Opportunities Find Me

Sometimes a door is opened for you and all you have to do is walk through it. That's how this week has gone for me. The first of such opportunities began actually last week when I decided to take the chinese painting instruction that my art teacher, Cohenko, had offered to me. So, Tuesday my lessons began.

This first lesson introduced the four treasures of the study (文房四寳 wen fang s bao). These are 筆bi (the pen), 墨mo (ink), 紙zhi (paper), and 硯yan (the ink stone). My name, 墨 , is a combination of the characters 黑 hei, meaning black, and 土 tu, meaning mud or soil. This is because the traditional process of making Chinese ink is, well, I'll start at the beginning, the reason will become self-evident, I think.

To begin, pine trees ar cut and burned in a furnace. The resulting soot that gathers on the walls of the furnace is collected and mixed with an oil creating a sort of black mud. This black mud is then pressed into a mold very tightly, thus creating what Cohenko referred to as an "ink stick", 墨 . This ink stick is dipped in water and rubbed on the ink stone in a circular motion for 20 to 80 minutes in order to prepare the ink for use.

Of course, now everyone cuts out the middle-man of the ink stick and goes straight to liquid ink.

Cohenko said that next week there may be four or five more people learning with me, which is great. I'm excited for that.

The second great thing that I learned this week was yesterday in my Home Ec. class. Not only have I made an apron using a sewing machine AND put an awesome little robot man on it using glue on jewels, the teacher randomly started introducing me to some traditional Chinese knot-work, which I have no objection to learning. I've pretty much mastered the Chinese button and now I'm working on the knot they call "lucky".

Later that day, my friend Leo and I went to back to the university where I study Chinese to check out the Traditional Instruments Club. Not so long story made even shorter, I will be studying the 二胡 (Erhu) on Tuesdays at 7:00 P.M.

I am really beginning to enjoy myself here, so I apologize in advance if communication becomes even more infrequent, but this is what I'm here for and I know you all understand that.

Also, while I'm here, I'd like to mention the possibility of another great opportunity that I recently was made aware of. I haven't looked into it very far, but apparently there is a Working-Holiday Visa in Australia available to people under thirty in which you can work and travel in the Land Down Under for a year. Just some forward thinking.

Until next time.

The Hardest Thing

Let me say first that lately I have not been able to find a computer capable of uploading all of my awesome photos and for that I apologize.

Today, I want to explain the hardest thing I'm having to cope with here and it has to do with the Chinese language. I know it's suppoesed to be the most difficult language to learn in the world, and I'll admit, it is proving to be more difficult to pick up than German was, but that's not my problem. Really, to me and my associate exchange students, the grammer is relatively simple (the trick being to forget everything that makes English great, like "the" and plural nouns and tenses) you don't have to conjugate verbs like in German and pronunciation takes practice and attention, but that is just another important aspect of any language.
No, the true difficulty with Chinese is getting native speakers to help me speak it without having them resort to using English every time the conversation strays into something I haven't learned yet and therefore don't understand. It's in not flipping out when the way some people speak to me in English sounds like they're mocking me and inside saying, "You foreign knucklehead, I can speak your language, why don't you just give up on mine. It would be a lot easier."
However, I didn't expect learning any new language to be easy, but when every Taiwanese person comes back to the idea that "Oh, Chinese very difficult to learn" it gets very old. Actually, the nicest thing I heard today was when, in Chinese class, we were making question sentences and so everyone is practicing out loud and the teacher said, "See, it's easy!" I could have cried because it was the first time anyone here had ever given me that kind of encouragement.
My point is that Chinese isn't, in itself, a hard language to learn. It takes time, practice, and patience. The other things I mentioned, though, take time, practice, and patience, as well as self-control, humor, and all kinds of love.

Chinese School and Why I'd Rather Be with the Natives

I guess it's kinda late right now, but all my days seem chock full o' stuff my supporters ought to know. Monday saw the start of my Chinese education and also an increase in my food and transportaion costs (no more pea crackers and chocolate milk). Monday was also the day that marked the beginning of being around other exchange students every morning (I'm not positive, but I think we're quickly running out of new things to talk about). In short, I'm glad that the long arduous journey of officially learning Chinese has begun, but I would rather a Sherpa guide to aid me in climbing this Everest than fifty foriegn exchange students each with his (and her) own pitfalls.
What I'm trying to get at is that I would rather be at SongShan Senior High School for eight hours than with fifty (myself included) contestants on Survivor.

In other news, I have some funny stories and neat little tidbits in store for you all which I hope to transmit when I find myself at a computer earlier in the day.

A Few Notes

This week I've discovered some interesting cultural details of the Taiwanese.


Regarding the culture of my high school, 松山高中:


Students are responsible for cleaning the school, including hallways, bathrooms, and classrooms


Snacks can be bought between classes


Lunch is eaten in the classrooms or hallways


Teachers move to the students


It is these aspects, in my opinion, that allow studeents to take pride in their school and their education. By having to take care of the building and clean up their own messes, the students are more careful with things and don't leave so much trash everywhere.

Regarding the Moon Festival:

The general premise is that even though one may be far away from his family and friends he can look at the moon and think about how the people he is far from also have the same moon to look at.

Ways to celebrate include barbecues with friends and family (I'm going to one next weekend), parades (I heard one go by the other evening), and eating mooncake. I have good mooncake and I've had weird mooncake, so there are different recipes I guess.

The whole thing is very comforting to me because I am sort of far away from my family and good friends, but every day I grow more and more connected to this place. I'm finding that I know where things are, I know where to go, I know what tastes good and what to politely decline. I still don't understand everything, I realize I might not ever understand everything, but that does not hinder me quite as often as it has in the past.