Short September-update

It's the very end of September, and more than a month since last update. I'm still in Taiwan, more than 365 days after I came to study Chinese.

September 5th was final exam, and September 6th the language center invited us all to the traditional dinner they have in the end of every term. My goal on every test and exam is at least 90 out of 100 points. The final exam is always the most difficult one, as it covers everything we've learned so far, and focuses on the last few chapters that we've rushed through in order to finish in time. This time I scored just below 90 on the test, but I still scored above 90 in the total semester-score.

During the vacation I went with my girlfriend to Taipei, and we run a race in the Maokong-mountains. A challenging and great race, in hot and humid weather this year. No heavy typhoon-rain like last year. After returning to Tainan we went barbecuing (it's mid-autumn festival and everyones barbecuing), we went swimming in the ocean and also done some shopping. After buying new shoes for the run in Taipei, I also needed some new slippers for everyday use. This time my girlfriend suggested a Taiwan brand, and I'm very happy with it.

Interviewed in Chinese prior to the race :)

Two weeks of vacation was great. I also prepared for the next semester by writing down some of the vocabulary in my little book, so when the time comes it will be much easier to practise the characters. After a short break, I also started to look forward to the next semester. We are now at the very last chapter of book three, and will start book number four next week. The weather is still warm, but not as warm as in July and August. I've heard several people prefer winter in Tainan, as it's not too warm and not to cold.

One of my favourite breakfasts, potato-hamburger ;) (薯餅漢堡)

Just a shorter update this time, as I've been quite lazy writing on my blog recently. I hope to write a little about my study techniques and experiences later. Book three has a vocabulary of 1073 words if I counted them correctly, and I've written them all down in my little book. I'm kind of proud of it, and would like to post a picture of it on the blog as it's taken me many many hours to finish it. I plan to do the same thing with the vocabulary of book four.

One year

Me and my girlfriend went to a concert. I wonder if they though:
"Hmm, where to hold this concert... let's occupy the road!"

Wow, one year away from home (except from a couple of weeks in March). My Chinese is still not perfect, but there's no doubt it has improved a lot. The amount of time spent on practising, reviewing homework and so on varies from time to time, but the time is usually spent on something good. The last weeks I've spent a lot of time with my girlfriend, and even though we do speak a lot of English together, she still teaches me a lot of Chinese, Taiwanese and Taiwanese culture. When I compare to Norway, the difference in culture is big. I've mentioned it before, but every now and then when I walk the streets and meet people, I get reminded of it again and agin. Sometimes I try to adapt, but quite often I just do things the way I'm used to. People in Taiwan are generally speaking very careful. It's often heavy rain on the island, but today we were also told there would be no classes due to the rain. Nothing wrong about that, and I believe there is good reasons for this carefulness if you look at history and earlier experiences with bad weather. Edit: A few hours after they announced school is closed, it's not even raining anymore. I see why you should avoid driving in the mountains during heavy rain, but what is the danger in a city? If you can explain this to me, this fear of rain, please leave a comment.

Mudslides is one of the reasons why offices and schools close during heavy rain. (thehindu.com)

Nice lady repaired my pants in no-time, 50NTD

A few someone came to see Metallica.. ;)

Last week I suddenly discovered a hole in my pants. Luckily, the same day I'd noticed a place where they repaired clothes. So I went there and the lady fixed my pants in no-time, she also lended me a towel because of the heavy rain outside. Things like this makes me aware of how my Chinese has improved during the year. I would never dare to go to a place like this and try to explain my problem in Chinese half a year ago.

When my friend did a stopover in Taipei last week, I decided to go with him to Singapore and see Metallica. A cool experience, and after approximately 24 hours I was back in Taiwan. (Due to no taxies, I was a little nervous about making it to the airport after the concert, but we made it..!)

Where I have Taiwanese-class and where I usually do homework. Why? #1: It has air condition :D

Next week is final exams, and then it's two weeks of vacation. Next term I'll start in E-class, and during October we'll begin book number 4 out of a total of 5 books.

Halfway through 4th term!

To learn Chinese is really interesting. After starting the third book in june, the new vocabulary every week has increased a lot, usually between 40 and 50 if I'm not wrong.. Although it might seem impossible to remember this amount of new vocabulary and characters every week, the actual new characters are usually less than or around 20, same as in the first and second book. Moreover, because the characters is usually put together in different kinds of logical ways, with radicals, pictographs, similar sounds and so on, I feel it becomes easier and easier to remember them. I recall when I started to learn Chinese one year ago, I had to repeat the characters like 15 times or so, while I now usually only repeats them three or four times before I remember them. Of course some will be forgotten the next day or next week, however I remember more and more in less and less amount of time, and characters that I struggled to remember a long time ago, suddenly sticks to mind.

