Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Just started the new years-weekend. Four days for own disposal. Wonderful!

Yesterday there was a christmas party at a school where my dad used to work. We went there and I brought some juggling equipment. I did a short performance, and played with the kids afterwards. It was mostly throwing balls back and forth, but using only simple Chinese, I were able to comunicate with them in simple manners, and we had a lot of fun.

Today I plan to do some work at home, and then practise Chinese when I'm done. Need to get this work done now, as it's been delayed for a while.. Except from new years eve, and maybe one day in the mountains, I plan to prepare for our mid-term exam on wednesday. It's just a plan, but I hope to manage to concentrate on some Chinese this weekend. ;)

Class trip to Yuanshan

Because new years eve is on a tuesday, many schools and workplaces decided to have a 4-day weekend. That means we had to have a work-up class. Instead of having this class in the classroom, we went on a fieldtrip to Taipei Story House and Lin An Tai Historical House and Museum.

The Taipei Story House has a british look, originally built by a man who very early discovered some great Taiwanese tea-plants, and how to make money out of it. This winter they have an exhibition about Taiwanese sweets. Later on we went to a historical house with it's garden. I was there two years ago, but I have to say I enjoyed going there with my class.

While waiting outside the MRT in the morning, a guy beatboxed and some... thing danced.

Taipei Story House
http://english.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1100520&ctNode=27687&mp=100002

Taiwan story house, with their "Taiwanese sweets" exhibition.

Some of my classmates, including teacher.

Nice garden.. ;)

Scholarship granted

The Chinese Language Center announced the recipients of their scholarship yesterday, and I am happy and surprised I became one of them. The office check the score from last term of every applicant. The score is a combination of how well you participated in class, absence hours, homework, tests and teachers recomodation. 10 recipients will recieve 20.000NT in the end of this term, as long as they are not absent for more than 12 hours/4 days. So far I've been away for one day because of a trip to Yilan, but it shouldn't be any problem to avoid more absence. Crossed fingers :)

Last weekend outside 101.

Last weekend we went to a christmas concert, and after that to the Sun Yat-sen memorial hall for some dinner. Outside this hall people where practising dance, alone and in groups, and people had kites which I belive reached above the Taipei 101. I'm amazed by good people are at using public areas in Taipei.

2 day hiking with Taiwanese

I went hiking with NCCU's mountain climbing club last weekend. After packing our bags Friday night, we left the campus early saturday morning. We where heading for a national trail, around 25km long, and reaching about 1700mas. I find Taiwanese people more cautious than what I'm used to, and so I found the climbing club as well. Don't get me wrong, everyone I met on the trip were very nice people, and we had a great trip together, but some occasions became challenging as it kind of crashed with what I'm used to.

After a few kilometers

Along the trail where several suspension bridges, waterfalls and narrow trails along the mountain side. Occasionally we came across mudslides that had not yet been cleared, and some parts of the trail where totally gone, and so we had to find some alternative routes. Scary... yes, intereresting... for sure.

The slack-line equipment made a nice clothesline across the room

After approximately 12 kilometers and 6 hours, we arrived at our first destination. A couple of cottages built by the goverment would be our protection for the rain, and the place where we would sleep and cook. I brought some slackline-equipment in case the weather would be suitable, but we found it more useful to turn it into a clothesline so we could dry our clothes a little during the stay.

Impressive Chinese food. Pork, rice, vegetables, tofu and more

After a few minutes at the site, I joined a couple of others and we went to look for water. After about 15-20 we found a small waterfall, and filled up several bottles with fresh water. When we returned, people had already started to prepare for cooking. One of the hikers' dad was a chef, and he had prepared delicious Chinese food we could heat up and enjoy. By this food and cooking I was especially impressed.

After I had changed clothes, and become dry and warm, I soon felt tired and pulled me back into my sleeping bag. I got suprised when they still wanted to serve me supper! They were so nice.

The second day we had another 12 kilometers waiting for us. It was still raining, but as long as we kept on walking I didn't feel cold. As soon as we stopped though, I soon started to shiver.

