Dog park?!

This weekend I certainly crossed some boarders again – this time though not in form of eating special food or getting a culture shock – but simply because my oldest host sister and her friends took me to a dog park, to play with their little dog. And with play they meant the normal kind of “play with a dog” plus swimming in a pool with the dog! Well, their dog was (ok) sweet, but not all of the dogs were as well bred as him. Everything went fine though, and I got some good pictures and a sunburn on my back :) Here are some pictures:

I know, that a lot of you are curious about my daily life, so this time I will post some pictures from my dance club. I go there every Monday and Thursday. Monday to do latin jazz and Thursday to do MTV dance (right now we are working on Circus by Britney Spears).

I can also tell that my Chinese is improving, which you can see on the picture below. The picture shows a card for my teacher, as today is Confusius’ birthday. Confusius was the first Chinese teacher and his birthday is yearly marked as teachersday – a day where the students are supposed to give cards or presents to their teachers. I think it shows a lot about how important teachers and school are in asian culture - school is like religion, and teachers are like gods :)

I am so proud of my chinese! 

Still love it heir!

Julia :)     

1 month in Taiwan!

I have now been in Taiwan for one month and two days – that is unbelievable! On one hand it feels like I just got her yesterday but on the other hand I feel like, I have already been experiencing so much, that I impossibly could have seen all these places and met all those people in one month! Well I have (and it freaks me out a little, as I know that the time in front of me will pass by even faster).

-     -  I have met so many people that I have a hard time remembering their faces (and names!). But some of them already mean a lot to me and have been so kind to show me their amazing city, Taipei.

-      - I have been eating so much rice, that I was unbelievably happy when my host mom served homemade noodles the other night – what a delicious meal!

-      - I’ve been eating a lot of jelly stuff: in cakes, in drinks, in food – in everything! I’ve found out that I like it the best, when it is cut into small pieces (jelly stuff in big pieces are yucky to swallow)

-       -I’ve only had bread with…. bread? They don’t put anything upon it in Taiwan

-       -I’ve become comfortable with the MRT- and bus system. I love how I can get everywhere!

-       -I am improving my Chinese though I am eager to get better…

-       -And most important: I have lived at the best host family I could ever imagine!

I don’t know if it was meant as I kind of celebration of this amazing “1-month-day” or if it was a coincidence, but I received my first packet from Denmark today. It consisted of a magazine, some letters, lakrids, øllebrød, rugbrød and frikadellemix!!!

 I am so happy to receive the food, even though my last days have included too much eating (and I’ve been eating a lot, as it did not come with too much rice and jelly stuff)! On the Moon Festival day (yesterday) I first went to a restaurant to eat barbeque with my host family, and afterwards I went to a classmate’s house to eat barbeque again! 

My three host sisters at the BBQ restaurant

BBQ in the small streets with my friends (people don't have gardens so the just BBQ on the road)

Now I have to go dancing to burn some of the delicious food! Class of the evening is MTV dance, which probably means, that we will learn a dance from some Korean music video, as Korean music is very popular here – well, I look forward! :D

Julia

Taiwanese and western

This week has been another week of Taiwanese culture (and climate), but this time with a little twist of something more western and known.

    It is obvious that we are getting closer to the Moon Festival (on Wednesday), as everybody enjoys the traditional Moon Festival food. The Moon Festival is the ending of the Ghost Month where the death ancestors return to our world to plague their descendants if they don’t offer them enough respect in shape of prayer, food and ghost money. On the Moon Festival day the ancestors finally returns to where they belong, and the families can relax again. This is celebrated with traditional barbeque and mooncakes. When I first heard barbeque I thought of some sausages on a barbeque in the backyard, but that is not the case. Barbeque here is eaten on formal restaurants as well as in the hones and consists of a lot of thin slices of different kinds of meat that you grill on the barbeque and eat together with delicious salad, different sauces and (of course) rice. It is very delicious and a good opportunity to get together with friends and family. I have already participated in two of those dinners all though we haven’t reached the Moon Festival day  (Wednesday) yet.

