The gym is suddenly quite a large part of my life, for the first time ever. I've been every day for the last three days; today was 2 hours, beginning with an hour personal training test-run. I feel so accomplished! And also so sore.
Today was odd for me, and oddly revolved around the gym. I woke up around 8:45, on the understanding that the painters would be here at 9 to paint our rooms, and I would flee to the gym's 10 o'clock fitness yoga class to escape the fumes. Yeah...that did not happen. I realized that a) I didn't really want to go anywhere, b) I didn't have a yoga mat, and c) I had an appointment for later and didn't want to be too exhausted for that.
Instead, I spent the morning lounging about my room and reading, in turns, my email, my Facebook, my Bible, and my new Kindle version of the New Yorker (Oct. 3 issue--LOVE LOVE LOVE Kindle subscriptions, for the record). And it was lovely--means I should wake up at the proper time every Thursday!
After school, then, I had like 20 minutes at home (during which I scarfed several handfuls of nuts, since I had only eaten an apple for lunch) before I had my scheduled meeting at the Fitness Factory with Gaudin.
Oh, Gaudin. He was great! He speaks some English--better than he thinks but not fluent--and he put me on this body mass/make-up analyzer and then explained to me that I'm pretty average, but that I could stand to lose a little fat and gain a little muscle. (To which my question is--why else would you go to a gym?) He then had me walk on a treadmill for 5 minutes while chatting with me (actually a welcome distraction--and another of his clients came in who had studied in Bellevue, Washington, so I got a little moment to talk about how amazing Seattle is!), then taught me how to use a bunch of the leg/back/chest machines.
As "homework," he told me to do the treadmill/elliptical for 40 minutes, trying to keep my heart rate in the weight loss range. Then, while I was doing this, he came over and told me to speed up! Getting mixed messages here...
Not entirely sure whether I'll be able to do personal training going forward (this one was a one-time complimentary feature of the gym), but I will definitely grab hold of the things he taught me and start adding machines into my gym regimen.
And I have a regimen now! I've discovered the secret to making myself work out: pay for it, don't do too much too fast, and make sure there are individual TVs attached to the elliptical machines. I'm not going to lie, I think that last one is what is making it easy--as long as I don't think about the fact that I'm working, all I really notice is the endorphin rush when I'm done, with the added bonus of getting to feel healthy. :)
I'm thinking I'll add a Zumba class on Sundays and, if I can get up next time, Thursday morning fitness yoga.
So yeah, the gym is great! For the first time ever.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Teachers' Day!
Today was Teachers' Day, which is, as you may have guessed, a day honoring teachers. Apparently there's one in the US, too, but I had never heard of it before 10 seconds ago, when I searched it on Wikipedia. Not possible here!
Here in Taiwan, Teachers' Day is a really big deal--according to Maggie, Kaohsiung used to give teachers $5,000NT each on this day, and according to Alison, they still give New Taipei teachers $1,000NT. (We didn't get money, though, for the record.) Here, Teachers' Day celebrates the attributed birthday of Confucius, he of the hundreds of wise sayings and seemingly the wellspring of all Chinese wisdom. Basically, he's a superstar--and a superstar at teaching. Which means that we, as modern-day teachers, are by extension superstars as well!
Teachers' Day celebrations actually began earlier this week. On Monday, I arrived at Han-Min to find this sitting (not bitten yet, of course; that was me) on my desk:
I think it may have been from one of the other teachers or from the administration (all the teachers in the Subject Teachers' Office had one), but still.
And not to worry: you can't say students don't know how to appreciate their teachers here in Taiwan! Later that day, I witnessed this wonderful little moment:
No, your eyes do not deceive you: that's a student rubbing Alison's shoulders while another waits behind her--they were literally in line a second before I snapped this; a second before that, they were fighting over who got to give her the back rub. Would this happen in America? I think NOT. (Incidentally, the boy in this picture is named Louis; he's a total teachers pet and especially loves Alison. The girl, however, is just there to rub her shoulders.)
And that wasn't even on the day.
Today, after teaching Morning English, I found, first of all, that Alison had bought me coffee. (She is so sweet!) Second of all, I discovered that I, like all other teachers, was a temporary rock star.
(Of course, all it really takes to make me feel like a rockstar is this, but still...)
Anyway, today, in addition to the carefully-scripted "Laoshi hao" and/or "Good Morning Teacher Bekah" in the halls and in the classrooms (where either greeting is accompanied by a group bow), I heard "Happy Teachers' Day!" more times than I could count. And they were genuinely excited about it! This could be evidenced by the growing pile of stuff on my desk that students gave me--I think this was the bulk of it, sans a couple candies I ate.
Not pictured is one of my favorite cards, a handmade postcard showing the beach, an umbrella and a big cloud cut out against an inexplicably yellow sky. Actually, now that I'm looking at it again to describe it, you've just got to see it:
I love this card all the more because two girls came literally running up to Maggie and I today while we were on our way to class to deliver it--they were that excited to show us their appreciation. And, terrible teacher that I am (or, you know, just teacher-with-540-students-I-see-once-a-week that I am), I couldn't even tell you their names. I know that they were in class 5-01, so I know I taught them yesterday, and I know that they are super sweet, and made me the best card ever! Yet another reason I need to take individual pictures of my students holding their name cards or something--I can't stand not knowing simple stuff like this!
Aherm--back to topic. Another fun discovery today was that my name has apparently changed its spelling without my knowledge: the standard attempt was "Bkka," which I guess sounds about right if you sound it out, and especially makes sense given that there is no "eh" sound in the Chinese language, but it was a bit funny to see written out over and over.
Then there was the absolutely adorable card Alison and I got from a student named Madeline:
But the most extravagant, wow-this-is-fantastic moment came in the second class of the day, when Maggie and I walked in to find...this:
It was beautiful! All over, it read "Happy Teachers' Day" in two languages, plus "I love teacher" and "You are beautiful" in Chinese. I had forgotten my camera, but instantly ran to get it. This was not a board that could be erased before being captured forever!
We did, of course, have to erase it for the lesson, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They actually did it themselves, going at it with a gusto I thought amazing, given the time they seemed to have put into making it. But they were enthusiastic, and we then had a great class!
Feeling very blessed to be here in Taiwan, and to have the co-teachers and schools that I do. And not just because they give me stuff on Teachers' Day--they are genuinely some of the best people I've ever met, and I just love spending time with each of them!
Here in Taiwan, Teachers' Day is a really big deal--according to Maggie, Kaohsiung used to give teachers $5,000NT each on this day, and according to Alison, they still give New Taipei teachers $1,000NT. (We didn't get money, though, for the record.) Here, Teachers' Day celebrates the attributed birthday of Confucius, he of the hundreds of wise sayings and seemingly the wellspring of all Chinese wisdom. Basically, he's a superstar--and a superstar at teaching. Which means that we, as modern-day teachers, are by extension superstars as well!
Teachers' Day celebrations actually began earlier this week. On Monday, I arrived at Han-Min to find this sitting (not bitten yet, of course; that was me) on my desk:
 |
| It's a rice bun filled with red bean and (a single) strawberry! Quite good, actually. |
And not to worry: you can't say students don't know how to appreciate their teachers here in Taiwan! Later that day, I witnessed this wonderful little moment:
No, your eyes do not deceive you: that's a student rubbing Alison's shoulders while another waits behind her--they were literally in line a second before I snapped this; a second before that, they were fighting over who got to give her the back rub. Would this happen in America? I think NOT. (Incidentally, the boy in this picture is named Louis; he's a total teachers pet and especially loves Alison. The girl, however, is just there to rub her shoulders.)
And that wasn't even on the day.
Today, after teaching Morning English, I found, first of all, that Alison had bought me coffee. (She is so sweet!) Second of all, I discovered that I, like all other teachers, was a temporary rock star.
(Of course, all it really takes to make me feel like a rockstar is this, but still...)
Anyway, today, in addition to the carefully-scripted "Laoshi hao" and/or "Good Morning Teacher Bekah" in the halls and in the classrooms (where either greeting is accompanied by a group bow), I heard "Happy Teachers' Day!" more times than I could count. And they were genuinely excited about it! This could be evidenced by the growing pile of stuff on my desk that students gave me--I think this was the bulk of it, sans a couple candies I ate.
 |
| Worth noting: the flower was from the school |
 |
| Sorry--webcam quality. |
Aherm--back to topic. Another fun discovery today was that my name has apparently changed its spelling without my knowledge: the standard attempt was "Bkka," which I guess sounds about right if you sound it out, and especially makes sense given that there is no "eh" sound in the Chinese language, but it was a bit funny to see written out over and over.
 |
| And once on a crane! |
 |
| Outside...(It reads "Lead; Knowledge; Kind; Humorous; Inspirit; Likes Playing; friend?" Last three are my favorites. :) |
 |
| And the inside: melts your heart! |
But the most extravagant, wow-this-is-fantastic moment came in the second class of the day, when Maggie and I walked in to find...this:
 |
| The artists and their creation. |
 |
| Had to get a close-up, too, to capture the vividness! |
 |
| Feeling very honored as a teacher (and very awkward to be having my picture taken--Maggie's idea) |
 |
| After class: even the home room teacher got in there! Can you spot the adults? |
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Oh, the Internet
How else can you live in Taiwan, have regular conversations with friends in the United States, and watch British television shows (mostly) at will? The shrinking world is truly a wonderful place.
With that in mind, and given that that's ALL that's in my mind at the moment, a few tidbits.
