Bardom

July 13

Today was another pretty fun day. We started off by having our first Chinese class of the second week. Things are starting to get a little bit better since we started to cover numbers and food, things that are much more practical to know than just “I am from the United States.” Still, this is a very challenging language to learn but I am trying hard to learn new words. Now when I listen to conversations in Mandarin, I try to see what words I recognize. Usually I can recognize at least a couple of them.

In the afternoon, one of the activities that we did was learn how to make tea. It sounds really simple, but there are actually quite a few steps that you need to perform. I was sitting at the same table as a girl from Japan, two Chinese, and a guy from Thailand. I joked that Americans only know how to put a teabag into a cup and add water. There are many different elements to the process. One of the cups is only used to smell the tea. One of the pots is only used to filter the tea. It was actually a lot of fun because I really enjoy hanging out with people from different cultures. Now that we've been here for a while, people are starting to get more comfortable talking to people from different areas which makes for a lot of fun.

In the evening we had a free night where we were able to go out and do whatever we want (until our 10:30 curfew of course). I went with three Koreans and a Chinese guy that teaches in Korea. He is fluent in Chinese, Korean, and English. We went to a local restaurant where the cost for each of us came to about NT45. It is so nice to eat dinner here for a little more than one US dollar.

After that I tried to get the people that were around to go out and do something. A lot of them were not too enthused, so I ended up going with a Korean guy, a Taiwanese girl, and a Korean girl. We went to a local bar that we discovered is owned by a Canadian guy that looks like he's only about 30 years old. The only problem with the place was the prices. A pitcher of the cheaper beer still ran at NT360. It's weird that the food here remains pretty cheap here no matter where you go, but some of the bars charge a substantial amount. Whatever. We split the pitcher three ways and just talked for awhile. After that we played steel-tipped darts. Apparently I was the only one who had played before, so we played a 1 v. 3 game. I would guess that I still won half of the time. After that, we went back at around 10 to meet curfew, but I ended up talking with more people 'til about 1:30 in the morning. I still can't believe how many dirty words the Brits can think of.