Activities

I'm behind schedule...again! No point in dwelling on it, let's get to the good stuff .

As all of you who have read my previous blog know, I have changed host families. I am extremely lucky because they love to bring me to awesome places. I moved on February 28th and we started our activities almost right away. Take a look:

1) March 1st: New Host Mother's Birthday.

Me and My Host Mother

2) March 4th: Bai Bai
Today I went to a Bai Bai ceremony for my host grandma who died last year. The ceremony was very quick and simple. We prayed to Buddha, went to my host grandmother's grave and gave a moment of silence, and then we burned money as a religious offering (not real money). It was a very elegant procedure, and it showed a lot about their cultural and religious beliefs.

3) March 10th/11th: Taiwanese history museum/YEP Conference.

Dutch Merchant's trading map. Taiwan was a Dutch colony in the mid-1600s and was a very important trading post.

4) March 16: Skipped school and traveled to Taipei.
No school! Today my host father had a meeting up in Taipei so I tagged along. The day was pretty boring, all I did was sit in meetings while they talked about sales inventories and communications issues. The cool part about it was that the Asia Correspondent for my host dad's company was a really nice lady from Switzerland who didn't speak Chinese so I got to experience an English-to-Chinese business deal. Which is nice.


5) March 17-18: He Huan Shan Mountain

This was our first big trip. We left pretty late on the 17th and ended up having to drive up the mountain in the dark. I personally believe that I handled the insane ascent fairly well: I was only in danger of wetting myself three or four times. We spent the night chilling in our hotel playing cards and watching Rush Hour 1 and 2 (not very culturally enriching, I know). The next day we went to the peak of the mountain and then later saw a sheep-shaving and horse-back-riding show(they didn't shave the sheep while riding horses although that would be tremendously amusing). We then made our departure and took a side detour to Taichung to visit the biggest night market I've ever seen. All-in-all it was a very fulfilling trip.

The view from my hotel

Taichung Night Market

6）March 21: Went to Taichung with host mom and aunt
Skipped school again! This time I went my host mom to chill with her sister and her sisters' friends. It was a very relaxed day because we spent the day just sitting around and talking. They are all very intelligent, kind people and I'm glad I made their acquaintance.

My Aunt and Host mother's friends

7) March 25: Liu Duei and hung out at the Harbor
My host mother, host brother, and I started out the day by going to a cultural center called 6 domes which wasn't very special aside from the awesome black swans in the pond. From there we met up with  one of my host mothers' friends in Kaoshiung. We spent a few hours "ripsticking"(the funny looking skateboard thing in the second picture), playing frisbee, and playing a lacrosse-esque game. After that we rented some bikes and rode around the Kaoshiung harbor, visited the British embassy, and ate some delicious ice. It was supposed to be a very short trip, but we played it by ear and had a lot of fun.

Cool pond in the Culture center with black swans!

Playing at the Harbor with my host brother.

8) March 30/31 Sun Moon Lake:
Another big trip. This time my host parents took me to the gorgeous Sun Moon Lake. We stayed at a very simple hotel with a great view of the lake(top picture). The next day was chock full of activities. We started by riding gondolas across the entire length of the lake giving us a beautiful, unobscured birds-eye view of the landscape. We  then proceeded to a cultural reservation for Taiwanese aboriginals designed to give the public an idea of how the indigenous tribes lived. We got to travel through various tribes' traditional houses and witnessed a marriage ritual of the Paiwan tribe as well as a performance showing every tribes' spiritual rituals. After that, we were all pretty cultured-out so we went to an amusement park based after the Japanese show "One-Piece." Oddly, the amusement park was part of the cultural center. It was definitely an awesome trip.

Top: The view from my Hotel
Bottom: Gondolas

9) April 5,6,7: Went to Penghu
This was one of the regrettably few trips that had been planned for us exchange students. We toured the islands of Penghu on a number of buses and boats. Surprisingly, we didn't see very many of the famously beautiful places in Penghu including the Twin Heart Stone Weir. It was a little disappointing, but just being around my fellow exchange students made up for it. The 2nd day also redeemed the trip. We spent half the day swimming, tubing, and eating pizza on the beach. That day was definitely an experience that will live with me for a long time.