The whole group after arriving at our pickup-point

Thanks everyone for a nice trip! I enjoyed it and learned a lot.

Second term, new class!

I had a really nice trip to Singapore last week. As I spent most of the time at the Sentosa island, I will probably return to Singapore one day in the future to explore the "real" Singapore. This time I got to see my friend and take a break from Chinese studies.

A park close to the National Cheng Kung University

After I returned to Taiwan, I went to Tainan to visit National Cheng Kung University. I'm thinking about moving to Tainan and continue my studies at there in March. One of the reasons being to see more of the island and experience life in a "smaller" city. I found the campus bigger than Cheng Chi where i curently study, and even though I didn't spend many hours there, it seemed to be a good place to continue my studies. Both train and bus-station where close to the campus, and I've heard the weather is better and more stable than in Taipei. It took me about five hours to get there by bus from Taipei, and the buses are very comfortable here. I found it easiest to buy tickets at the ticket counter by the bus stop, as both the website and 7-Eleven ticket-machines didn't have English translations.

This monday I started in a new class. New classmates, teacher and Chinese-subjects.
So far so good. My classmates are very nice, and we all seem to be at a more similar level than my previous class were, which makes it less frustrating. Our teacher is always smiling, and patient when we have a hard time to understand. My new class starts at 12:10am and finishes 3pm. which means more lazy mornings, but also more time to review my homework before I go to class.

At the cookie-factory. The cookies are machine rolled, and about 1mm thin. Tastes good :)

The cookies made at the factory are called ox-tongue-cookies due to their shape.

At the whiskey distillery they also prepare for  christmas.

Today I went on a trip to Yilan with the Campus caring group. They help foreign students with the language and Taiwanese culture. I go there for private class ones every week. They are really nice people. Well, in Yilan we went to visit a cake factory, whiskey distillery, national museum and conserved-fruit factory. All very interesting, and we had a lot of fun.

A lot of things is happening this week. Saturday morning I'll leave for a two-day hiking trip in some national trail. Looking forward to it!

First term finished!

The final exam went fine. We had written test on Thursday, and spoken test on Friday. I don't think it was too hard, even though I didn't remember all the characters. I studied hard the two first days of the week, reviewing the grammar and characters, but wednesday I had a lack of motivation, or maybe just tired of reviewing, so wednesday was more or less a day off. But I passed the test and will advance to next level next week. One part of the spoken test was a speach about our homecountry, and compared to the other speaches we've had during the term (family and home), I felt it was somewhat easier this time. I'm looking forward to find out how next term will be, what we'll learn and how my Chinese will improve.

Outside hte coast of Singapore, with one of it's many cargoships in the backgrond.

After the exam on friday I spent a few hours in Taipei before I went to the airport. I was heading for Singapore. With both the ARC and passport, I left Taiwan without any trouble. Singapore is an interesting place, and I'm still not done exploring it. I have one more day here before I'll return to Taiwan, so the next blog-update will tell more about it ^^

兩個月，三星期

大家好！
現在，我已經學了兩個月又三星期的中文。我還是覺得中文很難，可是現在比九月的時候好。
今天我認識了很好的台灣人，台灣真的有很多好人。下星期五，還有星期六，我有考試。我覺得下星期會很有意思。
星期六晚上，我會到Singapore去看我的朋友。四天以後我回來台灣(^ ^)
好，再見！

So, I've studied Chinese for 2 months and 3 weeks. This weekend I went width my dad and some Norwegians to Taizhong. While they were busy width a bicycle race, I went to a small restaurant to have some lunch and to study a little. I met a Taiwanese guy who didn't speak English, but we still managed to talk for an hour, in Chinese. With the help of a pen, some paper and drawing skills like 3-year olds, we understood most of what we wanted to express. I also met other Taiwanese people, all very helpful. At the bus station, a lot of people where waiting for the bus. They told me I had to wait for nearly two hours to get a seat. You picked a number, and had to wait for your number to be called. After about one hour, one of the bus-men came to me and asked what number I had in the queue, and even though it wasn't my number yet, it told me to bord the bus. I guess he recognized me as a foreigner and knew I was travelling alone, so he gave me the last seat available in the bus. It has advantages to be a foreigner sometimes. The bustrip back to Taipei was wonderful. The tourbuses hear are very comfortable. Only three seats in a row, a more than seven tv-screens showing movie after movie. 210NT, equals approx. 42NOK. Not bad for 3 hour trip.

