Music, sport and art

Hey everybody!

Time for some Breaking News!

So yesterday I had my first Guzheng Class. A Guzheng is a traditional Chinese string instrument in the Zither family and kind of looks like a small harp that lies down. It has 21 tones all in all, but if you compare the tones to the pianos do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti, the fa and ti are missing (til dem, som ved lid tom musik, vil det sige, at Guzhengen benytter en pentation durskala – atlså en skala uden halvtonetrin og dermed uden ledetoner).  But if necessary, you can make the missing tones by pressing on the string you play so the sound changes – kind of like on a guitar.

    To play it you have to tape something similar to fake nails or plectra onto your thumb, index finger, middle finger and ring finger on your right hand. Left hand can have several functions. You can use it for plucking the strings or for changing the tones made by your right hand.

So… The absolute Breaking News are, that I’ve bought a Guzheng that was brought to my house today. A Guzheng can cost everything from 8.000-150.000 TWD (ca. 1.500-30.000DKK) so I did definitely not have enough money to buy the most expensive one, but I am very satisfied with the one I got. Here it is:

The nails

The green(ish) strings indicate g/sol/5

In addition I can tell, that I Monday afternoon did a Kong Fu and following calligraphy performance at my school with the two other exchange students Jane (Canada) and Chelsea (USA). It is our beloved school counsellors who now are about to leave us, who have taught us these skills. We’ve had a great time practising as well as performing, cause a lot (a lot!!!) of our Taiwanese friends from all classes showed up at our performance to support us, although they are busy with important tests right now. Here are some photos from a photo shoot we did with the schools live technology teacher before the performance J

From the left: Jane (Canada), Chelsea (USA), me

HUA!

I LOVE TAIWAN!

Julia  

New Year's

Hey everybody!

I am sorry that I have been so bad at updating lately, but my life has been busy. You all know that I had a very different Christmas that was more about school and activities than about celebrating the birth of Jesus. But I can ensure all of you that I took revenge on New Years.

Even though the 31^st of December is not the actual New Years Eve in Taiwan (they celebrate the Chinese New Year which this years is on the 3^rd of February) people still celebrate it together with the rest of the world. And this year New Years was bigger than ever, as Taiwan in year 2011 has been independent for 100 years.

    So when it turns out that you actually are in the capital of Taiwan on the biggest New Years ever, I figured out I HAD to go and se the world famous fireworks on Taipei 101 – once the world’s tallest building! This year the fireworks came with a big concert showing a bunch of Taiwanese artist, but to get a chance to see anything it was necessary to show up at the concert place early. So me and the to other exchange students from my senior high school (Jane from Canada and Chelsea from USA), got off school at 12 o’clock and got the concert place at 1 pm where we got a wonderful spot. And yes – we had to wait for 6 hours for the concert to begin, but when you are the only foreigners in a big crowd of Taiwanese people at a very Taiwanese event, you quickly get attention, so before the concert started my friends and I had already made a bunch of new Taiwanese friends.

When waiting for the concert to start. From the right: Jane (Canada), me, Chelsea (USA) and new Taiwanese friend!

   

The concert was amazing. It is hard to say what made it that good. Maybe I’ve gotten used to Taiwanese pop music. Maybe I was happy because of the good company of my friends. Or maybe I was just overwhelmed by the energy coming from the 850.000 Taiwanese people who had come to see the concert. Actually I think all of it had influence on the best New Year’s Eve ever.

    When the top name Mayday went on the stage, people simply exploded, and just as the energy was highest it was time to count down for 2011. A countdown that, for me, came with sorrow as well as happiness. Sorrow because I realized how much of my stay is already completed here: time that I will never have back, but that will for always be in my heart. Happiness because I know I have so many good things to come. And so it came. 2011. Taipei 101 exploded in colours, Chinese symbols and a frightening but yet beautiful dragon. Just as I expect the rest of my exchange to be: colourful, maturing, frightening but yet beautiful.  

Now we have the 11^th of January, and so far 2011 has definitely lived up to my expectations.

    At a replacement test I had for my Chinese course on the 27^th of December I managed to jump from the second worst team (out of 4) to the best team. It is hard, as lot of the students in my new team already had studied Chinese for 1 year or more when they came here. On the other hand, I am glad that I really get to make some progress.

    Then yesterday I went to make a deal about some Guzheng classes at a music school. For those of you, who do not know what a Guzheng is (I didn’t know when I came to Taiwan), you should try to google the word. It is a traditional Chinese instrument that I find both very beautiful to listen to and look at. I am going to have class once a week for one hour, and so, the next thing is to buy an actual Guzheng. The prices vary (a lot!), and I do definitely not have enough money to buy the best one. But I am going to buy one, that is for sure, and then I’ll have to send it back to Denmark with snail mail (I wonder if my dad is passing Taiwan?).

Now, I very soon have winter holiday, which means one month off school of which I will spend one week in Japan, Tokyo with some students from my school and the exchange student from Canada Jane. I don’t know a lot about Japan, but everyone I ask says that Japan is clean, so I guess that is good… I look forward :D

Eventually I just want to whish all of you the best year in your lives so far, because that is what I am going to make mine!

