Host Family 寄宿家庭 part 1

This one is going to be too long to attempt to write in Chinese, sorry :( I really need to catch up on these things, almost two weeks behind now. This post was going to be three days worth of stuff, buuut as soon as I finished the day I decided I needed to nap and study for my exam tomorrow. So just day 1 of three, hope you enjoy.

 Started off the day with 蛋餅/葱油餅/I'm not actually sure what it is from Baozi guy. It has egg but also veggies and this ketchup like sauce. Anyway, it was good. I probably look quite interesting stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture of my breakfast haha.

 

Lunch time, one of my favorite go-to places as some of you might notice the food looks similar to some of the earlier post's meals.

 Anyway, got through class and did laundry real fast to have clothes for the host family weekend. I was quite nervous at first to be spending two nights with a Taiwanese family because I just didn't know what the expect. Also the TUSA program paired the Americans together in a lot of the host families because they had a hard time finding so many places for us to go. I was a little bummed at first (being an only child my whole life :P) to be paired, but ultimately I believe it was for the best. Matthew and I used our strengths to step up in certain situations and I will forever be grateful for his skills at breaking the ice as soon as we got in the car with the host family.

First new family picture haha. We'll meet the wife later. The daughter (Peggy) was super excited and also speaks really good English, which made it easy for us to fit in, but slightly unfortunate because we really didn't have to speak much Chinese. The dad (Arlong) also has really good English. The son warmed up to Matt a little bit later in the homestay, but ultimately didn't really seem to care for us much haha (it's ok Sam).

 They live about 45min drive north of where we say in Tainan in Liujia District 六甲區 which only has about 23,000 people (wiki said so) so it was pretty rural. It was a really nice change of pace compared to inner city Tainan.

First thing we do? Go to a night market of course!

 

 Thought this shirt was pretty brutal "I can't breathe".

 Coconut water                             

 

 Did some fishing!

 

Almost got a bastard but as soon as I pulled him out of the water my line broke.

Sugarcane drink. It was actually really good and not as overly-sweet as one might expect

 Fried and sweetened sweet potatoes. One of my favorite night market foods for sure.

Chinese lesson: 地瓜 di4gua1 = sweet potato = ground melon

土豆 du3dou4 = potato = earth bean

Found that kind of interesting.

 The dude in the bike outfit is Arlong's nephew Jay. He's on a cycling team and walked around the whole night market in chamois shorts. I applaud you sir.

 

 Played a balloon shooting game, took me back to my airsoft days heh.

 Peggy wanted us to try spicy duck blood pudding. The texture was a little weird because it literally just melts in your mouth, but was surprisingly tasty, I would totally eat it again.

I also finally ate Stinky Tofu... I'm sorry Taiwan, I love you and all, but I did not like chou dofu. I can eat anything else you throw at me, raw oysters, sea snails, spicy duck blood, coagulated pigs blood and rice, but chou dofu.... I'm sure it's an acquired taste, and I am willing to give it another shot, but I'm not rushing out for it lol. 

加水站 - Water station

So we headed back to Arlong's place with our goodies and chilled out for a bit. Pineapple beer. Yes.

 

 Chillin hard

After our meal we walked around the neighborhood a little bit. The sights and smells were very Arkansan, so I both felt at home and missed home a little bit, a very interesting feeling.

 Rice country

 A real bed! Of course I took the SpongeBob one lol. This was without a doubt the best sleep I've gotten in Taiwan so far. The Taipei hotel was pretty nice too, but here I got to sleep in a little bit.

Awesome cat picture in the hallway.

I thought I was going to write multiple days in one blog, but I actually need to be studying for my exam tomorrow instead of blogging all day lol. So this is just day 1 of 3, but at least I'm getting somewhere eh?

中文

這個網誌裡我會只用中文寫！我的老師告訴我她會幫我改一改（太謝謝你了老師！）

所以，我們一起開始吧！English will be posted after the Chinese at the bottom.

