End of classes - week 1

Hi everyone – I apologize for the slow updates --- things are crazy here~

We are in the midst of our first week of classes and everything is chaos.  A good kind of chaos, but chaos nonetheless.  After taking the placement exam (last week), you get “recommended” to a certain level and class.  Currently there are 3 main levels (1 , 2, 3) and multiple small levels (1-5).  So, class 1-1 is super beginning I-can’t-even-say-hello-in-Chinese Chinese class, while 3-3 is the step right before taking university level classes in Chinese (so, pretty darn fluent).  When I took my exam (which took all of 5 minutes – a matter of having a conversation with the professor asking “Can you read this passage?” and how long I’ve been studying), they recommended me to do 2-4  (levels are as follows: 1-1, 1-2,1-3,1-4,1-5, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 3-1, 3-3….where 3-2 and 2-5 are, I don’t know, haha) or 3-1.  Level 3-1 (as I explained in my last email) is pretty complicated.  You have 4 classes: 1) Reading newspapers 2) reading literature (short stories, memoirs, etc) 3) watching movies in Chinese and describing them, and finally 4) taking a Chinese culture class (in Chinese)  **note: I will be taking a culture class, but it will be taught in English. Hooray.  The first two days of this class weren’t bad – I was struggling to keep up, and the reading was just outright HARD.  But because I really really liked the professors (amazingly funny and witty) and the class (who actually wanted to talk), I tried my best.  However, after going to class yesterday and not understanding a good 60% of what the professor was saying, I decided to drop down to 2-4.  As of yet, this is the class that I probably will remain in.  It was a little irritating to find that my classmates in level 2-4 have stayed in Shanghai (or china) for an extended period of time (1-3 years) and thus know a lot more 口语 (colloquial speech) than I.  A lot more.  So when I know one word for taxi, they know 3.  But, I speak just as well – just without the large span of vocabulary.  And in level 2-4 I will probably remain (and my classmates, who do know a lot more speech than I will help me expand my vocabulary.  A win-win situation!).  Although, if you do want another complaint, I still really want to be in 3-1.  I like literature and analysis that much.  Sad day, oh well.  Perhaps I’ll have the chance to read literature in Chinese at a different point in time – but in the meantime, I guess I’ll need to play catch up with my vocabulary….haha….

As a side note, I did meet some cool people here.  One guy (in his late 20s, from Australia) is married to a Chinese woman and teaches in Guangzhou (a large city in the south --- If you find an object that says “Made in China”, it was most likely manufactured there – especially clothing)!  He teaches English to university students, but he felt the need to connect with them so he decided to come to Shanghai to perfect his Chinese.  AND he plays badminton (quite well).  Which makes him super awesome.  He (and another girl, Xiao Li (pronounced “She-ow Lee”)) have become my mates in practicing Chinese (especially since Xiao Li – whose background is Chinese and Japanese – doesn’t speak any English).  There are definitely a large number of cool students in my place of residence – and I often hang out with some guys and gals from the UK.  However, we Oles do still like each others company.  This doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t meet Chinese people.   It just happens to be old retired guys who kick out butts at ping-pong and badminton ><;

Oh.  And I partially forgot it was my birthday 2 days ago…..Virginia (my roommate) had to remind me with a cute (and very delicious) chocolate cake!  Thanks to you all for send me emails, phone calls, and facebook posts on my birthday!!!!! I loved reading every word~

Finally made it to 20, but it still feels like I’m 19 (haha)

Sorry for this long rambly note……..love you all very very much!  Keep sending me emails~

2 week mark.

Cool.  I've made it to the 2 week mark without too much diffuculty.  Monday we start classes, and already I have met so many international students (both language-studies like me, but also full time students).  Currently I have a friend who I'll be tutoring in English and who will be helping me in Chinese.  He and his older brother are from Hanoi and speaking Chinese pretty fluently, but would like to learn English.  Crazy，no?  I've gone and seen most of the famous places here (the Bund, Nanjing Road, Yu Gardens).  Currently, I am a little too tired to write anything about them and I didn't have my camera on me.....(haha, sorry!!!)
Just relaxing today.  It's raining in Shanghai.

