As a result of my sickness, my exploration during the past couple days has been limited. On Saturday I barely left my room, only to eat and when I got restless from being kept inside for so long. I wanted to go out Saturday night but I decided against it, since I still was not fully recuperated. Luckily, I was recovered enough to practice our drageoke song that evening.
On Sunday many of us went to karaoke (the non-drag kind). It was a lot of fun, as we were able to eat, sing, and drink non-alcoholic beverages for up to six hours. But of course, it is not easy to sing songs for several hours on end, so we tired out after about four hours and moved on to other plans. But I did sing several Chinese songs, which greatly impressed the two Taiwanese students with us! After karaoke two of the guys and I headed to Taipei 101 to drink tea at a tea shop that has become one of our favorite places. Though it's in Taipei 101's shopping mall, it's actually rather peaceful (situated at the edge of the central area on the fourth floor) and inexpensive (a pot of tea is about 200 NT or $6, but can be refilled as many times as necessary). So we stayed there, chatted for a couple hours, then returned to campus. Later that night a Taiwanese friend brought me strawberries, which were quite delicious!
Note on the weather: Some of you may have read about sandstorms impacting China and Taiwan. Perhaps I misunderstand the word "sandstorm" (I picture Star Wars Tatooine weather), but that isn't quite what happens here. Rather, the whole city becomes shrouded in what looks like brown fog, but is in fact particles of dust (not sand). It's really bad for your lungs, cars, buildings, et cetera. In Chinese they call it [沙塵暴], or "dust storm". This is more accurate. Due to desertification in Western China, strong winds have carried sand and pollution far to the east, so when we left Taipei 101 the city was shrouded and the air smelled very dirty. I have heard that the situation is even worse in Beijing. Yet another reason why I don't like the city. Sadly, while today's weather was fairly clear, the dust storm conditions are predicted to return tomorrow along with lower temperatures. The strange weather conditions hitting the US of late haven't missed Taiwan either, they just manifest themselves differently.
Global climate change: Something interesting I've noticed while here (but also in Xiamen) is that there are virtually no "global warming skeptics". It's definitely a cultural thing, but Taiwanese and Chinese people seem to lack the stubborn contrariness that Americans so often possess. If scientists say that the global climate is changing, they don't search for excuses to deny this widely-accepted fact. Anyway, I digress.
Yesterday I rested for most of the day (other than classes). I had tutoring for two hours, where we discussed Taiwanese novels and certain characters that are put at the end of spoken Chinese to express mood. They're very complicated and my tutor was unable to explain them. That evening I again practiced the song with my two co-singers. Hopefully we'll be ready by Friday and sing fairly on-key. But regardless, I'm sure that my drag performance will win us major creativity points, and that's 1/4 of the total score.
Today was a lot more exciting. Class, however, was tremendously boring. In morning class we spent approximately 2 hours learning four Chinese idioms. That's a rate of 8 characters learned per hour. It has become more and more evident that this class is too easy for me, but it is unfortunately too late to switch again. Afternoon class consisted of asking follow-up questions to Friday's lecture, which I missed due to sickness. Thus today was an utter waste of time as far as school is concerned. But after class the fun began!
A group of us went to Ximen-ding [西門町], a shopping area, with the goal of buying costumes for drageoke. Near the subway exit, we found two girls dressed like maids handing out advertisements for a maid cafe. This excited my flame dame to no end (she's a former otaku), so we went there for dinner. All of the waitresses were dressed in Japanese maid outfits, and the decor consisted of Japanese anime women dolls, wall paintings, and pictures, most of them wearing little clothing. Pretty exciting.
Looks like Nurse Joy from Pokemon Centers. But has guns.
The workers at the maid cafe. In uniform.
Finally, we got to the goal of our mission, a Cosplay store where I found most of my drag outfit. I'm sure there will be pictures of it on Friday, so you'll just have to wait 'til then. My goal is to look like a Japanese pop singer. Finally, we headed back to campus, and saw a tea shop that we have been meaning to visit for weeks. We popped in, had a nice chat with the employee, a girl who had just graduated from college but was now working at the family tea shop. We tried two kinds of tea: baozhong [包種] and baihao wulong [白毫烏龍]. Baozhong is a lightly oxidised tea that is between green and wulong, and baihao wulong is a kind of wulong that produces a deep gold-colored tea. Both were good but I decided to buy some of the baozhong. It's a famous Taiwanese tea (I hadn't heard of it while in Xiamen) and has a very smooth flavor.
Until next time! Sorry for the relative lack of pictures, after arriving and settling in I reverted to student mode, so I don't carry my camera with me as much. Starting next week is spring break (April 1 - 5) and, while everyone else is planning to travel Taiwan, I may actually stay in Taipei and do some exploration that I normally don't have a chance to do. After all, I want to visit the zoo, go to the top of Taipei 101, visit Danshui at sunset. Plus, travelling is rather expensive and I'd have to find lodging, where here it would be free.
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