    The other part of the food (the mooncakes) are more…. special. I like the outer part, which often consists of some kind of pastry and then some chocolate, pineapple or other fruit stuffing. The special part is the boiled egg yolk in the middle. Well – I like cake, and I like egg – but together? That is weird. I eat it anyway (the taste is not bad, just weird), cause people get so happy when they see me eat the traditional food :)

As you can hear, the Moon Festival comes with a lot of food and celebration just as Christmas does in Denmark. Therefore it is perfect that I have finally found a place to dance. I join a dance club in Taipei city who dances the genres: Jazz, Hip Hop and MTV dance (they do also have some gospel and tap-dancing, but I am not joining them those days). It is great finally to move (!!!), and everybody there are very kind and devoted to dance. I also think that they the dance club might save my Christmas, as I have found out that the leaders are Christian and members of a gospel church. So this week has also brought some familiar culture (dance and Christianity) hat I warmly welcome.

Other updates of the week are, that I have had my first meeting with my music club at school – we are a lot of people but not so many vocalists, so that is just perfect. We went to a concert together on Friday evening (another schools music club was playing), and that definitely brought us closer even though I’ve just met those “music-club-people”. 

   I’ve also spent some time with the other exchange students. Saturday we all went to a water park outside Taipei – a great arrangement set up by my Rotary district.

    And concerning Rotary, then I’ve met my second and third host parents. Both families are Rotarians (members of my club), and they seem really nice! The only drawback is that my next host family lives in Beitou (a part of Taipei), which means that it will take me 1 and a half hour to go to school! But as long as they seemed nice it doesn’t matter.      

    The last update has to be that the school camp on Monday to Tuesday has been cancelled (my class and I should have slept in a tent somewhere, cooked our own food, made a show and so on…). The reason? A typhoon. So far it though hasn’t been that bad here in Taipei – much worse in the central and southern part of Taiwan, but the school has cancelled the camp anyway, which is really sad… Well… At least I might get a day of tomorrow if the weather gets worse :)

I still love everything here, and now I can even eat without getting bad conscience because I have found a dance club – LOVELY!

Julia :)    

Food!!!

This weekend did definitely not turn out as I had expected. But that is not negative, cause it has been another brilliant weekend.

    Friday evening some Rotary students and I had arranged to go to the Snake Alley (a creepy night market known for its snake shows and snake restaurants). However it turned out that one of the girls (Taylor) had to go and eat dinner with her Rotary club, so she invited me to join her, and then we could move on to the Snake Alley together after on – well, we never made it to the Snake Alley. After chatting on the backseat while her mother drove the car for about a quarter the car suddenly stopped and Taylor and I looked out the window to realise that the car had stopped in front of Taipei Grand Hotel’s restaurant. For those of you who don’t know Taiwan Grand Hotel I can tell that it is a landmark in Taiwan as it is known for having the biggest traditional Chinese roof in the world. So, very famous and very expensive place… Yeah, kind of problematic as Taylor and I hadn’t planned to stay – and as Taylor wore shorts! Well of course we could not just walk away from a very formal dinner party at Grand Hotel so we had to call our friends and tell them that we couldn’t make it to Snake Alley – sad because it would have been fun. The dinner was formidable though, and I’m glad that Taylor invited me as I loooooooove food…. :)

Saturday I thought I had to go swimming with all the other exchange students, but that arrangement had been moved to next weekend. Instead my host mom took me to eat traditional Taiwanese breakfast at one of the many breakfast shops. It is very normal that people stop by at these shops and by their breakfast, and I was supposed to do that too when I go to school, but right now I just eat oats… :) Well, the breakfast consisted of a lot of different mostly a little oily breads with vegetables or spices, some kind of omelette, steamed buns with meat stuffing and a special kind of milk (tasted like rice or soya). Delicious, but not what I associate with breakfast (better than burger though, which is also normal to eat in the morning).

