"The exchange student's job seems to be eating shit & crapping out flowers." #93

Ok, I was quite surprised & pleased by the number of comments on the previous post. It also seems I have new readers of whom I was not previously aware (注意: several changes have been made to links reflecting my current reading practises). I found Victor Fan's blog & he is quite a thinker... I wish he would write traditional Chinese--somehow what I wrote got encoded in Simplified HZ instead of Traditional Big5 though. Also, both my English & Chinese comments sound a little stupid in retrospect. I think it's time for some more Face Time^tm (probably not my trademark though) with the exchange student with the best Chinese:

Meet Alex. Alex is from the United States of America. Like me he is a deputy leader of the exchange students; both of us are under Scott. Unlike me, he studied Chinese for a year some time before coming to Taiwan. For this reason, his Chinese is relatively good & we in Taipei like to boast of his r0x0ring ways. Part of the invalidity of the Rotary-adjudicated speech contest stems from the flawed result in which he did not place.

Monday was a rather good day. In the morning we discovered it was our last calligraphy class; the guy gave us our calligraphy gear so now I have basic stuff with which to practise... I need paper, but I know where to get it. I have yet to ascertain what will fill that time slot. Military Training brought more studying, as usual. At lunch I went to the music room & some random class was watching the end of "Into the Woods," so I caught that. Then in Music class everybody except me & Kenta had a singing test... almost everyone was terribly quiet though, singing pop songs. Even the people in choir were almost impossible to hear. It was a little irksome after a while.

Chinese class was all right, we learned some things, probably had a test of some sort as well. Oh, I almost forgot. Since it was Scott's birthday, & then Kenta's yesterday, we decided to have another cake in Chinese. So at lunch I wanted to go get one, but, surprise surprise, I don't have freedom of movement--at my school, I am limited as the other students. I had to push a form to get past the gate security, which needed to be stamped (similar to signing, but more authoritative) by my English/homeroom teacher, & one of the military staff from the discipline office. I had to fill out the form myself, so the guy looked really skeptical at my three-character reason for leaving: "buy cake" (買蛋糕). It took me only about 5 minutes, I got a good cake, age candles, & a lighter and ever-so-quickly returned (I am pro).

I decided I wanted AC to help me because she is kind of a birthday-observer/good organizer. But right when we put the candles on I was like "wouldn't it be cool if you did the thing like at a restaurant where you take the lid off to reveal the cake." Quickly I added, "but with the fire, it won't work, we can only do one at once. In fact, you should keep two hands on the cake, Claire." Now, Claire can be randomly spazzy at times, projecting small objects at high velocities and walking into things, but she has her pride, so she replied, "No, now I'm doing it." Of course, the cover was styrofoam so it caught fire a bit, but nothing really bad happened and the cake was good. After AC almost dropping cake, we delegated that to AA who decided to only serve once. So Kenta got a ridiculously big piece of cake, about 3/8ths or thereabouts.

After class I headed home, took a shower, put on some non-school clothes, picked up Scott's present & headed to Dingxi. At Chinese I had given him instructions on how to get to the martial arts place (he got a metal fan from somebody). At Scott's we watched Smallville & ate dinner & goodies. I stuffed, and enjoyed, myself thoroughly. I also gave him a ridiculous children's book called "Why am I here?" so he can practise reading bopomo & learn a few words.

Tuesday was a good day as well. Spent the morning studying... in PE we played table tennis (in Chinese 桌球 "table ball") and English conversation & talk-Chinese-with-Denise class were ok. I forget what I did at lunch~I was probably at the music room. In "waste office staff's time" I went to the counciling center and talked to a senior guidance counselor for a long time. Luckily I knew the word for 'pressure' among other things; the discussion proved instructive.

Scout wasn't bad as I spent a lot of it studying & practising characters. After class my teacher talked to me for like 10 minutes, mostly just talking constantly. I followed her for about 9 minutes hardly missing a word & also learned the word for weekend. Yay. In Art we finished "Triplettes de Belleville" with much laughter from my classmates. I also snapped some pictures of the elusive "obey" sign:

I thought it was fitting. Nothing remarkable in the evening, talked with Scott & Alex about Rotary issues and also some of the weird/crazy things about the school system.

Today, I had intended to arrive fashionably late for culture class; however, somehow I ended up right on time. I took my sweet time having a nice morning shower (makes hair nice for the day) & then got on the subway at like 8:20... somehow this worked & I got the bus at main station & didn't get lost this time.

In response to Anna's comment on my previous post, lol indeed. It's funny because it's the exact opposite of truth. Sarcastro strikes again!

Hacking with Scott was good, as was my lunch. I don't know I did well on the Chinese test but whatever. It was the guy teacher, pleasant surprise. On the ride home on the Green 2, which came very conveniently, I wrote a journal entry in Chinese... a little messy and a character or two maybe wrong, but all from my mind--didn't look anything up. Alex has begun to do the same. It only took like 35 minutes again today, yay.

Right now, my host mother is multi-tasking: watching a movie on t.v., talking on her cell, and excercising on a sort of walking machine all at once.

I am thinking of doing some more extended opinion pieces on Rotary and stuff that's been irking me lately, but I am curious? Do we have any Rotarians among the readership? Also, who IS my readership... I know some of the core Wellingtonians & some exchange students read, but there are new people I'm not sure of. Post a comment, everyone, & tell me what you'd like to see more of. [2 hours 20 minutes] K out