First Day of Class

Thursday, I had orientation, and Friday was my first day of Chinese class.


Getting Lost


Orientation day was the day that I got lost everywhere I went.  First, I missed my stop on the bus and had to take a taxi back to NTNU.  Then, on the way home, I walked the wrong way when I was looking for the MRT.  I walked fooooooorreeeeever and ended up at CKS Memorial Hall.  Then, I managed to take the wrong train several times before finding the right one.

The MRT can be a little confusing some times because at some stops, they have multiple trains stop at the same place, and the trains themselves are not labeled.  They have a sign on the wall that looks like this, which would lead you to believe that the train stopping there is the one you want.

They also have a LED display inside that tells you the current station you are at.  About  30-60 seconds after you leave the station, the LCD changes to tell you the destination you are going to and the next stop.  This is just enough time for you to realize you are on the wrong train.  To know which train is actually there, you have to watch the TV that is there, which is constantly displaying commercials, mostly involving some girl dancing around and falling on her ass and then taking some product and becoming an amazing dancer complete with animated ribbons flying around her.  Anyway, on one side, there is a thing that tells you how long it is until each train comes.

Orientation


For orientation, there were several hundred new students in a large lecture hall.  They said everything in Chinese, and then repeated it in English, which was OK.  Though, a lot of what they say conflicts with other things that they say, so it was a bit confusing.  For example, we have 10 hours a week of regular Chinese class.  But, we need 15 hours a week of class to keep the Visa people happy.  So, there all these things you can do to get extra hours.  You can study in the library.  You can attend lectures on pronunciation and such.  You can also take cultural classes such as the cooking class I am thinking about taking.  Anyway, but then they have these rules for the maximum hours you can do of each thing.  For this month for example, we need 19 supplemental hours.  In theory, I can take the cooking class for  1-2 hours a week and it is supposed towards that.  But then they told us that we must have exactly 13 hours in one place and exactly 6 hours in another place. (I think one was the library and one was a language lab or something.)  So, I am confused if taking the cultural class will just make me have to do more total hours or not.  Anyway, I guess it is a typical bureaucracy.

My First Class

I attended a supplemental class on pronunciation Friday morning.  It was good.  Though, the teacher pronounced the third tone in a way that is different than anyone else I have ever heard.  A lot of other students commented on this, so it wasn't just me.  But, two hours is a long time to focus on a foreign language without having a break.  I did meet several interesting people there.  One guy was a Buddhist monk.  He is originally from Oregon, and grew up near my college town.  He went to college in Eugene, Oregon.  Apparently, he is in a monastery in Taiwan now and has to take a 2 hour bus ride to get to school each day.  I also met a couple of girls from Japan that seemed nice.  One of them kept correcting the stuff I wrote down wrong, which was cool.  Afterwards, when I was killing time waiting for my regular class, I met a guy from Thailand.  I have a theory that they actually don't let anyone out of Thailand who is not from Bangkok.  When I was talking to him I met several other students from Thailand, and they were of course all from Bangkok too.

My class has maybe 8-10 students.  One other guy is from the US.  He was studying in Japan and was forced to leave and ended up in Taiwan.  There are three more girls from Japan, who were all  very nice.  Then, there was a guy from Thailand.  And a Buddhist monk from somewhere that has a strange accent.  Anyway, so this school is very culturally diverse.

They gave us this food to eat during class called Zongzi that looked like this:

This food is traditional for the Dragon Boat Festival.  Apparently, it is designed to be better for fish to eat than a dead body of a poet.  True Story.  I'm not even making this up.  Some guy killed himself by jumping in the river, and he was so popular that people didn't want the fish eating his dead body.  So they threw bundles of rice in the water.    

Anyway, for a while, everyone just sort of stared at it.  I'm not sure what everyone else was thinking, but I was trying to decide whether or not you were supposed to eat the outside layer.  Luckily, the teacher didn't mention the part about it being a substitute fish food and all of that.  Finally, one of the girls who is braver (or more reckless) than me untied hers and started eating it.  I decided she was our poison taster.  She didn't appear to be poisoned, so I started eating mine too.  Anyway, you had to untie the string and it was kind of messy and we didn't have napkins.  So, I ripped out some paper from my notebook to use as a plate/napkin.   One girl couldn't actually get hers untied for a while.  I don't remember what her name was, but I secretly nicknamed her Houdini.  Actually, I could emphasize with here because they were really hard to open.  I was going to tell her the Houdini thing, but I didn't think she would get the cultural reference. Seriously though, it was totally like a puzzle or something.  It didn't taste all that great, but I would indeed prefer to eat it than to eat a dead body.

Capoeira 


Thursday night I took my first Capoeira class.  It was fun, but I am so out of practice.  Ninja, which is the nickname of the teacher, did a good job teaching the class. We did a lot of a kick called Meia Lua de Compasso.  It looks like this:

Here is a random youtube video of a guy doing this kick:

Anyway, I am sore in every muscle in my body.  Hopefully, I will get used to it again.

McDonalds:

McDonald's delivers here.  They have person on a scooter who carts around a rally big box with the food in it.  I tried to take a picture of her, but she didn't want me to.  Maybe it is because we made her walk up three flights of stairs with a big box to deliver our food.  They also have some different things on their menu.  I will have to check that out some other time though.   

Some Random Pictures:

Here are a few other random pictures of me and Venus:

Bubbles!!! :)

On the bus to Venus's office