Party people! This week was much better than Week 5. Week 6 overall is still pretty boring, but my weekly post is more for me to keep track of my progress and my mother who wants to know every detail of what I’m doing at all times. I also had the Two Day Trip over the weekend which was a blast! Made lots of friends and memories but you’ll see all that if you just read. WOop woOP
Sunday- I felt slightly better after posting my How am I doing (Week 5 post) but not as good as I thought I would. Not as many people reached out as I expected, and I hurt some people in the process. In many ways it was a cry for attention more than for help, but I wasn’t quite sure how else to do it. I’d been reaching out and felt like I wasn’t being received. So I used this platform. It is something that is accessible to all, but takes time and effort to go on the site and read. I thought that only the people that care would read it, and they’d see how I was really feeling. The people that don’t care, would just go about their day. This is somewhat what happened. Sunday night, Maddie came to my room and we talked everything out. She told me that she (and apparently other people?) read the blog too. I’m not really sure why I was surprised, because I sent the link to everyone a few weeks back. I guess I just wondered why you would want to read the daily life of someone you don’t like. idk idk. Anyways Maddie told me nothing she did was malicious, and she wishes I’d came to her privately so that we could’ve talked it out. Our bridge hasn’t been burned and she wants to help me in my quest for friends! I apologized for hurting her feelings, as that wasn’t my intention, I’m just speaking my truth. Sometimes my truth involves being scared to have a face to face conversation about ~feelings~ as I am a person that doesn’t like ~feelings~. I was also made aware that I can come off as aggressive (I think a better word is blunt) which might be part of what is making my friend quest so difficult, but that’s really just the basis of my whole personality and not really anything I plan or even want to change. I think that one is kind of take it or leave it. Oh! I was also told that apparently part of my exclusion is because I am late everywhere which makes people think I don’t care. While that’s fair because I AM late everywhere, I run on CPT so even when I try my hardest to be on time, I am late. I could literally leave an hour earlier than I need to and still somehow be late because the world is against me. I’d like to make it clear to everyone that I do care about the program and CIEE, it’s just that Black culture in America is polychronic and it just be like that. I thought asian cultures were polychronic too but apparently not. Anyways, this talk was the highlight of my Sunday. I got some feedback and communicated in a positive manner. Woop! Shoutout to Maddie because she came to me in a calm manner to tell me how she felt and wanted to know how she could help me. (Also please recall Maddie’s part in the uber situation) That’s some good communication. GOALS
Monday- No class on Mondays, but I teach an English language corner at the NCCU affiliated high school. Now I left, on time, fairly early even, but the bus I was supposed to take never came. I didn’t want to be late, so I looked up the high school again on google maps. It said that it was only a 15 min walk which is fairly strange considering the bus ride is usually like 7 mins, but I just went with it. Mind you it’s super gross outside. It’s lightly raining but also like 68 degrees and I had my heavy jacket on so I was sweaTING. After a smooth 600 m I arrived at what google said was my destination. However it wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s actually the affiliated elementary school instead of the affiliated high school. I take a lap around the block just to double check and make sure I was in the wrong place. I was. So I google the high school’s name in Chinese and found it on google maps. Guess what? It was an additional 23 min walk. It was also all uphill. Eventually I got there, but not before seeing one of my students walk by me and we kind of both awkwardly put our heads down and kept walking. Right before walking into the school, I saw another one of my students. There only would’ve been 15 mins left in the class anyways so I assumed the just let the students go home. I get into the school and this was, in fact, the case. They still let me sign my attendance sheet (so I could get my transportation reimbursement even though I walked the whole friggin’way. I waited the 15 minutes because Maddie and I were going to go to 公館 （gongguan) to grab dinner and do some work. Thus bus ride is about 30-40 mins depending on traffic. We walked around for a really long time because we couldn’t decide where we wanted to go so I just pointed to a little restaurant on the street and that’s where we went. The food was good, it was just fish, rice, and an array of veggies as many Taiwanese meals are. We looked for a cafe for a while but lots of them were pricey (compared to the rest of Taiwanese things but in general still fairly cheap) so we settled on Starbucks. They didn’t have chai and nothing else was worth paying a bunch of money for so I just got some water. It took me forever to figure out how to connect to the wifi because it’s different here, but eventually I figured it out and didn’t even get that much actual work done in the 1.5 hours that we were there. It’s fine. I went home and watched GOT until an ungodly hour. (I’m trying to rewatch the entire series before the new season premiere)
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday- I really ain’t do nothing but go to class eat food, and watch Games of Thrones. At this point I’m fairly addicted to GOT and I’m going to sleepat 4-5 am and waking up at like 1-2 pm. Except for Thursday where I really struggled to wake up at 9 am. I also went to the gym on a Tuesday and Thursday if that is of any interest whatsoever.