10) April 22/23: Went to Alishan Mountain
This was by far my favorite trip, but you'l have to wait until my next blog to hear about it!


Well, that's all for now folks. I hope you enjoyed it! I certainly have been enjoying myself these past few months! If you want me to elaborate on any of my trips just shoot me an e-mail at Taiwantom33@gmail.com. Thank you all and see you next time.

Big Dong

好就不見！

Hello everybody!! I'm really sorry about the long gap between post, but I have been really busy lately. I will be doing two blogs this week. This first one will be about updates and to let you know that I'm still alive, and the second one will cover all of my latest advetures. *Witty Comment, cool introduction, blah, blah, blah* Ok let's do this.

February was a pretty normal month. I made some improvement on my Chinese and all that good stuff. I read some pretty awesome books which are probably the main reason for the long delay. But the main awesomeness in this month was another trip to Taipei. As you may know, my host father owns a fairly large chain of restaurants in and around Tainan City. What you may not have known is that he also co-owns a restaurant on the 87th floor of Taipei 101 and, if I do say so myself, it is very High-end (pun intended). On February 25th, my host family and I rode up to Taipei in style. We all wore our most ravishing clothing. We took the incredibly luxurious first-class on Taiwan's High Speed Rail traveling at a smooth 186 m/ph. We sipped on the best wine the island had to offer as we watched the stunning countryside go by. We then disembarked a mere 90 minutes later, and, looking very suave in our apparel,... hailed a cab. 5 minutes later we reached our destination, and take the worlds fastest elevator. It went from level 1 to the 87th floor in less than 40 seconds which I believe is scientifically equivalent to the speed of smell... or something. Anyway, that was all cool, but the restaurant definitely topped it. The interior decorations themselves must have cost a fortune. All around there were intricate pieces of art made entirely of feathers from various birds. In our VIP room our "wall paper" was peacock feathers. The food was not as great as I thought it would be considering the lowest price to eat there is $300 per person, but I think my host father's main focus was the atmosphere. By far the coolest thing about this million dollar restaurant was the toilet-placement. The urinals were put right underneath a wall-length window where I could look down on all of Taipei while I "relieved myself." Awesome.

Alright so more awesome news, I have changed host families! On February 28th, I packed up all my stuff, walked the entire 3 minutes to my new house, and unpacked! I walked in the door and BAM! Everything went into turbo-mode. I 'm now speaking chinese all day everyday, I have gone to so many places recently that I've lost count, and I've learned more about Taiwanese culture than ever before. Obviously, I am very happy that I changed families because even though I love my first host family and they were great to me, this family definitely has a lot more to offer me in terms of the quality of my exchange. Not only that, but they are really cool people as well.

Okay so I know that this blog was really short considering it's been almost 4 months since my last one, but don't fret! I'm compiling a lot of pictures and information of the trips I've gone on recently and I will put it all in a very long blog for you guys by Next Tuesday.
Peace Out,
Tom Richter

Holidays

       Hey everybody! Hope your holidays were as great as mine! I am actually in the midst of the most important holiday in Taiwan. It is currently the 2nd day of Chinese New Years, but I'll talk about that later. I was debating on which Holiday to start with because they were all.. unique. Let's start with Christmas which makes sense because it's the first in the chronological order, and I suppose I had every intention of starting with it from the beginning I guess I just said that I debated which one to start with because it was an almost creative way to introduce to you that my Holidays were a little strange. Anyway... I digress.

      The entire week leading up to Christmas felt weird. I was still in school, I had to finish writing a speech, and there was no festive mood among the masses. The only real decoration was a big sign on the Department store entrance that said, "Marry Chrismas." They either misspelled it a little or maybe they were advertising to people the chance to join Mr. and Mrs. Chrismas' hands in marriage. Who knows? Anyway, Christmas came in the blink of an eye without any of the usual excitement on my part. Christmas day was.. different. I got up at the usual time: 12:30 P.M, and went to the department store with my friends. The high point of the entire day was that I bought my German friend and I ridiculous hats that gave the already oogly-eyed Taiwanese people a reason to oogle at us. (Fun fact: Oogle is not a word.) While I wouldn't say that I particularly enjoyed Christmas this year, it was very unique.