It's wonderful that many American sites, like Amazon and Facebook and Google, can be accessed here as well as anywhere else. I check Facebook and Google daily; I recently received a lovely package from Amazon containing my new e-reader, which I named Johannes (other options notwithstanding). Skype is a necessity in my life, though I loathe the 15-hour time difference these days.
What's not quite so wonderful, for me, at least, is the inability of sites like NBC, Fox, and Hulu to broadcast to Taiwan. It leads me to other video sources, ones with less-than-savory features like a time-based watching system which, for whatever reason, does not work here. There are at least 3 separate such sites that I can think of which have a 72 minute daily limit--which is reasonable, in theory, and works as such in the United States. Here, however, it doesn't. Rather, I've been stopped multiple times about 28 minutes into an hour-long show, and once 15 minutes into my second half hour-show of the day, with the message announcing I've watched my 72 minutes for the day. Except for the fact that it is impossible to watch 72 minutes in 28 minutes. Also worth noting is that I clear my cookies off my browser whenever I finish watching--so how are they keeping track of how much time I spend on their sites?
And then there's my computer's constant inability to figure out where I am and my language preferences. Despite the fact that I check my Gmail account daily, and Google almost as often, always in English, about 30% of the time, typing in "www.google.com" will yield me "www.google.com.tw". The statistics are worse on sites like MSN, which prompts me to specify my preferred country, Taiwan or the US, every time I go to it. And then there's Amazon, which, even after I changed my location in their system and entered a Taiwanese shipping address, still shows me Kindle results for America which may or may not be available in Taiwan.
So again, I say oh, the Internet. So much wonderfulness and so much annoyance, all packaged together.
With that in mind, and given that that's ALL that's in my mind at the moment, a few tidbits.
It's wonderful that many American sites, like Amazon and Facebook and Google, can be accessed here as well as anywhere else. I check Facebook and Google daily; I recently received a lovely package from Amazon containing my new e-reader, which I named Johannes (other options notwithstanding). Skype is a necessity in my life, though I loathe the 15-hour time difference these days.
What's not quite so wonderful, for me, at least, is the inability of sites like NBC, Fox, and Hulu to broadcast to Taiwan. It leads me to other video sources, ones with less-than-savory features like a time-based watching system which, for whatever reason, does not work here. There are at least 3 separate such sites that I can think of which have a 72 minute daily limit--which is reasonable, in theory, and works as such in the United States. Here, however, it doesn't. Rather, I've been stopped multiple times about 28 minutes into an hour-long show, and once 15 minutes into my second half hour-show of the day, with the message announcing I've watched my 72 minutes for the day. Except for the fact that it is impossible to watch 72 minutes in 28 minutes. Also worth noting is that I clear my cookies off my browser whenever I finish watching--so how are they keeping track of how much time I spend on their sites?
And then there's my computer's constant inability to figure out where I am and my language preferences. Despite the fact that I check my Gmail account daily, and Google almost as often, always in English, about 30% of the time, typing in "www.google.com" will yield me "www.google.com.tw". The statistics are worse on sites like MSN, which prompts me to specify my preferred country, Taiwan or the US, every time I go to it. And then there's Amazon, which, even after I changed my location in their system and entered a Taiwanese shipping address, still shows me Kindle results for America which may or may not be available in Taiwan.
So again, I say oh, the Internet. So much wonderfulness and so much annoyance, all packaged together.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Why'd Chinese Go and Make Things So Complicated?
I had Chinese class again tonight, and while the hours I put in studying after last week's fiasco definitely paid off, my overwhelming though at the end of class was still one of being overwhelmed. Near the end, Tiffiany began singing this song, and I thought it apt, so I couldn't help but replicate it here:
Congratulations, you will now all have Avril Lavigne stuck in your head for weeks. (Of course, if you're like me and had a younger brother who was obsessed with Weird Al for a while, you may know it better in this form:)
In any case, on the drive home I had both versions playing through my head and alternating between lyrics--with very odd results, I might add. (Though, in my defense, I had forgotten the gross-out lyrics and skipped to the cousin stanza.)
Anyway, back to Chinese. It's complicated! But you know, even its complications are complicated; to be honest, I can't just say it's complicated and leave it at that, because every thing that makes Chinese hard also makes it easy, and vice versa. Check it out:
Hey look, a pros and cons list for learning Chinese!
PRO #1:
Chinese has a limited, and definitive, set of sounds--21 initials, 35 finals. All Chinese words consist of a combination of these, meaning there are really on 411 sound-combinations available in Chinese--infinitely fewer than English, if you think about all the different ways you can combine our 26 little letters (I'm not a mathematician; if anyone wants to tell me how many sound combinations there are in English, feel free. I found my Chinese stats online :) Alternately, of course, you can just pick up a dictionary and see how many unique words you can find in there, but I'm guessing theoretical math is easier in this case..). But 411 sound combinations is puny--anyone should be able to knock through those in no time flat! Which leads us to...
CON #1:
INFINITE HOMONYMS. For the non-grammar-minded among us, a homonym is a word which sounds exactly like another word, but which means something entirely different. In English, these are usually spelled differently, as well; some examples would be heir and air, wood and would, eight and ate--I'm sure you can think of more if you want to. In English, you pick up which homonym is being used by the context--if someone says they're going to give their gold ring to their heir, for instance, you can pretty well guess they mean their next of kin, not the oxygen which happens to be floating past their face. Homonyms are confusing, to be sure, but at least in English, they're a fairly limited set.
Not so in Chinese. As Pro #1 pointed out, in Chinese there are only. 411. Sounds. Possible. Just try listening for context when almost every word is the same. As a result of this homogeneity, in my most recent Chinese unit, for instance, we learned "zai" twice--with the same tone (I'll get to tones in a second--for now, just realize that they're usually what's used to make 411 sounds stretch to fit a language full of words.) So, in the simple question-and-answer of "Where is the post office located?" "Go straight, then turn right," you use "zai" twice, once to mean "located" (郵局在哪裡?) and then to mean "then" (直走, 再右轉.) Even typing those two sentences was difficult--I have pinyin input installed on my computer, so I type each word phonetically and indicate tone by number, yet even so I had to scroll through several pages of choices to find the right characters to use--and not just for zai!
As you can see, the characters for each "zai," 4th tone are different, but that just leads us into our 2nd con...
CON #2: So. Many. Characters. As part of solving the whole every-word-sounds-the-same problem, maybe, Chinese has more than 80,000 characters; you need to memorize at least a few thousand to be considered literate in the language. According to Wikipedia, educated Chinese-speakers know 4,000. Wait, 4,000? Out of 80,000? And these are the educated people??? Annnd here we run into how very very difficult and--wait for it--COMPLICATED the Chinese language truly is. It's not unimaginable at all for a very well educated Chinese-speaking person to run across completely unknown characters while reading something slightly more obscure. Sure, this happens to English-speakers, too, but at least with a phonetic language and a basic knowledge of linguistic etymology (such as the educated person in our scenario would have), you would have a pretty good shot at pronouncing it at least in the ballpark of correctly. Not so in Chinese-- from what I can tell, at least, a new character is a new character: you may be able to derive the meaning from the radicals (patterns based on meaning which get repeated across characters), but there's absolutely no guarantee that you could pronounce it. Maybe that's just my flawed understanding of the language, but so far as I can tell, that's it: a new character is absolutely unknowable, even for a very educated person. So good luck when you run into those lesser-used 76,000 words, I guess.
But at least you know to expect them. Which brings us to...
PRO #2: You can't change the characters. No, really, you can't change them. So, you know that whole irregularity thing you get in most languages, things like verb conjugations, pluralizations, all that crap? Throw it out the window. A word is a word is a word. "I go" is the same as "He goes" is the same as "She goes" is the same as "They went." (Man, where did English come up with those screwy changes, anyway? "Go" to "went"? Almost as bad as Spanish's "voy" to "fuí," from a verb called "ir." Almost.)
It's kind of refreshing in Chinese, coming from a language chock full of verb- and tense-confusion and irregularities: suddenly, "I go to the beach;" "Yesterday I go to the beach;" and "Tomorrow, he and I go to the beach" are all perfectly correct. Lovely for a new learner, especially when there are so many/so few words to work with all of a sudden. Just add a modifier like "de" (的) to most anything and it's possessive/adjectival (我 is "me/I," 我的 is "mine;" 中山路 is "ZhongShan Road," 中山路的 is "on ZhongShan Road"); add "le" (了), or just specify a time like yesterday, and you've made it past tense. And that's glorious.
And another glorious fact brought about by unchanging characters is...
PRO #3: They started combining words to make more words--and their compound words actually make SENSE. This is actually probably the single best thing about Chinese: if you know what each of the characters in a compound word means, you can probably figure out what the word means as a whole. Conversely, if you have absolutely no idea what the word you're searching for is, you can talk your way around the unknown word and, chances are, you might actually hit on the right one. As an example, the other day Rachel and I went out looking for a helmet store; on the way there, Rachel (who actually knows Chinese, unlike me) told me she didn't know the word for helmet, but she knew the words for head, scooter, safety, and thing. So, the plan was to ask if they had any "scooter head safety things." And sure, that strategy might also work in English, but the likelihood of actually guessing the word in English is infinitely smaller than in Chinese.
I mean, come on, just look at English compound words. There's neither "pine" nor "apple" in a pineapple, for instance. Chinese is much more sensical: the word for "school," for instance, "學校," is literally "study school;" an elementary school is "小學校," or "small study school;" and college is "大學," or "big study." As a language learner, there's no way not to love how literal it can be.
BUT...
PRO/CON #4: It's ironic that this is my fourth and last pro/con--and odd for me that I even have a fourth point--because what I'm going to talk about here is TONES, and there are four regular tones in Chinese (technically 5, but the 5th is a non-tone). And I don't quite know where to stick them.
