Don't your feet get cold in the wintertime?

The sky won't snow & the sun won't shine. Well, the sun'll shine, but the buildings are still made of concrete, not to mention the fact that people leave windows open deliberately, then wear coats inside. I don't understand, but nor do I judge (just wear my sandal/slippers, so my feet don't touch the floor).

Let's talk a little bit about Monday... I posted in a comment somewhere how it didn't suck enough, and you all should have inferred likewise from the lack of rant. Even though the event involved very flawed treatment of we the exchange students & in general "culture class" has been poorly executed, several saving graces prevent me from doing anything but providing a summary.

At a few minutes past 4 I arrived at Yuanshan station (seems all Rotary events are up on the Red line), which it turns out is the station for the famous hotel that looks like a traditional Asian building and is very nice. Hacked with AA/Scott for a while before we went to the hotel. People were of course late.

We went up to the 12th floor and started wandering aimlessly--a sweet hall was decked out for the visit of the presidet-elect of Rotary (i.e. he just got voted in for RI but won't lead until later). We were given cold lunch boxes for dinner, rushed to eat them, and then we went out to practise, sans props, on the stage. This finished around 5ish which was when Yujing got there (I admire how she is consistently late).

After this, we had nothing to do, and were left to our devices in a rather small room (maybe 20' x 20' for 20 people)... the event was not to start until 7:30. So Scott & I talked to some college dance students, who were there to be lackeys for the dance-teacher lady. This was cool and part of the reason I was not *furious* afterwards as it helped pass the hours of waiting. Later on we had to put on lame t-shirts... partway through I left the little room (gasp!) to listen to the speech by the President. It was pretty interesting, though broken up due to him stopping for the translator every couple lines.

Just prior to the start of the event, Scott and I placed our business cards (with handwritten messages) at the new president's spot at the head table... go my random ideas. At 9:00 PM (5 hours after we HAD to be there) we performed our parts, and posed for pictures. We all shook hands with the president and exchanged a few words with him. This was interesting, though unfortunately, he was fresh out of business cards. We also met the assistant to the president, a Mexican (pres is a Swede) who in turn has an unimportant assistant.

I think we were finished at about 9:30 & got to the MRT. 5 hours 30 minutes for a performance/photo op of 10 minutes tops. At this point we were mostly pretty irked due to all the wasted time and the leadership style of Vino. So there was nothing for it for me & some of the guys to go play pool at Ximending. Sure I didn't get home until 12:10, but I had fun, forget some of the suckiness of before, and got better at pool. I had do some laundry and stuff, so I didn't get to bed until 2:30.

However, as Kaylee had invited me & I had been keen to go, on Tuesday I went to the Taipei Zoo with some people... I got there at 10:00 AM sharp, as she'd said. Of course, Etienne, Yujing & Yoshiteru arrived around 30 minutes later... the ticket was really cheap, just over $1.00 CDN (30 NT). I brought my camera & by the end took about 120 pictures, but I think I will post only two:

Most of the ones I took after a while were of signage, because it was difficult to photograph a lot of the animals & I was more interested in seeing them myself. Also, the signs had English names & Chinese with bopomo (the zoo is children-friendly, yay) so I took a lot of those for educational purposes. Scott came after a while and all in all it was great fun.

After a long time walking around we eventually left, ate at MacDonalds (I had a ew "prosperity burger") & berate me if you must, but I need my calories however unhealthily they come. Subsequently all agreed to watch Smallville at Scott's (incl. new addition Yoshiteru). Thus we rode the MRT back to Dingxi, picked up Claire from the Zhang residence & started on another disc. It had some terrific episodes I tell you, beautiful story... actually I cried at the end of the last one on the disc (this usually only happens during LotR; "Princess Mononoke" makes me fall asleep if I'm tired).

After that Scott, Claire & I watched a lot of bonus features... Smallville is amazing not only because all the actors are brilliant, perfectly cast, and with awesome chemistry, but also for numerous other reasons. The script is really well-written. Characters have intelligent lines and the many interacting story lines are really enjoyable and cleverly interconnected. The show's theme is about secrets, revelations thereof, & who knows what... also they always try to go for feature-film quality. I love it.

Afterwards, we three had a long discussion on various topics, from Monday, to Chinese to who will probably get sent home... a number of things. Rotary, how we're treated, whatever. It was really neat & I agreed to go with Claire sometime to meet the Su family in Neihu (if I though Nanshijiao was far out, this really is the boonies... take the MRT to the end at Kunyang, then take a bus, then walk. Yeah. Gotta love living in Taipei county.

Today I went to culture class & it was pretty random. It was another Gong Fu, kind of in the middle of the stupid one and the awesome one, but we mostly weilded sticks. This class (unlike others) ran all the way until the end. For once. Several people again took their sweet time coming, & I don't blame them. Lunch was good, with fine conversation to be had. Chinese class was random though, we ended really early.

BUT, I add, something interesting happened. I was assigned yet another 500 word essay (these people aren't very creative are they?) about what I will be doing Chinese New Year (not at all)... that is until my teacher realised I was already writing one about it. So now it's about everything in the break except the CNY. That means I can write it earlier, but it also means Kenta & I have 3 essays of 500 words each to write over the break (that's 1500 words, in Chinese of course, otherwise I wouldn't complain).

Went to a stationery store afterwards. I got a new book with sections, A4 paper (8.5" x 11") for my essay like the school told me, and flash cards. I plan to use the flash cards to convert transit time into study time with them. Got on the bus at like 4:15, it was really fast, only half an hour or thereabouts again, not hitting traffic until the drag in Zhong He city.

That's all for now folks. [1 hour 15 minutes] K out