I just finished mid-term exam, and after preparing by reviewing characters from the last four chapters, it went quite well on the test. We have started chapter eight of the third book, and will finish chapter twelve in the beginning of September.

Went to this concert a couple of weeks ago, with a great singer and band.
Songs mostly in Taiwanese, and a good ambience.

Taiwanese

A couple of weeks into this term, I started to learn Taiwanese twice every week. A lot of people speak the language in Taiwan, and especially in the south. Taiwanese use sounds that you don't find in Chinese, and the romanization of the sounds is not as standardised as pinyin for Chinese. The language has seven or eight tones, depending on how you see it, and most of the words will be spoken with two different tones and might also have several slightly different pronunciations. When reading the romanization of Taiwanese, the letters and symbols used for tones might be the same as in pinyin for Chinese, but they are to be read and pronounced in a different way. It's hard, it's difficult, but it's amazing to experience how the brain can learn languages and different systems of romanizations and stuff.. My Taiwanese improves slowly, very slowly, but it's improving.

Close to one year

It's August, again. August 25th last year was my arrival in Taiwan. I couldn't speak any Chinese, and I could hardly imagine it was possible to learn such a language. Time proves it's possible, and time flies.

So long...!

台灣的夏天

這次我想要練習寫中文。我們最近學過很多新的文法跟生詞，不過我可能寫得不對。

最近幾個月，溫度越來越高。雖然我不少覺得太陽好大和天氣好熱，但是我平常戴帽子和裡面平常開冷氣，所以沒有問題。上個週末颱風來了，可是對我來說，台南的天氣跟平常的比起來，颱風來的時候天氣差不多一樣。比較冷一點，也颳風颳得大一點。台北跟另外北部的城市有真的颱風。不知道下次颱風要來台灣的時候天氣怎麼樣。

上個禮拜一和二，我去安平國中教怎麼騎獨輪車。四十個很認真的學生。除了我以外，別的兩個老師也在幫助。一些學生學會騎獨輪車，有的學會丟球。看起來學生大部份喜歡我的課。我覺得很好玩，也很喜歡他們送給我的禮物。禮物前面一位老師話我跟聖誕老公公，學生在後面寫他們的名字。謝謝安平國中給我這個機會。

安平國中送給我的禮物

中文課

我很喜歡我新的小班跟同學。暑學期的學生比另外學期的多。所以在很多課，像太極課，正音課什麼的，學生很多。我最近碰到另外一個挪威學生跟瑞典學生，可是他們夏天以後再離開台灣。這個禮拜我要開始上台語課，每個禮拜上兩堂課。我覺得泰語聽起來很有趣，所以想要試試看學。應為最近發生了的一些事情，我更想要留在台灣到明年三月。計劃是好好地學中文。

Summer in Taiwan

The temperature have continued to increase the last months. I usually wear a hat to protect against the sun, and also turn on air condition when indoors. Last week we were all informed about the coming typhoon. Friday night the wind increased, but all in all the typhoon didn't really hit us here south on the island. Reports from Taipei and the cities up north says they had a rough weekend. Even though we had some rain in Tainan as well this weekend, it was nothing more than what I've become used to. I wonder how it will be next time a typhoon comes.

Last week I went to a Municipal Anping Junior Highschool to teach kids there how to ride a unicycle. I taught 40 students for two days, one hour each day. They were hardworking students, and some of them take the unicycle for a little ride in the end of the second day. I'm proud of them. I also taught them some juggling, and we had a lot of fun. After saying goodbye to the students, the school gave me a diploma and a drawing with the student's signatures on the backside. It made me so happy, and it's a great memory that's now decorating the wall in my room.

The gift from the school

Chinese classes

My new class and classmates are great. There's more students at the language center during the summer session, so there is also more participants in the elective classes than what I'm used to. I've met another norwegian and a swedish guy, but they will only stay for the summer. Later this week I'll start 1 on 1 Taiwanese class. Taiwanese sounds very interesting, and so I hope to learn some practical basics during the coming 8 weeks. Things have happened recently that makes me want to stay until next year even more. So I better keep up practising what we learn every day, as it won't become easier with time ;)

Ready for 4th term!