Friday- I went on a mini hike! I decided that I need to get out of my dark room and see more of Taiwan. I still woke up pretty late (Around 12) but I didn’t have to be anywhere until 5:35 so I decided to hike up one of the mountains near campus. There are several, including the one that I live on. I went up to Zhinan temple. It’s about 30 mins. away from my dorm and a 20 min walk away from the where the actual trail begins. It wasn’t really difficult as far as hiking goes because it’s paved the entire way and there’s even some benches on the flatter parts of the trail. The most difficult part is that most of the climb is purely stairs. It’s a lot of stairs for 20 mins straight and can be a little difficult for those who haven’t been to the gym in awhile… or ever. When I got to the top, an older chinese couple started talking to me, and I was answering. There were surprised at how well I spoke, and honestly I was surprised myself. I was having a whole conversation with native speakers without any especially long pauses to try and translate in my head. It was coming natural. When the couple went on their way I kind of just sat on the stairs of the temple and took in the view. It was cloudy, but I could still see a great skyline and most if not all of Muzha. (木柵）(The suburb that my school is in.) I was really proud of myself for the conversation I’d just had. While it was simple, it was still the first time I’d ever experienced speaking fluently, so it was something of which I could be proud. After reflecting on my conversation I still sat on the stairs of the temple and began to go through my social media. I was tired from the hike and didn’t have anywhere else to pass the time, so temple stairs were just fine for the time being. I thought about getting some tea because the temple offers it for free. However, they only use cups that were brought in as donations and I also just theard that the tea was gross so I took a pass on that one.
After a little while I decided to make the trek back down the mountain. I just went to my room, cleaned up a little bit and the took a shower. Since I was already bored and was making a point of being on time (since my chronic lateness is so matic here) I left 20 minutes early. I get to the meet up spot early so I wait until 5:35 to text anybody. I texted the ambassador that invited and he told me that he had class but everyone else would be there soon. Finally 10 mins. later I see one of the ambassadors that was also going to dinner. We talk while everyone else trickles in. FINALLY, at 5:55 the last person gets there and we go to dinner. I’d realized that I’d been duped. The ambassador that invited me to come 10 minutes early probably did so so that I’d end up getting there on time. Now don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t really be mad because I did deserve it. However it was irritating that I sat there for 30 mins. doing nothing. I also had nothing else to do which is another reason I wasn’t even mad. We went to dinner about 2 blocks away and I had some grilled fish! It was a nice change up because there’s so much red meat in Taiwan. Whenever I happen to find anywhere with fish, it’s usually fried and even though I haven’t even been here that long I am starting to hear my liver groan. We ate, we talked, we left to go to Mahjong. We were running a little late so some people started to run but I was not that pressed so I just picked up to a quick walk. We got to our Mahjong room and everyone was already in there and some people had already started to play!
Now for my Americans reading this, the mahjong that we usually think of is the matching game that we can play online or on our phones. This is not the same thing. This is traditional Chinese Mahjong （麻將） that I’m talking about. It looks like this:
It’s not difficult to play and is a lot of fun. I think I’m gonna ask my mom for a set. They’re a little pricey but they last forever and the whole family can play. While the whole event was fun and were trying to have a competition, there was a problem. We didn’t really have a consistent winner at our table that we could send to the “Mahjong Championship.” Not really because people were tied in their number of wins or there was suspicion of cheating, BUT RATHER, it was the chair. The chair kept winning. We probably play somewhere between 7-9 games of Mahjong. For every, single one of these games, whoever was sitting in this chair won. There were 3-4 people that sat in the chair. We shuffled. We moved the tile around. I even switched other variables including the tile pushers, but no! The chair was either magical or cheating somehow I literally have no clue, but it was creepy. Anyways, the chair was the winner at our table, I got to share the prize (a desert soup) with another CIEE student. I didn’t really like the soup anyways so I ate a little but just to try it but not much after that. I had a great time at Mahjong but I was mad that I never won because I happened to be at the table with the magical chair. Yes, I could’ve moved but I wanted to be there when the chair finally lost. But the chair never lost. I did. I took several L’s that night. After Mahjong I just went back to my dorm, and guess what I did? Yes I watched GOT to yet another ungodly hour even though I had to be somewhere at 7:30 am.