Recently, I've noticed I know words I've never actually studied. I've heard them repeatedly during my stay in Taiwan, and suddenly I recognize them everywhere and remember them whenever they come in handy. Interesting and inspiring.

I'm now facing the last week of the first term. I'll have exam thursday and friday, and then I'm going to Singapore for a four-day trip. Looking forward to see how I do on the exam, and then go see more of Asia.

Week 10 and 11

Two weeks since last blogpost (!) Last weekend I went to the southern part of Taiwan together with my dad and his wife. We took the HighSpeedRail, and arrived our destination within a few hours. The train reached speeds of 295km/h on our trip, and it is very comfortable. On the way to Kending there was a ghost house along the road. We stopped to have a look. Tickets were 285NTD and we got a small flashlight before we entered the house. Inside was a labyrinth through rooms, with bloody dools, hands and fingers laying around. There was also some people inside to scare us, and they actually did a few times. Although the "quality" of the house wasn't very good, it was a lot of fun.

In Kending we went to the beach and I went swimming. The waves were huge, and sometimes scary. Especially when I shared the water with a few jetskis. We went to a nightmarked, tried different foodstands, and found a nice hotel close to Nixon's head.

The HSR was finished in 2007

Bright outside, dark inside

Before we went back to Taipei, we went to the very southest part of Taiwan. There's a lighthouse there, and they have built a park around it, with small trails along the coustline. We arrived in Taipei late that sunday night, and that's why I didn't post any updates on the blog as I usually do in the end of the week.

I'm starting to get used to all the
customized vehicles here

Taiwanese and japanese friend

Last week have been filled with study, running, slackline, tasty food, movies and more. I tried kebab in Taiwan for the first time, and appart from adding mustard it was more or less just like the kebab you find in Norway. I like eating taiwanese food, but sometimes the hunger for western-style is just too big ;)

Skyfall, another James Bond movie :)

2 months of study

They say winter is coming, but I haven't seen signs of it yet!

Progress

After two months of study, I do know more Chinese than I did before I started (of course..). It's not much, but what should I expect? Every week I find my self saying a new Chinese phrase, and now and then new words suddenly stick to my mind. I try to speak simple Chinese to my Taiwanese friends, and they give me constructive feedback, making me improve little by little.

When I walk to bus or subway, I often meet a security guard on my way. Occasionally we have a little conversation together, and every time we get to know eachother a little bit more. We only speak Chinese.

I've studied more than 200 characters, and I often recognize them on streetsigns, brochures and more. Because the characters can form a different meaning when put in pairs, it's not always easy to understand them even though I recognize them individually. But it's getting better ;) When we went to a concert last friday, I was able to locate the position in the lyrics, and that's for sure something I couldn't do last summer!

Pictures from last week

This is in a shop for calligraphy equipment.
The pencils were made with different kind of hair, like hair from inside the cows ear (!).

We usually use this board for writing Chinese characters,
but this day we were told to draw  what's on our mind, and then use it as subject for conversation.

Our teacher explaining some grammar, I think I understand... some of it... :p

Todays trip to Yangminshan. Because of bad weather in the mountain,
we didn't do much more than eating breakfast and taking the public transportation together.
Nice people though!