Scholarship achieved

I got scholarship from the Chinese Language Center! Makes me very happy and motivated. It's actually possible for C-level students to achieve it even though the test covers several chapters we haven't studied yet. I've decided to at least stay until December, and then maybe March 2014. It's kind of sad not to return to Norway this autumn, as that was my original plan and I miss my family and friends in Norway from time to time. Still, I feel it's more important to improve my Chinese now that I have the chance, and it might improve my job-opportunities later in life. Even though my current dream is to become a bus driver, things might chance later on.

Two week summer vacation

A friend from Taipei came to visit me this weekend,
we went to Anping (安平) and met som other tourists as well.

We've just had a two week summer vacation. The first days was spent in my home, relaxing, reading and preparing a little for the scholarship test. After the test I spent a few days working on some website-projects, before I went to Taipei early Friday morning. Because I couldn't sleep that night, I jumped on the 5am bus to Taipei. I was the only passenger the first hour, and it kind of reminded me of my military-service last year, when me and my co-bus driver could take our bus for a ride without any passengers. A couple of Norwegian friends were about to leave Taiwan, and so we had a farewell-party for them in Taipei. I then went back to Tainan Monday evening. This time I went by train for the first time. The train ticket was double prize compared to bus, and you might only save half an hour.. I still prefer to go by bus, cheap and comfortable as it is.

Today after saying goodbye to my Taipei-friend who came to visit me this weekend, I went to Anping for a concert. My landlord recommended me to go, and it was great fun. The songs were all in Taiwaneese, so I didn't understand much of the lyrics, but when it comes to music that is not always necessary.. ;)

Tomorrow we start the summer-term, and I'm looking forward to it. I feel I've forgotten a lot of characters, so I'll try to review some tonight and tomorrow morning, as well as have a look at chapter 4 and its vocabulary and grammar.

So long!

Finished 3rd term!

I've finished my third term! Wohoo!

The final tests last week went ok. It was a lot of pressure having to memorize texts and dialogues, do homework and reviewing, and most of the time actually feeling quite tired of studying. The vocabulary and grammar the last weeks have been escalating, and I know it still needs a lot of reviewing even though the term has ended. That said, I still feel I keep up with the progression, and look forward to continue study after a couple of weeks. Before next term starts, I still have a written and spoken test coming up next week. This is the tests related to the CLC-scholarship. We are eight students competing over four scholarships. 6000NT/month for six months. It is a hard competition, taken into account the C-level students (that includes me) will get the same test papers as D-level students. This means we might get questions from 10 chapters or so, that we haven't studied yet. Anyway, I'll have a look at those chapters and memorize some new vocabulary for the spoken test, and we'll see how it goes!

Roommate Lizard

A few weeks after I moved to Tainan, a little lizard decided to become my roomate. He likes spiders and ants, but is a little shy. Every now and then when I come back home, he's crawling over the floor or alongside the wall. One day he was on the floor, I also discovered a spider on the wall. I picked up the spider and placed in from of my lizard, and less than a second later the spider had become lizard-food. Any name-suggestion for him? As for now I'll just call him Lizard.

My roommate. Lizard has been faithful for more than a month now ^_^

In my opinion some nice decorations! Norwegian trains are mostly red,
but it wouldn't hurt to decorate with some paintings like these :)

Templeactivities and firecrackers
It's several temples close to where I live, and one quite big one which every now and then hosts different kind of ceremonies. I attended one last week and recorded some of the activities with my phone. There's also a picture from my landlord showing some of the action. Most recent ceremony was this saturday morning. I don't know what it was for, but it woke me up around 6 or 7am with heavy fireworks lasting for several minutes, then only to have a short break before another set of explosives was fired up. Even though it's loud at times, I'm totally ok with it. An interesting part of the culture in Taiwan.

They placed firecrackers all
around him and fired it up

Taiwan offers a lot of tasty food and desserts...

...and there's an arcadehall close to where I live. Too much fun! ^_^

Getting used to life in Tainan

I've now lived in Tainan for almost two months, and I have to say time pass by quickly! There's been a few weeks since last update, so where should I start?

