We meet again Algebra 2...

Third day of school! I learned why no one was entering the campus as I arrived and why I got a slight glare from the military officer standing there with students holding clipboards. See, I enter campus roughly at 7:45 as I was told to be in class at 8:10. Students have to be in their classroom at 7:30 otherwise they are tardy. As the late students enter campus "on duty military instructors and student examiners will start to record down the name of students who enter school after 7:30am. Students who are late the first time will receive oral admonish from the on duty military instructor." No wonder I was getting a stern look! As an exchange student, I'm an exception to the rule because the teacher said I don't have to attend the morning study time at 7:30 since I have no need to. Hopefully the military instructor knows that and doesn't think me a disgrace. XD

When I did enter class I noticed a magazine on my chair. (In my high school, we put our chairs on the desk at the end of the day and obviously take them back down the next morning. Repeat) Front cover, big photo staring at me, there was Justin Bieber. Really confused as to who put it there and why, I simply just begin reading the magazine. It was a magazine for people who are learning English as it helps break down the articles with vocabulary words, audio CD and quizzes at the end. Pretty cool set up it had. I wish they had a English-person-learning-Chinese version. XD As I looked around the room I noticed many of the other students had the same magazine. It turns out that the school provides it sometime for students to study English and perhaps even give a test over the contexts later, as my classmate told me. Bring it! I'll ace it if I can write in English! ;D

Another difference in the class today was the desk layout. For the first two days, our layout was single rows of desks throughout the room. Quite crowded as there are about 60 of us in a small room. Today the teacher changed the desks so they were paired up into rows of coupled desks. This improved the room space but gave me an interesting time. I was paired with the guy to my right who I can't really tell if he likes me or not. Remember my story about the guy who tricked me into calling him "handsome man?" Yep, that's him. I don't think he speaks much English so I have trouble communicating with him. What was the real kicker was nap time which I'm skipping ahead to for just a minute. It was so strange to be so close in that manner of unconsciousness! I had to shrink my bubble for sure and forget about elementary school cooties. :P

First class was Earth Science which the teacher didn't seem to mind the exchange students so I just did some chinese character studying with a break to watch a snip-it of the Chinese geology video. So nothing much there. It was the following class that was much more eventful. Twas...math. The math from what I can tell is Algebra 2/Pre-Calculus. What was really nice was that it was written in the universal math language, latin if I'm correct. So the teacher used 'cos' & 'sin' & 1, 2, 3 etc. instead of chinese character numbers. The funny thing was, during the whole class I was really excited. I think it was because the fact that I could understand finer points to the lesson rather than a general idea. So not the math part but rather the non-language-barrier aspect. Plus I really like my teacher. He was so thoughtful as he would try and explain some parts to math problems in english for me. I actually really want to do well in this class as there is nothing stopping me from doing so and to do my teacher proud since he put the extra effort in for my foreign self. The hard part is remembering all that cos, sin and tan stuff I kinda forgot...with my notes in Texas and no textbook in Taiwan. This outta be interesting!

For lunch my classmate helped me order a DELICIOUS YUMMINESS FROM HEAVEN! It was noodles drenched in a lovely sauce with several pieces of ham and a egg on top. Also there was some sort of broth in a separate cup with two meatballs. All very veeeeeeeeeery tasty. My mother packed two slices of a soft honey bread cake which I shared with my classmates at lunch.

I know I mentioned nap time already but here it is again with more substance. Still had trouble falling asleep and woke up early but I think I was able to sneak a couple minutes in. The hard part is staying in the hunched-over-on-the-desk position for that long as my back longs for a chiropractor. That and my arms and legs completely fall asleep uncomfortably. I'm still experimenting on which position works best but maybe in winter (if we bring coats) the coat will act as a nice pillow. The classroom can actually get cold as they sometimes blast the 8+ fans they have in the room but it doesn't warrant bringing a jacket in such hot weather outside.

Chinese class was next. It wasn't a language class but rather similar to what English class is in America. So reading a piece of text and analyzing it from what I can tell. I understood very little but I could recognize stuff here and there, but things that didn't help me figure out the overall meaning. Things like "of""ground"etc. During this class for some reason, the teacher (note, I have different teachers for each class) switched the seating of the guy next to me and a girl I made friends with. I don't know why, but it kinda is good because I can ask the girl questions if I don't understand what's going on since she knows English better. Plus she's very nice and helpful. ^_^

The last class was an elective opening. The exchange students didn't get to pick an elective nor did we know which one we were assigned to until right before the class today. Erik and I were put in a computer program class focused on something called "scratch." I deduce that it is a simplified animation, game, movie, thingie-ma-whats-it. As the teacher took over the students' computers with her own screen, she showed us some basic things in the program...allllll in Chinese characters. I had to focus so hard to try and remember what was what, what was where, how to piece it together, etc. by pure memory and not the ability to read the characters. It was later that Erik discovered there was an English language option...faaaaaantastic(sarcasm). Sarcasm because I was working really hard to comprehend everything thrown at us until I found out it was all for nothing. But really it is fantastic since it just got lightyears easier to work with. The class is two periods long (most classes are) but exchange students get let out an hour early. I kinda regret not staying for all of it but I had things to work on at home. Next week I plan on staying the whole time because it seems like an interesting program though I probably will never set eyes on it outside of Taiwan. Who knows though?

The exchange students are trying to figure out the club aspect of school with the limited information we're currently getting. It is required to be in at least one of the many clubs. There is photography, dance, basketball, Japanese, and more. The down side is they all cost extra money because they can hire real teachers to come to the club. It might have been dance club, but it cost $2000 NT to join that certain club ($67 US). That's half of my monthly allowance! I asked about if there was an orchestra to which a lady said there was for really cheap. The downside from what she said is they don't provide instruments nor do they have cellos in it. WHAT?! I have a hard time believing an orchestra doesn't have a major string instrument included in it but I don't think the lady knew much about all the clubs. She was really busy today so perhaps we'll have more information later on. We can't research this ourselves on the school website because exchange students don't have student cards/accounts. I find that really strange but if that is how things work, then that's how things work.

FUN FACT TIME!!
The escalators are divided just like the roads are divided in America. If you drive slow, you remain in the right lane. If you are a speed demon, you rush in the left lane. So basically if you ride the escalator standing still, you need to be on the right. If you want to walk during the ride, be on the left. I generally like going on the left side because the line is much shorter, it's faster and I get some extra exercise. I appreciate any extra exercise after sitting in a desk for 8 hours.

And the Taffy is finished! :D