New Year New Classes

Taroko Gorge!

Sun Moon Lake!

Fail boat. A italian tanker ran aground in
one of the typhoons this summer.

Cute couple.

A beautiful island with all sorts of cool tide pools and
stuff connected to the mainland by a bridge that
looks like a dragon.

haha we went shrimp fishing when we
were in Hualien and ate the spoils. Fun night.

Random block of text in the Confucius Temple
in Tainan. I could read the whole thing and
understand it! In classical Chinese! Exciting.

This random couple was following me everywhere.

Winter break, as with all breaks it seems, was all too short. As I mentioned briefly in my last post, my parents were here for about three weeks, and those were three action-packed weeks. We visited so many places that were all so awesome in all very different ways by so many different modes of transportation it was ridiculous. We took the high-speed rail to Tainan, rented a car and drove (much to the amazement of our Taiwanese-American friends in the US) around the island, took a bus to Sun-Moon Lake, and finally the slow train to Yingge, with stops in Taipei in-between.

I won’t spend too much time on the traveling, but rather let the pictures do the talking. It was interesting being the sort of guide/translator though. My parents sort of relied on me much more than they needed to, and at times I found myself simply translating and deferring to them rather than just going ahead and making decisions. It made me realize how strange that position of translator can be. You may know the answers or what to do, but out of respect for the position of translator or just out of the trained passivity you’re left standing, waiting to be told what to do without even knowing it—a weird position to be in. Nonetheless, I’m amazed at my parents’ willingness to travel, without worry, to countries where they know absolutely none of the language. Obviously I could help them out here, and knowing English always makes things easier, but it’s definitely a different experience that I haven’t really had in a while. Maybe something to think about for some travel in the future.

Classes started last week, and I’m definitely more excited about class this semester. I’ve chosen my classes and they’re all relatively challenging, covering interesting topics, and allow for good discussion beyond just understanding the text usually. I’m in a listening class with no text, there’s just the new vocabulary and the recordings. We listen to 15-20 minutes per day and discuss it the next. These are real speeches that were part of a university series, so it’s nice to be listening to real speeches, and learn better how speeches are given in Chinese. I’m taking a similar class that’s reading-based. My one-on-one class is focused on problems of Taiwanese identity and history, which I’m excited about learning. Taiwan is all too often overlooked in the history of China, and it’s got a lot of really fascinating, unique social problems that have roots in its history. Finally, I’ve got a classical Chinese class, which is going well so far.

That’s all for now. It’s been raining a lot as of late, but it’s beautiful out today so I’m going to take the opportunity to get out for a bit.

Peace