Study
The first half of this term has been a repetition of January's new vocabulary and grammar in Taipei. Because of this, I've had less homework and less frustration in class. I've practised speaking, listening, writing and reading, and also picked up some new vocabulary here and there. We have now completed the last chapters of the second book, and will start on book 3 tomorrow. I can't wait. Book 3 is different from the previous ones. The vocabulary is bigger, and the conversations have no pinyin (romanization of Chinese) or English translations. The chapters are longer and seems to cover more daily-conversation kind of grammar. I've had a brief look at the chapters, and it's seems very useful and challenging. Among the topics is food and restaurant. The basic vocabulary for ordering food is some of the first things you'll learn just by living in a foreign country, but to be fluent takes some more focus on the topic.

Activities
After playing billiards a few times at the local pool-hall, I joined the university's billiard-club. It makes it really cheap to play billiards at certain times of the week, and I find playing billiards relaxing as well as a good opportunity to meet taiwanese friends and practise Chinese.

The language center arranged a singing competition, and we could compete as a class, duo or solo. My class chose to sing 我愛你, and we ended up winning 1st price :) We got free pizza and a nice diploma.
After the singing competition, a couple of taiwanese students invited us foreigners to join their Taiwanese song class. That evening I learned my first taiwanese phrases. Hello, Thank you, and Sorry. I hope to pick up more in the time to come.

My class just after the singing

May 17th

I went to Taipei on May 17th. It was Norway's national day, and so I felt the need to celebrate with family and friends in Taipei. I skipped the last class and rushed to the high-speed rail by taxi. A lot of people, both Taiwanese, Norwegians, Swedish and others, participated. We also had a Taiwanese choir singing Norwegian songs, and a TV crew were to catch our weird customs and broadcast them as a part of the evening-news.

When in Taipei, we went on a trip to Yilan and Turtle-island. We were not allowed to go ashore at the island, but instead we cruised around it before returning. Later we went to a waterfall and a cake-factory. All-in-all a lot of fun!

We were not the only boat circling the island

An old vulcano

Although the island is being opened for public,
you can still see traces of earlier conflicts.

Last day in Taipei we decided to go see a Norwegian movie, Kon Tiki, at the cinema. Funny to see a Norwegian movie here, with Chinese subtitles. The movie was a good one as well.

Accident

Today, after returning home, starting the laundry-machine and talking to the landlord, I though I should go out and get some food before todays work-out routine. Wearing slippers I jumped on my bike... and fell. I don't really know what exactly happend, but I could see my toe was displaced and maybe broken. A little scared, I limped back to the house and nocked on my landlords door once again. They took me to the hospital, and after a couple of x-rays, showing my toe was not broken, only displaced, the doctor put it back into place. I got some pills and was told to relax and don't move my toe more than necessary for the couple of coming weeks. As I didn't have any proof of insurance, I had to pay there and then (my nice landlord helped me out again). I'll go the language-center office later and ask them whether I have insurance in Taiwan or not, and if so how to proceed.

That's a brief summary of the last weeks happenings. To begin with I planned to study until september, but I'm thinking more and more about staying until December or maybe March 2014. No decision is taken yet, so we'll just have to wait and see ;) I've been told that you'll learn the most important Chinese during the first year, and after that you'll "just" become more and more fluent. I think that a job in Norway can wait, but that I'll probably never return to study Chinese after I go back to Norway, and so I should do it now if that's what I want.

Ok, that's it for this update! Thanks to my dad for pictures :)

Many nice scenic spots and places to explore

Me and my dad made it to the waterfall
before we had to return to the bus

四月的時候在台南

大家好！

在我的Blog我好久沒有寫了中文。所以最好多寫一點吧！

聽說最近台北的天氣不太好，下好多雨。可是我覺得在台南，最近的天氣還不錯，下起雨來平常是晚上的時候。早上到了，外面已經乾了。

今天（禮拜六）我跟話語中心大部份的同學一起去旅行。我們先去的地方有月亮好像的風景。那邊好玩。然後我們去吃羊肉餐，可是在那邊點菜有一點麻煩。應為有一些同學，包括（kuo4）我，不懂我們點了什麼菜。我點的菜來，就發現沒有那家餐廳有名的羊肉，而且什麼肉都沒有。

吃飽了以後，我們去溯溪（river tracing）。我很喜歡。下面有一張像片。

溯溪體驗（river tracing experience）的時候下著雨

兩隻有趣！

開始洗碗

洗好碗了

很多芒果冰，好吃！

Spring break

Springbreak started with a trip to Taipei last weekend, and returned to Tainan after two days in the north. I bought business-class tickets with the highspeed railway, and that was quite comfortable.The highspeed rail is comfortable in regular class as well, but in business you got wider seats, coffee, newspapers and the seat could recline quite a lot. Then on the way back south, I chose to go by a business-class bus. Comfortable seats, good recline, TV/music and no-one beside you. But as it didn't go any quicker than regular bus (and I did have some trouble with the controlpanel of my seat), I'll take the regular one next time, at half the prize.

