第四個星期：Typhoons and Festivals

星期一：Though we've been having intensive classes for a week, Wenzao officially started today. Every morning we have an hour long tutoring session with just us 8 NSLI-Y students starting at 9, then two hours of whatever level of Chinese class we’re in. I was put in the beginning level class, but it’s definitely too easy so I’m going to try and move up a level. After that we have an hour for lunch then, on Mondays, we each have a Chinese elective; I have a class to improve my reading skills. At lunch today we also met our Wenzao buddies. We were each matched with an English student at Wenzao who is essentially supposed to be our built in friend. Mine was really nice and I hope we’ll actually be able to become friends.

The Chinese Language Center at Wenzao, where our Chinese classes are, is actually really cool because it's only for international students who've come to learn Chinese, so I have class with people from all over: Korea, Japan, Australia, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Britain, and even Kiribati. Also though, almost everyone in the class is way older than me; we had to go around and say our birthday and the two students next to me were both born in 1989, so when it was my turn and I said I was born in 1998, everyone just thought I'd said it wrong in Chinese and was actually also 27.

Once school was over, I went to a stationary store by my house. It’s pretty insane; it’s three stories of adorable notebooks, postcards, bags, pens, and everything cute you could want. It’s been a struggle to not buy everything in there. I did buy a cute notebook with a bear and a rainbow, though. I think it’s great that having adorable school supplies is totally cool here, because I’m pretty sure I couldn’t show up to college with that in the U.S. and be taken seriously.

I also decided to visit the Central Park to study for awhile, and it turned out to be a convenient metro ride away, so I'm sure I'll be returning there lots in the future.

(back gate at Wenzao with the convenient 7-Eleven)

(Wenzao)

(Chinese Language Center where most of my classes are)

more Wenzao)

(Kaohsiung Central Park)

星期二：In the afternoon today I had my first elective class. I thought I was signing up for a Chinese art class, but turns out it’s some king of funky philosophy class that also involves art. The professor is also the stereotypical eccentric art professor, and, in general, I don’t know what’s going on as it’s all in Chinese, but I already met a nice group of students who don’t mind helping me out.

After school Mackenzie and I went to visit Becca in the hospital as she’d gotten pretty sick in the past few days. Going to the hospital was definitely an interesting experience as it was way overcrowded, so the weird pepto bismol colored beds were lined up in the lobby and hallways. Apparently Becca was 53rd in line for a hospital room.

星期三：Today Kaohsiung was hit my Typhoon Meranti so all schools were cancelled in the city. We weren’t allowed to leave the house so I pretty much took the day to study, color, and read a lot. Since we don’t live by the ocean, our apartment was really okay, but, since we live on the 15th floor, the wind was really loud and out the window you could see the clouds swirling around the sky.

Overall it was a actually relaxing day, and now I can say I’ve lived through a typhoon.

星期四：Happy Mid-autumn Festival! Today we woke up and headed straight to the family’s grandmother’s house to visit with family and eat lunch. On the way there, it became pretty obvious that the typhoon was quite destructive as most of the trees around had been torn out of the ground, signs were down, and lots of roofs were badly damaged. My host mom also showed me some news footage of the Kaohsiung port where some cars had been washed away and the giant shipping containers had just fallen over like dominos.

At the grandmother’s house, though, we snacked on bubble tea, cookies, and moon cakes while watching Cinderella for some reason, and then we all ate lunch together. From there, we headed to the arts district in Kaohsiung that’s also a park and railway museum. It used to be the warehouse district, but now it’s filled with art galleries, bakeries, and is covered in funky statues. There is also a colorful upside-down house there that you can tour, though it was closed because of the typhoon and holiday. I’ll definitely be heading back there, though, to tour the house and look in more of the shops. From there we tried to visit a temple, but it was flooded, so we just headed back home to nap.

In the evening, we headed over to a family friend’s house where we met up with about 20 people to barbecue for the moon festival. It was really fun as everyone was very interested in what I was doing in Taiwan (they all thought I was an English teacher for most of the night), and I got to try lots of interesting foods. I ate whole squid, goose, pig’s blood cake, and chicken feet, and, though I probably wouldn’t choose to eat any of that again on my own, it really wasn’t too bad. The best, though, was that my host sister told me to try the barbecued chicken hearts, but, when I asked her if they were good, she admitted to never having eaten any as she was too scared, so I made her eat one with me. We both decided they were honestly quite good, though we then felt like vampires. The highlight of the night, though, was that a friend showed up with her new baby, so, from then on, everyone forgot about barbecuing and just passed around the baby for the rest of the night.

(my favorite statue from the arts district)

(no idea what this is supposed to be but it's cute)

(the famous upside-down house)

(moon festival barbecue)

(my host sister and me with a chicken heart)

(moon cake)

星期五：Today we woke up to find out that, because of the typhoon, something was wrong with the water system and we didn’t have any water, so we packed up a lunch and headed to the other grandmother’s house to find water. Once there we watched Cinderella II (so much Cinderella) and then a creepy zombie movie I’m pretty sure none of us actually enjoyed. We then went back to check on the water situation only to find that it was still down, so we went to eat shave ice at a shop behind our apartment. I had been hearing lots about Taiwan’s famous mango shave ice, so I was quite excited to try it, and I was not disappointed. It was delicious.

After that we went to a wetlands park but found that it was full of dead fish from the typhoon, so left soon after to see the Kaohsiung Harbor which also had a nice park. For dinner we went to my host brother’s favorite restaurant, a dumpling place outside the city.

(the wetlands park had lots of cool rope bridges)

(view from the park)

(a great view of the 85 Tower from the harbor)

(the park was full of cool statues like these)

星期六：Today the water was back on and we headed out to Fo Guang Shan, a giant Buddhist monastery, temple, and museum. It was truly giant with eight small pagodas, four large ones, a huge museum, and a giant Buddha statue. The museum was really interesting and explained the history of Buddhism, the life of Buddha, Buddhist holidays, and it also displayed many ancient Buddhist artifacts.

From there we went to a giant mall (also a small theme park) to eat lunch. It’s apparently owned by some giant company that also owns a hospital, hotel, bus line, university, and baseball team. The mall was huge and full of super expensive foreign stores; my host brother and I bonded a bit while dozing off on a bench for about an hour while my host mom shopped.

In the evening we headed to a street market where we bought Taiwanese fried chicken and octopus dumplings for dinner, both of which were quite good.

(Giant Buddha Statue at Fo Guang Shan)

(all the pagodas)

(Fo Guang Shan was beautifully located up in the mountains)

星期天：Today we were all pretty exhausted from all our sightseeing so we spent most of the day relaxing indoors, but we did go out for some fancy Japanese food for dinner where I somehow ended up with sesame pork, vegetables in a sesame sauce, and sesame ice cream, but I did discover that sesame is a very delicious and versatile food.