Sick but truckin'!

YES! Sleep was on my side today! (and my door :P) I want to name my door...just for reference. Hmm...male or female? Thaaaaaaat will be for another time. Let's get down to the Taffy shall we? :)

Morning arrived and I was greeted with the lovely *cough* feeling of groggy sickness. Oh, joy. Thankfully it hasn't worsened terribly but has remained at the same level with the slight development of throat mucus. I bet that's a great image. XD

Walking on campus I saw my history teacher of extreme friendliness. Exchanging greetings, she asked how I was. Being truthful (and in Chinese!) I told her I was sick. Her sweetness then flooded out as she took care of me by giving me several get-well-tips and showing me where the campus clinic was. A nurse there gave me some throat lozenges and told me to come back between 2-5pm when the doctor would arrive to prescribe actual medication.

The first class of the day was English which I understood very, veeeeeery well today. We were reading a story about a boy, his father and ice cream. Mmm yummy. But the point was to answer some questions over the context and to break down the story's grammar. The teacher had me read aloud parts of the story with the class repeating the snip-its right after me. It was fun except with a sore throat. XD I kept reaching for my water after every paragraph. The end of the class was my favorite part because a classmate came to me for help to translate a sentence. Yay! An opportunity to help! Heck they can pelt me with English questions if they want, I'm just so happy to be of service!

Art class followed which we had to draw two 12cmx12cm squares in different themes. The first one we had to draw 5 curvy lines and design each little piece that the lines made with different patterns. The second one was requiring 5 straight lines that each section had to be colored a different shades of black gray and white. The second task was quite difficult to do with a 0.5 mechanical pencil. I had to b.s. some shades of gray because there's only so much I can shade with a mechanical pencil as a beginner. If this is the type of art we will be doing all year, I might need to send an S.O.S. call for help at all my art peeps out there. :P

LUNCH! Oooh thinking about it makes me hungry! Today I tried what is similar to the university lunch I had yesterday. Twas the same buffet-type line with so much more food options and WAAAAAY more people. The lunch room is veeeeeery crowded with no time to dilly-dally. My tray ended up containing veggies, tofu, fried egg, nuggets of some sort, an unknown-fried-thingie-whats-it and the delicious egg pudding thing I've had several times before that I've come to crave. It's not egg pudding but it's texture feels like pudding. It's just egg made a different way with some type of pink veggie bits included. (refer to the Japanese Sushi dinner pictures in a previous blog to see it) It was all very delicious and something I might do more often.

HALLELUJAH! NAP TIME WAS A SUCCESS!!! I completely conked out without even three minutes to dream. But thank goodness I got some sleep in! Tis necessary for a sickie. If fact, I slept so hard that when I woke up, the area above my right eye hurt due to my head resting on it. I could bring a jacket as a make shift pillow but...carrying a jacket in the summer...in Taiwan? I'd rather not. I carry around too much stuff already. :P

Iiiiiiiiiit's Tuesday! That means Military Education! :D Excited? Like last week, the class had to stand in a pencil upright position for 10+ minutes which I think is inspection time...maybe. Eric and I once again stick out like a sore thumb due to our BRIGHT ORANGE P.E. uniforms in a sea of tan/white formal uniforms. It's not our fault! XD We also did some marching in place and chanting but this time was faster and repeating sets without rest. After four sets of chant-marching your thighs start to sting. :P Nothing really hard, thankfully, just not a cake walk. It would be weird if a military class was a cake walk of relaxedness. XD What we did learn was how to salute properly. Now I don't know if this is the Taiwanese salute or a universal salute but here's the break down:
-First, stick out your arm absolutely straight and slightly angled to the right
-Second, bend the arm into a salute with straight hand that touches the lower right of the right eyebrow.
You must do these two parts in a smooth but strong movement. I couldn't tell if the instructor was copying a bad student or if he was teaching the correct way, but the hand might be oh-so-slightly curved upward while saluting. I would imagine each country has different salutes in their own way. Is the American salute placed more in the middle of the head? I'm curious as to what the differences are. Anyone know?