On the one hand, tones are great--they provide a great non-context way out of the sticky homonym situation, and they make you sound super animated all the time.
But on the other hand, they're terrible--for English-speakers who are used to infusing our daily speech with tone to convey emotion, not meaning, the prospect of accidentally putting that question-mark tone (the 2nd tone in Chinese sounds like us asking a question in English) on a word accidentally, AND CHANGING THE ENTIRE MEANING OF THE WORD, is terrifying. Take the seemingly innocent and wonderful word "love"--in Chinese, pronounced "ai" (as in "eye;" 愛), with the fourth tone (which goes down from high to low, and sounds like a very serious definitive--not very loving in English). BUT the 4th tone is absolutely crucial here. Say "ai" with a first tone (like singing) and it means "sorrow;" with a second tone (question mark) and it means "cancer;" with a third tone (dropping and rising) and it means "low."
And that's just one example--and, for that matter, just one set of what each of those tones can mean, because, as I mentioned earlier, the same sounds and the same tones can have different meanings. Just, you know, for fun.
Maybe I do know where to stick tones--in the "cons" category. Because no one wants to accidentally tell someone that they "sorrow" them.
So yeah, that's my pros and cons list. I'll likely add more as I learn more, but now I'm still at an extremely low level of study. How low, you ask? Well, today during my breaks at Han-Min I was studying the words 圖書館 (library), 花店 (flower shop), and 銀行 (bank), amongst others, at my desk--and all three of those words were in our lesson for the 6th graders today. What's more, most of them were able to volunteer other locations when prompted, places like the swimming pool or the department store. I don't know how to say swimming pool.
But I'll learn! Because, for all its complications, Chinese is worth it, and I'm loving growing in my knowledge of it daily, however slowly.
Congratulations, you will now all have Avril Lavigne stuck in your head for weeks. (Of course, if you're like me and had a younger brother who was obsessed with Weird Al for a while, you may know it better in this form:)
In any case, on the drive home I had both versions playing through my head and alternating between lyrics--with very odd results, I might add. (Though, in my defense, I had forgotten the gross-out lyrics and skipped to the cousin stanza.)
Anyway, back to Chinese. It's complicated! But you know, even its complications are complicated; to be honest, I can't just say it's complicated and leave it at that, because every thing that makes Chinese hard also makes it easy, and vice versa. Check it out:
Hey look, a pros and cons list for learning Chinese!
PRO #1:
Chinese has a limited, and definitive, set of sounds--21 initials, 35 finals. All Chinese words consist of a combination of these, meaning there are really on 411 sound-combinations available in Chinese--infinitely fewer than English, if you think about all the different ways you can combine our 26 little letters (I'm not a mathematician; if anyone wants to tell me how many sound combinations there are in English, feel free. I found my Chinese stats online :) Alternately, of course, you can just pick up a dictionary and see how many unique words you can find in there, but I'm guessing theoretical math is easier in this case..). But 411 sound combinations is puny--anyone should be able to knock through those in no time flat! Which leads us to...
CON #1:
INFINITE HOMONYMS. For the non-grammar-minded among us, a homonym is a word which sounds exactly like another word, but which means something entirely different. In English, these are usually spelled differently, as well; some examples would be heir and air, wood and would, eight and ate--I'm sure you can think of more if you want to. In English, you pick up which homonym is being used by the context--if someone says they're going to give their gold ring to their heir, for instance, you can pretty well guess they mean their next of kin, not the oxygen which happens to be floating past their face. Homonyms are confusing, to be sure, but at least in English, they're a fairly limited set.
Not so in Chinese. As Pro #1 pointed out, in Chinese there are only. 411. Sounds. Possible. Just try listening for context when almost every word is the same. As a result of this homogeneity, in my most recent Chinese unit, for instance, we learned "zai" twice--with the same tone (I'll get to tones in a second--for now, just realize that they're usually what's used to make 411 sounds stretch to fit a language full of words.) So, in the simple question-and-answer of "Where is the post office located?" "Go straight, then turn right," you use "zai" twice, once to mean "located" (郵局在哪裡?) and then to mean "then" (直走, 再右轉.) Even typing those two sentences was difficult--I have pinyin input installed on my computer, so I type each word phonetically and indicate tone by number, yet even so I had to scroll through several pages of choices to find the right characters to use--and not just for zai!
As you can see, the characters for each "zai," 4th tone are different, but that just leads us into our 2nd con...
CON #2: So. Many. Characters. As part of solving the whole every-word-sounds-the-same problem, maybe, Chinese has more than 80,000 characters; you need to memorize at least a few thousand to be considered literate in the language. According to Wikipedia, educated Chinese-speakers know 4,000. Wait, 4,000? Out of 80,000? And these are the educated people??? Annnd here we run into how very very difficult and--wait for it--COMPLICATED the Chinese language truly is. It's not unimaginable at all for a very well educated Chinese-speaking person to run across completely unknown characters while reading something slightly more obscure. Sure, this happens to English-speakers, too, but at least with a phonetic language and a basic knowledge of linguistic etymology (such as the educated person in our scenario would have), you would have a pretty good shot at pronouncing it at least in the ballpark of correctly. Not so in Chinese-- from what I can tell, at least, a new character is a new character: you may be able to derive the meaning from the radicals (patterns based on meaning which get repeated across characters), but there's absolutely no guarantee that you could pronounce it. Maybe that's just my flawed understanding of the language, but so far as I can tell, that's it: a new character is absolutely unknowable, even for a very educated person. So good luck when you run into those lesser-used 76,000 words, I guess.
But at least you know to expect them. Which brings us to...
PRO #2: You can't change the characters. No, really, you can't change them. So, you know that whole irregularity thing you get in most languages, things like verb conjugations, pluralizations, all that crap? Throw it out the window. A word is a word is a word. "I go" is the same as "He goes" is the same as "She goes" is the same as "They went." (Man, where did English come up with those screwy changes, anyway? "Go" to "went"? Almost as bad as Spanish's "voy" to "fuí," from a verb called "ir." Almost.)
It's kind of refreshing in Chinese, coming from a language chock full of verb- and tense-confusion and irregularities: suddenly, "I go to the beach;" "Yesterday I go to the beach;" and "Tomorrow, he and I go to the beach" are all perfectly correct. Lovely for a new learner, especially when there are so many/so few words to work with all of a sudden. Just add a modifier like "de" (的) to most anything and it's possessive/adjectival (我 is "me/I," 我的 is "mine;" 中山路 is "ZhongShan Road," 中山路的 is "on ZhongShan Road"); add "le" (了), or just specify a time like yesterday, and you've made it past tense. And that's glorious.
And another glorious fact brought about by unchanging characters is...
PRO #3: They started combining words to make more words--and their compound words actually make SENSE. This is actually probably the single best thing about Chinese: if you know what each of the characters in a compound word means, you can probably figure out what the word means as a whole. Conversely, if you have absolutely no idea what the word you're searching for is, you can talk your way around the unknown word and, chances are, you might actually hit on the right one. As an example, the other day Rachel and I went out looking for a helmet store; on the way there, Rachel (who actually knows Chinese, unlike me) told me she didn't know the word for helmet, but she knew the words for head, scooter, safety, and thing. So, the plan was to ask if they had any "scooter head safety things." And sure, that strategy might also work in English, but the likelihood of actually guessing the word in English is infinitely smaller than in Chinese.
I mean, come on, just look at English compound words. There's neither "pine" nor "apple" in a pineapple, for instance. Chinese is much more sensical: the word for "school," for instance, "學校," is literally "study school;" an elementary school is "小學校," or "small study school;" and college is "大學," or "big study." As a language learner, there's no way not to love how literal it can be.
BUT...
PRO/CON #4: It's ironic that this is my fourth and last pro/con--and odd for me that I even have a fourth point--because what I'm going to talk about here is TONES, and there are four regular tones in Chinese (technically 5, but the 5th is a non-tone). And I don't quite know where to stick them.
On the one hand, tones are great--they provide a great non-context way out of the sticky homonym situation, and they make you sound super animated all the time.
But on the other hand, they're terrible--for English-speakers who are used to infusing our daily speech with tone to convey emotion, not meaning, the prospect of accidentally putting that question-mark tone (the 2nd tone in Chinese sounds like us asking a question in English) on a word accidentally, AND CHANGING THE ENTIRE MEANING OF THE WORD, is terrifying. Take the seemingly innocent and wonderful word "love"--in Chinese, pronounced "ai" (as in "eye;" 愛), with the fourth tone (which goes down from high to low, and sounds like a very serious definitive--not very loving in English). BUT the 4th tone is absolutely crucial here. Say "ai" with a first tone (like singing) and it means "sorrow;" with a second tone (question mark) and it means "cancer;" with a third tone (dropping and rising) and it means "low."
And that's just one example--and, for that matter, just one set of what each of those tones can mean, because, as I mentioned earlier, the same sounds and the same tones can have different meanings. Just, you know, for fun.
Maybe I do know where to stick tones--in the "cons" category. Because no one wants to accidentally tell someone that they "sorrow" them.
So yeah, that's my pros and cons list. I'll likely add more as I learn more, but now I'm still at an extremely low level of study. How low, you ask? Well, today during my breaks at Han-Min I was studying the words 圖書館 (library), 花店 (flower shop), and 銀行 (bank), amongst others, at my desk--and all three of those words were in our lesson for the 6th graders today. What's more, most of them were able to volunteer other locations when prompted, places like the swimming pool or the department store. I don't know how to say swimming pool.
