First Week of School

This week was my first full week of school! I was able to change Chinese classes into a more suitable level which has been much better; I like the students in my class and they are all very motivated to learn the language. Most of the students from my class come from Korea. The mandarin training center where I'm studying has a range of students of all different ages so that makes the learning experience interesting. This past Wednesday, I went to an area of Taipei called Shi Pai, where I went to a colleague of Mei's house to help teach her colleague's daughter some English. It was fun to go to a different area of the city, but also to get to meet another family in Taiwan. I'm getting to explore the area of my school a bit more, which has also been lots of fun. I went to the night market near my school a couple of nights, which is a fun experience to partake in. Last night I met up with a student of Mei's and we went out to dinner at this famous restaurant that is a chain throughout China. I ate this famous dumpling called the Wo Long Jiaozi, which had both soup and pork in it, it was actually quite tasty. After we went to Starbucks and we talked about school and life in Taiwan; I helped him with English and he helped me with Chinese. I arrived back home at about 11:00 and me and Mei watched a little bit of the World Cup; we then ended up talking for a while so I didn't get to sleep until about 1:00 am. Today I met up with a family of a student who goes to my old high school and they took me to some different sights in Taipei. We went to the cultural tourism museum and the beautiful and famous Long Shan temple. There were so many people there offering food, flowers and goods to their gods and to their ancestors. It was really interesting to observe. After they showed me around some sights we went to a really wonderful lunch at this hotel called the Howard hotel, its certainly no Howard Johnson. We then drove back to their house where I will be staying for the weekend. Its really quite beautiful to be outside of Taipei and in the country area. I will post some pictures of my weekend here later, I unfortunately forgot to bring my converter to transfer pictures, so that will have to wait. I just wanted to give you all an update. Hope everyone is enjoying their summers! Sending my love