The President's House, Tacos, and a Puppet Show

Hopefully this post won't be quite so long in coming as the last, but, that said, it will probably be a lot shorter.

Last Tuesday morning, I was still staying at Mati's house, and woke up later than usual. We got ready, ate some small sandwiches for breakfast, then walked to the MRT and took it together to Ximen Station. There we met up with all of the other Chinese classes, and walked to the President's House. We sat around for at least 30 minutes outside, then in a few separate groups entered the house for a tour. We walked through a museum that included information about the building's creation and history, the history of traditional people in Taiwan and some artifacts, some symbolic paintings related to Taiwan, the President, and the building itself, as well as some more modern inventions by Taiwanese people. In my group only three of us were paying attention during the tour - Mati, an american named Ali, and I - so the tour guide was only speaking Chinese and letting Ali and I translate for Mati. We took a lot of pictures, and learned quite a bit about the history of the island, the Republic of China, and the current Taiwanese government. In 1895 the Japanese occupied Taiwan, and between 1912 and 1919 the current President’s House was built as headquarters for the Governor-General in charge of the island. The building is 4 stories high with a tower in the middle that is 11 stories, 60 meters, and at the time of its completion was the tallest building on the island. Seen from above, the building has the shape of a rectangle crossed by a line, the Chinese and Japanese character for the sun, and also the first character in Japan. In 1945, during World War II, Allied forces bombed the building, damaging much of the front, and the Japanese were forced out of Taiwan. After and during the war, the ROC took over the island, and moved there fully a few years later when they were pushed out of mainland China. In 1950 the former headquarters were converted into use as the President's House and the island's governing building. The current president, Tsai Yingwen, is the first female president of the country, and the second president from the Democratic Progressive Party, and currently resides and works at the President's house, however was away when we visited. We learned a lot more, and I'll include lots of photos at the end. Overall it was very interesting for those of us who listened, and I think very useful and important for us in understanding the culture and history of the country that will continue to be our home during the coming 7 and a half months (wow, it feels like just a couple weeks ago that we were looking forward to 10 months here!)

After the President's house, I went with about 20 other exchange students to an Italian restaurant where I had some incredible cheesy potatoes and some pizza that was good enough that it was amazing just for being pizza. I ate with my Mati, Pedro from Brazil, Matús for Slovakia, and Krys from Poland, then took the MRT back to school. During culture class we went to Bihu Park with our student teachers, where we drank chocolate milk, taught each other tongue twisters in Chinese and English, and sang Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lounges to the delight and extreme amusement of our teacher and an older lady practicing Tai chi in the park who burst out laughing when we passed her. I love my three culture class teachers, and have connected to them a lot more than many of the students in my class, simply because when we do stuff together we usually just walk around and talk about whatever we feel like in Chinese, joke, and have fun together as we would with friends. I look forward to the three hours of culture class we have every week for a chance to truly feel engaged at school and in conversations in Chinese.

After school, I met Grant, the other boy from my district in the US, at the SOGO at Zhongxiao Fuxing Station (there are three SOGO malls, no one really understands and it gets really confusing). We walked around searching for the perfect food purchase, which is hard in a huge department store where they have so many options, but all of them are fairly expensive. Something I forgot to mention earlier was that I accidentally only brought about 300 NT in cash and 150 NT on my transport card to Mati's house, which is hardly enough for five days, especially because we always go to expensive restaurants with the exchange students. So I ended up just buying some sweet pastries for dinner, which, considering I eat really healthily every day with my host mom, I didn't feel too bad about. Grant and I had a great time just walking around the area for a couple of hours, eating and talking, before we had to head home. When we finally called it a night, we were actually at a different, nearby MRT station, which I found out is connected to Zhongxiao Fuxing by an underground mall, so we walked back throught the mall, then hopped on our respective MRTs towards home, or Mati's house in my case.

Wednesday was a pretty typical day; at school I studied, did some interesting station exercises along with some volleyball during both of my Martial Arts/ PE classes. I was tested in CPR during health class, and taught my classmate some extra skills such as the how to save a choking baby with the dummies (thank you lifeguarding for that and for helping me seriously impress my teacher with my life-saving skills), and learned about the inside of a monitor computer class. After school I went to Mati’s, took a shower, and did my homework which was very extensive and took hours of writing characters. We eventually realized it was pass 9 and we hadn't eaten, so we went over to Mati's family's apartment (not sure if I mentioned this, but they have two separate apartments, one where most of her family is, and another where Mati and her host cousin live). It turned out the majority of her family wasn't there, just her aunt who I had never met before, but Anna, the woman who takes care of Mati's grandmother, brought us some dumplings, and we sat on the floor of her room eating and playing card games. I really loved staying at Mati's house because we are very close friends, and it was nice to have someone to talk with, eat with, and work on Chinese homework with for a week.

