聖誕節 and Everything in between

Hello!
I'm sorry it has been so long. I have had many affairs to attend to and now I'm enjoying my new room, a five minute walk from my school. It is truly a blessing to be so close. I marvel every time I can walk to the metro without waiting in the cold 20 plus mins for a bus that has no set schedule. Now that it's colder, I had to admit, the wait was less bearable. I still need to pay the new landlord the rest of the deposit. Thankfully, I had a random subbing position for 10 hours teaching English to two classes. The money helped me a bundle. I believe God had a hand in arranging for the meeting with myself and the lady who arranged the subbing position. I felt that way the most when on my way to see the school to learn the curriculum. I passed for the first time in Taiwan the scene of the Nativity. Christmas is all commercialized and secular here unless you are near a church. So seeing this on my way to my destination in the metro gave me hope to my lousy week and the stress of finding a new place to live. Now that I have a new place I'm focusing on buying tickets to Hong Kong in order to "renew" my visa, which is another pain that I never had to deal with in Spain. Here they require you to visit the immigration office every 3 months or so to get your visa extended. I have already gone there twice because they didn't extend it fully when I hadn't yet paid tuition for the following semester to continue my studies. In order to keep my visa from expiring I must go outside the country and re-enter it. That will automatically reset the days for another 2 extensions. It is the most convenient and least stressful manner for me. Otherwise going for a Resident Visa would be another boatload of work.

Well, as for my Christmas. It was standard for being away from home. I went on Friday evening with my friend to attend church. I got to see a Christmas concert and hear Latin, English and Chinese song. My friend sang "Holy Night" in Japanese and I sang it in English. Although she doesn't attend mass, she is that special that she would go with me just so I wouldn't be alone. She is definitely a special friend. Christmas day, my friends arranged for a Christmas picnic that went indoors because of the rain. All week it was sunny and warm until Christmas! We enjoyed ourselves for lunch and then we got donuts from Mister Donut and went to a nice coffee shop near my friends' apartment. We talked and played cards into the evening before I went home to pack for the move.

I have my language exchange partner to thank for helping find a nice price for a short walk away from school. We found this place within two days. It is great knowing people who live here for sure. I find that people are often stunned by the rapid pace that I'm learning Chinese. It's not rocket science. I just hang out less and less around English speakers and more and more with my Taiwanese and other friends who don't speak English often or well and must use Chinese.
Since I'm not so thrilled by my new teacher this semester, I find it all the more important to do my best where I can outside of it with my friends and the people I meet.

Today, I don't want to forget to look more into the spiced milk tea I drank at the Indian Restaurant near my new place. I ordered the tea 印度奶茶 which just translates to Indian milk tea and it was amazing! The spices and milk blended made it creamy and yummier than any latte. I asked the waiter about what was put in it. My Japanese friends' language exchange partner was there to help us but I didn't get the answer I wanted. We just found out it had spices in it. I want to know how it was made so I plan on going back with a list of spices translated to ask what they used.

Holiday Trip South

Hi Again,

This is another quick blog to talk about my holiday between classes. I start my next semester in the middle of the second book tomorrow. I hope I like my new teacher. If not I have every intention of changing. I will not stay if I have any doubts. Some of my friends did not get along with there teachers and our learning experiences were like night and day. It's important that your class is like a family I believe in order to learn together well. My class this past semester was great and I'm going to miss that.

As for the places I went to. I started in one National Park 楊明山 near 台北 Taibei and ended in another National Park 太魯閣 near Hualien 花蓮。