Bus heading for the mountain :)

8th week abroad

Well, as I wrote in my last post, I was frustrated in the beginning  of this week. My frustration is like a rollercoaster though, and thursday evening it turned for the better again. I had went to my weekly private class, and there I asked my teacher one of the questions that started this weeks frustration. The thing is that in Chinese, a verb usually consists of a verb and an object. (Please be aware I might not be 100% correct on this, but let me give it a try). If you want to describe an action, like how I'm driving, the Chinese verb for driving is "drive car". In English you could say "You drive slowly", now in Chinese I think you could say "你的車，開得很慢", which directly translated becomes something like "Your car, drive slow". Even though it's ok to say it like this in many occasions, it's not a rule without exceptions. There's exceptions for "ride horse", or "fish fish" (fishing) etc, because horse and fish are living creatures, and also with "dive water" (diving), "slide ice" iceskating), because the objects; water and ice, are to general.. And finally, after all, this might not be a common way of describing the action at all.. but what do I know.. I'm still not 100% sure about this grammar, but the private class on thursdays really helps a lot.

Saturday we had a party in our appartment. Several Norwegians came together to talk, eat dinner and listen to a speach by a man from The Norwegian Church Abroad (Seamans Church). After doing preparations all saturday morning, we enjoyed the evening in a more or less Norwegian atmosphere.

Today I've tried to study next weeks chapter (chapter 8), with all it's words and grammar. Tomorrow we'll see if I've prepared enough, or if I'll have another round of frustration :)

oh.. almost forgot pictures...

This is my class, in the karaoke room, prepared for a couple of Chinese songs.
Teacher to the left.

There's always something to balance.. :)

Facial change

Monday night I decided to watch Felix Baumgartners jump live. He jumped in the middle of the night, around 2:30am Taiwan time, and now I really regret staying up that late.. I was so tired in class Monday, and we started a new chapter with new words, characters and some difficult grammar. I was really tired and frustrated after school, so I went strait to my bed and slept for a couple of hours. I guess I learned a lesson I should have learned already, not to watch live streams in the middle of the night ;) Anyway, as a break in my homework that evening, I shaved my beard. My dad helped me taking some pictures, and we made the animation you see below. Then I went to bed earlier to be prepared for a fresh start Tuesday morning. 

Today's class was fun. I was awake and we had an auction and bought stuff from our teacher with fake money. We also got to see our mid-term exam results, and I'd actually done better than I expected :) It also felt good to walk around campus without beard. Oh Happy day!

7 weeks, halfway through first first term

Tuesday - They needed a teacher at a junior highschool, so I volountered. We played some games to get to know eachother, and then I introduced myself, and they asked me questions about me and Norway. It was fun and challenging, and even though it was an English-class, I got to practise my 中文 (Chinese) a little bit as well. Like when one of the pupils asked me if I could speak some Chinese, and spoke a little. It wasn't perfect, so they corrected some of my tones before we moved on ;)

Wednesday - October 10th, National holiday! We didn't have class, so I got up late in the morning. Then I walked to a small restaurant and bought breakfast. The empolyees at this restaurant is so nice, so I've already been there a couple of times. They serve good food and let me practise my Chinese with them (because they don't speak English ;)) This time I told them stuff like my age and that I had family in both Norway and Taiwan. Simple stuff, but still, I am able to speak more and more Chinese everytime I go there. Who knows what subject we'll talk about next time..? It depends on our Chinese text-book I guess. After breakfast I tried to prepare for the mid-term exam. I tested my self and found out I could write 62% of all the characters we've learned so far perfectly. I'd forgotten some completely, and some of them I did with mistakes. I made myself flashcards and practised the ones I'd forgotten.

Spongebob! I might send this hat to my nephue. I hope he likes it!

Thursday - Mid-term exam, written test!
Our written mid-term exam wasn't too difficult. It was actually easier than I expected. We needed to read sentences and find out if the grammar was correct or not, then answer some questions. Later we read some other simple sentences and put tone-marks above the character. I did a few mistakes here, but nothing too serious. One other task was to look at some graphics and put in the correct measure word. Luckily all the measure words were written just above, so if it was to words we didn't know for sure we could make a guess (but this time I knew them all :)) I scored more than 94 points out of 100.

