An update (高中 & 淡水)

I don't know if I've posted in a while, but here's an update on my life for those of you who might follow it with a modicum of interest.

I have started school (as of Thursday) finally. On Wednesday, we did Taiwanese traditional flag & ribbon dancing [boys & girls respectively]. I have pictures/video of that, incl. pics of the people Alleah & whoever so desperately wanted to see. But my camera is in the other room, so not today. It was much fun. My class is Grade 10s... 42 people, evenly girls & boys. The girls all sit at the front, & the boys all at the back, so it's weird--I don't talk to girls during class.

I have been photographed a lot of times & it's pretty random. Many girls think I am handsome or cute or something, which I find strange... though I do rather enjoy my hair nowadays. Some people are still shy (esp. younger girls) but whatever, it's only been two days & my class is especially cool. A lot of my friends like hip-hop & the likes, so there is really sweet urban art on the back wall of the class... in between classes somebody will plug an MP3 ("MP-san") player into the mic jack and pump pop music over the classroom speakers. I went to a school show on Friday where the rock band played (they covered "bring me to life" and the girl sounded exactly like the chick from Evanescence) & also there wre hip-hop dance breaks -- very skilled.

Today was "School's Day" so we went to school on a Saturday. It's like "meet the teacher" except parents can watch you do your class, but only a few came. We get another day off later in the month to make a 4-day weekend for Moon Festival though, so it's all good. I had military training today. The first part, I did tons of pushups/jumping jacks. The second part we just did standing... my mom came & watched, but it was dull. Like our instructor made us go back & forth between sitting and various types of standing... then a class of girls showed up, so while he taught them, we all stood holding one position for 20 minutes, in the hot sun. It was fun though, because when they were sucky we would all make fun of their poor performance.

Afterwards, headed off with my friends to get ice dessert for lunch at a restaurant--'twas good. Saw some Mormon missionaries on the way there, chatted with them for a while. Also, I had "Pudding Milk Tea" today... I like it (unlike "Pearl Milk Tea," known in Canada as 'bubble tea'). Headed off to the MRT station & rode to Danshui. My friend had the bright idea of 'treating me' to the ride, so he scanned his EasyCard in on the entrance gate.

淡水: When I got to Danshui station (after standing nearly the whole way) I scanned my card on the exit gate and it just beeped red and flashed a message. So some guy took me over to the info desk, where I explained (in Chinese) that I couldn't speak Chinese.

Eventually, they found a staffer who was bilingual, and I explained to him what happened. So they had to key the information into my card manually & I ended up being charged full price anyway. Bah. If only he'd bought me a ticket... :p Met up with some exchange students... English Claire & Lisa were there at the start, and a creepy old Chinese guy was taking their picture & asking for their addresses just as I arrived, but he left. They weren't too happy about it. Other-Claire & Kyle showed up quickly, as well as French Alex. We found Ivan wandering through the crowd & Laura showed up around then as well. Anna came very late (we had to go get her, we were far away at the time).

It turned out we ran into Taipei history day or something, so there were random cultural activities we could do. For the most part, we all walked around the waterfront, saw some cute dogs, tried food and played games. Alex & Ivan were being a bit silly a lot of the time... Alex wanted some girls' pcitures or something, but he got shut down--we couldn't hear what they were saying but we could see. Kyle kept whispering "walk away" as our friend dug himself deeper & deeper. They also said lots of random things in Chinese & other languages to people walking around / shopkeepers. American-Claire & I were a little embarrassed. Claire & Anna both played a game where you shoot balloons with BB guns, doing very well and winning good prizes. None of the guys dared attempt as we were afraid we would be shown up.

For dinner we went to a French restaurant where Alex did a good job of talking to the host. It was confusing because I was unsure what language to speak to the servers in (the maitre d' was French, but they were Taiwanese). We met some 白人 who were studying Chinese on exchange from Belarus & Russia... they were at the #2-ranked university in Taiwan. Eventually we all went home. I discovered a bookstore across the street from my house (well, across the alley--the post office is across the street). Joy. Most of the books are in Chinese though, and it's none too cheap. But there are postcards.

So, if you have a hankering for a postcard in the next while (maybe not a little while, maybe a long while) I would be much obliged were you to post a comment (or send an email, for the more paranoid) with your mailing address & postal code. If my hotmail bounces, try sending it to kdobson@shaw.ca. I check that occassionally and it has lots of webspace.

As always, post a comment... about your life, this post, my grammatical errors, whatever. Even to bitch about your lack of Asia的文語 support.