This is what you get if you pay double for your bus-ticket,
but you'll arrive at the same time.

Go explore!

After the weekend in Taipei, I rented a scooter and went to explore Tainan for a day. I first went to Google Maps to find a destination and to memorize how to get there, and then hoped I would find my way back. I wanted to go swimming, so I went to a small island that seemed to have a beach on it. But the sign there said (not surprisingly) swimming forbidden. So I went on and found a warship being docked along the harbor. It turned out to be an exhibition, so I boarded the ship. After walking around for a while I finished off with a cup of coffee on the helicopter platform at the back of the ship.

Cool warship! And yes, it has served in several combats around Taiwan.

Some pictures

Randomly placed chair, beside a tree, beside the beach.
But I like it!

Many historical sites and buildings in Tainan,
this castle now serves as immigration office!

It all shows red. Temperature close to 30 degrees, and humidity of 80, and it's still spring-time :)
This is a selfmade stand btw, a clock and a thermometer mounted on some cardboard with glue ^^

Nightmarket

Nightmarkets are fun, and this one we went to last saturday night was quite big as well. I like to taste new types of food, as long as it looks and smells ok. In Tainan you can find something called a coffin. What it is? Ok, take a slice of bread, toast it, cut out "the filling", pour soup into the hole and put "the filling" back on top. Like this:

And it tastes good!

Thanks to my friend Amber for pictures

Trying to learn out how to play Mahjong.
I've heard it's many ways to play Mahjong,
so maybe this is the night-market version?

I'd like a towel please, the big black one with the blue cat on it!

My first mahjong-set. Still don't know how to play though!
One of my goals to accomplish before I return to Norway must be to learn how to play it ;)

See you!

Long time no see!

好久不見！

( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

It's been too long since last update, I know, but I'm glad you still visit my blog (which you apparently do as you read this ;) I'll try to write a short summary, including travelling in Taiwan, trip to Norway and starting school in Tainan.

After last update in beginning of February, I travelled around Taiwan with my family, rented a scooter and drove around an island called Lanyu, south-east of Taiwan. It's a small but beautiful island worth a visit:

You could drive close to anywhere...

...on this beautiful island

My family trusted me and let me drive the car most of the way. We started in Taipei and drove south to Taichung before we turned east and crossed Taiwan over the mountains, the beautiful mountains! In addition to all the other tourist, we also came across some wild monkeys up there. On the other side we drove through the magnificent Taroko gorge. I were there two years ago with a friend, and it felt really good to be back. Beautiful view, and a lot of tourists. Later on we went by boat from Taidong to Lanyu. After close to three hours on the ocean, we arrived. As we had a lot of waves during the trip, it was not the most comfortable way of transportation, and so I would advice others to go one way by boat, and the other by airplane. Try to go by boat just to know how it is ^^

After our trip around the island it was time to celebrate Chinese new year, this time the year of the snake. It's common to celebrate together with family, and so we did. Every day, all week, we could hear firework here and there. I didn't see any big firework like at Taipei one new years eve, but you were always reminded there was something special going on that week.

Later in february was the sky-lantern festival. Really cool. I went with some friends to a place not too far away from Taipei. There was buses back and forth all day long, and I am, as with all big events her, impressed by the organizing and crowd-control. When the night came, and people started the group-launching of lanterns... oh what an amazing sight!

At first we just watched others who launched lanterns...

...then we got to launch our own ^^

March 7th I went to Tainan to take a placement test at Cheng Kong University. The weather was beautiful! Warm, but not too warm ;) My new landlord let me stay over for free, even though I still hadn't decided whether I wanted to rent a room for the semester or not. The landlord also picked me up at the bus-stop and treated me with dinner. I believe their hospitality made me want to rent at their place.