Friday - Mid-term exam, oral test
I still find listening as the most difficult part of Chinese-learning. Our teacher said some words, and we needed to check the correct one in our test-papers. Then we had prepared a speach and spoke in front of the class for 4 minutes. I had prepared more than 4 minutes of speach, but I accidentaly forgot to say some of it =/ In the end we should "buy" something from the teacher, like food or clothing, and of course use our Chinese. When everything was over I didn't feel I did very well, but I'm looking forward to get the results next week. The result of the mid-term exam will count 20% of our final score this term.

After the exam we went to a pineapple cake factory and made our own cakes. The factory also had a museum with some cake-culture history, like how they did Chinese weddings in the past, and how the cake was a part of this tradition.

Later on I went to a Swedish restaurant together with some Swedish friends of mine. It was expensive compared to regular Taiwan food, but it was a nice place and we had a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to a cool nightclub, a fancy club with a lot of people. The entrance fee was 300NT, and that included two bottles of beer. When I later wanted some water they wanted me to pay 150NT.. Well, I said no and bought it at 7Eleven for one tenth of the prize. That night I took a taxi back home. It wasn't easy to explain to the taxidriver where I wanted to go, but I made it in the end and got home safely.


Sunday I went to a place called Wulai together with some Taiwanese friends. We had dinner together and took a cable car up in the mountainside. The weather was nice and we had a lot of fun. Pictures below :)

Arrived the waterfall

The parrot said something... Maybe the Chinese version of Polly wants cracker?

This shop sold souvenirs and aboriginal rice-beer.
They collected recomondations in diffrerent languages, so I wrote one in Norwegian! :)

At the endstation of the cablecar

6th week in 台灣

大家好！
我喜歡台灣，可是我想念挪威！

Hello everyone!
I like Taiwan, but I miss Norway

This has been an interesting week. After I paid for the winterterm last friday, I recieved my enrollment certificate this monday. I was told I now had everything I needed to extend my ARC. Then I went to the imigration office to apply for ARC-extension. When I finally got to the service encounter, they told me I couldn't apply yet, and that I should come back after October 30th (1 month prior to my ARC expire date). I guess they wanted to see more than one third of my attendance record, but I'm a little bit disappointed anyway, as I expected to get it extended.

Japanese restaurant this week

Tuesday I went with some friends to a Japanese restaurant at lunchtime. We had to wait outside for 15-20 minutes, as all the tables were taken. It was so hot in the sun, but the waitress came outside to serve us icetea while we waited. When we finally got in to the restaurant we sat down and had a nice time with interesting dishes. There's so many places to eat in Taiwan, and if you want you can try something new every day, every meal.
In the evening the NCCU's magic club presented a magicshow at campus. A great performance with cardtricks, pigeons and more..

View from a Taiwanese bus :)

 I try to use some Chinese everyday, but it's not always easy as my vocabulary is very limited.. Every now and then I learn some new words outside class, and one of this weeks new words is "zui4", which I learned in the private class on thursday. It means "most", as in "what do you like most about Taiwan". 你最喜歡台灣的東西？ I've actually used it several times already ^^

Last friday every scholarship recipients in Taiwan (ministry of education-scholarships) where invited to a welcome party. There were speaches held by the ministry of education, diplomats and prior scholarship recipients. They told us about the scholarship, their experiences in Taiwan, and gave us their advices for our stay in the country. What to see and what to do. We got served a variety of Taiwanese food, dessert, snacks and drinks. Bubble tea were placed on every table for us to enjoy. The recipients from each country got together and got to know eachother and exchange experiences so far. I talked to other beginner-students from other universities, and some of them told me they where only 4 students in their class and that they had already reached lesson 9 in our textbook. We are 9 students in my class, and we've just finished chapter 5. If this is a good or bad thing I'm not sure. We might spend more time on each lesson and so learn the content even better, but we might as well progress slowly because we are more than twice as many in class.. I'm afraid my language center had more applicants than they expected, and therefore put more students together in every class.

