Hello my followers! (that sounds creepy). If you are not already aware, I have officially been in Taiwan for over a month! I arrived here hot, sweaty and confused, and here I am 31 days later and now I'm hotter, sweatier, and more confused than ever before! Isn't it great! Ha all kidding aside it was a great month with few if any hiccups, and it appears that the future is just as bright. A special shout out to all of my sponsors who made this amazing trip possible, you guys are truly the best! I don't know how I could ever thank all of you enough!
The reason that I have not posted a blog in a while is that I have been extremely busy integrating myself into an entirely different culture while simultaneously learning Chinese, learning Japanese being a full-time student, watching hilarious youtube videos, reading lots of intense novels, and of course fighting crime by night (all true).
In other news I have decided to create lists of advice for people who are interested in visiting or residing here in Taiwan. Today's list is aptly named Things You Must Not Fear if You Ever Visit Taiwan. Here it is:
3 Things you Must not be afraid of:
Sweating: People hear are sweating here 24/7 due to the heat and 80%-and-up humidity. No matter what activity I participate in it is accompanied with sweating, be it sitting, eating, sleeping, or even running a mile. If you fear this: STAY AWAY you will not survive!!!
Being Different: Especially in the Southwest where I live, there are extremely few foreign people and seeing one is rare. What this means is that when you go anywhere in public people will constantly be staring at you. Fortunately I got use to this fairly quickly, and soon I was staring at foreign people too!
Finally, Misunderstandings: These occurrences happen almost as much as sweating and are twice as frustrating. After a while I became numb to being misunderstood when I speak English, but there's nothing quite as frustrating as trying as hard as you can, searching your entire knowledge base, and finally saying something in Chinese and then getting laughed at for saying it wrong or worse not being understood at all. In the beginning I was discouraged from speaking Chinese due to these misunderstandings, but I finally got over it and now i am totally kicking this language's ass! Pardon my Chinese.
So there you have it! I will attempt to post more often, but until next time this has been Big Dong's blog!
Zai Jian! Soyonara!
