The Joy of Midterms, and Maokong

The past week has been dominated by midterms. We had a written test on Thursday and a spoken test on Friday, so most of the week before that was devoted to preparation. The written part was somewhat difficult, but it also contained material that our class had not covered. So we will see which parts the teacher counts and which parts she doesn't. The spoken part was very easy for me. We were to read aloud from the book and then answer questions, but as the topic was Chinese tea, an aspect of the culture that fascinates me, I was extremely prepared.

We returned from spring break on Tuesday. I cannot remember what I did on Tuesday or Wednesday so it must not have been very interesting. On Thursday we had the test, then that evening I again did language exchange with my Japanese classmate. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully I learned a good bit.

After the exam on Friday, I went to the night market for a delicious steamed bun and pineapple cake snack, and met my flame dame and a group of other foreigners at a hookah bar. The group had snacks and drinks and smoked hookah. It was a very pleasant evening and I got to meet several new foreign friends.

On Saturday I went with a couple of the other CIEE students to Gongguan [公館], where one of the French students at Zhengda owns a crepe restaurant, and I tried Qingwazhuangnai [青蛙撞奶], a milk drink flavored with sweetened mesona [仙草] pearls. Mesona is a type of grass that is often fried and set as a jelly, but it can't be found easily in the US. It has a sweet caramel/lavender/licorice flavor that is good in small amounts but quickly becomes too much. On our way back to Zhengda me and one of the other students decided to go back to Maokong, which you may remember from earlier has a lot of tea plantations. The cable car up to Maokong was recently reopened after a pillar had to be moved to avoid earthquake-caused erosion. The ride up the mountain is very beautiful (it offers a view of much of downtown Taipei and the setting sun), though the air was very hazy due to pollution. The ride takes 20 minutes, and as we arrived the sun was setting. So we found a tea shop and sat and drank Oriental Beauty [東方美人] tea. Pictures of this will hopefully be posted soon.

Later that night, two CIEE girls, a Taiwanese gay student, and myself went to a gay bar downtown. Because one of them owed me a drink and I had a free entry ticket, I was able to get in and get a drink for free! As a young foreigner, I was almost immediately popular there. No later than a minute after I got to the dance floor, a group of five or six Taiwanese guys had said hi and welcomed me to join their group. They even bought me a shot of tequila! An hour or so later, we regrettably had to leave, but not before some excitement! I gave one of the guys my phone number and he says he hopes we'll keep in touch ^_^. As we left I was glad to hear that all of my companions had also enjoyed their time, and we went back for a late bedtime.

Today was a day for resting. I ate delicious beef noodles for lunch. I can't quite figure out exactly what they flavor their broth with, but it's delicious. After that I came back to do laundry, so now all my clothes are clean! I ate dinner with my flame dame (sweet and sour fried cabbage, mixed seafood and pork, and pineapple fried shrimp) and then headed back to write this after a Skype call with my grandmother.

Regarding Japanese: though I am fascinated with the language, my unique situation has caused me much frustration. As a Chinese major, I am familiar with the characters that are used commonly in the Japanese language but not with their pronunciation.

For example, from a news article title: [72億ドルの貿易赤字] means "7.2 billion dollar trade deficit".
It is written nearly the same in Chinese: [72億美元的貿易赤字].

Unfortunately, I don't know how to pronounce any of those characters in Japanese. My reading abilities far exceed my speaking abilities. The lopsided nature of my ability is very annoying because it means that I don't often learn new meaning, just new pronunciations of written words I can already understand.