This is the appartment building where I live now, 21st floor and a nice view :)

October 10th is a national holiday, so there's no class. There will be some happenings in Taipei during the day which would be fun to see. The problem is that we have mid-term exam the day after, so I guess I'll rather stay home or at the library to study. After the exam I plan to explore some of the available cinemas in Taipei, and hopefully find a good movie. Friday afternoon our class plan to go to a mooncake-factory, and there we'll try make some moon cake ourself. Looking forward to another challenging and fun week.

1 month of study!

I've now studied Chinese for four weeks, and the days pass quickly. This week we moved on to lesson 4 in our book. We've started to learn measure words, and there's many of them! Chinese use many different words for referring to different type of objects. Example: 3 books = San1 ben3 shu1 = 三本書. Ben3 本 is describing the type of object, and shu1 書 means book. This newspaper =  zhe4 fen4 bao4 = 這份報, where fen4 is describing the type of object. There's different measure words for long objects, flat object, electronical objects, vehicles etc etc. It's important to learn them though, especially the most used ones.

Some days in class are a lot of fun, while others are still quite frustrating. It helps to be well prepared though, by reading the current chapter and try to learn all the words before we start with the chapter in class, but even that is not always enough to avoid frustration. I try to remind my self that I'm no expected to understand every word that's spoken in class, as we actually haven't learned all of them yet. The important thing is to understand the content of the previous and current chapter, and therefor read the texts over and over again, listen to texts through the attached mp3-files several times, and write the characters over and over again. Some days I'm satisfied with the time I spend on study and homework, while I know that some days I could have done better.

Classmates eating lunch a couple of weeks ago :)

Study facilities

The library at campus offer a great study enviroment. In the basement you can get access to your own desk with- or without poweroutlet for laptops. It's quiet and a good place for concentration.

If you want to take a break from your study, you can go to first floor and borrow and watch a movie, alone or together with a friend, at one of the many available computers. Foreign students need to pay a fee and deposit of 3000NTD to borrow, I don't now if local students need to do the same. (I haven't paid the fee yet, but maybe I'll do it later..). It's also fun to see all the students sleeping around in the library, it seems to be a common thing to do..

In first floor of the appartment building where I live, there's also I nice place to do homework. The entrancehall offers tables, lighting, and is neither too noisy or too quiet ;) I might also talk to the nice gatekeepers to practise my Chinese.

Studentclubs and scholarship

This week there's been many welcomeparties by studentclubs. I attended the climbing club, magic club and the mixology club (cocktail club). I've met so many nice people and hope to be able to attend the club nights in the time to come.

Last friday I recieved my first scholarship-payment. 25.000NTD. I went straight to the cashier office and payed 22.500NTD for my next term. The winterterm is a little cheaper than the other terms because of the celebration of Chinese new year in February. I paid the fee now to get my enrolment certificate, which I will use to extend my ARC. I hope to go to the imigration office tomorrow to do this.

PS. I think I should try to take more pictures.. I didn't take anyone this week..

4 weeks ( ! )

Lesson 2

My Chinese has slow progress, but at least it is progress! I think listening is the most difficult part. When I hear someone speaking Chinese, I automatically try to translate to Norwegian for analysis. That takes way to much time :p People tell me to relax though, they say it's normal and that it will pass.

On wednesday I volounteered for an english class at a junior highschool. It was fun, but difficult the make them speak English. I'm told that they only do reading and writing at school, and that's why we want to make them listen and speak as well. I'll probably continue as a volounteer in the weeks to come, and so it will be interesting to see how the kids speaking develope.

