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.  

Camp, test and school

Friday at noon I once again was placed together with a lot of people that I did not know. This time though English was widely understood and spoke, and the unknown people did not only come from Taiwan but from all over the world. All in all we were about 100 people gathered to participate in the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards workshop/Intro Camp.  50% of the young people came from Taiwan and participated in the camp to improve their leadership skills. The other 50% came as mentioned from all over the world and had just arrived to Taiwan. In front of us we all had three days of experiences we yet didn’t know, but when we returned home Sunday we had all made friends and done thing, that we will never forget.

    After an hour of bus driving to a resort outside Taipei the activities were about to begin. To be earnest most of Friday consisted of saying hello to a lot of people and listening to some presentations held by Taiwanese Rotarians. In the evening though it got interesting as the Rotarians (and remember the 4 D’s: no drinking, dating, drugs and driving) actually threw a party for us with a DJ and everything. It was really fun and great to do something together without having to tell about your country.

    Later I figured out that throwing a party was actually a great idea as it made the Rotarians sure that their students would sleep at night and not run around at the hotel making trouble! :) And even though it worked we did not get much sleep, as we had to get up 6:30 the next morning. This day offered one of the most frightening but fun experiences I have ever had.

    In the afternoon we were separated into teams consisting of 10 persons (mixed together Taiwanese and foreigners). We started up doing exercises to improve hour confidence in one another, because soon one of use would be dangling 12 meters over the earth only held by this group which members you had just met 24 hours ago.  We were going to do sky walking, and my first trip to the sky went to a tree trunk 10 meters up in the air. Luckily I had some nice and strong friends holding my line on the earth but anyway my legs were shaking and my heart was pounding as never before. But the adrenalin and the feeling of actually to be walking 10 meters over the earth made the experience extremely great, and when my team had lowered me safely down on the ground, I just wanted to go up again.

    And up I went. This time on a thin, thin line 12 meters over the earth. As I was crawling up towards the line I suddenly realised that I had an ant walking cheerfully on my hand – and that is NOT what you want to focus on when you are 9 meters up in the air! Anyway my second trip was even greater than the first one, and it is so great being able to say that: I DID IT! :D

    Sunday was hardly as frightening as Saturday, but this day was great as well as my group won the price of being the best group (we had received points for everything like the cooperation during the sky walking, some games we had done, a drama we had done etc.)! Great! :D That meant that I Sunday afternoon went home with two diplomas in my hands: one for participating in this camp, and one for winning the price of best group. In addition I also brought home a lot of pins and visit cards not to speak of all the information!

Therefore it is not strange that I was really exhausted as I Sunday evening went to bed. I went to bed very early as I had to be ready for the mandarin test that I did this morning. So unfortunately I can’t excuse my bad achievement in the test with a lack of sleep – no the test was just really difficult as it did not use Bopomofo but traditional Taiwanese characters which I cannot read. Luckily everybody found the test hard, so it is not because I’m extremely dumb (or…. that is what I keep telling myself :p ). Anyway the test did not really leave me with a feeling of success… But that did my first school day!

Because after on I took the bus to school, and here I have an extremely sweet counsellor (even though her English is limited). She helped me finding my new school uniform (I can’t wait to wear it!), choosing subjects, finding my classroom and so on. My first class was geography (and I understood like… NOTHING), but people were really friendly and kept on smiling to me! This was the only class I had, as I had to do a lot of practical stuff, but tomorrow I will have an entire day at school.

I hope you have a great time in Denmark!

Julia :)

P.s. I forgot to tell that I experienced my first earthquake ever today! It was actually pretty big but short – and really fun! But don’t worry because nothing happened to anyone :D