Home

I made it back to Taiwan without any troubles, and it was really good to be back. I think partly because it is my home now, and partly because I can function here. Going to places where I can't speak any of the language made me realize that, while my Chinese isn't fantastic, I can function. Right after I got into the airport I asked someone for directions to the bus station right away, just so I Chinese to someone. And on the bus ride to Taipei I talked to the woman who was sitting beside me for about 45 min. After I got home and cleaned up, I went out and got some food. The food was delicious and incredibly satisfying because I ordered it all in Chinese, and there was no pointing or sub-par communication. And I got a steaming bowl of soy milk, which was amazing because it was cool outside.

The first week after getting back I was swamped with homework, partly because my classes are a lot more intense this semester, but also because I skipped the first three days of school, so I was having to make up for that. I'm taking 'Talks on Chinese Culture', 'New Radio Plays', and a news class. The news class is the favorite because although the articles are short and in a textbook, they were all written by a journalist for regular Chinese people to read, not by a teacher for students to read. 'Talks on Chinese Culture' is really interesting too though, because the texts are all about more substantive topics (last semester they were all crappy short dialog's just designed to use the vocab for the lesson). And I'm getting to learn all kinds of fun new words like 'feudalistic' and 'UV rays' and 'consciousness'. And some words we don't have in English like 'universalality'. So thats cool.