The first day in 楊明山was exhausting but beautiful hike up the mountain. Kristyna wanted to go to the very top but my lungs where starting to give out and I haven't built up my endurance entirely so I said lets turn here and we went left along the easier road that went to the clearing instead of the steep climb upwards to the top. We "plan" to go back for the Cherry Blossoms and Azaleas that come out in the springtime. It's a very popular place. While we hiked a fast pace, we passed many elderly people with back packs that held a stereo blasting old Chinese classical music or something relaxing... Not am radio Mom. Haha! They had very nice hiking sticks and they were steadily making the climb. I had to take breaks because Kristyna was zooming up the mountainside. I would have taken my time on my own. At least I'm not sore anymore because of Judo. My legs are feeling fine. But I want to have more stamina. Anyway, as we reached one marked point of our climb one of the many stray dogs that we see everywhere took a liking to us. Kristyna was not happy about it but it was funny because the dog specifically followed her. It was a cute dog and I find it sad that most stray dogs are the typical black short haired, pointy eared dogs that owners decide to leave on the side of the road. They look well fed for the most part, so I believe they survive for some time but I am nonetheless heartbroken that it's always the same breed. The fluffy little lap dogs are mostly favored with the families and are normally decked out in ridiculous clothing.

About half way back down the mountain the dog stopped following us so we headed home. I was exhausted and still coughing from my cold. I didn't feel like getting up early the next day...

The next day, I did get up early. We found a bank that finally allowed me to take out some money. It has been frustrating looking for atms now that my scholarship has ended. Our plan was to wake up and make the train, which we did. We made the train and once there we were met with locals wanting our service. So we so happened to stay in the first hotel that the worker there showed us. He walked us to the hotel and showed us different rooms for options. I hesitated because it was the first hotel we checked. However, we were tired and the place was decent for the price so we stayed for 600 NT for two in one room with a bath. After dropping off our things in the hotel and setting out we found a buffet for lunch, which is always the cheapest when eating out. I ordered my food and the lady at the register asked me if I knew where I was pointing to my shirt with a map of Taiwan. I pointed to Hualian. And then she asked me from where I had come and I told her Taipei and pointed there. She was really excited that I could talk to her in Chinese and it made me smile. We sat down to eat and at the table next to us a business man was eating. He mentioned to us to get some of the soup behind us and later offered us paper napkins. We ended up talking for awhile and he was impressed with our Chinese. And that was the beginning of our adventure around Hualian with our tour guide for the day. He was very kind to us and drove us to the beach and all of the best sites to see the ocean since we planned to walk he insisted to drive us. He laughed saying we couldn't possibly walk and that the buses are not like in Taipei, where they barely ever come by and are never on time. As the day went on, we wondered if he was an important official with nothing better to do at the time. He had been to countries all over Europe and then he mentioned visiting Hartford, CT. Which shocked me because nobody knows Connecticut and definitely not Hartford in Taiwan. They know NY, so that is where I always say I'm near.

The next day we got on the hotel's tour bus to 太魯閣. At very good price we were brought to the most famous areas of Taiwan's most famous National Park with lunch included. We were happy about this because the gorge is very long and there was no way for us to see it all on foot within a day. So we were dropped off at areas that we could explore and take pictures before going to the next destination. We had our bags with us on the bus and the tour guide dropped us off at the train station afterwards so we could go straight to Taipei. I will remember the place we ate for lunch because it was a gemstone and jewelery shop with a restaurant in the back. The food was typical Taiwanese but for the first time I found everything to be very savory and yummy. I can never compare my mothers food to anything at a restaurant but I finally had something satisfying. And because we were in a gem shop, they owners gave us a demonstration of the inner qualities they believe in Jade and coral and everything in between. As part of one demo, I tried a small sip of sake and then after dipping this particular rock into the cup to try it again. He told me it would taste lighter, like water. I believe it tasted light probably because I was tasting it off of the stone instead of out of the cup. Afterwards, a lady showed us how to check for real Jade. She demonstrated with a strand of human hair wrapped over the gem. She proceeded to burn it with a lighter but it didn't burn. She tried again on a replica of a Jade stone and the hair snapped in two and a piece of the gem stone also broke apart. After some more talking she told us there was a discount of 60% for our group and she seemed to have me pinned down as her next buyer. I was not happy but tried to be polite. I didn't want to spend money. So we bargained in Chinese for a good while ~mainly me saying sorry, it's pretty but I can't buy anything. She acted sympathetic to me being a student and poor so we set the price down on a sapphire ring that I am happy with... The part I enjoyed was talking in Chinese about money. She was impressed by that too. But it seemed unfair that she didn't pin down the German girl on our tour. The Malaysian men had no interest so it was Kristyna and I that walked out with jewelry.