Right after military class was finished, I headed off to the clinic as it was 2:00 at the time. With a slight language barrier I was able to communicate the desire to see a doctor with the nurse I met in the morning. Not learning medical Chinese other than "I am sick" a session of charades was in order. Easy things like pointing to my throat, coughing and nose drainage. The doctor took a look down my throat and...yeah. He looked down my throat and then immediately prescribed some medication. It was super fast and I was a bit shocked that I already received medicine in such a short time. The two pills I was given were for sore throat and cough. Though it wasn't just two pills but instead quite a few numbering to eight of each kind. The instructions were to take each pill three times a day after meals. Woah. Three times a day? That seems a little frequent for a person with no medication record in school.  But then again I might just be paranoid with taking medicine I don't know the names of from a different doctor. Let's hope it helps!

While waiting for the medication to be packaged I stayed silent since I didn't think the couple people present spoke English. All of a sudden my ear detects my native language. It so happens a Rotex (past exchange student) was there! His name either Li, Lee or Ling went to Oklahoma and knew English quite well. The poor guy had a broken foot from playing basketball and was on crutches. After the medication was ready, we walked together for a time discussing things here and there about Taiwan. It's just such a coincidence Rotex and exchange students attract each other because I came across about five Rotexs last Friday night. Very fun conversations are had. :)

The exchange students were shown the campus gym that is really just for the university students but would be open to us. A small little underground room, it contains machines such as treadmills and other sorts. Spotting the sign in sheet, one must write their name, gender, clock in time, etc. It is just the girl exchange students, myself included, that want to make use of the gym. Irony is found here since the sign in sheet solely had males on it. Hahaha! We saw the sheet from the lunch period but I don't know if girls join the gym after school or not. I might try to go tomorrow depending if anyone is going, because we have to work together to figure out how to work Chinese charactered machines. XD

YAY! I HAVE CLUB INFORMATION!! BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! The exchange students received a list of all the clubs or as they translated it "agencies" they had available and the fees. Clubs meet eight times every semester. Our first club meeting will be this Thursday. I have three very prominent choices:
-Pop Dance
-Decorative Lantern Making
-Chinese Martial Arts
Boy would I love to do the first two choices but, come on. You can't beat learning martial arts in ASIA! AHAHAHA I'M GOING TO FULFILL MY CHILDHOOD DREAM!! Hey, Mom and Dad? Remember me asking to take karate as a kid? Yeah, I'm super excited for this club and extremely look forward to it. I'm not positive which type of marital arts it will be, but a lady believes it to involve swords. That's not a fact but it might not just be karate or tai chi. I'll find out this Thursday! Apparently mostly guys are in the club but two other exchange student girls want to join, so ha! The club will have an invasion people who are both foreigners and girls. That should be interesting for the Taiwanese students. I may be terrible at the club(even though it's for beginners) but I'm not going down without a fight! It's also a form of exercise which is more than welcome. Just in case something is wrong, I have one opportunity per semester to change clubs to something else. So no worries there just in case the club doesn't work out.

The exchange students got together and discussed our Teacher's Day performance. So the separate country culture sections doesn't seem to work out. Instead we plan on taking a children's song and writing lyrics to it, thanking the teachers for their work while adding in bits of different languages. We don't have anything to show yet but at least we focused our theme down by a bunch. Tomorrow should bring more progress.

Last but not least is dinner! Cold pizza. So I'm not sure what was all on top but I recognized corn, peas, and cheese. It was mostly veggies with some balls of meat. I think meat...either that or tofu. I have trouble telling the two apart sometimes. XD Also I'm not sure if the pizza we had would be considered 'healthy' or not because it didn't seem as greasy and had less cheese. Not really sure but it was tasty!

Taffy Fin!