大家好!

Sorry I haven't updated my blog in awhile! I've been doing a TON of things here in Taiwan! Over the past few weeks, the exchange students from district 3520 (my district) have been getting ready for a big coming-of-age ceremony that is taking place tomorrow. We have all been practicing traditional dances, such as the third prince dinan, the dragon dance, and the lion dance. Tomorrow we will perform for the ceremony. Also, I have been trying to get more focused on learning Chinese and trying to speak only Chinese with my friends >< 太難了!!! I'll try to post a blog post of just pictures here soon! I hope everything is going well back in the States, and if anyone wants to send me an email to know more about what I've been doing, feel free too!

Last Sunday was 10/10/10, the 100th anniversary of Taiwan, R.O.C. To celebrate, all of the YEP students wore their nationals flags and marched in the parade carrying the flag that was made up of all of the national flags representing all of the YEP student's countries sewn together. All of the YEP students from all over Taiwan were there, so it was a very exciting event!

Yesterday the Rotary District held an event in which every nationality that was represented sewed together their flags. The event made it on many local news channels, and my host dad says that he saw me in one of the clips! After that, some of the exchange students and people from my school went to the market at Danshui (淡水) and played games and ate food. It was really fun! There were a LOT of people there from the Interact club at NTCB (Interact club is like a branch of Rotary club in school) who all came just to hang out with the exchange students. There were so many people that we had to split up into four groups! All in all, it was a really fun day.

This past Thursday, the Chinese Opera teacher held a workshop in which she painted three of the exchange student's faces in the traditional Chinese style and dressed them up as if they were actually performing. The above picture is of the final product: an old man, a jester, and a beautiful woman. This past week has been pretty chaotic at school with homework, lessons, and being swarmed by new friends and classmates. I've been really busy, but it has been a lot of fun!

This is a picture of all of the exchange students (minus Ilvia who wasn't here when the picture was taken) that attend NTCB (National Taipei College of Business). This week has been a pretty crazy week. Classes are just starting to ramp up, so I've had lots of homework to do and pretests to take (though some of the homework is in English so it's pretty easy but time consuming). We just finished Chapter 1 in my Chinese class, so we have a big test Monday that is in all traditional Chinese characters... This week I went to a shopping mall called Myramar which has a gigantic Ferris Wheel attached to it! I went with some of the other exchange students from my school, as well as with some Taiwanese students from NTCB. We didn't ride on the Ferris Wheel, but we did get to eat delicious food in the food court. Then yesterday, Saturday, I went to a lot of different places. First, I went to Dazhi to eat lunch with one of my friends, then I went with some other friends from school to a Japanese school festival, and finally I went to a Rotary dinner with my family. Well, I should probably study for my Chinese test now. 再見!

Today after school, Maren (one of my classmates who is an exchange student from Germany) and I went to Ximen, which is a major market district in Taiwan. There you can buy all sorts of things like clothes, jewelry, food, shoes, posters, books, movies, etc. I bought a black and white checkered hat for only 200 NT (6 USD)! It's so close to the school that you can just walk there and not pay to take the MRT. Also, my classes were pretty fun. I have an awesome speech communication in English class! The teacher loves having me in the class because I can help the other students learn American English (she says I am an expert on English). Yesterday was a typhoon, so I couldn't really leave the house. So, I have really don't have anything to say about this weekend other than that I was lazy and watched tv all day! I'm having a really fun time in Taiwan!

This week was the first week of school at NTCB (National Taipei College of Business). My classes include Chinese instruction, English classes (communication and business English), P.E., and Japanese class (though I also want to take French, too). I've made a lot of friends with both the exchange students and the Taiwanese students. School has actually been a lot of fun!