ORIENTATION

My school had an orientation today. Basically, it wasn't very interesting. There was a lot of quickly spoken Chinese, but they had given out written copies of everything important so I didn't worry about not understanding much. I did find out that I can audit classes at this university (National Taiwan University), which is exciting, cause its a big university, I think there are some cool ones out there. Also at the orientation, I made a new friend. His name is Ai Jin (He has an English name, but I don't know what it is). He's from Texas.

When I started looking for a place to live, and Kuan had told me I wouldn't be able to rent a place with a kitchen (I was especially disappointed because I brought a cast iron pan, all the way from america and I wanted to use it. They are solid pans, and I wanted to be able to fry up a good egg, but alas, no dice.), I had become accustomed to the idea of eating out for every meal. Fortunately, I don't think I will have to. Jerry's mom gave me a little electric wok, and some frozen dumplings to cook in it. She also gave a set of sheets that she had, for my bed, and a set of utensils (and by a set of utensils, I mean three pairs of chopsticks), and a bowl and spoon. She also gave me HER OWN CELL PHONE. She spent over an hour transferring the numbers out of it to another phone so she could give me this one. I think she could have given me another phone, but she wanted the phone to have an English mode, so I could use it. FURTHERMORE, she loaned me almost two hundred dollars so I could make the rent and deposit. So that was pretty nice.

I was about to cook some dumplings for dinner when Ai Jin called me, so I went out to dinner with him. He wanted to eat out at an Italian restaurant. I thought about asking him why he had come to Taiwan to eat Italian, but I just went along with it. The food was good, though we ate outside, and it was unbelievably humid. I thought I grew up in a humid place, and I thought I could handle the humidity but I was wrong. Pretty much I start sweating as soon as I go outside.

Anyways, dinner was good. Afterward we walked around a "Night Market". It's pretty self explanatory. Just a lot of street vendors, and a lot of people walking around and buying things at night. Then back to my new home to sleep in my own bed again.

I think it would be nice for my parents to meet Jerry's mother and father, whether my parents visit here, or Jerry's parents visit America. It seems sad to me that they will never be able to communicate on any meaningful level. But then again, most of the time my communication with Jerry's mom is little more than smiles and nods, and I think we're pretty good friends. When she serves food, she just smiles and nods, and says 'come eat', and I smile and nod and say 'thank you'. I don't know her in the sense that I could tell you when her birthday is, or any of her hobbies, or anything about her life (I still don't even know her name). But I do know that I can trust her, and that she has my best interests at heart. And we basically just smile and nod. Maybe smiling and nodding are the most meaningful form of communication, and everything beyond that just clutters things up.