SHANGHAI --- Arrival

and so ends my blog for Taiwan.
But, now, on to Shanghai -- the international capital of China:
It’s been a full day and 2 nights since my arrival in Shanghai. Other St. Olaf students (Virgina Ma, Matt Venker, and Nick) will be arriving today (and possibly Tim Knutson?) ~ Um YaYa!~
The campus here at ECNU is GORGEOUS!!!! It’s like taking a leaf out of Hangzhou’s or Suzhou’s book….(two famous Chinese cities, known for their gardens). The campus is big, I got lost at least 4 times trying to find my place of residence and then a place to eat…..albeit, I did arrive at night. The staff have been super friendly, and the maids always say hi when you walk by. My room is comfy and does have air conditioning. The weather isn’t much of a change – although, it is a little smoggier and rainy here =(
Today I’m heading out to the Yu Gardens with a friend, Ling Gu, who is also a St. Olaf student – but who will be returning to St. Olaf’s fall semester on Sept 9th or so. I’ll face Shanghai’s elaborate subway (which has at least 14 lines) in about an hour. 0___0; it’s huge compared to Taiwan.
I live on the 15th floor of my building, which is of average height for an apartment complex. I have my own TV! And the bathrooms are nice – and partially western style (they have western toilets, as compared to squat). As of yet, I do not have a roommate – but that will probably change later in the week. School starts next week, on the 9th? (I should figure that out, haha). Before then, I look forward to exploring. Already, I’m comfortable with some parts of the campus and 2 entrances. There is a huge statue of Mao Zedong at the center of the campus, which serves as a great place-marker. ECNU is well known here – a good school for many different fields of academia.
I do have internet, but quite a bit of my regular sites (including this one) is blocked. The way my room is set up, I can have either internet or power, but not both. The skype connection, for those of you who want to talk with me face to face, is not so great – as Thu, Erik, Alex, and Kelsey found out……email is best for contact. (among other things)
I’m on the north-west side of the city, and the architecture is CRAZY. It’s like taking random things from Italy, Beijing, France, Hong Kong, the US, England and shoving them in random places and random buildings ><; very confusing for the onlooker. Very confusing, BIG, and exciting.

Leaving Taiwan - Last thoughts....

hello!
Just wanted to quickly compile some interesting last-thoughts about my travels and internship in Taiwan.  Without further ado, here is some top 5 quickies for you ~~

Top 5 best foods:
1. Scrambled eggs and tomatoes over rice (or noodles) -- a simple dish that even I have made!  this will continually be my favorite thing to eat.  I don't really know why, because it's nothing special.....but soooo tasty
2. 剉冰 (cuo4bing1) -- shaved ice with fruit (like fresh mango) and coconut milk (or condensed milk).  This can't be beaten in Taiwan's summer. I eat mine like lightning.
3. 豆花 (dou1hua1) -- soybean milk pudding with a syrup and other goodies. delicious and taiwan-style. I'm attracted to sweet things.....
4. 猪跟 (zhu1gen1） -- shaved pigs heel with cilantro and some salts....
5. 蛤金格面汤 （ge1jin1ge2mian4tang1) -- clam and ginger noodle soup, mmmm! the clams are fun to eat, too!
 

Top 5 best places:
1. 九分 Jiufen-- <3  want to return....and ascend their mountain.....
2. 背投图书馆 Beitou Library --- the architecture is old, wooden, and relaxing. 
3. 剥皮了 Bopiliao - One of Taipei's oldest streets, Bopiliao has seen masses come and go, and it still remains.  It smells like damp wood......
4. 十分 Shifen-- who can resist all those lanterns???
5. 士林夜市 Shilin Night Market -- a little materialistic, but I do like to browse through all the cute objects

Top 5 activities:
1. making mochi balls for the ghost festival and talking with all the volunteers!
2. going to the 88 floods remembrance and seeing the president of Taiwan　(how neat is that??!)
3. practicing Chinese with my coworkers (this was a lot of fun -- trying to explain phrases or words)
4. walking around Beitou and the hot springs.  We went to "thermal valley" where the water is so hot you would receive some 2nd or 3rd degree burns!  But it looked gorgeous with billows of steam around the green foliage....
5. taking the Green 9 bus back to the IHouse.  This small, often cramped, bus that again and again defeated the mountainside with sharp turns always made for interesting nightly returns........and conversations!