But I'll learn! Because, for all its complications, Chinese is worth it, and I'm loving growing in my knowledge of it daily, however slowly.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Discoveries
Tonight, Karina and I decided to go check out Kaohsiung International Church--you know, the one which we tried to find the first weekend, only to have a doorman at an apartment building where we were trying to ask directions tell us that we weren't in Kaohsiung anymore. (He was wrong.)
This time, though, we went by scooter (first time driving with someone on the back--discovered I could do it--success!), and looked up and wrote down directions ahead of time. Only parking was an issue, since the street the church is on is under construction and I fail, in general, in getting my scooter into parking spaces. But, even with that little drama, we ended up in the church five minutes before service began.
And service was good! In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Springfield Faith Center, where I attended while growing up--the pastor's name was even the same, Dave, which I thought was a funny coincidence. And the people were friendly and fairly outgoing; it turns out, several of them live near the Cultural Center, too! One guy, Mike, had on a Mariners shirt, which got me excited for a minute, but turns out he's not from there. Dave, on the other hand, is!
It was a good mix of people (age-wise etc), good preaching, and decent worship (though I'm not going to lie, at moments I wanted to run on stage and grab the bass sitting there unused to get their rhythm back to where it should have been). Basically, still no City Church, but I felt like I could learn and belong there for a year.
After service, one of the girls, Katie, invited Karina and I to get dinner with them, but we had to get back to write our weekly reports (and, in my case, blog), so we declined and went to Mosburger for a quick bite instead--one which turned out unexpectedly fishy and slightly stomach-turning (looked like a burger in the picture! Shoot!). Next time, I'll join the church group.
On the way back, we saw a little bit of the area, which is technically in Sanmin district, and loved what we saw! First of all, clearly a fairly Westernized area--Mosburgers, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Blockbusters dotted the scenery--and it was also a very young area, with young people wandering everywhere. Also, from what I can tell, it's near the Love River! Definitely a very nice (and probably expensive) place to live, and definitely a nice district discovery which I will have to explore more in the very near future.
So, one successful church visit down, I dropped Karina at the MRT station and scouted out a flower shop I'd seen on Guangzhou the other day to buy a bunch of flowers for my lesson tomorrow, "Where are you going?" We're using realia to help reinforce the vocabulary, and I volunteered to supply the material for flower shop--and as a bonus, get some lovely flowers in my apartment after we're done with them! (Assuming they survive tomorrow, that is.)
Anyway, here they are--cost me all of $150NT, or about $5US, so a bit steep for around here but I didn't feel like bartering with a nice older lady when I could barely speak the language anyway and I was her only customer.
So, things I discovered today: a good church; that I can drive with someone on the back; a great area to hang out; that I shouldn't eat seafood at Mosburger; that flower shops here are open on Sundays; that I need to buy a vase. Obviously some discoveries are worth more than others--so I should really go buy that vase now. :)
This time, though, we went by scooter (first time driving with someone on the back--discovered I could do it--success!), and looked up and wrote down directions ahead of time. Only parking was an issue, since the street the church is on is under construction and I fail, in general, in getting my scooter into parking spaces. But, even with that little drama, we ended up in the church five minutes before service began.
And service was good! In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Springfield Faith Center, where I attended while growing up--the pastor's name was even the same, Dave, which I thought was a funny coincidence. And the people were friendly and fairly outgoing; it turns out, several of them live near the Cultural Center, too! One guy, Mike, had on a Mariners shirt, which got me excited for a minute, but turns out he's not from there. Dave, on the other hand, is!
It was a good mix of people (age-wise etc), good preaching, and decent worship (though I'm not going to lie, at moments I wanted to run on stage and grab the bass sitting there unused to get their rhythm back to where it should have been). Basically, still no City Church, but I felt like I could learn and belong there for a year.
After service, one of the girls, Katie, invited Karina and I to get dinner with them, but we had to get back to write our weekly reports (and, in my case, blog), so we declined and went to Mosburger for a quick bite instead--one which turned out unexpectedly fishy and slightly stomach-turning (looked like a burger in the picture! Shoot!). Next time, I'll join the church group.
On the way back, we saw a little bit of the area, which is technically in Sanmin district, and loved what we saw! First of all, clearly a fairly Westernized area--Mosburgers, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Blockbusters dotted the scenery--and it was also a very young area, with young people wandering everywhere. Also, from what I can tell, it's near the Love River! Definitely a very nice (and probably expensive) place to live, and definitely a nice district discovery which I will have to explore more in the very near future.
So, one successful church visit down, I dropped Karina at the MRT station and scouted out a flower shop I'd seen on Guangzhou the other day to buy a bunch of flowers for my lesson tomorrow, "Where are you going?" We're using realia to help reinforce the vocabulary, and I volunteered to supply the material for flower shop--and as a bonus, get some lovely flowers in my apartment after we're done with them! (Assuming they survive tomorrow, that is.)
Anyway, here they are--cost me all of $150NT, or about $5US, so a bit steep for around here but I didn't feel like bartering with a nice older lady when I could barely speak the language anyway and I was her only customer.
 |
| Please note that they are currently sitting in an aluminum thermos. In other news, I need to buy a vase. |
Technical difficulties...and spaghetti
As of 3pm here today, I was supposed to have hit 'submit' on my application and have been finished. In fact, my plan was to do it earlier than 3pm (which would have been midnight 9/23 in Seattle--end of the deadline); to this end, I turned on my computer around 10:30am. And when I did, I found...nothing.
I don't mean to imply that my essays were gone. Rather, the website was. I went to log on to discover a page saying it had suffered a fatal error, listing an email address to contact, and a whole host of error messages. I emailed the listed address and got back an auto-answer saying there was a fatal error with that address and listing a second one; I emailed that and got the same answer. Gulp.
So I emailed SPU's liaison, and discovered that people had been having problems with it all day--which was then confirmed by an email from one of the professors whom I'd asked to submit a recommendation for me. Fortunately, though, the liaison told me it would be fine to submit it late--a grace I didn't fully appreciate at the moment, but we'll get to that.
So the rest of the day was spent in watching shows, reading articles, and periodically checking back in with the application web site, to see if it had healed itself. (It never had.)
Then, around 5:30, I went to Chialing's to meet up with her, Samia, Emily and Lydia for a night of Italian food we'd planned yesterday. It was delicious, and such a welcome change! Chialing and Samia--who is pretty much the nicest person you'll ever meet--had pretty much done all of the cooking by the time I got there, so I felt bad that I couldn't participate in the cooking part of the plan, but the EATING part was wonderful!
And as an added bonus, Fonda and her niece, who everyone calls "little Fonda" were there at first, and "little Fonda," who's about 4, wasn't as scared of me this time, and even gave me a high-5! No way not to love that. :)
Emily and Lydia were running a little late because they'd been in Zuoying with Karina and playing with the puppies, and while we ate, Samia and I started chatting about our days, and I mentioned my oh-so-fun tangle with technology. She asked what my application was for, and when I said the Marshall and started to explain, she cut me off with "I know." Turns out, she applied last year, made it to the interview stage, and applied again this year, thinking that Fulbright would have pushed her application over the edge (which I am 100% sure it would have--she is superwoman even without the Fulbright), but her university turned her down because of a missed deadline.
See, I told you we'd get there. And it wasn't even her missed deadline, or the Marshall's deadline, which is still a week away even now. Her recommenders hadn't turned in their letters before her campus (read: phone call in the middle of the night here) interview, so, after the interview, they told her no. Absolute insanity--one arbitrary deadline missed by the applicant's contacts, with a full month to go before the real deadline, and they won't back the person who is undoubtedly their best chance for winning a prestigious award?
Really made me grateful for SPU's graciousness today.
After Italian food, we set out for the movies, where we watched "Crazy Stupid Love," with Steve Carrell, which was brilliantly funny and (at times) poignant, I thought. Definitely worth a watch.
Then it was back to my computer, where I discovered two things: the web site was working again, and I had previously missed several sections I needed to fill in. Good time I waited till I was fully awake and functioning before I hit send! Prayers for my application would be greatly appreciated. And hey, if I get an interview, I'll be back in the States for a few days in November sometime!
Anyway, now that my application is in, my self-embargo on book-reading has been lifted. So I've really got to go. :)
I don't mean to imply that my essays were gone. Rather, the website was. I went to log on to discover a page saying it had suffered a fatal error, listing an email address to contact, and a whole host of error messages. I emailed the listed address and got back an auto-answer saying there was a fatal error with that address and listing a second one; I emailed that and got the same answer. Gulp.
So I emailed SPU's liaison, and discovered that people had been having problems with it all day--which was then confirmed by an email from one of the professors whom I'd asked to submit a recommendation for me. Fortunately, though, the liaison told me it would be fine to submit it late--a grace I didn't fully appreciate at the moment, but we'll get to that.
So the rest of the day was spent in watching shows, reading articles, and periodically checking back in with the application web site, to see if it had healed itself. (It never had.)
Then, around 5:30, I went to Chialing's to meet up with her, Samia, Emily and Lydia for a night of Italian food we'd planned yesterday. It was delicious, and such a welcome change! Chialing and Samia--who is pretty much the nicest person you'll ever meet--had pretty much done all of the cooking by the time I got there, so I felt bad that I couldn't participate in the cooking part of the plan, but the EATING part was wonderful!