Saturday- As a result of staying up until the ungodly hour I had a hard time getting up in the morning. I think I got like 3 or 4 hrs of sleep. As a result I was like 15 mins late getting to the bus for the International Youth trip. However, they called me while I was walking there and I told them I was on my way so they waited for me. They rock. Anyways I get on the bus with my super bulky bag, sit in the only free seat next to who I’d soon learn to be a Japanese exchange student then we were on our way to Yilan! The bus ride is 1-2 hrs. I have transportation induced narcolepsy and was also just exhausted so I slept almost the whole way. The primary reason I didn’t sleep the “entire” way is because we were having bus karaoke. One of these songs included the native singing of “Finlandia.” Finlandia is a very famous, very traditional and very long song that is recognized as the unofficial Finnish national anthem. While I was amuse because they guy that was singing it was very invested, I was also very tired and would have loved to sleep in peace. Our first stop was the 林美石磐 trail (mu mei shi pan) It was nice. Lots of green which is the usual in Taiwan. There were some streams and a nice waterfall. Overall it was a nice little trail. It was fairly short, but nice nonetheless.
After the trail we went to Yilan’s very own National Center for Traditional Arts. As implied by the title it’s basically a huge DIY museum for Taiwanese traditional arts. There’s a bunch of stuff to see, do, and buy here, but our International Youth group had prepared for us to do the Indigo Blue Dye activity. This is basically dyeing a cloth, but traditionally from the dye created by indigo leaves. WARNING: This dye smells like fish. Not terrible for me but I loooove fish and seafood and even the smell, but some people were not happy to say the least. I made a cloth, which I will use as a bandana/extremely small tapestry. The process is very similar to ti-dying. First, you get your cloth and choose the design you want. I chose a star design with a few little bullseyes on the outside for a little bit of extra flavour. For the star design, there’s a special way of folding , then you use popsicle sticks and rubber bands to place the design. You just need rubber bands for the bullseye. After you’re done designing you got to the dyeing area where you will be constructed to soak your cloth in a solution to prepare it for dyeing. Mine only sat in the for about 3 minutes. After that, you’re ready to dye. Throw on your apron and your gloves and get to the dying pots.
Once you get to the pots, you spend about five minutes submerging your cloth in the dye and massaging it paying special attention to to displace any popsicle sticks or rubber bands. After the nice massage, the cloth should be blue and green. Mostly green since this is only the first round. You are then instructed to proceed over to the sinks so you can wash out the cloth. Again, you’re massaging you cloth, but this time under water and there might be some scrubbing involved. Over at the sinks, the objective is to wash out the cloth until there’s no more green. Boom. No more green. You go back to the pots and repeat this process two more times. When all the green is finally out, one of the nice ladies working the will but your creation in the spinner to dry it out. Then you can go over to a little table with scissors so you can take off all the rubber bands and popsicle sticks to see your creation! Mine turned out pretty dang nifty in my opinion, but I ti-dye all the time so I’d be disappointed if it was looking rachet.
After Blue Dye we got a chance to walk around the center and do whatever while the other groups dyed. I went off on my own because I’m too impatient to wait for other people so I trekked around, stopped in the Chinese medicine store to see if I could ask some questions because ya know research and all that jazz, but it was pretty crowded and the nobody spoke English so I just moved on. I was walking around trying to find another DIY because that’s my jam but apparently you have to sign up for everything in advance but we didn’t do that so no DIY for me. The only thing you didn’t have to sign up in advance for was the stone work, but all you really did was polish a piece of black jade. It started at about 300 NT$ ($10 USD) for a small rock and you can make it into a necklace or something else, but I knew I wasn’t going to wear a bulky rock everyday and I didn’t want to pay to polish a small rock that I wasn’t going to wear. The cool thing about black jade though, is that it is green under a flashlight! (Again, when would i ever be under a flashlight? I wasn’t going to spend money on this, but it was cool.) There was a play being performed on the stage in the middle of the center. I didn’t really know what was going on because I went mid-way through but the amount of makeup that everyone (including men) as well as the extremely dramatic actors were funny so I enjoyed it for the short time I watched. After a little while it was time to go, so myself as well as the other people in my group that were also watching the play made our way to the front gate. I stopped for some soft serve ice cream because I saw other people around the grounds eating it. The first little stand I stopped at only had milk flavor. Now I don’t even really drink milk like that, so why in the world would would I not only eat something that is milk/cream based but the flavor is purely milk! No thanks man. Thankfully, about 3 feet away was a little shop and they had peanut flavored soft serve! I am absolutely a fan of peanut butter soft serve but I wasn’t too sure about peanut, but I took a chance. It was actually really tasty and not as creamy as peanut butter but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
We left the center, went to our hotel, spent a little while there. Then it was night market time! I had Yilan night market’s famous scallion pancake which is literally just fried dough with scallions in it but it was yummy. I also had so chicken wings, and fresh watermelon juice because I am a simple lady. By the time we got back it was Saturday night which means partay! I’ not going to go into the details because it was a relatively wild night but it was the first night that I was able to drink with friends in a long time and we were dancing in that tiny hotel room. I had a really great time and am thankful for that experience, especially since don’t know the next time it’s going to happen. After our mini-party had died down I went on a little walk outside with one of my American friends and one of my new Taiwanese friends that was apart of International Youth. We weren’t out for that long but we were just talking, laughing and I was messing with this super weird guy from tinder. It was a good time.
