"All I do is eat & sleep & sing"

Well, not really... though I did just listen to Abba's "Super Trouper." Today, I had free time due to not going to friggin Catholic choir. So, as per our plans I went shopping at Ximen with Anna. Now, a few words about Ximen: this is only the 3rd or 4th time I have been there, and the first time without a middle-aged Rotary woman. It is called "teenager's paradise" due to the immense number of clothing stores, movie theatres, food shops, arcades, KTV, and all the things teenagers in Taiwan allegedly like to do. Most of the exchange students are sick of it because they went there "too many" times in the first few months. Like '30 to 40 times' apparently which sounds insane.

Anyway, this morning was another dull culture class. This guy came in and showed us above puppets & stuff, so we got to play with them. It's kind of difficult and awkward. Like almost everyone, American Claire has bigger hands than I (just randomly). It was dull, so I talked to AA & AC for a while, then went with Scott to heat his lunch box. We hacked for about 30 minutes until it was ready, then down to class--discovered everyone leaving to the mall early, 'bout 11:30 so we headed over. Had subway, more chitchat, then reviewed for the test in Chinese.

Test was pretty short & easy, there was a (gasp!) oral component. Involving just reading a Chinese conversation passage, then describing freestyle a picture saying as much as you could about it. I didn't know the word for "soldier," "wall" or "swing" but I managed to talk a lot. Mostly about the clothes the people were wearing, & why I liked the soldier because he had a drum. Fun times. Afterwards, hung out with Alex & Claire a bit, & talked with Claire for a while. Then went to Ximen with Anna.

We walked around a lot of it, playing the drum game. Anna is pretty good & I was sucking. We turned the difficulty too high. Looked at handbags for Anna, she smoked a bit of which I don't really approve. Eventually went to the food court for dinner, I had steak which came with really crappy, watered-down versions of the two generic beverages at all restaurants. Anna made me ask a random student the population of Taipei, but he thought like 2 million when I wanted to know the pop for the county. What are they teaching the children these days?

Afterwards, went shopping some more, found a fantastically cheap store for bags (most things were 100) so Anna bought two & a purse. Also went to another store so I got a Canada button for my bag. I want a Wanfang Senior High bag though. After that, we went back out to the MRT station. Outside is a guy we'd seen earlier. He had these dolls & seemed to offer them to people, but not ask for money. So we went up to talk to him, and Anna was trying to talk to him but he wasn't responsive. He showed me a sign and it said he was with an organization for deaf-mutes. So I wrote some notes back & forth to him, and bought a doll for Anna for NT $100 (4 bucks canadian). Merry Christmas to her. Then we talked to some random foreigners, who turned out to be from Canada incl. BC who were teaching English in Taipei. Then home.

Fun in a bucket I thought. It's all about the people, & as I can't hang out with you all, faithful readers, I must develop relationships with these as well. Thus having a widely spread network of dear friends to visit around the globe. That would be cool I think. Thanks for all the comments on the last post... behold Greg & Celia.

Tomorrow all afternoon is the choir concert, yay~~in fact likely while you in the Nanaimo time zone are reading this I'll be on stage. Might not be able to post at that time but who knows. Hope it goes well. Rock on for now [35 minutes] K out