Top 5 unfortunate happenings:
1. mistaking $600 for $200 by mishearing and being too stubborn and embarressed to not buy a shirt.....
2. having a 6 hour delay at the San Fran airport =(
3. asking a ladｙ on the the street (who was selling bread (mianbao)) how much her noodles (mian) cost.....oops....
4. having to kill a cockroach at 3 am in my room.....
5. not getting to go in the hot springs at beitou (my coworker wasn't feeling well, so I bailed out as well....)

Top 5 reasons why I don't want to leave Taiwan, and why you should come! :
1. the food
2. the really really nice people
3. the cheap prices
4. the food.....
5. the aethetic, natural fauna - everywhere.

<3
to be continued......but in Shanghai!
(thank you everyone, for bearing with me.....)

Last Day of Work and Relaxing

Wow.  Cheesy to say it, but time went by really really fast.  Yesterday was already my last day at work.  Nothing too special, finished up my translations (I was working on translating an interview/new article on Lu Laoshi - the executive director of Begonia foundation - and another spreadsheet.  We had a wonderful lunch, and then, at 7pm, we went out to dinner!


We went to a fantastic vegetarian restaurant (one of my coworkers is vegan) that mimics meat dishes, but instead uses vegan substitutes.  Within our main courses we at "sashimi" (some kind of root vegetable gelatin), "black pepper pork medallions" (??? don't know what vegetable this was...), "deep fried fish" (??? again didn't know), ginger and mushroom aged soup, fried taro and something cubes in papaya, actual vegetables imitating vegetables, and tea!  Although I've eaten at a restaurant similar to this one in Beijing, and am still surprised that a lot of vegetarians will come here to eat.  In the states, I've never met anyone (who is vegan) who wants to eat this kind of fake "meat" --- because they oppose eating things with the cooked form of animals in any way, shape or form -- that's a good part of the reason they became vegetarian in the first place!
 Quite a few buddhist monks and youth like this type of restaurants -- it offers something unusual and tasty.

This weekend I'll be writing postcards, updating this blog, heading out to Longshan Temple, and Beitou (where all the hot springs are!).  And packing. : (

I thought I'd be doing more things in taiwan or that it would feel as comfortable as Beijing.  Now that I am close to leaving, I wish I traveled more in the area, and went down to the southern tip.  But more about that later......

(From left: Yu-san, Xiao Jin, Me, Lu Laoshi (CEO), Xiao Hui)

九分 Jiufen

Out of all the places gone and seen as of yet, Jiufen stands out as the most beautiful. I don't use that word lightly. Located on a mountanside, the town of Jiufen receives the refreshing breeze from the bay area below. While once a prosperous town in the early 1900s, supplying gold from their mines, it is now a historic day-visit to both Taiwanese and international tourists. Actually, this tourism is only quite recent (in the late 1900s, early 2000s) - Jiufen actually had a large downturn after running out of gold in the 70s. This spike of tourism in recet times was helped by Miyazaki's Spirited Away (a movie that I own and cherish), which used Jiufen's downtown as a model for the place Chihiro enters. More history can be read here.  Regardless, you cannot beat the 80TWD (less than $3.00) train ticket from downtown Taipei to Jiufen.

(ok, so this isn't the ocean, but it's still really pretty - taken from the museum)

From left: Harry (xiao jin's boyfriend), Yu-san, me,
xiao jin, and xiao ming (their friend) 

Turning away from staring at the blue seacarpet before you, the first thing you notice is the air - a mixed ocean and foresty sent that you know only gets better the higher you go up the mountain. Standing at the entrance of the Gold Ecological Park/Museum, you can see the entire bay area and the town below! Walking around the museum with my 2 coworkers (Xiao Jin and Yu-san), Xiao Jin's boyfriend, and their friend, we had a fantastic time.

Here I am talking about gold, pirates, and the Song dynasty. 
In the same conversation.

We learned about some of the other types of minerals that were mined (byrite, pyrite, quartz, and the like) and read about the history of gold as Taiwan knows it (and, of course, its role with the rest of the world). The museum even has a solid gold brick that is surrounded by a transparent case, open with 2 holes so one can stick their hand through and touch it！ (Which we all proceeded to do and shout - "we're rich people!!!!" haha). I was a little bemused when I read about gold and electronics, keeping in mind my past internship at Kester Solder (or ITW-Kester, however you like to call it now）with Dad.

