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! ^_^