Spring in Tainan

Winter in Norway

After the placement test I returned to Taipei to pack my bag before going to the airport. Me and my dad had tickets with KLM, and went by Amsterdam Schiphol to Sandefjord Airport Torp, a smaller airport close to my hometown. We had clear sky and so a perfect view from the plane when we flew up the Oslo fjord of Norway. After half a year in Taiwan, it felt a little exotic to see snow-covered mountains and frozen lakes. During the two weeks in Norway I met friends and family, but most important attended my niece's baptism. I got to speak Chinese with some family members for the first time, so although I'm still no expert in Chinese it was fun to see that I'd learned something since I started studying in August.

Returning to Taiwan for another six months didn't feel too bad after a short visit to Norway. I called my landlord and said I would like to rent a room at their place, and stayed one night in Taipei before going to Tainan. My landlord picked me up, served me dinner and showed me to my room. They also lended me a bicycle (which I still use) so that I could bike to school the next day.

This picture is taken just after I moved my stuff.
It's way more cozy now, and the landlord will give me a TV if I just ask for it.

I now live on my own, with my own toilet and shower. I share refrigerator, waterdispenser and washing-machine with the other people renting here. It's a quiet area, but whenever someone come or go by scooter, I'll notice. Hopefully I'll get used to it and not wake up late night or early morning because of it :)

As I change school and class the chance of having to review a few chapters or skip some were quite big. In Taipei we finished chapter 11, but the class I was assigned to starts at chapter  7. It's probably a good thing to review some chapters rather than skipping some, and it's no doubt I've already forgotten a lot of characters. My classmates seems to be cool, and we have two hours together every day. The third hour (which is required to get the student-visa) can be chosen from a set of elective classes. For example daily conversation, grammar, Taichi, Chinese painting and more...

So far so good! Living on my own, started new class and facing a warm summer in the south of Taiwan (^_^)

新年快樂！Happy Chinese New Year!

Picture taken last day of second term, spring has come to Taiwan :)

I've just finished second term of Chinese language classes, and now I'm looking forward to one and a half month of vacation. I'll go travel in Taiwan, work on some projects of mine, read books and relax. But why such a long vacation? It's because I'll change to a universiy in Tainan, and the language courses there will start later than the language courses in Taipei. But to extend my ARC, to extend my permission to stay in Tawan as I have to do every three months, would not be an easy task this time.

Picture taken i December, a few weeks into second term.

My struggle to get my ARC extended

I went to Tainan in November to have a look at the university and ask the language center some questions. One of the questions I asked them was if I were able to extend my ARC for such a long period of time. They called the Tainan Immigration Office, and found out it shouldn't be any problem. 

So, last week, when it was less than one month until my ARC expired, I went to my local immigration office to renew my ARC. I had all the papers (I thought) I neeeded, like admission letter from my new university and an attendance record from the current. What I thought would be an easy task, turned out to be the opposite. At first they told I needed to extend my ARC in Tainan, as that was where I were going to study. I told him several times that I would still live at my current adress for another 2 months, and that I did not have any adress in Tainan yet. After a few repetitions he got my point, and asked he's colleagues. They told us I could not stay in Taiwan for such a long time without being enrolled in any university. I told them the universities offer 3 month terms, and that I couldn't enroll anywhere the time between Chinese new year and my next term. He told me I should ask one of the universities to change the dates written on my enrollment letters, so that I didn't have any break in between the terms. When I asked if he wanted them to write fake letters, that included almost two months of vacation, he said yes! I was like... are you serious? After questioning him about this matter a few times, he asked his colleagues again. This time they asked me to wait, and gave the immigration office in Tainan. It took them 10 to 15 minutes, so I believe they might call my new university to get my admission confermed as well. When they returned to me, they told me they could extend my ARC until the end of March, so that I have one week to renew it within one week after I move to Tainan. Thank you! But wait, they wanted me to give them my ARC..? Instead of letting me keep my ARC card, they gave me a receipt saying I would have to extend my ARC in Tainan before the end of March. That would be ok, of it hadn't been for my trip to Norway in March. Without the ARC card I'm not able to enter Taiwan again. I didn't think about this matter until I went to class later that day, but luckily the office at school helped me out. They called the immigration office and were told I could apply for a re-entry permit. I would have to wait until the end of February though, as it will only be valid for one month. I hope it will be ok now, so I can go to Norway and return without any further problems :)

First time driving in Taiwan. Interesting.

We'll travel south tomorrow (Sunday), and we'll probably be offline for a week. I hope that next time I'll update my blog about my progression after six months of Chinese study, as well as some thoughs about driving a car in Taiwan. I drove a few kilometers today, and I found it very interesting ;)