Thursday morning was back to regular Chinese class. We had a test as usual, then learned new words. I love that we learn words in the context of conversations, so we'll often practice as we go, and learn other words that are relevant but that aren't in our textbook. Afterwards we headed back to our favorite supermarket to meet up with what is becoming our usual Thursday group: me, Maria, Anneke from Germany, Mati, Natalie, Hayden, and Alberte from Denmark. It's pretty much my closest friends, plus anyone we go to school with, so we all depart in pairs when we finish eating. First however, we use it as our one meal a week to indulge in the carbs we miss so much from home. Our go to staples are garlic bread, cheesecake and KFC french fries (yes I know this sounds very unhealthy, but once a week it is absolutely incredible, considering carbs and familiar bread are such a tiny part of our usual diet here).

During culture class, Hayden and I took the bus with our teachers to a small store packed with everything you could imagine for cheap prices, I guess it would be closest to a dollar tree back home. There were isles and isles of snacks, bags, hats and other random clothing items, and shelves upon shelves of Christmas decorations. I was so surprised by all the Christmas items, especially considering it was the second of November, but since that Thursday, everyday I pass a few stores decked in stockings, ornaments, snowmen, and lots of red and green sparkly banners. It's very disorienting because it's still rather hot out, and the Christmas spirit is very unevenly distributed: most stores don't have anything related to the holiday, but the few that do are full to the gills.

After school, I headed back home, ate some dinner (more dumplings, which I luckily have yet to get tired of), worked on some Chinese, hung out with Mati, packed my stuff, and then around 10 my host mom came to pick me up. I have to say that when I flipped on the lights, dropped my stuff in my room, and flopped onto my bed, it felt just like coming back home from a short trip. It's a great feeling to have your own room, to know your way around a house and feel like it's yours. I know that in a month or two I will be switching host families, and it's somehow very strange to imagine myself in another room, packing up all the stuff scattered in various places around the apartment, and settling in to another, and even stranger to think that someone else has lived and will be living in what I've come to think of as my room, specifically my host sister and soon Matilde. Speaking of which, I'm trying to not to think about what must be happening to my room back home now that my younger brother is living in it...

On Friday I went to school as usual. We played volleyball during PE in the morning, I was actually pretty good once my PE teacher taught me how to properly hit the ball. With the confusion of coming home the night before, I forgot it was Friday and that I would need my swimsuit. During swimming club I instead did exercises with the other students who usually skip out on swimming. In music class I played some songs in Chinese, including one we learned the words to during our last Chinese class. I also practiced some of the English songs I taught myself, and learned some new chords during our break. By the time class was over, my fingers were starting to bleed, but it felt good, and I really loved playing. I also miss playing the violin a lot, but am worried about buying one because our apartment is so small that I'm sure it would drive my host mom and our neighbors crazy, so maybe a ukulele would be better suited, at least while I'm here. There is someone upstairs who practices the piano every evening, and they're not the best at playing, so I can definitely imagine that it would get old to hear the violin through the walls every day. Still, I really miss playing so maybe it's something to think about.

After school on Friday, I went home. My host mom and I were planning to go IKEA, but at the last minute she realized she would have a meeting at 7:30, so she picked me up at 6, and we headed to a nearby restaurant for beef noodle soup and some particularly thick and flavorful scallion pancakes. The beef was actually really good: soft and perfectly cooked, and overall it was a great meal, though a bit rushed. I ate my pancake on the way home, and it was completely worth the greasy fingers. When I got home I worked out, and added all the pictures to last week's blog. That took forever, especially because I had so many photos and I wanted to post every one (as you can see, I practically did). There are just so many incredible things I've seen and done here. Even on the days that sometimes feel boring or uneventful, I experience things I never would in the US, and sure, maybe the locals think I'm crazy when I stop to take a picture of some particularly big snails, or just the view, or a shot of the street that looks interesting, but sometimes it strikes me that the things that I now take for granted surprised me when I first got here. It’s also interesting to think of all the things that would be so normal back home, but would feel so out of place here. I’m truly in a different world, and living in the heart of a huge, constantly moving city is the most incredible part.

