Friday October 26th, 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
Andrea! I was at the mall in Austin yesterday and there's a cafe that sells bubble tea and bananna milk there! Just thought you'd like to know. XD
ReplyDeleteCool beans! Did you get something from the cafe? :P
DeleteBwahaha I love it when ppl turn into lil girls at the sight of a bug XD
ReplyDeleteand well, i think your history teacher meant tone as in the difference between saying a sentence and saying a question(which could be phrases identically except for the punctuation).
There's also general tones of surprise, anger, sadness, etc. that might be different, but other than that I can really think why she would say that. There are a couple of cases where pronouncing a word would give it different meanings(Ex: minute (min-ut means a measurement of time, while my-nweut means something small), but nowhere near the extend that the Asian languages have. Most of the time our words are perfect homonyms where we can only tell the difference in writing and context.
I have talked with a couple other people about the tone subject and it seems like it goes more towards emphasis of certain sounds. So basically what you said but you phrase it better. ;)
DeleteShe might also be talking about the connotation of a word, that's what I thought of.
ReplyDeleteIt very well might be just that. ;) English is way too hard. I consider us fortunate that it's our first language.
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