Ok... let's try to summarize everything that happened during the last week, 9 days. I'll start with last week's Sunday's excursion to a Buddhist temple near Fo-Guang Shan (Mountain)
with subsequent trip to Mei Nung where we painted a little oil paper umbrella. A Buddhist monk from Vienna showed us around and even gave us a tour in German - super interesting! And funny, with his strong Austrian accent.
The temple was built around 40 years ago and is HUGE! It's like a small town and can host up to 3,000 people at once. Of course, they're still planning to extend it. This picture shows the main shrine from the inside (the entrance is in the right, the three large Buddah statues on the left)
Our Taiwanese friends from Tainan organized the trip for us. Here you can see Jon, whose Chinese name I just can't seem to remember. He was super funny...
And of course, there are 500 almost-person size Buddah statues all around the site...
That temple was really impressive! If I get a chance, I'd really like to go there for a day and follow the way of one of the monks... Just to see what it's like to devote yourself to mediation like that.
After visiting the temple we went to Mei Nung and painted oil paper umbrellas. The muscial background was the performance of a guy who I call "Master of Oscillations". He could not only perform full songs by whistling into a water bottle or playing the singning jigsaw, he could even play full songs by blowing against the edge of a newspaper! And it even sounded good! Nuts, eh? Anyway, here's my effort of Chinese painting, No. 1.
On the way back to Tainan, we briefly visited a small museum for ceramic art, but they were just about to close when we arrived, so we hit up the Karaoke machine in the bus!
For dinner, we went to this cool place where you'd sit down at the 'bar' and have the chefs perpare the food right in front of you. It was super yummy and a really cool thing to see - those guys are FAST!
That day was really cool! Wolf (our organizer and new Taiwanese friend whose Chinese name is Hau Yuan) did a great job of organizing a tour for us!
So that was Sunday, August 5 2007. On Monday, we had Chinese lessons again which included a visit to a Confucian temple in the afternoon. That was also quite cool. He was a philosopher, but he's being celebrated almost like a religion... These temples also serve as schools. That way, people remember how to use the musical instruments and such.
After visiting this site, we walked around Tainan some more, visited another temple (at that point it started to become a bit much, hehe) and went out for tea at a super fancy tea house.
Here you see a fire department. A bit dilapidated, doncha think? The next picture is titled "Hello, Kitty"
Taiwan is packed with scooters. What better way to enforce traffic laws than to equip police with scooters, too? Sitting on the scooter: Justus aka Justice!
And finally, the fancy tea!
In the evening, we went out for KTV - the Asian type of Karaoke. A group can book a room including all you can eat dinner and then sing all night - payable by the hour. We were a crowd of about 20 and had our own room - it was crazy! And the Mandy Boyz were singing with all their heart and soul...
Tuesday, August 7, was a full day of language training. Phew, that was pretty intense! After that, we didn't really do very much. We just went out for dinner with our language teacher Lydia and shopping in the mall. My phone had died, probably because I sweated too much when I was talking to Miranda for half an hour - oops... 30 degrees with 80% humidity really take their toll. Or, to quote Christof, my roommate here, I "have bad tech-Karama". Indeed, it does seem to be the case. But I might get back to that later.
On Wednesday we only had 4 hours of Chinese lessons. After that, we had an introduction to the classic Chinese painting style. But instead of showing you what I painted, I'll show you a picture that was drawn by our instructor. It took him 6 weeks to finish this...
During lunch break we went to see Tainan park. It kinda reminded me of Central Park in NYC, but smaller - very nice though!
In the evening, we had a good-bye Tainan party, as we were leaving for Taipei the next day. The party was at the COMC (Coastal Ocean Monitoring Center) at NCKU (National Cheng Kung University). The incoming Typhoon didn't really bother us very much...
Here's most of our Chinese friends, from left to right: The director of COMC whose name I forgot, but who liked to "gang bei", Jon, the other guy whose name I constantly forgot, Wolf, Sarah, I-Shing and I-ting.
As for me, I'm becoming the master of Kuai Zi (chopsticks), and Taiwan Beer is quite yummy, too! Here, I'm eating Chicken liver... mmmh, from the BBQ. Another "delicious" food I tried that night was Chicken stomach. It actually didn't taste so bad - just the consistency was a bit weird...
