For those interested

Rotary was nice enough to send an email to the 4 students out of Nanaimo, so I figured I would respond. And since I spent so much time typing it (time flies sitting in front of the computer) I figured I would also present it here for your viewing pleasure. Not interested? Skip ahead to the next post, or comment on something :P

I guess you'd call my response an "open letter" considering I'm broadcasting it to you all right now. w00t, I suppose. Gotta w00t for something.

The original letter:
"I just wanted to let you know that our Nanaimo Youth Exchange joint committee members are thinking of you all, and hoping that everything is going well with you. As you know, you are now into your final quarter of your exchange year. I expect you are wondering how the time has gone by so fast. We are all looking forward to getting together with you when you get home, and hearing about your experience. The committee would like very much to hear from you, and let us know how things are going. What have you been up to? How is school, tell us about your host family, have you been interacting with your host Rotary club? Let us know if there is anything that we can do for you.
Paul Geneau"

And my response:
Dear Paul & Nanaimo YEP,

Thank you for your concern. I assure you all that I am alive & well (as may not have been evident in my previous correspondence / lack thereof). I do of course prove the exception to the rule that "you WILL gain weight on this exchange year." Earlier, I lost weight, though I gained some of it back through a dedicated regime of snacking and sitting in front of a computer. My friend from Texas also dropped a lot of pounds. I am now officially underweight acccording to the BMI. :p

Taiwan is a challenging country, made more so by the fact that I had no previous experience with the language before arriving. On that note, in the interest of actually advancing the cause & improving RI D5020's success in this country, could you please help me get in contact with the outbound to Taiwan for 2005-2006? I heard it is a girl from the US. I would like to help her prepare as best I can, what with things to bring/not bring & a head start on Chinese.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to know? I'd be glad to show you any of the 2+ GB of pictures I took or the numerous short videos upon my return (well in between parties, road trips, and playing lots of pool & jamming with my friends). I went to see Diana Krall live in concert, as well as Avril Lavigne, earlier on in the year. I have no idea how to get tickets to the popular Taiwanese acts, but I have a bunch of pop songs on my iPod I listen to so I can "better appreciate the culture." [ulterior motive: improve Chinese-language ability]

School continues to be pretty boring. I have a good time with my personal Chinese teacher (free of charge, w00t) 5 hours a week, and I also practise drums 5 hours a week--they couldn't not let me, considering our resident Japanese guy of being-good-at-everything has several hours a day to practise his instruments. I swear, he came to Taiwan just to learn a kind of traditional Chinese two-stringed violin, haha. Most of my classes suck. I transferred out of English and Math because I don't like them. I don't mind listening to Chinese Lit or History class, though I don't quite understand. I have a Chinese school textbook, but it is Grade 3 level, so I kind of suck considering they put me in a grade 10 class.

My favourite two classes are Government (kind of... it's really about the writings & political philosophy of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, who led the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty & established the Republic of China in 1911) & Citizenship. In Citizenship it's supposed to be about a wide range of different things, but because so many guys are really homophobic, our teacher just talks about gender issues & brings in GLBT guest speakers, who are all really cool university students. I would much rather have gone on the university exchange this year, come to think of it. I stopped memorizing poems a long time ago because the language is too classical/ archaic.

My host family is pretty good. I'd like to take this opportunity to laugh at fate. If you'll recall the District urged me to pick Taiwan or Finland (I guess I should have adopted a "Japan or bust" policy as some Texans did) with the specious assertation that "people in those countries are very health-conscious; they don't smoke much." Of course, this host family I am currently in not only includes a father who smokes in the house but also a cat which lives in the house. Glad I mentioned my aversion to those on my application. I guess it's only fair though, my friend from Texas has all sorts of food allergies & he always gets food poisoning at Rotary events because nothing is prepared for him (Rotary knows, they take no advance action). But really my host family is great. My host father is really, really awesome... my host brother even talks to me (the others were all silent all the time) though my relationship with my host mother isn't so good.

One of the most annoying things about host families in Taiwan (besides the cultural differences which mean commitments, meeting times &c. don't mean much) is that in Taiwan, due to a lack of volunteer interest for hosting inbounds, families sending out an outbound are obliged to host an inbound. This leads to two things: 1. many indifferent or uninterested host families merely fulfilling the terms of their contract (I've watched four great girls, including a terrific Korean exchangee with terrific Chinese, break down over 4 hours at a coffee shop because their host families are so cold & unloving). Mine have been pretty good, though not so good about letting me go out and do stuff. I can handle that though. 2. The second annoyance is never having a host sibling my age, as the person in the exchange age range is of course overseas~otherwise I wouldn't be in the home. I don't mind this either, except of course because my classmates are all 2+ years younger than me. And they don't talk to me either, regardless of my facility for communication in the language of their choice. But such is life. :)

As for my host Rotary club, did I mention that I have a ladies-only club? I don't mind, but just thought I'd share, because apparently they--as well as my first host family--thought I was a girl, even though I checked the "boy" box on my application. Something must be done about actually reading & understanding the applications; I put so much work into mine, including horrible tests I would never do again for the medical part, and then it's just disregarded. But back to the club. Though I have mentioned several times I would love to come to every meeting and attend their events, they tell me only to come on the first Thursday of the month. So I do. It doesn't help that their club charter says they are supposed to speak Taiwanese at club meetings, when exchange students must study Mandarin Chinese--it's the language of instruction at school, spoken exclusively at home, and taught in Rotary classes (which ended a while ago... it was a nice gesture though). My counselor is really awesome though.

Did I mention I had a counselor change? The lady who was supposed to be my counselor would never talk to me, but this other lady always called me, inquired after my health, and took me to lunch to talk about my life & exchange. So now that lady is my counselor, which works out nicely for all concerned. Because she is a businesswoman, and a Rotarian in Taipei (they all seem loaded) we go really nice places for lunch, like the Hyatt at the base of 101. In fact, whenever I go out with her we seem to be cavorting in the halls of international trade & jet-setters at the base of Taipei 101. All in good fun.

Anyway, in case you've forgotten all I really wanted was the contact information of the next one coming down the pipe for Taiwan. My only other concern would really be this summer. I have about 3 weeks from the end of school until I plan to come home. I am not sure if I will be able to do any of the traveling I want to do though. I don't want to sit roasting in 27-33 degree weather with nothing to do--I could be watching my best friends graduate & spending our last summer together before everyone leaves to their far-off universities. So I might need help either with pressure for activity approval or a revised flight date--I'll get back to you on that later.

Thanks for your concern. Rock on and write back.

Regards,

Kevin Dobson
(8 months without a haircut... it'll take forever to grow back)

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Well that's it for today. I hope my back-in-time dating of this post works to place it behind the one which should be above. rock on