Saturday morning I was proud of myself for getting up early when I didn't need to and finishing putting up my photos and some more Chinese homework. My host mom had a meeting in the morning, and when she got back we went out to lunch. We were going to go to a semi Italian food place that she told me was very famous, but the place was entirely full, so we left. Still it is worth noting that the restaurant was covered in Christmas decorations, much more than I have ever seen a restaurant in the US. Not many people really celebrate Christmas here, and we don't get school off for it, so I still find it very strange that there were huge signs plastered to the wall reading Merry Christmas, and wreaths and banners on every surface. Instead of that restaurant, we went to the dumpling restaurant that my host mom brought me too on my third day in Taiwan. I had a huge bowl of beef noodle soup, another scallion pancake, a second type of scallion pancake with noodles inside, and lots of dumplings. My host mom had a class or a meeting in the afternoon, so she dropped me off at home, where I worked out a bit, changed, and headed to Daan park where I spent part of the afternoon trying to teach Natalie to bike on the you-bikes there. I have a lot of respect for parents teaching their kids to ride a bike, it was very hard to explain something that is so instinctive to someone who's never done it. She made some progress but after a while we decided to call it quits and instead take the MRT to buy tacos. We have found a tiny taco shop that's actually not bad for Taiwanese Mexican food. They also had burritos, nachos, quesadillas, and more, but the tacos were the cheapest and the easiest, so we each bought one. While they wouldn't have passed for anything more than a shell with some lettuce, cheese, and meat when compared to any other tacos, there are no other tacos to in sight to compare them to, so they tasted incredible. It may sound like I'm eating a lot of non-Taiwanese food, but the truth is I love Chinese food (most Taiwanese food is Chinese) and I eat it every day. However, there is very little cultural and general diversity in the food here, at least in what is cheap and tastes good, so most of what I eat is rice, noodles, soup, chicken, pork, dumplings, scallion pancakes, and maybe some pickled or steamed vegetables or an egg. It's certainly very different coming from the US where most of the food we eat is actually from another part of the world.

On Sunday I got up and went with my host mom to a traditional vegetable market. But first we got a very traditional breakfast from a tiny stand on the side of a street. The vendor took rice, pork floss, and a fried egg, and wrapped it in a dough pancake. It was good, but I really don't like pork floss, which is just dried shredded pork powdery pieces. I also had soy milk which was heated, and therefore much much better than normal soy milk. At the vegetable market my host mom bought some huge filled green mochi balls, which I would go on to eat in the following days. Some were sweet, with red bean inside, which I enjoyed, but the savory ones were very strange and I'm not sure what the filling was. After the vegetable market, we returned home, and my host mom got ready for her annual high school reunion, which she was very stressed about. I instead got ready and went out to meet up with Mati and Lucia, and from there we went to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial concert hall for a puppet show that lasted 3 hours. We met other exchange students there. Overall the show was very interesting because at various points different signers would come out, or dancers, or actors, and an orchestra was playing most of the time with puppets in the background, although at one point at the end it was just a puppet show with one guy sitting in front doing all the voices, and a bunch of people moving the marionettes around to portray a story of some kind of battle. After the show we walked to the area where the taco place was and bought bubble tea, went in some stores to look around, and talked for a while before heading back home on the MRT. When I got home I did some homework, then went to bed.

Monday was a pretty typical day, I took the bus to school, and studied in the morning and at the end of the day. During art class we worked on finishing up and assembling our cardboard 3D installation, I have to say it looks pretty cool, although the Mona Lisa is a bit creepy, as is the random boy with a huge mouth at the bottom of our backdrop. I'm not really sure what the purpose of the piece is, but it's certainly abstract. During school my classmates gave out our class shirts which we designed for the school anniversary celebration on Saturday. After school I brought my Chinese homework to Buddhist class with my host mom, where I studied characters that would be on the test the next day for two hours straight. When I got home I went to bed, but set my alarm very early. On Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:30 to my alarm, and got up around 5:00. I spent an hour preparing a presentation about everything we learned at the President's House the week before. I was determined to do well on the presentation, and show that I had been paying attention, so I made a powerpoint and made myself note cards with words I would need to know. I finished at 6:40, and hurried to get ready for school and Chinese class. When I got there, we had a test which was easy thanks to all the studying I had done the night before. I volunteered to go first for the presentation, and I felt good about it because it was fairly thorough and included lots of new grammar and vocabulary. After we had all finished our presentations, my teacher told me that my pronunciation and use of tones had been very good, which made me feel great because I know tones are very important in being able to speak the language, and there are always difficult to remember to focus on while talking. My teacher asked me if I had practiced the tones, which I hadn't, but now that I think about it, it has probably helped that I will often read articles to my host mom in Chinese and she will correct my pronunciation and help me practice my tones. Chinese is such a hard language in so many ways, so to have my teacher commend me on something I've been working on was particularly rewarding.