And as an added bonus, Fonda and her niece, who everyone calls "little Fonda" were there at first, and "little Fonda," who's about 4, wasn't as scared of me this time, and even gave me a high-5! No way not to love that. :)
Emily and Lydia were running a little late because they'd been in Zuoying with Karina and playing with the puppies, and while we ate, Samia and I started chatting about our days, and I mentioned my oh-so-fun tangle with technology. She asked what my application was for, and when I said the Marshall and started to explain, she cut me off with "I know." Turns out, she applied last year, made it to the interview stage, and applied again this year, thinking that Fulbright would have pushed her application over the edge (which I am 100% sure it would have--she is superwoman even without the Fulbright), but her university turned her down because of a missed deadline.
See, I told you we'd get there. And it wasn't even her missed deadline, or the Marshall's deadline, which is still a week away even now. Her recommenders hadn't turned in their letters before her campus (read: phone call in the middle of the night here) interview, so, after the interview, they told her no. Absolute insanity--one arbitrary deadline missed by the applicant's contacts, with a full month to go before the real deadline, and they won't back the person who is undoubtedly their best chance for winning a prestigious award?
Really made me grateful for SPU's graciousness today.
After Italian food, we set out for the movies, where we watched "Crazy Stupid Love," with Steve Carrell, which was brilliantly funny and (at times) poignant, I thought. Definitely worth a watch.
Then it was back to my computer, where I discovered two things: the web site was working again, and I had previously missed several sections I needed to fill in. Good time I waited till I was fully awake and functioning before I hit send! Prayers for my application would be greatly appreciated. And hey, if I get an interview, I'll be back in the States for a few days in November sometime!
Anyway, now that my application is in, my self-embargo on book-reading has been lifted. So I've really got to go. :)
Friday, September 23, 2011
This is a blog post
Which says that I'm exhausted and in the final stages of finishing my application. Therefore, I'm sorry, but that's all I can write today--there is a limit to how much writing and editing I can do in a given period of time at the end of a long week, and I've reached it. :)
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Revision(s)
My day consisted of revision. Or, rather, revisions, both of my schedule and within it.
My oh-so-optimistic schedule, as laid out last night, had to do with me making it to the gym today by roughly 11am. That didn't happen. It had me at Brunch and working through my essays the remainder of the day. That did happen, but it also had me finishing these revisions and finalizing my essays before tonight. And that, also, didn't happen.
But I did spend the bulk of my day making revisions, and that was no small feat: when I began, my 1,000 word personal statement was closer to 1,200 words, and didn't have everything in it that it needed; my 500 word essay on choosing the UK was 650 words long and also didn't have everything in; ditto for my 500 word essay on my academic program. So, all told, today I cut roughly 500 words and somehow managed to fit multiple complicated ideas back in. But I'm still not done.
One of the most frustrating aspects of being a writer, or just of the writing process in general, is that it can never truly be done. This is especially true for things like applications, since they are all voluntary writings with high stakes involved--meaning you are highly, highly invested in getting each word and sentence transition down perfectly. If it weren't for institutions' graceful granting of strict deadlines, I'm convinced no application would ever get turned in--or maybe a lack of caring or over-the-top self-confidence would become the new determining factor for who won every competition.
All that to say, I'm still working. John, a former Kaohsiung ETA and current Marshall scholar whom I contacted a while ago, was gracious enough to look over my personal statement and give me a few pointers, which I devoured like a starving man in a desert (sorry for the tired cliche--I've used up my creative juices allowance for the day). Now I'm busy reworking my essay after his suggestions; tomorrow after school, it'll be more of the same. The deadline is technically tomorrow, Sept. 23, but it's due on Seattle time, so I actually have another night with my application if I want it--and, knowing me, I will. Ah, the (occasional) joys of the time difference.
So that was my day. Tonight Fonda and Alex (who's in town for classroom observations) came out to dinner with Karina, Lydia, Emily, Samia and I, and took us to a quite delicious stir fry place on Guanghua, about 3 blocks from here. I've walked past/through (sidewalks are extensions of the inside here, always) it dozens of times, but had never tried it. But we will be back! Absolutely wonderful veggies, fish, chicken and fried rice.
On a final, unrelated note (and because my blog has been sorely missing in photos lately), here's a shot I took yesterday walking towards Guanghua--I think it's adorable. If I submitted it for a photo contest, I'd call it "Training Wheels." Of course, it wouldn't win, but maybe you'll still like it:
My oh-so-optimistic schedule, as laid out last night, had to do with me making it to the gym today by roughly 11am. That didn't happen. It had me at Brunch and working through my essays the remainder of the day. That did happen, but it also had me finishing these revisions and finalizing my essays before tonight. And that, also, didn't happen.
But I did spend the bulk of my day making revisions, and that was no small feat: when I began, my 1,000 word personal statement was closer to 1,200 words, and didn't have everything in it that it needed; my 500 word essay on choosing the UK was 650 words long and also didn't have everything in; ditto for my 500 word essay on my academic program. So, all told, today I cut roughly 500 words and somehow managed to fit multiple complicated ideas back in. But I'm still not done.
One of the most frustrating aspects of being a writer, or just of the writing process in general, is that it can never truly be done. This is especially true for things like applications, since they are all voluntary writings with high stakes involved--meaning you are highly, highly invested in getting each word and sentence transition down perfectly. If it weren't for institutions' graceful granting of strict deadlines, I'm convinced no application would ever get turned in--or maybe a lack of caring or over-the-top self-confidence would become the new determining factor for who won every competition.
All that to say, I'm still working. John, a former Kaohsiung ETA and current Marshall scholar whom I contacted a while ago, was gracious enough to look over my personal statement and give me a few pointers, which I devoured like a starving man in a desert (sorry for the tired cliche--I've used up my creative juices allowance for the day). Now I'm busy reworking my essay after his suggestions; tomorrow after school, it'll be more of the same. The deadline is technically tomorrow, Sept. 23, but it's due on Seattle time, so I actually have another night with my application if I want it--and, knowing me, I will. Ah, the (occasional) joys of the time difference.
So that was my day. Tonight Fonda and Alex (who's in town for classroom observations) came out to dinner with Karina, Lydia, Emily, Samia and I, and took us to a quite delicious stir fry place on Guanghua, about 3 blocks from here. I've walked past/through (sidewalks are extensions of the inside here, always) it dozens of times, but had never tried it. But we will be back! Absolutely wonderful veggies, fish, chicken and fried rice.
On a final, unrelated note (and because my blog has been sorely missing in photos lately), here's a shot I took yesterday walking towards Guanghua--I think it's adorable. If I submitted it for a photo contest, I'd call it "Training Wheels." Of course, it wouldn't win, but maybe you'll still like it:
Brain Lapse
Again with the two-days thing. Today was actually worse--Wednesdays in general are going to be rough, really. My brain is fried.
My day today began with Morning English at Hanmin at 8am, meaning I had to be out the door here by no later than 7:15 or so. After that I had (and always will have) an hour break (in which I get coffee; this morning Maggie and I went out and brought back some for Alison, too), and then taught from 9:30-noon. Then, after eating lunch, I lesson planned with Alison and Maggie, then set out for Sanmin for our biweekly Fulbright meeting, which began at 2pm. It was interesting at times, but the general mood of teachers (LETs and ETAs alike) was exhaustion. When that finished (10 minutes late), the ETAs had a chat with Alex and Fonda, then had about a half hour to go grab a snack (奶茶--milk tea--and 7-11 garlic bread for me) before Chinese classes started at 5:10. Then we had class for 2 hours. When I got home, around 7:45 (after a brief detour to Chialing's with Emily and Lydia, where we were disappointed to find her closing up already), I took the opportunity to run some errands: pick up flashcards from the stationary store (more on that later), buy pineapple and nectarines from a fruit stand (dinner), and pick up some milk.
So around 8:30, just over 13 hours after I left the house, I sat down to a nice relaxing evening of painstakingly copying foreign characters and building a stack of unknown words the height of Taipei 101.
Why, you may ask?
Well, the title refers to more than just my present inability to think straight, or my inability to remember the first part of my day--on the drive from Hanmin to Sanmin I decided I was going to write my scooter rant today--traffic inspired me--but that rant is lost now--though that does of course play a part.
But it also refers to Chinese class. Maybe it was a function of the long day, but today in class I was absolutely worthless in anything related to Chinese. Usually pronunciation can be my saving grace, even when my memory fails (often), but tonight, I couldn't even get that right. When we met up with Chialing, she asked me what we learned today, and I couldn't remember a single thing to tell her. The word "zai" (4th tone--在/ 再) popped into my head--it means either "located" or "then," depending on context/character--but that was it. One word, from an entire lesson which included pretty much everything about how to ask for/give directions.
Crap.
The kicker was that I had spent all of my breaks at school today studying--going over old vocabulary, studying the dialogues we would be doing tonight--all for nothing. This may seem like the most self-evident statement in the history of the world, but Chinese is hard!
Also, today while ordering 奶茶 with Karina today, she told me I've been saying "you" (有) instead of "yao" (搖) when ordering recently--telling everyone that I have whatever I'm ordering, instead of saying that I want it. The one phrase I thought I had down. And the worst part is that I know the difference between those two words! Yet even this failed me today.
So now I have a freakishly tall stack of cards with the Chinese character and a picture on one side, and the pinyin (phonetic Chinese) and English translation written on the back. I'll be staring hard at these puppies on a daily basis, and adding to them, too, which my writers' cramp-y hands are not looking forward to right now.
On a positive note, I received my official invitation to the 10/10 celebration in Taipei next month. It's kind of a big deal.
So yeah, all the Fulbright scholars this year are invited to celebrate the Republic of China's 100th Anniversary, in the capital, with the president, as the guests of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The invitation states that "national dress or western style dress" is required (time to break out my silk from China!), and "guest pass is enclosed and required for entry."
