Moving In

Ok, so I'm getting behind in my blogs and I'm going to try to catch up REAL quick before my first pottery class at 2!

In my rush to post the "Where is Thursday?" blog, I forgot a really funny story. While walking through the city of Kaohsiung, we were hurrying across a crosswalk when an old man hurriedly zoomed past on a scooter. He was so excited to see white people that he yelled Ni Hao! (hello), but apparently no one else heard him. With my wonderful hearing, I tuned into the hello and decided to greet him back. As I was running in the opposite direction of him on the crosswalk, I began to wave my hands and yell Ni hao!!! Remember how no one heard him? My group just thought I had gone crazy and decided to run screaming KNEEEE HOOOWYOOOOW! So I'm getting mocked PRETTY good for that one.

Anyway, Saturday morning we packed up and boarded the bus for our new home: Shu-Te University dorms. We pulled up to the school and TinMan announces "Hey! There are all your new friends!" and I got REALLY nervous looking out the window to see about a BILLION people waiting to greet us. I exited holding my suitcase, backpack, purse, and carry-on bag along with the bag of pineapple from the night before. My new friends Nickie and Iris and Jessica greeted me with my nametag and as we were saying our awkward, miscommunicated hellos, my pineapple decided to EXPLODE all over the place. So, as I'm just staring at the leaking bag with Kenney laughing at me and Nickie frantically wiping pineapple juice off my bags, I thought "Wow. What a great start!" My group members along with Jessica's boyfriend Kai (pronounced like "high" with a K) led me to the dorms and helped me unpack and set up my desk. I gave them a gift I'd brought from home : animal crackers in a cute trolley box. It was two hours later when I had Christine (one of the Auburn students who knows Chinese) explain to them that there are cookies inside the box. I hadn't realized that they'd thought I'd just given them silly little boxes with a string on them!

We then met at the "Four Trees Courtyard" and went into a classroom for TinMan to lecture us on how to be good students and not die while studying abroad.

Something I've failed to mention thus far is the Lying Down Game. Kenney and I discovered this game online about a month ago and decided that we should do it in Taiwan. Objective : lie face-down as rigid as possible in a setting that would grab attention. Here is an example of Kenney, Matt, and Ian at the subway station in the city.


As TinMan was giving his bilingual introduction speech he warned the Taiwanese group that "this group is very strange. They like to do things like this." and then he surprised us with his contribution to the Lying Down Game! It was HILARIOUS.


After the lecture, we went outside by their ID sculpture in the Four Trees Courtyard and we took a normal group picture and a jumping group picture. I am very bad at jumping, AND I'm short, so you can't see me in the second.


After that we went to the cafeteria which has a REALLY pretty courtyard outside! Here I had my first Chinese meal on my own.


I ate 1/3 of it because they gave me SOOOO much! I had something green (like spinach and leeks maybe), some bitter melon (wasn't a fan of that one), some mushrooms, some cabbage, and rice with chicken. It was waaaay too much food. I'm finding that I'm have a very hard time adjusting to the food. It's just a lot more soggy, I guess, and the tastes all seems to run together. The textures just aren't something I'm used to, but I bet I'll grow to like it!

After lunch we went and met the IT guy to set up my internet in the dorm and then we went to the CostCo of Taiwan! It has a name...but I don't know what it is because it was in Chinese. On the way to the market I rode in my first ever taxi and it was the scariest thing ever. Driving here is completely different. There seems to be no speed limit and everyone just...goes. Our new friends were following alongside us on scooters and I was so scared that were going to wreck. The supermarket was HUGE with EVERYTHING. Basically a five story Wal-Mart.


I bought some necessities like laundry detergent (even though most washing here is done by hand and hung out on the balcony to dry...pictures some other day, don't worry), funky toilet paper that is more like dinner napkins, some kiwi, and froot loops!

Then I returned to my dorm and saw roommates for the first time. All four of them had been MIA all day. It WAS Saturday, so maybe they went home or out with friends. 3 have not introduced themselves because I don't think they know English...and I don't know Chinese, but I'll try to say hello soon. One introduced herself, Lynn is the fourth in the desk/bunk next to me (pictures, I promise!). She's from Malaysia and speaks VERY good English. In fact, she said she doesn't REALLY know Chinese.

I finished off the night with my first dorm shower, which is interesting. Unless everyone is out and about from the dorm, you have to strip and get dressed in the shower so you just hope to God that your clothes don't get wet while hanging in there. As I was climbing (literally, up a ladder) into bed, two more members of my group showed up to apologize for not being there earlier that day. Rosanna and Mikey were sleeping. They brought me Taiwanese gummy bears, and I gave them animal crackers. I still haven't seen the last member, Meuck.

My first night of sleeping was interesting. Someone, I think my group members, provided me with a VERY big, thick pillow and a pretty blanket. TinMan gave us each fans (mine broke from the mounting clip so it's kind of just holding on) but I was still VERY hot while sleeping. I think I'll get used to it though.