今天【七月十六號】我走路去上課的時候，看到新早餐攤子（對不起賣包子的朋友，那天你看起來很忙而且我沒有時間)。我一到那個攤子，老闆就馬上告訴我“買這個，很好吃！",我回答”好啊”。因為我不知道買什麽，他們告訴我非常方便哈哈。$1.50USD

我很早起床，因為我覺得我得與我的一對一課輔老師見面上課，可是原來星期五我們才見面，我早了一天:P。她問我為什麽我很早，我有點糊塗哈哈。我累死了，而且我的腦沒辦法思考（看上個博客），所以很難說中文。大概十分鐘以後我才發現了。沒關係，我們一起說中文，很好玩。每天我學習得越來越多。最後我回去宿舍睡覺。

 當然今天上課很難。上課以後我與同學一起去吃午餐。愛欣【左】卓琳【右】。

 我同學都是非常好的人！卓琳幫我很多忙，她不怕去陌生的地方，問陌生人很多問題。她教了我下課以後在外面怎麽用中文，也不感覺怕。真謝謝你！

牛肉麵，餃子，非常好吃！

 吃飯以後我們一起去小七買飲料。如雲買這個香蕉牛奶，我想喝喝看所以我也買了。是韓國的飲料。有一點貴，可是好喝，不太甜。

午睡以後再跟我的同學見面。最後一天我們有一個小表演，我們決定表演笑話，也唱歌哈哈。老師買我們飲料！！！

我們班的照片！正在準備自拍竿

全世界最好的班的照片

寫中文很難！需要記得很多生詞... 謝謝大家！

英文

So I'll post the English here, unfortunately you guys will have to scroll up to check the pics when I comment on them, doubling up seems silly. 

This blog is 10 days behind what I'm doing now. It's a lot of work to keep up with this heh, I'm going to end up finishing it back in the States which will be a little odd, but I must for completions sake. 

Tried a new food stand today and bought 【sandwich picture】. I just wanted up and the stand owner just about immediately told me to buy it, and that it was tasty. With that kind of service I couldn't say no, and they were correct on the tasty part. It was super convenient because I really don't know what anything is, so I don't mind being told what to buy lol. 

Woke up early to meet with my tutor, but was a day early lol. She was pretty confused about why I was there, and trying to only speak Chinese to figure out what was going on was a bit difficult because of my previous night of nefarious activity (see previous blog). I eventually figured out that I had the wrong day in mind, so went back to my dorm and slept some more haha.

Class was hard as always. Went to lunch at a new place with the classmates. Shoutout to Katie 【picture of classmates, Katie is on the right】 for being boss at randomly walking into any place and figuring it out. She's not afraid to keep asking questions. I've learned a lot about how to be confident using Chinese outside of class and making communication happen. Thanks Katie!!! 

【food picture】beef noodles and jiaozi. Everything was really good as always. I'm going to miss Taiwanese food... really need to learn how to make it in the States. 

【Korean banana milk picture】Ramsey bought this at the 7-Eleven and I was curious so had to try it. Kinda expensive (like $3 US) but it was good, less sweet than I was expecting which was a good thing. 

【teacher picture】We had to meet later that day in the classroom to figure out our end-of-semester performance. We're going to try and mix jokes and songs I think haha. It should be interesting. Laoshi bought us drinks!!! 

【selfie stick picture】 getting ready for an awesome class picture

【class picture】best class photo in the world!

Anyway, it took me like two days to write this in Chinese haha, but I did learn a lot. Super thanks to Laoshi for editing my post, it really helped me nail down some of my common mistakes and learn some new words. And thanks to everyone for reading!

Chinese painting

 Oh how each day toys with my emotions. This was the first day I ventured out to order lunch on my own (or at least attempt to). I really liked this place's noodles so after asking around I found out where it was and went on a mission. First issue, having to ask for the English menu (never again, I'm determined to learn this whole thing!.... or at least the one dish I'll always order lol). Studying new vocabulary in class is one thing, but when you get called out and shamed for not knowing a particular word, those stay with you forever （like when I said "assassination" instead of "spicy", not going to forget that tone now...).

 手工肉絲湯麵。These noodles rock my world.

 So ordering ended up being a bit of a pain because the lady asked me not one, but three questions where I just blanked and stared at her. After some hand gestures I figured out the first one was if I was eating in the shop or carry-out, so I pointed at the ground. Question two I have no idea. Question three I believe was her asking for my name, because after a couple seconds of staring at her blankly (I should have at least asked her to repeat slowly so I don't look like a total idiot, but alas my fight-or-flight kicked in and I froze in the headlights) she wrote "外國人" on the ticket (foreigner).

