Burning A Bag of Paper Money for the AncestorsToday's the first day of the new year! I stayed with Vicky and her family (the family I live with) to celebrate. Yesterday night, we burnt a lot of paper money for Vicky's ancestors (they tell me the ancestors will let us know if they spend it all and need more).
Food!
Saying Goodbye to the Old Year
Katie and 奶奶 (Grandmother)Then we played mahjong until I decided I should go upstairs before I fell asleep in my chair.
Mahjong with Vicky and Her CousinsBut before the new year commenced, there were things that had to be finished... My first semester at ShiDa ended on Friday with presentations on our final project - which was another cool inspiration to make us use Chinese. For the project, our teacher had us all draw the name of a restaurant, then we had to work with a classmate to call 104 (Taiwan's information number), ask the operator for the phone number of our restaurant, then call the restaurant and ask them when they started serving dinner, what kind of food they served, their address, and how to get their from ShiDa. Then, as a class, we decided where to go eat dinner (Greek food!). When we got to the restaurant, we had to ask the server (the boss, actually, who was super nice to us!) to tell us about his food and restaurant... and after dinner, we all got to grill two restaurant patrons on their opinion of the place. Then write it all up in a paper, and then on Friday, I gave a power point presentation on our project, with pictures! Woo-hoo!
To clean out the old year, I also quit my "job" teaching business English to too-busy corporate managers. Good riddance. I did however, find a new language exchange partner who lives in my neighborhood who's studying for the TOEFL. Now we get together a few times a week (one time English, one time Chinese), where he tells me about Taiwan's history, shows me around the neighborhood (there's a late night tasty tasty tang yuan place around the corner!) and I tell him my opinions about the world.
Also, on Valentine's Day, I performed with Brook (an American dancer in Taipei), and I think it went really well. There's a video Brook's girlfriend took that's lurking somewhere, and as soon as I watch it I'll know all the things I want to do better next time. There are also pictures that I'll post on my blog, whenever I get them. And I'm already practicing to perform in two more shows - an Irish dance piece that Brook's choreographing, and an hour and a half long show that we'll probably do every dance we've ever seen in (including the swing number and the Irish dance), so, with much of Brook's help, I'm starting to figure out how things work for performers in Taipei. Brook's been dancing here for a good number of years now (maybe 6?) so he's been helping introduce me to the system, and he takes pride in his dances being done well, so I'm flattered and very happy to have him including me in Taipei's dance performance world.
Masks and More Masks!With the new year, everyone in Taiwan now has 9 days vacation, and I get two weeks before my next semester starts, woo-hoo! I'm leaving tomorrow to begin my travels... hopefully getting to Taizhong, Hualien, Taroko Gorge, TaiDong, and up into the mountains in the middle of Taiwan. I'm going with Taiwanese friends who have more of a plan than I do, so we'll see how it all turns out.