A golden touch.

I was downright amused when we noticed a large group of caucasians (seen above) following a tour guide. Getting the courage to talk to them, I found out that they were all from Canada and are having a great time touring around Taipei! The next time we saw them, Xiao Jin went, "Fran! 你的外國朋友來一次！" and then proceeded to ask "他們為什麼呢麼大？" ("Fran! Your foreign friends are back!"...."Why are they so big?"). I was glad that they didn't understand Chinese, and hoped that the tour guide head wasn't listening. Finished eating our bakery goods (I had a walnut-something muffin and cream stuffed bun), we headed to the downtown.

The streets kind of reminded me of Venice's - except a little narrower and more...Taiwanese. They maintained that nice dark brown cobblestone and "old-style" buildings (although, like Venice, most of these shops are newly built for the tourist boom in recent times). Every square inch packed with either people, various food stands (stinky tofu included, unfortunately), or gift stores, Jiufen's "Old Street" quite a bit of variety.

Known for its fried taro, 肉圓 (this is a little hard to explain...), fishball soup, and sweet yuyuan冰淇凌 (another dough, like mochi, except different, put ontop of shaved ice), customers leave happy and full. Always a good thing in my mind =D And, like the rest of Taiwan, all the food is really inexpensive - dinner (plus snacks and dessert) would be around $5. Some of the souvenirs that can be bought are wooden goods (shoes, massagers, mooncake molds), jewlery, and other knicknacks. This is all very nice, but you really want to go there for the food and the mochi. ^__^ At night, strings of lanterns, which line the posts from store to store, all light up, and you can see the uncanny resemblence to the nighttime for Chihiro (in Spirited Away). The same coworker who was amazed at the Canadians got to use her two favorite words over and over: "so beautiful" and "so delicious". I couldn't help, but agree!

P.S. Grandma & Grandpa --- Look they had mini golf for the prince! (look near the grass - the long stretches of concrete are minigolf holes/fairways...haha!)

Ghost Festival and Buddhism Con't!

So.
I returned to the same spot with Esther and found our lady, who was ecstatic that her two foreigners (gawky and noticeable in the Taipei civilian crowd) had returned. She hurried us off to the tables, where at least 30 volunteers were rolling out mochi (again explained, rice gluten flour-dough that is eventually boiled) balls. They must have made HUNDREDS before we arrived. Turning the corner I could see more clearly that the prayer tables were set up on the grounds of an elementary school. Unlike our own schools, the halls of most Asian schools (Japan, China, Taiwan, not sure about Korea) have sinks outside in the corridors so kids can clean up before and after school. After washing our hands, we immediately got to work. Rolling out the dough in our hands, I started breaking off pieces and quickly got reprimanded: "太小了" and then "太大了 - 人吃不下!” ("too small" and then "too big- people won't be able to swallow them!"). After that, it wasn't too difficult! Just roll the dough, and pick up the next piece. It was at that point that I decided to strike a conversation with the ladies next to us with my savvy Chinese skills. It went something like this:

me: "There's a lot of these" (pointing to the mochi balls)
lady: **doesn't glance up**
me: **re-attempting, embarassed** "There's a lot of these - how many have you all made?"
lady: **blank stare**
Esther: (to me in English) "I don't think they understood...."
me: **what if they speak Taiwanese.....** "Are you all from Taibei?"
ladies: "Yep." **smiling**
me: **contact made! woohoo!**


It was quite a bit less daunting after that initial barrier of miscommunication (or lack thereof). However, that didn't stop me from not understanding quite a few words that they used....
After an hour and a half or so, we decided to clean up and walk around to see what else was going on. It turns out that this was quite a large event with quite a few 表演 (performances), not in the least including a dragon dance. They also had elementary kid setups with shime drums (small, beat-keeping drums about the size of a snare drum) for a drum performace. Some monks were preparing for a festival speech, while elementary girls in leaf ballet costumes were complaining about the heat. I do not blame them - it was hot. Not wanting to wait 30 minutes for the performances to start (we had other places to go), we decided to head out. On the way, we grabbed some of the mochi soup (the mochi balls were now cooked an in a very sweet syrup） and fish noodle soup. Both were delicious. We then left, and by the time we came back that evening all the tables we taken down and the people had all gone. The festival was over.