that can move around) out of a solid piece of stone, really I think it was very hardcore.

Afterwards, we went to the movie theatre, which was very big. The lineup was stupidly long... I wanted to see "Super Size Me," but it wasn't showing today... the next best thing was "the Terminal" which I'd already seen. We bought tickets then went to dinner at a Chinese Japanese restaurant (by that I mean the servers didn't speak Japanese and there was no sushi or sashimi). Alice's mother met us there, and she could also speak Japanese. The elderly rock... they are very cool & multi-lingual. So afterwards we watched the movie and people laughed in the weirdest places. Like the stuff I thought was funny, I was the only one, and almost the whole crowd was totally broken up at things where I hardly cracked a smile. I attribute part of it to the subtitles, but I felt like my sense of humour was messed up.

Anyway, turns out since one of the Japanese guys isn't registered at my school, so we are all not starting until Tuesday. Day off w00t. As always, post a comment. If you have nothing to say, tell me where the quote that titles/begins this post comes from. Rock on.