Of course, ours didn't have the guest passes--Vivian, a Fulbright coordinator in Taipei took them for us so we don't forget them--but the prestige of the invitation still oozes forth. I am so excited, humbled, and blessed to be in Taiwan at such a great moment in its history!
Perhaps I should have mentioned at the beginning of this post that I don't have school tomorrow, thanks to Cing-Shan's students' 6th grade trip. This is, after all, the only reason I'm still up at 3am local time: no set time frame tomorrow. Which means that I will (try to remember to) hit up the gym and then shut myself up at Brunch Cafe to finish my application, which is due Friday, Seattle time.
So I guess I should go to bed now. Time to let my brain recover.
My day today began with Morning English at Hanmin at 8am, meaning I had to be out the door here by no later than 7:15 or so. After that I had (and always will have) an hour break (in which I get coffee; this morning Maggie and I went out and brought back some for Alison, too), and then taught from 9:30-noon. Then, after eating lunch, I lesson planned with Alison and Maggie, then set out for Sanmin for our biweekly Fulbright meeting, which began at 2pm. It was interesting at times, but the general mood of teachers (LETs and ETAs alike) was exhaustion. When that finished (10 minutes late), the ETAs had a chat with Alex and Fonda, then had about a half hour to go grab a snack (奶茶--milk tea--and 7-11 garlic bread for me) before Chinese classes started at 5:10. Then we had class for 2 hours. When I got home, around 7:45 (after a brief detour to Chialing's with Emily and Lydia, where we were disappointed to find her closing up already), I took the opportunity to run some errands: pick up flashcards from the stationary store (more on that later), buy pineapple and nectarines from a fruit stand (dinner), and pick up some milk.
So around 8:30, just over 13 hours after I left the house, I sat down to a nice relaxing evening of painstakingly copying foreign characters and building a stack of unknown words the height of Taipei 101.
Why, you may ask?
Well, the title refers to more than just my present inability to think straight, or my inability to remember the first part of my day--on the drive from Hanmin to Sanmin I decided I was going to write my scooter rant today--traffic inspired me--but that rant is lost now--though that does of course play a part.
But it also refers to Chinese class. Maybe it was a function of the long day, but today in class I was absolutely worthless in anything related to Chinese. Usually pronunciation can be my saving grace, even when my memory fails (often), but tonight, I couldn't even get that right. When we met up with Chialing, she asked me what we learned today, and I couldn't remember a single thing to tell her. The word "zai" (4th tone--在/ 再) popped into my head--it means either "located" or "then," depending on context/character--but that was it. One word, from an entire lesson which included pretty much everything about how to ask for/give directions.
Crap.
The kicker was that I had spent all of my breaks at school today studying--going over old vocabulary, studying the dialogues we would be doing tonight--all for nothing. This may seem like the most self-evident statement in the history of the world, but Chinese is hard!
Also, today while ordering 奶茶 with Karina today, she told me I've been saying "you" (有) instead of "yao" (搖) when ordering recently--telling everyone that I have whatever I'm ordering, instead of saying that I want it. The one phrase I thought I had down. And the worst part is that I know the difference between those two words! Yet even this failed me today.
So now I have a freakishly tall stack of cards with the Chinese character and a picture on one side, and the pinyin (phonetic Chinese) and English translation written on the back. I'll be staring hard at these puppies on a daily basis, and adding to them, too, which my writers' cramp-y hands are not looking forward to right now.
On a positive note, I received my official invitation to the 10/10 celebration in Taipei next month. It's kind of a big deal.
 |
| You can tell by the envelope. And, you know, the return address: "Ministry of Foreign Affairs." |
Of course, ours didn't have the guest passes--Vivian, a Fulbright coordinator in Taipei took them for us so we don't forget them--but the prestige of the invitation still oozes forth. I am so excited, humbled, and blessed to be in Taiwan at such a great moment in its history!
 |
| If you were curious, here's the invitation itself. |
Perhaps I should have mentioned at the beginning of this post that I don't have school tomorrow, thanks to Cing-Shan's students' 6th grade trip. This is, after all, the only reason I'm still up at 3am local time: no set time frame tomorrow. Which means that I will (try to remember to) hit up the gym and then shut myself up at Brunch Cafe to finish my application, which is due Friday, Seattle time.
So I guess I should go to bed now. Time to let my brain recover.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Real life
I don't know what to think about this, but my days now seem to naturally divide themselves into two parts--my school day and my 'real' day. By the time I sit down to write my blog, most of my school day has faded away, as if it was from a different life.
But of course it's not! In fact, it's more my 'real' day than my time after school--it's at school that I get to teach kids English, after all, and that's the reason I'm here! So, with that in mind, I taught 5th graders with Maggie today. They learned phonics, the "ng" sound, doing things like chanting "There is the king/ The king can sing/ The king can sing on a swing." After one of my classes, one of the best students came up to me to tell me that he was going to give an English speech tonight. That was all, just wanted to tell me. Super cute. :)
At lunch, as is my norm, I ate the school lunch in the subject teachers office and chatted with Maggie, Alison, and Fiona, the other English teacher at Han-Min. I always love talking to them--though the lunch today was somewhat less than delicious, rice porridge with taro, mystery meat, and tofu. Still loved the greens that are an ever-present part of the meals, though. That and the milk. :)
One of these days I'll give a more complete run down of my daily routine.
Today, though, I went to they gym for the first time here! Rachel and I went over after she got home from school, and I pretty much just followed her around the gym, seeing as it's been far too long since I've been and I was pretty lost as to what to do, other than the first half hour of cardio, which is pretty standard. Nonetheless, though, and the air conditioning notwithstanding, I was dripping and my muscles were strained by about 15 minutes in--I had not realized how out of shape I was. This will be a fun next couple of weeks...
We also did weights, and I did an ab workout, too, so the rest of the week will be pretty sore for me in general. I had ample opportunity to realize this, too, because after the gym we went to Carrefour and I bought a vacuum cleaner to take care of my rapidly dirty-ing rug in my room. Shaking it out can only do so much.
Another fun side effect of buying a vacuum cleaner is that I learned how to drive with something entirely occupying my foot space on my scooter. Or, at least the part of my foot space that I usually use--apparently, there's still plenty of space if you maneuver a bit.
Anyway, as a result partly of a bad nights sleep and partly of my workout, probably, I'm now really tired, and tomorrow I have to teach Morning English, and get gas before I head to school. Realistically I'll still be up for a few hours, but finishing this now makes that process shorter, at least. Now back to real life. :)
But of course it's not! In fact, it's more my 'real' day than my time after school--it's at school that I get to teach kids English, after all, and that's the reason I'm here! So, with that in mind, I taught 5th graders with Maggie today. They learned phonics, the "ng" sound, doing things like chanting "There is the king/ The king can sing/ The king can sing on a swing." After one of my classes, one of the best students came up to me to tell me that he was going to give an English speech tonight. That was all, just wanted to tell me. Super cute. :)
At lunch, as is my norm, I ate the school lunch in the subject teachers office and chatted with Maggie, Alison, and Fiona, the other English teacher at Han-Min. I always love talking to them--though the lunch today was somewhat less than delicious, rice porridge with taro, mystery meat, and tofu. Still loved the greens that are an ever-present part of the meals, though. That and the milk. :)
One of these days I'll give a more complete run down of my daily routine.
Today, though, I went to they gym for the first time here! Rachel and I went over after she got home from school, and I pretty much just followed her around the gym, seeing as it's been far too long since I've been and I was pretty lost as to what to do, other than the first half hour of cardio, which is pretty standard. Nonetheless, though, and the air conditioning notwithstanding, I was dripping and my muscles were strained by about 15 minutes in--I had not realized how out of shape I was. This will be a fun next couple of weeks...
We also did weights, and I did an ab workout, too, so the rest of the week will be pretty sore for me in general. I had ample opportunity to realize this, too, because after the gym we went to Carrefour and I bought a vacuum cleaner to take care of my rapidly dirty-ing rug in my room. Shaking it out can only do so much.
Another fun side effect of buying a vacuum cleaner is that I learned how to drive with something entirely occupying my foot space on my scooter. Or, at least the part of my foot space that I usually use--apparently, there's still plenty of space if you maneuver a bit.
Anyway, as a result partly of a bad nights sleep and partly of my workout, probably, I'm now really tired, and tomorrow I have to teach Morning English, and get gas before I head to school. Realistically I'll still be up for a few hours, but finishing this now makes that process shorter, at least. Now back to real life. :)
Monday, September 19, 2011
Drenching
It's finally stopped pouring outside right now--but pour it did, for several hours, beginning, of course when I was just getting ready to drive back from Chinese class.
And I discovered several things about the rain:
And I discovered several things about the rain:
- It's absolutely wonderful. It cools you down, the humidity's not as bad, somehow, and overall it just feels like you're sitting in the middle of a perfect waterfall in the middle of the jungle. And of course, given that this is a subtropical region, that's not too far from the truth.
- It's absolutely inescapable. Remember that waterfall simile? Yeah...that actually applies to force and drop size, it's not just a stereotype of something wonderful. Leaving San-Min, where we have Chinese classes, I wasn't quite insane enough to think I could make it home unprotected, so my first instinct was simple: drive across the street, where there was a 7-11 which, Fonda informed me, would be selling ponchos. Yeah...in the time it took for me to get to my scooter, put on my helmet, stop at the light and drive across the street, I was drenched. As in my white skirt was clinging to my legs, my shoulders were wet through and my sandals were sponging water. Even after I put on my newly-purchased pale yellow all-body poncho, my shoes were under what felt like a running faucet, my face was being constantly smattered with rain, and the small triangle of my shirt left exposed by the poncho was soaked through by the time we made it back to the apartment.