Love you all

Julia J

The successful exchange

First of all: sorry that I have not been updating my Blog for years… My excuses are many. Basically I have just been busy…

I wonder if any of you saw the article about me in Horsens Folkeblad last Tuesday (I think). It tells about how my Christmas here in Taiwan is going to be different from the one in Denmark. The thing is that it is going to be very different as Christmas not really is a big deal here, but that does not mean that it is going to be bad. Actually I am having my best time in Taiwan so far. And my time here in Taiwan has always been good, so now it is just brilliant!

I think the reason, why I am having such a good time, is that I am doing stuff I like to do. One of my really good friends from America has had a hard time recently. She has been working unnecessarily hard on improving her Chinese (which was already really good), because she thought mastering the language would make her stay here more successful. And of course being able to communicate with people is necessary for making friends, but being able to communicate is not useful if you have nothing to communicate about. And that is what happens if you spend too much time by your self or with foreigners studying the language.

    A lot of the exchange students want extra lessons at our language school, and most of them are willing to pay a big amount of money to get them. I don’t want more lessons. I don’t want them, because that it not why I am here. If I was here to study Chinese I should have tried to get into some kind of university instead. I shouldn’t have gone to a High School where I have more cooking than Chinese classes, I shouldn’t have stayed at host families and I shouldn’t have spend energy taking dance classes twice a week. But that is what I do – because I am here on cultural exchange. And of course the language is important to get close to the culture, and some of the exchange students definitely should work harder on improving it, but the important thing is, that you do stuff whit the Taiwanese people, and best of all stuff that you enjoy doing yourself, because that it what makes you happy. And it is when you are happy, that you are having a successful exchange year.

So back to the Christmas issue I just want you to know, that I have all I could possibly whish for this Christmas, because I am doing stuff I enjoy with people I like.

Last weekend my dance club had a performance, and it was great, because I actually was a part of it. And when I use the word actually it is because I was not just a foreigner who danced along at the corner of the stage, but a person equal to the other dancers. The other dancers would ask me questions about the choreography and I had some very good positions (like whether you are center front or corner back), so I definitely was a part of this as much as everyone else, which was just great!

    On Saturday (and yes, I am talking about the 25. of December), my school has its anniversary, so we all have to go to school, but that really doesn’t bother me as I am going to play a little concert with my school band. I play the keyboard and sing the second voice (yap yap: in Chinese!), so here I am really a part of something as well. Furthermore my classmates and I are going to sell some food together, and it is just going to be very cosy!

    Even on Christmas Eve I am going to really be a part of something. And yeah, you might think that I have “bing” as they say here (which means that you are crazy), but on the very 24^th of December I am going to run a stafett whith my classmates agingst the other classes! I know it is crazy, but don’t worry: afterwards I will go to my Rotary Clubs Christmas Party which will probably be more or less about food, so I am not going to miss anything.

And remember: it is not bad, it is not good – it is just different!

Merry Christmas!

Julia            

Changing families

So changing host family is weird – like really weird. Cause after three months in your host country you feel like you know a lot. You know your school, you know the busses, you know your Rotary club and you might even have gotten some new habits or routines that you did not have back in your own country. But just as everything feels familiar: BAM, you are put into a new family. A family you might have met, but definitely haven not lived with before.

I am not saying that changing host family is a bad thing. Even though I got really close to my former family, I might get even closer to this one. Only time can tell. But when I said goodbye to my family I realized how much they mean to me. They ARE Taiwan for me. Cause they were the ones that introduced this foreign country and culture to me: went with me on my first busride, took me to Taiwan’s nightmarkets for the first time, gave me my first bowl of rice and taught me the first word (which to your information was 山 shan, meaning mountain, because the first thing a saw when I got out of the airport were Taiwan’s majestic mountains in the panorama of the crowded city). Now it has been time to let go of my teachers – my family.
    It does not mean that I am on my own though. I have gotten a new family, who will definitely show me new sites of Taiwan. But it is always difficult in the beginning when everything is new. Well, actually it is even harder than in the beginning, cause when I came to Taiwan I was totally prepared for something new to happen: Taiwan! Here I come! Now I feel like I now Taiwan – and yet I don’t.

My last host family pretty much lived in the ghetto of Taipei. The streets were broken and dirty, the stores were unorganized and wild dogs constantly passed me at my way home from school. But I loved it anyway. Because my family cared about me and wanted the best for me.

    Now I live in a penthouse apartment on the 15th floor in the pretty part of Taipei. When I walk out my door I get to a nice breakfast store with clean plates, and if I turn a corner I reach a little park with benches, a playground and gym facilities. This is where I’ll live from Monday to Friday, cause in the weekend my family and I will go to their 4 stories house in another part of the city. A house with garden (everything in Taipei are small apartments) is a big change from a first floor apartment without windows.

So in many ways I really look forward to the upcoming months, and my new family definitely seems lovely. But on the other hand I really miss my former family. You know just coming home after school, drop your bag and then surch for some cookies in the candy drawer. But hopefully, after some time, I’ll know how to find the candy in my new house as well.