For lunch about twenty of us went to a different dumpling place for lunch. I love the little dumpling shops they often have here because you can order as many dumplings as you want of as many different kinds, and they're each about 5 NT or 17 US cents, so you can have a solid meal for a dollar or two. I had three pork and cabbage dumplings, which is kind of the standard, plain dumpling, and two curry dumplings which were particularly delicious. Afterwards I got passion fruit bubble tea, and headed back to school. Somehow I almost always end up on the same MRT car as Hayden or Alberte or both, as Alberte goes to school near Hayden and I. Today I rode with both of them, and when Hayden and I got back to school we had culture class. During the class, we watched two episodes of a Chinese "drama", whose name translated to "teenage psychic", and was about a girl who could talk to the dead. To me what was the most interesting was how much the school, the uniforms, and the streets they walked along looked just like the ones I see everyday. Something else that's interesting is how different interpersonal relationships are here. During the episodes we watched we watched there were clearly some feelings between the main character and a boy in her class, and the whole second episode was kind of building up to the moment when they barely kissed which was a huge deal, and when they touched at all, or when anyone touched or hugged each other it was also big deal. It's kind of a strange thing to bring up, but it was just a very concrete example of a cultural difference, especially now that so many of my friends and my whole community of exchange students are European or South American. Every time you meet or see anyone here, the first thing you do is hug them and kiss them on the cheek, which is something I already think I'm going to miss from American culture. When I told my friend Emma, from Italy, that it wouldn't necessarily be rude to not even hug your friend when you see them, she thought it was very strange and sounded very cold, which now that I've gotten used to this European culture, I kind of agree with.

After school I came home, expecting to go to Buddhist class, but my host mom was running late from her meeting, and couldn't stop by to pick me up, so instead I worked out a bit, cleaned my room, boiled up some dumplings for dinner, drank some tea (which I definitely drink too much of, at least two cups an evening) and wrote this blog post. I also ate some Japanese oreos, which I have to mention because they're very good. While I would have to rate regular oreo filling over this filling, which was slight and a bit wimpy, the cookies themselves were amazing, very rich and a bit salty, while I've always felt regular oreo cookies somewhat bland and uninteresting. My host mom bought them for me to try, and if you're ever in Japan or can find them in Taiwan, I would highly recommend :).

I hope you enjoyed the short update, I’ll try to be more consistent and regular with my posts from now on.

The mochi balls my host mom bought at the market

The rice/pancake wrap breakfast being made

The traditional breakfast item itself

Some kind of taro fat brick thing being sold at the market

Crabs for sale at the market

My classmates in our classroom at school

My school is structured with our or five long
individual sections branching off a main
walkway, each with five floors and about five
classrooms per floor, all along an outdoor walkway.
This photo was taken from the third floor walkway
looking out at the next individual building wing

The hallway outside our classrooms

Another view of the next wing over.
As you can see, there are many many classrooms,
and there are over 2,000 students at the school in total

Another view of the hallway. There are many
trees outside and between the wings, and also
planter boxes outside the classrooms, giving the whole
school a very tropical feel

A classroom with students taking a test inside

My class taking their daily morning test

My classmates during break

A model of the President's House

Because it rains so much here, the bricks that the
Presdient's House are made of are special
Japanese waterproof bricks to avoid acid rain damage

A bird's eye floor plan of the building, you can see the
shape of the character 日 from 日本(Japan) if you
were to turn the shape of the building

The wheel from the original elevator

The most important Taiwanese medals

The President's stamps, used in passing laws and
giving orders

Some old traditional Taiwanese pottery

A traditional Taiwanese clay pot

Arroheads and other stone weapons once used
by Taiwanese people who have been on the island
for many centuries

A traditional Taiwanese boat. Every year there is a
competition where participants must use the boats to
sail from Taipei to another island

A timeline of the history of the island

Some examples of the traditional clothing worn
by Taiwanese people

A view of the garden from above. It is in the shape
of a flower that is a symbol of the ROC

The same garden from the ground, the tree you see in
the middle is a very important symbol of the country

Some artwork portraying the current President,
Tsai Yingwen, working at her desk in the President's office

The building in this painting represents the Taiwanese
government, protecting the person (the Taiwanese people)
from the rain. It is also showing that the government is held
up by the Taiwanese people. Since it rains so much here
and everyone uses umbrellas, I think this is a very
appropriate metaphor

Another painting somehow representing the relationship
between Taiwan and Japan

A modern Taiwanese invention of a char that is
made to be particularly comfortable

The pieces of the chair separated individually
to demonstrate the chair's construction

Some modern Taiwanese artwork

Some Taiwanese modern inventions/art at the
President's house museaum

A Taiwanese invention: Some multicolored,
difficult to spill bowls and cups that we were
told were made for people with Alzheiemers
to help remember the individual dishes

me trying to say a Chinese tongue twister

my Chinese teacher trying to say an English tongue twister