- When it rains in Taiwan, ponchos emerge out of nowhere like umbrellas in New York or cicadas in their long-awaited season. Everyone expects torrential rain; everyone prepares for it. Everyone, that is, except foreigners. (Well, not quite only foreigners--I was in good company at 7-11, and they had a stash of raincoats by the check-out.)
Productive Sunday
Wait, productive Sunday? What is this crazyness you speak of?
It's true, though--I got SO much done today that now, as it nears midnight, I can hardly believe it. Typical Sundays here have consisted of lounging about and watching TV, as you may have picked up from my immensely boring typical Sunday posts.
TODAY, however...
So yeah, some things were pretty far off from my own theology, some things were just minor differences or argument holes; and while some parts were right on, I think I'm going to keep looking. I miss the City Church; I was definitely spoiled in Seattle with such a wonderful church and the inspiring and challenging messages of Judah Smith.
It's true, though--I got SO much done today that now, as it nears midnight, I can hardly believe it. Typical Sundays here have consisted of lounging about and watching TV, as you may have picked up from my immensely boring typical Sunday posts.
TODAY, however...
- I joined the gym. Rachel and I drove our scooters over to Sanduo, proudly presented our receipts from yesterday's excursion, signed our names a few places, shelled out some more money, and we were in! It was an interesting experience in which I was almost totally silent, since no one working knew English (in stark contrast to last time we went, when at least three of the six people working were essentially fluent), but the woman who signed us up was one of the same people from last time and remembered us, so that was nice. And another major bonus was that, for some reason, the people at the gym took both of our receipts but gave us Rachel's discount--the full discount--even though I spent $500NT under what I was supposed to. Sweet! And now I have full reign of machines, weights, a game room, and weekly Zumba, yoga, and step aerobic classes, amongst others. And, in my ever-growing consciousness about the layout of Kaohsiung, I found out that this branch is RIGHT off my normal route to/from school. Must remember to start packing gym clothes and a shower towel when I go to school...
- I finished drafting my application. (As a side note, I find it ironic that you can tell I'm a writer because I refuse to use the word "write" for this sort of thing--everything is a draft until it's turned in/published, and even then it's not always beyond revisions!) This involved sitting in the Brunch Cafe across the street for several hours and pounding away on my Internet-intentionally-disconnected computer. And, on a related note...
- I ordered at Brunch Cafe--a whole conversation, not just "I want this," but with options and new vocabulary--and the lady understood me, and I understood her! And Brunch Cafe gives numbers for food, which they then call over a 20-year-old-McDonald's reminiscent microphone--in Chinese--and I knew when to go pick up my food! (I think--it wasn't cold when I got there, anyway.) Win!
- I went to church, along with Analicia, her friend Wendy, Karina, and Fonda. Turns out the church is in Zuoying, really close to where Karina lives, actually. Also turns out this will likely NOT be my home church. Analicia warned me that it would be traditional--single hymns interspersed on a printed service order in the bulletin--but in addition to that, I found portions of the sermon iffy, at best. The pastor hit some good points, but for the most part, I think our core theologies differ too much for me to feel like I can learn from him. Here's a (very rough) graphic representation. In this case, deviation from the blue line means I disagree with what's being said:
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| To clarify my unclear graph, the Scripture part at the beginning refers to the yellow along the blue line. |
- Back at home (and back to my list), I filled out my weekly report, did my Chinese homework, and worked a bit more on my application. It's due this Friday, which is so crazy! It'll be nice to have it in,though.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Taxi!
Considering my other non-Taipei, non-USA weekends since I got here, I did a remarkable amount today. But it wasn't quite intentional.
The day began with me looking at my clock and thinking "Huh, 10 o'clock. Not a bad time to get up!" Seconds later, I looked over and saw that it was now 11 o'clock.
Once I was up, though, I immediately set into cleaning mode: our apartment decided to set up weekly cleaning people, rather than divvy up weekly chores like we did at my last house. And this was my week, and I hadn't yet completed probably the biggest and most important of my cleaning jobs: sweeping and mopping all the common areas. It wasn't pretty, and it certainly wasn't fun (take all the joy of normal cleaning, then add 15* and humidity), but it was rewarding to see the outcome: clean floors, for about 5 minutes. Se la vie, I guess.
Anyway, after that, Rachel and I set out to try to find a way to spend $2,500NT. That may sound like an easy task, but ours was actually more complicated--the reason we were trying to spend money was that the gym we're planning on joining, Fitness Factory (for the record, not the gigantic one with the rock climbing wall and pool pictured; we're going to a smaller, cheaper branch off of Sanduo), is having a promotion in which, if you spend up to $2,500NT at once at one of their partner stores, you can deduct that amount from your joining fee of $2,500NT. So, really, it's a question of "Do you want to give us $2,500 and get nothing, or spend $2,500 somewhere else and get something?"
Big surprise, we chose the latter.
But it was not an easy task! We visited Fitness Factory on Tuesday, found out about the deal, and were given a pamphlet listing all the partner stores. It was, however, written entirely in traditional characters, which neither Rachel nor I can read. (We could read "SUBWAY," but $2,500NT worth of sandwiches is a bit extreme...) So we (and by we, I mostly mean Rachel) spent the week asking various Taiwanese friends what the places on our pamphlet were, and where we should go. With the help of Chialing, as well as Rebecca and Karen (Rachel's LETs), we got some translations and narrowed down the list to a few contenders.
And this morning, we clutched our little green pamphlet, grabbed a cab across the street (and down a ways, since the guy in the cab directly across the street was sound asleep in the driver's seat), and asked him to take us to a car store. Now you may be thinking "Cars? But you don't have a car.." which is true. Our thought was that they might also sell scooter stuff, and we have both been hankering for a better scooter helmet.
Turns out, though, that your thoughts were right--nothing doing. As Rachel pointed out, we could have gotten Ferrari bumper stickers for our scooters, but I really can't say that's something I'm in the market for.
So we hailed another cab and asked him to take us to our back-up place--a jewelry store which turned out to be right around the corner from the gym. It also happened to be a tiny little section of a department store, with prices beginning at $40,000NT. Next!
We hopped another cab and asked him to take us to either of two watch stores on the list; whichever was closest. He agreed and set out, but as we looked closer at the address on the pamphlet, we realized that even the "closer" one was in Zuoying--by the HSR station, quite a ways from where we were. *sigh* One $200NT cab ride (spendy for here, but dirt cheap by US standards) later, we finally found the store, and discovered we'd finally found somewhere to spend our money. I walked away with a great watch and a pair of cheap clear glasses (for scootering at night), and Rachel walked away with a pair of cheap clear glasses and a pair of "designer" (we're not sure if they were telling the truth...ever hear of Martini?) sunglasses. I was actually a bit disappointed, though, because they gave me a discount, meaning my total was less than the $2500 allowed. Never been disappointed about a discount before! But now I have to pay a good $420NT to join, which is unfortunate.
Anyway, since we were in Zuoying and I'd promised Karina a visit today anyway--she lives in Zuoying now--we took the MRT down to meet her puppies. They are absolutely adorable! She adopted them off of Cijin Island a few weeks ago, and though she's since discovered she can't keep them--she's taking them to Taipei next weekend to become animal therapy dogs--it was so much fun to see the little pups and watch them play. Their names are MoMo and ChiChi--combined into "Mochi" their names mean "an unspoken deep understanding" in Chinese--and they were born at almost the same time that we got to Taiwan, Karina says. I do wish she could keep them if only for that reason--they have the same amount of history here as we do! In any case, though, it was lots of fun to see them, and to see where Karina and Esther live now.
We then grabbed another cab and went back to our apartment, where Brittany (who had been at a Taiwanese engagement ceremony of the friend of one of her LETs all day) was waiting for us to go to Kaohsiung Sky Tower 85--the landmark building of Kaohsiung, which we hadn't been to yet.
So we hopped in yet another cab and went to the 85, as it's usually referred to around here. At the top (or, rather, floor 74, where the observation deck is), we enjoyed some great views and an....interesting....Tokyo photographers exhibit, before grabbing dessert (caramel apple cheesecake for me; Haagen Dazs for Brittany and Rachel; Karina didn't want anything) and heading home.
For Karina and I, anyway--we walked to the MRT and went our separate ways. Brittany and Rachel grabbed another cab and went shopping.
And that was my day! Did some application work when I got home, which I should have done all day, and now I'm sitting here doing this. At least it doesn't require a taxi!
The day began with me looking at my clock and thinking "Huh, 10 o'clock. Not a bad time to get up!" Seconds later, I looked over and saw that it was now 11 o'clock.
Once I was up, though, I immediately set into cleaning mode: our apartment decided to set up weekly cleaning people, rather than divvy up weekly chores like we did at my last house. And this was my week, and I hadn't yet completed probably the biggest and most important of my cleaning jobs: sweeping and mopping all the common areas. It wasn't pretty, and it certainly wasn't fun (take all the joy of normal cleaning, then add 15* and humidity), but it was rewarding to see the outcome: clean floors, for about 5 minutes. Se la vie, I guess.
Anyway, after that, Rachel and I set out to try to find a way to spend $2,500NT. That may sound like an easy task, but ours was actually more complicated--the reason we were trying to spend money was that the gym we're planning on joining, Fitness Factory (for the record, not the gigantic one with the rock climbing wall and pool pictured; we're going to a smaller, cheaper branch off of Sanduo), is having a promotion in which, if you spend up to $2,500NT at once at one of their partner stores, you can deduct that amount from your joining fee of $2,500NT. So, really, it's a question of "Do you want to give us $2,500 and get nothing, or spend $2,500 somewhere else and get something?"