Fast Forward to the next morning, a day night of only 3-4 hours of sleep but I didn’t want to hold anybody up again so I got my booty up, got dressed because I’d showered the night before and went to the lobby for breakfast. It was McDonald’s 😦 I ate it though cuz ya girl was not tryna starve. It was just a chicken sandwich and I paid for it later but it did its job when it was supposed to. We had a decently long bus ride to our first destination of the day- the rice farm! The farm’s owner brought us all in, gave us this really long speech on what I think was the history but it was really early in the morning, I was tired, and he was just talking a lot so I am not going to lie and say I paid attention. Anyways after a long talk inside then a long talk outside, we got to doing! We got a feel of what it was like to carry the rice plants (technically a really farmer would’ve been carrying 3 times the weight but we are students, not farmers.) Then like 4 different people tried to fire up the rice wagon and all brutally failed, even the manly men that thought they could do it even though the previous person could not. The farmer did it and made it look easy. He asked for volunteers to hop on the rice wagon so I did! Then some of my amigos hopped on as well and we rode about 50 feet away at a slower rate than the people walking. It was fun though! We were in a little grassy area so the farmer showed us how to walk and plant the rice seeds then we made our way to ….. mud. I really don’t what I was expecting, but I utterly hate mud and only have about 2 minutes to mentally prepare for 1/3 of my legs to be completely submerged in it. Just walking over there was dangerous. I think I almost slipped like 3 times. Anyways I pulled my pant legs all the way up and got to work!
When we finished the farmer washed our legs off with a power washer which was unexpectedly painful but it did the job. We then started to put some already harvested rice in what seems to be a drainer? I’m not quite sure, but you got to spin a thingy and it was fun. After that we started to make the rice noodles that we were going to eat. We put the rice in the grinder/noodle maker , pushed the little lever and out came noodles into the boiling water! When they were ready we at them with some premade savory soup and then some cold sweet soup! There were super tasty.
After our soup, we had a catered lunch that wasn’t that great but ya girl was hungry so I ate it. We then went to a beer factory that wasn’t really interesting at all and I just sat and chilled on my phone until we left. After that we went to the beach because it stopped raining but the beach was rocky, it was still cold, and I was super tired so I sat in the little cafe that overlooked the beach, ordered a pizza to share with a friend and once again lollygagged on my phone. When it was finally time to go I was excited because again, I was tired. We finally got home around 7 and by this time y’all should know what I did when I got back. If you don’t I watched GOT. That’s is my life as of right now.
Monday- I wake up at some outrageously late hour and then just started watching GOT again. I’m in Season 4 or 5 so getting close to the end. I don’t have class on Monday, but I did have teaching which I completely forgot about. They called me and asked me if I forgot and I told the that I surely did. They just moved my kids to a different class and I felt bad because I missed last week because I was late, missed this week because I forgot and was missing the next week because I’d be on vacation. Wow, I’m the worst. Anyways, I just continued on my little GOT binge for the rest of the day.
Tuesday- I went to my Chinese class in the morning. It was good as usual. I got to speak conversationally, talk about things that I enjoyed talking about and practice the things that I have trouble with. After that I actually didn’t have my usual Lit class, so I went back to my room took a shower and a little nap. After my nap, I decided to pack! I was leaving later that night for Bali and I didn’t want to be packing last minute. It actually took a long time to pack because I had to pack up all my toiletries and stuff like that but I’ll put packing details in my Bali post. Anyways when I was done, I didn’t really have time to go down to the main street and look for/buy a selfie stick like I wanted to so I put on my travel clothes, grabbed some quick dumplings and bubble tea and headed for the bus to take me to the airport!
I’ll detail getting to the airport in my Bali post too, but while Saturday/ Sunday was technically the conclusion of Week 6 and Monday/Tuesday are Week 7, most of Week 7 is going to be the fun Bali stuff which is going to be split into 2 posts. A actual Bali guide on how I packed, got to/from the airport,what I did, where I stayed, how I got around, and all that fun travel stuff. The other post is just going to be my thoughts/opinions and some extra details of my excursions. Sorry this post took so long to come out but GOT took over my life and I’m finally caught up so the blog is definitely going to be the focus now. Can’t wait for you guys to see what I put out in the next few weeks. 🙂
Abroad, Black, 会说 Chinese 