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:
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