Busy breakfast café

In the afternoon we went to a porcelain museum and to an old pedestrian street with lot of ceramic shops. At that place I was introduced to another special dish: noodles with ice! Not ice like ice cream but like crushed ice cubes – hmmm, special :)

My host mom at the porcelain museum

Eating noodles with ice!

So – the arrangements were not the ones that I expected, but it was all worth it! At least I’ve been eating a lot of food (it is really important to me to find a place to dance – otherwise I’ll get pang (fat in chinese) VERY quickly with all the delicious food).

Julia :)      

Three wonderful days

Wauw! My Saturday, Sunday and Monday have been soooo bussy – but SOOO good too! It has been three days of experiences, with three different groups of people and each day brought me to se Taipei from a new point of view!

    Saturday I met Isabel (german exchange student) at Taipei main station, and from that meeting point our “explore Taipei” day begun! At first we went shopping in Taipei Main station Underground Mall, which is a very long underground shopping centre. In one part of the centre everything was very cheap (you can actually boy clothes for 100 TN$, which is like 18,3 DKK) and in another part of the centre you found the more expensive stuff like luxury body product and high-class clothing. I have to say that I find it very unnecessarily to spend my money on the expensive clothes when they have so much pretty and cool clothes that in addition are inexpensive.

    And as I probably have told you before, the food here is very cheap to, so Isabel and I found a bakery and bought two traditional Taiwanese cakes. The outer was like a pie while the inner was kind of like vanilla crème with a slight taste of lemon. – very delicious!

The cake

To see Taipei from another angle than cheap shopping and eating we decided to go to the Museum of Contemporary art. It is a Museum next to Taipei Main Station that changes its exhibitions regularly to live up to its name: “Museum of CONTEMPORARY art”. After 20 minutes in a  waiting line we finally got into the museum – and got surprised! This period’s exhibition was all about World of Warcraft, you see. And to those of you who don’t know World of Warcraft then all I can tell you is, that it is an online computer game where imaginative creatures fight each other. Try to google some pictures and you will find out that this was absolutely not what Isabel and I had expected to see…. Anyway it was fun to watch people inside the museum as they were all very in to this game (in some cases I actually found it fantastic that the persons had paused their games and left their computers to go outside and watch this exhibition) :p

People taking fotos of the world of warcraft drawings - I took fotos of the people instead!

    Eventually (after a lot of “people watching” at the Museum) we took the MRT to Shilin night market together with Daniel (an exchange student from Switzerland) and Isabel’s host brother. Once again I have to say that I love the night markets because of the good atmosphere and because of the cheap stuff a food. This time I am not going to list all the food that I ate (because there is too much) …

Even though Shilin is not known for snakes (you have to go to the Snake Alley) we found one anyway

Instead I’m going to talk about the food I got for lunch on Sunday. My host family had taken me to a big shopping mall to look for some stuff like a dictionary. But the important thing is, that we had lunch at a real sushi bar – you know, the kind where the sushi comes on assembly lines! So you just sit down, and then you pick the sushi you want as it passes you. I want to tell about my favourite, but I have just realised, that I can’t pick one! Everything was simply too delicious! For instance there were some with rice, seaweed and salmon, some with tuna, some with shrimps, and some cones with vegetables and dressing. Mmmmmm :)

    But the day went even better as a girl named Penny invited me to her housewarming party. She told me that she had just moved to the countryside to get some more space, so as the bus suddenly stopped in front of her apartment, I was sure that we (me and my youngest host sister) were at the wrong place. To me, this was not countryside, you see – it was city! City with lot of new, modern skyscrapers! Well anyway we had an awesome time. We were only around 10 people and for that reason a really got to speak to all of them, and not just “Hi, I’m from Denmark. Bye bye”. That was great, and I really think I made some friends there!