Last week I was offered private Chinese classes, and I said yes (of course). This thursday was first lection. It was me and another beginner from the Netherlands, and after introduction and the "get to know eachother"-part we spent a lot of time practising days and weeks. Yesterday, tomorrow etc. Now the challenge is to use it in everyday conversation, because everytime I do, my Chinese improves a little bit more ;)

Don't Leave Anything but Footprints,

Don't Take Anything but Photos

a sign at the trail entrance

Today I went hiking the mountains behind NCCU. I had bought a map over the area, and we found a waterfall we wanted to explore. It was 1,5 hours walk from the Chinese Language Center. After seeing the waterfall, we walked on to Zhinan Temple, passing Maokong Station and many teahouses on the way. We brought sunscreen, mosquito spray, hats, 2 litres of water each, lunch, map, compass, cameras and were well prepared. As the maps in the trail don't always point north, it's easy to get confused about directions. The compassed made it easier to orient though.

Where to go next? =)

My friend taking pictures of the waterfall

Yes, we saw snakes. We also met salamanders,
big, flying bugs, spiders, dogs and scooters in the trail.

4th weekend

Last saturday, there was a trail running race in the mountains behind NCCU. 800NTD to join. There was a 17km run and a 9km. I chose the shortest one because I had never run 17km before, and I was afraid of the humid weather and high temperatures. I had nothing to be afraid of though, because we had constant rain during the run. Even after 5km I wasn't really thirsty, but I grabbed some wather anyway ;) The trail went through muddy woods, rivers, temples, farms and more. 4-500 people participated, most of them went for the longest trail. A lot of fun!

三，二，一！ 加油!

Some (heavy) rain due to the typhoon.. :p

1h14m12s  9th place :-)

My Chinese is slowly getting better, and last time I counted, I knew more than 30 characters. I don't know if I still remember them next week though.. :p Anyway, it's fun to read and understand the small conversations in our textbook and answer the questions with traditional characters.

How's class?

I've been to class for seven days and spent a total of 21 hours there.
Has my Chinese improved? Yes. Much? No. Easy? Definitely not.

The first week was all about pronounciation and tones, and depending on our prononciation, we either stayed in the class or we were moved to a higher or lower level. I stayed in class, but a couple of my classmates were moved, and we got four other students to join our class.

Time flies when we are in class, but the last days have been frustrating. There's different reasons for my frustration.
- When I applied for the CLC, I was told there would be an average of 6 students per teacher. We are now 10 students in class, and yesterday we were 11. That means the teacher have less time to help each student, and she have to move on more quickly than if we had been less students.
- Different proficiency level in our class. We have three Japanese in class, and because they use the same characters in Japan, the writing is easy for them. We also have one in class who often speaks Chinese with the teacher, and another one who says he understand most of the things our teacher says. I guess I'm not the only one feeling this, but I feel many of my classmates have advantages when it comes to learning Chinese.

好看嗎

This week we started learning Chinese characters, both handwriting and computerinput. I need to repeat the writing over and over again, and I find it useful to listen to music while practising. I do have progress, and it feels good every time I recognize a new character :)

Second week

Never bored in Taiwan :)

I've been in the B1-6 class for one week now. Some students have been changing classes the last week, to find the class which is at their level. From monday on there will be no more changes though, so we'll all know who will be our classmates for the rest of the semester.

View from our classroom in 6th floor

My uncle visits Taiwan this week. Last friday we went to the Maokong mountain together. He and my dad took the gondola, and I met them on top. There's buses driving from NCCU and up to Maokong, and as a student you only pay 12NTD. On the top you can go running, enjoy the view or visit teahouses. You can also take the gondola back down of course.

View from Maokong station after sunset, Taipei 101 in the background

Saturday I went together with some friends to a beach in the north of Taiwan. We took the MRT to Tamsui, and then went by bus to our final destination. The weather was beautiful and the watertemperature was perfect. We had to rent a tent to get some shadow, and then run down to the water as quickly as possible, as the sand burned our feet :)

Germany, Norway, Czech Republic, Taiwan and France

Today I went with some other friends to a mountain in the south of Taipei. A fantastic trip!! ^^ Nice view, climbing, exotic. I drank 2,5 liters of water during the 4 hour trip :) Thanks to Ondrej for arranging the hiking. Pictures below!

The spiders were everywhere!

This is in the middle of a drop of nearly 20 meter, and the rope was all the safety we had.
No other climbing gear ^^