三明治時間

 大家好，是張克洋。I'm going to try and crank out the next couple blogs pretty quick to get to the weekend trip to Taipei, which yes, was amazing. But have a bit of a backlog to catch up on.

Decided to try some Taiwanese sandwiches from my baozi friend instead of baozi. They were pretty good really. Three pieces of bread with some stuff added in between. The one on the left is a chicken sandwich, and the right one sweet dried pork dust, which sounds weird but is quite tasty.

The crosswalk tells you how long you have to wait before going. Why isn't this just standard in America? 

 You know it's a slow day when I take pictures of bathroom signs.The sign literally translates to "solution urgent department", definitely not a way I ever learned to say toilet.

Fire escape slings, wonder if I could sign up for training :P

Some more classroom building shots, really want to emphasize how connected to the outside one is at all times.

Some dang ole dogs chillin. I counted 5-6 while taking these pictures. Quite a few pups roaming these lands. 

Some cool artwork on campus

7-Eleven 飯糰。The mangled wrapper under this one is the previous one I ate before realizing there are numbers on the corners of the packaging telling you how to open it properly so the seaweed paper stays on. I was feeling pretty brutalized this day as well, so wanted to eat lunch alone. 

Hardcore lady crossing the road and my new rain jacket. I've had a couple chances to use it now. I think I still want to carry an umbrella because my pants get super wet. Also really need to find some sandals I can stand walking in. My dorm room sandals kill my little toesies.

Dinner with Chad, William, and Daniel. I really like this place because you can ask for more rice. I totally botched the sentence to the chef but he still said I have good Chinese lol. I think the guy gets a kick out of 外國人 trying to speak Chinese to him and seems super happy.

So for our homework we had to go ask 3 Taiwanese people some questions and present on it in class. With the guidance of my language partner he suggested I asked these people. I was incredibility nervous and scared so I only ended up asking their names, what sports they like, and if I could take a picture. I'm such a wimp...

We went to the bakery and grabbed some stuff. This guy was quite tasty. Very spongy. 

Also, on a side note, I've been trying to slip into absurd stereotypical Southern accents around my Taiwanese friends for funsies. That's been going pretty well haha.

Getting more into a rhythm over here. It feels like I've been here for way longer than (while writing this) 2 weeks, and I've been hearing similar thoughts from other TUSA students. For the most part I'm feeling good. I started to reflect a little more on something a good friend told me in the states about deciding what I want to get out of the program. Obviously I'm not going to learn everything about Chinese and be a fully functional member of Taiwanese society in 8 weeks, which was my original goal haha, so now that I'm letting myself calm down a little bit I'm learning to stress out less and actually enjoy myself while trying to speak to people. Ultimately I'm going to be better at Chinese when this program is said and done, there's no way around that, so just kinda gonna go with it, and even though I get brutalized in class, I think it's for the best. 

謝謝大家！<3