So I'm sitting there, feeling a little better because I handed her money and got my ticket, got my chopsticks and soup spoon and am waiting. Then I hear some numbers called out. Not sure what numbers exactly, so I wait a little longer. Then I hear numbers after my order being called and "外國人” coming from the front counter. Processing the information given, I start to slowly form a plan with my scared and barely functioning brain to go up to the counter and ask. In the next several minutes of trying to build up enough confidence to even stand up off my very tiny seat I hear "外國人“ a couple more times, and some other customers making an effort to look over at me. Finally, after pretending I had something urgent to do on my phone for another minute or so, I try and, as nonchalantly as possible, get up and go fetch my order. Anyway, the meal was pretty good (the pork was better the first time I ate there, but I will return noodle shop! Just you wait! And this time I'll get my order right when it comes out).

Culture class today was super rad, we did Chinese painting! (as you may have suspected from the title). This guy was brilliant and crazy at the same time. He has been painting for decades now, has his own exhibit at the school, and even had some of his work up at the Beijing Olympics. He really liked making fun of peoples laugh. Someone would laugh awkwardly at something and he would ask "what you mean *imitate students laugh*". Which of course just built up on itself because other people would start making their individually strange laughing noises (laughing really is a bizarre thing). It was another one of those -teachers wouldn't do this in America- moments. He was kind of making fun of people, but then commented about how he enjoyed the laughter and keeping a light-hearted classroom.

 Anyway, this man really is a genius. He had a student randomly drop some ink on the paper...

 Work his magic...

 And suddenly it's epic Chinese landscape art.

 Another random ink splatter...

 Killer flower drawing.

 He then demonstrated how "easy" it was and painted any fruit that students called out.

 A true master.

Here's what I did!

 

 My first attempt. Kinda crappy, but you have to start somewhere eh. Just figuring out the different things you can do with the brush and how much water to use with the ink was quite a task.

 

Determined to paint some damn mountains. Didn't really know what to do with the blank space here. The river and trees were a last minute thought, but I think the painting would have been better without. Might just slice this thing in half longways and only keep the mountains. 

This one I actually quite like. The thing in the middle of the waterfall is supposed to be a rock, but it ended up looking like a face, and the bottom rocks kind of like a ribcage so went with the bluff edges more wing like than rocky. I tried to keep "Arkansas" in my mind while painting this one.

And lastly this silly thing. We were two hours in and I was running out of ideas, so I thought, "what would painting depression look like?" And this was my attempt with the Alex Grey inspired eyes at the top.The lighter part is supposed to be a person engulfed in flames with their eyes and mouth slashed out and an upside down cross on their forehead. Then with some shadowy, authoritarian/deity like figure behind the right shoulder, and the eyes are pretty self-explanatory. 

They even wrote an article about it! Unfortunately the reporter lady came in at the end when I was doing my last one, so I didn't want to comment on it haha.

http://www.cna.com.tw/postwrite/Detail/174698.aspx#.VbCpAflLHoN

 I'm kinda hiding in the back left there. Everyone else did way better than me, but it was still really fun heh.

 After Chinese painting meal. Guava juice and green tea lol. Plus some jiaozi. It's pretty rad, the fruit/tea place we go to are actually the same people that do these jiaozi. They were pretty darn tasty and of course super cheap. The tea is like $1.50 and the jiaozi I believe were around $2 USD.

 The bicycle parking lot heh. Katie's bike doesn't have back brakes :(

 Some sky shots from my dorm, cause ya know, it's beautiful and whatnot.

 

 

 

 Late night chillin with Chad! We went and drank some brews at the 7-Eleven like real men do. Moosehead <3

 Walking around town drinking... cause it's totally legal (come on America...)

What do young handsome men like us do after downing a couple pints? Play scratchcards of course!

 

 

 I really should have taken a picture of my ticket cause I won $1000 NT!!! You scratch the number in the middle, then the ones all around it looking for a number higher. I got like 19 and found a 21 worth $500NT, but also on the card there's a double-your-winnings number, which was my number as well. The 小朋友 has been good to me (rollback to post #1). I spend NT$200 on the card, so won $800 in total. In USD I spent $6.66 and made $33.33. Also saw my first "working girl" standing around on a corner. Kinda wanted to take a picture, but figured that would be rude.

Anyway, twas a good day overall. After my lunch embarrassment painting felt good, then having some brews with Chad at the 7-Eleven talking about Taiwanese and American culture is always great. I still speak too much English with my language partner. People speak Chinese and I still have no idea what's going on, but all is well in the Phoenix City! Felt like this was a pretty entertaining blog, hope you all enjoyed as always! (broke 1000 views including some views in Portugal, Japan, and Austria!!!).

謝謝大家！