And talking about friends we move on to Monday. That is, that in the afternoon my Class Teacher had invited me to sightseeing in Taipei together with her daughter and my school counsellor. And this time, the journey went to National Taiwan Palace Museum! If you know just a little about Chinese history you’ll probably know that during the Civil War in China, almost all of the treasures of the country were moved to Taiwan (which at that time was a part of China) in order to protect them – and they’ve never returned to the mainland. That is why The National Taiwan Palace Museum has the world’s biggest collection of Chinese treasures/art. They too change their exhibition regularly but still it takes years to show all the treasures! Amazing! I really owe my teacher big time for taking me there.

   And so, I also owe my school counsellor for taking me to another night marked. This time it wasn’t Shilin but Sheda – maybe a bit smaller but very, very cosy! In addition to eating a lot we also bought a birthday book as Chelsea (an exchange student from America who is also on my school) has birthday on Thursday or Friday (sorry, but right now, I can’t remember) :D Once again I am not going to tell about all the food – just one thing: A warm cake that tasted like pancakes or waffles, just thicker (like with two layers) and something in the middle. I had one with vanilla crème but you can also have it with chocolate and a lot of other things – mmmmm :D

Now, that was three days with different ways of experiencing Taipei. One day was exploring it with my friend (almost like a tourist) another day was very intimate with the Sushi eating with my family and the private housewarming party and a third day was a historical and cultural day with my teachers! I have to say, that I love it!  

Julia :)   

  

     

School

School in Taiwan teaches you everything from math, social science and music over cleaning, acting correctly in the traffic and military stuff to sleeping. I have been to school every day since Monday now and that has indeed given me a look into Taiwanese culture.

    When I say that the youth in Taiwan study a lot I mean a LOT. People meet at school at 7 o’clock even though they are not supposed to be there before 8. Why? To read and study in the morning. From 8 until 12 o’clock they have lessons, but their lessons are not like my lessons in Denmark, because even though we are 44 students in my class, nobody raises their hands during the class – they are totally quiet. Only the teacher speaks (mostly into a microphone) and he or she does not give the pupils much time to think – they just keep on teaching new stuff for the entire class. So as you probably can guess “group work” is an unknown word here which makes the school really boring if you don’t understand what the teachers are saying (which I don’t).

The school is though not bad because there are a lot of curious and nice (and random :p) students contacting me all the time because of the fact that I am blond! The conversation mostly goes like this:

“Ohhhh look (hi hi hi), hey! Welcome to Taiwan! You are very beautiful!”

“Ehhm thanks xie xie”

“Where are you from?”

“Wo she Dan-mei ren”

“Uuuuuu (hi, hi, hi she speaks Chinese!), bye bye!”

“Well okay, bye bye, see you!”.

As you can hear most of the people just speak to me to speak to me… Just because… I guess it is cool? Well anyway everybody is really sweat and the other day I had a headache, so I went downstairs to a-i (auntie, which we call the staff that is not teachers or policemen) and asked her for a pill, but as they are not aloud to give medicine to the students she took me to a place with three beds, where I could sleep. A lot of the a-i’s came and asked me how I was, but the important thing was, that I actually got better.

    Some of my teachers are extremely sweet too. My Chinese teacher for instance has bought me two “Chinese for beginners” books, and on Monday I am going to go to the city together with her to have lunch and visit a temple!

All the Chinese makes me a bit tired though. Today I have been to language school in the morning. Then I went to my senior high school where I studied the books that my Chinese teacher gave me. And at four o’clock I went to the library to have a Chinese lesson with my personal school counsellor. But I try my best all the time because everyone is so kind to me, and actually I shouldn’t complain as I study much less than my Taiwanese friends. They even go to school in the evenings. Not because they want to, but because everybody does – that is just the culture. Danish students could definitely learn something from that. To hand in homework late is for instance very, very seldom seen.