Big surprise, we chose the latter.
But it was not an easy task! We visited Fitness Factory on Tuesday, found out about the deal, and were given a pamphlet listing all the partner stores. It was, however, written entirely in traditional characters, which neither Rachel nor I can read. (We could read "SUBWAY," but $2,500NT worth of sandwiches is a bit extreme...) So we (and by we, I mostly mean Rachel) spent the week asking various Taiwanese friends what the places on our pamphlet were, and where we should go. With the help of Chialing, as well as Rebecca and Karen (Rachel's LETs), we got some translations and narrowed down the list to a few contenders.
And this morning, we clutched our little green pamphlet, grabbed a cab across the street (and down a ways, since the guy in the cab directly across the street was sound asleep in the driver's seat), and asked him to take us to a car store. Now you may be thinking "Cars? But you don't have a car.." which is true. Our thought was that they might also sell scooter stuff, and we have both been hankering for a better scooter helmet.
Turns out, though, that your thoughts were right--nothing doing. As Rachel pointed out, we could have gotten Ferrari bumper stickers for our scooters, but I really can't say that's something I'm in the market for.
So we hailed another cab and asked him to take us to our back-up place--a jewelry store which turned out to be right around the corner from the gym. It also happened to be a tiny little section of a department store, with prices beginning at $40,000NT. Next!
We hopped another cab and asked him to take us to either of two watch stores on the list; whichever was closest. He agreed and set out, but as we looked closer at the address on the pamphlet, we realized that even the "closer" one was in Zuoying--by the HSR station, quite a ways from where we were. *sigh* One $200NT cab ride (spendy for here, but dirt cheap by US standards) later, we finally found the store, and discovered we'd finally found somewhere to spend our money. I walked away with a great watch and a pair of cheap clear glasses (for scootering at night), and Rachel walked away with a pair of cheap clear glasses and a pair of "designer" (we're not sure if they were telling the truth...ever hear of Martini?) sunglasses. I was actually a bit disappointed, though, because they gave me a discount, meaning my total was less than the $2500 allowed. Never been disappointed about a discount before! But now I have to pay a good $420NT to join, which is unfortunate.
Anyway, since we were in Zuoying and I'd promised Karina a visit today anyway--she lives in Zuoying now--we took the MRT down to meet her puppies. They are absolutely adorable! She adopted them off of Cijin Island a few weeks ago, and though she's since discovered she can't keep them--she's taking them to Taipei next weekend to become animal therapy dogs--it was so much fun to see the little pups and watch them play. Their names are MoMo and ChiChi--combined into "Mochi" their names mean "an unspoken deep understanding" in Chinese--and they were born at almost the same time that we got to Taiwan, Karina says. I do wish she could keep them if only for that reason--they have the same amount of history here as we do! In any case, though, it was lots of fun to see them, and to see where Karina and Esther live now.
We then grabbed another cab and went back to our apartment, where Brittany (who had been at a Taiwanese engagement ceremony of the friend of one of her LETs all day) was waiting for us to go to Kaohsiung Sky Tower 85--the landmark building of Kaohsiung, which we hadn't been to yet.
So we hopped in yet another cab and went to the 85, as it's usually referred to around here. At the top (or, rather, floor 74, where the observation deck is), we enjoyed some great views and an....interesting....Tokyo photographers exhibit, before grabbing dessert (caramel apple cheesecake for me; Haagen Dazs for Brittany and Rachel; Karina didn't want anything) and heading home.
For Karina and I, anyway--we walked to the MRT and went our separate ways. Brittany and Rachel grabbed another cab and went shopping.
And that was my day! Did some application work when I got home, which I should have done all day, and now I'm sitting here doing this. At least it doesn't require a taxi!
Friday, September 16, 2011
Friday
Well that title is simultaneously the most blatantly obvious statement of all time and it managed to get the song by Rebecca Black stuck in my head. But it is, nonetheless, an apt description of how I feel right now--it's Friday!
And I'm spending my Friday night sitting on the couch in my apartment, watching movies and eating junk food. Because sometimes, you just need a day like that. (Or at least that's what we're telling ourselves.)
But fortunately, we're currently watching The Holiday--way out of season, I know--but I'm watching the scenes of the snow-covered southern English countryside and realizing afresh just how much I want to go there next on my travels. So maybe I'll use this time to gain inspiration to keep working on my application. :)
After school (which was pretty great, though the 5th graders were rather too noisy in their appreciation of the vocabulary matching game), I got home just in time to get a call from Rachel asking if I wanted to go to lunch with her and her LET, Karen. I'd met Karen at the orientation and loved chatting with her then; today was no different!
Karen took us to a lovely Japanese restaurant owned by her family (she introduced us to several, who were there--and were, if I remember her introductions correctly, were her 6th and 7th aunts? Big family!), and it was absolutely deLICious. Here are some photos of us and the wonderful spread:
Other than that, nothing terribly exciting, provocative or insightful happened today. I worked on my application, watched TV, hung out with Karina, who came over for a few hours, and pretty much just rehearsed my role as a couch potato.
And that's it! Another reason my posts are getting shorter: my life is settling into a routine, and with routine comes a lack of new experiences to write about. SO, if you have things you want to know more about, just let me know!
For now, I'm going to enjoy my lazy Friday.
And I'm spending my Friday night sitting on the couch in my apartment, watching movies and eating junk food. Because sometimes, you just need a day like that. (Or at least that's what we're telling ourselves.)
But fortunately, we're currently watching The Holiday--way out of season, I know--but I'm watching the scenes of the snow-covered southern English countryside and realizing afresh just how much I want to go there next on my travels. So maybe I'll use this time to gain inspiration to keep working on my application. :)
After school (which was pretty great, though the 5th graders were rather too noisy in their appreciation of the vocabulary matching game), I got home just in time to get a call from Rachel asking if I wanted to go to lunch with her and her LET, Karen. I'd met Karen at the orientation and loved chatting with her then; today was no different!
Karen took us to a lovely Japanese restaurant owned by her family (she introduced us to several, who were there--and were, if I remember her introductions correctly, were her 6th and 7th aunts? Big family!), and it was absolutely deLICious. Here are some photos of us and the wonderful spread:
 |
| ...and keep in mind that this wasn't all of it. |
 |
| Pictured behind the hand rolls: tempura shrimp. Possibly the best thing I ate all lunch...hard to tell, though. So yummy! |
And that's it! Another reason my posts are getting shorter: my life is settling into a routine, and with routine comes a lack of new experiences to write about. SO, if you have things you want to know more about, just let me know!
For now, I'm going to enjoy my lazy Friday.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Distraction
Then something misfired. My pages were missing. And, in re-adding them, I missed Blogger.
As a result, I keep forgetting to post until I'm about to go to sleep. Tonight, I actually got all the way ready for bed--PJs, teeth brushed, face washed, etc--before realizing I forgot to blog. And yet there's no worse excuse for destroying a thus-far daily habit for something as prosaic as 15 more minutes of sleep. So that's why my blog posts have been short lately, for those who've been asking (Mom).
And that's not been my only distraction. It's my cleaning week at the apartment, which has both been a distraction and has suffered from my other distraction, namely, my application to be a Marshall scholar next year.
The application is due in just over a week, and I still have so much to do! And, for most of this week, most of what I did was work on it, sporadically, and try to think of new ways to get my recommenders to respond to my pleas--while they're still on summer break and mostly away from their computers, if not busy with other work, and while I'm 15 hours ahead of them, meaning my waking hours are their sleeping hours and vice versa. Sigh.
At last it worked itself out, though; once I finish my parts, I WILL actually be able to submit. I wasn't sure there for a while, though...and the thought that it could all be for nothing does not exactly inspire an unrelenting work ethic!
In other news: quiet coyote.
So many years of camp experience miraculously confirmed today in my little class of 6th grade hellions--because, to be honest, there's really only the one class that's *really* hard to manage, and *really* full of stereotypical 6th graders. But, as it turns out, they can be ruled with a combination of quiet coyote and a smart board! They were captivated today, and easy as all get out to make be quiet! Night and day difference.
For the uninitiated, quiet coyote is quite simple. It involves holding your hand with your middle and ring fingers touching your thumb and your first and pinky fingers lifted up. The idea is that the kids do the motion (that part didn't catch on today, for some reason) and imitate the 'coyote'--ears up, mouth shut.
 |
| Like this, but sans the blond hair, since I'm in Taiwan. :) |
And, at the genius suggestion of Patty, we added a "make noise" signal to precede the coyote--and which was, needless to say, insanely popular. The game was the last table to be quiet when I lifted up the coyote lost points. Points, of course, are all but meaningless, except for the kids themselves, but it worked! Amazing how easily kids--even middle schoolers--buy into this sort of thing. And I know I was no different! I wanted to win, even if there was nothing to win!
But let me tell you, on the other side, I'm so glad they do.
The other highlight of my day was a jaunt with Rachel over to Subway, which we discovered is like 6 blocks from our apartment. The plan was to buy a $2500NT gift card, which we could then deduct from our gym joining fee (it's an odd inter-company joining promotion; Subway and a bunch of other companies are participating), but apparently there's no such thing as a Subway gift card here. So I guess Rachel and I will have to indulge in some jewelry shopping. Oh darn.
Well, that was actually quite long, considering how tired I am and the fact that I have to be up in a little under 7 hours. Distracted yet again--from going to bed.
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