有手機！

Got my Taiwanese cell phone all setup! I've made like 1 whole call and read maybe 3 messages so far haha. I did finally get my iPhone unlocked, but there's several people I can't get a hold of via the interwebs, so really still needed my iPhone set to U.S. Only paid $10USD for this little guy. It will officially be my international cell phone for when I travel to other places.

Speaking of traveling, I'm seriously considering what to plan out for my life. I've broken it down to:

1. Finish my degree in the U.S. then maybe grad school abroad. Could possibly take.... 3 more years for undergrad degree.... and that's if I go pretty hard, but without taking summer classes, so can maybe shorten it.

2. Restart my undergrad program in another country (most likely come back to NCKU Tainan) and get a different degree (they have Environmental Engineer).

3. Forget it all, come back to Taiwan and study Chinese and achieve fluency, teach English or get some kinda interpreter/translator job.

4. Postpone my U.S. studies for another year or so and study abroad for a much longer time than my current outing. As much as I complain about how brutal the courses are, I really am learning a lot. Still super scared to use my Chinese, but slowly understanding people more, and this is after only 3 weeks. If I spent a year a over here.... I think I could actually be comfortably using the language.

5. Do something else lol.

Basically the only way I'm going to actually get any good at Chinese is to study in an area that speaks it. Chinese was just an academic study for me back in the States. I found the characters fascinating, the grammar relatively simple, and the idea of speaking interesting. But I've never actually had any sort of functional understanding of Chinese as a language. I was overconfident in my sideline knowledge, but when actually getting to a Chinese speaking country I found myself way out of my element haha. People actually use Chinese to communicate! Imagine that. Anyway, I'm reiterating a lot of what I've already posted about. More pictures! 

Some cool doors in the school (yes I'm taking pictures of doors now lol)

 I walked past this probably a dozen times before realizing what it was referring to. The literal translation is "oblique angle alley".斜角巷.

I will never get tired of walking down "food street". Every shop an exploration of senses; an intimate bonding of sights, smells, taste, and texture; each dish a new lover.

The shops are probably 1.5-2 meters wide at most, so it's quite overwhelming even knowing where to go. Thankfully I typically tag along with friends and we just keep trying new stuff.

















Daniel, Jeremy, and I went to this Japanese ramen place that was quite tasty. Super Americanized, which is a good and bad thing. The only place I've been that served ice water which was pleasant. It's typically cold sweet black tea (which confusingly enough is called red tea in Chinese), hot jasmine tea, soup, or nothing. It is definitely one of those things that's quite different from the West.

 Coke came with the meal lol.

 I however got real food :D

Jeremy using chopsticks to dip a chicken nugget into ketchup.... To each his own as they say :P

 Another food street shot

So finally had to do laundry. Not creepy at all...

Gender segregated washers. Ladies have 4 and dudes only have 3.... Also learned how to say pervert in class today (7/16) because we asked the teacher why the gendered washers lol. 色狼, 色being color or appearance, and 狼 being wolf. Funny enough 色狼 also means Satyr apparently, which I find the connection amazingly fascinating. I also looked up pornography.. cause ya know... and it happens to be 色情, "having the color or appearance of love/passion". I love Chinese so much...Also got curious and looked up prostitute which is 妓女. 女 being woman, so also the radical for the other word, but 支 is quite interesting, meanings include: support, pay money, bear, put up, branch/division, and is a measure word for troops... interesting connection there.






The dryers however, are not gender segregated which is a little bizarre. Not sure what the thinking there is. I guess perverts won't take off with clean ladies undergarments...












On that note, here's a picture of the elevator.... the little bottom do-hickey is a key card lock. We have these credit card sized grey cards that unlock the doors to get into the dorm, and use the elevator. Yep...

 A picture of the laundry detergent.... cause I know you were curious (this blog post gets better I swear)

 Cool alley on the way to dinner with the bros

 Daniel and the one-and-only William.

 牛肉麵, quite tasty but that soup wrecked me... very intense.

I believe I've mentioned that a lot of places cook outside and you wait inside. Here's an example:

 Jason, Daniel, and William. William is going to leave us in like 2 weeks for Japan. We're already sad, won't see him again while we're in Taiwan.

 

 Bought this stuff from the vending machine. First drink I have not cared much for while here.

Alright, so first time I went out drinking! Me and my Taiwanese brothers Jason and Will kicking back, chowin' some noodles, drinkin' some Taiwan brews. We talked a lot about politics and our goals for life. Discovered that William wants to write Chinese poetry and Jason wants to basically learn every language and help the world's people communicate with each other better. Both of them however are kinda stuck being engineers due to social and family pressure. If there's anything I've learned from coming to Taiwan is that anything is really possible with effort and an open heart. My favorite way to say "happy" in Chinese is 開心 which you guessed it... translates to "open heart". These are some wonderful dudes and I know they will find the path they want to be on. 加油！

 

 

The first Taiwanese beer tasted a lot like your typical cheap American beer, but that second one was rice based, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. And yes, the Taiwanese put ice in their beer, which kinda freaked me out at first, but it does get warm very quickly, so I guess I can accept that :D

Alight, caught up to 7-10 now. Next blog post, Trip to Taipei part 1 of 2! Then after that a couple more quick blogs in anticipation for this coming weekend, staying at a host family for 2 nights! Really looking forward to that, should be intense. 

As always, thanks for reading! <3 <3 <3