Did I mention, I was hot?
After having plenty of food, we went out to a nightclub. The 400 NT$ admission fee included unlimited alcohol, water was 150 NT$ (3,50 Euro) per 0.6l bottle. It was great fun, but because I was challenged to gang bei (bottoms up) a whole lot by some fat Taiwanese dude, I was drunk rather quickly... Here you see Lukas, Sarah and Birgit at the club (from left to right). The guy in the background is Christian. The second picture shows I-ting, Justus and me after the club...
With just 3 hours or so of sleep, we hopped in a bus at 7.30 am to drive everybody to their respective internship institutions. Since we, i.e. Christof, Birgit and I, all work in the same institution, ASIAA, we were one of the last people to arrive. Here are two pictures taken from the bus as we were approaching Taipei and then one of the Physics building of NTU (National Taiwan University), where ASIAA (Academia Sinica Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics) is located. Taipei is really mountainous - it's awesome! Kinda reminds me a bit of Vancouver... just the mountains, though...
When we arrived at the NTU campus, we were picked up immediately by our accomodation's shuttle bus. The house is way up on a hill and I was really hoping for a view, but at first, we only saw the neihboring building, some bushes and upwards the mountain. So I asked really really nicely, and now I see this from my room:
In the later afternoon, we looked around the closer vicnity of our house and went to bed rather early... sleep is scarce in Taiwan :)
Friday, August 10, was our first official day at ASIAA. A lot of running around getting a computer account set up, hearing a talk, seeing a colloquium, having tea with everybody and introducing each other. It's cool here! Birgit, Christof and I share an office without windows with three Taiwanese girls, my room is in the far back of the room. There's a little ant highway running through the office, I might have to get some poison for that. But for now, writing this blog is more important (as you can see, posts get out of hand, if I wait for too long). So anyway, here's my office:
After work, we went further downtown to check out Taipei. It's great! What more can I say... Here are some images from inside the central train station. Massages with dull butcher's knives, gaming machines (Taiwanese go absolutely NUTS for this sort of stuff)
Starbucks does exist here, but I've seen at least three almost identical imitations of it. The only difference seems to be the name... Anyway, more pictures of our evening stroll of Taiwan coming up:
Haha, this is sooo funny... when you're at a MRT station trying to orientate yourself, make sure you know which way is North on the map. Have a closer look...
That night, my camera died. I lost balance, stumbled against a table and cracked the display. So while my camera is in repair, I won't be taking quite as many pictures... Here's one I took with Birgit's camera. It's some sort of ice cream covered in dough - quite yummy, in fact!
That was taken yesterday, walking around our area of Taipei, Hsin-Tien. Saturday, we slept in a little bit, did some laundry, paid some bills and went downtown around 4pm. We checked out the tech-district of Taipei, where you'll find millions of electronics dealers everywhere and - which came as a huge surprise - no food anywhere! In the evening, we visited two night markets, one close to Longshan temple and then the largest tourist night market close to Shilin station. The smaller one was much more original though.. tons of food everywhere and little gambling booths - very cool. The larger one was clearly more tourist oriented and dirtier, but still worth a visit. Afterwards, we went out to a rather fancy / posh nightclub called Room18. Fancy and expensive - still affordable by German standards, though. It's sooo crazy, people here often hardly speak any English, but - or maybe because of that - they go nuts for gangsta rap :D ! Luckily, there were two floors, so I partied and danced my ass off to electronic music yeehaa! Great night!
On Sunday, yesterday, we just went to Hsin-Tien again, did a little shopping. Did more laundry and started packing, because Miranda is arriving in Taipei on Tuesday morning, 5am!! So after work today, I will move into our hostel in central Taipei, and go pick her up tomorrow!! YAAAY!!!! I'm excited! She'll like it here for sure! I can't wait to teach her some Chinese and go places with her! eeek!
Alrighty, it took me two hours to write all this. Time to get to work. I hope you guys are all doing fine and I'm looking forward to comments!
Later dudes and dudesses!
