0.5" BUG OF DEATH!

Friday October 26^th, 2012

Another bright and promising day! Onward!

Before descending down into the underground cafeteria at Tatung High School I like going to, I noticed a poster on the wall. This is for my Sengoku Basara friends again (feel free to skip this paragraph if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Remember yesterday’s “Are You Ready?” poster I connected to Date Masamune? Well this poster just gives me more reason to make that reference because the color choice totally fits our dear One-Eyed Dragon. So when you add on the “Let’s go shopping!” what picture is painted in your mind? I see Date riding his motorcycle horse with over flowing shopping bags dangling from his arms as he sits with them crossed over his chest. They are all violently bouncing with the horse’s gate as Date steers it to the next mall. Kojuro acts as the pack mule and advisor who begs Date to stop spending so much money. That’s what I got from the poster! Share with me your creative minds! :D

BREAKFAST! Feeling particularly hungry, I decided to try something very Taiwanese and have a hamburger for breakfast. That’s a difference between the cultures of American and Taiwan. In America we usually have burgers for lunch or dinner but in Taiwan it is more common to eat burgers for breakfast. So at my favorite breakfast shop, being cheerily greeted with “Good morning!” and replying “Zao an!” I ordered my beloved chicken & egg burger. That being combined with banana milk, it hit the spot just right. 我喜歡！Do you remember what those characters mean? If you did, that would be outright astounding! XD They mean “I like!”

Here’s a snapshot of the place I go to every high school morning for breakfast and some Wi-Fi. That little table with two chairs is where I always sit, specifically the closest one. There is a bigger table in the back but it’s hidden from view here. In the background is the teahouse I enjoy going to but it’s not yet opened for the day. There’s a single man in a white shirt that opens up shop, only later to be joined by more employees for lunch rush. I like being a regular customer here as I’m practicing my Chinese beverage vocabulary, getting tasty drinks and racking up drink points. (You get 1 point for every drink you purchase and collecting 10 will get you a free drink.) Me gusta!

The same girl from yesterday still was asking if she could cut my hair. I still kept on saying “我不要 !” (I don’t want!) but she just doesn’t give in!

An update on my seat buddy, I still am getting a “zao an” out of him but this morning a laugh accompanied his speech. I think he finds it amusing I say good morning to him. Perhaps it’s not normal in Taiwan to say “zao an.” I’m not sure but I would like to find out!

In class today, some students behind me were getting all skittish and frantic, emitting squeaks and flailing around. I didn’t know what was going on until a little black grain of rice hopped onto the ground next to me. The student parallel to me got a crafting knife and started stabbing the rice. I was so confused as to why he needed to do so to this little black thing. Then I figured it out. It was a wee little bug less than half an inch. Now this wee little bug made the whole room go into an uproar, totally interrupting class and making a guy who wants to seem older turn into a little girl who can’t stand bugs. Ok, I’m not fond of bugs and am terrified of one certain type (I shan’t reveal which one in fear that it’ll be used against me :P) but seriously? A bug that small is barely even noticeable much less lacking a reason to be afraid of it. At first I thought maybe the bug was poisonous and that’s why people got so jittery from it but nope, it was an ordinary harmless bug. Wow. I felt like a cowgirl from the country where a bug that small is nothing. The bug actually flew onto my schoolbag, which I merely looked for before it jumped off, causing an upheaval with the students surrounding it. The incidence was quite amusing to watch I’ll admit. It was a fun break from class. :P

For lunch I dropped by the buffet line in the underground cafeteria. There I got a bunch of tasty food like vegetables, tofu, chicken, egg and the curious purple rice! Looking closer, there’s both black and brown grains sporadically within the purple rice. Does anyone know what this type of rice is called in English? Either way, it’s pretty good. I expected the chicken to be just like the Chinese chicken you can find at a normal Chinese restaurant in America. So biting into it I felt a slight crunch. Thinking this was a pleasant surprise crunch of the breaded part of the chicken, I bit down harder. Bad idea! The chicken still had the bones included! I am not used to that at all! I learned my lesson, don’t let your guard down when it comes to chicken bones in Taiwan! XD

Following naptime was Civics class where I had to do my weekly global news. Today I chose to do something that I could get the class involved in, like a socratic seminar rather than just reporting random news. The subject I spoke of was over whether or not to drill for oil. I gave the example of a barren part of Alaska that has no animals or people to harm but still gets hammered with environmentalists refusing to let people drill there. Then I told of off the coast of Texas where we could drill in the ocean but would have a risk of damaging the waters and sea life. In order to demonstrate where these places were in America, I drew an extremely general picture of the USA. It’s harder to write with chalk that I thought! Feel free to laugh at its terribleness. :P

I asked the class who would want to drill in Alaska where it was a barren land with no life forms to harm. Not everyone answered but for those who did, I got 14 ‘yes’ and 4 ‘no.’ In regards to drilling within the Gulf of Mexico the answered totally flip flopped to 5 ‘yes’ and 14 ‘no.’ I find those results quite interesting! That would make a fun educated discussion if I could speak Chinese better! But overall I think my weekly news was pretty successful. Yay!

I forgot to mention something that my history teacher told me yesterday. She asked me what was the hardest thing about learning Mandarin. I replied with “all the different tones.” But then she commented that English also had tones within the language. I did a double take on that one, replying that I knew nothing of the sort for the English language. She said that apparently within the English textbooks students have, there are different tones for certain English words. WHAT?! When did this happen? I’m 99.9% sure English doesn’t have any tones. We just have complicated grammar. XD

With words that I’m pretty sure doesn’t have any sort of tone assigned to it, good luck and good night! :D Taffy fin!