Typhoon binge, noun: the act of eating as much pizza, french fries, onion rings, and fried chicken as possible on Fried Food Friday (FFF) in an enfort to prepare for an oncoming typhoon, much like hibernation

I just got back from a typhoon binge at an all-you-can-eat pizza place with Jessica, Sara, and Ethan.  Did you know that America’s best fried chicken is served at a pizza restaurant??  And in Taiwan of all places??  CRAZY!

Also, fun facts:

• Taiwanese pizza has  sweeter sauce than American pizza
• Corn is a common topping

Fanny, part of my home stay family, messaged me a couple of days ago about what they had planned for the weekend.  They were planning on taking me to a small island off of Taiwan called Xiao Liuqiu (小琉球).

Hi, Allison,

I am your host family.  My name is Fanny.  I am not sure whether you are in Taiwan now or not.  I want to inform you that I will pick you up on July 13th and then we will directly go to take a boat to 小琉球, a small island which is not far away from Taiwan. On July 14th, we will be back.  I hope you will like this two-day tour.  You can enjoy the beach and sunshine. See you soon.

Dear All Students,Due to the typhoon, the host family will be cancelled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to the latest weather reports, today (12th July), a typhoon reached Taiwan. This will affect Taiwanese weather until night time on 13th July. At present, because the effects of typhoons can be unpredictable, we do not yet know whether the activity of host family on the 13th and 14th will be affected. Therefore, for your safety, the Chinese Language Center decided to cancel the activity of host family.

This was pretty disappointing news, so I really hope they can reschedule for another weekend.  The host family trip was something I was really looking forward to.  But Jocelyn, Sara, and I did stock up on food in case Typhoon Soulik, which has been identified as a medium force typhoon, gets really bad.  Typhoon prepared!

Those mixed nuts with the squirrel on it are the best!  Exponentially better than Chex Mix.  This was also my first time ever buying lychee.

On another pre-typhoon errand, I got these sticky fig balls from a stand in between the school and our dorm.  Delicious!  Though Jocelyn didn’t think so.  More for me!

So far the typhoon’s just brought strong wind, with a little bit of rain.  Nothing too drastic.  It was actually pretty nice standing outside last night with the cool wind and light rain, given it’s so hot here every other day.  A bunch of us played board games in the lounge.  I learned a new game called Citadels.  I almost won, but Tony beat me by one coin.  I was also pleasantly surprised that we’ve got some Blokus fans in the program.  Mark gave me a real challenge.

Late night snack!  The perks of living in Taiwan…

In other news, I learned to paint mountains and rocks in Chinese painting this week.  I was really proud of one particular mountain I painted.  On the left is our teacher’s demonstration, and the one of the right is mine.

Language class was especially funny this week.  We are starting to learn adjectives, full sentences, and questions.  So in today’s lesson, our teacher would point at different people and ask a question with an adjective in it.  “Are you fat?”  “Are you pretty?”  And then we were expect to answer with the degree of whatever it was she was asking that we were, such as, “I am not fat, I am not very fat, I am fat, I am very fat, or I am extremely fat.”  Let’s just say, we had a really fun time calling our friends fat and extremely beautiful.

Caitlin had some hilarious answers, twice mixing up fruits and a countries.  Our teacher asked, “Do you like China?” and she answered, “Yes, I like mangos.”  Then later our teacher asked, “Do you like cherries?” and she said, “Yes, I like England.”  Gave our whole class a good laugh.  My last name means tall, so when she asked me, “Are you tall?”  I said, “My last name is tall.”  I was pretty proud of myself for being able to make a joke in Mandarin. For having just two weeks of Chinese, I’m pretty impressed by what we’ve all learned.  We are able to ask names, and describe I, you, him, and her, with simple adjectives.  And we know about 20 characters.  Today we had our first test in all characters, which was a little intimidating.  Okay, a lot intimidating.  But by the time I turned it in, I felt I understood the questions and answers well, even if my characters were pretty butchered.  I think the answers were right, at least.

I’d say this song just about describes my level:

It was played on the projector before our lecture on Taiwanese, a language which is completely different and 100 times harder than Mandarin.  It made Mandarin seem easy.  Like I mentioned earlier, Mandarin has four tones.  Taiwanese has seven.  Seven!  Well, eight, but two are the same.  Our teacher said that because it’s difficult, many people in Taiwan never learned it.  Now it’s mandatory education in schools.  Taiwanese is only spoken, not written.  And there’s no uniform pinyin (phonetic spelling) to learn the language either.  I believe our teacher said that out of 1,000 Americans in Taiwan, only .05 knows Taiwanese.  That’s why if we use it, she said, people would be really impressed.  Though I can’t say I picked up any, I have a lot of respect for the people who know it.

And how could I have forgotten, “I’m waffle”?  I can’t decide whether its sign or the sign about chicken from the pizza place is better.  Anyway, I got a waffle for a dollar (35 NT) and they put strawberry jam and honey in the middle.  After one bite I “forgot all my worries and felt satisfied of heart.”