   I realize that I said my holidays were great. I did not lie. This year's New Years was by far the coolest New Years I have, or probably will have in my life. My rotary district took all of the inbound exchange students up to Taipei to celebrate. We arrived at 4:30 P.M on New Year's Eve and much to my surprise, we were let loose upon the city with just the promise that we would be at the bus at 2:30 A.M and no supervision. I went along with 30 or so of my fellow exchange students and we explored the great city of Taipei for a few hours then we went to a park near a little pond. At this pond, we met up with an enormous group of Rotary exchange kids from all around Taiwan. There were kids living in Taichung, Taoyen, Taipei, and Kaoshiung: about 150 of us in all. For the rest of the night, I partied, mingled, danced, and even sang (a little) with kids from all over the world. Cool? Hell yeah. Then at 12 was the grand finale. It would be easier to show you than tell you: Here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHNP-bYOrjw.
So that was my New Years.

     Next up is Tom's birthday! Woohoo! It was a rather quiet day, and nothing happened until about 6 P.M when my host father took the family to one of his restaurants to celebrate Chinese New Year's Eve, but we'll talk about that later. During dinner there was a nice magic show and some traditional Taiwanese and Chinese drums and magic shows. After dinner we retired to my house and had a nice little party with my two host families. Not a big, flashy day but I enjoyed it.

   As I have previously stated, today is the second/third day of Chinese New Years which lasts 7 days here.  The evening of the New Year's Eve is considered the first day which makes sense if you don't think about it. This first day is reserved for immediate family, and it is traditional for family members to give each other a little red envelope full of money. I racked up a whopping $3,000. Ok so it was Taiwanese dollars so about $100 US dollars. Still not bad though right? Yesterday's focus was the female side of the family, and I would have spent the day with my host mother's family but they live in Japan so I hung  so out with my host Grandmother's side of the family and went to a few buddhist temples. Today was the father's side of the family and I spent the day playing cards with his family and made a lot of money with poker, and then lost it all with a few new "games" they taught me. I didn't really understand it because it was in rapid Chinese, but I could have sworn that one of the games was called "Take the foreign guy's money." Oh well, it was a good time. I have yet to learn the focus of the last few days seeing as I just go with the flow here and the internets machine isn't giving me any useful results, but I will be sure to inform you in my next blog. So that was my holiday season in a But Shell, (Blog Nut Shell, maybe that shouldn't become a saying) and as you can see it was awesome at times, and boring at times, but it was certainly unique.

In other news, I gave two speeches in the last two months and I'm pretty proud of myself, here are the links:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=339779346047577&set=t.100000767275609&type=2&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=355429007815944&set=t.100000767275609&type=2&theater
   
       The first speech was for an exchange student competition for whose Chinese was the best. I got 4th out of 28! Secret: Everyone who didn't get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd got a certificate saying that they got 4th, but don't tell anyone that. The second speech was to all of the next-year-outbound students explaining my American life and America in general. I actually gave that one twice, once to my Rotary club and then to the Outbounds.

Thanks again to my sponsors for giving me this opportunity! Thanks everyone for reading Big Dong's blog. I miss all of you guys!

Fun Facts:

In Japan, a black cat crossing your path is good luck.

In Chinese the phrase "Next week" is translated directly as "Down week" This is simply because on a calendar, the following week is the one located below the current week.  "Last week" is likewise translated directly as "Up week."

Ok this one is a little complicated. I noticed that when someone from Europe or America emphasizes parts in a story, they will use their right hand to gesture the beginning of the story and their left to depict the end. It is the opposite for Asians. When I was discussing a movie with my host mom recently, I noticed that she kept saying the word for "end" but was shaking her left hand. Not even thinking about it, I was confused and unconsciously assumed I had misunderstood, but it turns out I didn't. My host sister did the same and she was speaking English. I puzzled over this until I came up with the slap-yourself-in-the-face-that-was-so-obvious answer: they read right-to-left. When you look at a book in Chinese from the middle, the beginning is on the right and the end is on the left.

Taipei 101 from the park with the lake: